Dispensing injustice

Good editorial today in the Post highlighting yet another "human rights" travesty:

... Following a four-day hearing in 2009, a tribunal adjudicator sided with [the complainant] and ordered Ms. Telfer to pay her former employee $36,000, a sum Ms. Telfer says she does not have.  ... When she failed to pay, the plaintiff's government paid lawyers placed a lien on the home of Ms. Telfer.

... At the hearing, [the compainant] was represented by governmentpaid lawyers, while Ms. Telfer represented herself because she could not afford counsel (and no government aid was offered to her). During the proceedings, a key witness for Ms. Telfer was prevented from giving evidence, while no such exclusions were made from [the complainant's] witness list.

... Sadly, these are all-too-common tactics employed by federal and provincial rights commissions and tribunals ...

The good news is:

Last week, a three-judge Ontario Superior Court panel struck down the adjudicator's decision in Ms. Telfer's case, saying it was "fatally flawed" and explaining that it was "simply not possible to logically follow the pathway taken by the adjudicator" to arrive at his conclusions.

Which was promptly followed by some more bad news:

The court ordered another hearing before a different adjudicator...

Along with some slightly better news:

... and told [the complainant] to pay for Ms. Telfer's lawyer.

 But:

Naturally, the Ontario human rights tribunal has already said it will pay on [the complainant's] behalf ...

Arrrggghhh!

In conclusion:

["Human Rights" Commissions] have evolved into modern-day Star Chambers. Commissioners and investigators all too often act as though they have -- or should have -- the same authority as judges. Yet given their biases and the lack of safeguards for defendants' rights, they seldom dispense true justice. It is long past time that politicians found the courage to rein them in. [Amen!]

Dear Mr. Prime Minister and provincial Premiers:
Please get together on this, use some common sense and try to locate your gonads!

O'Reilly's Obama interview

Part 1


Part 2

False prophets

David Warren sees Marxism/socialism, economics and environmentalism as bad parodies of Biblical religion:

Marxism was an elaborate, and really bad, parody of Christian and Jewish teachings. (To say nothing of idolatrous.)

.... in the latest permutations -- "green" ideologies have been replacing "red"

... Marx, Engels, and all the other luminaries of the left, have persistently cast themselves as prophets, pointing the way to this radiant future.

... At Davos, Switzerland, this week, where the world's most self-regarding prophets were assembled for their annual Pentecostal parody, which they call the World Economic Forum, a session was devoted to discussing why economic forecasts always turn out wrong.

... the Messianic prophecy, that "no man can know the day or the hour" -- nor even the angels -- is not a prediction, but a statement of deep fact. It is the way things are. There are more things in heaven and Earth, than economists can dream of, and there is no model that can begin to incorporate all the "geists."

And yet we have constructed vast bureaucracies, that work on the premise that these forecasts will come true. The sheer idiocy of it, takes one's breath away. Centuries of "the triumph of reason," and it comes to this.

All too true.  Friedrich Hayek called it "the fatal conceit".

Update: Speaking of "the fatal conceit", Hunter (in the comments) recommended this rap video:

No evidence of CO2 influence on climate

According to Dr. Noor van Andel, speaking at the Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI):

● The atmosphere has become more transparent to IR radiation in the past 60 years. The “greenhouse effect” has become less.

● Solar constant and the properties of water determine our climate

● Rising surface temperature is tightly controlled by increasing wet convection and concomitant upper tropospheric drying

● No observational evidence for influence of CO2 on past or present climate

● Strong observational correlation of solar magnetic activity with climate temperatures,  presumably via cloud condensation nucleation and albedo

It's oceans, clouds and cosmic rays, not CO2.

[via FOS]

Socialist big-shot abuses Adam Smith

Peter Foster takes IMF Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, to task for his distortion/misinterpretation of Adam Smith's views on inequality and the distribution of wealth.  Strauss-Kahn attempts to recruit Smith to justify the redistribution of wealth as a solution to "poverty":

... I would venture that Smith’s eyes would pop out were he to witness the level of “poverty” about which Mr. Strauss-Kahn is rending his garments.

The notion of a “welfare state” was utterly alien both to Smith’s political times and his own moral inclinations. Smith lived in an age of personal responsibility. Poor relief was a local, personal affair, as was the “beneficence” that Smith praised as the highest virtue. “Beneficence,” wrote Smith, “is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.” ...

Strauss-Kahn's speech is another example of the left's obsession with income "gaps".  Absolute poverty, which has been dropping spectacularly thanks to the global free market economy, doesn't interest them.  Their interests are either useless emotional bleating about the poor or stoking envy as a means of boosting votes - not about practical, proven solutions which they constantly berate.

An interesting debate - gas v. wind,etc

on-line debate at the Economist:

This house believes that natural gas will do more than renewables to limit the world's carbon emissions.

While it's highly doubtful that there's a need to "limit the world's carbon emissions" anything that limits taxpayer subsidized environmental abominations like wind farms has my vote.

[via FOS]

Carbon trading scandal (number 4)

From the UK Telegraph (and the twighlight zone):

Carbon allowances, Europe’s main weapon against climate change, have an impact on every household, yet the scheme is open to fraudsters and profiteers.

... thieves behind the heist had made off with 500,000 carbon allowances – intangible products worth around €14 each that are the European Union's main weapon against climate change.

... this is the fourth time that the carbon market has been hit with a major scandal.

Hmmm. A scam to steal the intangible products of the global warming scam. Seems fitting.

[Via FOS]