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It's Not that Liberals Deny Science
Remember the halcyon days of yore, when our liberal friends were shocked, shocked that some people were denying the science of climate change, as double-blind tested by the best scientists at UN Climate Change? Because the graph of global temperature from 101 scientifically validated climate models pointed ever upwards — or would if the scientists knew what was good for them.
Of course, some people felt that using the tactics of the Spanish Inquisition and tarring and feathering the yahoos as “science deniers” was a bridge too far. (Not that the Spanish Inquisition ever dealt with heretics using yahoo tar-and-feathers, or even the boiling oil of The Mikado). But what’s a liberal to do when scientists agree that the Earth in is peril?
But then, scientists agree that, with CO2 below 150 ppm, plants start to die.
During the coldest peaks of the last ice age (the Last Glacial Maximum roughly 20,000 years ago), atmospheric carbon dioxide dropped to a low of about 180 parts per million (ppm).
And scientists say that plants are experiencing a Global Greening with today’s CO2 at 420 ppm, resulting in an improvement in crop yields.
So you tell me, dear liberals, what the science says.
But back to Earth. If there is one thing that economists agree on it is that rent controls don’t work. As a test of science denial, we are fortunate to be experiencing the rent-control experiment of a social scientist from Uganda, Zohran Mamdani, who is presently testing his theories on the landlords and renters of New York City.
Guess what! Rents in New York City are up 10% on last year.
The median rent, meanwhile, sits at $5,295, up 6% from last July, though it held flat month over month after climbing 3% in both June and July from May’s previous record of $5,125.
And more:
At the same time, apartments are becoming harder to find. The number of rentals available across the city fell 1.4% from a year ago, while Manhattan saw a 4.4% drop.
Guess what. Developers remove apartments from the market in a city with rent control. But don’t worry. Mamdani has Plans: to “build 200,000 new apartments over the next decade.”
In a parallel social science experiment, economist Javier Milei abolished rent controls in Buenos Aires and rents went down. I was shocked. Do you know why? Because landlords started renting apartments that they had been keeping off the market for years.
Now I ask you, dear liberal friends: who is the biggest science denier? The eevil right-winger who wants to boil the climate with fossil fuels? The BA landlord that keeps his apartment off the market during rent control? Or noble Mamdani, the rent-controller?
Yeah, I know. Back in the day, they called it “scientific socialism.” It was going to save the world from the evils of capitalism, including landlords.
It’s odd isn’t it, that word “landlord.” The people that own apartment buildings aren’t “lords” and the don’t own “land,” if you think of land as rich green acres.
Fact is, dear liberal friends, pretty well every time you propose a new program, you ignore the science. Because practically everything government does is an attempt to dodge the science of the price system.
In fact, practically everything that liberal politics has tried to do since Rousseau has been an attempt to dodge the reality of the price system.
What puzzles me is that the journalists willing to call out politicians for proposing programs that deny the science are as scarce as hen’s teeth.
We know why, of course. It’s like the good old days of the Hollywood moguls: “you’ll never work in this town again.” With journalists, it’s “you’ll never get a leak from a confidential source again.”
In our modern era, of course, the same rule applies to everyone in public life except JK Rowling, including the little kiddies that acted in the Harry Potter movies.
Yeah! What’s the science about transgenders? Legal expert Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson once asked us to check with a biologist on that. Thank goodness she believes in The Science.
| Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:15:08 GMT |
Life Unaffordable? Blame Politics and Government
All the experts agree that the US is facing an “unaffordability” crisis.
Of course, I get where this is coming from. Prices are up about 40% since the Day Before COVID, so everyone is blaming it on the Other Guy.
The Democrats are blaming it all on billionaires and oligarchs.
Ron Dreyer quotes Evan Barker and her new book: Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative.
As life becomes more unaffordable for Americans, and our politicians do not take meaningful action to address the problem, it is clear to me that the future, right or left, regardless of who is in power, will be populist. Whichever “establishment” party is in charge will continually be voted out, every four years, until a transformative FDR-like figure emerges, from either side of the aisle, delivering either a Republican or Democratic version of transformation that permanently improves the lives of most Americans.
OK. So what “transformation that permanently improves the lives of most Americans” is on offer?
None, really. Because the affordability crisis, the “problem” to be addressed, is the fault of two parties. There’s the Democrats, courtesy of FDR & Co. And there are the Republicans, that don’t have a clue.
You see we have an affordability crisis in the US in part because government takes about 40 percent of the income Americans earn in useful work and spends it on stuff that is less useful. Then it regulates the economy in favor of various interests. Wanna know who that is? Any group that can credibly be described as Big Something, from Big Government to Big Pharma to Big Education. And also any group that can be described as an Industrial Complex, from Ike’s Military Industrial Complex to the Activist Industrial Complex to the Climate Industrial Complex.
Then there is the Federal Reserve System that printed 40 percent more dollars in 2020-21 and has reduced the value of the dollar by 99 percent over the past century.
Then there is Social Security that channels savings for retirement through government.
Then there is government healthcare programs and regulation of healthcare. Healthcare costs are increasing faster than anything else, from real estate to automobiles.
Then there is government welfare that encourages women to get government to pay for their children rather than the child’s father.
Then there is government education that is mostly administrators doing who knows what.
Then there is government subsidies for home loans that increase the price and the size of homes.
There’s your affordability crisis.
The Democrats won’t do anything about it because each of the programs mentioned helped buy them votes back in the day.
The Republicans won’t do anything about it because nothing infuriates a human more than having their government benefits cut.
Back to Evan Barker. She understands that the “establishment” parties are chained to the status quo.
But what can “populists” of left or right do about it?
Right populists like Trump are trying to fix the economy with magic tricks like Trump Accounts and Trump Tariffs and No Tax on Tips.
Left populists like the DSA are trying to fix affordability with government food stores and taxing billionaires with a wealth tax.
Nobody dares to deal with our real problem: the trash mountain of free stuff handed out over the last century.
| Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:15:01 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. — Hermann Göring
Passion is the distinction between love and hate.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic:
