Because anthropogenic global climate whatever is a non-falsifiable hypothesis, with no means of objective proof, it belongs squarely in the realm of faith-based conjecture, like religion and origin of species. Heretic really is the correct word for this, although a true scientist would prefer to be called a skeptic.  WE prefer heretic, because it tends to better cancel out the emotionally charged term, denier.  This political discussion exited the realm of pure science decades ago.

Folks should note that Professor Mass does (has always) subscribed to the belief that climate is changing (getting warmer) - but he does seem to recognize that there are legitimate questions about the many "whys" of it  - as a legitimate scientist should.
​

Why One Should Never Use the Term "Climate Denier"
Professor Cliff Mass, UW Atmospheric Sciences
​May 28, 2018
​
Some terms are simultaneously hurtful, destructive, counter-productive and misleading.  

Climate denier is a good example of such an inappropriate phrase, and one that is unfortunately in vogue among some climate activists and media outlets.

​There are so many reasons that the term climate denier should never be used, but let me provide a few:

(1)   It plays off the term "Holocaust denier".    For most of the second half of the 20th century, the term holocaust denier was given to those who denied the reality of the holocaust--- bottom feeders such as neo-Nazis and those with strong anti-Semitic tendencies.  The Holocaust is an historical fact in which 1/3 of the Jewish people were killed:  an obscenity and a crime against humanity.  It occurred.

But some "environmentalists" have decided to use adopt this term for folks that have a different view of climate change than they have, included those that agree that climate is changing and that mankind is making some contribution to it.    Furthermore, while the Holocaust is history and a known fact, climate change, and particularly anthropogenically forced climate change is another story:  there are still major uncertainties regarding climate change, including the magnitude of the human-forced warming and the local impacts.  Our models are very clear than increasing greenhouse gases will warm the planet, how much and spatially varying impacts have a lot of uncertainty.

In short, using the term "climate denier cheapens the term "denier" in a way that is painful to many in the Jewish community.

​(2)  The terms "climate denier" or "climate change denier" is usually used for anyone who does not "believe" that virtually all of the change in Earth's climate over the past half-century was caused by human emission of greenhouse gases.  

You are a climate change denier even if you accept that there has been climate change caused by natural processes, or if you believe that both natural variability and human forcing is behind the changes.    Seems strange to call someone a climate change denier if they accept that there is climate change and mankind is contributing.   

Many climate activists demand that folks agree with them that virtually all climate change is caused by humans--or they use the "D" word.  

This is really silly because climate scientists can not show that humans are entirely to blame for what has happened during the past fifty years.  We know that some modes of natural variability have had major impacts (like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and that the warming trend and sea level rise has been going on for over a hundred thirty years ago (since the Little Ice Age ended)--well before human emissions of greenhouse gases had a significant radiative effect (see sea level rise plot below)

From NASA Web Site

So many of my department, one of the leading research centers in atmospheric sciences of the country, should be considered climate change deniers.  Go figure.

(3)  Climate denier clearly is a pejorative, put-down term that does not win converts or friends.   Folks are irritated when they called a denier and a less likely to listen to the findings of climate science.   We need to build bridges to those who are doubtful about the impacts of increasing greenhouse gases, and calling them names can only push them away.  

A number of leading climate communicators understand the dangers of the "D" word.  Two weeks ago, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, one of the current rock stars of the climate communication universe, spend a few days at my department.  She explained why the denier terminology is bad and says she doesn't use it.  Her favorite:  climate dismissal.

To secure real action on human-forced climate change one needs to build a consensus of folks with varied political backgrounds.  Calling names is not the way to do it.

​Some of the most active name callers (folks who love the "D" word) ironically are some of the least informed and the most dramatic stretchers of the truth.

Bill Nye, for example, loves to call folks deniers, while he makes exaggerated claims about the impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing on extreme events (like major cold waves being caused by global warming).  He frequently makes serious technical errors (he is not a climate scientist by the way).  Why does such a poorly informed individual represent science?

​Al Gore also likes to sling around the "D" word and is constantly exaggerating the effects of greenhouse gases on extreme weather (yes, he also claims cold waves are caused by increasing CO2).    

Ironically, many of these name slingers don't seem concerned about their carbon intensive life styles, for example, jetting around the nation and the world, and owning big houses (or several houses in the case of Al Gore).  There is another letter for such behavior and is starts with "H" and it rhymes with "theocracy."

The ideas that the "deniers" are stopping progress on climate change is just nonsense.  Some of the most knowledgeable, progressive people I know have the worst carbon footprints.  Climate scientists are probably the worst of the bunch.  Left-leaning politicians who enjoy traveling to unnecessary meetings (like a certain governor) are another.   They know the truth, but they won't sacrifice in their own lives.  See all the big cars being driven around Seattle these days?....those folks are not deniers.  Most are good, card-carrying progressives.

In fact, I have found a strong correlation between heavy use of the phrase climate denier and NOT knowing much about climate.   There are a few exceptions to this (like Professor Michael Mann of Penn. State), but most folks fixated on going after climate denial have very weak backgrounds in climate and atmospheric sciences.

Instead of using fact-based arguments, such fervid "anti-denialists" often use a near-religious use of authority, pushing a baseless "97% agreement" among scientists about global warming.   John Cook of Skeptical Science and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard are the worst offenders.

The media has used the "climate denial" narrative as a crutch.  Instead of spending the time on learning about the highly technical details of climate science, it is far easier to cover (and participate in) the name calling.  In many ways, this reflects the hollowing out of science coverage in U.S. media and the reduction in science journalism.

The solutions to greenhouse gas emissions are not name calling or laying on  guilt trips.  The solutions will be technological, with new energy sources displacing fossil fuels.  And eventually we will learn how to pull CO2 from the atmosphere on an industrial scale..

Putting down other people and calling names, might make some folks feel better, and perhaps represents  "virtue signaling" in some quarters (such as with the staff at the Seattle Stranger tabloid), but it is counterproductive, without scientific basis, and hurtful.

Time to drop the "D" word.
​

WE don't recall ever having quoted Barack Obama.  But if ever there were a good time to cite the man it would be now.  The Big O gave a speech in a reach-out to Vietnam about healing the wounds that remain after the Vietnam War.  And he said,  "...a new future is possible when we refuse to be prisoners of the past."

Much of the nation seems to have lost its mind in the last few years, virtue-signaling and engaging in race based guilt-shaming.  The shame is principally limited to the descendants of european migrants who made the mistake of stepping onto these shores. Whether those immigrants were aching for freedom and opportunity, or simply coming to join loved ones, in the 21st Century almost all of our young are taught daily that 'europeans' had no place here.  And no matter when a pale forefather arrived, collective guilt for slavery and indian wars is constantly laid at the feet of persons "not of color."  WE are often struck at the cruelty and stupidity of what's become so trendy, but even more we're struck by the extent of bitter "get-even" tactics and the return of religious concepts like original sin and sins of the father - brands of blame and bias that can never be cleansed from one's DNA.  Alas, much of this hatred is a cultivated strategy, a politic, and a pox.  This article about the bludgeons being used - "yesterday sticks" - is insightful.  Read on.
​

Kneecapping America with ‘Yesterday Sticks’
By Elaine D. Willman, MPA
 
One of the most mean-spirited emotional weapons is what I call the Yesterday Stick. Here’s how it works: A long-time married couple has survived a long-ago spousal affair, but one spouse never forgets and  raises that Yesterday Stick as a power tool frequently in their marriage. Or a recovering alcoholic has successfully turned his/her life around with several years of sobriety, but relatives continually remember that “we knew you when!” Or a convicted felon who has paid the consequences and transformed his/her life is forever stained with the Yesterday Stick.
 
Yesterday facts are unfortunate events that cannot be changed. Slavery is one. Tribalism is another. Black Lives Matter radicals rely upon the Slavery Stick to continually demean all of America’s ancestors and founders. Our country stopped this madness over a century ago, but weaponizing yesterday’s flaws today works marvelously to spread false guilt and inferiority to our fellow Americans in this and future centuries. Until we stop it. Just stop it.

​INDIAN TREATIES: A YESTERDAY STICK
 
The same can be said for long-ago dead Indian treaties. The legal industry thrives on conflict, so asserting ancient Indian treaty rights in the present creates instant conflict in light of contemporary demographics, towns and counties on reservations today. The Washington State “Culvert” case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court today is a prime example. The case asserts that old treaty rights are superior to state sovereignty. Yet, life has dramatically changed with predominantly non-Indian populations on reservations that include state, county and municipal jurisdictional authorities within reservation boundaries. Tribal constitutions limit their governance to their enrolled members and their Indian lands, only. That’s likely why tribal governments and the legal industry are rapidly reclaiming old dead treaty rights for off-reservation and “aboriginal” rights.

RESERVATIONS' REALITY
​
On most reservations it is the non-Indian economy that provides abundant resources and quality of life to tribal and non-tribal reservation residents. And yet, the growing trend of reasserting treaty rights sends a message that all Congressional statutes and judicial rulings from the 1850’s forward are irrelevant, and that only treaty rights are perpetual and cannot be supplanted. What a whopper of a lie is this Yesterday Stick.
 
Perhaps the remedy is to actually acknowledge these treaty rights and remove all other benefits that Congress and communities have provided to tribal governments for 200 years. Restore reservations to the 1850’s – no more annual funding to tribes, no electricity, no flat screen TV’s, no cell phones, no cars, no casinos, nothing that non-tribal Americans created for the benefit of all. Return reservations to their Old Life Ways under their old dead treaties. Yes, were we to succumb to the Treaty Yesterday Stick, the irony is that the resulting  lifestyle would be one Native Americans truly would not want today. Instead, we have heavily rewarded tribal government with ongoing largesse while getting sand kicked in our teeth.​
​

​Justice Antonin Scalia in agreement with Justice Clarence Thomas, have clearly described America’s racial problem in a 1995 Indian law Supreme Court ruling as follows:

“More than good motives should be required when government seeks to allocate its resources by way of an explicit racial classification system…the basic principle of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution protects persons, not groups…distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people."  —Adarand v. Pena, USSC (1995) 

We are clearly not a free and equal people while racial classifications exist in any form in America. We will never be a free people while American taxpayers are indentured to annually subsidize all the basic needs of just one ethnicity— 567 Native American tribal governments.

FEDERAL AGENCIES:  YESTERDAY STICK IMPLEMENTERS

So how are these Yesterday Sticks implemented? Within Columbia Law Professor Philip Hamburger’s acclaimed body of expertise on Administrative Law in America, we learn that the Executive Branch has created a powerful workaround that transfers power from Congress and the Courts to federal “regulatory” agencies.
 
There is no better example than the enormous Bureau of Indian Affairs, staffed by thousands of predominantly tribal employees, funding all basic needs of 567 tribal governments composed of a mere 0.06%                          of our country’s population. Yet another example is the thuggery implemented upon landowners across the country by Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Department of Agriculture, et al.
 
Each of these federal agencies has their own Administrative Law Courts. They make the rules, set the fines and penalties, impose and enforce their regulations upon persons and private properties (bypassing state authority), then stand as judge and jury when a citizen objects. The Interior Board of Indian Appeals is a prime example of an agency Administrative Law Court. Imagine any objectivity in such a court. Federal agency autonomy, coupled with their administrative law courts, is a debilitating system that far exceeds the intent of the balance of power between the three branches of government succinctly defined in the U.S. Constitution.
 
In addition to Administrative Law, there is the onslaught of The Diversity Principle, fueled by 156 separate ethnicities identified by the U.S. Census Bureau, each category of which sets the stage for racially- based funded programs. Diversity propaganda over the past decade has turned “Equality” into an undesirable term…now politically incorrect. Americans are consistently categorized by skin tone in a racial hierarchy that trumps our Constitutional Amendments and puts equality six feet underground.
 
THE RIGHT REMEDY: AMERICANISM 
The entrenchment of these racial Yesterday Sticks is such that their removal from our American governance would be an earthquake shift among federal and state agencies, but it can and should be done. Just suppose that all federal funding were based solely upon one single and neutral requirement—annual household

income. Period. Annual household income would not involve race, religion, marital status, sexual lifestyle; nothing except household income. It would simply be a calculation of the number of persons within an American household, and an established poverty income threshold level. That simple. Such fairness would collapse race-based programs throughout the maze of federal and state agencies, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The simplicity of Annual Household Income would eliminate most, if not all, of the Yesterday Sticks, and restore the principle of equality to its rightful place in this country. No American household in poverty would be ineligible.
 
Remedy will not come easily, but could begin with an Executive Order that requires elimination of all race- based federally funded programs within a reasonable time; perhaps two to three years. Congress could then follow the lead of the Executive Branch and ensure that America ceases its racial preference funding.

Tribalism is communalism based upon race, and was never contemplated as a governing system in the U.S. Constitution. Communalism is socialism, antithetical to the government our Founders provided. The federal government should return back to the tribes all lands acquired by tribes and donated to the federal government to be held in “trust” title by the United States on behalf of Indian tribes. Tribally owned lands should be restored to the authority and jurisdiction of the state, like all other lands ceded to the states upon statehood.
 
The severity of tribalism and diversity Yesterday Sticks is truly kneecapping equality and individual civil rights in this country. It is not too late to end these debilitating forces, but if nothing is done, it soon will be too late.

___________ 
Elaine Willman, MPA, served from 2002 – 2007 as National Chair of Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA), an organization of community education groups and citizens in 25 states who reside within or near federally recognized Indian reservations. She is a retired career municipal administrator, and author of Going to Pieces…the Dismantling of the United States of America (2005), and Slumbering Thunder…a primer for confronting the spread of federal Indian policy and tribalism overwhelming America (2016). Email her at: toppin@aol.com.

The people at Washington Policy Center do their homework.  Good article about all kinds of hooey, including grocery (gross-ery) bag bans.
​

​Six Environmental Myths To Get Rid of This Earth Day

By TODD MYERS  |  
Apr 19, 2018
 
First do no harm is a good maxim for Earth Day in more than one way. Many will think of it in the most obvious terms – don’t harm the planet. But, it is also a reminder to be thoughtful about actions intended to help the environment, but which may do more harm than good.
 
Here are six environmental myths people can give up this Earth Day.
 
Buying Local Food Helps the Environment: False
 
Contrary to the claims of the environmental left, buying local food dramatically increases environmental harm.
 
At the University of Washington tomorrow, the Earth Day presentation will feature a speaker promoting “transformation” of the food system to support “small-scale organic farmers.” Organic farming is fine, but it is primarily a luxury for the wealthy and widespread use would dramatically increase the use of water, fertilizer, and even pesticides.
 
If we moved to local production for 40 major crops, research shows the U.S. would have to increase land use – and the water and fertilizer that goes with it – by 60 million acres, about the size of Oregon. 
 
Cotton Grocery Bags Protect Water Quality: False
 
Banning plastic grocery bags has become a fad among local cities, but organic cotton bags do far more environmental damage, causing 606 times as much water pollution as plastic bags. A study by the Danish Ministry of Food and Environment found organic cotton requires so much fertilizer that it significantly contributes to the worst water quality problem, deoxygenation that creates “dead zones.” 
 
Politicians who push plastic bag bans point to photos of the bags harming marine life. They ignore the far more damaging, but less obvious, impacts of cotton bags. Consumers would have to use a cotton bag every week for 11 ½ years just to break even compared to using plastic bags that whole time.
 
Honeybees Populations Are Collapsing: False
 
The number of honeybee hives in the United States is at the highest level in 20 years. You wouldn’t know that by listening to some environmental groups, who claim honeybee populations are falling. As a beekeeper, I have an interest in protecting honeybee health, but those who make these claims know almost nothing about the issue.
 
Although the percentage of hives that die each year has increased from about 20 percent to about 35 percent, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that beekeepers are replacing lost hives and increasing the total number of bees. Additionally, the threat to honeybees is not pesticides but the varroa mite, which attaches itself to honeybees. Agricultural beekeepers, whose bees are most exposed to pesticides, have the lowest mortality. 
 
Solar Panels Are Free Electricity: False
 
Imagine spending a dollar to save a dime. Despite the perception that solar energy is free, that’s exactly what taxpayer subsidies for solar power do. Solar panels enjoy huge taxpayer subsidies, despite the fact that most people who can afford to install them are rich.
 
Even with improvements in solar technology, the Energy Information Administration estimates solar panels will still cost thirty percent more, on average, than natural gas. In Washington state, this is even worse. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory indicates Seattle receives half the solar radiance as Arizona or California. Even though the energy is “free,” the cost to install solar panels means we pay far more than with other energy sources and a much higher cost to reduce CO2 emissions. 
 
Washington State’s Snowpack is Declining: False
 
The Governor’s carbon tax bill this year lamented that climate change is “already” causing Washington state to experience “depleting snowpack.” This claim ignores the fact that for the 2017-18 winter, snowpack finished at 119 percent of normal. It wasn’t an anomaly. Ten of the last twelve years have seen above normal snowpack in Washington state. 
 
The snowpack myth persists despite clear and consistent data. Former State Climatologist Mark Albright of the University of Washington charted snowpack across 223 sites across the Pacific Northwest and found average snowpack has been steady for more than 30 years. We can still believe that climate change will have future impacts, but the impulse to ignore basic data shows how politics, not science, is driving the discussion on climate policy. 
 
Subsidizing Electric Vehicles Helps the Planet: False
 
Two years ago, a line to preorder the Tesla 3 stretched three blocks in Seattle, with people eager to place deposits on a car they had never seen or taken for a test drive. If you have the disposable income to commit to a car, sight unseen, you don’t need a tax break as an incentive.
 
Later this year, Washington’s sales tax break for electric vehicles will expire, but it was unnecessary from the beginning. For wealthy buyers of Teslas or the Nissan Leaf, a tax break simply offers tax breaks for the wealthy and gives politicians an opportunity to take credit for supporting cool technology while doing little to incentivize car sales or improve overall fuel efficiency or reduce CO2 emissions.
 
AUTHOR
TODD MYERS
Director, Center for the Environment
tmyers@washingtonpolicy.org  (206) 963-3409

TIMOTHY R. SNOWBALL -  ATTORNEY
Pacific Legal Foundation
​
This is the ninth part in a series discussing the principles of the American founding, their embodiment in the United States Constitution, and the ways in which the Supreme Court has all too often negated these principles to the detriment of individual liberty:
 
The size, scope, and power of the modern administrative state has far surpassed even the direst imaginings of the Founding Fathers. One of the primary ways Thomas Jefferson justified the split from Great Britain in the Declaration of Independence was King George III’s empowerment of bureaucrats to “harass our people and eat out their substance.” After the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, the Framers of the Constitution took great pains to prevent just such an abuse by dividing the power of the new federal government into separate but co-equal branches, designed to check and balance each other. Familiarly, Congress is vested with the power to make the laws, the President is vested with the power to sign or not sign the laws, as well as enforce the laws, and the Supreme Court is vested with the power to decide the constitutionality of the laws passed by Congress. According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” “[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” And yet this troubling mixing of constitutional powers is exactly what has occurred in the modern administrative state, which has been allowed to perpetuate and fester for decades.
 
But it is the so-called Chevron Doctrine that represents the single greatest threat to individual liberty.
 
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. began simply enough. In 1977 Congress amended the Clean Air Act to ensure that states complied with air quality standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Under the amended Act, non-compliant states were required to establish a permit program regulating “new or modified stationary sources” of air pollution. The problem in the case centered, as it does in many legal challenges, on competing definitions. Under Jimmy Carter, the EPA defined “new or modified stationary sources” of air pollution as individual polluting devices. But once Ronald Reagan took office, the EPA redefined “new or modified stationary sources” of air pollution as encompassing entire plants, the effect being that as the total emissions from a plant did not increase, even equipment that violated the new standards could be legally procured. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental protection group, challenged the new EPA regulation. When the district court ruled in the Council’s favor, Chevron U.S.A., a party affected by the outcome of the case, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. The question facing the Court was how much judicial deference is due to agencies when they interpret their own congressionally mandated enabling statutes. Or, put another way, should agencies be allowed to determine the limits of their own power?
 
In perhaps the most stunning example of judicial abdication in the last forty years, the Court answered: yes.
 
Writing for a six justice majority, Justice Stevens laid the groundwork for the most constitutionally damaging doctrines of the modern era:  “When a court reviews an agency’s construction of the statute which it administers, it is confronted with two questions. First, always, is the question whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. If, however, the court determines Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue, the court does not simply impose its own construction on the statute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administrative interpretation. Rather, if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” That is to say, when Congress speaks clearly, it has spoken clearly. Easy enough. But the issue in the case concerns when Congress does not speak clearly. What then? What happens when congressional mandates are ambiguous? What is a “permissible construction”? How are agencies supposed to define “permissible”? These are questions that the Court left purposefully open.
 
As a result, in the decades since the decision the Chevron Doctrine has allowed agencies nearly unfettered authority to determine the limits of their own congressionally bestowed powers, enabled Congress to enacted purposefully ambiguous statutes as a means of avoiding democratic accountability, and left individual liberty subject to the whims of professional bureaucrats. How in any rational sense can such a system be described as a government of limited powers?
 
James Madison also once wrote that “[i]t will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?” Unless and until we reign in the power of the modern administrative state, beginning with the poisonous Chevron Doctrine, the American people risk the Framer’s experiment in liberty becoming so compromised as to no longer exist.
 
The time to fight back has come.
 
Series:
Part 1: Government is not the source of our rights
Part 2: Government power must be limited
Part 3: Individual rights trump government power
Part 4: Judges should do their jobs
Part 5: All rights were created equal
Part 6: All men are created equal
Part 7: Liberty is more important than security
Part 8: Absolute government power corrupts absolutely
Part 9: The greatest threat to liberty
Part 10: The solution to unconstitutional government: Fight Back
​

WE have seen and reported about how our local county and city governments have become not only the affiliates of, but handmaidens to, numerous "partner" non-profits.  Right here, many groups (like the land trusts, Opportunity Council, Futurewise, ReSources) have become so deeply embedded that they not only direct policy (Futurewise..."Hirst") but staff funding.  Powerful, official D.C. swamp rats (like The Nature Conservancy) control vast amounts of federal funds that are handed down as "grants" welcomed by local government departments; then the departments work to deliver plans and policies that meet the groups' long term goals and strategies.  This is scary stuff but true.  Immense power has grown that's unaccountable; it's the new reality.  Unfortunately, all that WE can do is merely report.  The public has got to wake up and push back.  Here's a stunning expose' that just surfaced at MyNorthwest:

Government for hire: Washington contracted to green nonprofit
BY DORI MONSON SHOW
JANUARY 12, 2018 AT 2:47 PM

​LISTEN: Wall Street Journal Writer who broke the Inslee climate scandal, Jillian Melchior

The Wall Street Journal’s scrutiny of Washington Governor Jay Insee’s office continues after new details were revealed about policy advisor Reed Schuler.

“Basically, what we found out is that the World Resources Institute, which is a green nonprofit, and the Hewlett Foundation — which has invested massively in the green climate change agenda — is paying his salary; is paying his benefits, and paying his expenses,” The Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Kay Melchior told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson. “… I think that’s really concerning because this is a guy who holds an influential policy position and he is being paid, not by the taxpayers.”

RELATED: Why Dori is certain global warming cult is phony

“I haven’t seen something like this before,” she said. “Basically, there is a contract that exists between the green group, the World Resources Institute, and Washington state. Washington state is the contractor. It commits to providing a scope of work, activities, and deliverables to advance a green agenda. Both the nonprofit and the state, they are not dictating specific policy outcomes. On the other hand … the State of Washington sends a bill every quarter to cover Mr. Schuler’s salary, his benefits, and expenses. Along with this invoice, it provides the nonprofit a progress report … this man who is paid by a nonprofit, an outside special interest group, is in a policy position. I think that raises a real concern.”

In a recent opinion piece by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board titled “Climate of Unaccountability,” the newspaper chronicles a behind-the-scenes deal between Governor Inslee’s office and The World Resources Institute. Both Inslee and the institute share a mission to address environmental issues, including climate change. But one might assume that governments contract out to organizations such as WRI for expertise and assistance. In this case, the institute has hired Inslee’s public office, paying for Schuler’s salary, according to emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

The institute is a nonprofit with offices around the globe, including Washington DC. Its purpose is to “promote environmental sustainability, economic opportunity, and human health and well-being,” according to its website.

In response to the story by the Wall Street Journal, Governor Inslee’s office provided this statement:

"No one should be surprised that the Wall Street Journal editorial page doesn’t support the governor’s efforts to reduce carbon pollution. The page isn’t known for reasoned arguments and in the words of one former WSJ editor, has ‘gone full bats—t’ in its backing of Donald Trump. There’s nothing more to their attacks on sensible climate policy than there was on the paper’s deep, dark dive into the Vince Foster murder conspiracies.

As to the use of philanthropic funds, we are happy that public/private partnerships allow us to fill critical gaps. This is the same mechanism that many news organizations use and, just like the Seattle Times, for example, we “operate independently of our funders” and maintain full control over the work of our staff.

In regards to Reed Schuler, as I said to the Wall Street Journal, he is a Washington state employee who is subject to the same legal and ethical requirements as any other state employee."
​
The news comes shortly after Inslee’s state of the state speech, where Inslee urged Washington lawmakers to pass a carbon tax.

Beyond the World Resources Institute

Melchior further argues that the deal is concerning because of the Hewlett Foundation’s participation. The foundation promotes progressive politics and provides funding to WRI.

“The Hewitt Foundation is ultimately funding this,” Melchior said. “When I asked Washington state … they just knew that the Hewlett Foundation had given WRI a grant at some point … (in emails) Chris Davis, Mr. Inslee’s climate advisor, talks about how Hewlett is paying for Reed Schuler to work in the shop for 12 months.”

“I think they are not being upfront about Hewlett’s role in this,” she said. “They are saying they don’t know about Hewlett, but we are saying that Hewlett money is passing through WRI, a green nonprofit, an ends up funding a policymaker in the governor’s office. That would raise concerns even if they were being transparent.”

The Wall Street Journal argues that the Hewlett Foundation’s role is suspect in the same manner that the Koch brothers’ meddling in Republican politics draws scrutiny.

Climate of Inslee’s office

The contract between Inslee’s office and the World Resources Institute comes on the heels of additional coverage by the Wall Street Journal revealing the commuting habits of Inslee’s climate advisor Chris Davis, who is commuting to his job in Washington state from Morocco.

“It’s kind of a classic hypocrisy tale,” Melchior told Dori on Thursday. “You’ve got Governor Inslee saying climate change is an existential crisis. He had some rather dramatic tweets the other day saying we only had 59 days to save our children from an endless cycle of crop-killing droughts and rivers spilling over their banks. And one of his top climate advisors is commuting, and not just commuting from anywhere. It’s a carbon-intensive commute because he is commuting from Morocco.”

The details of Davis’ commute from Marrakesh was revealed in a Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The Marrakesh Climate Express.”  The opinion piece was authored by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which includes Melchior and based on emails from the governor’s office obtained by Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Melchior argues that the cost of a couple of Davis’ airplane commutes between Morocco and Washington have cost taxpayers at least $6,000. More than 4,500 lbs of carbon were released into the atmosphere on just one trip from Marrakesh to New York, and then to Washington.​

WE can't imagine anything to add here - watch!

For years WE have observed the steady unraveling of the fabric of justice both here and afar.  Even as Minnesota Senator Al Franken topples from his perch, perhaps deservedly, this brief account should set alarm bells ringing.  WE encourage readers to crack open their copies of the Constitution and reflect earnestly on the fundamentals of justice and human rights...

Even Social Justice Can't Be Achieved When the Accused Don't Know the Allegations Against Them
 
Abusers must be punished, and victims deserve their privacy. But the ability to answer charges is a fundamental right.

The Weekly Standard 
11:46 AM, DEC 07, 2017 | By ETHAN EPSTEIN
 
The adjectives “Orwellian” and “Kafkaesque” (but, curiously, never Orwellesque or Kafkian) are some of the most overused and abused in the English language. They’re oft employed, one suspects, by those with hazy memories of paging through the Cliffs Notes of 1984 or The Hunger Artist a couple of decades ago.
 
But occasionally the comparisons are apt. Such as when people seem to be living through the literal plot of a Kafka novel.
 
Consider the case of Australian actor Geoffrey Rush. The Academy Award winner appeared in a Sydney production of King Lear in 2015 and 2016, to much acclaim.
 
But just recently, a complaint was lodged against Rush dating back to that performance. It is alleged by someone—we don’t know who, as the accusation has not been made public—that he behaved “inappropriately” at some point during the course of the production. But not unlike Joseph K. in The Trial, Rush claims he has no idea what he is actually being accused of: The theater has refused to tell the actor what it is that he supposedly did. Subjected to a campaign of innuendo and a charge that he literally can’t answer, Rush just stepped aside from his role atop the Australian Screen Academy.
 
That’s relatively mild compared to what happened to a prominent radio host this week. Leonard Lopate, the host for many decades of a genteel arts show on public radio powerhouse WNYC, was suspended an hour before he was scheduled to go on the air on Wednesday morning. Indeed, the 77-year-old was actually physically removed from the building.
 
Like The Trial’s Committee of Affairs, WNYC brass refused to tell Lopate what he was accused of, other than to say there there were multiple complaints. They didn’t even “give him a clue,” the host told the New York Times. This is quite literally Kafka-esque: Lopate is being punished for something—and he has no idea what.
 
So did Rush and Lopate “do it?” Who knows. After all, we—and the accused, according to their statements—don’t even know what “it” is.
 
Being able to answer charges—indeed, simply being made aware of what one is being accused of—is foundational in any remotely fair judicial process. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that this noxious trend has been borrowed from academia, where kangaroo courts increasingly rule the day.
 
It’s vitally important that sexual abusers be punished. But the accused deserve to know what, precisely, they’re being accused of. They shouldn’t be treated … like a dog.

Here's some important news that will get zero mention at the Herald.  The Department of Interior is reviewing federal indian policy - hooray! - and the public can submit comments (there's a link below, in the article).

The two indian groups in this county have asserted drum-beating, race-based "sovereignty" and yet "dependence" for decades.  Even though their 'business councils' are social organizations, they're riding the dependent money train, some years receiving as much as a hundred million dollars at taxpayer expense that most folks don't know about.  Neither the Lummi or Nooksack want any facts about their actual legal status brought out in the open.  That's why they keep demanding privately "negotiated settlements" of their claims.  Is it time for a review?   Does the situation need to be straightened out?  WE think so.   Read on - and by all means, don't let this opportunity to comment slip by.

Federal Indian Policy: "Mom Always Liked YOU best!"
by Elaine Willman, July 31 2017
published at The New American
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​It’s 83 years late in coming, but at long last the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA) is finally getting its first-ever review, and hopefully serious reform. IRA (48 stat. 984) forms the backbone of federal Indian policy across the country and has been extended, expanded, and abused far beyond the original intent of Congress.

In order to understand IRA and its major impacts on America, let me share an analogy. Imagine an American household with a single mom and a couple of sons, Johnny and Jimmy. One day Mom calls the family together to make an announcement. “Johnny, you were here first; Jimmy you were here second. Therefore, Johnny, you are more valuable and important than your brother. And Jimmy, you have intruded upon Johnny’s room, his life and his world, so a big chunk of everything you earn from now on and forever will be given to me, Mom, and I will redirect your earnings to Johnny. You really don’t belong here, Jimmy, because you were here second.”

This is exactly what has been happening in our country for 83 years. Since the Tribes (Johnny) tell the government (Mom) that they were here first, the non-tribal inhabitants (Jimmy) have become second-class citizens.

The mantra foisted upon Americans for decades is, “We were here first; you stole our land.” Neither is true. But even if it were true, the response as of 1789 should have been, “So what?” That was the way of the world in the 1600s under the Doctrine of Discovery. Life changed on this continent in September 1789.

One could hardly call the poor souls arriving on the Mayflower and other ships to establish a new life on this continent, conquerors. They had fled religious oppression under a tyrannical king, and were seeking liberty, religious and individual freedom. These were the seeds that became the Great American Experiment. But for that “transgression,” apparently, Americans are to be forever damned.

In my analogy, Mom is our Mother Country. Imagine that Mom’s folks come to visit their grandsons and discover the new household rules. Mom’s folks, representing our Founders, would be astonished. The seeds planted in the early 1600s by arrivals from Europe gave birth to the Framers of our Constitution and our republican form of government. Regardless of historical decisions, some right, some wrong, the reality is that the United States of America, as of September 1789, is our government, inclusive of the now 50 separate and sovereign states. Revisionist history has been common practice for far too long, but the actual reversal of history occurring today is the slumbering thunder creeping across this country.

There is no tribal sovereignty recognized in the U.S. Constitution, but such sovereignty (just like Jimmy paying perpetual debt to Johnny) has acquired a power beyond the Constitution’s declared sovereign authority of individual citizens and states. States such as Washington, Montana, Idaho, and some Midwestern states have continually relinquished their state authority in deference to all tribal whims. Many states have created de facto “trust” relationships with tribes where none existed; only the federal government has a court ordered (but not constitutional) “trust” relationship with their “dependent wards — Indian tribes.”

Johnny’s governments (tribes) may directly finance political parties, incumbents, or candidate election officials. Jimmy’s government may not. Johnny’s businesses are all tax-exempt and growing enormously. Jimmy’s businesses are taxed to the max. Johnny’s government members can hold elected office anywhere across the country, passing land use and taxation laws upon Jimmy that do not apply to Johnny. Johnny has priority over most of the river and water systems throughout the Western states because Johnny was here first, and Jimmy’s needs don’t matter — he shouldn’t exist.

There is a wondrous Statue of Liberty in New York harbor that welcomes all to come, as the early Jamestown settlers, legally to the United States. We are a country forged and thriving by “intruders” from all over the world. Our republican form of government does not classify those who were here first as superior, nor does it distinguish a priority between the person naturalized yesterday as a full American citizen and the child born here five minutes ago. But federal Indian policy requires perpetual debt and shame for all who came second.

And now we take a deeper look at the Indian Reorganization Act and its impact on the lives of American citizens. In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Carcieri v Salazar that IRA was intended to reorganize only those tribes on existing reservations and “now under federal jurisdiction” in June 1934. There were only some 65-70 actual Indian reservations in the United States in 1934. Therefore, the IRA was to reorganize only those 65-70 tribes, and no more. The Carcieri ruling was a political earthquake.

The Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs have not just reorganized reservations in existence in 1934; they have federally recognized a current total of 567 tribal governments, each acquiring and expanding their reservations, each receiving tax exemptions, and each receiving money from Jimmy (“second-class” citizens).

The response to Carcieri under the Obama administration was to utterly ignore it, along with other Supreme Court rulings where the High Court rolled back tribal governing authority, replacing state sovereign authority.

The good news is that on June 22, 2017, the Department of Interior published a “Notice of Regulatory Reform” with an open public comment period on the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) and four other major federal statutes. The Notice reads: “This document also provides an overview of Interior’s approach for implementing the regulatory reform initiative to alleviate unnecessary burdens placed on the American people.”

No doubt Johnny’s 567 tribal governments and the entire Indian industry will be weighing in with their comments to legitimize and further expand decades of IRA unauthorized overreach.

This is our very first opportunity to truly confront the erroneous and detrimental policies that one ethnicity that was here “first” is superior to all others in this country because all other ethnicities are intruders on this continent, and that communalism, socialism, and tribalism is preferable to individual liberty.

It is imperative that states, counties, towns, and Jimmy — who lives within an Indian reservation — describe their “burden” at this time. If Jimmy stays silent, Jimmy’s wallet will continue to be annually poached for the expansion of tribalism as a governing system, replacing our constitutional republic form of government.

Please get your comments on the record to the Department of Interior in one of two ways:

1) Submit comments to the federal “eRulemaking Portal,” www.regulations.gov. In the Search box, enter the appropriate document number (DOI-2017-0003-0002). Or,

2) Mail a hard-copy of your comments to: Office of the Executive Secretariat, ATTN: Reg. Reform; U.S. Department of Interior; 1859 C Street NW. MailStop 7328; Washington, DC 20240.

All other Americans are up against 567 tribal governments with 400 more waiting in the wings for their recognition (not “reorganization”). How long must Jimmy owe his older brother who was here “first” and who seldom says “thank you,” and never says “enough”?

I am not a secondary American citizen. Are you?

Related videos and articles:
Warpath: Obama’s Indian Policy Threatens All Americans, Both Tribal and Non-tribal Citizens 
Oops! SPLC Exposes “Anti-Indian Movement” — Led by Indian
VIDEO: U.S. Indian Policy Used to Assault Freedom, Expert Says
VIDEO: Full Interview with Author Elaine Willman
Exploiting Indians 
American Natives Ask UN to End U.S. “Occupation” 
Exploiting Indians to Seize Land 

Truly worthwhile, and timely.
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Why The Greens Lost, And Trump Won
by Joel Kotkin
NewGeography - July 23, 2017

When President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords, embraced coal, and stacked his administration from people from fossil-fuel producing states, the environmental movement reacted with near-apocalyptic fear and fury. They would have been better off beginning to understand precisely why the country has become so indifferent to their cause, as evidenced by the victory not only of Trump but of unsympathetic Republicans at every level of government.

Yet there’s been little soul-searching among green activists and donors, or in the generally pliant media since November about how decades of exaggerated concerns—about peak oil, the “population bomb,” and even, a few decades back, global cooling—and demands for economic, social, and political sacrifices from the masses have damaged their movement.

The New Religion and the Next Autocracy

Not long ago, many greens still embraced pragmatic solutions—for example substituting abundant natural gas for coal—that have generated large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than celebrate those demonstrable successes, many environmentalists began pushing for a total ban on the development of fossil fuels, including natural gas, irrespective of the costs or the impact on ordinary people.

James Lovelock, who coined the term “Gaia,” notes that the green movement has morphed into “a religion” sometimes marginally tethered to reality. Rather than engage in vigorous debate, they insist that the “science is settled” meaning not only what the challenges are but also the only acceptable solutions to them. There’s about as much openness about goals and methods within the green lobby today as there was questioning the existence of God in Medieval Europe. With the Judeo-Christian and Asian belief systems in decline, particularly among the young, environmentalism offers “science” as the basis of a new theology.

The believers at times seem more concerned in demonstrating their faith than in passing laws, winning elections or demonstrating results. So with Republicans controlling the federal government, greens are cheering Democratic state attorney generals’ long-shot legal cases against oil companies. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman has talked about dismissing the disorder of democracy as not suited to meeting the environmental challenges we face, and replacing it with rulers like the “reasonably enlightened group of people” who run the Chinese dictatorship.

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, China was praised, bizarrely, as the great green hope. The Middle Kingdom, though, is the world’s biggest and fastest grower emitter, generating coal energy at record levels. It won’t, under Paris, need to cut its emissions till 2030. Largely ignored is the fact that America, due largely to natural gas replacing coal, has been leading the world in GHG reductions.

Among many greens, and their supports, performance seems to mean less than proper genuflecting; the Paris accords, so beloved by the green establishment, will make little impact on the actual climate, as both rational skeptics like Bjorn Lomborg and true believers like NASA’s James Hanson agree. In this context, support for Paris represents the ultimate in “virtue signaling.” Ave Maria, Gaia.

The California Model

The cutting edge for green soft authoritarianism, and likely model after the inevitable collapse of the Trump regime, lies in California. On his recent trip with China, Brown fervently kowtowed to President Xi Jinping. Brown’s environmental obsessions also seems to have let loose his own inner authoritarian, as when he recently touted “the coercive power of the state.”

Coercion has its consequences. California has imposed, largely in the name of climate change, severe land use controls that have helped make the state among the most unaffordable in the nation, driving homeownership rates to the lowest levels since the 1940s, and leaving the Golden State with the nation’s highest poverty rate.

The biggest losers from Brown’s policies have been traditional blue collar, energy-intensive industries such as home building, manufacturing, and energy. Brown’s climate policies have boosted energy prices and made gas in oil-rich California about the most expensive in the nation. That doesn’t mean much to the affluent Tesla-driving living in the state’s more temperate coast, but it’s forced many poor and middle-class people in the state’s less temperate interior into “energy poverty,” according to one recent study.

That, too, fits the climatista’s agenda, which revolves around social engineering designed to shift people from predominately suburban environments to dense, urban and transit dependent ones. The state’s crowded freeway are not be expanded due to a mandated “road diet,” while local officials repeatedly seek to reduce lanes and “calm traffic” on what are already agonizing congested streets. In this shift, market forces and consumer preferences are rarely considered, one reason these policies have stimulated much local opposition—and not only from the state’s few remaining conservatives.

California’s greens ambitions even extend to eating habits. Brown has already assaulted the beef producers for their cattle’s flatulence. Regulators in the Bay Area and local environmental activists are proposing people shift to meatless meals. Green lobbyists have already convinced some Oakland school districts to take meat off the menu. OK with me, if I get the hamburger or taco-truck franchise next to school when the kids get out.

Sadly, many of these often socially harmful policies may do very little to address the problem associated with climate change. California’s draconian policies fail to actually do anything for the actual climate, given the state’s already low carbon footprint and the impact of people and firms moving to places where generally they expand their carbon footprint. Much of this has taken on the character of a passion play that shows how California is leading us to the green millennium.

Goodbye to the Family

An even bigger ambition of the green movement—reflecting concerns from its earliest days—has been to reduce the number of children, particularly in developed countries. Grist’s Lisa Hymas has suggested that it’s better to have babies in Bangladesh than America because they don’t end up creating as many emissions as their more fortunate counterparts. Hymas’ ideal is to have people become GINKs—green inclinations, no kids.
Many green activists argue that birth rates need to be driven down so warming will not “fry” the planet. Genial Bill Nye, science guy, has raised the idea of enforced limits on producing children in high-income countries. This seems odd since the U.S. already is experiencing record-low fertility rates, a phenomenon in almost all advanced economies, with some falling to as little as half the “replacement rate” needed to maintain the current population. In these countries, aging populations and shrinking workforces may mean government defaults over the coming decades.

The demographic shift, hailed and promoted by greens, is also creating a kind of post-familial politics. Like Jerry Brown himself, many European leaders—in France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—are themselves childless. Their attitude, enshrined in a EU document as “no kids, no problem” represents a breathtaking shift in human affairs; it’s one thing to talk a good game about protecting the “next generation” in the collective abstract, another to experience being personally responsible for the future of another, initially helpless, human being.

Do As We Say, Not How We Live

The pressing need to change people’s lives seems intrinsic now to green theology. Without penance and penalties, after all, there is no redemption from original sin. In the process, it seems to matter little if we undermine the great achievements of our bourgeois economy—expanded homeownership, greater personal mobility, the ability to rise to a higher class—if it signals our commitment to achieve a more earth-friendly existence.

The left-wing theorist Jedidiah Purdy has noted that “mainstream environmentalism overemphasizes elite advocacy” at the expense of issues of economic equity, a weakness that both Trump and the GOP have exploited successfully, particularly in the Midwest, the South, and Intermountain West. Some greens object even to the idea of GDP growth at a time when most Americans are seeing their standard of living drop. No surprise then that the green agenda has yet to emerge from the basement of public priorities, which remain focused on such mundanities as better jobs, public safety, and decent housing.

To further alienate voters, many green scolds live far more lavishly than the people they are urging to cut back. Greens have won over a good portion of the corporate elite, many of whom see profit in the transformation as they reap subsidies for “green” energy, expensive and often ineffective transit and exorbitant high-density housing. Most notable are the tech oligarchs, clustered in ultra-green Seattle and the Bay Area, who depend on massive amounts of electricity to run their devices, but have reaped huge subsidies for green energy.

The tech oligarchs have little interest in family friendly suburbs, preferring the model of prolonged adolescence in largely childless places like college campuses and San Francisco. Oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg live in spacious and numerous houses, even while pressing policies that would push everyone without such a fortune to downsize. Richard Branson, another prominent green supporter, may not like working people’s SUVs, but he’s more than willing to sponsor climate change events on a remote Caribbean island reachable only by private plane. One does not even need to plumb the hypocrisy of Al Gore’s jet-setting luxurious lifestyle.

In the manner of Medieval indulgences these mega emissions-generators claim to pay for their carbon sins by activism, buying rain forests and other noble gestures. Hollywood, as usual, is particularly absurd, with people like Leonardo di Caprio flying in his private jet across country on a weekly basis. Living in Malibu, Avatar director James Cameron sees skeptics as “boneheads” who will have “to be answerable” for their dissidence, suggesting perhaps a shootout at high noon.

In the end, the greens and their wealthy bankrollers may find it difficult to prevail as long as their agenda makes people poorer, more subservient, and more miserable; this disconnect is, in part, why the awful Donald Trump is now in the White House. Making progress on climate change, and other environmental concerns, remains a critical priority, but it needs to explore ways humans, through ingenuity and innovation, can meet these challenges without undermining what’s left of our middle class and faded democratic virtue.

This piece originally appeared on the Daily Beast.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.