Around the Web

Excerpts from all over the internet

 

 

 

To read a very interesting study about personal freedom from the George Mason University Mercatus Center, click here It shows that freedom in the economic, social and personal arenas is greatest in conservative states (so what else is new) and least in liberal states. But this stands to reason. After all, socialism is the limitation of liberty and the empowerment of government. Just remember where was the greatest opposition to the American Revolution – in New York City!

 

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To view an analysis of how government workers are prospering in the recession while private-sector employees are suffering go here to read an analysis of the current situation by Steve Malanga of the Manhattan Institute writing in The Wall Street Journal. The most striking figure in this piece is that government workers today earn an average 46% more in salary than private-sector workers. This exposes the lie about the "underpaid" public schools teacher, road repair crew, police officer etc.

 

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If you would like to read about the biases being propagated in today's public school textbooks, visit www.textbookreviews.org a website devoted to uncovering the propaganda being taught to kids. Another source for this type of info is professor Larry Schweikart's book 48 Liberal Lies about American History (that you probably learned in school). Search for his name and you will find lots of info on the web.

 

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There is a superb website called www.ontheissues.org which lists every federal elected official and their stands on every issue from the economy to abortion. This is a very handy place for one-stop shopping to find out exactly how people are voting.

 

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If you would like to read about the outrageous cost of higher education, you can see the report of the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education here It was issued in 1998 and nothing was done about the price spikes which continue today. Why? Because it is liberals and leftists who are doing the gouging. It is time for a new investigation and a new report.

 

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If you want to know the political leanings of a Hollywood celebrity or a New York financier or some other well-known person, visit www.newsmeat.com It lists campaign contributions as provided by the Federal Election Commission, and has more than 16 million records. It is very, very interesting. What you will find is that the growing majority of rich and super-rich people in America are Democrats. Why? Probably because they want to get fawning media treatment and that comes only if  you are a liberal. Also, there is great peer pressure on the left, and anyone who is not on board will not get invited to all the right cocktail parties and other social functions.

 

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Are you sad about the coming destruction of mankind? World running out of everything? Nonsense. The whole idea that the world is running out of oil is as old as, well, the environmental movement itself. These enviros put out their apocalyptic hysteria for one reason - to get more money in the form of contributions. If you'd like to read an interesting analysis of the world oil supply by someone who knows a thing or two about oil, read The World Has Plenty of Oil by Nansen Saleri from the March 4, 2008 Wall Street Journal Online here

Mr. Saleri explains that the world's remaining oil resources are 12 to 16 times as large as the quantity of oil that man has used since the beginning of the Oil Age 150 years ago.

 

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If you want to see the work of an interesting guy, go to www.johnrlott.tripod.com Dr. Lott has done statistical studies about gun ownership and use (showing that crime drops when people are given the right to carry a weapon) and has written a fine book called Freedomnomics, in which he offers solid evidence of how the capitalist free market helps people to make the best choices. Also, www.junkscience.com is a really good place to learn about how science is being perverted and subverted by politics. And for more information on the nonsensical 'global warming' theory and to read the names of 31,000 American scientists who have signed a petition saying this theory is unproven, visit www.oism.org/pproject

 

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If you need any information about energy supply, production or consumption in America, visit www.eia.doe.gov This is the Energy Information Administration website. It is government-run by the Department of Energy and gives straightforward facts about energy supplies, nuclear power plant construction, electrical generating capacity by state, oil supply forecasts, energy prices and virtually anything else you would want to know. Very easy to use. For a private-sector look at the oil and natural gas industries, with huge amounts of information on all aspects of petroleum supply, production and consumption, visit www.api.org This is the website of the private-sector American Petroleum Institute. Lots of good stuff here. These two sites can help to clear the fog that the media and the enviro movement put out about energy in America.

 

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To learn about how the federal mortgage guarantee agencies called Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have helped to create the mess we’re in, read this somewhat technical piece by Carl F. Horowitz from the always-lively American Spectator website ( www.spectator.org ) Called Leveraging Fannie and Freddie, Horowitz shows how these agencies use government taxpayer guarantees to make politicized decisions, bad policy and unwise loans, and are milked by people like Jesse Jackson as cash cows for his radical programs. The article is here 

Here is an excerpt from the article about cronyism at Fannie Mae. Next time a lib complains about executive salaries at ExxonMobil or Pfizer, you can tell them about this:

 

Experience, if not necessarily integrity, counts for a lot. Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's CEO for most of the six years that the company cooked its books to the tune of $10.6 billion, previously had been Clinton White House budget director. Raines pulled in $52.8 million in bonuses during his 1999-2004 stay at the company, a fact not unrelated to the suspect accounting.

 

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If you want to read a wonderful piece about the false myths perpetrated by the media and by academia about the so-called ‘robber barons’ of the oil, steel, shipping and railroad industries, check out this brief and entertaining lecture by Dr. Burton Folsom, author of the book The Myth of the Robber Barons. The lecture is here   

Folsom’s talk concerns the establishment of trans-Atlantic steamship service between a taxpayer-supported company which ultimately failed, and the private company of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Dr. Folsom explains in his book how subsidized industries always fail and need to be propped up by taxpayers, while private industries certainly may fail, but when they do succeed, they often provide the best products at the lowest prices without taxpayer assistance. He gave an example in a recent speech, noting that steel railroad rails were selling for $50 a ton when 'robber baron' Andrew Carnegie started out, but were down to $11 a ton and were far superior in quality by the time Carnegie's companies had developed all the technology.

Liberals, of course, only want you to remember that Carnegie at one point cut his workers’ wages while ignoring the overall fact that Carnegie and his company made huge contributions to American growth and progress.

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While Americans are bombarded daily about the plight of "the poor", Robert E. Rector at The Heritage Foundation has done an in-depth study called How Poor are America's Poor? Examining the 'Plague' of Poverty in America here 

This study uses real facts - and not the anecdotal hysteria on which liberals depend - to paint a unique picture of "the poor" in America and how our prosperous capitalist society actually treats them with generosity and compassion. When some liberal tells you exactly how many "poor" people there are in the United States, be skeptical. The description may not apply at all. Compared to history, and to other nations today, "the poor" in America are doing quite well, thank you.

 

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To read a great article on the subject of ethanol and its failed promise, see this piece in The American Spectator at here This brief article pulls no punches and clears the air of all the enviro baloney about ethanol which is a bad fuel that wastes land, food and energy resources.

 

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Townhall.com has a good article on the happiness statistics and low divorce rates among Christians here 

 

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Estonia? Where's that? It's one of the former Soviet satellites on the Baltic Sea. You know, south of Finland and north of Latvia. And it is one of the world's great economic success stories. Freed from slave-holding communism, Estonia is flourishing under free-market capitalism with a flat-tax system and a rate that is going to decrease as time goes on. Read an enlightening article about Estonia from The Cato Institute here 

Nikitas3.com will add more about Estonia as time goes on. It's a classic case of a new nation with bold ideas that are just common sense.

 

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If you'd like to read an excellent and well-researched essay that debunks the end-of-the-world nonsense that the environmental movement puts out, see Earth Day, Then and Now; The planet's future has never looked better. Here's why. The piece actually appeared in Reason magazine, the libertarian publication, in May 2000, but it still is applicable today and really fascinating reading. In fact, author Ronald Bailey severely lowballed the oil picture, saying back then... 'What about oil? The (US Geological) survey estimates that global reserves could be as much as 2.1 trillion barrels of crude oil - enough to supply the world for the next 90 years'.

But 2.1 trillion is very low compared to 2008 global estimates which range from 12 trillion to 16 trillion barrels, 2 trillion in Canada's oil sands alone. Anyway, the essay is here 

 

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Here are two quotes from William Tucker’s Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal Online, July 21, 2008, about nuclear power:

 

Finally the problem of radioactive waste has been absurdly exaggerated. More than 95% of the material in a spent fuel rod can be recycled for energy and medical isotopes…

Meanwhile, France has proven that reprocessing works. With a fully developed nuclear cycle, the French now store all the waste from 30 years of producing 75% of its electricity beneath the floor of one room at La Hague in Normandy (italics added for emphasis)

 

Mr. Tucker’s book Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Can Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Long Energy Odyssey will be published in September by Bartleby.

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If you want to see the real statistics on immigration in a nutshell, go to the Center for Immigration Studies website here This one article, Immigrants in the United States, 2007, has everything you would ever want to know about immigration, both legal and illegal. Some of it will shock you, like the fact that half of all Mexican immigrant households are on welfare! This study shows where immigrants come from, why they are in the dire economic situation that many find themselves in (primarily a result of their low education levels), and what effect they are having on poor and low-income people in America by undercutting wages. This is classic socialism; open-borders leftists making Americans poorer and poorer while claiming to be "saving" the world from poverty.

 

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How Conservatism Sabotages Itself: To read about how Republicans in the state of Ohio wrote their own epitaphs by trying to be more like liberal Democrats, please visit this web page at The American Spectator here 

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If you would like to see an illustration of what partial-birth abortion looks like, where the baby is too far developed for the standard abortion and so he/she is pulled out of the womb and has his/her brains sucked out of his/her head, you can see it on the National Right to Life website at here