Liberal economist: "Conservatives are stupid and selfish"

Peter Foster: "Why can’t we anti-market, conservative dinosaurs understand carbon taxes are super amazing?"

According to a column in Tuesday’s National Post by Stephen Gordon (“Conservatives need to learn”), conservatives with both the upper-case and lower-case “C” are guilty of failing to regenerate themselves intellectually by thinking more like their opponents.  

... according to Gordon, the benighted right is, in particular, failing to grasp the benefits of “carbon pricing.” But surely Gordon, a professor of economics, knows the difference between a market price and a tax. Has he forgotten that it was a conservative, Preston Manning, who promoted the Big Lie of not calling a carbon tax a tax? ...

NASA/GISS scientist, Gavin Schmidt, refuses to debate global warming

Actually, Gavin Schmidt's field of expertise is climate modeling, which is more an art (and propaganda tool) than it is science.  Here he is back in 2013 on John Stossel's program refusing to debate renowned climatologist Roy Spencer:



I kind of expected Schmidt to say he wouldn't debate Prof. Spencer because "the debate is over, the science is settled".

The great carbon tax grab and BC's bogus green claims

Terence Corcoran:

Just as consumers start getting used to the idea of lower gasoline prices, putting billions of dollars in their pockets for spending on other things, politicians are conspiring to grab it back ... a long list of economists and celebrity policy wonks eager to provide support... Preston “Don’t call it a tax” Manning, The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, assorted think tanks ... Obama advisor Lawrence Summers ... Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada ...

... The carbon tax issue is no small policy shift. This is big statism in a green cloak, filled with policy inconsistencies, economic nonsense and out-of-control rationalizations.

... Carbon taxes are piled on green taxes piled on congestion taxes on top of regulations and other direct interventions. ... Worse, none of these taxes will do anything to improve the environment or curb carbon emissions...

Far left radical Saul Alinsky once wrote "never let a good crisis go to waste". Obama's far left fixer, Rahm Emanuel famously repeated it.   So, now, with a "crisis" in falling oil prices, opportunistic political weasels and wonks of all stripes are rationalizing a tax they hope can be imposed with minimal objection.  And once imposed it'll stay there after oil prices rise again. It's time for tax payers to show up en-mass on all their doorsteps carrying tar, feathers, torches and pitch-forks.

The B.C. carbon tax: Gordon Campbell's Liberals imposed a carbon tax in 2008 and have long held it up as a glowing success in  lowering BC's carbon footprint.  Terence Corcoran puts the lie to that load of junk economics:

... B.C. gasoline consumption is actually higher today than it was in 2008, both in absolute and per capita numbers. B.C. is therefore today producing more carbon emissions than it was the day the carbon tax was introduced.... Economics 101 is still the law, and the B.C. case for a carbon tax does not exist.

Mark Carney - overrated hypocrite

William Watson:

IMF head Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney both spoke last week in London on the subject of “inclusive capitalism” at a highly exclusive conference organized by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild ...

... [both] made very literate and interesting speeches arguing that rising inequality ...  fundamentally threatens capitalism ...

Strangely, in view of their concern about inequality, neither ... offered to do their bit by taking a pay cut. ... Carney ... total compensation ...reported to be in the neighbourhood of £1 million per annum. ... If people at the top end making too much money is the dangerous social problem they both think it is, why don’t they help out by taking a pay cut?

Peter Foster:

... Canadian rock star Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney ...  was hypocritically flailing away at a straw man. [He] wittered on last week about how fundamentalist capitalism was increasing inequality and hurting the poor ... It is pretty much a rule that anybody who attaches a qualifier to the word “capitalism” is seeking to undermine it.

Carney may be among the most overrated men in recent history. It’s not that he lacks raw intelligence. It’s that the feats attributed to him ... are within the capacity of no man.

An explanation for this dangerous state of mind is contained in a must-read paper by an academic named Slavisa Tasic: “Are Regulators Rational?” Mr. Tasic concludes that they suffer from “illusions of competence” and are entirely blind to the power and subtlety of markets.

Pope Francis - economic naif / dunce

Peter Foster on the Pope’s economic naivete and ignorance:

 ... the serious issue of whether the Pope knows what he’s talking about when it comes to his professed concern for the poor. 

The appropriate approach to poverty is not to sanctify it but eradicate it . ... if Pope Francis really is concerned about relieving poverty, his reflexive anti-capitalist attitudes are pointing precisely in the wrong direction.

Pope John Paul II actually praised the free market as “the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. ... his successors  ... returned to the Church’s more traditional anti-capitalist stance, now larded with environmental concerns and support for UN-based global governance. ... Pope Francis came out of the Vatican gate in March sounding like the theological wing of the Occupy movement ...

... if the poor are truly his priority, then surely what is important is not “the gap” but the massive reductions in levels of absolute poverty in recent decades ... one can’t help asking whether the Pope is more concerned with relieving the poor or bringing down the rich.

he exposed his own economic confusion, first in implying that social benefits come only from charitable intention  ... and second in peddling the canard that promotion of markets represents some kind of quasi religious faith...

FP's Annual Rubber Duck Awards for Junk Science

Dishonoured for contributions to Junk Science:

Rick Smith for Lifetime Achievement
... the inspiration for the Rubber Duckies, which are named in his honour. Mr. Smith, as president of Environmental Defence Canada, co-authored of a remarkable piece of junk science literature, the 2009 Slow Death by Rubber Duck.

New York Times
... the NYT has aimed much of its junk at Canada...oil sands and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline ... similar canards were regurgitated in a paranoid piece by Canadian academic and zero-growth fan Thomas Homer-Dixon ... On the double-standard beat, the paper nobly refused to reproduce the “private” Climategate emails ... but couldn’t wait to publish Wikileaks

The Ontario Medical Association
... Since 2003, the union managed to boost average doctor salaries by 75% to $385,000
... hectoring the public and policy makers on issues to which the OMA brings no particular expertise ... Bill to ban indoor tanning ... restaurant menu labeling for calories and salt ... Doctors are prescribing too many antibiotics to too many people ...

Bill Gates
... his father headed Planned Parenthood ... Gates plans to reduce the global population by 10% to 15%, or about one billion people through reforms including reproductive health (abortion) ... Gates says we need to get down to zero-carbon to spare us from global warming. ... he’s working to correct “the failure of capitalism,”

For Happiness economics
Rubber duckies to the government of France, Joseph Stiglitz, the United Nations Human Development Report and anti-growth activists everywhere ...

Well deserved awards, congratulations.

Jeremy Rifkin - Maurice Strong on stilts

Peter Foster:

... Mr. Rifkin is the archetype of that creature known as the policy entrepreneur. He is a consistent generator of bad ideas, and it is bad ideas, more than anything, that help governments grow.

... For decades, he has been exploiting technophobia, junk science, postmodern psychobabble and folk economics to peddle a long list of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate scares, along with matching Big Government “solutions.”

... Mr. Rifkin, like his predecessors since Karl Marx, is very keen to “retire Adam Smith,” which in fact amounts to the continued rejection of a bunch of ideas that Smith never promoted, such as an alleged “conventional, top-down, centralized approach to organizing economic activity.”

... He teaches in the executive education program at the Wharton School of Business, and is an advisor not just to Chancellor Merkel but to the whole European Union. He is likely to get an enthusiastic hearing tomorrow from all those Queen’s Parkers supervising Ontario’s Green Energy Act.

Rifkin sounds like Maurice ("Mo") Strong on stilts, big stilts. Given that list of "buyers" he's unquestionably a master "visionary" snake-oil salesman.