tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:05:21 +0000Spreading the ideas of freedom. Discusses economic, political, and social issues in the context of liberty and individual rights. Shows freedom and capitalism are essential to human advancement on all levels. Identifies government actions that are anti-liberty and detrimental to our rights, our lives and health, and the nation's prosperity and future.http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/noreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)Blogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2496136443522678243Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:05:00 +00002010-04-07T07:05:22.073-06:00 This blog is now located at http://amlibpub.blogspot.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here. For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://amlibpub.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2010/04/this-blog-has-moved.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2317738209670528754Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:24:00 +00002010-04-04T07:10:28.522-06:00Obama's health care law is a tragedy. He campaigned on “change” and spoke of “fundamentally restructuring the United States of America.” And on signing the health care bill into law, he said, “This is what change looks like.” That law represents a rejection of the historic American system, the Constitution, arithmetic, and simple honesty. All those were considered expendable by the liars and http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2010/03/another-way-to-kill-obama-health-care.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-5915565813181236376Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:34:00 +00002010-02-07T22:34:43.890-06:00The government program that gave people up to $4,500 for trading in an old car for a new energy efficient model has been widely proclaimed a huge success, as measured by the popularity of the program. That certainly made it successful for the politicians who, in effect, were buying futures votes for themselves. Of course, they didn't say so; instead they claimed they were pursuing the noble http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2010/02/cash-for-clunkers-immoral-wasteful.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2751612932967662783Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:14:00 +00002010-01-20T08:04:20.305-06:00"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." —Ayn Rand The Detroit automakers were “perfectly viable businesses that have been slowly murdered over 30 years,“ according to Wall Street Journal http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2010/01/government-destroyed-us-auto-companies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2034565450608280171Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:05:00 +00002010-01-11T21:41:51.266-06:00The Senate passage of the president's Health care reform bill is a landmark of depravity. Sure, there have been many instances of corruption before; but nothing, to my knowledge, compares to the complicity of the entire majority of the Senate in a scheme of such proportions in bribery, protection money, and dishonesty in a bill itself. Add to this the acceptance of this immorality—even a http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2010/01/most-depraved-us-congress-ever.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-3907851499456082149Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:34:00 +00002009-12-30T11:30:31.803-06:00Actually, the agenda wasn't hidden. It was right out in the open, proclaimed by banners and protesters. But it was hidden from the American people by the news media which refused to report it. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is a scientist who attended the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. He witnessed a very different http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/12/copenhagen-climate-summit-hidden-agenda.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-5186006529311826197Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:24:00 +00002009-11-30T21:32:01.531-06:00The Obama administration and its allies in Congress—not to mention their political supporters in the news media—lose no opportunity to demonize business leaders, doctors, others with high incomes, and big companies themselves as “enemies of the people.” The business executives' salaries are said to be too high, their bonuses too generous, the corporate life style too extravagant; doctors charge http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/11/corporate-jets-extravagance-or.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2540397617615085635Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:38:00 +00002009-11-13T22:38:14.975-06:00Of the more than ninety columns on this blog, I have written all but one. Now I have found one more by another author that I would like to share with you. It was written by Gregg Cavanagh in response to a proposal by two professors for a national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The professors claim a tax on soft drinks would provide about $150 billion in tax revenue over ten years and about http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/11/taxing-to-reduce-obesity-and-its-costs.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-4824110705616229242Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:23:00 +00002009-11-13T22:44:17.974-06:00It hard to know whether Obama's policies of trade protectionism result from his ignorance of both economics and history or simply putting politics ahead of both. Take your pick. Either way, he has become the first protectionist president since Herbert Hoover. The Smoot-Hawley tariff, passed in 1930 by Hoover, was a catastrophe. It ignited retaliation from other countries, resulting in a http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/10/obamas-economic-vandalism-trade.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-6985262565457956454Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:45:00 +00002009-09-16T07:31:45.960-06:00Even amid widespread talk that the recession is ending, ominous developments have been taking place on the monetary front, which are rarely reported. I explained the background for this in my 3-part series “Mortgage Crisis, the Dollar and its Future”, which I recommend you read if you have not already done so. It covers: 1) how inflation, recessions and depressions are caused by the government http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/09/us-dollar-in-troubleworse-ahead.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2531074790041606843Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:41:00 +00002009-10-23T14:06:48.991-06:00This month marked the 70 anniversary of the beginning of World War II. On September 1, 1939, the Nazi army crossed into Poland, and the first shots of the war were fired at point blank range at a Polish shore installation by the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, which was moored in the Polish harbor of Danzig on a friendship visit. Scarcely two weeks later, on September 17, the Soviet army http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/09/pat-buchanans-apologia-for-hitler.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-3926065050162683668Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:21:00 +00002009-08-31T08:21:27.060-06:00The claim that global warming will cause more violent weather, including more violent ocean storms, has been used repeatedly to scare the public into supporting political action to stop global warming. The lack of substance to this claim has not deterred to prophets of global doom from trying to prove the opposite. And Michael Mann is one of them.You may remember him as the scientist who was http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/08/global-warming-tropical-storm-effects.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-187410459791350095Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:40:00 +00002009-08-21T17:52:47.249-06:00Actually, it's not the thermometers but their placement, which produces a false warming trend.The official temperature record of continental United States comes from 1,221 stations of the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). During the past few years, Anthony Watts, a 25-year veteran meteorologist, assisted by 650 volunteers http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/08/thermometers-create-global-warming.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-8761230896346603996Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:13:00 +00002009-08-10T13:07:06.172-06:00 <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->The arrest of Henry Louis Gates by a white police office would not have been a national issue but for President Obama's assertion that the police “acted stupidly.” The officer, responding to a call that a burglary was in progress, arrested Gates when he was uncooperative, refused to show ID and harangued the http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/08/obama-and-racism.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-4274934497454865166Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:43:00 +00002009-08-02T14:34:59.601-06:00First of all, it should be noted that scientific truth is determined by a rational relationship to physical reality, not by the number of people believing an idea is true. The ideas of Copernicus, Issac Newton and Einstein were true even when no one else thought so. That is the way science has always been, always will be. “Consensus,” which we hear so much about, has nothing to do with http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/07/global-warming-more-phony-numbers-from.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-8489474105560667193Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:11:00 +00002009-07-13T11:07:42.692-06:00On Friday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to limit carbon dioxide emissions in the name of curbing global warming. This bill is totally senseless from any perspective other than as an excuse to give the government power over every aspect of people's lives. First of all, there is no global warming. There hasn't been any for more than ten years—despite the fact that atmospheric http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/06/us-house-takes-big-step-in-foolish.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-1242893920084815188Wed, 27 May 2009 04:06:00 +00002009-07-13T11:29:54.842-06:00A major argument in promoting smoking bans is that they can reduce the occurrence of the heart attacks or heart disease that are allegedly caused by secondhand smoke. The new study is the most extensive ever done on this issue and utterly demolishes this claim. The study analyzes heart attack hospital admissions and mortality before and after implementation of all state and local workplace http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/05/new-study-big-blow-to-smoking-ban.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-8189578741757569479Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:04:00 +00002009-03-26T14:57:32.995-06:00At her confirmation hearing to be the new director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson said her first task would be to restore scientific and legal integrity to the office. Then she did the opposite. She quickly directed EPA staff to prepare the paperwork for a finding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and safety and therefore must be regulated under the http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/03/epas-co2-policy-zero-integrity-anti.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-3364514288558307581Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:02:00 +00002009-03-15T19:48:46.019-06:00Last week the Obama administration emphatically eliminated the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste. This decision was not based on science but on politics: Obama in his presidential campaign told Nevadans that if elected, he wouldn't allow nuclear wastes to be stored there. The storage site was not popular with the state's voters or with Senate majority http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/03/nuclear-waste-government-created.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-8451633376538140406Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:35:00 +00002009-02-27T09:30:02.373-06:00The politicians have been blaming the nation's huge economic problems on the private sector and claiming the solution is more government, meaning more regulation. The media have been quite effective in parroting this line and convincing the public this must be so. The problems of housing foreclosures, the banking crisis, the insurance giant AIG, Wall Street, the auto industry, and even the $50 http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/02/madoffanother-failure-of-government.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-3340723415803341793Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:28:00 +00002009-01-31T11:16:40.627-06:00James Hansen is the NASA climatologist who started the global warming hysteria in 1988 when he told a Senate committee he was 99 percent sure global warming was already underway. The news media seized upon his unsupported testimony and parlayed it into an impending planetary crisis. A new industry was born. Billions of dollars were spent, and tens of thousands of jobs were created, giving rise tohttp://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2009/01/nasa-rigs-data-reports-false-global.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-8589213535919363405Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:30:00 +00002008-11-19T21:29:21.702-06:00Some scientists skillfully utilize the news media to promote a view of carbon dioxide and global warming that ignores contrary evidence or pretends it doesn't even exist. The media suck this up, puke it all over the airwaves and the newspapers, and the public, not knowing any better and awed by these scientists with Ph.D.s, believes it must be true. Here are a couple of examples. On June 25, 2007http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2008/11/global-warming-global-myth-part-3.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-2840499468574221106Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:48:00 +00002008-10-24T19:03:05.776-06:00The global warming advocates make all sorts of false claims about dire consequences of global warming. They claim it will result in the spread of malaria, food shortages, more human deaths, more violent weather, and a loss of biological diversity through the extinction of species. All untrue. The largest number of species — the greatest biological diversity — is in the tropics. As you move away http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2008/10/global-warming-global-myth-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-8777613014474097220Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:15:00 +00002008-10-17T21:35:24.068-06:00“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”—Sir John Houghton, first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and lead editor of its first three reports.”During the 20th century, the earth warmed 0.6 degree Celsius (1 degree Farhenheit), but that warming was wiped out in a single year when January 2008 showed an annual drop of 0.63 degree C. (1.13 F.). A single year does http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2008/10/global-warming-global-myth-part-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-3348066363200695359Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:49:00 +00002008-08-27T20:00:37.582-06:00Various other countries, even those not hostile to the U.S., also seek to reduce their their risks by reducing their dollars. Over a year ago Italy, Russia, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates announced they would reduce their dollar holdings slightly. Sweden's 90 % dollar foreign reserve went to 85 %. The UAE said it would convert 8% of its dollar holdings to euros. Friendly Japan, the largest http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2008/08/mortgage-crisis-dollar-and-its-future_27.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Edmund Contoski)0