We conservatives are incessantly assailed by the Left as “anti-science.” That we stand athwart scientific and technological advancement – yelling “Stop!” But time and again, it is Leftists that make decisions that fly in the face of actual, readily obvious science. And the Barack Obama Administration is rife with just these sorts of Luddites.
Mathematics is a science – so Leftists oppose it. Math dictates that when you make it more expensive for businesses to hire people – businesses will hire less people. Thus the minimum wage is anti-science. Uber-Left California Governor Jerry Brown admitted “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense” – before raising his state’s anyway. President Obama unilaterally raised the minimum wage for government contractors.
The science on global warming – oops, I mean climate change – is far from “settled.” Former high-ranking Obama Administration official Dr. Steven Koonin wrote “The idea that ‘Climate science is settled’ runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.”
The climate science evidence we do have is mounting – and it’s against the Leftist alarmists. Who have already woefully missed decades-worth of predictions. Who claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant – when it is what everything plant on the planet inhales. Leftists claim that carbon dioxide raises global temperatures – all the while China and India’s CO2 outputs have exponentially exploded, while global temperatures have flatlined for now-going-on eighteen years.
Meanwhile, multiple alleged science institutions have been caught actively attacking science to protect the Left’s climate change myth. Amongst these anti-science scammers are United-Nations-touchstone East Anglia University and our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The Left’s anti-science-ness is so deep – and yet so superficial – President Obama tried to dodge culpability for his ongoing, terrible jobs record by blaming ATM machines.
This Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is just another anti-science Leftist entity. Time and again the FCC’s three Democrat Commissioners (one of whom also serves as Chairman) have voted for ridiculously anti-science unilateral power grabs. Particularly in their sites – the World Wide Web.
The Internet has become a free speech-free market Xanadu – and it has done so virtually government-free. Arguably no endeavor in human history has grown so huge, so fast – in large part because it has been virtually government-free.
If ever there was an “If it ain’t broke – don’t fix it” entity – the Web is it. This FCC has made it their mission to ignore Reality, mathematics, economics, technology and many other wings of science – and pretend what ain’t broke needs a whole lot of government fixing.
Beginning with their “reclassification” power grab. Where the FCC’s Democrats decided to go back in time eighty years and bizarrely superimpose 1934 landline telephone law – on to the Internet.
Basic science says “The Internet network is dramatically different and exponentially more complex than a telephone network.” Basic science says “Law written sixty years before the advent of the Internet – doesn’t really work on the Internet.” But these things matter not to the Luddites. This power grab had to happen – to set the table for a whole host of subsequent anti-science attacks.
Also currently under consideration – the “set-top-box” grab. Where the FCC’s Democrats will force cable television providers to crack open their own complex digital networks – and completely reconfigure them each and every time an outside company wants to offer a new set-top-box.
Basic science says “Reconfiguring these networks is a huge, very expensive undertaking. Forcing providers to do so time and again will dramatically increase the prices consumers pay for these services.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he’s received e-mails from customers urging him to help lower their cable bills – and this bill-exploding proposal is his response.
Basic science says “The use of set-top-boxes is declining – as the use of applications (apps) is rising.” Thanks to technology and its advancement, every day your TV is becoming more like your smart phone – with rafts of apps, one for each individualized service. Rendering the set-top-box the soon-to-be-dinosaur of content delivery. And the backwards-looking, anti-science FCC is myopically fixating on the fossils.
Meanwhile, since about 2000 local governments have wasted hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars trying to be Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Wasted – because government has been abjectly awful at it. So awful – that twenty states passed laws prohibiting or limiting their down-ballot governments from wasting even more coin thereon.
The Obama Administration – undaunted by math and history – dumped $7.2 billion more into government broadband in the 2009 “Stimulus.” Which shockingly created even more of the exact same failures. Making those twenty states look a whole lot smarter than the Feds.
Who’s even more steadfastly impervious to facts than the Obama Administration? The Administration’s FCC. Which just last year ignored all of these failures at all levels of government – and overturned the sensible state laws prohibiting these failures.
We could go on, and on, and….
Of course these myriad Administration officials aren’t dim – they’re ideological zealots. For them – it’s government uber alles. And being pro-government means just about always being anti-science.
Because far too often science demands less government. And this Administration won’t stand for that.