You can depend on Conservatives Part 1

The conflict between dueling schools of Economics among dissenters has cost us dearly, I blame the influence of Peter Schiff on Ron Paul!

My recent trip to the Money Show in Las Vegas brought me in spitting distance of the granddaddy of modern conservative economics, Mr. Austrian School himself, Peter Schiff…and I almost wish I had tested that measure of distance.

I was there, in Vegas at Ceasers’s Palace, in the convention space, walking around the various vendors. One caught my eye, it was the booth of Al Yegenah, promoting the Original Soup Man Line that is his way of marketing his nationally famous soup and proving that there is no such thing as bad publicity (How would you like to be famous as a Seinfield character called a Nazi?). They served the soup in a line all the while observing the same rules Mr. Yeganeh had at his restaurant in New York. Major difference, in New York, the company was not being pitched as an investment to you by a leggy chick when you had to have your money ready, state which soup you want and then step aside like in the Sienfeld episode
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So I got my Broccoli Cheese Soup, stepped aside, and continued to make my way down the various aisles of software vendors, gold coin dealers, and people who wished an investor would take notice of what they were pitching. As a bit of delicious soup made its way down my mouth, I noticed this sign.

In wandering the aisles of the Money Show, I had come to both ends of certain spectrum of entrepreneurs. On one end we had an intelligent talented man who had worked hard for his achievements, who had emerged victorious from a brutal national spotlight, who had mastered the concepts of Free Market competition and I was drinking his soup! On the other end we had Peter Schiff!
The same Peter Schiff who described himself as a sympathetic 1%er to the Occupy crowd when he tried to turn the anger at the crony capitalism that screwed us all over into anger at the government.
The same Peter Schiff who arrogantly demanded that Congress eliminate the minimum wage as a cure to unemployment. (Brilliant, Peter, brilliant, everyone will have a job but the paychecks won’t be worth anything)
The same Peter Schiff who has been appearing as an expert in front of one our worst Congresses ever and giving them the ammunition they need for austerity at a time of high unemployment.
Approximately 15% of the workforce of the United States is unemployed according to the U6, the measure of real unemployment. It is a single statistic that measures a lot of misery. It’s serious. Callously using the term "job creator" of "job killer" to advance your agenda is insulting in it’s manipulative avarice. People who do this should be shunned not having their ass kissed.
In fairness to Mr. Schiff, at least he talked to the Occupy protesters. The morons at the Chicago Board of Trade who dropped McDonalds job applications on those outraged at the ill effects of Crony Capitalism either ignored or didn’t care about the fact that although McDonalds had 50K job openings they had over a million job applicants.
There he was sitting in the "bookstore" section of the Money Show…and me with some Soup Man soup left in my cup! I thought about tossing it over the top of the line of adoring sycophants lined up to get his signature. But really, I didn’t want to exit the Money Show in that manner nor did I want to give up my soup.
History will be far unkinder to him than anything I can do anyway. For those who don’t know, Mr Schiff is the economic advisor to Ron Paul. I’ve felt that there is enough common ground between the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, between elements of the "far left" and "far right" that conceivably some common ground might be found and some good may have been accomplished. Both are aware of the negative effect the Military Industrial Complex has on our nation and our world. Both want an end to the "War on Drugs". Both were outraged at the Crony Capitalism that has devastated this economy.
Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich had reached across the aisle on more than one occasion to do some good.
The real disagreement between the two sides has always been the difference in the warring Schools of Economics being advocated. A New New Deal under a new president could have put people back to work immediately, repaired our infrastructure so it will be able to handle the commerce of the near future (something we still desperately need to do), and not decreased the police, fire, education on the State level. All that was needed was for Libertarians to stand down, agree to disagree, and save the debate for another day when unemployment wasn’t as bad.
Unfortunately, you can always depend on conservatives to rationalize selfishness!
Peter Schiff as an influence on Ron Paul in 2008 would have none of that. In fact he actively encouraged economic action in the opposite direction, i.e. Austerity at a time of high unemployment. That is the main reason I dislike the man.
Peter Schiff, it is claimed, accurately, foresaw the collapse of the HousingBubble in 2008. And we have the big sign at Euro Pacific Capital at the Money Show to remind everyone of that. Of course he also predicted Hyperinflation, that the rest of the world would be immune to the US implosion and that there would be decoupling, and that foreign equities and commodities would be worth more than the dollar. I didn’t expect to see that on the big trade show sign nor was I surprised when it wasn’t there.
Of course, Peter Schiff is always predicting things of this nature. If you count your hits and forget your misses, you have zero credibility. But not Peter Schiff, as the principal of Euro Pacific Capital, he gets easy access to the media to promote doom and gloom.
But how is his credibility as an expert in international markets?

Anti-Intellectualism is Stupid and Dangerous

 

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been.The strain of Anti-Intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means 'my ignorance is as good as your knowledge'" Isaac Asimov

Recently the state of Tennessee succeeded in passing a bill which allows for the challenging of scientific facts and evidence with nonsense in any taxpayer funded science classroom. Established scientific doctrine can now be attacked by those with an anti-science and anti-intellectual agenda in front of the next generation of citizens while at a very impressionable age. The world in which these kids are adults is going to be more dependent on science and technology that we currently are. Shortchanging them is stupid and dangerous. But more than that, the whole wave of cultural ignorance which this is a part of is stupid and dangerous for us as a species and as a nation.

In a time where technology (applied science) has become a vital prerequisite to our current standard of living, the socially conservative legislatures of Tennessee and Louisiana have launched an assault on their own science classrooms. This country will soon be facing serious challenges rising ocean levels, scarcity of resources, and a population explosion. The genius of the future generation that must face these challenges may be in a Louisiana or Tennessee classroom right now having his first exposure to science tainted by a teacher with a creationist agenda who insists that the world is only 6000 years old.

This was a present from ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the malevolent Right wing group that is responsible for the "Stand Your Ground" laws among other pieces of legislative excrement. This group functions as close to Mussolini's Chamber of the Fascist Corporations as we can get in present day America. Under the Orwellian misdirective name of "Academic Freedom", you can now as a Science Teacher in those states, decide on your own to attack evolution, promote global warming denial, and spread panic when it comes to genetic research by railing against human cloning. Likewise if you are a History Teacher, you can decide that you want to teach that Ceaser was never assassinated, that there never was a 2nd World War, and Marie Antionette was elevated to Goddess Empress in 1794 and rules to this day. It is your Academic Freedom to do exactly that. And if you a Math Teacher, you can teach 2 + 2 = 5, that's your Academic Freedom.

Speaking of History, today Baghdad, Iraq is the scene of a lot of pointless and savage destruction and the site of the most embarrassing and expensive quagmire in military history. It was not always the case. From 800 to 1100 A.D., Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world. The period saw many advances in engineering, biology, astronomy and mathematics all in the city that has been raped by imperialist and fundamentalist forces over the past 10 years or so.They created algebra (an ARABIC word), invented Arabic numerals, and fully exploited the discovery of the Zero. All of that changed after the influence of one Imam Hamid Al-Ghazah. Under the influence of Al-Ghazah, the study of mathematics became the work of the devil. Under him, the foundation of what Islam would become-the medieval stupid fanatics who kill apostates, stone to death unpopular women, riot over cartoons they don't like and fetish offensive suicide- was laid.

The Islamic world never recovered and is stuck in a medieval mindset to this day.

Modern social conservatives in the USA are proudly following in the footsteps of Imam Hamis Al-Ghazah. And they have given no thought to the consequence of attacking science in this manner.

"Those who do not learn from History are destined to repeat it" Santa Yanna

On the agenda of the "Academic Freedom" bill is an attack on Evolution and an embracement of Climate Change Denial (as opposed to Climate Skepticism). We don't know in advance where the next Einstein is going to be going to his first science class. Tennessee and Louisiana students deserve better. That next genius may be among the number of students affected by this Anti-intellectual monstrosity.

Targeted specifically in the bill is the Theory of Evolution. The volumes of evidence in support of Darwinian Evolution are considered a threat by a minority of people who insist on a selectively literal interpretation of the Bible, specifically the book of Genesis. Deliberate logical fallacies are put forward to misdirect debates on the subject. "The Way of the Master" series by Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort openly says that one of their goals is to use techniques during a debate that circumvent the reason of who ever they are talking to. Circumventing reason has no place in a science classroom. Science, the study of nature, embraces reason.

Proof of Evolution is everywhere. From the carbon-dated fossils that show a clear progression from single celled organisms to primitive invertebrates to fish to reptiles to mammals to primates, from the discovery of genetics and the fused 23rd chromosome we find when looking at the difference between our DNA and that of a chimp,from medical advances that take evolution into account when developing new treatments for diseases that adapt through natural selection and become resistant to antibiotics and much more, evolution is the foundation of modern biology. And to opt out of it in order to teach creationist propaganda in a science classroom is a betrayal of the trust children place in their teacher.

If any person disagrees with me on this point they are more than welcome to take the following challenge if they insist on the literal truth of the Bible (which is really the reason for the hard sell that insists we deny scientific evidence). The Book of Leviticus gives us a cure for leprosy. Leviticus 14 2-7 says that if you want to be cleansed from leprosy, all you need to do is obtain 2 birds, kill one, dip the living bird in the dead bird's blood and sprinkle it on the leper and he shall be pronounced clean! If you insist on teaching that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and Evolution is just a Theory, I challenge you to contract leprosy and use the Biblical cure instead of the 6 month treatment of pills that medical science has provided! Please do this before you teach one child in Tennessee or Louisiana that the Earth might be 6,000 years old in a science classroom!

The Science of Climate Change is under a similar well financed and coordinated attack by forces like the Koch-funded Heartland Institute. This organization has spent several million dollars in order to undermine climate science. They are willing to spend $200K on "creating a curriculum" to cast doubt on mainstream science. And now, thanks to legislators with an Anti Intellectual agenda in Tennessee and Louisiana, they are free to do just that.

Science is the study of the natural world. It relies on the brutal crucible of peer review journals, as it should. What does it say about your thesis if you can't go that route, but instead spend money to engage in sleazy opportunistic debate tactics rather than put your evidence forward where all with expertise in the area can evaluate it. The Truth does not need to be sponsored by industries that benefit from suppressing the Truth! No amount of money one spends or logical fallacies deliberately indulged in can change the fact that although IR light goes through most gases in our atmosphere, a minority of gasses including methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide absorb IR light and transmit it in all directions. If you have any evidence that disproves that, please present it to a peer reviewed journal and endure the rigors of that before ignoring it in a science classroom that we are all paying for!

And not to pick on the Right exclusively, rest assured the Left has also indulged in Anti-Intellectualism. The campaign against genetically modified foods in the face of mass starvation is an embarrassment to the humanity of the Left. Sorry, but anytime you rationalize massive suffering and death you compromise your humanity. If it is wrong for a cowardly Right Wing chickenhawk to rationalize the suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people by those he put in office, it is wrong for someone on the Left to rationalize famine because he's afraid of "Frankenfoods"! Both the Right and Left have spoken out for the junk science behind anti-vaccination and the preventable deaths it causes. When Robert Kennedy Jr., Jenny McCarthy and Michelle Bachmann can unite on an issue, they prove how worthless bipartisanship can be!

"...if you examine the record, it's not the psychics but the hard nosed scientists who have actually delivered the things that improve human life."James Randi, one of the greatest magician's ever and the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation and it's $1 Million dollar paranormal prize.

In a world as dependent on technology as we are and will continue to be, the "Academic Freedom" bills in Tennessee and Louisiana are hurting the children of those states and this is an outrage. Those who back these measures are people who would gladly bring about another Dark Age or Human Extinction and they deserve every ounce of shame, contempt and disrespect that can be thrown in their way. Those responsible should never be allowed to make policy ever again.