Dinner Conversation With Keynesians

Five Questions for a Keynesian

posted by Steven Horwitz, Guest Blogger at 10:28 AM on 12/24/09

In the wake of last fall's financial market chaos and the deepening of the recession, Keynesian economics, largely left for dead by the economics profession for the last 30 years, has made something of a comeback, at least among pundits and politicians, neither of whom have sterling reputations as sophisticated consumers of economics. But they are not the only group clinging to Keynesian fallacies in the current world of endless bailouts and stimulus packages. Many Keynesian fallacies have become part and parcel of the average American's understanding of how to fight recessions. It seems that, like foxholes and belief in God, a good recession turns everyone into a believer in big government. You may have even talked to some of these people, perhaps at a Thanksgiving dinner or holiday party.

So before you go to your next get-together where such a conversation might take place, I offer you five questions you might ask such a person, just to get their critical thinking juices going and perhaps poke a few holes in their worldview.

1. Why did Keynes think savings was bad if when people save through financial intermediaries they give control over resources to the banking system, which in turn will lend that out to firms to create capital and new jobs?

2. How does government spending create jobs and wealth if the resources that government spends must ultimately come from the private sector, through taxes or reduced borrowing due to government borrowing more (or inflation), and the private sector would have spent it either on consumption directly or on investment through savings anyway?

3. If one of the problems of the housing boom is that we put too many resources into housing and finance, how will a Keynesian government spending package know where that spending should have gone instead?

4. Keynes frequently wrote about the importance of the uncertainty of the future and the way that made things difficult for private investors and for the connection between savings and investment. Why doesn't that same uncertainty prevent governments from knowing exactly how much and where they should be spending in a recession, especially because markets have prices and profits as signals to help entrepreneurs navigate that uncertainty while government bureaucrats do not have similar signals?

5. Given the enormous role that government interventions played in causing the current recession, from the expansionary policies of the Fed to GSEs like Fannie and Freddie, to misguided regulations in housing and banking, why should anyone believe that the same government actors will know how to solve it?

The Day Our Freedom Died: The Tyranny of Obama Healthcare Deform Begins

From the Heritage Foundation

The months long drama over the fate of President Barack Obama’s health care plan ended at 1 AM this morning when the Senate voted  60 - 40, on a strictly party line vote, to end debate on Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) manager’s amendment; a mere 38-hoursafter it had been unveiled to the American public. With Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) threatening to veto the bill if any significant changes are made by the House in conference, it is virtually guaranteed that this is the version of Obamacare that will be signed by the President before his State of the Union address in January.

Final passage of this health bill will be historic, but not in the way President Obama intended. Never before has such a large restructuring of the U.S. economy been passed on a straight party-line vote. Never before has legislation so unpopular with the American people been passed on a straight party-line vote. Never before has the fate of one-sixth of our economy been so dependent on backroom deals and payoffs the full extent of which may not be known for years.

To defend this abomination of a bill yesterday on the Sunday shows, the White House did not send Health Reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle or Budget director Peter Orszag. Instead they sent White House sent political consultant David Axelrod to defend the bill on three of the five top Sunday shows. But there simply is no defending the policy substance of this bill:

Busts the Federal Budget: According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the amended Reid plan would reduce the federal budget deficit by $132 billion over the period 2010 to 2019, but that is a mirage. The CBO can only score what the Senate tells them they will do, not what everyone knows they actually will do. For example, the Senate bill cuts Medicare fees for doctors by 20% starting in 2011. Nobody believes these cuts will be allowed to happen. By changing just that provision, Obamacare ends up adding $196 billion to the deficit in the first 10 years and $765 billion in the second decade.

Busts State Budgets: According to The Fiscal Survey of States, 31 states cut higher education and 26 states cut K-12 education in 2009. This is because Medicaid and education are almost always any states two highest budget items, and states cannot touch the entitlement to Medicaid. Obamacare only increases state Medicaid obligations thus further bankrupting states. This is why Sen. Nelson demanded a permanent Medicaid bailout for Nebraska in exchange for his vote. Other states like Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts also won key federal bailouts for their health programs. Who are the losers? All the other that are forced to pick up the $1 billion tab.

Increases Health Care Costs: Throughout the health care debate, President Obama promised reform that would “bend the cost curve down” on health care spending. But according to the President’s own the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) the Senate does exactly the opposite, actually driving health care costs up by adding $234 billion to national health expenditures.

Endangers Americans Quality of Care: President Obama used to promise that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But as the CBO confirmed this month 10 million Americans will be forced out of their current health insurance plan should Obamacare become law. Even worse, CMMS has reported that Obamacare’s $493 billion in Medicare cuts could force as many as one-in-five health care providers into insolvency thus forcing them out of the Medicare program.

Forces Americans to Pay for Abortions: Despite the inclusion of the Nelson amendment, when the federal government’s role over the financing and delivery of health care grows, as it does under this bill, a requirement to segregate premiums that cover abortion serviceswould be merely cosmetic in practice.

$400 Billion in New Taxes: From taxes on employment to taxes on tanning beds, Obamacare is funded with over $400 billion in new taxes at a time of double digit unemployment, including $29 billion in taxes on 19 million Americans who still will not receive any health insurance.

A “Starter Home” for Government Run Health Care: While technically not a public option, this scheme will have the same results. By giving unprecedented power and authority to the Director of Office of Personal Management, the multi-state plans created in the bill will simply become the government plan. Single payer advocate Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is even calling the bill a “starter home” for further reform.

This bill will only make every single problem with out health care system worse: higher spending, higher deficits, and worse care. Former-Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean said on Meet the Press yesterday, “[This bill] simply sets us on a track in this country which is expensive and where we’re going to have lots more political fights.” Dean is dead on. President Barack Obama’s signature on this health care bill settles nothing: it is only the beginning of a much larger health care fight.

Deadly Truths About the Healthcare Deform Bill

#1 - It is a planned certainty thta private insurance companies have been put on a path to Nationalization or elimination
From legal scholar Richard A. Epstein

At this point, there is a near mathematical certainty that the scheme of health insurance market regulation contemplated by the Reid bill will reduce the risk-adjusted rate of return below the level needed to keep these firms in the individual and small-group health-insurance markets. I am not aware of a single provision in the Reid Bill that looks to ensuring a minimum rate of return. And there are countless provisions in the bill that impose new obligations to cover services while eliminating the revenue sources to deal with them. It is just this combination of regulatory programs that leads the CBO to treat private health insurance issuers as part of a federal program—as though they have been subject to de facto nationalization.

#2 - From The Offical CBO report on teh Deform Bill, if history is any guide, the planned "savings" in Medicare will almost certainly come from service cuts and rationing and NOT from greater efficiencies in care delivery:

CBO expects that Medicare spending under the legislation would increase at an average annual rate of roughly 6 percent during the next two decades—well below the roughly 8 percent annual growth rate of the past two decades (excluding the effect of establishing the Medicare prescription drug benefit). Adjusting for inflation, Medicare spending per beneficiary under the legislation would increase at an average annual rate of roughly 2 percent during the next two decades—well below the roughly 4 percent annual growth rate of the past two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.

Government vs Private Sector: Who Do You Want Supplying Your Healthcare?

posted by Robert Wenzel 
When you think of more government involvement in healthcare, think about these pictures. I took both pictures this morning within a minute of each other. The first shows the sidewalk in front of the Department of Labor building, after yesterday's snowstorm. The second photo is of the sidewalk right next to the Labor Department building, 101 Constitution Avenue, NW. It is a privately owned building. Goldman Sachs, among others, has offices in the building.





Who do you want to shovel your sidewalk?

ObamaCare: Just The Simple Lies Please

by Mario Rizzo 
There are two fundamental deceptions in the Senate healthcare bill. They are so elementary that they are often ignored in favor of more technical problems. They are:
1. The various provisions do not take full effect until 2015 or so. Thus the ten year cost totals as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office are misleading, but deliberately so, on the part of the bill’s authors. Only one-percent of the costs are incurred in the first four years. Thus, a $849 billion bill becomes a $1.8 trillion bill when the trick is adjusted for. 
2. The elimination of an insurance company’s ability to deny coverage on the basis of existing conditions is an effort to provide a benefit to individuals while hiding the “tax” on the rest. Clearly, insurance rates must rise for most individuals if insurers cannot price according to evident risk. If this were an honest bill there would be an explicit tax to subsidize the premiums of high risk individuals. Costless beneficence is a mockery of the idea of “helping people.” (I do not address the issues of legislative or private alternatives.) 
Why should any honest and intelligent person be happy with this? Democracy becomes a delusion when government lies. Of course, this is the usual modus operandi.

Blanche Lincoln Demonsrtates The General Stupidity Clause

On the General Welfare Clause and Government Mandates.

Today CSN News reported that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) responded to question that Congress has the authority to force individual Americans to buy health insurance because the U.S. Constitution “charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” Of course, as CSN News reporter Nicholas Ballasy noted, the words “health” and “well-being” do not appear anywhere in the Constitution.

Blanche Lincoln is a "knucklehead" to quote Mark Levin. However, unfortunately so are at least 59 other US Senators and a majority of the House.

What does the Constitution actually say?

Article 1, Section 8 states: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

Now, just what does "welfare" mean in the context of the Constitution and the times in which it was written?

From the 1828 Edition  - 40 years after the Constitution was written - of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language:      WELFARE, n. [well and fare, a good faring; G.]

1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.

2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applied to states.

A clear distinction is made between welfare for PERSONS and welfare for STATES. In the Constitution Welfare is used in the context of STATES AND NOT PERONS. There is little similarity between welfare of the people and welfare of the States. The Constitution empowers the Federal Government with responsibilities associated with  General Welfare of the States - which at most means "Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government" and NOT the ability to force people to buy a product in order to supposedly "promote their General Welfare".


Blanche Lincoln is a Moron.

Consumer Choice: Another Victim of Obama Death Panel

Forcing coverage on those that don't want it, mandating what it is they have to buy and forcing companies to seel it is a recipie for armageddon in the Health Care Industry. Don't believe me? Just take at look at how it has ALREADY been a disaster at the state level. I guess the logic here is take a bad idea that failed on a small/local scale and ramp it up to mega-level. Admittedly it is faster to ruin the entire country all at once rather than state by state -- if that is your plan.


American Thinker: Senate's Solution: Consumer Choice Is Dead on Arrival

Healthcare access better overseas?

Healthcare access better overseas?

You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

By Robert Tracinski

Before Thanksgiving, the Senate voted to opening debate on President Obama's health-care bill, and that debate has begun in earnest this week.

Well, if they want a debate, let's let them have it. But let's not get distracted by the sideshows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has planned for us.

So let's get straight what the real essentials of the bill are-and how disastrous they are.

Three provisions constitute the vicious heart of the Democrats' health-care overhaul.

The first is "guaranteed issue" and "community rating." This is the requirement that insurance companies have to offer coverage to people who are already sick, and that they be limited in their ability to charge higher rates for customer who pose a higher risk. The extra expense to the insurance companies of covering people with pre-existing conditions will get passed on to existing customers in the form of higher premiums. But why spend years paying these inflated premiums for insurance you're not using, when you can get exactly the same benefits by waiting until you actually fall ill? The obvious result is that million of people, especially healthy young people, will quickly realize that there is no reason to buy health insurance until they get sick.

Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills. It is an attempt to turn health insurance into what the left really wants: another welfare program in which everyone is entitled to free benefits, mandated by the government. But this would wreck private health insurance, making the whole industrial financially unsustainable.

Following the usual pattern of government intervention, the health-care bill offers anotherintervention as the solution for the problem created by the first. The "individual mandate" requires everyone to buy health insurance and subjects us to a tax if we fail to do so. But this is an especially onerous new tax, the first tax not tied to any kind of income or activity. It's not a tax on stock-market profits, say, or a tax on buying cigarettes. It's just a tax for existing.

So fearing a public backlash, Congress didn't have the guts to make this new tax very large-only $750. Yet actual insurance can cost more than $3,000 per year-and as we shall see, this legislation goes out of its way to drive up those rates by mandating more lavish coverage. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds. This provision won't actually drive anyone to buy health insurance and prop up the risk pools for those who are insured. All it will accomplish is to create a brand new form of tax.

But the biggest power-grab in the bill is the government takeover of the entire market for health insurance. The bill requires all new policies to be sold on a government-controlled exchange run by a commissioner who is empowered to dictate what kinds of insurance policies can be offered, what they must cover, and what they can charge.

Right now, your best option for reducing the cost of your health insurance is to buy a policy with a high deductible, which leaves you to pay for routine checkups and minor injuries (preferably from savings held in a tax-free Health Savings Account) but which covers your needs in catastrophic circumstances-a bad car accident, say, or expensive treatment for cancer. This is the kind of coverage I have.

But the health-insurance exchange is intended to eliminate precisely this kind of low-cost catastrophic coverage. Its purpose is to force health-insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage that pays for all of your routine bills-which in turn comes at a higher price. So under the guise of making health insurance more affordable, this bill will restrict your menu of choices to include only the most expensive options.

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.

By all means, let's debate some of that in the Senate.

When you understand what this bill does, you can see why the Democrats would be happy to compromise and drop the public option-for now. This bill so comprehensively wrecks private health insurance that pretty soon a "public option" will seem like the only alternative, and they will already have put into place one of the new taxes needed to pay for it. If the left's goal is to impose socialized medicine in America, this bill does it in the most callous and destructive way possible. It smashes private health care-then leaves us stranded in the rubble, at which point we will be expected to come crawling back to the same people who caused the disaster and ask them to save us.

That is the final and perhaps most compelling reason to kill this bill: the sheer arrogance of the whole enterprise. It is the arrogance of stampeding an unwilling public toward a monstrous 2,000-page piece of legislation while admitting that it still has huge problems, but promising that it will all somehow be fixed later on. It's the arrogance of selling us a bill that expands government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while telling us that it will reduce the deficit. It is the sheer unmitigated gall of appointing a bureaucrat to run a government-controlled insurance market that takes away all of our health choices-and then calling this bureaucrat the Health Choices Commissioner.

That's the kind of government arrogance that has to be smacked down hard, and that alone is reason to demand that your senator reject this vicious bill in its entirety.

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com.

You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

By Robert Tracinski

Before Thanksgiving, the Senate voted to opening debate on President Obama's health-care bill, and that debate has begun in earnest this week.

Well, if they want a debate, let's let them have it. But let's not get distracted by the sideshows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has planned for us.

Forget about abortion. Of course the left will accept restrictions on funding for abortion, because they want to keep moderate Democrats on board for the goal they know is really important: giving the government a dominant role in health care. Everything else is just details, and funding for abortions is an issue to which the left can return at leisure later on-once government is firmly in charge of everything.

And don't bother debating the "public option," either, because it's already dead; enough Democratic senators have come out against it. But Harry Reid is all too happy to have a debate over the public option so he can make a show of "compromising" and giving it up. And while we're having that fake debate, he's hoping that we won't be challenging everything else in the bill.

So let's get straight what the real essentials of the bill are-and how disastrous they are.

Three provisions constitute the vicious heart of the Democrats' health-care overhaul.

The first is "guaranteed issue" and "community rating." This is the requirement that insurance companies have to offer coverage to people who are already sick, and that they be limited in their ability to charge higher rates for customer who pose a higher risk. The extra expense to the insurance companies of covering people with pre-existing conditions will get passed on to existing customers in the form of higher premiums. But why spend years paying these inflated premiums for insurance you're not using, when you can get exactly the same benefits by waiting until you actually fall ill? The obvious result is that million of people, especially healthy young people, will quickly realize that there is no reason to buy health insurance until they get sick.

Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills. It is an attempt to turn health insurance into what the left really wants: another welfare program in which everyone is entitled to free benefits, mandated by the government. But this would wreck private health insurance, making the whole industrial financially unsustainable.

Following the usual pattern of government intervention, the health-care bill offers anotherintervention as the solution for the problem created by the first. The "individual mandate" requires everyone to buy health insurance and subjects us to a tax if we fail to do so. But this is an especially onerous new tax, the first tax not tied to any kind of income or activity. It's not a tax on stock-market profits, say, or a tax on buying cigarettes. It's just a tax for existing.

So fearing a public backlash, Congress didn't have the guts to make this new tax very large-only $750. Yet actual insurance can cost more than $3,000 per year-and as we shall see, this legislation goes out of its way to drive up those rates by mandating more lavish coverage. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds. This provision won't actually drive anyone to buy health insurance and prop up the risk pools for those who are insured. All it will accomplish is to create a brand new form of tax.

But the biggest power-grab in the bill is the government takeover of the entire market for health insurance. The bill requires all new policies to be sold on a government-controlled exchange run by a commissioner who is empowered to dictate what kinds of insurance policies can be offered, what they must cover, and what they can charge.

Right now, your best option for reducing the cost of your health insurance is to buy a policy with a high deductible, which leaves you to pay for routine checkups and minor injuries (preferably from savings held in a tax-free Health Savings Account) but which covers your needs in catastrophic circumstances-a bad car accident, say, or expensive treatment for cancer. This is the kind of coverage I have.

But the health-insurance exchange is intended to eliminate precisely this kind of low-cost catastrophic coverage. Its purpose is to force health-insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage that pays for all of your routine bills-which in turn comes at a higher price. So under the guise of making health insurance more affordable, this bill will restrict your menu of choices to include only the most expensive options.

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one's very existence.

By all means, let's debate some of that in the Senate.

When you understand what this bill does, you can see why the Democrats would be happy to compromise and drop the public option-for now. This bill so comprehensively wrecks private health insurance that pretty soon a "public option" will seem like the only alternative, and they will already have put into place one of the new taxes needed to pay for it. If the left's goal is to impose socialized medicine in America, this bill does it in the most callous and destructive way possible. It smashes private health care-then leaves us stranded in the rubble, at which point we will be expected to come crawling back to the same people who caused the disaster and ask them to save us.

That is the final and perhaps most compelling reason to kill this bill: the sheer arrogance of the whole enterprise. It is the arrogance of stampeding an unwilling public toward a monstrous 2,000-page piece of legislation while admitting that it still has huge problems, but promising that it will all somehow be fixed later on. It's the arrogance of selling us a bill that expands government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars while telling us that it will reduce the deficit. It is the sheer unmitigated gall of appointing a bureaucrat to run a government-controlled insurance market that takes away all of our health choices-and then calling this bureaucrat the Health Choices Commissioner.

That's the kind of government arrogance that has to be smacked down hard, and that alone is reason to demand that your senator reject this vicious bill in its entirety.

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com.

You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

You emWill/em Lose Your Private Health Insurance

R

Revenge of the Computer Nerds

By Larrey Anderson

It is fascinating to watch the mainstream media in America duck (and/or make excuses for) the greatest scam in modern history: the "science" behind man made global warming. Even more entertaining, and far more enlightening, is to follow the analyses by the experts in computer programming of the recently disclosed methods used by the Climate Research Unit (CRU) from the University of East Anglia.

Most commentators in the media have been talking about the "REM" statements in the purloined emails and computer codes from the CRU.[i] True believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), especially those in the mainstream and "scientific" media, are pooh poohing such words as "tricks" or "hide the decline" as interoffice slang that had no real impact on how the science was conducted.

But the real action (and the evidence for chicanery) is in the computer code that was obtained from the CRU. Our own computer guru Marc Sheppard, writing for American Thinker here andhere, was one of the first to offer an accurate diagnosis of this fraudulent and deceptive method of computer programming. Analyzing the code, as Marc has indicated in his work, is a complex business. As he pleads in one article:

... please bear with me while I get a tad techie on you.

For the laymen readers of American Thinker, I want to explain, in a simple manner, what went on in the construction of one piece of the controversial programming.

A bit of background: The main evidence of Al Gore and the AGW crowd was a notorious graph that became known as "the hockey stick graph."  The graph is based on computer models that supposedly prove our planet has heated exponentially in the last half century -- due to increasing amounts of man made CO2 released into the atmosphere.  Proponents further claim (and the computer models purport to show) that temperatures will continue to increase exponentially. The implication is that unless we drastically curtail human output of CO2 the "escalation" in temperature is going to get even worse even faster.

Turns out that these claims are absolutely false and that the computer models have been rigged.

Here is one version of the famous "hockey stick" graph:

Now that is scary![ii] According to the now debunked myth, global temperatures started going through the roof about 60 years ago and are going to continue to get increasingly hotter and lead to unimaginable disasters. Except they haven't and they probably won't.

Now to the CRU code that maintains these fictional monstrosities: Pay particular attention to the black line at the far right of the "hockey stick" in Graph 1. The black line starts at about 1900. (This is the same period of time addressed by the code we will examine.) The black line looks something like this very simplified version:

The x-axis (horizontal) shows time. The y-axis (vertical) shows temperature.  In the last few decades the temperature, according to AGW enthusiasts, has been climbing off of the charts.

Marc Sheppard discovered and showed us this bit of programming taken from the CRU documents:

yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]

valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75         ; fudge factor

The long string of bold numbers in the second set of brackets is the "fudge factor" applied (supposedly) to the raw data.[iii]  This string of numbers "adjusts" the raw data from 1904 to 1994 in 5-year increments. Here is what these 19 numbers roughly look like on a simple graph (each bar below represents a number in bold above):

I have left a space between the bars that represent each number so the reader can compare the temperature line to the numbers from the program. Time is once again indicated by the x-axis (horizontal). Temperature is portrayed on the y-axis (vertical).

The numbers in the code indicate a degree of cheating that is actually much larger than I was able to show with the bars in Graph 3.[iv]

We can now prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the hockey stick is an absolute ruse. The hockey stick graph cannot possibly be based on the actual data.  (Wherever and whatever that data might have been. The CRU has admitted destroying the raw data.)

Even if the numbers in the program were not added to the aggregate temperatures (of each preceding period)[v] the numbers in the code plot like this:

Graph 4 this still looks an awful lot like the "hockey stick." In short, no matter how you read the code -- it was designed to create a phony outcome.

But don't take my word for it. Computer experts everywhere are all over this particular con game, and many other deceptions, that came out of the CRU files.

Many years ago I was an instructor in logic at the university level. Some of my best students were young people who planned on entering the new, exciting, rapidly expanding, and lucrative fields of computer science and computer programming.

A solid grasp of logic was, and still is, a great way to start an education in the computer sciences -- since computer programs are grounded in the basic rules and the syntax (sometimes slightly adjusted) of Boolean logic.

Computer programmers are often referred to as "nerds." In fact, they are meticulous. They have to be. Their programs don't work if the programmer is lazy, or skips a step, or ignores the rules of logic and syntax that make computers do the job they are supposed to do. This is why competent computer programmers can spot a phony and a cheater a mile away.

Writing the beautiful and logical structure of a computer code is almost like writing music. It is very easy for a skilled computer programmer to detect code that is "out of tune." Computer nerds are literally shouting about the audacity of the obviously contrived bit of code we have just examined. They are screaming in Germany, in America and in lots of other places. Read the comments to these postings -- there are some good ones. (There are also efforts by true believers to justify the code. Try following the logic of the post in that last link.)

The bottom line is that if this kind of code were to be used by, say, an insurance actuary -- or by someone writing banking software or for tracking the stock market -- the programmer would immediately be fired ... and probably face criminal prosecution.

The truth about the hockey stick hoax is slowly leaking out. New Zealand climate scientists released a similar doctored graph (for temperatures in New Zealand) that looked like this:

The scientists in New Zealand didn't destroy the raw data. (Oops.) The raw temperature data from New Zealand, when feed into a computer without a "fudge factor," looks like this:

In short, New Zealand has not heated up in the last 150 years. Not a bit. Zealous scientists promoting AGW (not the actual weather) caused the "warming" in New Zealand.  (Notice how closely the doctored Graph 5 from New Zealand resembles doctored Graph 1 and the code from the CRU we have examined.)

Any computer programmer worth his or her salt will tell you, "Garbage in, garbage out." The garbage in the AGW debate turns out to be the scientists who are writing fraudulent computer codes.  Time to take out the garbage.

Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and submissions editor for American Thinker. He is the author ofThe Order of the Beloved, and the memoir, Underground: Life and Survival in the Russian Black Market.

Revenge of the Computer Nerds

Revenge of the Computer Nerds

Global Deceit: Revenge of the Computer Nerds

This article by a computer modeling expert shows the level of deception used by FOGWARMS (Followers of Global Warming) to deliberately fudge the temperature graphs -- and then destroy the original data so no one could check the data and analysis.

Revenge of the Computer Nerds

Gee, Is The NYT Biased or Are The Just Happy To See BHO?

Warner Todd Huston at Big Government did the work on this one. I’m basically just rewriting his post a bit.
Here’s the NY Times, circa 2002, under President Bush. The headline is Unemployment Fell in August but Drop is Called Insignificant:

The labor market improved slightly last month but offered little hopethat the economy would soon emerge from its prolonged weakness.
American employers added 39,000 jobs in August, roughly in line with the modest growth of recent months, the Labor Department reported yesterday, but the entire gain came from the hiring of new airport security guards and other government workers. Companies remain reluctant to hire until economic growth improves.
The unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent last month, from 5.9 percent in July, but economists at the Labor Department and on Wall Street called the decline almost meaningless. The rate, which is based on a smaller survey than the payroll numbers, often jumps around from month to month. Many experts expect the jobless rate to move up at least slightly later this year.
”The drop in the unemployment rate should be ignored,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y. ”Over all, new jobs are still very scarce.”

Do you think they are downplaying the drop a bit?
Now here’s the same paper reporting Friday on another unemployement report under the headline Jobs Report is Strongest Since the Start of the Recession:

The nation’s employers not only have stopped eliminating large numbers of jobs, but appear to be on the verge of rebuilding the American work force, devastated by the recession.
The unexpected improvement comes as a relief to the Obama administration, which plans to unveil new proposals next week to ease the plight of the jobless following its labor forum in Washington on Thursday.
In the best report since the recession began two years ago, only 11,000 jobs disappeared last month, the government said on Friday, and the unemployment rate actually dipped, to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent the previous month.
“There are going to be some months where the reports are going to be a little better, some months where the reports are worse, but the trend line right now is good,” President Obama said in a visit to Allentown, Pa., offering reassurance to a city besieged by unemployment and a country still suffering from the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.
Many forecasters suggest that the turning point — from jobs being cut to jobs being added — will come by March, assuming theeconomy continues to grow, as it finally started to do in the third quarter. If they are right, the beginning of a work force recoverywould come more quickly than after the last two recessions, in the early 1990s and 2001, despite the much greater severity of this downturn.

Two presidents, both dealing with a recession. Bush’s report showed a drop from 5.9% unemployment to 5.7% and 39K jobs added. That was “insigificant” and “meaningless.”
Obama’s jobs report showed a drop from 10.2% unemployment to 10% and a loss of 11K jobs. That is called “improvement” and a good trend.
The most significant difference is that in the Bush report, paragraphs are structured around a “but.” News is reported but here’s why it doesn’t mean anything. There is one forward looking statement and it’s the one that says unnamed experts expect unemployment to go up.
In the Obama report there are no but statements at all. In fact Obama gets a report structured around “if.” If forecasters are right this is great news. Assuming the economy grows, this is good news. And notice in the second paragraph the author highlights something Obama “plans to unveil.” It’s all very forward looking and hopeful. No buts for Obama.
This is what the professionals call journalism, but I call it media bias.

Public Option: Great Britain's Warning to America

American Thinker: Public Option: Great Britain's Warning to America

On Rosy Premium Scenarios

The law of unintended consequences and the prospect of people reacting to negative incentives need to be made explicit in the ObamaCare debate.

The New Atlantis » Diagnosis » On Rosy Premium Scenarios

"I'd gladly Pay You Tuesday For ObamaCare Today....."

How to Hide the Incline

John on November 25, 2009

From one form of statistical malfeasance to another. This chart shows the cost of the Democrats health reform proposal (Senate flavor):

Looking at the green vs. blue brackets you’ll see how the Democrats crafted the bill such that they can claim it is only going to cost $900 billion within the standard 10-year budget window. This is only because it doesn’t begin operating until 2014 and then scales up gradually! In fact, the cost over the first decade of operation is fully double that number. [HT:Michael Barone]

I’d also like to call attention again to something Morgen discovered a week ago. The bulk of the “deficit reduction” in the Senate bill comes from one program. It’s an assisted living program for the elderly. However, this program will begin paying out much more money in the second 10 years and will not be contributing to any kind of surplus. In short, it’s another gimmick to hide the incline in costs.

Category: Health & Education, Politics |