Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

If you thought the University of East Anglia email dump from two years ago was revealing, put your drink down and take a deep breath. There’s a whole new dump of 5,000 emails and documents leaked by FOIA.org, and they are just as damning – and more so – than the first batch. James Watts has the best synopsis here . Here’s a teaser sample from Michael Mann: email 1680.txt date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400 from: “Michael E. Mann”.. subject: Re: Something not to pass on to: Phil Jones Phil, I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you provide. s They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too. I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigat...

A couple of years ago, Newsweek had a cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now.”  The basic themes of huge stimulus package, ObamaCare, and government overregulation leading once-capitalist America down the dangerous road to socialism  is quite well worn.  There’s some truth to the basic theme:  the state is getting more and more deeply involved in business, even taking controlling interests in some private companies.  And the state is even trying to "make policy" for private companies they do not control.  So state power is growing at the expense of corporations. The problem is, that isn't socialism.  Socialism rests on a firm concept:  the abolition of private property.  What is happening now - particularly in the Obama administration - is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business.  It’s very "European," and some Eur...

Global Warming Hysteria, at least in the USA, has really hit hard times. Maybe it is because global temperatures haven’t risen in a statistically significant manner for more than 12 years, despite increases in carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the bad economy is such that even believers don’t want more downward pressure to stop warming that might never come. Or, perhaps the credibility of global warming has been generally lost due to constant dire warnings, trying to make every weather event into global warming, incorrect computer model projections, or whatever, people are just not into the old panic anymore. Or perhaps, it is those evil Koch Brothers and their astonishingly effective propaganda machine. Whatever, the hysteria seems to have run out of gas. Here’s a small but very telling example: Three years ago Pacific Gas and Electric offered its customers the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are by paying a little extra to fund carbon offsets. Well, the program is...

Republicans stink. This, in a nutshell, is what Democrats are running on in 2012. Republicans are mean. They're obstructionists. They don't care about the elderly and they don't care about the middle class. They're dangerous ideologues looking out only for the rich. The country faces serious economic challenges and catastrophic debt. Homes are worthless, jobs are scarce and collapsing European social-welfare states are providing frightening previews of what Americans can expect if Washington doesn't dial back its deficit spending. But Democrats are unwilling to engage in serious, honest debate about their vision for the country. Instead, they just criticize Republicans. What's even more repulsive than this juvenile approach to governance and campaigning? The fact that a huge chunk of the electorate actually buys it. If there's a lesson in all this, one year before Americans go to the polls to again decide the direction of the country, it's that...

A big part of the reason for Occupy malaise is that the social model no longer works. The machine by which universities train young people to become minor regulators and then delivers them into white-collar positions on the basis of credentials in history, political science, literature, ethnic and women’s studies – with or without the benefit of law school – has broken down. The supply is uninterrupted, but the demand has dried up. It’s not the greedy Wall Street bankers who destroyed these people’s hopes. It’s the virtueocracy itself. It’s the people who constructed a benefit-heavy entitlement system whose costs can no longer be sustained. It’s the politicians and union leaders who made reckless pension promises that are now bankrupting cities and states. It’s the socially progressive policy-makers in the U.S. who declared that everyone, even those with no visible means of support, should be able to own a home with no money down, courtesy of their government. The fact of the...