Frustrated wannabe authoritarians

It’s refreshing to see Democrats tear their hair out over the blessings our freedoms give us. Just look at their goal of “transitioning” from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles (including airplanes and construction equipment). The whole plan is based on the unproven connection between the use of fossil fuels and climate change.

Whatever their motivations, it’s not working out as they hoped it would. Don’t be surprised if they soon switch crusades from climate change to some other “emergency.”

As is often the case, Democrats were smitten with a cause — in this case, electric vehicles to rescue the climate — and assumed everyone else would fall in love with it, too.

Then, when President Joe Biden proposed rules that would require 60 percent of new cars sold to be battery-powered by 2030 and 66 percent by 2032, what happened?

Unfortunately for these aspiring socialists, the U.S. economy is still predominantly based on that economic freedom known as voluntary exchange.

So far, auto buyers have not voluntarily exchanged enough of their hard earned dollars for E.V.s. The vast majority continue to prefer fossil fuel alternatives. At this point, only about 7 percent of cars sold are electric. Furthermore, according to a McKinsey & Company survey, 46 percent of electric vehicle owners say they intend to switch back to internal-combustion cars.

A Catch-22 the E.V. enthusiasts are struggling with is the need to maintain a rough balance between the number of E.V.s and the number of charging stations. Unless the number of E.V.s grows, there will be no incentive to build more charging stations. A scarcity of charging stations is already something that E.V. owners complain about.

Democrat policy-makers believe they are far more clever than the rest of us. They don’t seem to think it’s necessary to determine how many car buyers are perfectly happy with their gasoline and diesel vehicles and unimpressed with E.V.s.

In order for their electric vehicle dream to happen, let alone work, they would have needed unlimited power from the git-go. Their precious transition would have required not just subsidies, but brute force as well. Their plan would have necessitated doing away with, in advance, our preference for voluntary exchange.

Democrats are against voluntary exchange because they don’t approve of what we do with it, such as producing and consuming fossil fuels. Fortunately for the rest of us, these incompetent Marxists neglected to emasculate us prior to springing their E.V. fantasy on us. They mistakenly left us free to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Thanks to voluntary exchange we did just that. ____________________

◼ Frustrated wannabe authoritarians - American Thinker August 27, 2024

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Speaking of conservative NeverTrumpers

You no doubt have conservative friends who strongly dislike Donald Trump. They can’t tolerate his take-no-prisoners rhetoric. His personality rubs them the wrong way -- he’s abrasive, crude, and in their opinion, obnoxious.

Their attitude reveals a form of narrow-mindedness known as tunnel vision. These conservative NeverTrumpers, when asked, typically admit that they like his policies -- securing the border, smaller government, lower taxes, and deregulation, to name a few. They say they could never vote for him, though. They apparently want a perfect candidate, but no such animal exists and they know it. They seem stuck on making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Their "...tunnel vision is over-reliance on internal information..." such as bias. They refuse to grasp that Trump’s personality might only be one percent as important as his accomplishments while in office or what he could do in a second term.

These conservative NeverTrumpers show zero gratitude for what Trump has done for them. It’s no exaggeration to say that no other Republican could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016. She would have been president for four or eight years. Can they even imagine what living through that would have been like?

During his first term, President Trump was able to get three conservative judges appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court. In the years since then most of the court’s rulings have been applauded by all conservatives.

Common sense should teach us that every human being is a package deal. The conservative NeverTrumpers often say something like, “I just wish he weren’t so braggadocious!”

But humans don’t come a la carte. We have to take the bad along with the good. Just like every other living person, Donald Trump is who he is.

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◼ Speaking of conservative NeverTrumpers - American Thinker August 13, 2024

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Democrats believe in miraculous money

Democrats believe that money in the form of government expenditures can perform miracles and cure any ill.

What used to be Humboldt State University (HSU) in Arcata, California is now Cal Poly Humboldt (CPH).

When I began teaching there in 1969 (and continued for ten more years), enrollment was about 6,000. That is about where it remains today.

Over the past fifty years, the university has made numerous failed attempts to attract more students.

The most recent and by far the costliest attempt occurred in 2021, when Governor Gavin Newsom strong-armed the Legislature to commit almost half a billion dollars to convert HSU to CPH, thinking enrollment would quickly double to 12,000. Thus far, enrollment has increased two percent.

There are two previously existing state polytechnic universities in California, both of which have enrollments exceeding 20,000, but both are close to population centers (San Luis Obispo and Pomona). Arcata, the location of the new Cal Poly, is and always has been the most remote site of the twenty institutions in the California State University system.

Throwing half a billion dollars at HSU/CPH will fail just as all the other attempts to make it grow have failed.

This HSU to CPH conversion is not at all different from Jerry Brown’s “bullet train to nowhere” boondoggle, which is now a sensitive topic for Democrats. That train, the construction for which began in 2015, was supposed to link San Francisco and Los Angeles, but so far, it links only Merced and Bakersfield. Authorized in 2008, it was based on a projected cost of $24 billion, which has since ballooned to $106 billion.

California is a one-party state governed by arrogant “progressive” Democrats. Will they learn anything from this HSU/CPH fiasco?

They will not. Why should they? They have no incentive to do so. After all, that half a billion dollars they’ve squandered is not their own money.

Such waste never fazes Democrats — no guilt, no embarrassment, no lessons learned.

Money must really seem miraculous to Democrats. They confiscate it from their enemies, spend it on whatever suits their fancy, and never have to worry about being held accountable.

The Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, and the Empire State Building were each built in about three years, start to finish, during the depths of the Great Depression. Nowadays, government projects take seemingly forever and usually cost multiples of their original cost estimates.

Remember Obama’s “shovel-ready jobs,” which he later confessed did not exist? That was a classic Democrat fabrication designed to hoodwink taxpayers into supporting his 900-billion-dollar stimulus bill in 2009. Yes, it was a con job, but who cares? Certainly not Democrats. Simply spending the money is all that matters to them.

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◼ Democrats believe in miraculous money - American Thinker May 11, 2024

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Good news sucks for climate cultists

There's a war against happiness. Climate alarmists bury good news and exaggerate bad news. They have made up their minds to be miserable, and they're determined to take the rest of us down with them.

For example, have you heard that over the past 30 years, there has been a 14-percent increase in the Earth's green vegetation? Deserts are getting smaller, and forests are getting lusher. That gain even has a name: "Earth Greening." Not surprisingly, 70 percent of it stems from the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere! Zaichun Zhu, one of the scientists who measured the greening, says it's equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

The benefits of the increased vegetation are widespread: "It means more food for insects and deer, for elephants and mice, for fish and whales. It means higher yields for farmers; the effect has probably added about $3 trillion to farm incomes over the past 30 years, so less land is needed to feed the human population and more can be spared for wildlife instead." We've given a raise to all commercial farmers around the world. Increased supply eventually results in reduced prices.

The connection between increased carbon dioxide and increased plant growth is a perfect example of "negative feedback" in that the added vegetation from Earth Greening takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. A physicist friend of mine reminds his students, "We live in a negative-feedback world. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here."

Nevertheless, every single catastrophic climate prediction idiotically assumes a world of positive feedbacks, a world of runaway changes. The renowned physicist and climatologist Richard Lindzen says he knows of not a single large-scale positive feedback in the physical world or the biosphere. Insofar as that's true, it annihilates the entire argument of the climate catastrophists.

There are billions of examples of negative feedback in the physical and biological worlds, yet positive feedback is what climate catastrophists stake their predictions and reputations on. If you know of an example of a large-scale long-term runaway change, what is it?

Ironically, negative feedback is doing its own "carbon capture" and "sequestration" thousands of times more effectively than humans do deliberately. And it's doing so without massive subsidies or carbon taxes.

Changes occur everywhere, constantly, but changes never continue in the same direction indefinitely. That's kind of interesting if you think about it. Why can't any given species grow until it covers the globe? Answer: negative feedback.

Some other good news you may not know about if you rely on the media and catastrophists is that snow cover in the northern hemisphere is now at a 56-year high (for this time of year). The population of polar bears is increasing and is currently estimated to be over 30,000. You won't learn that from Al Gore.

We are currently ten years into a "global warming hiatus." The climate-change cultists are falling all over one another trying to explain why that pause means absolutely nothing about long-term warming. That they have so many excuses shows that the Earth's climate is extremely complex and impossible to effectively model or predict. There's no way they can know how long the hiatus will last. Their list of excuses does not include Earth Greening. That would require saying something nice about CO2.

Unlike the Earth's climate, Earth Greening was an easily predictable outcome of the CO2 increase. Life itself is carbon-based. Commercial greenhouses pump in additional CO2 to stimulate plant growth.

The alarmists' hysterical hostility toward carbon dioxide shows their ignorance and tunnel vision. They are willfully blind to anything beneficial deriving from CO2, a compound essential to life itself. When someone doesn't tell the whole truth, he's lying.

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◼ Good news sucks for climate cultists American Thinker - March 22, 2023

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

It just gets harder and harder to live free in California

Legislation passed by California's Legislature six and a half years ago (!) is finally being implemented. Its title is "California's Short-lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Law," or S.B. 1383 for short. (S.B. stands for senate bill.) Its primary purpose is to reduce human-activity methane emissions. The legislation is supposedly going to slow climate change by diverting 75 percent of organic waste from landfills and redirecting 20 percent of edible food to "food-insecure" Californians.

Advocates for the regulations assert that "methane is a climate super-pollutant 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide." That could be true, but only on a molecular basis. What's deliberately left out of that claim is that carbon dioxide constitutes 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, while methane amounts to only 0.00017 percent. Thus, the number of CO2 molecules is 235 times the number of methane molecules in the atmosphere. While it's possible that methane is more powerful as a greenhouse gas per molecule, there are simply not enough methane molecules to have a measurable impact on the Earth's atmosphere.

If you google the question, "Is there evidence that methane contributes to global warming?," all you'll find are assertions and speculation, not evidence. That shouldn't be surprising. Evidence is rarely in evidence when it comes to global warming catastrophism. The alarmists are happy believing naïvely that correlation equals causation.

Furthermore, it never seems to occur to California politicians that California is not the world. The world's population is currently about eight billion. California's is about forty million, which accounts for only 0.5 percent of the global population. Even if California achieved "net zero" methane generation, how much would that reduce global methane? Whatever success California made in reducing methane would quickly be neutralized by circulation in the Earth's atmosphere.

There are numerous questionable assumptions and unanswered questions inherent in S.B. 1383. Some of the organic waste that now ends up in landfills decomposes just as compost does. Meanwhile, many consumers dispose of their uneaten food in garbage disposals. Is there a net difference between disposing and composting in terms of methane generation? If so, how much of a difference?

The California Legislature's contribution to the rest of the country is to demonstrate what not to do. If methane needed to be reduced, the most effective route would instead be through innovation and the free market, not coercion. Half the methane generated from human activity in California comes from cows. Ironically, an increasing amount of their waste is being captured and converted into renewable natural gas. That's true as well for landfills.

In that same vein, I recently spoke to the manager of a supermarket where my wife and I usually shop. His supermarket and (he believes) others in town already send their unsold edible food to the local food bank. Any spoiled produce goes to a local pig farmer and has for many years. It's a win-win for all involved and therefore happens voluntarily.

A curious term in the title of the legislation is "short-lived." It's there because the "residence time" of methane in the atmosphere is approximately nine years. Residence time is the average time it takes for a molecule to break down and be removed naturally from the atmosphere. In comparison, the residence time for carbon dioxide varies from 20 to 200 years.

The law all but reimposes the draft. The following excerpts are from the informational instructions provided by the authorities:

Businesses and apartment complexes must provide collection containers for compost and recyclables to employees, contractors, tenants, and customers.

Annually provide educational information about the requirements to compost and recycle including how to sort properly among the three waste streams.

Periodically inspect recycling and compost containers and inform employees if contamination is found.

Who is going to collect the edible surplus food and see that it finds its way to "food insecure" Californians? Logistically, it's not that easy. Who's going to assure that the unsold food hasn't spoiled? Will anyone be held accountable?

Because enforcement of S.B. 1383 is only just starting, very few Californians are aware that arrogant politicians and bureaucrats are once again stealing their freedoms for bogus reasons. When that finally hits home, many Californians will not be happy. Will they rebel? It could be fun to watch. To survive and keep your sanity in California, it helps to have a wry sense of humor.

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◼ It just gets harder and harder to live free in California - American Thinker January 12, 2023

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Religions in disguise

There are two broad categories of religions — admitted and disguised.

Admitted religions principally include Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Religions in disguise include environmentalism, Marxism, globalism, and greenism, as well as other isms too numerous to list.

Traditional religions don't hide the fact that they're religions. They know they are belief systems based on faith.

Religions in disguise never admit to themselves and others that they are faith-based belief systems. They self-identify as being "scientific" rather than faith-based.

Viewing themselves as non-religious is a central element of their worldview. They are, in fact, extremely hostile to the concept of religion. But when it comes to their own religions in disguise, they've morphed into the truest of true believers. Irony of ironies, they've become what they hate.

Not being honest about their religiosity, even to themselves, forces them to live a lie. The worst person you can lie to is yourself.

Disguised religions have many of the trappings of traditional religions, but they are grotesque caricatures of traditional religions. They have all the bad aspects of regular religions and none of the good. Traditional religions are primarily positive, while the disguised versions are primarily negative. They are far more intolerant, doctrinaire, and dogmatic.

They even have their own versions of sacraments — abortion, wokism, and sustainability, for example. Organic is their version of Kosher. Recycling is their way of doing penance. For them, producing, transporting, and using fossil fuels are sins. Donald Trump is the devil.

The religions in disguise have an inconsistent attitude toward evil. When it suits them, they deny that mass murderers and child-molesters are evil, but they have no problem believing that oil companies and Republicans are evil.

The disguised religions ridicule and ostracize anyone who doesn't share their doctrines. When the COVID lockdowns became a kind of fanatical crusade, "non-vaxxers" lost jobs. Masks became a modern "outward sign of inward grace." They attempted to force conformity on the entire world.

The religions in disguise are fervently eschatological, more than Christianity ever was. They truly believe that carbon dioxide will cook the planet and cause mass extinctions.

There's a propensity in human nature toward religion and a belief in God. Denying religion and the existence of God is not a simple matter. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that applies as well to human nature.

When you deny religion and the existence of God, that space wants to be filled — whence come environmentalism, Marxism, globalism, and all the other isms. But there's a problem with those religions in disguise. When you have no traditional god, you're left to become your own god.

Being your own god results in arrogance. Contrast that with Christianity. If you follow the Bible, you cannot be arrogant. The Bible teaches humility and gratitude, as do most other traditional religions.

The religions in disguise have nothing that compares to the Ten Commandments of the Bible. Those commandments are meant to make humans moral, humble, faithful, and honest. The religions in disguise pay little attention to morality and no attention to honesty.

Our country's founders were primarily religious and Christian. They were opposed to a state religion. The Constitution they created included religious freedom. That freedom is as vital today as the other freedoms — speech, assembly, right to bear arms, and freedom of the press.

The opening words in the First Amendment are "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended by federal, state, and local governments because of environmentalism and the hysteria of climate change. And it's not just the money they spend. They do even more damage with the laws and regulations they force on us, such as trying to prevent us from enjoying the huge benefits of fossil fuels. Being their own god is not enough for them. They demand to be ours, too. Once we have exposed the religions in disguise for what they are, it will be game over for them.

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◼ Religions in disguise October 28, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The unbearable miseries of Democrats

Democrats and the Left have a long and ever-expanding list of concerns: climate change, white supremacy, rising sea levels, non-organic vegetables, insufficient diversity, COVID, systemic racism, population growth, pronouns, Fox News, Donald Trump, and now, Giorgia Meloni, just to name a few.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have relatively few concerns, such as individual freedom, economic growth, law and order, secure borders, sanctity of life, the importance of families, and the U.S. Constitution. These are values conservatives have treasured since at least the founding of our nation.

There are also qualitative differences between the concerns of liberals and conservatives. Unlike those of the Right, the concerns of the Left are negative. Theirs are also without substantive foundations, clear definitions, logic, or evidence. They are unrecognizable exaggerations of reality. Compared to Democrats, conservatives are worry free.

The frequent additions to their long list of anxiety-causing concerns suggest that the Democrat Party suffers from a kind of collective attention deficit disorder. Democrats and the Left occupy a world fraught with peril, a world in which happiness is impossible.

The anxieties of Democrats lead to enormous costs for the rest of the population. Their hysteria regarding fossil fuels is one of countless examples. Their restrictions on drilling, fracking, and the cancellation of pipelines have caused a doubling of natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fuel prices. Partly because natural gas is the main raw material for fertilizer, food prices have also risen substantially.

The supposed threat of climate change is a favorite issue the Left uses to fan the flames of anxiety. It’s an all-purpose specter that has been highly effective in frightening millions, especially children. The Earth’s climate is an extremely complex subject, but Democrats conveniently ignore that fact. They abide by W. C. Fields’ famous dictum, “Never smarten up a chump.”

Similarly, COVID and the accompanying lockdowns typify the Democrats. It is now clear they grossly exaggerated the threat of the virus and abused it for the largest and most destructive power grab in U.S. history. They coerced us all to behave in absurd and repressive ways -- masks, social distancing, untested and dangerous vaccines, and horrible isolation. The fear of COVID resulted in many more deaths than COVID itself. The lockdowns were crimes against humanity. Those responsible should be punished as criminals.

The Democrat Party has until now been adept at exploiting fear wherever it can to increase its power and control. Individual and societal choices are better based on courage than fear. As Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

The time is ripe to rid ourselves of the miserable fearmongers.

Image: ◼ Enough Project

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◼ The unbearable miseries of Democrats At American Thinker

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.