Political Football

- been telling you this since mid 2007.  -pf

LINK

Democrats mull Al Gore’s nomination

By Tim Shipman in Washington

Plans for Al Gore to take the Democratic presidential nomination as the saviour of a bitterly divided party are being actively discussed by senior figures and aides to the former vice-president.

The bloody civil war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has left many Democrats convinced that neither can deliver a knockout blow to the other and that both have been so damaged that they risk losing November’s election to the Republican nominee, John McCain.

Former aides to Al Gore now believe he could emerge as a compromise candidate

Former Gore aides now believe he could emerge as a compromise candidate acceptable to both camps at the party’s convention in Denver during the last week of August.

Two former Gore campaign officials have told The Sunday Telegraph that a scenario first mapped out by members of Mr Gore’s inner circle last May now has a sporting chance of coming true.

Mr Gore, who was Bill Clinton’s vice-president and has since won a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his work on green issues, remains an influential figure eight years after he beat George W Bush in the popular vote but lost the White House after the Florida recount fiasco.

The opening has emerged because opinion polls show Mr McCain stretching his lead over both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, whose campaigns are engaged in a daily cycle of attacks, character assassination and mutual recriminations on religion, race and the economy.

Between a quarter and a third of Obama and Clinton supporters say that they would not now vote for the other in November.

The prospect of a new Gore candidacy was raised last week in Time magazine by Joe Klein, the doyen of American political writers, and discussed on the main cable news networks, CNN, Fox and MSNBC.

If neither Mr Obama nor Mrs Clinton has the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination, and if both appear unable to beat Mr McCain, under one scenario a group of about 100 party elders – the “super-delegates” – could sit out the first ballot in Denver, preventing either candidate winning outright, and then offer Mr Gore the nomination for the good of the party.

Tim Mahoney, a Democrat congressman from Florida, said last week: “If it goes into the convention, don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top of the ticket.” This suggests the party would accept a Gore-Clinton or a Gore-Obama pairing.

Following a brief flurry of speculation that he might jump into the race last year, Mr Gore claimed he had “fallen out of love” with politics, but he has pointedly refused to rule out another tilt at the White House and said that the only job in public life that interests him is the presidency.

March 28, 2008, 0:01 a.m.

Iraqis for McCain
They know that a withdrawal now means Al Qaeda wins the war.

By Kathleen Parker

If Iraqis could elect America’s next president, chances are good that the next occupant of the Oval Office would be Gen. David Petraeus.

Barring that unlikely development, John McCain will do. Or so I hear from an Iraqi journalist with whom I’ve corresponded the past couple of years, a woman whose family was once courted by Saddam Hussein but who later became a victim of his torturers.

Mayada al-Askari, about whom I’ve written previously, is today a reporter for the Gulf News. Although she lives in Dubai, she visits and writes extensively about Iraq and has regular access to both American and Iraqi leaders there.

Her Iraqi roots run deep. One grandfather was the Arab commander for T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), while another was one of the first Arab nationalists. Other family members have held prominent government positions.

Our correspondence, which has included exchanges of family photos and personal histories, has provided a window into the confusion and ambivalence many Iraqis share with Americans. Mayada’s missives, which she has agreed to let me excerpt here, haven’t always been easy to read and often betrayed resentment mixed with gratitude.

She once angrily told me of having to start each day looking at newsroom photographs of dead babies, raging against my own sanitized exposure to the war. She wrote of friends killed and disappeared.

Mayada knew what she was talking about. Before the war, she was part of a roundup of Baghdad publishers arrested and imprisoned when someone printed anti-regime leaflets. Mayada’s internment and torture in Baladiyat Prison, along with 17 other women cellmates who suffered much worse, were the subject of Jean P. Sasson’s 2003 book, Mayada, Daughter of Iraq.

In the course of the war, Mayada sometimes insisted that the U.S. had to leave for the violence to stop. Like many Americans, she was enraged that no plan was in place for the day after:

“All the resistance, insurgents, party militias and other forces that came through . . . all this would not have taken place if the coalition forces had a clear plan for the day after. . . . Your soldiers need to return home, as more fighting and killing will not solve anything.”

At other times, she insisted that a U.S. withdrawal would plunge Iraq into a ceaseless civil war and genocide.

In June 2006, she wrote: “Tell him (Bush) we are ever thankful for his ousting the dictator, but to forget democracy and announce martial laws, and put an end to the blood bath and misery.”

By April 2007, Mayada was critical of the Democrats and their promises to bring the troops home. Should that happen, she wrote, America “will leave Iraq in its current devastated state, and who knows what will happen in the area, and everything inside this red-hot region.”

Her contradictory responses to my continuous questions echoed the debate that has divided this country the past five years. A clear answer has never been easy to find.

That is no longer the case, in Mayada’s view. She gives credit to Petraeus, whom she describes as “intelligent and calm, set on winning hearts and souls.”

Today she insists that Iraqis who are not Baathist hope that McCain wins the election for one simple reason: “The man knows the job that has to be done in Iraq. If the U.S. pulls out of Iraq now or anytime soon, then that will mean one thing: al-Qaeda won the war.”

She points out that for the first time since Iraq’s monarchy was toppled in 1958, the country has a parliament, a free press, jobs, a true identity “and a better understanding toward where the country should be heading.”

The sectarian divide, meanwhile, is an artificial schism created by al-Qaeda and other non-Iraqis, she says. Many Iraqis are like Mayada, a Sunni, who have married across sectarian lines.

Says Mayada: “When you ask the young people of Iraq — what are you, a Sunni or a Shiite? — the ready answer is: I am an Iraqi.”

There may be a way to safely withdraw troops sometime in the near future, but as McCain insisted in his Wednesday speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, premature departure would be “an unconscionable act of betrayal,” as well as a political gamble with stakes too high to consider.

The Governor slowing this bill down is a great sign – if you have not contacted your representatives and senators please do so – or call the governor at 1-515-281-5211 or e-mail at chet.culver@iowa.gov this is ground breaking legislation and will start to bring back the fair share debate.

The bill passed on party line votes in 2 days. Democrat Senators only delayed the bill on Monday because Republican Senators threatened to walk out.

Public hearings should be allowed on bills that drastically changes how the state operates. Apparently Culver wants to keep his job. Union ownership of the Democrat House and Senate Caucuses apparently don’t believe this vote jeopardizes theirs. -pf

Link to story below

Gov. Chet Culver threatened Tuesday to veto legislation that would give Iowa’s public employees greater negotiating powers.

The legislation, House File 2645, was introduced and passed by both the House and the Senate within the past week.

The governor said that the process was rushed and that leaders in his own party failed to provide more public input as he requested.

Senate Democratic leaders on Monday temporarily delayed the bill from going to the governor’s desk. Majority Leader Michael Gronstal of Council Bluffs filed a motion to reconsider the bill. That means lawmakers could bring it back up for more debate or merely give Culver more time before the bill reaches his desk and triggers his three-day time frame for taking action.

“The motion to reconsider was a step in the right direction,” Culver said. “However, I want to be clear: There is a strong possibility that I will veto this bill if a real effort to listen to the concerns of Iowans, local elected officials and government stakeholders at all levels does not take place.”

Culver’s statements drew quick praise from opponents of the bill and Republican lawmakers and criticism from some union representatives and Democratic lawmakers.

“If he does indeed veto this bill, it represents a major step backward and once again relegates public employees to second-class citizens at the bargaining table,” said Linda Nelson, president of the Iowa State Education Association.

House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, a Sioux City Republican, said he was “pleased to see the governor is inclined to veto” the bill.

Rants said the section of the bill that allows unions greater negotiating powers should be taken out. “Short of a thorough removal of that amendment, the bill should be vetoed by the governor,” he said.

Culver had asked legislative leaders Monday to hold a public hearing on the issue before the bill was passed. Senate leaders ignored his request, saying the governor, who only recently returned from a vacation, would agree with them when he was up to speed on the issue.

Culver wasn’t specific Tuesday when reporters asked whether he would take the rare step of seeking a hearing after the Legislature has already acted on the bill.

“I’m looking for a thorough discussion and dialogue on this important issue, and I’m hoping that we can find common ground,” Culver said. “We can do whatever we think we need to do before we adjourn – to make changes, to make modifications, to start over.”

Gronstal was “incredibly disappointed” with Culver’s veto threat. The legislation would bring Iowa in line with 80 percent of the other states with public employee collective bargaining, he said.

It’s unlikely the Senate will hold a public hearing on House File 2645 or greatly alter the proposal, he added.

Senate Minority Leader Ron Wieck of Sioux City said that “there’s obviously some personal animosities between Senator Gronstal and the governor, and I would ask Senator Gronstal to put them aside.”

This is not about “giving the moon”. This is about putting financial decision making powers in the hands of unelected arbitrators who may not even live in Iowa. This is bill is about reducing the power of the elected school board and Superintendents, a bill passed through both houses in 2 days within 3 votes of strict party line with no time for public input. Democrats expected this uproar or it wouldn’t have been managed through the Legislature in this way.  -pf

Link to original article below

Iowa would have the widest-reaching union rights for public employees in the nation under a proposal that Democratic leaders pushed through the Legislature during the past week, according to a nonprofit group.

While 27 states allow a wide range of topics to be included in collective bargaining, all have narrower laws for using binding arbitration to resolve disputes than Iowa’s pending legislation would provide.

Advocates say having the nation’s strongest union laws would strengthen worker rights. Opponents argue that taxes would spike if key decisions – regarding such subjects as early retirements and class sizes – are taken out of the hands of elected officials.

“It would be unprecedented, and I think it would be a devastating mistake if the governor signs it,” said Simon Campbell, president of Stop Teacher Strikes, a nonprofit group based in Pennsylvania.

The legislation, House File 2645, expands the number of issues about which union officials may negotiate.

Public employees in the 27 other states have “open scope” negotiating powers like those in the proposed Iowa legislation. The difference between the Iowa proposal and the others relates to how disputes between unions and government bodies are resolved.

Iowa uses what is known as binding arbitration, which allows a third party to determine what is fair in a dispute. Binding arbitration prevents public employees from striking, which means most school employees and workers in essential services such as waste collection do not shut down during times of negotiation squabbles.

While other states specify arbitration powers, union leaders in none of the 27 “open scope” states are able to use binding arbitration exactly as it would be allowed in Iowa under House File 2645.

Public employees in other states can use arbitration only in specific situations or only when both parties mutually agree, according to Stop Teacher Strikes.

Under Iowa’s proposed legislation, unions could make sweeping demands that would ultimately be resolved through arbitration, rather than by elected officials who are directly accountable to voters, Campbell said.

“The unions love this because what they do is ask for the moon, and if they get two-thirds of it, they feel like they’ve made a home run,” Campbell said.

Union officials in Iowa say Campbell and groups such as the Iowa Association of School Boards are wrong to assume that the proposal would increase taxes. The proposal would give public employees the option to negotiate on a wider range of issues. Unions and local governments would not be required to negotiate on all the issues that would be available, unless one side determined that talks on a given issue were critical, they noted.

“I get tired of these Chicken Little ‘the sky is falling’ arguments,” said Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor. “It makes for good news stories and political fodder for this fall, but it does not move the state forward.”

Professional fact-finders who help resolve union disputes rarely, if ever, side completely with either party in labor negotiations, said Wayne Newkirk, a retired Drake University labor economics professor who also is an arbitrator. Instead, they look at comparable data on specific issues and the financial situations of government bodies and try to find the fairest solution, he said.

“Arbitrators are not inclined to give the moon,” Newkirk said in response to Campbell’s comments.

Des Moines City Council members, both Democratic and Republican, have opposed the bill. Among their concerns are that an arbitrator, not elected officials, could force taxpayers to pay health insurance premiums for retired city employees; and that selection of insurance providers could be decided for the city, rather than be determined through competitive bidding.

“The potential cost implication of adding these new mandatory bargaining subjects is staggering,” wrote Des Moines City Councilman Chris Coleman, a Democrat, in an e-mail to local lawmakers.

Taxpayer watchdog groups such as Iowans for Tax Relief, as well as groups such as the Iowa Association of School Boards, said this week that the fast passage of the legislation failed to give them time to conduct studies of how similar legislation has affected other states.

“We do believe with some pretty credible authority that you will see property taxes go up because of early retirement and some of the benefit discussions,” said Margaret Buckton, a lobbyist for the school boards association.

An Open Letter to Senator Obama

Link

Dear Senator Obama:

I have now read and reread your speech, understanding you take this to be a “teaching moment,” I have applied myself to its lessons. But some questions have arisen and I need a little more clarification.

You tell me Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s horrendous remarks will take on a different meaning if I will but contextualize them and understand he has seen terrible things in his time, a burden shared by all African-Americans. A fair proposition; from Kant to Auden and beyond we learn we define by comparison and only by internalizing can we grasp true meaning. So I have done precisely that: looked inside myself to understand how hatred might need to be contextualized.

I did not have to look far. I remembered how, as a boy, I sat at the Passover Seder with my sister’s Polish-born husband and the remnants of his family. The remnants of five families to be precise, for the 12 weary souls around that table were all that remained of what had once been 300. The others – their loved ones, their sons, their daughters, their hopes and dreams – were gone, their lives consumed by zyklon-b gas, their mortal remains wisps of smoke from a Büchenwald chimney. These people, who had seen and suffered so much, read of my ancestor’s deliverance from Egypt exactly as the Bible instructed: in the present tense, as if it happened to them. “For with a mighty hand the Lord thy God raised thee out of Egypt and brought you from slavery to freedom.” But as they spoke – or really whispered such was the fear and holiness of the moment – they were not conjuring up Egyptian slavery as a present experience but recalling the horrors they themselves had witnessed, murder on a scope once unimaginable and only made possible by perverted technology. Though their Yiddish was foreign to me, I picked up the odd word. When they spoke of the Concentration Camp guards, they called them the Ukrainians. When they remembered the betrayal of their neighbors, I could distinguish the word Pole. But above all, it was the Germans, the hated Germans. The Hun. The Devil’s Scourge. And I was filled with a righteous hatred. Had I, in that moment, the power to end the life of every German on earth, I might have well done so. That is a shameful thought. I am humiliated by the memory. But perhaps, in context, you can understand my homicidal rage and forgive me, and should I have chosen to preach that doctrine in a place of worship and stir an audience to its feet as it cheered my righteous fury, I trust you would offer me the fig leaf of “context.”

As the Seder ended, my brother-in-law, seeing my rage, put his arm around my shoulder and asked what troubled me. I stammered the best explanation I could. He smiled, “Don’t be a fool,” he said, “the Germans left so many of us dead and stole the joy from so many that remain. So now you want to give them the final victory by allowing your own life to be consumed and twisted and deformed by the same hatred? Leave it to them. That’s why we, at this table, forgive. Not forget, but forgive. You just heard how Moses told the Israelites not to celebrate the death of the Egyptians in the Reed Sea. Learn.”

But his words were empty to me.

A few years later, work on a particular film took me to Munich, and as I drove past the road signs to Dachau, past Hitler’s favorite spot, “The English Gardens,” to my suite at the Bayerischof Hotel (where The Fuehrer himself once stayed) I was physically ill. I couldn’t stand to hear the German tongue, nor bear to see Germans smile, and when I noticed a man in traditional Bavarian dress I again felt my homicidal anger rise. I survived that trip, came back to the safety of my blessed America, promising never to return to part of the world that was home to alien races who had destroyed so many people just like me.

Sometime after that, I was invited to participate on a panel on “Hollywood and Stereotypes” sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It was against my instinct, but a good friend had asked I participate and so I did. It began with a clip from Hollywood movies picturing stereotypical Germans and ended with the famous moment in Casablanca where the French stand and sing “La Marseillaise”. What a crock, I thought, Senator! After all, the short story upon which the film was based was set in Marseilles where the French were happily arresting Jews for transport to their own concentration camp at Drancy. Besides France had yet to apologize for her diligent rounding up and deportation of Jews even after the successes of D-Day. And yet they considered themselves victims which meant never having to say they were sorry. My first co-panelist to speak was a young woman, a German filmmaker. She spoke of how growing up as a German she felt ashamed and humiliated whenever it was necessary to admit her lineage and how her life was about working to ease her shame. It was pure self-hatred. Senator, by some strange alchemy I heard myself explaining to her the mantle of guilt did not fall upon the shoulders of her generation. In fact, I found myself describing Germany’s honest attempt to come to terms with the horrors committed in its name. I spoke of all the things they had done from which the French, the Ukrainians, the Poles had run. How they taught in their schools the truth of their actions, how they policed their civil society and punished words or acts that had echoes of that time, how they worked tirelessly to make reparation to those survivors not stamped out by their hobnailed boots. They had sought atonement. That is not say anti-Semitism and anti-Semites did not persist in Germany. Of course they did, as they do everywhere. But they are no longer the soul or intent of the German nation, they are seen for the abhorrent aberration they truly are. Mind you, Senator, the “new” Germans did not ask for forgiveness; they knew this was not within the power of humankind and could only be given by the grace of God. They acted out their atonement from pure understanding of what had gone before.

And in that instant I realized my hatred was unjustified. The “context” was false. I was nursing the anger for my own psychic advantage and not because the current state of humanity or my own experience gave it justice. And I shed my anger. And when another film project took me to Germany, my journey was completely different. I’m not saying as I sat in the lobby of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kimpinski in Munich I couldn’t help but imagine it filled with SS Officers enjoying the fruits of their murdering conquest. Of course I did. But I also understood the young Germans around me could not be held to that account. When one of my colleagues, also Jewish, made a derogatory remark I engaged him, and with surprising ease found he agreed it was time to let go. I threw away the comfort of context, spoke the truth to him. And it freed me. Now, this is not true for all Jews, Senator; some still dwell on that bitterness, and you would say, understandable, given the “context.” Perhaps. But they are not our soul or intent. They are a past generation and we do not look to them for leadership. We teach redemption. We try to hold them to some form of account.

That is the teaching opportunity I hoped you would evoke: not explaining Wright’s outrage to me, but explaining his outrageousness to him. That’s how we’ll reach the postracial era: by no longer justifying ourselves with what was, instead speaking to what now exists. Not deny the past, but recognize that’s what it is: past.

You say you are devoted to Reverend Wright because he brought you to Christ. I can only imagine how powerful a relationship that forges. But, my imperfect understanding of the Christian Faith tells me you can do him an equally magnificent service: You can help bring him back to Christ. Show him redemption and salvation lie not in the satisfaction of doing little dances in a pulpit while you slander good and decent people. Teach him that great leadership and Christian love abjures the very filth – and I pick that word deliberately – that he spews on an apparently regular basis. After all, Senator, you know our government did not invent the HIV virus to kill African-Americans. You know, Senator, this is not the United States of KKK America. You know the truth of 9/11. At least you should. Both you and Michelle have benefited mightily from the new spirit that has come to America in the last two generations. I thought you were part of that. I thought you were post-racial.

But in your silence, in your justifications, in your facile instruction to contextualize, you seem just a more presentable version of those dreary self-promoters, Sharpton, Jackson, Bakewell and the rest. Surely this is not you. Please, Senator, be brave. Lead. From a position of honesty where context is our daily reality, not drawn from bitter memories, no matter how justified they once might have been. Deny Jeremiah Wright your comfort of “context”. Be Presidential. To all Americans.

Yours sincerely, and in prayer for the Grace of God,

Lionel Chetwynd

PS – I would like to discuss your stereotyping of “typical” white people whose only valid dissatisfaction is apparently the occasional irritation at the misuse of affirmative action. But enough for now. Perhaps another time.

Lionel Chetwynd is an Oscar and Emmy Award nominated filmmaker living in Los Angeles.

Your Capitol Voice
Representative Jeff Kaufmann

In my last column I wrote about a strong bipartisan effort dealing with Iowa health care policy. Both political parties in the House worked together, resulting in good legislation that passed unanimously.

Last week, unfortunately, was the most partisan so far this session. Quite frankly I did not enjoy my time in the Capitol last week. At 4 pm on Wednesday, after the media had gone home, the majority party filed a 14-page amendment to a non-controversial bill that will dramatically change Iowa’s collective bargaining laws. Debate on the amendment began the next day and we continued until 3 am in the morning. With Easter weekend approaching and debate in the middle of the night, most school, city and county officials affected by this law were on vacation and at that specific moment asleep. It was obvious that the goal was to minimize coverage of the legislation.

By the next day, mid-afternoon, Republican House members had offered 43 amendments and every single one was turned down on a party-line vote. It was obvious that a deal had already been worked out between the majority party and the labor unions who were the only groups in favor of the bill. In fact there were multiple groups registered strongly opposed.

Neither the minority party nor the public were allowed input.

Did the 24-hour debate accomplish anything? By Thursday morning Iowans became aware of the negative aspects of this legislation and the significant lack of input into the process. My e-mail inbox was filling up fast. I had school board members, superintendents, city administrators, and county officials demanding my “no” vote. Not since last year’s attempt to force non-union members to pay a share of union dues, or the previous year’s veto of our strong property rights law, did I hear such anxiety and bitterness towards a bill. People were quite angry at the attempt to pass controversial legislation in the middle of the night right before a major holiday.

This legislation will add topics to union negotiations that were previously the responsibility of management. These include staffing levels, classroom size, choice of health insurance carrier, class preparation time, and all aspects of employee evaluation. The list also includes the phrase “not limited to” that will lead to a list of negotiated items that is virtually endless.

Most troublesome is the stipulation that an unelected adjudicator has final decision-making power in a dispute between employer and employees, removing a potential challenge in court. The adjudicator is not accountable to the voters and many do not even live Iowa. Many also have a background as a public employee. Do you think their final decision will be unbiased and sensitive to the community and tax payer? For example if a union negotiates a classroom size, schools could be forced to hire new teachers and build new facilities, not because of the demands of a school board or citizens, but because an unelected adjudicator ordered it. If the District doesn’t have the money, it will be required to raise property taxes if it has the capability to do so.

You can see why I had many constituents, in their contacts with me last week, describe this legislation as “catastrophic,” “devastating,” and “potentially the largest property tax increase ever.” These descriptions were typical and originated from local officials all over the state. Universities, municipal utilities, and municipal hospitals are also included in this legislation, hence tuition rates, utility rates, and health care costs could also be affected.

Our collective bargaining laws have always been a balance between employer and employee; management and labor. This legislation destroys this balance, something with negative consequences beyond this session and the next. When legislation happens without ANY input from the minority political party or the affected citizens, bad things are bound to happen. I have been on both sides of the bargaining table and this legislation is not good policy. The original collective bargaining law was a work of bipartisanship, this was the exact opposite.

The only recourse is for the Governor to veto this bill. I would suggest a call to him at 1-515-281-5211 or an e-mail at chet.culver@iowa.gov If you like this legislation I respect your view, but I am convinced that this will be the disaster of 2008.

Please contact me with your opinions or questions:
jeff.kaufmann@legis.state.ia.us
Write me:   State Capitol Des Moines IA 50319
Call me:      1-515-281-3221

again, I’m not saying that conservation and reduction of oil consumption is not important – actually I think it’s SO important that I’ve been irritated by the global warming crowd who has made a farce out of the subject.   read on…  -pf

Link to original article

Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday – on ABC Radio National, of all places – there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth stillwarming?”

She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.”

Duffy: “Is this a matter of any controversy?”

Marohasy: “Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued … This is not what you’d expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you’d expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up … So (it’s) very unexpected, not something that’s being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it’s very significant.”

Duffy: “It’s not only that it’s not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there’s any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it’s put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary.”

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn’t support their case. “People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?”

Marohasy: “Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that’s what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we’re going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling.”

Duffy: “Can you tell us about NASA’s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we’re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?”

Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback.”

Duffy: “The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?”

Marohasy: “That’s right … These findings actually aren’t being disputed by the meteorological community. They’re having trouble digesting the findings, they’re acknowledging the findings, they’re acknowledging that the data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they’re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”

Duffy: “From what you’re saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable …”

Marohasy: “That’s right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer’s interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point.”

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can’t be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate “climate refugees”.

Penny Wong’s climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.

It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.

THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian’s Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald’s version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that “we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics”.

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: “Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)”

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age’s version of the essay. The attribution reads: “Copyright Ian McEwan 2008″ and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn’t there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at “absorbing inconvenient fact”?

Doesn’t sound like a deal to me… stay tuned.

Republicans, Democrats reach deal on bargaining bill

By MIKE GLOVER

DES MOINES, Iowa – Republicans and Democrats agreed Friday to end a 24-hour stalemate that had blocked a proposed expansion of the state’s collective bargaining law.

The deal will delay a vote on the measure in the Senate until Monday, but it also will limit debate when the bill comes up. And ultimately, Democrats said they were confident the bill would pass and head to Gov. Chet Culver.

At issue is the first expansion of the state’s collective bargaining law governing public-sector workers since 1974. The bill set for debate Monday would expand a list of issues that are subject to bargaining, for example letting teachers raise matters like class size and others address discipline rules.

The proposal is supported by public-sector unions, a key part of the political base of Democrats who run the House and Senate.

Republicans have opposed the measure and forced a marathon debate in the House, which approved it on a party-line vote.

After its arrival in the Senate, minority Republicans rushed to a closed-door private meeting, then refused to emerge and allow debate on the measure. By Senate tradition, debate rarely moves forward without both parties present.

Under the deal announced Friday, the Senate will delay debate until noon Monday and a vote is scheduled at 6 p.m.

“We give up the scheduling and the minority party gives up extending the debate beyond six hours,” said Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs.

Senate Minority Leader Ron Wieck, R-Sioux City, had threatened to keep Republican locked in their Statehouse meeting room throughout the Easter weekend in an effort to delay a vote.

“It’s been an interesting process,” Wieck said at a news conference with Gronstal.

The standoff prompted a handful of Democrats and Republicans to spend the night at the Statehouse. Some brought beverage coolers and sleeping bags, stretching out on benches and watching basketball games on television.

Democrats argue the expansion of bargaining rights is needed so public workers have the same rights as those in the private sector. Republicans contend such a change would strengthen the hands of public-sector unions and ultimately cost taxpayers.

Culver was elected with the backing of key unions who are pushing the issue, such as the state’s teacher union and the union representing state government workers.

Courtney Greene, the governor’s press secretary, wouldn’t say whether Culver would sign the bill.

“As for the bill itself, he will continue to listen to the debate, and as with all pieces of legislation, he will carefully review and consider it if and when received, and make a decision at that time,” Greene said in a statement.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

National Federation of Independent Business/ IA (NFIB)

Last week the House Labor Committee passed by a unanimous vote HF 2645, a “technical” and non-controversial clean-up bill to Iowa’s Public Employee Collective Bargaining Law.

Unfortunately, the bill did not stay that way. House Labor Committee Chairman Rick Olson (D-Des Moines) filed a 14-page amendment dramatically shifting the balance of power in labor negotiations to the unions and opened the door to requiring employees to pay union dues even if they are not a member.

Fortunately, this underhanded attempt to gut Iowa’s Right-to-Work Law was defeated. Rep. Brian Quirk (D-New Hampton), Rep. Swati Dandekar (D-Cedar Rapids) along with other key Democrat and Republican legislators moved quickly and forced House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-Des Moines) to offer an amendment protecting Iowa’s Right to Work Law. That amendment passed 98-0.

From this debate the good news is that Iowa’s Right to Work Law is protected. The bad news is the remainder of the bill greatly tips the negotiating power to the labor unions as they negotiate with school districts, city and county government, and public hospitals.

Here are some quick points on HF 2645:

• Iowa’s 34 year-old public employee collective bargaining Shifts the negotiating balance of power to the public labor union
• Virtually any subject can now be a matter of negotiation, current law requires both parties to agree to discuss a specific subject
• Management of employees becomes more difficult as work shifts, staffing levels, and schedules become part of negotiations and subject to the arbitrator
• Decisions will be shifted from locally elected officials to an arbitrator

Property Taxpayers will bear the burden. The bill now moves to the Senate where they will be debating the bill over the weekend. Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Ron Wieck (R-Sioux City), are focused on delaying debate until next week in hopes of generating more public outcry on the issue.

Senate Switchboard phone number is (515) 281-3371

CAPITOL CONTACT
Statehouse: (515) 242-6437
E-mail: Tom.Sands@legis.state.ia.us
Web: www.SandsForStateHouse.com

News from the Hill…

This week the majority party in the state house decided to sneak an amendment H-8164 onto the HF 2645. House File 2645 made some corrective changes to Chapter 20 upon which all four caucuses had previously agreed.

Chapter 20, which defines the collective bargaining rights and duties of public employers and public employees in Iowa, first debated and passed with bi-partisan support and under the leadership of then Governor Robert Ray. During its initial adoption, it took the Iowa House 13 days to debate the bill because of its great controversy. The original bill went through extensive subcommittee work with both management and labor having input. The work paid off, and they reached an agreement finding a delicate balance between labor and management.

House Democrats, under cover of darkness, brought up the most far-reaching revisions to Iowa’s collective bargaining since its inception in 1974.

Political payback to organized labor took precedence over sticking up for middle class families in the Iowa House on Wednesday and Thursday. Unfortunately, the controversial changes made to chapter 20 this week in the Iowa House did not have any subcommittee work for scrutiny, or input from both sides. House Democrats jammed the revisions through in about 13 hours of debate, most of which came under the cover of darkness, skewing the delicate balance between labor and management. None, however, were as controversial as the House Democrats attempt to sneak through the wildly controversial “Fair Share” provision.

With the rest of the House Democrat’s plan, school board members, city council members, and county supervisors were stripped of their ability to control the level of property tax increases. That ability is forfeited to an unnamed and unelected adjudicator. Property taxes makeup the vast majority of local government revenue and pay for nearly all of any employee contracts. If the costs for that contract increase, so do property taxes. If this bill as amended is passed in the senate and signed by the governor, it will take a generation for a future legislature to undo the damage.

What upsets me the most is the process used to move this amendment. We have a good process to our rules and our openness, but during the National Sunshine Week, the majority party tried to sneak the amendment into the bill. However, our caucus staff person caught it late into the night on Tuesday. Most of us did not know what was about to transpire until we showed up at the capital on Wednesday morning.

Both parties can play partisan politics and neither party is pure or perfect. Nevertheless, some of the tactics the House Democrats used to get amendment H-8164 on is unfounded and something to be ashamed of.

The survival of democracy depends on elected officials being open and honest to their constituents. This should be expected, not just a possibility.

From what I understand this is what happen with HF2645.

It came out of the Labor Committee with some non-controversial wording changes related to some old Education policies.

It was brought to the floor when most of the School Superintendents are on Spring Break. Those Superintendents and School Boards are affected most by the changes in the bill’s 14 page amendment offered at 4pm on March 18. Many had to be tracked down for comment. For a good part of March 19 (when I was at the Capitol Building) the Republican House caucused on what to do with this lousy bill. Some quotes are below, but no School official had anything good to say about this amendment, and many are Democrats.

When they finally came to the floor at 1:55pm, House Republican after House Republican pummeled the 14 page amendment:

“Sir, each school board is elected to do their job as we are, and each can lose their jobs as we can.” School Boards should be allowed to do the job they were elected to do.

“I just called one of the School Superintendents in my district who read the amendment and replied ‘what’s left for me to manage?’ ”

“Have you consulted any school board member or superintendent in your district before supporting this amendment?” [answer was no]

Then a comment that had to be dripping with sarcasm… “There is plenty of time for discussion – and if a concern arises after our vote, the Senate can debate and correct” [the Iowa Senate has a super majority of Democrats, so no - there will be no debate by Republicans on the Senate floor and he knew that when he made that remark]

This amendment was offered with no opportunity for public discussion. I’ve heard several superintendents tried to get time to speak on the House floor last night and were bodily removed by security there.

I will post Jeff Kauffman’s note this week verbatim in this post space when I get it – he will be hoping mad to have lost this fight at 2am after 12 hours of debate.

Primary changes to the Education bill as I understand it is as follows:

• Teachers can now collect sick leave and disability at the same time.
• School Boards and Superintendents can no longer terminate teachers, only an arbitrator can make that judgment which is not subject to appeal.
• Unions can dictate class size (to the extreme of mandating 25 student classes, so if there are 51 students – 3 teachers are required) as well as other staffing levels and preparation time, and heath care insurance provider.

you can read the amendment here.

All these costs are unfunded by the State but Mandated by the State. This is EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY, don’t let anyone tell you this is about providing good education. This WILL raise taxes; anyone who thinks it won’t is fooling themselves.

Next – what the Dems call “Fair share” or “we need more union dues to get more Dems elected so they get more union control so they can get more union members to pay more union dues so they can elect more democrats”. Why would you take a bill through committee with moderate changes – then two weeks later attach a 14 page amendment that guts the bill, submitting it during a week when those most affected are hardest to contact? Why allow NO time for public discussion? You decide.  This bill was move to the Senate – on party lines 47-53.

March 20, 2008
House approves controversial union legislation

JASON CLAYWORTH
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

The Iowa House today approved a legislative union-backed proposal that opponents say would siphon power away from local elected officials and raise Iowa taxes.

One of the key issues on House File 2645 is a Democrat-proposed addition to the bill that greatly expands the issues that unions can negotiate. Under the proposal, unions could negotiate such issues as insurance carriers, class sizes and overtime compensation.

Advocates say the proposal would better protect public employees. Opponents said it would strip power away from locally elected officials, placing more decision-making power in the hands of unions.

Lawmakers reported a large number of phone calls and e-mails from government officials throughout the state today opposing the proposal.

Des Moines City Manager Rick Clark, for example, sent a note to some lawmakers estimating that passage of House File 2645 would increase city taxes by 7 percent, or roughly $69 a year for a home assessed at around $150,000.

The proposal passed on a 52 to 47 vote along party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. The vote came this afternoon after a marathon debate that began Wednesday afternoon dragged into the early-morning hours today.

Senate leaders said they expect to debate the proposal later today.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington

When government supplies your food, then your medical care, then housing, that dangerous servant becomes your master. Darrell Kearney, the Iowa GOP’s Finance Director gave a moving albeit brief talk about why we are republicans and what’s at stake in the 2008 election.

I went to Des Moines with a group of Muscatine Republican Women for Iowa’s Republican Women’s Day – our time to spend with our legislators. Nathan (invited but was not expected to and) did not acknowledge our attendance at the Capitol today.

The day started with 30 minutes with our State Auditor David Vaudt, always good for some fiscal insight. He wants to see some simple changes to our state budgeting process.

1) Align revenues with expenses
2) Eliminate reliance on one-time and limited resources for ongoing expenditures
3) incorporate longer range planning into budgeting process
4) Continue to enhance clarity in budgeting process.

Examples he gave to #2 was hundreds of millions of dollars being diverted from infrastructure to the general fund and one time bond proceeds of $67 million used to balance the FY09 budget; we will pay for those FY09 services for decades. This is contrary to good budgeting processes.

He talked about there being a 7% increase in revenue, but 4% of that was due to tax or rate increases, and the fact that in the last 10 years with a split government, there was a decent ratio of monies in and monies out. It took 4 months of democrat controlled executive and legislative branches to seriously break that trend.

Vaudt is a nice guy, I like him. What’s really scary to me is our tax revenues from Tobacco and Gaming are keeping us solvent. (More on how the Roman Empire fell later…)

After our visit to David’s office, we spent some time trying to find our legislators, but everyone appeared to be in caucus which took us all by surprise. We found out why shortly.

We gathered for lunch, including more drop-in visits – one was Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. He too is an eloquent speaker and nice guy.

In the Q&A I asked him what I should tell my out of state friends that pummel me about subsidized Ethanol manufacture and the increased price of related food items. He made the standard statements (about reducing the need for foreign oil) but continued to talk about the evolution of this process to the use of switch grass and/or development of anhydrous ammonia or hydrogen production as a replacement for oil. That won’t end the pummeling, and on the way home I pouted that I just want to TOTALLY eliminate the need for foreign oil. I blame American car manufacturers (after the gas lines of the 70’s) for not moving more dramatically toward alternative fuels back then.

Many of the legislators then started to pop in to say hi, or speak for a bit, and that’s where we started to hear the story of the day.

The fiery debate over “fair share” fees for labor unions is alive again…

Republican lawmakers believe they have spotted language that would allow unions to negotiate for fair share-type fees in an amendment to a bill that some lawmakers say was pitched as noncontroversial.

“It doesn’t use the words ‘fair share,’ but there are two pieces that taken together make fair share a mandatory subject of collective bargaining,” said House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, a Republican from Sioux City. “I’d admire the elegance if I wasn’t so angry.”

read more by taking this LINK

One by one representatives like Tom Sands, Jeff Kaufmann, Carmine Boal, and Kraig Paulsen told us about what was going on – the biggest hand from the women’s group was for Dawn Pettengill; the woman who single handedly saved Right To Work in Iowa in 2007. She dramatically switched parties at the end of the session. I met her at a Kaufmann fundraiser where she talked about that experience and we had a few seconds to renew acquaintance today. She’s got a book in her on that experience.

Earlier in the day most of the conversation was about 2009, Democrats will lay low and try to take a super majority in both houses, and not propose any huge new tax bills before election 2008. But what happened at 4pm yesterday (3/18) and continued today, was unexpected.

More on that tomorrow.

The National Review Online Editors nail this – good read   -pf

March 15, 2008, 8:00 a.m.

Congressional Stuntmen (and Speaker)

By the Editors

Here’s the edict from House Democrats: Terrorists plotting to kill Americans get protection from surveillance, while businesses helping to protect Americans from terrorists get ruined by litigation.

For the second time in a month, House Democrats have closed up shop to go on vacation (this time for two weeks) without permitting a vote on a bill that would restore critical surveillance authority to U.S. intelligence agencies. Obviously embarrassed by the bad publicity they generated last time around, they’ve attempted to camouflage dereliction with chicanery, offering an alternative proposal Democrats know to be so deeply flawed that it would be dead on arrival in the Senate — let alone at the White House, where it would be vetoed instantly.

Here’s the bottom line: If an Egyptian terrorist in Iraq calls a Saudi terrorist in Iraq to coordinate an operation against U.S. troops, House Democrats believe the American intelligence community should not be permitted to monitor their conversation unless a judge in Washington is convinced the courtroom standard of “probable cause” has been met.

Mind you, aliens outside the United States have no Fourth Amendment rights, and our current surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, was specifically designed to permit the intelligence community to monitor non-Americans overseas without any restrictions or court interference — the point of FISA was to protect Americans inside the United States. No matter. Democrats have decided that a threat environment in which foreign terrorists are targeting the American people for mass-murder attacks is the perfect opportunity for giving foreign terrorists worldwide privacy protections against eavesdropping.

Beyond ignoring the chamber’s Republican members, the Democratic leadership evidently did not think it was important to consult with the intelligence community or the Justice Department about the nation’s surveillance needs. How reassuring to know, then, that the views of the trial lawyers, who so lavishly support Democrats, are so well represented.

The House Democrats’ alternative bill denies telecommunications companies the liability protection that would deflect the trial lawyers’ multibillion-dollar lawsuits against those that have stuck their necks out to help our intelligence agencies. In the emergency conditions that followed the 9/11 attacks, the companies complied in good faith (that is, based on an assurance of legality) with government requests that they assist the NSA’s surveillance program, an effort to thwart further attacks. Without a guarantee that they will not be sued for complying with ostensibly lawful government requests, the telecoms cannot be expected to cooperate expeditiously in the future (even during emergencies) or in the intelligence community’s continuing efforts to maintain a technological edge over those actively trying to kill Americans.

Nor is that the end of the House Democrats’ campaign against those trying to protect the country from attack. Democrats also want to create a congressional commission to probe an NSA program that already has been the subject of three years’ worth of extensive oversight investigation, requiring the Justice Department and Intelligence Community to divert thousands of hours from their counterterrorist mission to answer countless inquiries from politicians on the Hill. The message to our intelligence agents is the same one Democrats have for the telecoms: If you’re asked to take sensible steps to protect Americans, it’s better to answer “no” than to risk legal jeopardy and assaults on your reputation.

What is truly remarkable is that the House Democrats’ recklessness with our security studiously ignores a reform bill, supported not only by the administration, but also by Senate Democrats. The bill was approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by a lopsided 13-2 margin before passing in the Democrat-controlled Senate in a two-to-one bipartisan landslide. The Senate bill would restore essential foreign intelligence-collection authority that has been lost since House Democrats allowed this summer’s temporary Protect America Act to lapse just before leaving on their last vacation in February.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charges may think this sleight-of-hand will work. It won’t. As they know, their maneuver was opposed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell, respected non-partisan professionals, who’ve reported that we are already losing intelligence due to the House’s partisan intransigence. Pelosi’s stunt is opposed by the Senate, including by Intelligence Committee Democrats who studied the issues closely and concluded it was imperative that the telecoms be given a measure of protection and that the intelligence community be permitted — as it has traditionally been — to conduct surveillance overseas without restriction or court interference.

House Democrats have chosen to leave American intelligence operatives hobbled in the fight against terrorism. No amount of gamesmanship will conceal that.

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National Review Online – Link to original article

LINK

Article published Mar 14, 2008
COMMENTARY/Climate panel on the hot seat

March 14, 2008 By H. Sterling Burnett – More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to raise alarms over the possibility global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.To better understand this potential threat, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide a “comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socioeconomic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

IPCC reports have predicted average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. However, several assessments of the IPCC’s work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.

In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the “hockey stick.” This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the last 100 years has caused unprecedented rise global warming.

However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC’s peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted.

Furthermore, the community of specialists in ancient climates from which the peer reviewers were drawn was small and many of them had ties to the original authors — 43 paleoclimatologists had previously coauthored papers with the lead researcher who constructed the hockey stick.

These problems led Mr. Wegman’s team to conclude that the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming “cannot be supported.”

The IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 predicting global warming will lead to widespread catastrophe if not mitigated, yet failed to provide the most basic requirement for effective climate policy: accurate temperature statistics. A number of weaknesses in the measurements include the fact temperatures aren’t recorded from large areas of the Earth’s surface and many weather stations once in undeveloped areas are now surrounded by buildings, parking lots and other heat-trapping structures resulting in an urban-heat-island effect.

Even using accurate temperature data, sound forecasting methods are required to predict climate change. Over time, forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics.

In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.

A good example of a principle clearly violated is “Make sure forecasts are independent of politics.” Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists — at least the lead scientists — who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval.

Sadly, Mr. Green and Mr. Armstrong found no evidence the IPCC was even aware of the vast literature on scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles.

The IPCC and its defenders often argue that critics who are not climate scientists are unqualified to judge the validity of their work. However, climate predictions rely on methods, data and evidence from other fields of expertise, including statistical analysis and forecasting. Thus, the work of the IPCC is open to analysis and criticism from other disciplines.

The IPCC’s policy recommendations are based on flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles. Policymakers should take this into account before enacting laws to counter global warming — which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.

H. Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute in Dallas.

Eliot Spitzer is a Republican? I don’t think so.

AP reports “Congress Endorses Post-Bush Tax Hikes” with a picture of John McCain with a hands up gesture…  The content of article indicates Democrats are pushing the taxes, Republicans are against tax increases -

STOP THE PRESSES! after 7 years of bias against George Bush and his policies – we have NEWS! The media IS biased – against Clinton! (apparently they can spot it when it’s against one of their own) -pf

Media tainted by anti-Clinton bias

By Bill Maxwell, Times Columnist
Published March 9, 2008

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For a brief period last week, earnest members of my chosen profession, the press, did a little soul-searching and asked if we have been, and are, biased against Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The conclusion: Of course we are. Any journalist who denies this fact is unable to recognize objectivity if it were branded on his eyeballs.

I am not referring to opinion writers, who are expected to bring their personal perspectives and slants to issues and events. I am talking about editors and reporters charged with delivering a product the public can trust as truth and fairness. (For the record, though, most pundits, conservatives and liberals, also show bias against Clinton.)

If Clinton had not raised the issue and if Saturday Night Live had not spoofed journalists for fawning over Sen. Barack Obama, like puppies licking their owners’ mouths, the charge of bias probably would have remained a mere wink-and-nod charade.

The charge of bias picked up more credence when Clinton fundraiser Walter Shorenstein, founder of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, sent a memo to Democratic Party superdelegates criticizing media coverage of Clinton and Obama.

Shorenstein wrote: “The stakes are so high – for our security, our economy, our health care, our future and our country. … Is it in the country’s best interest that voters received far more information about Hillary’s laugh than Obama’s legislative record?”

Several independent watchdog organizations, including Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and the Center for Media and Public Affairs, have documented persistent and widespread bias against Clinton and in favor of Obama.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs reported that since mid December, when the Iowa caucuses came into play, Obama has received the lion’s share of the positive coverage: “From Dec. 16 through Jan. 27, five out of six on-air evaluations of Obama (84 percent) have been favorable, compared to a bare majority (51 percent) of evaluations of Mrs. Clinton. The gap in good press widened since the New Hampshire primary, with Clinton dropping to 47 percent positive comments and Obama holding steady at 83 percent positive.

“NBC’s coverage has been the most critical of Clinton – nearly 2 to 1 negative (36 percent positive and to 64 percent negative). Conversely, ABC’s coverage was most supportive – nearly 2 to 1 positive (63 percent vs. 37 percent). CBS and Fox were more balanced – 50 percent positive comments on Fox and 56 percent positive on CBS.”

The Pew Research Center found a sharp difference in tone between coverage of Clinton and Obama. Here, I also must address the pundits. Most, left and right, have been unfriendly to Clinton, some writing her obit and others advising her to fold up her tent. Obama, on the other hand, has been treated like the Second Coming.

If you do not believe me, go back and reread your newspapers and magazines. Order transcripts of your network nightly news and read them. I guarantee that you will hear a lot of Hillary bashing and a whole lot Obama serenading.

The most surprising finding, at least to me, was the pervasive bias in coverage of the two candidates’ foreign policy. “When it comes to foreign policy coverage – perhaps the most important issue in the coming election,” Shorenstein wrote in his memo, “the media monitoring group, Media Tenor, found that there was not a single positive story about Hillary Clinton and foreign policy in the month of February.”

If we only had anecdotal evidence, I would be willing to question, or even dismiss, claims of media bias against Clinton. But each watchdog group conducted content analyses and crunched the numbers.

When I conducted my own analysis, I found that real or perceived bad news about Clinton earned front-page placement more often than for Obama. Rarely have I seen a story about Obama’s influence-peddling pal from Chicago, Tony Rezko, on the front page. Nor have I seen much on the front page about Obama’s linguistic sleight of hand with NAFTA and the Canadians.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? I do not think so. Journalism is important to me. It is my profession. And I agree with Shorenstein: “Our democracy depends upon the Fourth Estate (journalism) to fulfill the uniquely critical role of informing voters about the important issues facing our nation – yet far too often, the campaign coverage has been biased, blase, or baseless.”

With its coverage of the Clinton-Obama campaign, the Fourth Estate has failed miserably.

Obama’s grandma slams ‘untruths’.

Obama’s grandfather had converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism and taken the name Hussein, Sarah Obama said, but his children had inherited only the name, not the religion. Each person should be able to choose how they worshipped, she said.

“In the world of today, children have different religions from their parents,” she said. She, too, is a Christian.

In April of last year, Sarah Hussein Obama told the New York Times she is a devout Muslim.

Sarah Hussein Obama, who is his stepgrandmother but whom Mr. Obama calls his grandmother, still rises at 5 a.m. to pray before tending to her crops and the three orphans she has taken in.

“I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith,” Ms. Obama, 85, said in a recent interview in Kenya.

Link

Weather Channel Founder Blasts Network; Claims It Is ‘Telling Us What to Think’

TWC founder and global warming skeptic advocates suing Al Gore to expose ‘the fraud of global warming.’

The Weather Channel has lost its way, according to John Coleman, who founded the channel in 1982.

Coleman told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism.

“The Weather Channel had great promise, and that’s all gone now because they’ve made every mistake in the book on what they’ve done and how they’ve done it and it’s very sad,” Coleman said. “It’s now for sale and there’s a new owner of The Weather Channel will be announced – several billion dollars having changed hands in the near future. Let’s hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information.”

The Weather Channel has been an outlet for global warming alarmism. In December 2006, The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen argued on her blog that weathercasters who had doubts about human influence on global warming should be punished with decertification by the American Meteorological Society.

Coleman also told the audience his strategy for exposing what he called “the fraud of global warming.” He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose.

[I] have a feeling this is the opening,” Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the media stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

Earlier at the conference Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told an audience that the science will eventually prevail and the “scare” of global warming will go away. He also said the courts were a good avenue to show the science.

Stuart James and Paul Detrick also contributed to this report.

Obama Denies Assuring Canada on NAFTA, Despite Disclosure of a Memo Indicating Otherwise
Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 5:36pm EST

SAN ANTONIO
Barack Obama said Monday that his campaign never gave Canada back-channel assurances that his harsh words about the North American Free Trade Agreement were for political show _ despite the disclosure of a Canadian memo indicating otherwise.

According to the memo obtained by The Associated Press, Obama’s senior economic adviser told Canadian officials in Chicago that the debate over free trade in the Democratic presidential primary campaign was “political positioning” and that Obama was not really protectionist.

The adviser, Austan Goolsbee, said his comments to those officials were misinterpreted by the author, Joseph DeMora, who works for the Canadian consulate in Chicago and attended the meeting.

In Carrollton, Texas, Obama told reporters: “Nobody reached out to the Canadians to try to assure them of anything.”

Asked why he had appeared to deny a report last week that such a meeting had taken place, Obama said: “That was the information I had at the time.”

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper disputed the contention of his political opposition that Canadian officials leaked word of the meeting to complicate Obama’s chances or to favor Republican Sen. John McCain, who strongly supports NAFTA.

Harper told Parliament he was amused by the suggestion “we are so all powerful that we could interfere in the American election and pick their president for them. This government doesn’t claim that kind of power. I certainly deny any allegation that this government has attempted to interfere in the American election.”

Harper said he has watched the U.S. campaign closely and believes all leading candidates from both parties _ Obama, McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton _ “would continue the strong friendship and partnership that Canada and the United States enjoys.”

The original report by CTV in Canada suggested an Obama emissary had reached out to officials at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. Embassy officials artfully denied any such contact had been made with them.

As it turned out, the meeting took place in Chicago instead, with Canadian Consul General Georges Rioux and DeMora taking notes.

Obama said that one of his advisers had been invited by someone at the consulate to visit and discuss trade.

“The Canadian Embassy confirmed that he said everything I said on the campaign trail,” Obama asserted.

“We think the terms of NAFTA have to be altered” to strengthen environmental and labor protections, he said.

The memo says: “Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign.”

It went on: “He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.”

Goolsbee disputed the characterization.

“This thing about ‘it’s more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,’ that’s this guy’s language,” Goolsbee said of DeMora. “He’s not quoting me.

“I certainly did not use that phrase in any way,” he said.

NAFTA is widely opposed in economically depressed Ohio, which holds its presidential primary Tuesday and is a battleground between Obama and Clinton.

Clinton said Monday that Obama’s campaign gave the Canadians “the old wink-wink.”

“I think that’s the kind of difference between talk and action that I’ve been talking about,” Clinton told reporters while campaigning in Ohio. “It raises questions about Senator Obama coming to Ohio and giving speeches against NAFTA.”

Both candidates said in a debate in Cleveland last week that they would use the threat of pulling out of NAFTA to persuade Canada and Mexico to negotiate more protections for workers and the environment in the agreement.

The memo obtained by the AP was widely distributed within the Canadian government. It is more than 1,300 words and covers many topics that DeMora said were discussed in the Feb. 8 “introductory meeting.”

Goolsbee “was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy,” the memo’s introduction said.

“On NAFTA, Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more `core’ principles of the agreement.”

Goolsbee said that sentence is true and consistent with Obama’s position. But he said other portions of the memo were inaccurate.

In a statement, the Canadian Embassy expressed regret on how the discussions have been interpreted.

The statement said “there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA.”

Goolsbee said the visit lasted about 40 minutes, and perhaps two to three minutes were spent discussing NAFTA. He said the Canadians asked about Obama’s position, and he replied about his interest in improving labor and environmental standards, and they raised some concerns that Obama sounds like a protectionist.

Goolsbee said he responded that Obama is not a protectionist, but that the Illinois senator tries to strike a balance between the economic struggles of working Americans and recognizing that free trade is good for the economy.

“That’s a pretty ham-handed description of what I answered,” Goolsbee said of the memo’s description of “political positioning.” “A: In no possible way was that a reference to NAFTA. And B: In no possible way was I inferring that he was going to introduce any policies that you should ignore and he had no intention of enacting. Those are both completely crazy.”

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AP writer Rob Gillies contributed to this story from Toronto.