Editorial Comic

Failed liberal policies


Democrats claim to be committed to protecting the environment and maintaining decent living standards, but in large cities run by Democrats, living conditions have become unhealthy, dangerous and intolerable for many. In a March 19 YouTube video entitled “Seattle is Dying,” the documentary shows the effects of several years of liberal rule. The city has become a magnet for drug-addicted criminals who know that law enforcement officials have been ordered not to arrest them. Coupled with being known as “Free-attle” for all its freebies, Seattle is descending into a lawless, over-taxed, unmanageable city that panders to criminals and the homeless instead of protecting the lives and businesses of its citizens.

In a July 16 report by Reform California, a political action committee, the findings show that California, especially Los Angeles, is being overrun by rats. After 18 years of predominantly Democratic rule, the city is experiencing a major public health crisis. According to Dr. Drew Pinsky, “We have complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now.” Medieval diseases like typhus and bubonic plague are on the verge of an outbreak. The main reasons for the breakdown are due to the 59,000 homeless providing a source of food for the rats and the banning of most effective means for eradicating the rats. Instead of using commonsense practices to combat the rats, environmentalists want to use “green alternatives,” which are less effective.

After 88 years of Democratic rule, Chicago is on the verge total financial and livability collapse. Murders are at an all-time high, rat infestation is the worst of all major U.S. cities and corruption is unabated.

After 52 years of Democratic rule, Baltimore is one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world. Murders are up dramatically with no solutions in sight.

After 57 years of Democratic rule, Detroit is still crime-ridden, and according to the FBI, corruption is so ingrained that it is a “generational, systematic part of the culture of southeast Michigan.”

After 63 years of Democratic rule, Portland’s city streets are strewn with garbage, drug paraphernalia and human feces. Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner, said, on July 16, 2018, “Our city has become a cesspool. Livability…is now replaced with human feces in businesses’ doorways, in our parks and on our streets.”

After 55 years of Democrat rule, San Francisco has become a “drug-infested hellhole,” according to an April 22 Zero Hedge report. In a January 31 article, The San Francisco Chronicle stated, “San Francisco — where drug addicts outnumber high school students.”

Instead of using commonsense solutions to big city problems, liberal city leaders continue to rely on failed liberal policies that encourage a vicious cycle of dependency, indolence, lawlessness and despair. Allowing the homeless, drug-addicted and mentally ill to continue to commit crimes and live in squalor does nothing for their self-respect and self-dignity. Enforcing drug and sanitation laws would at least send a message that their degrading behavior is unacceptable. Good intentions, political correctness and “progressive” solutions don’t work. Enabling bad behavior is counterproductive. New, pragmatic leadership is necessary; otherwise many of our large cities will collapse.  

Igor Shpudejko


There she goes again


“People are going to die if we don’t start addressing climate change ASAP.” So spoke the most radical socialist/communist congressperson in the history of the United Sates, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC’s view is promoted by a prominent segment of mainstream society.

An example: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous,” U.S. President Barack Obama tweeted in 2013. This view motivated Bernie Sanders to say this February, “It is really a disgrace and an embarrassment that we have a president who rejects science.”

This argument is driving the “Green New Deal” and much thinking in the Democratic Party. Only dangerously ignorant simpletons don’t believe in “manmade climate change,” don’t cha know? Once the crusaders can steamroll enough of their uninformed opposition, they and the scientists can deal with this threat and save the world. This is an age of astonishing irrationality!

That 97% scientific consensus Obama referenced is not a fact. It is a terribly misleading figure. It derives from a survey of peer-reviewed science papers conducted by John Cook, an assistant professor at George Mason University. But, only 34% of the papers Cook examined took a position on the cause of global warming. He reckoned that 33% (97% of 34%) blamed humans as a cause. Thus, it would be more accurate to claim that one third of scientists say humans are causing climate change, and two thirds of them are not taking a position.

However, when University of Delaware professor David Legates reexamined Cook’s study, he found that even the 33% figure may be inflated. By his assessment, only about 0.3% of the abstracts Cook examined dogmatically state that humans cause climate change.

In the peer-reviewed Organization Studies, a 2012 survey of 1,077 professional engineers and geoscientists showed that only 36% believed humans are creating a global warming crisis. The large remaining majority were skeptical of this claim. They said they believe changes to the climate are natural. Normal earth cycles (global warming) are what brought the world out of the Ice Age.

So, somewhere between 0.3% and 35% of climate scientists believe climate change is caused by humans. That is hardly a “scientific consensus.” There is a far greater consensus among scientists that we simply don’t know. This is because of a profusion of facts that contradict the manmade climate-change thesis.

The fact is, for example, the earth has warmed and cooled before — and that it is not as warm today as it was centuries before people started using fossil fuels on a mass scale. Reams of data from ice cores, dripstones, tree rings and ocean sediment cores indicate that earth naturally alternates between warm and cold phases in a thousand-year cycle.

During the Roman Warm Period, Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants. During the Medieval Warm Period, the Norman Duke William the Conqueror had his knights plant vineyards in balmy southern England, indicating that earth’s temperature was much warmer during these periods than it is today, yet none of the predictions of catastrophe that result from global warming occurred.

Climate scientists say the world is about 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than when the Little Ice Age ended in 1850. But, even if industrial emissions have partially contributed to this warming, there is no proof that such emissions will continue to have much of an effect. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. It is well established that the first 20 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere produce more warming than the next 400 parts per million. Additional carbon emissions will have a very limited effect, especially considering that rising carbon dioxide levels promote plant growth, which reduces carbon dioxide levels and balances the atmosphere.

Fact: There is no provable link between carbon emissions and higher atmospheric temperatures.

Fact: Antarctic ice is increasing and the polar bear population is growing.

Fact: Computer models formulating these apocalyptic scenarios cannot possibly account for all the factors affecting something as complex as earth’s climate.

Fact: Even scientists and their peer reviewers are subject to those most unscientific of forces: Ideology and peer pressure. Yet, the radical left would have us believe that scientists think they know exactly what is happening, exactly why and exactly how they can fix it by limiting specific human behaviors (and, for that matter, cow behaviors, too).

Actually, it’s not so much scientists but politicians like Obama, Sanders and Cortez, who think they know these things. In February 2015, this is how U.N. “climate official” Christiana Figueres articulated the accords goal: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” That is what the left is really after! It isn’t about science — it’s about remaking society. That’s why the people who are pushing for this are socialists. Remaking society in this way will undermine America’s free-market economy and representative government while giving the government far more power.

Think about this: On August 31, 1944, Adolph Hitler said, “What you tell people in the mass in a receptive state of fanatic devotion will remain. Words received under a hypnotic influence are radical and impervious to every reasonable explanation. A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming of interpretation in terms of the will and not of intelligence. There is no such thing as truth either in the moral or the scientific sense.”

Modern America proves Hitler correct. People are holding on to radical ideas that are impervious to reason. On balance, environmental alarmism is to climate science what the Da Vinci Code is to church history — speculative, full of exaggerations and calculated to entertain, but of very little real value in discovering the truth. Much of its data is misleading and one-sided, and many of the key findings on which its conclusions rest are just plain wrong. Hype gets more attention than does prudence. Thanking Christians should know better.

DJ Hammond


Follow the rules


In response to Michael Arnaud’s opinion:

Are you kidding? Why do you think you are above the rules? Waste Management has a particular job to do, and there are rules the customer has to follow. Go to Litchfield Park’s website: refuse and recycling.

The rules are: Put the containers in the street not before 6 p.m. the night before or by 6 a.m. the morning of pickup, and make sure the containers are 3 feet apart. There should be no waste outside the garbage container; only flattened boxes next to the recycle container. Obviously, nothing should be blocking the containers. There is a particular day for bulk pickup.

You could always take your own garbage to the dump if you are so dissatisfied! You have to wait until the following week if you have too much garbage, or again, take it yourself to the dump. Maybe a neighbor who has room in their garbage can would let you put your extra stuff in theirs!

The company doesn’t have to send out a second truck when you complain; it’s pretty darn nice that they have done that!

Oh, and by the way, you are the prima donna, not Waste Management, and I think it would be excellent if you put a bow around the branches, especially at Christmastime.

Bonnie Jansson