Marxism and Environmentalism: The Unholy Alliance

The Evil of the Scarcity Meme - In order to avoid misunderstanding, let us make clear from the outset that scarcity is an unavoidable fact of life – it is the very thing that impels economic activity. If all material human wants were satisfied and we were living as immortals in the Land of Cockaigne, there would no longer be a reason to plan for the future, to save and invest, and to weigh the opportunity costs of different choices. Read more at Acting Man Read More......

Greenspeak strategy: How the West will be lost?

For more than 50 years, there has been a growing campaign against the beneficial use of natural resources. The campaigners have several names: preservationists, conservationists, radical environmentalists, and greens. I will use “greens,” since it is rather inclusive and short. Years ago, it may have started as a movement to preserve some outstanding scenic or historic locations as parks, however it has expanded into a much more general opposition. The targets have been timber and mining, and more lately, hydro and even agriculture. ✧ There are three main components to most of the campaigns: persuasion, litigation and legislation. Read more at Oregon Catalyst
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

The Big Idea: California Is So Over

California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes.

Read more at the Daily Beast
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Oregon: How do you Commit Theft without Stealing?

I Spy Radio Guests: OSU Emeritus Professor of Forestry, Dr. Mike Newton & Senator Doug Whitsett
This week: How do you commit theft without stealing? You make it legal. But to do that, you need to pass a law or create administrative rules to give your agency legal "permission" to take what you want. And to create those laws or rules, you need to provide the justification for it -- hence, "best available science."

Last week we discussed how far-left environmental groups abuse laws like the Endangered Species Act to increase their bottom line. This week we discuss the abusive outcomes when they purposefully ignore good science for bad. First, with Dr. Mike Newton about his study that demonstrates a global, blanket policy currently in place to lower stream temperatures through shading may be harming fish production -- the opposite of their stated intention. But it does help prevent logging.

Then we talk with Sen. Doug Whitsett about what constitutes “best available science” from a legislator's viewpoint, which leads to governmental policies that take land from ranchers and give those lands to another group of people. And if ranchers don't take the deal the government tells them to take, they'll simply have their water shut off.

Call it environmental blackmail or legalized theft, it's the same effect. And all of this happens while a Governor -- who has the power to stop the administrators’ hands -- does nothing. And, in fact, advocates for it.

Busy on Saturday or Sunday? Not a problem. Monday, after the show airs you can go to our webpage www.ispyradio.com and download it from our “latest show” page. Read More......

Oregon's Sad Focus on 'Happiness'

By Joel Kotkin
Oregon is a beautiful place, and, for many of the state's well-heeled residents, including many refugees from equally beautiful but overpriced California, economic growth not only is unimportant but is even a negative. Rather than create opportunity, the real issue, according to Gov. John Kitzhaber, is making sure the state ranks high on “the happiness index.” Forget sweating the hard stuff, and cozy up with a hot soy latte. ✧ There's a problem with this. Oregon's unemployment rate remains above the national average and underemployment – the measure of people working part-time or well below their skill level – stands at nearly 17 percent, behind only Nevada and California. Since 2007, the state has lost over 3.4 percent of its jobs, a performance much worse than the national average and even California. ✧ “You have to wonder about the rhetoric of happiness,” suggests economist Bill Watkins, who predicts the state won't be back to 2007 employment levels till next year. “You need jobs for people to be happy, you would think.”

Read more at New Geography Read More......

Top MIT scientist: Newest UN climate report is ‘hilariously’ flawed

“I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence,” Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot, a global warming skeptic news site. “They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.” Read more at the Daily Caller...

---

From Marc Morano at Climate Depot via Australia
Even if the IPCC predictions were 100% correct... why should anyone trust them? ✧ The AGW advocates delight in making shrill claims about sceptics being funded by “Big Oil”, which the advocates believe is a perfectly good reason to dismiss much, if not all, of what they say as compromised. But what’s the difference with the IPCC? It is an organisation that is funded by “Big Green”, comprised of governments desperate to appear politically correct, vested interests from academia and business, and environmental activist groups. What goes for one, goes for the other. By analogy, anything the IPCC says must be regarded as equally compromised. ✧ The only differences, as far as I can see, are that:

Big Green funds the AGW advocates a thousand dollars for every one dollar funding sceptics;
the IPCC shies away from transparency and open debate, whereas sceptics encourage it.

Read More......

Common Core: Bad for Kids

[Adapted from an article in the Oregon Federation of Republican Women's April-May 2013 edition of Republication]: Holly Swanson, outstanding author, activist and member of the Josephine County Republican Women warns, "The Education for Sustainability movement is drastically altering the curriculum in our schools, changing the role of public education and imposing a political agenda on our innocent children. The aim of this indoctrination program is to train America’s children to be against our form of government, free enterprise system, religious beliefs and much more." Holly urges Republicans to become active in attending school board meetings, writing their government representatives, researching, becoming informed and learning from their children and grandchildren what they are studying.

WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is leading an effort to ask leading Senate appropriators to restore state-level decision making about academic content in public schools in response to the way federal incentives have interfered and put a heavy hand on states to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Grassley said the Common Core program was initially billed as a voluntary effort, and that current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. “The reality is that the U.S. Department of Education has made adoption of standards matching those in Common Core a requirement for getting waivers and funds,” Grassley said. “This violates the structure of our education system, where academic content decisions are made at the state level giving parents a direct line of accountability to those making the decisions. The federal government should not be allowed to coerce state education decision makers.”

In a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that funds education, Senators Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, Deb Fischer, Rand Paul, Pat Roberts, Jeff Sessions, and Ted Cruz urged appropriators to set clear restrictions on the U.S. Department of Education from setting academic content standards either directly or indirectly when they put together legislation to fund the U.S. Department of Education for the next fiscal year.

Get involved. If there was ever an issues for Republicans to get behind, it is re-empowering control of the education system to the states, local school boards and parents.

  Holly Swanson is the author of Training for Treason: The Harmful Agenda Behind Education for Sustainability and Set up & Sold Out: Find Out What Green Really Means. She is at the forefront of the fight to protect America's children from the indoctrination of a dangerous ideology that will steal their freedom and change America forever. Read More......

Corvallis wins "Porker Award"

From Oregon Capitol Watchdog Foundation - On October 1, the second Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation "Porker Award" was bestowed upon the City of Corvallis for spending $500,000 on encouraging people to use compact flourescent bulbs and ride their bicycles.

Corvallis Gazette-Times, 10/5/2012: Foundation hands 'pork' award to city (plus comments) - Public Works Department Director Mary Steckel defends money spent and money yet to be spent. Read More......

George F. Will: The sky, apparently, continues to fall

 Sometimes the news is that something was not newsworthy. The United Nations’ Rio+20 conference — 50,000 participants from 188 nations — occurred in June, without consequences. A generation has passed since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which begat other conferences and protocols (e.g., Kyoto). And, by now, apocalypse fatigue — boredom from being repeatedly told the end is nigh. Read more at the Columbus Dispatch...

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) Read More......

Huffman: Wind, timber and hypocrisy in the Pacific Northwest

DC CALLER, 3/9/2012 by Jim Huffman, Law Professor, Lewis & Clark Law School

[Excerpts] [...] In 2009 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the national death toll from wind turbines at 440,000 birds that year alone.  ✧ That seems like a lot of birds, particularly for those of us in the Pacific Northwest, where a once-vibrant timber economy has been devastated in a failing effort to save the spotted owl. Read more at DC Caller...

Read More......

OPB: OSU Study Casts Doubt On 'Worst Case' Climate Change

A new study led by Oregon State University scientists casts doubt on a climate change worst-case scenario. The new study helps narrow down what the greenhouse effect might mean for the earth’s climate. Read more at OPB... Read More......

Riparian Issue: Albany poised to act on controversial Goal 5 rules

9/25/2011 - The Albany City Council is poised to act on new land use regulations potentially affecting an estimated 1,000 property owners, but how much depends on the individual case. ✧ The city staff says the changes are intended to protect natural resources such as fish-bearing streams and streamside habitat, along with significant wetlands. Read more at the Democrat Herald... Read More......

Al Gore Compares Climate Change to Civil Rights Fight

Former Vice President Al Gore is comparing the struggle to win over climate change skeptics to the fight against racism. ✧ When racist comments would come up in the course of conversations, “There came a time when people said, 'Hey man, why do you talk that way? That's wrong, I don't go for that, so don't talk that way around me. I just don't believe that,'” Gore said in an interview Friday with FearLess Revolution founder Alex Bogusky. ✧ "That happened in millions of conversations, and slowly the conversation was won,” Gore said. “And we still have racism, God knows, but it's so different now and so much better. And we have to win the conversation on climate.” Read more at Fox News...
Read More......

TD: The Wrenching Transformation of America

(Hat tip: Facebook: Benton County Americans for Prosperity), April 22, 2009 Speech by Tom DeWeese - Ladies and gen­tlemen, I’ve come a long way to get here and I have such a short time to be with you. So, let’s just get every­thing out on the table right now, shall we? ∴ I believe the Amer­ican people, and their every action, are being ruled, reg­u­lated, restricted, licensed, reg­is­tered, directed, checked, inspected, mea­sured, num­bered, counted, rated, stamped, cen­sured, autho­rized, admon­ished, refused, pre­vented, drilled, indoc­tri­nated, monop­o­lized, extorted, robbed, hoaxed, fined, harassed, dis­armed, dis­hon­ored, fleeced, exploited, assessed, and taxed to the point of suf­fo­ca­tion and desperation. ∴ America is drowning in a sea of rules and reg­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­larly under the guise of “saving the environment.”

Read more at August Forecast... Read More......

NCPA: Smart Growth Policies Led to Greater Losses

The 11 metropolitan areas in which the greatest housing cost increases occurred accounted for 73 percent of the pre-crash losses, says Wendell Cox, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis... Read More......

AT: The Purposeful Flooding of America's Heartland

AMERICAN THINKER, 6/22/2011 by Joe Herring - "Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods." (Snip) "Preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby. The pressure to satisfy the demands of these groups grew exponentially as politicians eagerly traded their common sense for "green" political support." Read more at American Thinker... Read More......

Do We Need a National Strategy on Manufacturing?

JEC Hearing: Manufacturing in the USA: Why We Need a National Manufacturing Strategy?

Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC), chaired by Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) will hold a hearing titled, “Manufacturing in the USA: Why We Need a National Manufacturing Strategy?,” on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 10:15 am. The hearing will explore recent progress in the manufacturing sector and examine strategies and policies that will further bolster U.S. manufacturing growth in the future. Recent growth in manufacturing has played a key role in the economic recovery. Economic activity in the manufacturing sector has increased for 22 consecutive months and manufacturing employment has rebounded from its low, adding almost 250,000 jobs since December 2009. Read more at Jec.senate.gov...

Hasn't government done enough already to drive manufacturing off-shore? --bc Read More......

Alsea Valley Alliance Showing Important Video - You're Invited!

VIDEO
UNITED NATION’S PLAN
NOW BEING IMPLEMENTED
BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)
RESULTING IN EPA’S ATTEMPT TO CONTROL ALL WATERWAYS IN THE U.S. & BENTON COUNTY’S PLAN TO IMPLEMENT REGULATED RIPERARIAN BUFFERS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY
VIDEO WILL BE SHOWN ON FRIDAY, JUNE 24 AT 7PM IN THE ALSEA LIBRARY MEETING ROOM
EVERYONE INVITED
PRESENTED BY ALSEA VALLEY ALLIANCE

All Benton County residents should become well-informed on these issues. --bc Read More......

Bonn talks heat up, but where is the warming?

FORBES, 6/8/2011 by James M. Taylor (Heartland Institute) - Global greenhouse gas emissions have risen even faster during the past decade than predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other international agencies. According to alarmist groups, this proves global warming is much worse than previously feared. The increase in emissions “should shock even the most jaded negotiators” at international climate talks currently taking place in Bonn, Germany, the UK Guardian reports. But there’s only one problem with this storyline; global temperatures have not increased at all during the past decade. Read more at Forbes... Read More......

CPI: Rural Oregon Is Tired of Being Ignored

CASCADE POLICY INSTITUTE, 5/31/2011 by Karla Kay Edwards - A statistic commonly used to highlight the economic hardship Oregonians bear is that Oregonians on average earn 91 cents to every dollar of average earned income nationwide. But that story is even more dramatic for rural Oregonians, who earn a mere 75 cents on the dollar when compared to personal income nationally. Yet, the Oregon legislature has done nothing significant to begin to change this dire... Read more at CPI... Read More......