What gives with the climate?

What gives with the climate?

By Anthony J. DeBlasi

My take on global warming is perhaps not worth much in these days of "scientific" claims.  But I have not heard or read anyone else say what I am about to say, so let me set it down here.
As a gardener, I have always kept a keen eye on temperature extremes.  Over a period of about 60 years, I have noticed that every year breaks a record for the coolest or coldest temperature recorded – or the warmest or hottest temperature recorded – on some day or days of the given year, in the areas where I have lived.
I noticed that the record-breakers for coldest and warmest dates sometimes occur in the same year.  Admittedly, this is too small a sample to place much significance in it with respect to trends.  But these back-and-forth warmest-to-coolest swings over my own lifetime point to a reality that needs to be faced: meteorology is an imperfect predictive science when it comes to trends, especially long-range projections predicated on statistical measurements.  The "Butterfly Effect," once called "The Fly in the Ointment," throws computer models in a dither often enough to keep meteorologists guessing and hedging.  How often have we heard the weather guys say the computer models can't agree on a given forecast of the weather?
And if well honed computer models can't always agree on near-sight weather patterns, given precise satellite input data, then how can we expect experimental-stage computer models to agree on mega-far-sight weather patterns, given conflicting input data?
Is it not true that a statistical net will never trap all the butterflies that can skew a model?  As one of a team of computer specialists for the Defense Department, years ago, I know the difficulty of producing a "faultless program."
After all is said that can be said about this issue, it must be asked: is it possible to do anything about the weather?  If so, we are not there yet, and judging from evidence thus far, we are ages away from such technological achievement.  As for adverse effects of man-made pollution, such as those of fossil fuel usage, bear in mind that natural polluters – erupting volcanoes, for example – trump human pollution by an embarrassing margin.
Since predicting a long-term warming cycle is at best a maybe, as responsible research indicates, the very expensive rush to judgment must be tempered in the light of all the unknowns and contradictions that affect the issue.

It's Time To Prosecute The Clinton Political Crime Syndicate

It's Time To Prosecute The Clinton Political Crime Syndicate

• SCOTT S. POWELL
• 12:52 PM ET

Few would deny that the ascendance of the United States from colonial poverty to the world's top economic and military superpower in just 200 years is largely attributable to principles and rule of law in our founding documents enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
And so it should come as no surprise that America's decline in the last 25 years has coincided with the erosion of the U.S. Constitution and the corruption of the nation's law enforcement and judicial system.
What has most greased the skids of America's decline toward the ways of a banana republic is the emergence and acceptance of two-tiered justice and attendant cronyism and political corruption. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the pass given to the Clintons, and particularly former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, taking with them over $190,000 worth of heirloom china, flatware, rugs, and furniture as they cleared out — much of which they later had to return — they claimed they were flat broke.
Their net worth today is now in excess of $150 million, accumulated not by traditional means of work and investment, but rather by pay-for-play influence peddling through speeches and Clinton Foundation fundraising — with the tacit understanding that the Clintons would be in a position to return favors to donors after Hillary won the 2016 presidential election.

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An elementary role of the U.S. law enforcement and justice system is to punish lawbreakers. But more important is the judicial system's critical function in preventing future crime.
If the Clintons skate,  we as a nation are not only acknowledging acceptance of a two-tiered justice system, but we are getting on a waterslide to banana republic status, with political crime and injustice likely to get worse, perhaps risking failure as a nation.
It is a felony, punishable by fine and imprisonment up to 20 years, according to 18 U.S. Code 1519, to destroy, conceal, cover up or falsify any record or document whether on paper or on any digital device with the intent to impede or obstruct the investigation of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States.
The pattern of deceit through controlling  and destroying documents and records in order to facilitate and obfuscate self-dealing and political crime started early in Hillary's career.
While her husband faced impeachment, stiff monetary fines and a near million dollar settlement as well as disbarment for five years, Hillary Clinton skated with no accountability for anything in her incredibly checkered career.
There were the missing records documenting the statistically impossible profits from cattle futures trading, the disappearance of Hillary Clinton's billing records from the Rose Law Firm — under subpoena by Federal and Congressional investigators — where she previously worked on matters related to the Whitewater real estate sham, the removal and destruction of a hard drive from the computer of  her former Rose Law Firm partner and then-White House Deputy Legal Counsel Vince Foster, whose death by gunshot wound was ruled a suicide in the midst of the Whitewater investigation.
And then there were the missing documents from the White House Travelgate scandal — documents that would surface two years later — showing Hillary's  duplicity and contradiction of prior statements.
As egregious, scandalous  and unlawful as much of this was, it was small time and just a warm-up to what was to come after Hillary became Secretary of State,  at which time she insisted on using a private computer server and email address — about which she was warned would be vulnerable to hacking and security breaches — for the purpose of avoiding public scrutiny and accountability while indirectly helping the Clinton Foundation raise enormous sums from governments and parties with whom she was also interfacing as secretary of state.
It is now clear that this was all done to evade Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and federal government record-keeping laws and obfuscate conflicts of interest while serving as secretary of state.
But it all began to unravel after Hillary left office and was required to testify before a House committee on Benghazi in October 2015 and answer questions about the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Consulate on September 11, 2012.
It was those hearings that brought to light the existence of Hillary Clinton's secret, unsecured, do-it-yourself server.
And then it was learned that she not only stored classified and top secret information in an unsecured location, but that she had also authorized the destruction of subpoenaed evidence — some 33,000 emails — after she was put on notice of the existence of the subpoena.
These violations are felonies with stiff penalties and there were at least six other laws that appear violated for which Hillary could be indicted.
What is now waking up Americans about the seriousness of Clinton family self-dealing and the need for prosecution is the realization that the Clintons were at the center of what appears to be the biggest political corruption scandal in U.S. history.
The fact that the Clinton Foundation's single largest aggregate donation of some $145 million came from various parties linked to the Uranium One sale to the Russian government nuclear agency Rosatom makes this the mega-case of Russian influence and corruption.
Before the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution were even written, Samuel Adams observed that, "neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."
Political corruption in America has now become like cancer destroying people's trust in government and their respect for the rule of law.
The inclination to give a pass to lawbreaking politicians once out of office would be a grave mistake.
Boldness is needed and there is simply no more important or cathartic action to take to restore faith in our system, equality before the law and to rein in cronyism and double standards than the prosecution of the masters of political corruption — the Clinton crime syndicate.

The Anti-Conservative Mind

The Anti-Conservative Mind

By Richard M. Gamble

The Age of Trump has shattered old alliances and forged new ones.  Leaving many reeling and disoriented, the Trump phenomenon brings a fresh opportunity to examine the first principles of conservatism.
This coming year supplies an excellent starting point for this project.  It marks the centennial of the birth of Russell Kirk.  His landmark 1953 book, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana, gave post-World War II conservatism much of its intellectual coherence – a coherence that is now in shreds.
At the time Kirk wrote, liberalism dominated the academy as orthodoxy in American politics and culture – so much so that Kirk originally wanted to title his book The Conservatives' Rout.  It eventually appeared in print not as The Conservatives' Rout but as The Conservative Mind.  It became a bestseller, and it helped several generations of budding conservatives grapple with the intellectual tradition they suspected they might be part of.  Kirk stitched together a retrospective genealogy for an Anglo-American affirmation of "an enduring moral order," of the weight of custom in human judgment, the prescriptive power of the past, and the need for gradual reform of the ills of society, along with prudence, healthy diversity, suspicion of utopian schemes to remake man and the world, fear of concentrated power, a respect for and deference to localism, and the primacy of voluntary action within face-to-face communities as opposed to the collectivism of the modern bureaucratic state.
Implicit in Kirk's retelling of Anglo-American intellectual history lies an alternative temperament we could call "the Anti-Conservative Mind."  As an ideology, the Anti-Conservative Mind is more unified than the Conservative Mind.  It animates a self-conscious movement.  It marches in lockstep with what it assumes is the winning side of history.  The Anti-Conservative Movement knows its enemy.  It holds itself together by means of what sociologists call the "negative reference group" – the dreaded conservatives.  Conservatives, if they do mobilize, scramble to sand-bag against the rising sea.  Anti-Conservatives topple every impediment to their vision of final human emancipation from the past. 
Progressives tell their own story in this manner, hailing victories over the illiberal past and vaunting their plan for redemption in the future.  But there is another side to their story: the record of what they dismantled in the culture and civilization of the West.
What if conservatives were to turn the tables on the progressives and tell their opponents' story in terms of their longing to "wipe the slate clean" by stoking the fire on the Altar of Progress?  What if conservatives adopted a rhetorical strategy that named their opponents the Anti-Conservatives?  Russell Kirk subtitled The Conservative Mind "From Burke to Santayana" and later "From Burke to Eliot."  Surely the same type of genealogical reconstruction might be done with their opponents.
I am not saying the story of radical movements in Europe and America has not been told – far from it!  I am suggesting that conservatives now gather up the threads of that story and rename it to show that conservatism is an affirmation and progressivism is a denial.  We might title this study "The Anti-Conservative Mind" and rework the summary of Kirk's dissertation at the University of St. Andrews – "a study in politics, literature, and philosophy to trace historically the course of Anti-Conservative thought in Britain and America from the beginning of the French Revolution to the present day."
Although many texts could be used in this corollary to Kirk's project, few articulate the Anti-Conservative mind more clearly than progressive historian James Harvey Robinson.  In his book The New History, Robinson examined "The Spirit of Conservatism in the Light of History" – the title of the volume's final essay.  In thirty pages, conservatism is tried, convicted, and banished for its crimes.  It is possible to distill from this essay a few principles of Anti-Conservatism:
The Anti-Conservative Mind affirms conscious human progress, a comparatively recent phenomenon in the world, a movement that is accelerating, certain, and indefinite.
The Anti-Conservative Mind wants something it calls "our thought" in the present to be "revolutionized" in light of the accumulating knowledge of modern science.
The Anti-Conservative Mind lives in something it calls "our own day" – the standard by which to measure and judge all preceding generations.  The past, even the recent past, is relative barbarism compared to the wonders of the anticipated future.
The Anti-Conservative Mind deliberately "undermines reverence for the past" and works to weaken the past's authority over the mind and habits of man.
The Anti-Conservative Mind deploys the study of history as a weapon.  Once the province of the conservative, history can and should be turned on the conservative to defeat him as the enemy of progress.
The Anti-Conservative Mind rejects a fixed human nature.  The study of the past shows man to be entirely a product of historical circumstances and therefore entirely a product of nurture, not nature.  As such, the Anti-Conservative Mind believes that man can be altered at will.  Education must be used to radicalize boys and girls and prevent the conservative temperament from being transmitted to posterity.
The Anti-Conservative Mind maintains a mystical faith in human betterment.  In Robinson's words: "Even those of us who have little taste for mysticism have to recognize a mysterious unconscious impulse which appears to be a concomitant of natural order. It would seem as if this impulse has always been unsettling the existing conditions and pushing forward, groping after something more elaborate and intricate than what already exists."
The Anti-Conservative Mind believes that only those who agree with the radicals are entitled to an opinion.  Radicals think and operate on a "higher plane" than conservatives.
The Anti-Conservative Mind knows that the conservative's sins are legion.  Chief among them is his poverty of imagination and intelligence.  He is complacent and lethargic.  He is dead weight on the chariot of progress.  Indeed, the conservative commits the unforgivable sin.  Robinson spotted the guilty party: "[a]t last, perhaps, the long-disputed sin against the Holy Ghost has been found; it may be the refusal to cooperate with the vital principle of betterment. History would seem, in short, to condemn the principle of conservatism as a hopeless and wicked anachronism."
In 1912, Robinson sounded profound, and his sweeping vision counted as penetrating insight into the pattern of history.  Only two years later, Europe plunged into the bloodiest war to date in human history.  Promises of progress seemed confused at best.  Slaughter had become scientifically, technologically efficient, and the will to use that efficiency proved vigorous and widespread.  The great tragedy was that the Great War turned out to be merely the First World War of the brutal twentieth century.
An expanded study of what has held together the Anti-Conservative Mind over the centuries might show more clearly than ever before what holds together the Conservative Mind.  And what gives coherence to the conservative mind may not be at all what unifies the brand of "movement" conservatism on tap at Beltway think-tanks and media outlets or that helps the Republican Party rally the troops.  Indeed, this project might well redraw the boundaries between liberal and conservative in American life.  Unexpected similarities and differences might appear.
The conservatism that the Anti-Conservatives have always feared and opposed goes much deeper in human nature, history and American culture.  It has not been routed.

Obama Was a State Sponsor of Terror

Obama Was a State Sponsor of Terror

By Daniel John Sobieski

It should not surprise or shock anyone that President Barack Hussein Obama has been revealed to have derailed the investigation and prosecution of Iran’s terrorist sock puppet, Hezb’allah, and its drug-running operation in order to complete the fatally flawed Iran nuclear deal. Obama gave aid and comfort to terrorist groups and their state sponsors from the day he was sworn in, to the point of actual criminality.
Consider the case of Bowe Bergdahl, the deserter who left his post and his comrades in an Afghanistan combat zone to “find himself” and also to find the Taliban. Former U.N. ambassador and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, propagator of the Benghazi video lie, laughably said on the same talk show circuit that Bowe Bergdahl had “served with distinction.” This was the administration view of the man for whom Obama would trade key Taliban leaders in our custody.
President Obama welcomed and commiserated with Bowe Bergdahl’s parents in the Rose Garden on May 31, 2014. It would be stretching credulity to beyond the breaking point to believe President Obama did not know when it was announced we were trading five top Taliban commanders, soon to be free to return to the terrorist battlefield, for Bergdahl.
Even if Bergdahl was not a deserter, the trade would have been a bad deal. As Investor’s Business Daily noted in an editorial charging “Obama Gave Material Assistance To Our Taliban Enemy,” President Obama committed a federal crime by trading Taliban leaders for Bergdahl:

As former congressman and Afghanistan veteran Allen West points out, President Obama signed into law only months ago the National Defense Authorization Act, which makes it a crime to offer or provide any material support to terrorist groups. It makes no exception as to who and under which circumstances.
The Taliban is considered a non-state terrorist group to which Obama has returned five of the worst terrorists held at Guantanamo. They are not foot soldiers and this exchange was not at the end of a war, when prisoner swaps often happen. They are four-star general equivalents who will return to the battlefield to target and kill Americans again. If that's not material assistance, what is?...
"We have a federal statute which makes it a felony to provide material assistance to any terrorist organization," said Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano in support of West's opinion. "It could be money, maps, professional services, any asset whatsoever, include human assets."

hat Obama would endanger American security for a dubious photo-op and help empty a Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility he had pledged to close is beyond the pale. But then so is going to bed to rest up for a Las Vegas fundraiser the night four Americans were killed in Benghazi, including a U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens. Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice couldn’t bring themselves to blame the terrorist groups that attacked in Benghazi, including Ansar al-Sharia, or even to utter the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” They preferred to spread the lie that a video was responsible, a lie they repeated on national TV, before the United Nations and to the parents of the Benghazi dead before their sons’ caskets:

Last Thursday, Judicial Watch issued a press release announcing that on Feb. 11 it had "uncovered documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing that top aides for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including her then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, knew from the onset that the Benghazi mission compound was under attack by armed assailants tied to a terrorist group."
The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, make no mention of a reaction to an Internet video.
But they do contain references to an attack for which the al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia had taken credit, information available to the State Department before it released the statement implicating a video.

President Obama and his administration precipitously withdrew from Iraq, snatching defeat from President Bush’s victory, and then ignored intelligence warnings on the rise of ISIS for a year: Obama once told CNN that the rise and expansion of the Islamic State was “not on my intelligence radar” As the Washington Examiner reported:

President Obama admitted to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, in a TV special "The Legacy of Barack Obama," that his administration underestimated the Islamic State terrorist group.
"The ability of ISIL to not just mass inside of Syria, but then to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul, for example, that was not on my intelligence radar screen," Obama said in a pre-taped interview that aired Wednesday evening.

Well, in order to see something on your radar, you actually have to look at it, and the fact is that President Obama from the start ignored his daily intelligence briefings, including the ones about ISIS that he ignored for a year. The fact is that President Obama, who famously dismissed ISIS as a “JV team,” ignored the intelligence reports of the rise of the Islamic State and the danger it posed. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, Obama’s later promise to “degrade and destroy” ISIS was an empty threat by a President who could have destroyed ISIS in the cradle but didn’t:

Degrade? Degrading has been the foreign policy of a president who recently said that he didn't have a strategy yet for dealing with the Islamic State's butchery after watching it train and prepare for a year in its Syrian base before its "sudden" expansion into Iraq.
A former Pentagon official told Fox News that Obama received specific intelligence in daily briefings about the Islamic State's rise. The information was said to be "granular" in detail, laying out IS' intentions and capabilities for at least a year before it seized big chunks of Iraqi territory and started beheading Americans.
Obama's indifference to the briefings was an issue during the 2012 campaign, when former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen observed that Obama personally attended only 44% of them. Obama's perceived lack of interest in a terror war, which he claimed was won prior to the Benghazi attack, mirrors his reported lack of interest in the rise of the Islamic State.

So with Obama’s turning a blind eye to the terrorist threats posed by the Taliban, Ansar Al-Sharia, and ISIS, even offering material aid and comfort to the Taliban, should we be surprised that he flew pallets containing $1.7 billion in cash to Iran, cash used to fund terrorist groups like Hizb’allah whose drug-running he excused and ignored?
Just as he was an accomplice to gunrunning in Operation Fast and Furious, which got Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and many others killed, now we know Pressident Obama was so intent on getting any kind of nuclear deal with the state sponsor of terror known as Iran that he was willing to derail efforts that were about to shut down Hizb’allah’s drug running activities inside the United States:

In order to keep the Iran nuclear deal on track, Obama gave a free pass to Hezbollah’s drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations, including crimes unfolding inside the United States, Politico reported.
A Drug Enforcement Administration campaign, “Project Cassandra,” was launched to target the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah’s illicit networks, tracing the actions “to the innermost circle of Hizb’allah and its state sponsors in Iran,” according to the online political news outlet…
David Asher, a Defense Department illicit finance analyst who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra, said the Obama White House “ripped apart” their efforts.
“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” Asher said. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”
The closer Obama got to cementing the Iran nuclear deal, Asher said, the more difficult it was to conduct their investigation into Hezbollah activities.

Obama shut down the opportunity to end Hizb’allah’s drug trafficking operation, putting the lives of American youth at risk, in order to cement his legacy in the fatally flawed Iran nuclear deal. As Josh Meyer detailed in Politico:

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hizbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

Coupled with his material aid and comfort to the Taliban, Obama’s obstruction of justice in shutting down Hizb’allah’s drug-running operation and failing to prosecute those running it constitutes crimes against the United States worthy of investigation, prosecution, and, yes, incarceration.

Is Working Well within a Group the Essence of Education?

Is Working Well within a Group the Essence of Education?

By Robert Holland

According to a new twist to an international test, American students are much better at group collaboration than they are doing academic work on their own. If true, is that an advancement or setback for education in America?
One thing is certain: This first-ever attempt at assessing collaborative problem-solving (CPS) -- the holy grail for workplace-oriented education reform -- did succeed in vaulting American teenagers to a much more respectable ranking among the world’s developed nations than their scores on individual tests of mathematics, science, and reading ever have.
On previous triennial testing of 15-year-olds by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, U.S. students’ performance has been mediocre, at best, and often closer to worst than first.
For instance, the latest batch of PISA scores from the 2015 round of testing, which were released in November, show American individual scores in mathematics ranking 40th out of 70 nations and other entities. (Average PISA score: 490. U.S. average: 470.) However, on the new assessment of the so-called “soft, 21st-century” social skill of CPS, the United States ranked 13th, rarefied air for Americans in these international comparisons.
PISA officials said they ventured into the collaborative realm because business leaders informed them the ability to work in groups is what they seek from their workers. That is no surprise, because business, government, and foundation elites have put preparation of children to solve problems in workforce groups high on their school-reform agendas, beginning with the Outcome-Based Education craze of the 1990s and continuing through the current drive for Common Core standardization.
On the Common Core State Standards website, a set of frequently asked questions provides this indication of the importance the standards assign to student collaboration: “The middle school and high school standards call on students to practice applying mathematical ways of thinking to real-world issues and challenges. Across the English language arts and mathematics standards, skills critical to each content area are emphasized. In particular, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and critical-thinking skills are interwoven into the standards.”
PISA had received related criticism for focusing too heavily on skills transmitted expertly via the structured educational systems of South Asian nations, which emphasize the sort of repetitive drills and memorization detested by American progressives. Thus, adding CPS to the testing mix could help apologists for U.S. government schools soft-pedal their failures to teach kids the basics of literacy and computation.
Indeed, a relatively good grade on CPS could help excuse results of a separate international literacy test recently showing U.S. 4th-grade literacy skills tanking since 2011, the very year Common Core began to infect the government education standards of most states.
Interestingly, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea were the highest scorers in the softer-skills CPS testing, despite lacking the U.S. elites’ obsession with compulsory teamwork. They also were top-10 scorers for individual achievement. 
A legitimate question arises as to the accuracy of the first-year assessment of collaboration. At this point, CPS-PISA is more comparable to an experiment than an established form of testing. For instance, computer simulations are used to assess a student test-taker’s ability to adjust to the human dynamics within the supposedly cooperative group. That method must have its limitations.
A much more important question is whether functioning as part of a workforce team should be such an all-consuming feature of education -- or corporate management, for that matter. Legitimate criticisms of groupthink are out there, just don’t expect them to be the feature of any lavishly financed educators’ or workforce-preparation conferences.
In an Inc.com article, "Collaboration Creates Mediocrity, Not Excellence, According to Science," Geoffrey James cited a study of collaborative work environments that found “cooperative contexts proved socially disadvantageous for high performers.” It turns out that instead of viewing top performers as inspiring models, “mediocre employers tend to see them as threats, either to their own position in the company or to their own feelings of self-worth.” What often results are internal efforts to sabotage the work of the stars, or to steal credit for it.
Open, unwalled working or instructional areas intended to foster togetherness and collaboration pose special problems for introverts, who need privacy to be productive. Susan Cain has devoted a book and a blog to fighting what she calls “The New Groupthink” and advocating for introverts. Cain reminds us that “solitude has long been associated with creativity and transcendence.” As Cain notes, Picasso said, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”
“A central narrative of many religions is the seeker -- Moses, Jesus, Buddha -- who goes off by himself and brings profound insights back to the community,” Cain added.
Obviously, teamwork can play a role in final decision-making. However, education should be about preparing well-informed, independent-thinking individuals who can bring fresh ideas to the table. That’s hard to do when children are trained to become nothing more than cogs in elites’ exceptionally large wheel.

The Natural History of Tax Cuts

The Natural History of Tax Cuts

By Dean Kedenburg

Just what is the true efficacy of tax cuts?  This is a question with a simple answer but some tortuous details.
For those who argue that leaving money in the hands of the people who earn it fails to generate economic and social growth, here are some other simple questions.
Did you stoke the embers of the fire in your cave this morning, hone spear tips for a hunt, or wrestle with a hand-hewn yoke and some surly oxen?
Or, in a more modern scenario, did you derive your daily exercise by cranking over the Tin Lizzy in your driveway, greet the iceman's knock on your door, or dial up (literally) a friend to chat?
Today, the great majority of us live with the benefits of climate-controlled housing, personal transportation and communication, excessive nourishment, state-of-the-art medical care, and universal education – all unimaginable to even the most prescient of our forbears.
Where did all this stuff come from?
This stuff is the product of capital – the application of human capital employing resources in the form of financial capital toward the advancement of products and services.  So who wields capital better: the taxman or the taxpayer?
Research and development markets give the nod to the taxpayer by a current margin of three to one.  Twenty-fifteen National Science Foundation estimates of total R&D expenditures show 69% funding by the business sector versus 23% federal sponsorship.
The spread between these two numbers is indicative of the roles the private and public sectors play in society.  Much of the public-sector effort is aimed at basic research, while the private-sector adds a hefty measure of development to bring the fruits of research into the hands of the consumer.  For example, the genesis of the worldwide web was a government creation known as ARPNET, but this fledgling network came replete with a stamp reading "Not for Commercial Use Under Penalty of Law."  The private sector latched on to the web concept, raised R&D capital for everything except a stamp, and set forth to transform the world.
The history of the internet also illuminates a common fundamental misunderstanding of the process of economic and social growth.  Pundits habitually insist on demanding a clear temporal link between cause and effect of any event, but timelines of results can range from micro-seconds for a stock market to decades or longer for societal shifts.
While it seems as though the internet has exploded upon us in short order, early commercial applications such as CompuServe date back to 1969.  The internet march from a modest initial user base to becoming a part of the everyday landscape for more than 3 billion users (almost half the world's population) has been a nearly 50-year development.  Who could have predicted that the progeny of a CompuServe meme would grow up to be smart watch apps 50 years later?  Results often take time.
Detractors of the idea of tax cuts for economic growth tend to cherry-pick one or more of their favorite historical time slices to advance their thesis.  That's simply bad science, leading to biased findings and confusion.  The truth is that economic growth always moves in fits and starts.  Trying to capture definitive results within a specific time-period yields many a false conclusion; it is the lessons of history that fill out the story.
Results also need...well, results.  Development of ideas far outruns research.  Research creates sophisticated circuitry; development builds smart phones.  To borrow from the oft cited baseball analogy, the public sector is quite capable of designing a hit or even a home run, but it's the private sector that invests in a bat and steps up to the plate.
The path of economic growth is far wider and smoother when the taxpayer retains capital instead of ceding it to the taxman.  Most of that stuff we enjoy as a part of our quality of life emerged from the sweat of private investment, with an honorable mention to assists from the public side.
Every dollar retained in the hands of the taxpayer, short of imperiling the primacy of public safety, improves the forecast for more good stuff to come.  America is a remarkable place, sporting less than 5% of the world population while generating about 25% of global GDP.  Now, imagine the United Stated having leaned heavily socialistic during the 19th or 20th century, draining resources away from innovators and developers and toward the state.  What are the chances that we would be living the 2017 lifestyle we take for granted?
Would we be driving Teslas or Ladas, watching Lucy on CRTs or HBO on HDTV, dancing with new hips or poking through the park with canes, traveling everywhere on jets or booking a seat on a DC-3?  Would life as we know it be 2017 or 1950 or...?
The trail of details in the aftermath of any tax policy will always foster an industry of speculation for myopic politicians and economists, but history proves that the best way to distance ourselves from caves and Model-Ts is investing in people, not in government.

Clean Coal Is Surging

Clean Coal Is Surging

By Richard Zuber

Pouring more cold water over prophecies of coal's terminal decline, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently published its Coal Report 2017, which shows chatter about the fossil fuel's imminent demise as nothing more than wishful thinking.  Far from being the spent resource the green lobby would have the public see, coal is making a forceful comeback.  While key markets such as China, India, and the United States show stronger than expected demand, the report also predicts a growing need for coal in the developing world – an undeniable game-changer proving coal's resilience in the future.
The main takeaway from the report is that coal consumption in the developing world is set to increase in the future.  This will contribute to a global rise in coal use of around 0.5% every 12 months over the next five years.  Far from falling off a cliff, the IEA states that levels of coal use will remain stable for at least the next decade.  This reversal of coal's fortunes is fueled in no small part by the Trump administration's efforts to revive America's coal industry.  The U.S. economy is surging, a fact that has led to higher demand and the opening of new coal mines.
Even if demand has remained robust in major markets, India is especially significant.  The country is a major advocate for clean coal technology and a driving force for the "clean coal alliance."  This is a logical consequence of the fact that its coal-fired energy generation will increase by nearly 4% every 12 months in the years to come.  Citing the fact that coal is the cheapest fuel to drive India's economic development, chief economic adviser to the Indian government Arvind Subramanian repeatedly insisted that coal will remain the country's primary source of energy over the medium term.  In doing so, he laid bare a truth routinely denied by the renewables lobby – namely, that pursuing renewables at all costs is not a universally viable choice.
Luckily for New Delhi, it has a powerful supporter on its side.  Donald Trump's promise to restore the American coal industry goes hand in hand with the administration's promotion of clean coal technologies abroad, such as carbon capture.  During the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November, Trump climate change adviser George David Banks proposed a clean coal alliance designed to appeal to India and Australia, but which is also slated to include other energy-starved countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
As was to be expected, the pushback from coal-detractors was swift.  Twenty countries including Britain, Canada, and New Zealand joined an alliance committed to the phasing out of coal by 2030.  This came on the heels of a World Bank decision to stop financing upstream oil and gas from 2019, after having already ceased funding coal power stations in 2010.
However, while grand gestures such as these may score points with hardheaded environmentalists, they merely attest how far removed from reality these actors are.  No amount of politically correct grandstanding or capitulation to environmentalist dogma is going to change the fact that using fossil fuels is the only way for poorer countries to lift themselves out of poverty.  And as the IEA calculations show, not only is Washington's and New Delhi's push for clean coal technology timely, but it will ultimately extend coal's lifespan even longer.  In fact, Trump's plans for a global clean coal alliance have boosted the prospects of the fuel in developing countries, where growing energy demand simply cannot be met by exceedingly expensive renewables.
Anyone who blindly believes in the fallibility of coal should look to the small African country of Malawi for an example of how reliance on renewable energy has failed the local population.  For the past two years, large areas of Malawi have been hit with energy blackouts after water levels at the country's two main hydro plants fell to critically low levels during a severe ongoing drought.  The country generates 98% of its power needs through water, and this lopsided dependence is now plunging the people into darkness.  The power outages last up to several weeks and are making it impossible for the government to provide services such as the most basic health care.  The lack of power has resulted in infants perishing in hospital incubators and most recently killed four children after a blackout rendered their ventilator oxygen machines useless.
The Malawi government has consequently taken the only reasonable decision and turned to building a new coal plant.  However, instead of being considered a long-term solution to the country's power woes, the move was harshly criticized for its environmental effects.  Again, the critics are overlooking the fact that in countries such as Malawi, the tunnel-visioned pursuit of renewables is causing more damage to society and environment than alternative solutions.  The development of clean coal technology such as carbon capture will not only alleviate supply problems, but do so independent of weather conditions.
It is madness that children are dying as a result of insufficient energy supplies when there's affordable and abundant coal to put an end to all this.  India, Malawi, and many other countries around the globe are perfect examples illustrating the ongoing importance of coal.  And with our scientific progress, clean coal technology is a viable path to secure supply while negating environmental impacts.  It's time for a clean coal alliance to put common sense back into our approach to global energy policy, instead of focusing on misguided environmental policies that do nothing but cost lives.

Arctic Ice Alarmists Rear Their Frigid Heads | Climate Dispatch

Arctic Ice Alarmists Rear Their Frigid Heads

Arctic Ice Alarmists Rear Their Frigid Heads

The latest example of arctic hysteria comes from the usual suspects published at the usual venue, Inside Climate News. Polar Ice Is Disappearing, Setting Off Climate Alarms
Excerpts below with my bolds: The short-term consequences of Arctic (and Antarctic) warming may already be felt in other latitudes. The long-term threat to coastlines is becoming even more dire.
“When you’re taking out 30, 40, almost 50 percent of the ice cover, that’s a big change in the environment,” Meier said. “Whether we’re seeing it yet, there’s still some debate, but whether there will be an effect as we continue to lose ice, I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“There’s no evidence that anything is recovering here,” said Mark Serreze, the director of the NSIDC. “What we’ve seen historically is a downward trend in ice extent in all months. Superimposed on that are the ups and downs of natural variability. We’re going to continue to head downward.“
“We are looking at an ice-free Arctic Ocean sometime in the 2040s,” said Serreze. “There’s no evidence that we’ve seen anything like this before.”
Ted Scambos, lead scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said that while the current pace of melting is not alarming, a series of papers “has led to a realization that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may already be in an irreversible retreat.“
Greenland is melting, too—for now, it’s the biggest threat. “Greenland has become Loserville,” said Jason Box, who tracks ice for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
“New observations from many different sources confirm that ice-sheet loss is accelerating,” the United States Global Change Research Program said in its comprehensive special report on climate science. “Up to 8.5 feet of global sea level rise is possible by 2100” in a worst-case emissions scenario. That’s almost 2 feet more than scientists expected just a few years ago.
“So we’re guaranteed significant sea level rise no matter what we do, even under the optimistic Paris scenario,” Box said. “We had better prepare.”
These warnings of wolves are starting to sound the same: “It never happened before, is not happening now, but it will surely destroy us in the future if we don’t do something.”
Meanwhile the facts on the ground are not alarming: For example September minimums:
More details at Overachieving September Arctic ice
And the refreezing is not at all unusual:

The AAs (Arctic Alarmists) are putting their faith in the BBs (Barents and Bering), the only two basins below average this year. Both are marginal to the Arctic Ocean and both are heavily affected by human marine activities, including shipping, navies, fishing, tourism and seafloor extraction.
These outrageous appeals by alarmists in the face of contrary facts remind me of the story defining the term “chutzpah.” A young man is convicted of killing his parents and later appears before the judge for sentencing. Asked to give any last words, he replies: “Go easy on me, your Honor, I’m an orphan.”
Fortunately, there is help for climate alarmists. They can join or start a chapter of Alarmists Anonymous. By following the Twelve Step Program, it is possible to recover and unite in service to the real world and humanity.
Step One: Fully concede (admit) to our innermost selves that we were addicted to climate fear mongering.
Step Two: Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves causes weather and climate, restoring us to sanity.
Step Three: Make a decision to study and understand how the natural world works.
Step Four: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, our need to frighten others and how we have personally benefited by expressing alarms about the climate.
Step Five: Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our exaggerations and false claims.
Step Six: Become ready to set aside these notions and actions we now recognize as objectionable and groundless.
Step Seven: Seek help to remove every single defect of character that produced fear in us and led us to make others afraid.
Step Eight: Make a list of all persons we have harmed and called “deniers”, and become willing to make amends to them all.
Step Nine: Apologize to the people we have frightened or denigrated and explain the errors of our ways.
Step Ten: Continue to take personal inventory and when new illusions creep into our thinking, promptly renounce them.
Step Eleven: Dedicate ourselves to gain knowledge of natural climate factors and to deepen our understanding of nature’s powers and ways of working.
Step Twelve: Having awakened to our delusion of climate alarm, we try to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Summary:
With a New Year close at hand, let us hope that many climate alarmists take the opportunity to turn the page by resolving a return to sanity. It is not too late to get right with reality before the cooling comes in earnest.

Professors Say Farmers' Markets Sustain

Professors Say Farmers' Markets Sustain 

Professors Say Farmers’ Markets Sustain ‘Whiteness’

David Krayden

Ottawa Bureau Chief

9:48 AM 12/28/2017

 

Two geology professors are targeting farmers’ markets for sustaining alleged white privilege.
Pascale Jossart-Marcella and Fernando J. Bosco from San Diego State University are suggesting that introducing rural-style agricultural boutiques into an urban setting is  nothing more than a nefarious attempt to maintain oppressive “white spaces” and marginalize “people of color.”
The arguments were published in an academic anthology out this month entitled “Just Green Enough.” Campus Reform first reported Wednesday on the professors’ attempt to find a relationship between the “whiteness of farmers’ markets” and upscale living.
“Farmers’ markets are often white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized,” the professors maintain, claiming that the food stalls do business with “households from higher social-economic backgrounds.” As a result, “low-income residents and people of color” are somehow excluded.
It’s all about exclusion, according to the authors.
“The most insidious part of this gentrification process is that alternative food initiatives work against the community activists and residents who first mobilized to fight environmental injustices and provide these amenities but have significantly less political and economic clout than developers and real estate professionals.”

Huge 1920s KKK cache discovered, reveals war on Catholics

Huge 1920s KKK cache discovered, reveals war on Catholics

by Paul Bedard | Dec 15, 2017, 8:37 AM

A KKK Knights of Kamellia embroidered cloth patch typically sewn to the left breast of a klansman's white robe is going up for action, part of a huge cache of KKK items discovered in Pennsylvania.

A huge collection of Ku Klux Klan material from the 1920s has been discovered, detailing the group’s “second coming” when it shifted from attacking blacks to Catholics and immigrants.

KKK robes catalog.

The enormous Klan cache, untouched since the 1920s, was found in Altoona, Pa., about 23 miles from Lilly where hooded Klansmen fought with Catholic German and Irish immigrants in 1924. At the time, 250,000 Pennsylvanians were members and all but two counties had KKK chapters.
It has been divided into over 40 lots and is being put up for auction next week by Maryland-based Alexander Historical Auctions. The total value is $20,000-$50,000.
“It’s a fascinating look at an evil organization which, like its mature grandchild today, tried to cloak itself in respectability to gain the support and funding of the ignorant and gullible,” said Alexander President Bill Panagopulos.
The collection includes hundreds of documents, letters, brochures, signs and outfits from the Altoona chapter of the KKK.
“The entire operation of the chapter is documented in the voluminous archive — rules, regulations, educational material, correspondence and uniform ordering forms for members of the Klan,” said Panagopulos.

It also includes material from "Women of the Ku Klux Klan,” and the "Junior Ku Klux Klan," which accepted boys from 12 to 18.
Of the more bizarre items are signs advertising "KLAN DAY" which included a picnic and elaborate fireworks display, a press release describing a baseball game between Klansmen and blacks.

The Klan began after the Civil War ended and later faded. In the 1920s it came back, but targeted immigrants and Catholics. That era has come into focus with the publication of “The Second Coming of the KKK —The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition.”
In the collection he’s auctioning, Panagopulos said “Of note is the fact that the there is little mention made of blacks — the primary enemy of the Klan was the ‘Roman Church.’”

FBI made a ton more edits to water down James Comey's statement on Clinton email probe

FBI made a ton more edits to water down James Comey's statement on Clinton email probe

by Paul Bedard | Dec 14, 2017, 5:45 PM

In this July 7, 2016 file photo, FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Oversight Committee to explain his agency's recommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The FBI did far more editing of former FBI Director James Comey’s statement on their probe of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server than previously known, edits that erased serious concerns the FBI initially had, according to a key senator.
In documents provided by Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, there were three major edits to Comey’s statement that seemed to absolve Clinton.
The changes included reducing Clinton’s “culpability” in the scandal, removing references to the intelligence community’s role in the probe, and downgrading the likelihood that spies had penetrated Clinton’s private server stuck in the basement of her New York home.
Johnson is now demanding that everybody connected to the process of writing and editing Comey’s statement be identified. “We are asking for everyone that edited the speech,” said a committee official.
He is also looking into the pro-Clinton, anti-President Trump bias in the probe.
To show the changes in the statement, Johnson produced a copy of Comey’s original statement with the edits that he planned to give in May 2016 closing out his investigation. They are dramatic and show the FBI went soft on Clinton.
Initially, the only major edit revealed was that FBI insiders cut out the reference to Clinton being “grossly negligent.” But it went much further.
For example, they cut out Comey’s initial plan to refer to the “sheer volume” of email on Clinton’s server. Johnson said that was in an effort to “deemphasize the amount of classified information” held on Clinton’s private server.
Johnson’s letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray also cited another major edit. “The edited version also contained a sentence that read, “This is especially concerning because all of these emails were housed on servers not supported by full-time security staff, like those found at the departments and agencies of the U.S. government.” Comey did not use that sentence in his final statement.
Comey was also planning to give credit to the intelligence community for helping in the Clinton probe, but that was cut out.
And there were edits, said Johnson, to “downgrade the likelihood that hostile actors penetrated Secretary Clinton’s private server.”
Before: “We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. Given the combination of factors, we assess it is reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s private email account.”
After: “Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”

Tom Steyer Might Run For President

Tom Steyer Might Run For President 

Climate Activist Tom Steyer Spent $160 Million Trying To Influence Elections, Now He Might Run For President

Michael Bastasch

12:24 PM 12/28/2017

 

Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer has been the largest single political donor in the last two election cycles, spending more than $166 million on liberal causes and candidates, according to campaign finance data.
Steyer spent more than $91 million in the 2016 election cycle and more than $75 million in the 2014 cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
And that doesn’t include the estimated $20 million Steyer is said to have spent on TV and digital ads calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Now, he’s built an email list of nearly 4 million Americans as part of that campaign, according to the campaign’s website NeedToImpeach.com. That’s fueling speculation he will run for political office, and maybe even president.

“I think it begs the question of whether or not he’s running for president in 2020,’’ Democratic consultant Dave Jacobson told Politico Wednesday. “He’s set his sights on building up a national apparatus; he’s capitalizing on the new norm, which is digital persuasion.’’
“That’s how you build a grass-roots operations for a presidential campaign,” echoed Republican strategist Mike Madrid.
“That’s what he’s building, and it’s probably second only to Bernie Sanders’ list, and may be eclipsing it,” Madrid said, according to Politico. “Every election cycle has its own dynamics, and whoever is tapping into the sentiments of their own base usually has an advantage.”
While Steyer’s focus is now impeachment, he got his start in national politics funding environmental campaigns, including bankrolling much of the anti-Keystone XL oil pipeline effort. Steyer’s a long-time political donor and bundled donations for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run.

The former hedge fund manager then funded the political group NextGen Climate Action with the goal of making global warming a top-tier election issue. That largely failed despite millions being poured into it, and Steyer broadened its mission earlier this year.
Political pundits have been speculating about Steyer’s political ambitions for years. Why else would a retired billionaire inject himself into political ads?
Steyer himself hasn’t been shy about a potential run for office, recently telling C-SPAN, “I haven’t ruled it out, and I’m actually trying to determine what will have the most positive differential impact.”
“I’m absolutely ambitious,” Steyer told C-SPAN is a soon-to-air-interview, “to try and be part of the group of people who gets America back on a just and prosperous course.”
So far, most Democratic lawmakers haven’t backed efforts to impeach Trump, and instead are waiting for the Special Counsel Robert Mueller to finish his investigation. Only 58 House Democrats backed Louisiana Rep. Al Green’s impeachment legislation introduced in December.

Obama's Refugee Migration Responsible For SIX Eradicated Diseases Returned To United States

Obama’s Refugee Migration Responsible For SIX Eradicated Diseases Returned To United States

By Lauren Richardson

5:00 PM July 16, 2017

There are devastating consequences to Barack Obama allowing thousands of refugees and illegals into the United States without properly vetting them. 
These six diseases were virtually eradicated in the United States and until recently, most Americans believed these diseases were gone from our shores for good.

According to Pew Research, the U.S. admitted 84,995 refugees in the fiscal year ending in September 2016, the most in any year during the Obama administration. An additional 31,143 refugees have been admitted to the U.S. from Oct. 1 through Jan. 24, 2017.

Though refugee admissions has drastically dropped under President Trump’s proposal, the U.S. had been on pace to reach the Obama administration’s goal of admitting 110,000 refugees in fiscal 2017, which would have been the highest number since 1994.

In fiscal 2016, the highest number of refugees from any nation came from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congo accounted for 16,370 refugees followed by Syria (12,587), Burma (aka Myanmar, with 12,347), Iraq (9,880) and Somalia (9,020). Over the past decade, the largest numbers of refugees have come from Burma (159,692) and Iraq (135,643).

Nearly 39,000 Muslim refugees entered the U.S. in fiscal 2016, the highest number on record, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.

A politicized public health system, and a rise in the subsidized migration into the United States, have combined to reverse a century of progress.
The number of foreign-born residents of the country has increased by 31 million in three decades, from 11 million in 1986 to 42 million in 2015. Immigration to the United States during this period has come from Middle Eastern, African, Asian, South American and Central American countries where all these diseases are prevalent. The extra 31 million have arrived in a number of ways: approximately 3 million are refugees, 11 million are illegal immigrants, and the remainder are legal immigrants, asylees, and parolees.

Breitbart  reports that the returning diseases are:

1. Tuberculosis
2. Measles
3. Whooping Cough
4. Mumps
5. Scarlet Fever
6. Bubonic Plague

Tuberculosis
The number of communicable TB cases, dubbed active TB, increased by 1.7 percent to 9,563 in 2015, after 23 years of steady decline in the United States.
Medical experts agree that this increase is attributable to the dramatic increase in the number of foreign born residents of the country over the past three decades.
In 1986, 22 percent of the 22,000 active TB cases in the U.S. were foreign born. By 2015, 66 percent of the 9,563 active TB cases were foreign born—a tripling.
The number of active cases of TB among native-born Americans declined from 17,000 in 1986, down to just over 3,200 in 2015. At the same time, the number of foreign born cases increased from 5,000 to a little over 6,300.
Refugees are arriving in the United States with active TB. As Breitbart News recently reported, the number of refugees who have arrived with active TB over the past five years is huge: 21 in Louisiana, ten in Colorado, eleven in Florida, four in Indiana, eleven in Florida, and nine in one county in Kentucky.
Refugees are also arriving with high rates of non-communicable ‘latent TB’ infection (LTBI): 35 percent in Vermont, 27 percent in Tennessee, 26 percent in Indiana, 22 percent in Minnesota, 15 percent in Texas, and 12 percent in California. A large number of people with latent TB gradually acquire active or communicable TB.
A recent UC San Diego study concluded that high rates of LTBI among recently resettled refugees poses a health risk to the local community and general public.
Measles

“In 2014, the United States experienced a record number of measles cases, with 667 cases from 27 states reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD); this is the greatest number of cases since measles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000,” the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports. (emphasis added)
It’s not been much better since then. “From January 2 to May 21, 2016, 19 people from 9 states (Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Texas) were reported to have measles. In 2015, 189 people from 24 states and the District of Columbia were reported to have measles,” the CDC adds.
“The majority of people who got measles were unvaccinated,” the CDC notes, adding that “[m]easles is still common in many parts of the world including some countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.”
In 2015, a woman in Washington State died of measles, the first death from measles in the United States since 2003.
Refugees are not required to have vaccines, including the critical MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella: “Refugees, unlike most immigrant populations, are not required to have any vaccinations [including the critical MMR vaccine] before arrival in the United States,” the CDC reports.
At least one outbreak of measles in the United States in 2016 raises the question of whether an unvaccinated refugee was the original person who transmitted the disease. “The first reported case of a person with measles in the recent Memphis outbreak, which now numbers seven confirmed cases, was at a local mosque on April 15, according to the Shelby County Health Department,” Breitbart News reported recently.:
“Dr. Alisa Haushalter, Director of the Shelby County Health Department … acknowledged, however, that the measles outbreak could have originated with an unvaccinated for measles adult or child brought to Tennessee under the federal refugee resettlement program, something she called “a possibility amongst many”
There had been no reported cases of measles in Shelby County for the previous 24 months, according to a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Health. “There have been nine previous cases of measles in the entire state of Tennessee in the past 12 years,” WREG reported. . .
The prevalence of communicable disease among refugee populations is well documented. In January 2016, for instance, a severe outbreak of measles occurred in a refugee camp in Calais, France.

Whooping Cough
“Pertussis, a respiratory illness commonly known as whooping cough, is a very contagious disease caused by a type of bacteria called Bordetella pertussis. These bacteria attach to the cilia (tiny, hair-like extensions) that line part of the upper respiratory system. The bacteria release toxins (poisons), which damage the cilia and cause airways to swell,” the CDC reports.
In 1926, there were over 200,000 cases of whooping cough (pertussis) reported in the United States.
Half a century later, the disease had been virtually eradicated here, and only 1,010 cases were reported in 1976.
But a decade later, in 1986, the number of reported cases had crept back up over 4,000. Now, in 2014, the reported number of cases have increased to 32,971, more than thirty times the number of cases reported just four decades earlier.
“Following the introduction of pertussis vaccines in the 1940s when case counts frequently exceeded 100,000 cases per year, reports declined dramatically to fewer than 10,000 by 1965,” the CDC notes.
“During the 1980s pertussis reports began increasing gradually, and by 2014 more than 32,000 cases were reported nationwide,” the CDC admits, but fails to point out the simultaneous quadrupling of foreign-born residents of the United States.
Mumps
“Once a common illness among children and young adults, cases of mumps in the US have dropped by 99% since a vaccine was introduced in 1967,”Health.com reports:
“But occurrences crop up, particularly among close-knit communities. The CDC reports that there have been 688 reported cases of mumps in the US in 2015, including small outbreaks at universities in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Wisconsin. In 2014, there was a mini-outbreak among professional hockey players,” Health.com reports.
The only way to prevent the mumps (aside from avoiding people with it) is to get the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. Though usually administered to kids, you can get the vaccine at any time. It’s not foolproof (two doses are 88% effective at preventing the disease, per the CDC), and its protection can wear off over time, but it’s vastly better to get the shot than not. Booster doses are often recommended during outbreaks.

As noted, refugees are not required to have the MMR vaccine that prevents mumps.
Scarlet Fever
“Largely forgotten over the past century thanks to the rise of antibiotics … scarlet fever … [has been making a]comeback in Asia (with more than 5,000 cases over the past five years in Hong Kong and 100,000 in China) and the United Kingdom (roughly 12,000 cases over the past year),” Health.com reports.
It is a serious disease that mainly affects children, as the CDC notes:
Scarlet fever – or scarlatina – is a bacterial infection caused by group AStreptococcus or “group A strep.” This illness affects a small percentage of people who have strep throat or, less commonly, streptococcal skin infections. Scarlet fever is treatable with antibiotics and usually is a mild illness, but it needs to be treated to prevent rare but serious long-term health problems. Treatment with antibiotics also helps clear up symptoms faster and reduces spread to other people.
Although anyone can get scarlet fever, it usually affects children between 5 and 15 years old. The classic symptom of the disease is a certain type of red rash that feels rough, like sandpaper.
Bubonic Plague
The United States experienced a significant outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco during the first decade of the 20th century. This outbreak was much smaller than those in China and India just a few years earlier, but was frightening to many Americans. As PBS reported:
In the summer of 1899, a ship sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco had had two cases of plague on board. Because of this, although no passengers were ill when the ship reached San Franscisco, it was to be quarantined on Angel Island. When the boat was searched, 11 stowaways were found — the next day two were missing. Their bodies were later found in the Bay, and autopsy showed they contained plague bacilli. Despite this scare, there was no immediate outbreak of disease. But rats from the ship probably had something to do with the epidemic that hit San Francisco nine months later.
If you “think this notorious killer died with the Middle Ages,” think again. “The disease actually persists in parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. And there have been 16 reported cases of plague, with four deaths, in the United States this past year. Most recently, a 16-year-old girl from Oregon was sickened and hospitalized after apparently being bitten by a flea on a hunting trip,” as Health.com reported recently.:

You can get plague from fleas that have carried the Yersinia pestis bacteria from an infected rodent, or by handling an infected animal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Bubonic plague is the most common form in the U.S., while pneumonic plague (affecting the lungs) and septicemic plague (affecting the blood) are less prevalent but more serious. Symptoms of bubonic plague include fever, chills, headache, and swollen lymph glands.
These six “comeback” diseases are not the only ones of concern to America’s public health.
A number of other diseases, some of which are prevalent among foreign born residents of the United States and foreign visitors, also present a current problem, to varying degrees, including zika, flesh eating parasites—cutaneous leishmaniasis, ebola, leprosy, intestinal parasites, HIV, scabies, and diptheria.