08/6/15

Ernest Moniz, Iran and the Imprimatur of Science

By: Benjamin Weingarten

Ernest Moniz

Ernest Moniz

Watching the Obama administration trot out Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on the Sunday shows and in testimony to Congress following the consummation of what I believe will be a nuclear weapon-ensuring deal for not only the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad in Iran, but their Sunni counterparts, it should have been clear to all what a charade it was.

Moniz — an MIT physicist turned Obama administration shill — was there to provide the imprimatur of unimpeachable Science™ to the transparently deceptive deal. And who can fight with science, especially of the kind that is already settled?

In this light, I am reminded of a quote from an expert in financial markets and economic history, Jim Grant, he of the legendary Wall Street newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.

During an address delivered on June 2, 2015 to the Manhattan Institute in connection with his winning of the Hayek Prize, Grant stated:

In the 1960s, John Cowperthwaite, British governor of Hong Kong, refused to allow the collection of economic statistics lest the bureaucrats misappropriate that information in the service of governmental macroeconomic manipulation (the very word “statistics” derives from “the state”).

Such an act would be heresy today in a world in which the state, governing according to scientific principles, is the church for our progressive elites.

Cowperthwaite knew that politicians would conflate science and public policy to justify their agendas and grow their power.

For it is science that legitimates the Iran deal.

It is science that legitimates the disruption of human activity, and with it trillions of dollars in wealth through global climate regulation.

Indeed, it is science that legitimates any number of government intrusions into our daily lives.

Science ought to be celebrated. But politicians can manipulate it towards destructive ends.

Winston Churchill saw this early on when he expressed fears about the power of mass weaponry. Of course it is not the weapons that are the problem in and of themselves, but the prospect of evil people obtaining them and using them towards genocidal ends that ought to keep us awake at night.

Today America is aiding, abetting and enabling just these types of people.

In fact, as an aside, Ernest Moniz, again our Secretary of Energy, when asked about government findings on another mass weapon, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) during Congressional testimony — the use of which Iran has endorsed and for which we have yet to harden our grid — effectively pleaded ignorance.

Ernest Moniz is a fitting living embodiment of the fusion of science and state.

06/25/15

Media Largely Ignore News of Latest Obamacare Revelation

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

When it comes to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare role, the media are making sure that the joke remains on us. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently received 20,000 pages of emails of exchanges between this professor and the White House during “the crucial months when [Obamacare] was being crafted and passed,” writes Charles Lipson for RealClearPolitics.

“I just heard about this,” President Obama said in 2014. “…The fact that some advisor who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with, in terms of the voters, is no reflection on the actual process that was run.”

Gruber informed the administration “about interviews with reporters and discussions with lawmakers” and consulted with the administration “about how to publicly describe his role,” reported The Wall Street Journal. He received at least $400,000 from the federal government, and millions more from state governments for his brilliant advice.

The mainstream media, as they do with most negative news regarding Obamacare, met this newest revelation regarding President Obama’s obfuscations and lies with a near complete blackout.

As we recently reported, members of the media not only cover up President Obama’s many lies, they also defend his signature legislation from any threat from any source. Most recently the press has been pressuring the Supreme Court to vote to save Obamacare’s federal subsidies based on the pervasive myth that the legislative text requiring that subsidies be distributed through an exchange “established by the state” results from a Congressional drafting error.

Could the impending Supreme Court ruling have influenced editors’ and television news producers’ decisions to ignore this latest information regarding Gruber’s Obamacare role?

“A search of the New York Times shows zero hits for ‘Gruber’ this week,” writes Lipson. He continues:

The Washington Post has one hit, a brief comment by an online opinion columnist. Regional newspapers like the Chicago Tribune: zero.…The network shows—Good Morning America, the Today Show, and CBS This Morning—have eight hours of air time but did not mention it at all. Zilch.

As for MSNBC’s Morning Joe, panelists took a moment to have a good laugh at America’s expense, as Accuracy in Media Chairman Don Irvine noted:

“I owe my Republican sources an apology because they kept telling me he [Gruber] was hugely involved, and the White House played it down,” said Mark Halperin, co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics.

“Did the White House lie about that?” asked Joe Scarborough.

“I think they were not fully forthcoming,” replied Halperin. “Or they may have had their recollections impaired.”

In other words, President Obama lied.

“Morning Joe’s panel of Democratic stalwarts, including Howard Dean, actually laughed out loud,” writes Lipson. “When they were asked the same question—did the White House lie?—they kept laughing and said ‘they were not fully forthcoming.’”

Maybe if the media didn’t continue to laugh, ignore, or downplay President Obama’s constant lies and instead held him accountable for them, then the President and his administration wouldn’t be able to get away with their transparent disdain for the press, or, apparently, the “stupid” American voter, as Gruber characterized them.