Saudi King Abdullah Won’t Use “Universal” Health Coverage But Comes To The U.S. For His Blood Clot Treatment

This isn’t new: everyone knows and has always known that the best doctors and the best healthcare in the world are to be found in the United States. Which is why, when the chips are down, the United States is precisely where they all come for treatment.

No, the reason this particular story is a little more interesting than the usual traduce-America’s-health-care-system-until-you-get-seriously-sick scenario is that Saudi King Abdullah reportedly phoned Obama the day after Obamacare was forced through congress (via the unlawful use of the reconciliation process) and congratulated him on its passage.
As Doug Powers reports:

The day after the Obamacare law passed, Saudi King Abdullah reportedly called President Obama to congratulate him. The bill, it seems, was one more step toward the US embracing a superior universal health care system like that which can be found in Saudi Arabia, where treatments for medical problems such as, oh, say, blood clots, are fully covered.

Now, the king of the country with that health care system that gives the US something to strive for won’t be treated in that system, but will instead come to the US for treatment. He’s lucky the law that will make US health care system more closely resemble the Saudi system — the one that isn’t good enough for Saudi royalty — hasn’t kicked in yet:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia’s aged ruler will fly to the United States for medical tests over a blood clot, according to a Saudi official, in a development that would renew questions about succession in the oil-rich kingdom.

The 86-year-old King Abdullah is set to leave on Monday, three days after he was admitted to the hospital suffering from back pain due to a blood clot, the official said late Saturday. The official didn’t say which hospital would receive the king.

To paraphrase John McCain’s question, when Obamacare is fully implemented in America, where will rich Saudis go for health care?

(Link)

Friedrich Nietzsche Turns 166

In honor of Nietzsche’s recent birthday, I offer up the following, from the Nietzsche Family Circus:

Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle.
God is dead.
I never speak to the masses.

More here.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

The Electric Tea Party Acid Test — by Zombie

Zombie, an anonymous San Francisco blogger and photographer whom I admire, recently wrote an article for Pajamas Media that echoes what I myself have been saying for years: the left/right, republican/democrat, conservative/liberal alternative is a false alternative, and those two ideologies are really just two sides of the same penny: the one espouses (nominal) economic freedom but advocates government intrusion in political issues (the Right), while the other espouses nominal political freedom but advocates complete government intrusion in economic affairs (the Left). This issue is not a marginal issue — and indeed becomes more and more relevant each passing day, as this country creeps closer to outright revolution.

Zombie’s article is worth reading in full, but if you don’t have the time or the inclination, please take a long look at his graph, which he calls the real political spectrum: collectivism-versus-individualism — or, in my words, freedom-versus-statism. It’s not quite the graph I would have made, but it’s pretty good; and if freedom is ever to win the day, it is this distinction that must be understood:

(Note: to see Zombie’s explanation for his categories, click here.)

Emeritus Professor Of Physics Harold Lewis: “Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life”



Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II.

The following is his recent letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, of Princeton University, and President of the American Physical Society. This letter is burning up the climate blogosphere, and for very good reason:

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.< 5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council. 6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition. APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization? I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question. I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends. Hal

Environmental Propaganda And The 10:10 No Pressure Campaign

As I’ve often said, environmentalism as a political philosophy is a cult of death, the highroad to hell, truly neo-Marxism at its blackest. For all those who have so stridently claimed that my criticisms are unjust, that they are divorced from reality and wildly exaggerated, I offer you this latest inanity from the 10:10 propaganda machine:


And here’s another one from the World Wildlife Fund.

More on the matter from Ed Driscoll’s James Delingpole and also this thorough article.

The Apotheosis Of Ron Paul [Updated]

Concerning Ron Paul, Cory Massimino and friends are coming under some fire for a fine article, which recalls a newspaper piece the Fort Collins Weekly published back in 2008.

Here’s an excerpt from Cory’s article:

Hans Herman-Hoppe, distinguished fellow of the Mises Institute, wrote just last year that, “it is societies dominated by white heterosexual males, and in particular by the most successful among them, which have produced and accumulated the greatest amount of capital goods and achieved the highest average living standards.” Hoppe has also advocated violence against homosexuals and other people who live lifestyles he doesn’t approve of, “There can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They-the advocates of alternative, non-family-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism-will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.” The racist and homophobic themes in these passages speak for themselves.

(Link)

Here’s the Fort Collins Weekly article:

Among so-called libertarians, Congressman Ron Paul has taken on brobdingnagian proportions of late, despite the fact that he doesn’t actually believe in liberty.

The confusion comes, I think, from his nominal advocacy of free markets, the Austrian School of Economics in particular, of which I myself am a proponent. But as we’ve seen, economics is not the proper foundation of any government, because private property – which is the crux of the free market – is not primarily rooted in economics but ethics:

Property (including money) is only an extension of person; thus, the right to property rests upon the more fundamental right to life.

Do you think that Paul supports individual freedom, unrestricted by law? He does not. Quoting his own words:

I also support overriding the Supreme Court case that overturned state laws prohibiting flag burning. Under the Constitutional principle of federalism, questions such as whether or not Texas should prohibit flag burning are strictly up to the people of Texas, not the United States Supreme Court. Thus, if this amendment simply restored the state’s authority to ban flag burning, I would enthusiastically support it.

Goodbye, free speech — if, that is, your state votes it down.

You see, on Planet Paul, big government is fine, provided that government operates at the state or local level, not federal.

In fact, Ron Paul only believes in freedom unrestricted by federal law. When it comes to state and local governments, he fully endorses those governments’ “right” to restrict any number of your freedoms.

It comes as no surprise to learn, therefore, that on a host of other issues, such as the banning of raw milk, marijuana, abortion, same-sex relations, and so on, Paul explicitly advocates majority rule at the state level.

Properly classified, Ron Paul is what’s called an anti-federalist.

He is more specifically an anti-federalist neo-confederate masquerading as a defender of a Constitution he doesn’t fully understand. To wit:

“The notion of a rigid separation between church and state,” says Paul, “has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writing of our Founding Fathers.”

From this provably false assertion, he arrives at a remarkable conclusion:

“Far from mandating strict secularism in schools, [the First Amendment] instead bars the federal government from prohibiting the Pledge of Allegiance, school prayer, or any other religious expression. The politicians and judges pushing the removal of religion from public life are violating the First Amendment, not upholding it.”

What this translates to where Ron Paul comes from is that the First Amendment was intended to sanction (rather than prohibit) state governments who wish to impose religion upon the people.

Accordingly, Paul rejects the Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state, and you can read it in his own words on this website.

It’s important to note here a far-too-often forgotten fact: namely, the principle behind individual rights – and, indeed, the whole reason that the United States is not a democracy but a Constitutional Republic – is that the rights of every individual, including the rights of gay people, are inalienable and never subject to vote, not at the federal level, not at the state level, and not at the local level, much as Congressman Paul wishes they were.

A religious man, Ron Paul naturally rejects evolution in favor of creationism.

He believes also that the Ten Commandments should be posted in public institutions and that the word “God” should be included in the Pledge of Allegiance.

On the issue of abortion, he’s to the right of such notable figures as Pat Robertson. He thus seeks to repeal Roe v. Wade, and he supports legislation to eliminate any legal distinction between a zygote and a fully-formed human being.

On Planet Paul, abortion is tantamount to murder; yet despite this, neither “murder” (of this sort) nor “fetal rights” (so-called) fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government. “Murder” and “the rights of the unborn” devolve to the states, so that the state can then exercise its own brand of tyranny, via public vote. This is known as majority rule, which is also known as democracy, which is also known as tyranny of the masses, which is why our Constitutional framers distrusted democracy, as well they should have. And Ron Paul knows this.

Congressman Paul correctly votes against all spending bills – that is, until it comes to his own district, for which he’s won earmarks in the federal budget, to the tune of hundreds of millions. The above process, incidentally, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and yet Congressman Paul says he’s “never voted for anything not specifically authorized by the Constitution.” How, then, does he justify this?

“By getting the money into the budget but then voting against the budget on the floor of the House,” says Paul critic, libertarian Stephen Greene.

And who can forget the notorious Paul newsletter, which shocked so many, myself included, and which, it turns out, he didn’t write but did endorse for thirty years. (A more thorough explication of that bigoted bile can be viewed here.)

If you’re unfamiliar with this newsletter, please don’t despair: you’ve read it many times before from neo-Marxists like Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Norman Mailer, and an army of others: the standard anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, blame-America-first rhetoric.

The New Republic said this about it:

What [the newsletters] reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing – but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

True.

In the arena of foreign policy, one of Paul’s main gurus is a fellow named Robert Pape, who wrote a book called Dying to Win, which, in the last few years, has become Paul’s foreign policy Bible.

The premise of the book is that American occupation is what compels these otherwise gentle Islamofascists into their suicide missions. Marc Sageman, however, author of the more authoritative Understanding Terror Networks, says this about it:

“In terms of al Qaeda, [Robert Pape] is dead wrong.”

Osama bin Laden, incidentally, says the same thing as Marc Sageman. Still, Paul would have us believe Ron Paul and Robert Pape instead.

It’s this and a number of other hot topics (such as the peculiar about-face on immigration) that has made many erstwhile supporters distance themselves from Paul. To many, he’s become just another garden-variety, religious, conspiratorial “survivalist.”

Quoting libertarian lawyer Kip Esquire:

If you want to declare openly and loudly that you are a radical majoritarian anti-federalist, and that you support Ron Paul because he shares your worldview, then good for you. If you want to shrug and conclude that a radical majoritarian anti-federalist is better than the other candidates, that could be rational as well. But don’t dare proclaim that Paul is a libertarian or that his views reflect a commitment to individual liberty, regarding the war on drugs or anything else.

It’s crucial to remember here that the founders of this country didn’t create federalism so that the states could thus be empowered. On the contrary, along with the system of checks-and-balances, federalism was created to further protect individuals from government, at any and every level, including state.

Freedom is fundamentally the absence of coercion. It matters not at which level the coercion originates. Your right to life, liberty, and property are inalienable – which means: your rights literally cannot be transferred or made alien. Paul, however, doesn’t recognize the inalienability of rights but endorses overriding a great many of them, via majority rule, provided it occurs at the state or local levels.

Finally, if you’re still in doubt about Ron Paul, just look at whom he endorsed for the 2008 presidency.
That’s right: candidate Chuck Baldwin, of the Constitution Party, whose party Preamble reads, in part:

The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.

This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.

The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations …

(Source)

“Quite Frankly, Mr. President, I’m Exhausted Of Defending You”

Just recently, at a so-called CNBC Town Hall, a quondam Obot told Barack Obama to his face:

I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for.

My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?

Real Clear Politics hasn’t yet made the priceless video embeddable, but you can — and should — watch it here. It will make you laugh, or it will make you cry.

Just incidentally, if you want to get drunk while watching it, try this drinking game: take a guzzle of beer (or Evan Williams) every time she says “quite frankly,” and I virtually guarantee you that by the end of it, you’ll be shit-faced.

More Recycling Myths Exposed

The church of recycling and the cult of organic composting was dealt another hard blow recently, when the Toronto Star conducted the following in-depth investigation, which was sent to me by my indefatigable friend Redmond. (Vote Redmond on October 25th, 2010!)

Green bins: A wasted effort?
Deep flaws mar recycling program as tons of organics end up in landfills or are turned into compost so toxic it kills plants

The City of Toronto boasts that its green bin program diverts a third of our garbage and turns it into “black gold” compost. But a Star investigation shows that the program – although nobly conceived – is a sham.

There are two problems. First, the city’s claim of how much waste the program diverts from landfill is inflated. Second, some of the compost that is being produced will kill your plants because of its high salt content, according to laboratory tests.

The Star found that, over the past two years, thousands of tons of organics in various stages of the composting process have been dumped into a gravel pit, tossed into landfills or stockpiled on city property. What’s more, some of the material residents are told to place in green bins – plastic bags and diapers – has wound up in the belly of a Michigan incinerator, despite Mayor David Miller’s vow Toronto will never burn garbage.

City residents deserve better, say compost experts. At least $15 million of taxpayers’ money goes to truck and treat the organic waste.

“Toronto homeowners put a lot of time and energy into separating their kitchen organics,” says Jim Graham, chair of the Ontario Waste Management Association.

“Residents have the right to expect the processors to do their job – and to create high-quality compost of consumer grade that they can use on their gardens.”

Toronto Mayor David Miller was too busy with the strike to comment, a spokesman told the Star on Thursday.

Geoff Rathbone, the city official in charge of the organic program, told the Star what happens to the organic matter “is not of concern to us” because it’s the provincial Ministry of the Environment’s job to enforce standards on processors.

The green bin program began in 2002, and today 510,000 Toronto homeowners dutifully separate garbage and put the organic waste into green bins for curbside pickup.

Compared to the pure organic programs in Durham and Peel regions, Toronto’s was flawed from the start. After public consultations, the city chose the simplest system for homeowners, encouraging plastic bag liners and the inclusion of diapers, neither of which can be composted.

The city proudly states that the compost it produces is “safe to use in gardens and lawns.”

Tests conducted for the Star by A&L Canada, a leading agricultural laboratory, found serious problems with compost produced by two separate companies contracted by the city to process the organic waste.

In one case, the lab found the compost was unfinished, meaning it was rushed through the process, in which micro-organisms break the waste down into a high-nutrient soil conditioner.

In the second case, the sodium content of compost given out at Toronto’s Environment Days was so high that it would kill plants. (More curing time would have removed naturally occurring sodium in vegetables and the salt we add to food.)

The Star also looked at the city’s so-called “diversion rate,” the markers by which recycling programs are judged. Critics say Toronto’s one-third rate is inflated.

Miller’s re-election promise in 2006 vowed to ramp up diversion rates to 70 per cent by 2010, so there’s pressure on the city to claim the highest possible rate.

Toronto’s annual output of 120,000 tons of organics has created a mad scramble for processors. In each of 2007 and 2008, the city shipped 1,000 truckloads to Quebec. By the time the green bin waste arrived, locked inside plastic bags the city wants residents to use, it was sometimes so rotten it went straight to landfill, says Quebec’s environment ministry. Some processors can’t handle liquefied rotten material.

That burns Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who has spent years trying to track the organic waste. “We have an unwritten rule with the public that the green bin system will have integrity, and the materials they put in the bins will be reused in a meaningful way,” Minnan-Wong says.

“When the food ends up landfilled, or when the compost is toxic, then you are betraying the principles and the reasons why we have this program to begin with.”

Two major compost processors hired by the city to handle the waste – such as leftover steak, banana peels and all those diapers – have been hit with provincial restrictions due to neighbourhood odour complaints.

Within the past two months, before the municipal garbage strike began, Orgaworld Canada in London was severely limited in the amount of organics it could process while Universal Resource Recovery in Welland was shut down entirely. Follow the trail of Toronto’s organics, and the flaws in the system emerge.

The Star found that Orgaworld, which processes about 40 per cent of Toronto’s organic waste, has been sending thousands of tons of “residual” plastics to be burned in Detroit. It turns out about one-fifth of Toronto’s organic output is being burned or buried in landfills.

The city tells residents to put diapers into their green bins.

Graham of the Ontario Waste Management Association also owns Try-Recycling in London. He said the diapers are considered diverted when placed in the compost stream, but are immediately screened out. “Makes for good diversion numbers, but they end up in the landfill anyway,” he said.

Add to that the plastic Toronto wants homeowners to line their bins with. In Durham and Peel, residents are told to buy compostable bags.

Toronto has built a multi-million-dollar system that is sup posed to separate organic waste from non-compostable plastic bags. (It is also planning two new local processing facilities, at a cost of roughly $65 million, using the same technology.) But plastics make the food rot quickly, causing odour problems for processors, and large shreds of plastic end up in the compost.

Nobody wants to see the green bin program scrapped, just made better. Susan Antler, executive director of the Composting Council of Canada, says some municipalities, such as Durham, are “shining stars.” They impose strict limits – no plastic bags, no diapers, and no dog feces and kitty litter. (The latter two are both allowed in Toronto, with feces contributing to odour issues and kitty litter putting clay into the compost.)

“Garbage in means garbage out,” Antler says.

Orgaworld founder Henk Kaskens, who is based in the Netherlands, came to London, Ont., last month to deal with “the fuss” created when the environment ministry ordered Orgaworld to limit its daily intake of green bin material to five trucks, or about 150 tons. Before that it was taking about 1,000 tons a day. (The order was lifted recently, but a new investigation is underway.)

The environment ministry says it has logged 170 odour complaints against Orgaworld since January.

At the same time the ministry hit Orgaworld with the limits, it closed down the second largest processor of Toronto’s organic waste, Welland’s Universal. The ministry told Universal it had logged 120 complaints of odours such as smells akin to “vomit” or “dead animals” since the facility opened last fall.

Toronto was caught in a vice, with nowhere to turn, because all but one of its other processors were facing ministry limitations or Environment Act charges.

Universal general manager Gerald Pratt said his company is taking the odour issues very seriously and is working very hard to fix the problems at the plant.

The problem caused Toronto to stockpile 3,000 tons of organics in city transfer stations – long before the strike began.

Orgaworld’s Kaskens, who said he makes “the best compost in Ontario,” invited the Star for a tour of his plant. He said the odour problems resulted from ducts that crashed from the walls to the floor because a subcontractor had not properly fastened them. He complained the environment ministry is too enforcement-focused and scares away future investments.

Inside the cavernous plant are huge piles of food waste, plastic bags ripped open. Kaskens said his technology turns organics into compost in just 12 to 14 days. The ministry requires it be held another 21 days, but “it is not necessary.”

The Composting Council’s Antler and numerous other industry leaders said they have never heard of compost that can be finished in 12 days. It takes up to six months to cure compost, Antler said. Kaskens pointed out the piles of residual waste, the plastics, in his plant. He said they are trucked to Detroit for incineration.

Neither the city nor compost companies could put a firm figure on the amount of non-organic residuals that are burned or landfilled, giving figures that vary from 15 to 22 per cent and higher.

Welland’s Universal general manager Gerald Pratt put it at 26 per cent, primarily plastic shopping bags. Toronto’s organic waste has a “great deal of contaminants in it,” Pratt wrote in a June letter to a Michigan landfill he hoped would help him after his plant closed.

The Michigan landfill’s manager, Dan Gudgel, said in an interview he could not compost Universal’s organics because the contamination meant it would take too long to get Michigan government approvals.

“I hear you have a state of emergency up there,” he said.

Article by Moira Welsh

Calling The Obama Bluff

Just recently, Barack Obama said, for the five or sixth hundredth time in the last year and a half: “The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place.”

He was referring of course to the profligate policies instituted under George W. Bush — about whom I’ve written here — and yet the question remains: why then has Barack Obama, from the beginning of his term, “gone back to the very same policies” instituted by his favorite scapegoat, without whom he’d be lost?

Unfortunately, I have no good answer for that question, but here’s something everyone, including Barack Obama, should know:

The President of the United States can’t create budget deficits or budget surpluses.

All spending bills, without exception, are born in the House of Representatives, and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.

Quoting Thomas Sowell:

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.

The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.

The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.

Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.

Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.

“The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said recently. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”

Another political fable is that the current economic downturn is due to not enough government regulation of the housing and financial markets. But it was precisely the government regulators, under pressure from politicians, who forced banks and other lending institutions to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.

These risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.

Was this due to George W. Bush and the Republicans? Only partly. Most of those who pushed the lowering of mortgage lending standards were Democrats– notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, though too many Republicans went along.

At the heart of these policies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought huge amounts of risky mortgages, passing the risk on from the banks that lent the money (and made the profits) to the taxpayers who were not even aware that they would end up paying in the end.

When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.

If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.

The current policies of the Obama administration are a continuation of the same reckless policies that brought on the current economic problems– all in the name of “change.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still sacred cows in Washington, even though they have already required the biggest bailouts of all.

Why? Because they allow politicians to direct vast sums of money where it will do politicians the most good, either personally or in terms of buying votes in the next election.

(Link)

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick Wishes America Wasn’t A Free Country

Pretty hard to equivocate this one, no matter how liberal your viewpoint.

Here’s the Governor’s exact words:

“It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country. You know, you got to, you got to respect that freedom.”

Deval Patrick said this on the “Jim & Margery Show” (WTKK-FM, Boston) September 1st, 2010.

Here, on video, is the audio:

As Doug Powers drolly notes:

Every now and then, a politician goofs and reveals more than he or she intended, providing a window into the true motives or beliefs. Michigan’s John Dingell claiming that Obamacare is a peachy way to “control the people,” and President Obama saying that America is a world super power “whether we like it or not” are recent examples.

Reader, do the world a favor and send this son-of-a-bitch Deval Patrick a message. Here is his contact form.