People for the West -Tucson
Newsletter, October, 2021
PO Box 86868, Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
pfw-tucson@cox.net
Real environmentalism can go hand in hand with natural resource production, private property rights, and access to public lands
PROPERTY RIGHTS
Report on Civil Asset Forfeiture Aimed at Helping People Avoid Government Injustice
by Dan Greenberg, Competitive Enterprise Institute
A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report calls attention to a government injustice impacting too many Americans: civil asset forfeiture. The report offers advice to citizens on how to reduce risk of property seizure by law enforcement officials, such as during traffic stops, and explains how government succeeds in seizing and keeping personal property even without a criminal conviction. (Read full report – 66 pages) ☼
The Property We Have in Our Rights
By Christopher Slager
No person has a natural or a divine right to rule over another person unless the latter person gives intelligent consent. This is a fundamental axiom of our American government. The axiom takes root in the ideas expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The president of the United States, however, ignores these principles and continues to push public- and private-sector employers to force vaccine mandates on their employees. Many companies have acquiesced. More companies will follow. Let’s look to an action taken by Delta Airlines as one example. (Read more) ☼
STATE OF THE UNION
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” —James Madison (1792) ☼
“A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788) ☼
As I write this (Oct. 1, 2021), many multi-trillion dollar spending bills are pending in Congress. In my opinion, much of this proposed spending is unconstitutional. For some background, see my Wryheat blog post (from Dec. 2017): Stop Unconstitutional Federal Spending
Does Biden Want to Destroy America?
By Terry Paulson, Townhall (link to full article)
If you want to destroy America, open our Southern border to all who want to come in.
If you want to destroy America, do everything you can to end our energy independence.
If you want to destroy America, stoke the fires of racial hatred in an already divided country.
If you want to destroy America, allow crime on the streets to go unpunished.
If you want to destroy America, keep calling for lockdowns and strict mask guidelines.
If you want to destroy America, allow congress to pass reckless deficit spending creating government dependence and rampant Inflation.
If you want to destroy America, establish the federal control of elections.
If you want to destroy America, project military weakness and failed leadership in times of crisis. ☼
Left Doesn’t Just Want to Censor You on Social Media. It Also Wants to Close Your Bank Accounts.
By Annelise Butler, Daily Signal
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that people who spread “misinformation” “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others,” she revealed the left’s chilling plan for censoring content that goes against the left’s narrative. It is becoming increasingly clear that political leaders on the left and Big Tech are joining arms to not just deplatform dissident voices from social media, but to bar them from the digital space entirely, including from having the ability to make and receive payments online. (Read more) ☼
Biden’s tax plan could give IRS more access to your bank account
By Megan Henney, FOXBusiness
The Biden administration is aiming to bolster the Internal Revenue Service by adding bank account reporting requirements to Democrats’ massive tax and spending bill, prompting a swift backlash from Republicans who have warned it infringes on customers’ privacy. Under the proposal, banks and other financial institutions would be required to annually report customers’ account inflows and outflows of $600 or more to the IRS. Critics of the proposal have argued that giving the IRS more power to monitor taxpayer financial information could lead to privacy violations and also unwarranted audits of individuals for political purposes. Republican lawmakers have also said the burden of increased audits could fall on low-income Americans and small businesses. (Read more) ☼
Dumbing Down K-12 Education
By Keri D. Ingraham
The inability of U.S. students to perform on par with the majority of other developed nations should cause alarm, given its implications for America’s global leadership. Instead, while other countries take their K-12 education seriously, American leaders are satisfied with pumping more money into an outdated system that continues to fail students and produced mediocre results.
Here’s the sad truth. Twenty-five countries outperform U.S. K-12 students. Those leading the way are China, Hong Kong, Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Canada. China’s students not only place first overall, but they dominate each individual subject as well. U.S. students straggle in at 33rd in math, 23rd in science, and 17th in reading.
The reality is even worse than the weak performance on average. The majority of U.S. public school students do not achieve grade-level proficiency. The Nation’s Report Card reveals that only 28.7 percent of 4th-graders, 26.4 percent of 8th-graders, and a mere 22.8 percent of 12th-graders reach basic proficiency levels averaged across seven subjects (civics, geography, mathematics, reading, science, U.S. history, and writing) on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. In other words, over 71 percent of our students lack basic academic proficiencies at the end of their 13-year K-12 schooling.
At a time in history when more learning and skill development are needed, the opposite has occurred. As witnessed throughout the 2020-2021 school year, teacher unions led the charge in our government-funded and run K-12 public education system to make things worse. (Read more) ☼
Leftists Put Trigger Warnings on Founding Documents
by Douglas Andrews, Patriot Post
Our woke National Archives now warns about potentially hurtful language within the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. (Read more) ☼
8 Things You Need to Know About Democrats’ Tax Increase Bill
by Matthew Dickerson and Richard Stern
Congressional Democrats this week finally unveiled the legislative text of the largest tax increase in more than 50 years. It weighs in at more than 880 pages, so it’s no wonder they have attempted to keep the details of the so-called “Build Back Better Act” under wraps.
1. It Violates Biden’s Pledge, Hiking Taxes on Earnings of $50,000+ (Read more) ☼
So how did 15,000 Haitians suddenly find their way to Del Rio, Texas?
By Monica Showalter
The migrant mass of some 15,000 mostly Haitians now illegally on U.S. territory in a squalid, never-before-seen shantytown under a bridge near Del Rio, Texas demands some answers.
The surprising answer, which the migrants provided independently in different places and at different times, was universal: on Sunday, September 12, the Mexican government effectively sent a mass of migrants it had bottled up for months in its southern states up to the American border. This move, which appears to have been done under the cover of Mexico’s independence week of celebration known as El Grito, essentially foisted a humanitarian problem onto the Americans in a single week. As for why they all chose to head for Del Rio, the migrants were told that cartels did not hold sway over that crossing as they did at other illegal crossings, and so, migrants could get across without paying ‘fees’ to the cartels for the privilege of entering the U.S. illegally. And it certainly helped matters for them that Joe Biden halted the border wall. (Read more) For the full story, read: Why the Huge Illegal Alien Camp Formed in Del Rio The Mexican government, perhaps sensing the weakness of the Biden administration, decided to transfer a significant threat management and humanitarian challenge to America. ☼
Democrats Are Denying Basic Economics
by Peter Suderman, Reason Magazine
The simplest way to understand economics is that it is a reckoning with unavoidable tradeoffs. If you spend money on something, you may obtain something in return—but you lose the ability to use those resources on something else. In the world of politics, economics helps us weigh the merits of those tradeoffs. It answers the question: Do the benefits of a policy outweigh the costs? Sometimes the benefits are larger. Sometimes they are meager or even nonexistent. But there are always costs. To acknowledge this is merely to acknowledge reality.
Under President Joe Biden, however, Democrats in Washington have decided that they can simply wish those tradeoffs away by declaring that they do not exist. Over and over again, they have argued that their policies do not or should not have any costs whatsoever. (Read more) ☼
The CDC’s COVID Failures Mount
by Thomas Gallatin, Patriot Post
The once widely respected public health agency has become arrogant and politically beholden.
The CDC is supposed to be America’s frontline institution in the fight against infectious disease. Its job is to analyze viral threats, track their spread and development, and provide the public with relevant information about how to respond to outbreaks. Not only did the agency do this job poorly in the early stages of the pandemic, but it actively hindered efforts that would have greatly improved America’s response, and it made planning errors that were both predictable and avoidable. At nearly every stage of the pandemic, the CDC got things wrong and got in the way. Its failures almost certainly made America’s pandemic worse. (Read more) ☼
ENERGY
Biden Administration Sets New Light Bulb Efficiency Standards, Many Popular Bulbs Banned
by Kenneth Artz
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed a new set of stricter energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. The scheme, published in the Federal Register on August 9, sets new efficiency standards for around 2 billion bulbs, including those in decorative fixtures, recessed, and track lighting. Many of these types of bulbs had not been regulated under previous efficiency standards. Because many of the most popular types of bulbs are unable to meet the new efficiency standards, should the rule be finalized, billions of popular light bulbs would be banned from sale. (Read more) ☼
Green gold rush looms for electric power
By David Wojick
The slim majority in Congress wants to throw $150 billion in free money at the electric power industry. If they succeed the result will be a green gold rush of monumental proportions. Here is a brief analysis of what to expect, including the unexpected. The legislation is called the Clean Electricity Performance Program or CEPP. It should be named the green juice payment program. The idea is to move the industry toward using mostly renewables and it will sure do that, more than anybody seems to realize. (Read more) ☼
Power Markets In Crisis
By Paul Homewood
Alarm bells have been ringing in European and UK power markets this month, as electricity prices surge to record levels. Here day-ahead prices are triple those of a year ago, and European markets are seeing the same happening, a sign of serious instability in European grids. The immediate trigger has been low wind speeds across much of Europe in the last few weeks, meaning reduced outputs of wind power. This has led to a shortage of power on the grid, and a consequent spiking of prices. This sort of thing occasionally happens in winter when demand is high, but is unheard of in summer months, indicating that something is going badly wrong. (Read more) ☼
Europe is switching back to coal to survive bleak winter
GWPF International
Having banned fracking in much of Europe and with low wind speeds compounding the continent’s energy crisis, gas prices in the UK and much of Europe are going through the roof. A shortage of affordable natural gas is forcing European companies to switch to coal to survive a bleak winter. (Read more) ☼
Here are some results of relying too much on wind and solar generation:
1) Britain faces food shortages as energy crisis shuts down factories
GWPF Energy, 18 September 2021
2) UK energy groups in emergency talks with government over natural gas crisis
Financial Times, 18 September 2021
3) Europe faces bleak winter energy crisis years in the making
4) EU energy crisis: Brussels faces ‘tough’ reality check over ‘challenging’ green policy
Daily Express, 18 September 2021
5) Greenflation: Household bills to soar by more than £1,500 a year, analysts warn
6) Becalmed wind energy sector has UK turning to coal
Business Daily, 18 September 2021
7) And finally: Leaders of China, India, and other major economies snub Biden’s climate forum
The Washington Examiner, 17 September 2021 ☼
New Study: Wind Turbine Noise Issues
By Robert Bradley Jr.
Wind turbines generate low-frequency noise (LFN, 20–200 Hz)…. [which causes] headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, tinnitus, aural pain sleep disturbances, and annoyance. Clinically, exposure to LFN from wind turbines may cause increased risk of epilepsy, cardiovascular effects, and coronary artery disease.” (Read more) ☼
New Study Details How Vital Domestic Oil and Gas Production is to the Economy
by Tim Benson
A new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reports the oil and natural gas industries directly or indirectly supported over 11 million jobs across the country in 2019. According to the report, commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute (API), those jobs produced $892 billion in labor income, and had a nationwide economic impact of nearly $1.7 trillion. (Read more) ☼
Is Joe Biden Killing Fracking for EVs?
By Steve Milloy
Is Joe Biden choking the U.S. oil industry in order to advance his electric vehicle (EV) agenda? Since becoming president, Biden has undertaken a number of actions against domestic oil production, including: cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline; halting new leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands; and reinstating the Obama EPA’s anti-fracking methane rule. Biden has even gone so far as to ban fracking in two Pennsylvania counties where there isn’t even much fracking.
You might think that a president of a country feeling the economic pain of rising gas prices, would do something about those prices, like encouraging the domestic oil industry to step up production rather than discouraging it. But not Joe Biden.
So what gives?
One explanation is the Executive Order Biden issued in early August setting as a national goal that 50% of vehicles produced in America be electric by 2030. To put it mildly, American consumers are not wild about EVs. Despite 30 years of global warming hysteria and much hype about and incentives for EVs, only about 1-2% of new car sales are EVs. Instead, American car buyers, until recently, have been enjoying low gas prices and buying large, safe, and powerful SUVs. And gasoline cars don’t spontaneously combust.
(Read more) ☼
Five Big Problems With President Biden’s Energy-Climate Plan
By Jude Clemente
1. Oil obviously has no alternative. The infatuation with wind and solar power is an “electricity-only” one. These renewables compete only in the power sector, which accounts for less than 40% of the energy used in the U.S. and 20% globally. For example, even a Herculean surge in wind and solar capacity will effectively do nothing to lower our need for oil, namely our 400-million-gallon per day gasoline requirement. (Read more) ☼
Electric vehicle fire catastrophe: It is not a matter of if, but when
by Gregory Wrightstone
Joe Biden’s plan to convert 50% of the U.S. vehicle fleet from internal combustion engines to electricity by 2050 to fight climate change ignores a serious danger in doing so. Recent events around the world reveal that fire catastrophes from electric vehicles (EVs) are not only possible, but increasingly likely. The fire risk of the lithium-ion batteries that these EVs rely on for power is well documented, as they have been known to spontaneously combust in the most inopportune times and places.
Just this week, General Motors announced a second recall of Chevrolet Bolt EVs and EUVs manufactured from 2019 to 2022 model years in order to fix a defect in two of the lithium-ion battery modules that have led to fires. This follows on the heels of a previous recall of 69,000 older vehicles that will replace all five of the battery modules. 0:48 / 48:375 seconds…
The GM announcement is just the latest in a string of recalls by EV manufacturers to attempt to fix defects that can lead to catastrophic fires related to lithium-ion batteries. Last year, Ford was forced to recall 20,000 hybrids and soon thereafter, BMW recalled 26,700 vehicles due to battery defects that could lead to fires. (Read more)
See also: EV Battery Fires do not bode well for projected sales
The culprit in nearly all EV fire cases is the lithium-ion batteries that power them, and which burn with extraordinary ferocity. Adding to the fire and heat danger posed by these events is the extreme toxic fluoride gas emissions generated. According to one study, these fumes may in some circumstances be a larger threat, especially in confined environments where people are present. Since lithium-ion fires are a chemical reaction they can only be cooled not extinguished. They end up burning for several days in some cases. ☼
CLIMATE
Explanation of Climate Fraud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU Tony Heller: This is my most concise expose of climate fraud. Please pass it around to everyone you know and your elected officials. The video is short (13 minutes), but cuts right to the heart of the matter. ☼
The ‘Science’ of Climate Change
By Norman Rogers
The science surrounding COVID has been hijacked for political purposes. People who recovered from the disease are pushed to get vaccinated, even though they have a natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine immunity. People are required to wear masks even though masks are essentially useless for preventing infection. People that die are reported as dying of COVID even though they died of something else. The government demands that children be vaccinated even though they are naturally resistant to the disease and suffer disturbing side effects from the vaccine. Schools are closed for no good reason.
The “science” of climate change is also BS. That should be easier to accept after seeing what the government did to COVID science. Why do politicians want to hype a nonexistent climate crisis? In a word: power. By claiming that there is an urgent climate crisis the politicians can spend billions to fight the imaginary foe. Those billions create political allies and reward friends. H.L. Mencken put it nicely in 1918: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” (Read more) ☼
“Surprising” And “Statistically Significant” Cooling Trend Over Entire Continental Antarctica
By P Gosselin, NoTricksZone
East Antarctica, which covers two thirds of the South Pole, has cooled a whopping 2.8°C over the past 4 decades; West Antarctica approximately 1.6°C. ..only tiny Antarctic Peninsula saw statistically insignificant warming (possibly due to active volcanos under the ice.) (Read more) ☼
All 5 Global Temperature Measurement Systems Reject NOAA’s July 2021 “hottest month ever” Alarmist Hype
by Larry Hamlin
In a clear discrediting of NOAA’s and the media’s recent overhyped and flawed global temperature claim that “July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded” updated data from all major global temperature anomaly measurement systems (including NOAA) proves that NOAA’s claim was exaggerated, deceptive and distorted. (Read more) ☼
IPCC: Atlantic Hurricanes/tropical Cyclones Have Not Increased since the Late-1800s
by Cap Allon
The IPCC’s latest report (AR6) continues the claim that human CO2 emissions have caused earth’s climate to warm–no shocker there. But the impacts this has had on Atlantic hurricane/global tropical cyclone activity may come as a surprise, at least to those who were duped by the narrative constructed over the past few decades. As NOAA/GFDL Senior Scientist Tom Knutson explains, global warming has had no impact on either storm frequency nor intensity…(Read more) ☼
IPCC Method Linking Climate Change To Greenhouse Gases Disputed
by Nathan Worcester
A new study in “Climate Dynamics” has criticized a key methodology that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to attribute climate change to greenhouse gases, raising questions about the validity of research that relied on it and prompting a response from one of the scientists who developed the technique. The new study’s author, economist Ross McKitrick, told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview that he thinks his results have weakened the IPCC’s case that greenhouse gases cause climate change. (Read more) ☼
Evidence Indicates Climate Change Doesn’t Threaten Human Health
By H. Sterling Burnett
A Google news search of the phrase “climate change” turns up dozens of stories promoting a joint statement issued on behalf of more than 200 medical journals claiming climate change poses a dire threat to human health. This is false. It represents a political not a medical statement. Data consistently show human health has steadily improved during the recent period of modest climate change. Data also show, premature deaths from extreme temperatures, extreme weather events, and weather related illnesses and mosquito borne diseases have declined dramatically, and should continue to do so if earth continues its modest warming trend. (Read more)
See also: The Real Threat To Public Health Is Climate Alarmism ☼
New Atmospheric Science Publication Finds Quadrupling CO2 Would Lead To Only 1.0°C Increase! See Wryheat post ☼
Scientists Now Blame Geothermal Heat For Melting Antarctic Glaciers
by Kenneth Richard
According to a new study, 36% of the 1979-2017 Antarctic ice loss was from the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. Scientists believed this glacier melt was due to anthropogenic climate change “until recently.” Now they say the glacier mass losses are due to the thin underlying crust and anomalously high geothermal heat in this region. (Read more)
See also: West Antarctica Ice-sheet Calving Due Mainly to Geology ☼
Greenhouse saturation research could kill the “climate emergency”
By David Wojick
Professors William van Wijngaarden (Canada) and William Happer (USA) have published some extremely important research on the radiation saturation of the major greenhouse gases. Their first report is titled simply “Relative Potency of Greenhouse Molecules”. It makes use of a major breakthrough in radiation physics.
Until recently the estimates of greenhouse potency were based on approximation bands of absorbed radiation wavelengths. Now the authors have done line by line spectral analysis, looking at over 300,000 individual wavelengths within these bands.
It turns out that saturation occurs much sooner (at lower concentrations of CO2 and H2O) than previously thought. In particular the primary greenhouse gases, CO2 and H2O, turn out to be “extremely saturated” at present atmospheric concentrations. (Saturation means that additional CO2 or H2O will have no significant effect on global warming.)
These results strongly suggest that the dangerous multi-degree warming assumed by the climate emergency simply cannot occur. (Read more) This article contains links to research papers. ☼
Wryheat Climate articles:
A Review of the state of Climate Science
The Broken Greenhouse – Why Co2 Is a Minor Player in Global Climate
A Summary of Earth’s Climate History-a Geologist’s View
Problems with wind and solar generation of electricity – a review
The “Social Cost of Carbon” Scam Revisited
ATMOSPHERIC CO2: a boon for the biosphere
Carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth
Impact of the Paris Climate Accord and why Trump was right to drop it
New study shows that carbon dioxide is responsible for only seven percent of the greenhouse effect
Six Issues the Promoters of the Green New Deal Have Overlooked
Bottom line: Man-made carbon dioxide emissions pose no danger regarding global temperature nor climate. All efforts to reduce emissions are futile and will impose massive economic self-harm to Western Nations.
PARTING THOUGHTS
“The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves.” – George Washington
I offered my opponents a deal: “if they stop telling lies about me, I will stop telling the truth about them”. ~ Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952.
“Skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin” – Thomas Huxley
“Of all Tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons’ cruelty may sometimes sleep, (their) cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis
“The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken
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Our Mission
1) Support private property rights.
2) Support multiple use management of federal lands for agriculture, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, recreation, timber harvesting and water development activities.
3) Support a balance of environmental responsibility and economic benefit for all Americans by urging that environmental policy be based on good science and sound economic principles.
Newsletters can be viewed online on Jonathan’s Wryheat Blog:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/
See my essay on climate change:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/climate-in-perspective/
and
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/2019/01/03/a-review-of-the-state-of-climate-science/
If you like murder mysteries, try Lonni’s novels. See descriptions and links at:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/lonnis-murder-mysteries/
The Constitution is the real contract with America.
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People for the West – Tucson, Inc.
PO Box 86868
Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
Jonathan DuHamel, President & Editor
Dr. John Forrester, Vice President
Lonni Lees, Associate Editor
People for the West – Tucson, Inc. is an Arizona tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) corporation. Newsletter subscriptions are free.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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