A New Tack

We've spent some time here at 2PJ tracking the Scaife support given to think tanks mentioned in specific Tribune-Review editorials - for instance, yesterday.



But today I thought I'd try another strategy. How do things look if we look at all the editorials/opinion pieces published in one day?



So let's start.



This editorial about unemployment compensation, Scaife's braintrust cites the Cato Institute.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $245,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $2,037,500 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This opinion piece which chastises George Soros for, among other things, supporting the "openly leftist Open Society Institute" is by Mattew Vadum of the Capital Research Center.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $225,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $4,675,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This opinion piece by Colin McNickle, yet another anti-CFL bulb diatribe, cites the Manhatan Institute.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $693,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $3,815,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This piece by John Stossel cites the Competitive Enterprise Institute.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $60,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $2,865,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This piece is by Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $100,000 from the Scaife-controlled Allegheny Foundation.
• $50,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $10,148,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This piece by Tom Purcell cites Reason Magazine, which is published by the Reason Foundation.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $366,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $2,016,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

Whew.



If my math is correct, that means that over the years the Scaife-controlled Allegheny, Carthage and Sarah Scaife Foundations have given about $27.3 million to the various think tanks cited on today's op-ed pages alone.



Had he not given that support, those think tanks would look vastly different. They might not even exist. And yet he did and they do and his op-ed page cites them with no mention of all that money.



Tell me again how there's no vast right-wing conspiracy.

Scaife Funded Judicial Watch Spins On Voter "Fraud"

From today's Tribune-Review:

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the perniciously corrupt, leftist influence of ACORN and its Project Vote affiliate on voter registration in Colorado.



Alleging violation of a federal law requiring public-assistance offices to offer registration, the groups threatened litigation in 2009. The Democrat then-secretary of state, backed by leftist billionaire George Soros and liberal MoveOn.org, responded by, among other things, sharing registration data with Project Vote and ensuring its approval of changes to registration forms.



The result? In 2009-10, 8 percent of Colorado registration forms rejected as invalid or duplicate -- thus fraudulent -- came from public-assistance agencies. That was more than four times the national 1.9-percent average.

I guess they gotta do this once a month or so. Last month (July 17th to be exact) they wheel-barrowed out some horse crap that included James O'Keefe's "research" into ACORN. On that blog post we reported:

According to Media Matters, the Scaife controlled Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations granted $8.74 million dollars between 1997 and 2009.



Far more than any other foundation. In fact, if my math and the numbers are correct, Scaife's given about 20 times more than all the other foundations combined.

So while Scaife's braintrust uses phrases like "backed by leftist billionaire George Soros" we should all try to remember that when the braintrust quotes Judicial Watch or The Heritage Foundation or The American Enterprise Institute or the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, each of those think tanks are "backed by rightwing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife."



But back to the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch spin. Beyond the absurdity of pointing out how Colorado's voting registration system rejecting invalid registration forms is evidence of how far:

ACORN, Project Vote and their successor organizations would not go to undermine voting's integrity.

But what of that 8 percentage rejection rate? Surely that's evidence of fraud, right? The editorial even says that invalid and duplicate registration forms are fraudulent. This takes a little digging. The Scaife braintrust's editorial points back to this page at the Scaife funded Judicial Watch. And here is the important paragraph:

As a result of this collaboration between ACORN, Project Vote and Colorado officials, the number of voter registrations at Colorado public assistance agencies rose from 3,340 in 2007 to almost 44,000 in 2010. (In a February 15, 2011, email to Project Vote, Christi Heppard, Special Projects Coordinator for the Elections Division of the Colorado Department of State, wrote, “…I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the numbers.”) However, the collaboration also led to a large number of invalid and duplicate voter registrations. A total of 8% of rejected registration forms came from public assistance agencies in Colorado in 2009-2010. This is more than four times the national average of 1.9% for that same time period.

Judicial Watch is usually meticulous with its linkage. But this time, not so much.



For instance, where do they get the "8 percent" data point anyway? That bit of information can be found via that last link - but it takes some hunting to get to - something the braintrust probably doesn't want you to do.



The link leads to this report by the US Election Assistance Commission. It's on page 52 where we find that 8 percent of the voter registration forms, 1681 in real numbers, were regarded as "Invalid or Rejected."



And how does this report define "Invalid or Rejected"? Oh, my friends, this is where the fun is. On the very next page we read:

Invalid registrations in Colorado include incomplete or pending applications where the elector has omitted a required piece of information.

No way to tell how much of what's left over is, as Scaife's braintrust so courageously declared, fraudulent.



See how it works? Scaife supports a think tank that spins and hides some very important details and then his newspaper's editorial board reports that spin as the truth.



How's that for fraudulent?

Tea Party Vs YOU

From Reuters:

With Medicare at the top of lawmakers' fall agenda, Tea Party movement leaders hope to ignite support for Republican plans to transform the popular federal healthcare program for the elderly.

Thousands of Tea Party movement activists are expected to descend this month on town hall meetings across key battleground states as part of an intensifying campaign ahead of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

Their priority is a plan to slash Medicare costs proposed by House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which could gain momentum now that a debt-limit deal between President Barack Obama and Congress has made potential Medicare cuts a centerpiece of the deficit debate.

And what's that plan again? It's:

The Ryan plan -- which the House approved in April but which went nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate -- would preserve Medicare for current beneficiaries but transform it for future retirees from a system that provides guaranteed benefits to one that gives the elderly financial assistance to buy private insurance.

Enough of a change that we get to say this would "end Medicare as we know it." So instead of medicare funds going to doctors and/or hospitals for elderly care, note that it goes to insurance companies.

This from our friends at Freedomworks, an astroturf organization funded in part by, of course, our good friend Richard Mellon Scaife (more than $3 million over the past few decades).

So I am sure we can expect to see more than a few editorials from Scaife's braintrust at the Tribune-Review touting the benefits of Freedomworks and the Ryan plan to eradicate Medicare.

It's just that simple.

The Trib On The Debt Ceiling

Again, it's what they leave out that matters most.

From today's editorial page at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

"Saving" the nation from an anticipated default caused by Washington's own fiscal disregard, the deal cobbled together Sunday in the 11th hour amounts to yet another excuse for even more egregious spending -- not a course correction.

No mention of the fact that most of that "egregious spending" happened while a Republican was in the White House.

And then there's this:

What the nation gets, instead, is a short-term "fix" that raises the arbitrary debt ceiling, which already has been jacked up 11 times in the past decade. This continues the same ineffectual thinking, the same partisan brinkmanship masquerading as a fool's definition of leadership.

Yes, that's all true. But not in the way the Braintrust wants you to think.

Jacked up 11 times in the last decade. So that's 4 under Obama and 7 under Bush. Think Progress has a chart:

Look at how many times the debt ceiling was raised under Dubya. Look at how much it was raised by. Look at how many GOP Senators voted for it.

The "partisan brinkmanship" the Trib derides is simply this. It's Ok If You Are A Republican.

Did you know that Republican Presidents have raised the debt ceiling much much more than their Democratic counterparts in the last 30 years? The debt ceiling was raised almost 200% under Ronald Reagan alone.Again, a chart:Betcha didn't know that.

Tell me again about the liberal media?

Now This Is Interesting...

An astute reader clued me into this curiosity found in the pages of the Tribune-Review:

FBI agents involved in a secret grand jury investigation into the Allegheny County Jail have interviewed a former jail inmate who claims he was handcuffed and brutalized after an escape attempt last year, the man told the Tribune-Review.

Gary Barbour Jr., 29, who now is incarcerated in the state prison in Huntingdon, also asked attorney Ronald Barber to file a federal lawsuit naming the county and unspecified officials and guards as defendants in the April 6, 2010, incident that he says sent him to UPMC Mercy for treatment.

So far, so good. But take a look at this from 2005:

An Allegheny County judge decided Tuesday to unseal some records from the estate of the late Sen. H. John Heinz III after eight months of legal wrangling between the powerful family's lawyers and several newspapers.

Attorneys for both sides said yesterday they are pleased with Common Pleas Judge Frank J. Lucchino's decision, which opens 11 documents for public inspection in 20 days, but holds back on some details the judge called private and sensitive.

"It looks like a significant victory for the press. But we won't know how close we got to the target until we see the records," said Ronald Barber, an attorney for the Tribune-Review.

Since Attorney Barber is also quoted in the P-G's coverage of the same story:

When Gary W. Barbour Jr. tried to escape from the Allegheny County Jail last year, he was caught and beaten by guards before and after he was handcuffed, an attorney representing the inmate said Thursday.

Mr. Barbour's treatment after his escape attempt is one of the subjects of a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe of the lockup.

Statements Thursday by attorney Ronald D. Barber are the first accounts of the incident to emerge, beyond the initial Allegheny County police report that described Mr. Barbour as "injured and bleeding" to the extent that he required hospitalization.

I think we can assume that the papers called him to get a comment in print and not the other way around.

But still - if he's the Trib's attorney and he's quoted on the pages of the Trib for another story, shouldn't they at least mention that?

Not being completely forthcoming with the facts is the Trib's editorial page practice - one we're well aware of. Leaving important stuff like this out of the news shouldn't be.

Mystery of The Missing Altmire Op-Ed SOLVED

This is gonna give you a chuckle. I promise.

This morning I wrote about this complaint found on the Op-Ed page of the Tribune-Review regarding a pair of opinion pieces written (one each) by Congressman Mike Doyle and Congressman Jason Altmire. Scaife's braintrust complained that the two were too similar. I wanted to (as I often do) check their work. Usually, when I check their work I find they've spun a few things - and I can only assume they do that hoping no one will check. But this time, I couldn't.

Why not?

As I wrote this morning, I could easily find Doyle's opinion piece (it's here), but I could not find Altmire's.

So I contacted his office today asked them about it. Where was the Congressman's opinion piece about the CFL lightbulbs? I couldn't find it anywhere, I told them. Is there anyway I could see a copy? I further asked.

They sent me the piece (see below) and told me that while they submitted it to The Trib and then The Trib rejected it for publication.

So before we get on with the piece itself, let's mull this over for a second. Altmire's opinion piece is submitted to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for publication. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review rejects said opinion piece and then criticizes it in print sometime later. They're the only ones who have access to it and so they're the only ones who can assess whether it is, in fact, similar to the other opinion piece they claim it resembles. In short they're the only ones who could know whether they're telling the truth.

Until now, that is.

Remember, this is the braintrust's complaint about the two pieces:

The congressmen's offerings are so similar -- nearly word for word in spots -- that it has us highly suspicious that the two men regurgitated Democrat talking points for their op-ed submissions.

The two opinion pieces do cover similar ground - as well they should. They are talking about the same thing.

Both point out similar facts:

• Old style incandescent light bulbs waste 90% of their energy generating heat
• George Bush signed the original law in 2007
• New style incandescent light bulbs have been designed that meet the 2007 standard
• And so there is no "ban" on incandescent light bulbs - just inefficient ones
• Thomas Edison invented the light bulb

Altmire's op-ed is posted below, by the way. Do something the Trib doesn't want you to do - read it for yourself. Check my work.

Can someone show me the "nearly word for word in spots" similarities the braintrust is complaining about? Where are they? Apart from the obvious and banal congruencies ("Thomas Edison", "incandescent light bulb" and so on) I couldn't find any "nearly word for word" matches. Can you?

Think of it this way, if the two pieces were, in fact, so close that they ended each other's sentences, doncha think The Trib would be pointing them out to you sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase? They didn't. They couldn't. They're spinning this. Badly.

Anyway, here's Altmire's opinion piece the Trib (the one The Trib rejected then criticized in public):

When Thomas Edison first successfully tested a carbonized thread light bulb in 1879, it was a technology so revolutionary that the light bulb became the very symbol of innovation. Today, 132 years later, the image of a light bulb is still routinely used as an illustration of American ingenuity and scientific breakthrough. The technology that Edison pioneered, the incandescent light bulb, remains by far the most popular source of light in American households.

It is therefore not surprising that reports of a ban of the incandescent light bulb have caused a political firestorm and a public outcry. There have even been reports of organized efforts to hoard the remaining supply of the incandescent bulbs before the ban takes effect at the end of this year.

The topic has become especially popular on the political circuit, with members of Congress and presidential candidates making the “light bulb ban” part of their standard stump speech.

Adding to the public outrage is the fact that, as a result of the reported ban, consumers would be required to purchase and use expensive compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), some of which contain mercury and emit a lesser quality of light than standard incandescent bulbs.

The story goes that the government has banned the inexpensive bulbs produced by American companies and enjoyed by consumers for more than a century, and will now force consumers to use much more expensive, less illuminating lights that pose a significant health hazard, the compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). No wonder politicians are climbing all over themselves to defend the incandescent light bulb.

There is only one problem – none of it is true. The incandescent light bulb is not banned, nor will it be next year or thereafter. Consumers will continue to be free to buy the light bulb of their choice. American companies will continue to manufacture and market incandescent bulbs available to every American.

So, why the misconception about the so-called “ban”?

In 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act. One of the provisions of this bipartisan legislation was to establish energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. This was done primarily to reduce the strain and prevent overloads on our nation’s electrical grid, and to make energy more efficient, dependable and cost-effective for consumers.

Under the 2007 law, some household light bulbs are required to be approximately 28 percent more energy efficient. For the most commonly-used light bulbs, the phase-in occurs over a three-year period beginning in 2012. For example, by next year, a 100 watt incandescent bulb must emit the same amount of light using only 72 watts. The law does not specify what type of technology manufacturers may employ to achieve these standards, nor does it require consumers to purchase any specific type of light bulb.

Incandescent bulbs produce light by heating filament inside gas. This is nearly identical to the technology that existed in the initial Edison-inspired bulbs first made commercially available in the 19th century. These bulbs remain popular, but they are incredibly inefficient as a source of light. In fact, ninety percent of the energy produced by a standard incandescent bulb goes toward heat – only ten percent produces light. Of course, few consumers buy a household light bulb to use as a source of heat, so it makes sense that we should look for ways to make the bulbs more energy efficient than the bulbs Edison pioneered 132 years ago.

Some light bulb manufacturers have chosen to supplement their incandescent bulbs with other technologies, such as the CFL or the increasingly popular and potentially revolutionary light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs. Both technologies continue to evolve and will undoubtedly play a major role in America’s energy future, as will other technologies yet to be discovered. But what about the incandescent bulb?

As a result of the 2007 law, several large and small American companies, some of which have put down roots in western Pennsylvania, have developed energy efficient incandescent light bulbs that meet the new standards. Some of the new incandescent bulbs are already on the market, and many others will be available in time for the 2012 transition. These new bulbs have the same look and emit the same type of light as traditional incandescent bulbs, but they last much longer, offer substantial energy savings for the consumer and greatly reduce the burden to our nation’s electrical grid. So not only is the incandescent light bulb not banned, it has been improved and is now better than ever. Most important, it will still be made by American workers, for American consumers, for years to come.

Throughout our history, Americans have always risen to the challenges of the ever-changing global marketplace. Recently, American auto makers innovated and adapted to new fuel efficiency standards by producing fuel efficient cars that appeal to American consumers, resulting in General Motors surpassing Toyota this year as the world’s largest automaker.

Similarly, the quick transition to meet the new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs is yet another example of American ingenuity and innovation at its best. Without a doubt, others around the world are also researching and producing advanced light bulbs to compete with our American-made products. Just as Thomas Edison put America at the forefront of the development and manufacture of lighting technology in 1879, the American innovators of today continue to lead the way in the research and development of exciting new lighting technologies, like LEDs, as well as improving upon the popular technologies of the past, like the still-available incandescent light bulb.

Not Sure What To Make Of This

From Sunday's Trib:

PENNED BY POLTERGEISTS? Democrat U.S. Reps. Mike Doyle of Forest Hills and Jason Altmire of McCandless should consider consulting a specialist in paranormal activity.

Their offices appear to have been invaded by ghost writers.

Both supposedly penned recent opinion pieces defending the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The controversial law effectively bans Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb as we've known it in favor of supposedly more efficient but also more expensive and hazardous alternatives, namely the compact fluorescent light bulb.

The congressmen's offerings are so similar -- nearly word for word in spots -- that it has us highly suspicious that the two men regurgitated Democrat talking points for their op-ed submissions. We just thought we'd shed some light on the matter.

The only problem?

I can't find Congressman Altmire's op-ed defending Energy Independence and Security Act. I've googled:

• Atmire "Light bulb"
• Altmire "Energy Independence and Security Act"
• Altmire CFL

And couldn't find anything. Nothing. Nada. The null set. That doesn't mean it's not out there, of course. Just that I couldn't find it. It's a mystery. Usually the trails to the sources the braintrust uses are quite easy to follow; Heritage Foundation, AEI, Washington Times and so on. But none of my usual tricks worked this time. And I can't imagine even the Trib making something like this up.

If you can find it, please drop me an email with the link. I want to see how similar they are. Or if you can explain what the Tribune-Review is doing here, editorializing on something no one else can see, drop me an email on that, too.

That being said, we'll talk about CFLs, Thomas Edison, and Mike Doyle's easily found opinion piece for a bit. Here's the trib:

Both supposedly penned recent opinion pieces defending the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The controversial law effectively bans Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb as we've known it in favor of supposedly more efficient but also more expensive and hazardous alternatives, namely the compact fluorescent light bulb.

They make three points here:

• The CFL bulb's efficiency is questioned
• The CFL bulb is more expensive
• The CFL bulb is more hazardous

The Michigan DEQ has a page up describing the savings achieved by switching from an incandescent to a CFL. Over the course of the life of the CFL bulb the savings are substantial. That takes care of bullets one and two. What about the third? How hazardous is the CFL bulb?

Luckily, there's been work on that, too. From a page called Three CFL Myths Busted:

Myth: Compact fluorescent bulbs are a major safety hazard because they contain mercury.

Fact: Yes, it's true that CFLs contain tiny amounts of mercury, and if a bulb breaks you will be exposed to the neurotoxin. But, just how dangerous is a broken bulb? Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set out to answer that question. They compared how much exposure you'd get from breathing in the amount of mercury released from a broken CFL bulb to how much mercury you'd take in from eating Albacore tuna.

If you do a common sense job of cleaning up (open the windows, clean up, and remove the debris), then your mercury exposure would be the equivalent of taking a tiny nibble of tuna, according to Francis Rubinstein, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab. What if you did the worst job possible, say closed all the doors and smashed the bulb with a hammer? It's still no big deal, says Rubinstein, who points out that it would be the equivalent of eating one can of tuna.

Hmm - at worst it's the mercury equivalent of eating one can of tuna? Only ONE CAN? AND it saves money?

We already know The Trib's not really interested in facts that conflict with their politics, but I would have thought that the Trib would be in favor of saving money.

I guess not.

Again, if you have any info as to the whereabouts of the Altmire editorial please drop me an email. I'd love to see it.

ACORN: The Zombie Threat!

Even disbanded, ACORN scares the right wing if only by virtue of one of today's Op-Eds at The Trib.

But let me get the necessaries out of the way first.

The jeremiad was penned by Thomas Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch, in turn, is heavily, heavily HEH-VILLE-LEE funded by Trib owner and publisher, Richard Mellon Scaife. According to Media Matters, the Scaife controlled Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations granted $8.74 million dollars between 1997 and 2009.

Far more than any other foundation. In fact, if my math and the numbers are correct, Scaife's given about 20 times more than all the other foundations combined.

And of course there's no mention of this tremendous financial support given to Judicial Watch by Richard Mellon Scaife in the op-ed page that Richard Mellon Scaife owns.

Now onto the jeremiad itself.

Fitton's opening:

ACORN employees have been nailed time and time again for fraudulently registering voters -- including Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys -- allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office.

They were caught on tape advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration and child prostitution laws.

Ah, registration fraud and the James O'Keefe edited tapes.

Good opening.

Let's talk about the registration fraud. Some credit (though not much) to Fitton for inserting the word "registration" rather than going with the usual scary "voter fraud". It must be noted, however, that voter fraud is simply implied by the last phrase of that paragraph - "allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office."

The fraud was in the registration - not the voting. Fraudulently registering "Mickey Mouse" in an effort to be seen as doing a good job in no way leads to any more votes for anyone. And that's what happened. According to a CRS report done at the request of the then-chairman of teh House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers:

Effect of alleged false voter registrations by ACORN workers. You asked CRS to research improper voter registrations that resulted in people being placed on the voting rolls and attempting to vote improperly at the polls. As discussed, a NEXIS search of the ALL NEWS file did not identify any reported instances of individuals who were improperly registered by ACORN attempting to vote at the polls.

Not that Fitton and the Scaife-funded Judicial watch would bother to tell you that, of course.

And then there's James O'Keefe and his tapes. From New York Post March 2, 2010:

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

And from the Office of Attorney General of the State of California.

Videotapes secretly recorded last summer and severely edited by O'Keefe seemed to show ACORN employees encouraging a "pimp" (O'Keefe) and his "prostitute," actually a Florida college student named Hannah Giles, in conversations involving prostitution by underage girls, human trafficking and cheating on taxes. Those videos created a media sensation.

Evidence obtained by Brown tells a somewhat different story, however, as reflected in three videotapes made at ACORN locations in California. One ACORN worker in San Diego called the cops. Another ACORN worker in San Bernardino caught on to the scheme and played along with it, claiming among other things that she had murdered her abusive husband. Her two former husbands are alive and well, the Attorney General's report noted. At the beginning and end of the Internet videos, O'Keefe was dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp, but in his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, he was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp.

"The evidence illustrates," Brown said, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

The original storm of publicity created by O'Keefe's videotapes was instrumental in ACORN's subsequent denunciation in Congress, a sudden tourniquet on its funding, and the organization's eventual collapse.

Again, not that Fitton would tell you any of this stuff.

Great opening, Tommy.

But let's get to what Tommy Fitton calls "controversial and ridiculous". In October, 2009 President Obama signed the "Defund ACORN Act" and it:

...effectively prohibited the federal government from funding "ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate."

Following a lawsuit filed by ACORN challenging the law -- which passed both branches of Congress by wide margins -- the federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the funding ban on Aug. 13, 2010. And the Supreme Court last month refused to hear ACORN's appeal.

The problem:

On March 1, Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a $79,819 federal grant to ACORN-spinoff ACHOA to "educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws."

The advisory opinion by the GAO stating that ACORN isn't ACHOA is what's got Fitton in a snit. That's what he called "controversial and ridiculous."

Here's the ruling from the GAO by the way. Feel free to do something I don't think Fitton wants you to do - read it yourself.

Once you did, you'll see what the GAO based its opinion on. You know - the facts. Facts like:

The record does not show AHCOA to be directly or indirectly under the control of ACORN. AHCOA is not related to ACORN by shareholdings. Because AHCOA is organized as a nonstock corporation, ACORN cannot own shares in AHCOA. AHCOA Amended Articles of Incorporation, at 2. AHCOA also does not own any shares of ACORN.

And that:

• Neither ACORN nor any other organization has the authority to control the makeup of the AHCOA Board of Directors.
• No member of the AHCOA Board is also a member of the ACORN Board.
• While AHCOA and ACORN previously occupied offices in the same building, the two corporations no longer share the same facility.
• No employee of AHCOA is also an employee of ACORN.

There's also good stuff in there about how ACHOA is neither an affiliate or a subsidiary organization.

And did I mention that ACORN no longer exists? Thomas Fitton never actually gets around to telling you that, either.

All this over $79,819. This is another non-story the right wing noise machine is hoping to whip into a scandal.

By the way, last year alone, the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $175,000 to Judicial Watch. Something to chew on.

More Fun With Right Wing Math

This is something I've been waiting to see. From this morning's Midweek Briefing:

President Obama's handpicked economic advisers waited until the Friday before the long Independence Day holiday weekend to release a report showing how bankrupt the economic "stimulus" was. It cost taxpayers $278,000 per added or saved job. As The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Anderson noted, "(T)he government could have simply cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the 'stimulus,' and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead." Consider "outlandish" redefined.

Here's Anderson:

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Too bad this has already been debunked. By Calvin Woodward of the AP:

Some Republican lawmakers critical of President Barack Obama's stimulus package are using grade-school arithmetic to size up costs and consequences of all that spending. The math is satisfyingly simple but highly misleading.

It goes like this: Divide the stimulus money spent so far by the estimated number of jobs saved or created. That produces a rather frightening figure on how much money taxpayers are spending for each job.

Highly misleading? How?:

First, the naysayers' calculations ignore the value of the work produced.

Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output — a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid.

Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.

A construction project, for one, may only require a few engineers to get going, with the work force to swell as ground is broken and building accelerates.

Hundreds of such projects have been on the books, in which the full value of the contracts is already counted in the spending totals, but few or no jobs have been reported yet because the work is only getting started.

And:

Third, the package approved by Congress is aimed at more than direct job creation, although employment was certainly central to its promotion and purpose.

Its features include money for research, training, plant equipment, extended unemployment benefits, credit assistance for businesses and more — spending meant to pay off over time but impossible to judge in a short-term job formula.

Nor do the estimates made Friday include indirect employment already created by the package — difficult if not impossible to measure.

But why let math and logic get in the way when there's a highly misleading political point to be made?

By the way, this report also tripped up our very own Rick Santorum. Aside from Rick's huge math blunder, he echoes this point made by Anderson:

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

But what was Rick's math blunder? From CNN:

During an appearance on CNN's "American Morning" Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum claimed the 2009 stimulus package resulted in a loss of jobs. He cited a government report that he said previously stated 280 million jobs had been created by December and now says only 240 million jobs were created.

When pressed by CNN's Ali Velshi, who said there's a difference between a loss of jobs and creating fewer jobs than initially reported, Santorum remained firm on his position that the current administration has cost Americans' jobs. [emphasis added.]

Think Progress here's a transcript:

SANTORUM: [Obama] passed a huge stimulus package that now we know, over the past two quarters, has actually cost American jobs, and that’s from the report of his own administration. They claimed in December that, uh, by the end of last year that they created 280 million jobs, and now they’re saying that they created only 240 million jobs. So look, in this, you’re talking about huge increases in spending.

ALI VELSHI: Senator, I’m going to ask you to restate that, I’ve never heard that in my life. Tell me again, what you just said.

SANTORUM: If you look at the report that came out on Friday, the President’s own economic advisers said that the jobs stimulus package actually created fewer jobs over the period of time, since the uh, since the stimulus package went in place than it did when they reported back in December. In other words, there’s 30 million less jobs as a result of the stimulus package.

VELSHI: That’s not a loss of jobs, Senator, that’s a smaller aggregation of jobs. You can’t go on a campaign, a national campaign with this kind of math Senator. It’s just incorrect…I know you’ve got a lot of interviews to do. You might want to check that math.

And did you see Rick's blunder? Thinkprogress again:

Velshi is absolutely correct that Santorum needs to check his math, but he missed the huge problem with Santorum’s numbers. The entire American civilian labor force is about 153 million people. There are currently 13.9 million people unemployed. If the Obama administration had created 240 to 280 million jobs, the unemployment crisis would have been solved several times over, and America would have so many jobs that it would need to start employing workers from all over the world just to fill all the available positions.

Ah, the joys of right wing math!

Wow. Just Wow.

I have no explanation for this. None what so ever.

But it tells you everything you need to know about how skewed the thinking is with Scaife's braintrust when it comes to climate science.

Take a look at this from today's Sunday Pops:

In the Orwellian moment of the week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that efforts to promote transparency in "climate change" research, among other things, are inhibiting scientific inquiry. Transparency demands "make no constructive contribution to the public discourse," says the group. How utterly bizarre.

Now let's go see what they're actually talking about.

If you google the phrase they quote (""make no constructive contribution to the public discourse") you eventually make it to this board statement, dated June 28, 2011, from the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Begin to read it and you'll see it's NOT about transparency at all.

The quotation is taken from the last sentence of the statement's opening paragraph:

We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems. AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions. The progress of science and protection of its integrity depend on both full transparency about the details of scientific methodology and the freedom to follow the pursuit of knowledge. The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists. The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse. [Emphasis added.]

This is not about "transparency" (which the AAAS clearly states that it supports) but about excessive FOIA requests for personal data that'll then be used for harrassment and intimidation. Then there's the death threats.

Only those infected with teh climate crazie could possibly equate the two.

Here's what else the AAAS has to say about science. Stuff the braintrust curiously omits:

Scientists and policymakers may disagree over the scientific conclusions on climate change and other policy-relevant topics. But the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results. Science advances through a self-correcting system in which research results are shared and critically evaluated by peers and experiments are repeated when necessary. Disagreements about the interpretation of data, the methodology, and findings are part of daily scientific discourse. Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial. Most scientific disagreements are unrelated to any kind of fraud and are considered a legitimate and normal part of the scientific process. The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise.

And yet Scaife's braintrust whittles all that down to the AAAS declaring efforts to promote transparency are inhibiting scientific inquiry.

Tells you everything you need to know about the mendacity that doubles for editorial policy with Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust. How truly bizarre.

The editorial page an embarrassment to us, the news-reading public. As it also must be an embarrassment to all the fine reporters who find themselves working for Richard Mellon Scaife. They must realize that all their good work is being undermined, tainted or otherwise sullied by teh climate crazie dripping off of Scaife's editorial page.

I feel sorry for them. I really do.

Another Lesson In How The Right Wing Message Machine Works

We'll start at the end and work backwards. Today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review we find an editorial that begins thusly:

Eric Holder's coddling of terrorists -- during both the Clinton and Obama administrations -- makes him manifestly unfit to be U.S. attorney general.

At a National Press Club conference in Washington this week, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc., and speakers personally affected by terrorist beneficiaries of Mr. Holder's lax approach laid out his damning record.

When we head to the website for America's Survival Inc., we find this:

America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) President Cliff Kincaid, who also serves as the Director of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Center for Investigative Journalism, has announced a national conference in Washington, D.C. to examine Communist Cuba’s sponsorship of anti-American terrorism and harboring of fugitives from justice and the need to keep Cuba on the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Evidence will also be presented of how Castro’s agents of influence continue subversive operations on American soil and how the Obama Administration’s expansion of travel to and from the communist island undermines American national security.

On June 29, the Trib's news division published this:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

Which then was reposted at the America's Survivial website here:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

And then finally editorialized this morning at the Tribune-Review.

Why the trail?

You guessed it. America's Survival's got some serious funding support from the foundations controlled by Trib owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.

• $200,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2010
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008
• $60,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007
• $110,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2007
• $100,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2006

That's about three-quarters of a million dollars worth of support from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Any mention of any of that in the coverage?

Nope. Not a peep. Even from the Trib's news division. It's one thing for the editorial page (which I am told has no connection with the news division) to want to cover for the boss, but it's another when the more or less straight news division does the same. It's an embarrassment all the way round.

And we didn't even get to the Scaife money used to support Kincaid's other employer, Accuracy in Media. According to the media transparency project (or whatever it's called) Scaife's supported AIM to the tune of $4.36 million dollars.

Why does all this matter? Think of it this way, if Scaife hadn't given all that money to America's Survival, then it probably wouldn't exist. And if it didn't exist, there probably wouldn't have been a conference/discussion about AG Eric Holder at the National Press Club. And if there wasn't a discussion of the AG, there wouldn't have been any news coverage of it in the Scaife owned Tribune-Review.

The fact that none of the financial ties that bind Kincaid to Scaife are mentioned in the Trib's coverage of ASI is another example of the journalistic conflict of interest that's defining the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's editorial page and has tainted the Trib's news division.

Anti-Science News (Climate Change Edition)

This week, our favorite Ex-Senator, Rick Santorum, came out and said it:

There is no such thing as global warming.

Watch it:


Rick must've missed the NOAA report that it was undeniable.

They got the charts, they got the graphs, they got the science.

Rick's got nothing.

Then there's this at the Trib:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled correctly that the Environmental Protection Agency -- not judges -- should lead "greenhouse gas" regulation under the Clean Air Act. But EPA's fallacious classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant was left unaddressed.

The 8-0 decision rejected a lawsuit that sought to use public-nuisance laws to force utilities to cut CO2 emissions.

And then:

Not at issue was EPA regulating CO2 as a pollutant -- an absurd label for a substance intrinsic to nature and living creatures that stretches the Clean Air Act too far.

The anti-CO2 efforts of the Obama administration's ideologically driven, anti-growth EPA are an end run around congressional rejection of "global warming" legislation premised on junk science.

A case involving that issue can't reach the Supreme Court soon enough.

See that last sentence? Scaife's braintrust has to know that that issue already has reached the Supreme Court. In 2007 and they found that CO2 can be regulated by the EPA.

From Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court held that:

Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Act’s capacious definition of “air pollutant,” EPA has statutory authority to regulate emission of such gases from new motor vehicles. That definition—which includes “any air pollution agent..., including any physical, chemical,...substance...emitted into...the ambient air...,”—embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe. Moreover, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are undoubtedly “physical [and] chemical...substance[s].”

Justice Stevens even began his decision with this:

A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a “greenhouse gas.”

Yet another example of Scaife's braintrust misleading his audience.

Then there's the scientist. Again from today's Trib:

A professor emeritus at Colorado State University who's a credentialed longtime member of the American Meteorological Society blasts the AMS for allowing a small band of administrators to "hijack" the group's mission in support of "climate change."

Bill Gray, on the website Climate Realists (climaterealists.com), writes of his "disappointment" with the AMS' "downward path" over the last decade in advocating anthropogenic global warming. This, he says, when many AMS members do not support that conclusion.

"We believe that humans are having little or no significant influence on the global climate and that the many Global Circulation Climate Model (GCM) results and the four (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports do not realistically give accurate future projections," Mr. Gray says.

The link leads ultimately to this piece at Icecap.us. Go read it. Then go back to NOAA's assertion that climate change is undeniable.

Then ask yourself the question "Does Gray's complaint about the AMS uproot all of that science?" If it does, then he's made his case. If it doesn't, then the science stands.

Simple and undeniable as that.

The Noise Machine At Work (Again)

Another lesson in how the right-wing noise machine works. Pay attention, please.

In today's Tribune-Review, there's an editorial that begins like this:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency soft-pedals rigorous analysis showing its policies kill growth and jobs while trumpeting as truth junk analysis portraying burdensome regulations as economically beneficial.

A new National Taxpayers Union (ntu.org) study makes the mendacity clear: The EPA publicly proclaims bogus findings from its second report on the Clean Air Act's costs and benefits that fit its anti-growth agenda -- but is mum about that report's contradictory findings of economic harm.

We've done this before and so I don't want to spend too much time on it.

According to the Mediamatters transparency project, the largest chunks of foundation money, by far, come from foundations controlled by the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Richard Mellon Scaife. About $1.5 million over the years (unadjusted for inflation, by the way).

So this is how the right wing noise machine works, Richard Mellon Scaife lays out gobs and gobs of money to support a conservative think tank (in this case the National Tax Payers Union). That think tank produces a report that is trumpeted on the pages of the Tribune-Review, the newspaper Richard Mellon Scaife owns.

And none of this is ever mentioned to the Trib's readership.

The circle jerk continues.

Another Urban Myth At The Trib

From today's Midweek Briefing:

The folks at Human Events, a conservative newspaper, have been running a series of "365 ways to drive a liberal crazy." They're culled from James Delingpole's book of the same name. No. 164: "Quote liberal hero Karl Marx: 'There is only one way to kill capitalism -- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.'" Sadly, liberals still won't get it.

To begin with, I can't see how Karl Marx is much of a liberal hero. Socialist hero, sure. Communist hero, definitely. But liberal hero? Only if you equate those three very different terms. But I guess in the collective hive-mind that is the Scaife braintrust (and remember they also believe climate change to be a hoax) anything to the right of Scaife himself is a radical Marxist. So this one's iffy at best.

But what of that quotation of Marx?

According to the Irregular Times, MARX NEVER SAID IT:

Anybody who’s actually read Karl Marx knows that Karl Marx would never have written those words. Marx saw taxes as connected to state power, and he held a dubious opinion of state power throughout history, up to and including the modern form of the democratic republic. Marx favored the smashing of the bourgeois state, not its engorgement through taxation.

But why believe the Irregular Times? I've never seen the site before. It could be the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic for all I know.

They do include a link to the Marx & Engels archive - pretty sharp for a schizophrenic, if you ask me.

There's a search engine attached to the archive so you can look to see if Marx actually said what Scaife's braintrust said it said. And so, when I search for the exact phrase "kill capitalism" I get nothing, bupkis, nada, the null set. In short, it ain't in there.

But what does Marx say about taxes? The Irregular Times furnishes us with something Marx did say:

It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!

So next time you meet a Tea Partier (or Sovereign Citizen, or Grover Norquist acolyte or any other right wing anti-tax zealot) just tell them that when they demand lower taxes in order to starve the guv'ment they're actually quoting Karl Marx.

That'll drive them crazy.

The Trib Calls The Kettle Biased

From the editorial page of today's Tribune-Review:

Federal Communications Commission documents confirm that the supposedly independent agency is anything but neutral on so-called "net neutrality."

The damning paper trail -- obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act -- begins after March 2009, when President Obama's "Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency," The Washington Times reports.

It shows coordination with the far-left group Free Press, which opposes faster Internet service for those willing to pay for it.

Free Press, partially funded by far-left billionaire George Soros, was founded by a Marxist journal's editor and a contributor to the leftist "flagship" The Nation, and advocates expanding government control.

Can you guess where this is going? Can you?

Scaife's braintrust is looking to undermine the credibility of Free Press by pointing out that it's "partially funded by far-left billionaire George Soros," but, of course, they conveniently fail to mention the money (more than $8 million, as it turns out) poured into Judicial Watch by far-right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Tribune-Review and boss of bosses at the editorial page there.
You can stop giggling now.

And they get "net neutrality" wrong as well. Here's how PC Magazine defines it:

A level playing field for Internet transport. It refers to the absence of restrictions or priorities placed on the type of content carried over the Internet by the carriers and ISPs that run the major backbones. It states that all traffic be treated equally; that packets are delivered on a first-come, first-served basis regardless from where they originated or to where they are destined.

Only in the echo chamber of the right wing media could this be called "government regulating online content" as the braintrust dutifully does later in the editorial.

And what of this "damning paper trail"? You can see the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch page here. Media matters describes what the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch found:

The evidence Judicial Watch uses to justify their allegation comes from emails between FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and media reform organization Free Press. The e-mails detail communications between Copps and Free Press regarding the placement of an op-ed in favor of net neutrality regulations (which would guarantee that internet service providers can't favor their own content over others) , as well as arrangements for a meeting between Copps and a representative of Free Press.

And they go on to say that:

None of this is unusual. Government officials regularly meet and speak before outside groups, like the conservative Heritage Foundation and the progressive Center For American Progress.

We can talk about the tens of millions Scaife's given to the Heritage Foundation (which also opposes neutrality on the net, by the way) but I think we all know that story.

Only in the wingnut press could "neutrality" become a guv'ment intrusion on our liberties. And by "our" they mean "big business."

Of course.

Yawn...They're Doing It Again

Who? The Editorial Board of the Tribune-Review.

What are they doing? Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust is, yet again, failing to disclose his financial ties to the think-tank they reference in an editorial. Take a look:

The Obama administration's lax immigration enforcement includes failure to reform immigration courts that illegal aliens routinely ignore.

Mark Metcalf, a former Miami immigration court judge, extensively details the problems in a new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report, "Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts."

Media Matters lists about $1.4 million dollars in grants from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife between 1991 and 2007. This does not count the additional grants of $150,000 and $125,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008 and in 2009, respectively.

Of course no mention of the millions of dollars of Scaife Foundation money funneled to the CIS can be found in the editorial on Scaife's editorial page. That would be transparent but that's not how the right wing propaganda machine works.

Now take a closer look at the editorial. Or you can read the report first hand, if you like. Notice something? The Obama Administration is being criticized for (now wait for it) not cleaning up a mess left behind by the Bush Administration.

From the editorial:

He says deportation orders are rarely enforced -- in part because immigration judges lack authority to enforce their own orders -- even when those targeted ignore them or skip court. Among 1.9 million aliens freed to await trial from 1996 through 2009, 40 percent vanished.

Department of Justice statistics mask the grim truth, too. Justice contends 39 percent of aliens missed immigration court dates in 2005 and 2006; Mr. Metcalf says the real figure is 59 percent.

Look at the dates. Tell me again who was president from 2001 to 2009? This can't be Clinton's fault can it? I mean he was President from 1996 to 2001. Those were also the Lewinsky years. Brought to you, in part, by the Scaife funded Arkansas project. Thanks, Dick.

There's some more from Metcalf's report:

From 2002 through 2006 — in the shadow of 9/11 — 50 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. Court numbers show 360,199 aliens out of 713,974 dodged court.

In the Shadow of 9/11 the Bush Administration allowed this to happen?

And it's Obama's fault for not cleaning it up in 2 years.

This is Scaife's braintrust at work.

Thanks again, Dick.

Yes, Let's Meet David Evans

From the editorial page at today's Tribune-Review:

It's most unsettling to the cluckers of climate change when one of their own leading adherents, who formerly toed the line, becomes skeptical and drop-kicks the "science."

Meet David Evans.

A scientist with six university degrees, Mr. Evans consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (today's Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005. He studied carbon in plants, debris, forestry and agricultural products.

The remarks Scaife's braintrust uses come from this column at the Financial Times.

The thing you should've noticed in the op-ed is how the braintrust describes Evans - "a scientist with six university degrees." But which six? You'd think one of them is in climate science.

But you'd be wrong.

Here's the description from the bottom of the FT column:

David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23.

Given that the Trib cut and pasted whole phrases from this description, they had to know that he wasn't a climate scientist. But still, it's a PhD in electrical engineering - and that's nothing to sneeze at.

But you'd think that were he an expert in the field, he'd have some peer-reviewed publications under his belt, right?

Um, no. According to this "skeptic watch" page, Evens published one peer-reviewed paper. In 1987. And it wasn't about climate change. Interesting.

Also the material in the presentation Evans made at that Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, that became the FT column that the braintrust used to "debunk" climate science was itself debunked.

In 2007.

Nice going, guys. You made this one easy.

The Trib Should Check Their Science

From the generally scientifically illiterate pages of the Tribune-Review, today we find yet another attack on compact fluorescent light bulbs. This time Scaife's braintrust is using material quoted from that respected and science journal political online magazine The American Thinker:

Pricey compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) are even more dangerous -- and make even less economic sense -- than previously thought. They're fire hazards and mercury's just the tip of their toxic iceberg.

Edmund Contoski reports for the American Thinker that Telstar- and Electra-brand CFLs were recalled on May 12 as overheating fire hazards. And he notes that cleaning up after CFLs flame out usually breaks environmental regulations.

And so on.

I was curious what a real science magazine had to say about CFLs. In 2007 Popular Mechanics did a side by side comparison between CFLs and the incandescent bulb. Know what they found? That's right:

The results surprised us. Even though the incandescent bulb measured slightly brighter than the equivalent CFLs, our subjects didn't see any dramatic difference in brightness. And here was the real shocker: When it came to the overall quality of the light, all the CFLs scored higher than our incandescent control bulb. In other words, the new fluorescent bulbs aren't just better for both your wallet and the environment, they produce better light.

Then they alsopublished this "reality check" regarding the newer better lightbulbs. Some highlights. On the safety of the mercury:

How much mercury is contained in a CFL?
Each bulb contains an average of 5 milligrams of mercury, “which is just enough to cover a ballpoint pen tip,” says Leslie, associate director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer. “Though it’s nothing to laugh at, unless you wipe up mercury [without gloves] and then lick your hand, you’re probably going to be okay.”

On the energy savings by using a CFL:

How much of a difference can CFLs really make?
According to EnergyStar—a program run by the Environmental Protection Agency—if each U.S. home replaced just one of its incandescent bulbs with a CFL, the electricity saved each year could light 3 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of 800,000 cars.

But the big concern about CFLs revolves around the mercury used in them. And to that issue Popular Mechanics points out:

How much mercury do power plants emit to light a CFL?
About 50 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. is generated by coal-fired power plants. When coal burns to produce electricity, mercury naturally contained in the coal releases into the air. In 2006, coal-fired power plants produced 1,971 billion kilowatt hours (kwh) of electricity, emitting 50.7 tons of mercury into the air—the equivalent amount of mercury contained in more than 9 billion CFLs (the bulbs emit zero mercury when in use or being handled).

Approximately 0.0234 mg of mercury—plus carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—releases into the air per 1 kwh of electricity that a coal-fired power plant generates. Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, then, a plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.

So let's see. A real science journal vs a political opinion magazine. Where would you get your science?

To hear the chicken littles at the Trib describe it, a CFL packs enough plutonium to kill each and everyone of us twelve times over. Here's the Guv'ment's cleanup guidelines for CFLs.

The Stupidest Thing I Ever Read In The Trib

From today's Sunday Pops section of the op-ed page:

And, of course, this was inevitable: a sideshow of unfounded speculation that killer tornadoes are the result of supposed climate change. NBC weatherman Al Roker was one of the first cluckers out of the box to mention climate change, according to The Daily Caller. Perhaps Mr. Roker and other climate crusaders could lend some of their credibility to doomsdayologist Harold Camping. After all, he, too, dabbles in very much the same "science."

If this is the Daily Caller article to which Scaife's braintrust is referring, they didn't even get it right. No where in there does it say that Roker was one of the first to mention climate change. But this is what The Daily Caller says Roker says:

On Monday’s “Martin Bashir Show” program on MSNBC, “Today” weatherman Al Roker had a theory on what’s behind the weather. Broadcasting live from the site of St. John’s Hospital in Joplin that took a hard hit from Sunday’s weather, Roker assessed the tornado that hit Joplin to be on the top-end of the Fujita Scale.

“Well you know the National Weather Service is probably on the ground now and they will assess the damage,” Roker said. “Some people are saying an EF3. I would put this probably between an EF4 and EF5, which is the top of the Fujita Scale.”

Roker also offered a theory on why tornadoes are seemingly touching down in more urban areas as of late. His answer: Climate change.

Unfortunately for Scaife's braintrust, the speculation isn't unfounded. Take a look at this from 2007:

Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including "severe thunderstorms" that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground.

This information can be derived from the temperatures and humidities predicted by a climate computer model, according to the new study published on August 17 in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. It predicts that in a warmer climate, stronger and more severe storms can be expected, but with fewer storms overall.

On the other hand, it'll take decades of data to conclude whether the current season of bad weather is an anomaly or a trend. But as Bryan Walsh at Time.com writes:

But guess what? It doesn't matter. We already know more than enough about climate change to fear it. We know enough to embark on the long-term changes to our energy economy needed to reduce carbon emissions and blunt the impact of what no less than the Department of Defense has called a major threat to national security.

Did you know that? Did you know that the Department of Defense has called climate change a threat to national security? I do.

The braintrust obviously doesn't. For the scientifically ignorant braintrust, it's on as solid ground as Harold Camping's conclusion that the world was going to end on May 21.

We can, perhaps, forgive the good Reverend for allowing his faith to shred his rational thinking. When I think of Reverend Camping I wonder whether Abul'-Ala' al-Ma'arri was on to something. We are, after all, a nation where a quarter of us don't believe in the science of evolution, so how small a jump is it for a fringe to count the begats to "establish" the beginning of the world and that to "establish" the date of The Flood and then from that to "establish" the end of the world?

Not much. Obviously.

But for a "news" source (even one as tenuously connected to the news as Scaife's op-ed braintrust) to equate such real science as climate change with such drivel as Camping's end-that-wasn't is just beyond stupid.

Even for them.

The Trib on HB 574

Maria's already written about the bill here.

While I have no problem pummeling Scaife's braintrust when they deserve it, my inner sense of fairness compels me to point out (every now and then) when they get it right.

Today is one of those days. Take a look at what they have to say about HR 574:

Abortion is legal. And facilities performing abortions should be held to basic standards that apply to physicians' offices and outpatient settings.

But a bill that has passed the Pennsylvania House is nothing more than a back-door attempt to limit abortions by limiting the number of facilities performing them and increasing the costs of those facilities that might be able to overcome government's overreach.

House Bill 574, adopted last week, would require the commonwealth's 20 free-standing abortion clinics to meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, facilities which provide more complicated and risky procedures. It's in response to the West Philadelphia "House of Horrors" abortion case in January.

Among the proposed new law's measures, however, are those that strike us as "slap measures," quite expensive and specifically designed not to enhance care but to eliminate abortion providers. Among them are requirements for medical-grade elevators, much larger procedure rooms and a full-time registered nurse being on staff even when abortions are not being performed.

A sound litmus test for the legislation is this: Had it been in place, would the rogue actions of the Philadelphia facility been prevented? No. Punishing safe abortion clinics because of one horrific bad apple exposes the real agenda of the 148 state House members who voted for H.B. 574.

When they're right, they're right. Doesn't mean they're right on anything else they're wrong about (for instance, global warming) but it's good to see they're not entirely without rational thought.

By the way, did you know that Mayor Luke's brother (a Democrat) voted FOR this rather odious legislation?

Go take a look.