Climate Gravy Train

Strange voices are saying

What did they say?

Things I can't understand

It's too close for comfort

This heat has got right out of hand
--Bananarama

On the back of yesterday's post, another credentialed 'expert' fades the party line on climate change. He argues that any relationship between man and climate change is a spurious one. It is more likely, he suggests, that cyclical activity on the sun's surface is influencing weather patterns on earth.

Meanwhile, climate alarmists seek to ride a 'gravy train' to make money.

Greenpeace Man

"There is a WALL of water coming toward New York City!"
--Radio announcer (The Day After Tomorrow)

Interesting piece on Greenpeace founder who left the organization when it was 'hijacked by the political left' and morphed it into a 'political fundraising organization.'

Great comments particularly on the 'demonization' of carbon dioxide and its influence on climate. This chart should be particularly telling to any reasoning mind:

Also liked his comments on the dynamics of CO2, plant growth, and robust ecologies--something these pages have discussed.

Lagged Effects

Take a chance like all dreamers

Can't find another way

You don't have to dream it all

Just live a day
--Duran Duran

Another insightful interview with Stephanie Pomboy. I find the Maven's focus on credit market fallout from the Fed's tightening program intuitive. In leveraged systems, rate hikes and tight money policies increase stress and lead to failure.

But, as Pomboy observes, the effects are often lagged. She points to recent trends from credit upgrades to downgrades, as well as a lender bankruptcy or two, as evidence since they come several months after the Fed began its tightening campaign.  

Recall the 2008 credit collapse. The Fed was raising rates in 2006 but it wasn't until early 2007 that the first substantial cracks started appearing. New Century Financial, anyone?

And then it took another year until the crescendo really started to build.

If Pomboy is correct, and I think she is, then additional data points that reflect credit market stress should be pending.

Legitimacy by Association

"Looks like you're running with the cool kids now."
--Meg Harper (Joe Somebody)

Tom DiLorenzo discusses the long train of 'witch doctor' economists that have infiltrated government for generations. What gives these charlatans staying power?

It's primarily about perceived legitimacy that these so-called 'experts' bring to an administration. Fancy degrees and awards bring an air of distinction that wows the masses. By employing the witch doctors, politicians associate themselves with thought leaders. 

Legitimacy by association. And a nice gig for the intellectual class.

Moreover, because those who refuse to think for themselves are prone outsource the brains to others, political partisans can program minds by employing witch doctors ideologically aligned with the partisans' agendas. Blindly following expert advice puts the followers under the thumbs of the politicians.

The antidote to this cronyism? People who think as they seek truth.

Hiroshima Myth

"The principle of law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime...is guilty."
--Judge Dan Heywood (Judgment at Nuremburg)

On August 6, 1945, a United States B-29 dropped the world's first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later another A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered later that month to end WWII.

An estimated 120,000 perished in the two blasts with hundreds of thousands subsequently maimed or killed from radiation exposure. The lion's share of casualties were civilians--mostly women and children.

The popular myth trotted out to justify this carnage is that, by bombing the Japanese mainland and inflicting death and destruction to a degree that forced a surrender, the US subsequently avoided more than a million additional military casualties that would have resulted from the ongoing conventional war campaign--including an inevitable invasion operation of Japan.

As discussed in this article, this amounts to little more than the rationalization of atrocity.

The fact is that Japanese officials signaled their willingness to conditionally surrender earlier in 1945. Their condition was that Japanese emperor Hirohito would remain in power and not be subjected to criminal investigations after the war. The idea was to preserve as much Japanese culture as possible, and to provide continuity to facilitate economic and social functioning in post-war Japan.

Sadly, President Truman and his lackeys were unwilling to accept anything other than unconditional surrender--quite ironic since after the war Hirohito was indeed permitted to remain as emperor until his death in 1989. 

Why, then, were the bombs dropped?

The answer is that Truman and his staff, particularly his confidante and future secretary of state James Byrnes, had their eyes on Russia. Using atomic weapons would demonstrate US military strength to Russia and keep Stalin & Co at bay as the superpowers entered a 'cold war.' A secondary reason was that Congress could be assured that its secret appropriation for the Manhattan Project was bearing fruit that created near and longer term benefits.

Following the bombings, however, many officials, including Commander of the Third Fleet Admiral Bill Halsey, Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff William Leahy, and atomic theorist Albert Einstein, condemned the action. 

This is when the propaganda machinery got into gear. Editorials and articles began to hit the pages of newspapers and magazines about the military necessity of the bombings. The myth has been continually reinforced, usually around this time of year, by political leaders and a complicit media. 

Perhaps in a brief moment of conscience, Henry Stimson, who was secretary of war at the time and chief propagator of the subsequent Hiroshima myth, wrote in his memoirs, 

"Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is not what actually happened but what is recorded as such." 

Indeed, Mr Stimson. My sense is that you and many of your contemporaries will face, quite literally, the trial of your lives on Judgment Day.

Not Adding Up

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
--Buffalo Springfield

Something doesn't add up about Nancy Pelosi's provocative trip to Taiwan. Leftists have long expressed open admiration of the Chinese communist system. They have been silent on blatant human rights violations of the CCP for years, including the use of concentration camps for dissenters.

More recently, leftists sat idly by during the pro-freedom and independence protests in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019--protests that were ultimately put down by the Chinese government.

Now we are to believe that leftists like Pelosi are suddenly on the side of people seeking self-determination? Not only does this fly in the face of their affection for the Chinese model, but any reasoning mind realizes full well that leftists believe in authoritarian rule and collectivism, not self-determination. 

As the Chinese military incircles the island to conduct live fire 'military exercises,' one has to wonder what is really going on here.

In the Dogma House

Carmen Sternwood: What's your name?
Philip Marlowe: Doghouse Reilley
Carmen Sternwood: That's a funny kind of name.
Philip Marlowe: You think so?
--The Big Sleep

Dogma is belief accepted by a group without question or debate. It stands to reason that the higher the preference for collectivism among members of a group, the more likely that dogma will reside within the group.

How to counter such groupthink? One way is to avoid affiliations. As Jefferson understood, belonging to groups tends to cloud judgment.

Outside viewpoints are also useful as they bring fresh perspective. Of course, outsiders are typically unwelcome in collectivist circles as they threat group cohesion.

Finally, there is reason. Applying logic and scientific thinking toward dogmatic principles commonly lays groupthink to waste.

Should it be surprising, then, that leftists increasingly claim reason and critical thinking to be racist and inflammatory?

They need to quell the threat to group cohesion somehow.

Narrative Management

Nancy Oliver: What's the matter with the mistress? She don't look ill to me. Is she?

Elizabeth Tompkins: I don't know. Not as I can see. But the master keeps telling her she is.
--Gaslight

Leftists believe that words matter more than actions. This is why they respond like juveniles on the playground when someone says something they don't like. "He called me a name!"

Indeed, it seems that many leftists view hurtful words as equivalent to acts of physical aggression--acts that justify physical violence, perhaps by government agents, to quell the 'hate speech.'

This is also why leftists obsess with controlling narratives. Narratives are story lines. In reality, these story lines may be true or false. But regardless of whether narratives represent fact or fiction, leftists believe that they can manipulate behavior in their favor by manipulating language.

Controlling the narrative often begins by changing the definition of a word or phrase that is central to the storyline.

Leftists are currently focusing on the meaning of 'recession.' Rather than using the traditional definition of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth (which likely has occurred in Q1 and Q2 of this year), leftists are now arguing that the definition is more nebulous and requires (very conveniently) a panel of experts to determine--perhaps far after the fact of the recession's actual commencement.

The narrative can then manipulated. We're still in an economic expansion, they say, because the experts haven't called a recession yet.

Should recent history be any guide, leftists will also try to recruit their media cabal to label alternative narratives as 'disinformation.'

If they can get the public to buy in, then perhaps leftists can postpone widespread perception of recession until after the November midterm elections. Leftists well know that people experiencing economic hardship are prone to vote out people and parties in positions of political power.

This time around, that would be Democrats.

Use your capacity for reason. Ignore the gaslights of narrative management.

Undercover Hero?

My beacon's been moved
Under moon and star
Where am I to go
Now that I've gone too far?
--Golden Earring

I enjoy reading Tom Luongo's work. Thought provoking--even when his general premise is wrongheaded. 

In this recent piece, for example, Luongo gives the Fed entirely too much credit, arguing that the central bank is essentially the 'good guy'--battling inflation wrought by irresponsible fiscal policies that sent money to people in boxes during CV19. 

He fails to mention the Fed's long history of bailing out markets (and policymakers) when markets break, or of the central bank's $9 trillion of balance sheet assets purchased with money created at the click of a mouse. Because, as Friedman observed, inflation is always a creature of monetary policy, arguing that the Fed is somehow not the Dr Frankenstein that created our present monster seems a bit naive.

However, Luongo does make an interesting point toward the end of his article. He notes (correctly) that the Davos/World Economic Forum crowd would like to put an end to commercial banking, and put all monetary power in the hands of central banks--perhaps even in a one world central bank with digital currency-producing capacity.

He then suggests that, in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere), the Fed represents the interests of those commercial banks. As such, the Fed is motivated to break the EU-centric Davos/WEF threat to US commercial banks by raising rates, pounding the euro, and perhaps even driving the EU toward dissolution.

There's lots of holes in that argument--including the Fed's 'institutional obligations' both domestic and abroad--but interesting to ponder the 'undercover hero' thesis nonetheless.

Obeying Absurdity

"Private, I know they brainwashed you in boot camp. But sometimes you gotta QUESTION authority!"
--Chief Petty Officer Casey Ryback (Under Seige)

When a reasoning mind reflects on what's gone on, like this nurse has done, it is difficult not to conclude that a large fraction of the population will unquestionably obey authoritarian 'guidance.' 

No matter how absurd.

Tree Truth

See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
--U2

This little decision tree captures lots of logic.

Adding a branch or two for side effect risk would make it even better.

Zero Coherence

Maybe someday
Saved by zero
I'll be more together
--The Fixx

Earlier today the European Central Bank (ECB) raised its deposit rate 50 basis point to...zero. The ECB's deposit rate had been in negative territory since 2014, meaning that depositors essentially paid to keep their money in the central bank's vault.

This is also the first interest rate increase by the ECB since 2011.

Needless to say, monetary policy in Europe has been off the rails for quite some time.

To demonstrate that it hasn't suddenly been transformed into an institution with coherence, the ECB unleashed a blizzard of acronym-heavy programs, such as Transmissions Protection Mechanisms (TPI), designed to selectively buy bonds of struggling EU countries (e.g., Italy) to keep sovereign debt from imploding.

Thus, we have a central bank raising interest rates while continuing easy money policy using a quantitative easing (QE) transmission mechanism.

The ECB truly makes the Fed look smart.

Viral Spreads

There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do
I'll be right behind you
--Tears for Fears

Ponder the differences indicated here.

Hard to imagine that there are more significant predictors of these spreads than underlying ideologies that determine political party affiliation.

Then comes the real research question: Why should this be--particularly in the context of public health? 

Roe Overturned

Always searching for the real thing
Living like it's far away
Just leave all the madness in yesterday
You're holding the key
When you believe it
--Michael McDonald

Yesterday the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Org, overturned the controversial 1973 high court opinion of Roe v Wade--that abortion was a constitutional right. The 6-3 decision was split along party lines, although, as usual, the political animal Chief Justice John Roberts, while concurring in judgment, argued for a compromise that would have prohibited a clean break from Roe.

Dobbs is a worthy read. The institutional challenge facing the court was how to reverse a longstanding albeit controversial and politically charged precedent. The solution, of course, is to stick to the law--something that the Roe court failed to do. 

The primary opinion authored by Justice Alito and supplemented by Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh demonstrates how to go about righting a past judicial wrong. The court first reviews the standards by which 'liberty' as referenced in the Fourteenth Amendment protects particular rights. The central conclusion of this analysis is that the Constitution makes no express reference to the right to obtain an abortion. 

Next, the court considers whether abortion can be construed as an essential component of 'ordered liberty' as reflected by its grounding in the nation's history. The judicial term commonly associated with this analysis is 'substantive due process.' A review of pre-American common law as well as American law all the way up to Roe clearly does not protect a right to abortion. In fact, the law generally specified abortion as a criminal act--often on the level of a felony or manslaughter.

Finally, the court considers the stare decisis issues associated with overturning a legal precedent--particularly a big one like Roe. The court applies several tests: the nature of the previous error, the quality of reasoning, the workability of rules resulting from the previous judgment, effects on other areas of the law, and interests that relied upon the previous decision. It also considered the dissent's claim that overturning Roe would create considerable political consequences and damage the court's legitimacy (Chief Justice Roberts seems particularly sensitive to these types of arguments). The central conclusion: stare decisis does not prevent righting wrongs, no matter how controversial the reversal might be.

In overturning Roe, the court does not make abortion illegal. Instead, it returns the decision to the various states. There, the citizens and their elected representatives must decide to what extent abortion should be permitted, regulated, or prohibited.

As Justice Thomas suggested in his concurring opinion, Dobbs might serve as a template for re-considering other previous high court decisions of questionable legal quality.

Confiscate the Cars

Who's gonna hold you down
When you shake?
Who's gonna tell you things
Aren't so great?
--The Cars

Nice one.

As we've noted, reason is not a prominent feature of gun grabber 'logic.'

Hysteria Again

I get hysterical
Hysteria
Oh can you feel it?
Do you believe it?
--Def Leppard

Acute situations foster System 1 thinking rather than reasoned thinking. System 1 thinking presents opportunity for politicians to engage in emotional capture.

It should therefore not be surprising that gun grabbers are once again coming out of the woodwork following recent episodes of mass shootings. They betray any semblance of sincerity by their hysterical idiocy.

These pages have previously suggested that, if they really wanted to sponsor 'serious' conversations about the positions they advocate, anti-gunners would benefit from better understanding of the firearms they target, and of their utility in self-defense situations.

That gun grabbers consistently fail to do so suggests that they believe the calm, reasoned approach to be a losing strategy.

So they continue down the path of hysteria.

Love and Liberty

No more running down the wrong road
Dancing to a different drum
Can't you see what's going on
Deep inside your heart?
--Michael McDonald

Leonard Read's Students of Liberty is a thoughtful compilation of remarks made to students at Pitt in 1950. I found several points particularly interesting.

Read proposes that the history of the world is largely a history of violence. These pages have proposed similarly. Some violence is direct, such as war, while other violence is indirect, such as the violence that manifests under the guise of democracy. For example, when people vote to raise taxes to pay for a particular program, those voters are principals of violence. They contract with the strong arm of government to shake down others for resources to fund their pet projects.

The alternative to violence, Read suggests, is love. Love refers to the kindly virtues in human relations such as charity, integrity, and not doing unto others what you would not have them do unto you. This is, of course, Christ's central message. 

If we are to trends of violence toward love, then Read asserts that liberty is required. Love "generates and grows among free men; only with great difficulty among men ruled by the principles of violence. As violence begets violence so does one personal act of kindness beget another." (28) 

How does liberty grow? Read dismisses approaches such as marketing campaigns, subsidized instruction, and fear mongering programs. Instead, he advocates for self-motivated learning and improvement. Only through personal search for truth and leading by example will liberty grow.

Read admits that his 'one-individual-at-a-time' notion lacks the speed of other, more aggressive proposals, but he argues that the Students of Liberty approach is the only one that will produce durable and lasting change.

Here we are 70+ years later, and most of the approaches that Read downplayed have been tried with marginal success. Perhaps it is time to put Read's proposal to work.

I personally plan to.

Why Silence Speech?

"You can break a man's skull. You can arrest him. You can throw him into a dungeon. But how do you control what's up here? How do you fight an idea?"
--Sextus (Ben-Hur)

Why would people seek to silence speech they don't like? Several explanations are plausible.

One is that would-be censors simply can't handle the psychic pain of disagreement. Rather than reason with dissenters or simply walking away, they instead attempt to muzzle the unpleasantries.

Censors might also fear that those listening to dissenting voices are unable to think for themselves. When listening to independent viewpoints, those uncritical thinkers might believe what they hear even though, in the minds of the censors, that speech is obviously 'disinformation.' Because the censors believe that they have been enlightened to understand what the truth actually is, it is their duty to silence the disinformation and flood the pipes with 'facts.'

Of course, it is also possible that the censors fully understand that others are capable of thinking for themselves. They fear that, instead of blindly accepting the party line, listeners to opposing viewpoints will conclude that truth lies elsewhere--and that the truth will set them free. To keep people in the dark, censors seek to keep the light of truth switched off.

Finally, censoring is an essential tool of the propagandist. The central objective of propaganda is to undermine sense of truth. As successful propaganda campaigns have demonstrated, censoring seeks to keep truth out while lies are delivered in well insulated echo chambers. 

Censoring helps to keep the signal of the propagandists' message high compared to the noise of the truth.

Treason Mania

"A toast...to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and--my personal favorite--had their entrails cut out and BURNED!"
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

Glen Greenwald discusses the increased tendency to label people as 'traitors.' Out of concerns that treason term would be abused for political gain, the framers defined the limited scope of the crime in the Constitution itself. Per Article 3, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Treason was the only crime to be delineated in the Constitution. Why? Because the framers anticipated the grave danger of repressive governments seeking to silence criticism of, or opposition to, government policy by making it a capital crime.

Stated differently, they knew that liberal interpretations of treason would squash freedom of speech.

Given its constitutional limitations, treason has rarely been prosecuted in the United States, and less than 12 Americans have been convicted of treason in the nation's history.

Unfortunately, legal limitations have not prevented politicians and their media minions from shouting "Treason!" in the direction of those who behave in manners deemed unsupportive of consensus government policy.

Greenwald suggests that the Trump era elevated accusations of treason from a periodic transgression to a standard, reflexive way of criticizing political opposition. Indeed, the 'scandal' investigations that embroiled Trump's term can easily be seen as a protracted treason campaign. As Greenwald observes,

"The dominant narrative insisted that Trump and his allies were controlled by Moscow, subservient to the Kremlin, and were acting to promote Russian over American interests. That Trump was loyal not to the country that elected him but, instead, to an adversarial nation is something Democrats believe as an article of faith."

In reality, of course, many of those who have accused Trump of treason seem to possess little affinity for the fundamental institutions that underpin the United States and, in fact, seem hell bent on overthrowing them. As such, the Trump Treason narrative seems another ironic act of projection by this group. 

In any event, thanks to the Trump Treason years, "an entire generation has been trained to believe that 'treason' is the crime of expressing views that undermine Democratic Party leaders, diverge from the US security state, and/or dispute the consensus of the US corporate press."

Enter, now, the Ukraine conflict. Russia's invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago has taken treason mania to another level. (Although Greenwald calls it 'never-before-seen,' I suspect that we have, judging from what I've gathered about the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, as well as the Wilson and FDR years). People suggesting that NATO expansion or any other factor beyond 'Putin' helped spark this conflict, or that Ukrainian borders are not vital enough interests to the US to warrant American involvement, are reflexively labeled 'traitors.'

Our founding ancestors lived this accusation. By speaking out against the King of England they were deemed traitors for voicing legitimate political opposition to the crown. They understood that the hallmark of tyranny is intolerance of voices that questioned official government policy, and to criminalize them if possible by equating dissenting voices with treason.

That's why the framers articulated the First Amendment, and a limited criminal scope for treasonous behavior. 

If you've been labeled a 'traitor' for dissenting from the party line on Ukraine, then find comfort that you're on the right side of history and of reason. Don't take the insults personally.

Better yet, pray for them.

Hyper Connectedness and Hyperinflation

Hundred dollar car note
Two hundred rent
I get a check on Friday
But it's already spent
--Huey Lewis & the News

With 40 yr highs in official measures goods and service prices, it should not be surprising that inflation expectations are marking similar highs.

Although it is caused by increases in money supply, inflation's effect on prices can be shaped by buyer psychology. The greater the belief that money will be worth less tomorrow, then the more consumers will buy today in attempt to get ahead of that devaluation. Prices squirt higher as result.

That is why it is often said that once inflationary psychology takes hold, the toothpaste is out of the tube.

This time around, I wonder whether inflation expectations may be worse than in the past due to the amplifying effect of our increased connectedness. We know that networked individuals are more tightly coupled, meaning that they respond similarly to stimuli and disturbances. 

If the echo chambers of social networks, et al tell individuals that inflation is rocketing, might this exacerbate expectations and the 'buy today' behavior that serves as a coping mechanism?

Weimar Germany. Venezuela. Could hyper connectedness breed hyperinflation?