Guest bashing by David Middleton
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs was the proximal reason we cancelled our subscription to Scientific American. His monthly column, “Sustainable Developments” was nothing less than an annoying propaganda campaign for the imposition of enviro-tyranny upon these tangentially United States. The straw that broke my camel’s back was his demand that the Wall Street Journal cease and desist publishing editorials skeptical of Gorebal Warming.
Dr. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Not to be confused with Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, The Earth Institute is a program which serves little purpose other than to teach non-science majors how to sound all sciency when spouting enviro-psychobabble. The levels of ignorance on display in this CNN editorial are mind boggling.
Trump is taking US down the path to tyranny
By Jeffrey Sachs
Mon July 23, 2018
(CNN) The United States was born in a revolt against the tyranny of King George III. The Constitution was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of checks and balances, but in President Trump’s America, those safeguards are failing.
Donald Trump holds the grandiose belief that only he should rule America. Unchecked by cowed or complicit Republicans in Congress, Trump invokes executive authority to alter policies and practices long established by law and treaty.
[…]
[GOOD FRACKING GRIEF!!! Hey Dr. Sachs, remember this???]
[…]
Trump used executive authority without Congressional mandate to… to announce the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement despite treaty-bound US obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change…
[AEUHHH????]
[…]
The Nazi henchman Hermann Göring explained in Nuremberg prison how easy it is to mobilize the public to war: “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.”
[…]
[Godwin’s Law anyone?]
[Can you believe that Godwin created a Trump exemption to Godwin’s Law? Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome has gone full (rhymes with petard).]
[…]
Note: The videos and red-bracketed comments represent my commentary and are not in the CNN editorial… I am only posting this notice because, if I didn’t, some commentator would probably accuse me of altering the CNN editorial because I don’t like CNN and they have Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Obama got us into the fracking Paris Climate Agreement with his pen and his phone, without Congressional mandate!
Trump used executive authority without Congressional mandate to… to announce the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement despite treaty-bound US obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change…
Hey Dr. Sachs! President Trump had the executive authority, without Congressional mandate, to announce the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement… because it was not a TREATY and the agreement stipulated that he could do exactly what he did.
Hey Dr. Sachs! President Trump even has the executive authority to withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change without Congressional mandate because… Drum roll, please… THE UNITED STATES FRACKING CONSTITUTION and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change provide him with that authority…
Congressional Research Service
Withdrawal from International Agreements: Legal Framework, the Paris Agreement, and the Iran Nuclear Agreement
Stephen P. Mulligan
Legislative Attorney
May 4, 2018[…]
Although the Constitution sets forth a definite procedure whereby the Executive has the power to make treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, it is silent as to how treaties may be terminated. Moreover, not all agreements between the United States and foreign nations take the form of Senate-approved, ratified treaties. The President also enters into executive agreements, which do not receive the Senate’s advice and consent, and “political commitments” that are not binding under domestic or international law. The legal procedure for withdrawal often depends on the type of agreement at issue, and the process may be further complicated when Congress has enacted legislation to give the international agreement domestic legal effect.
On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that he intends to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement—a multilateral, international agreement intended to reduce the effects of climate change. Historical practice suggests that, because the Obama Administration considered the Paris Agreement to be an executive agreement that did not require the Senate’s advice and consent, the President potentially may claim authority to withdraw without seeking approval from the legislative branch. By its terms, however, the Paris Agreement does not allow parties to complete the withdrawal process until November 2020, and Trump Administration officials have stated that the Administration intends to follow the multiyear withdrawal procedure. Consequently, absent additional action by the Trump Administration, the United States will remain a party to the Paris Agreement until November 2020, albeit one that has announced its intent to withdraw once it is eligible to do so.
[…]
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that he intends to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement—a multilateral, international agreement intended to reduce the effects of climate change by maintaining global temperatures “well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels[.]” The Paris Agreement is a subsidiary to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a broader, framework treaty entered into during the George H. W. Bush Administration. Unlike the UNFCCC, which received the Senate’s advice and consent in 1992, the Paris Agreement was not submitted to the Senate for approval. Instead, the Obama Administration took the position that the Paris Agreement is an executive agreement for which senatorial or congressional approval was not required. President Obama signed an instrument of acceptance of the Paris Agreement on August 29, 2016, which was deposited with U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon on September 3, 2016. The Agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016.
Although the Obama Administration described the Paris Agreement as an executive agreement, it did not publicly articulate the precise sources of executive authority on which the President relied in entering into the Agreement. Possible sources include the UNFCCC, existing statutes such as the Clean Air Act and Energy Policy Act, the President’s sole constitutional powers, or a combination of these authorities. While the precise source of authority is not readily apparent, there does not appear to be an underlying restriction on unilateral presidential withdrawal (i.e., a treaty reservation, statutory restriction, or other form of limitation) in any of the potential sources of executive authority. Therefore, the Paris Agreement would likely fall into the category of executive agreements that the Executive has terminated without seeking consent from the Senate or Congress.
[…]
Some commentators advocated for withdrawal from the parent treaty to the Paris Agreement—the UNFCCC—as a more expedient method of exiting the Paris Agreement. Article 28 of the Paris Agreement provides that any party that withdraws from the UNFCCC shall be considered also to have withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. The UNFCCC has nearly identical withdrawal requirements to the Paris Agreement, but because the UNFCCC entered into force in 1994, the three-year withdrawal prohibition expired in 1997. Therefore withdrawal from both the parent treaty and the subsidiary Paris Agreement could be accomplished within one year. The Trump Administration, however, has not announced that it intends to take action with respect to the UNFCCC. Therefore, at present, the United States remains a party to the subsidiary Paris Agreement until Article 28’s withdrawal procedure is complete—albeit one that has announced its intention to withdraw once it is eligible to do so.
[…]
Hey Dr. Sachs!… One more thing…
You can bet anyone promoting the word “sustainable” is a card-carrying cultural marxist-loon. Just like other code-words — racist, sexist, supremacist, misogynist, “stick in any word”- justice, etc, etc, etc.
Same reason I’m cancelling SA. The Paris Climate Agreement is NOT a treaty, it was never ratified by the Senate. The only person that agreed to it was Obama. The irony is that AGW thinks that it is and is published as such. Does SA have editors that review this garbage? Has SA become a political mouthpiece for communists? People that actively twist and distort the US Constitution are also twisting and distorting science as well to fit an agenda.
It not that I disagree with SA, I strongly Disagree. Both the column and the science behind global warming is flat out wrong.
SA can sell their garbage to their communist friends. It probably won’t go out of business, but I don’t have to support it either.
SciAm essentially became corrupted even before it was bought by a German company.
I dropped my Scentific American subscription in the early 1980’s because they were presenting climate change speculation as fact.
I read their “Global Cooling” speculation for years and at first I thought they might have a case to make, but as time went along, it became obvious that they couldn’t prove their speculations, but that didn’t stop them from pretending they were true.
And then in the late 1970’s the temperature trend turned around and started getting warmer and so Scientific American started pushing the “Global Warming” meme just like they did for Global Cooling.
So they didn’t prove Global Cooling was caused by humans and then they make a 180 degree turn and start claiming humans are causing the warming with no more evidence than they had for human-caused Global Cooling, and so after a few years of realizing they were going to stick with the unproven meme, I decided they weren’t worth the trouble. I would get mad at the speculation with no accompanying proof, and decided I wasn’t going to let a magazine make me mad anymore.
And I quit subscribing to National Geographic and Science News about the same time for the same reason.
So yes, Scientfic American was corrupted long before the German company bought the magazine.
Apparently Dr. Sachs has allowed the ethical compromises required to be an environmental extremist to also degrade his ability to have a factual discussion of how American government actually works.
There seems to be a creeping madness amongst Progressives everywhere. They no longer recognise their own opinions as opinions, which come with all the usual biases and emotions, but sincerely believe they are reasoned and logical positions that are self-evidently true – because they hold them.
That produces arguments that are so obviously one-sided or so obviously false that I just don’t udnerstand how intelligent people keep making them. This seems to be one of those, where Trump is doing nothing that other Presidents have not done before. Then we have the simple truth that doing away with regulations is a clear and obvious reduction in state power, and so cannot possibly be authoritarian.
One side of so many debates just doesn’t seem to think they need to make sense any more.
“Dr. Jeffrey Sachs was the proximal reason we cancelled our subscription to Scientific American. ”
Bingo!
SciAm had an issue wherein the future (50 years out ?) was described by ‘experts’ such as Jeffrey Sachs.
It was stinky carp.
I have that issue; where I don’t know — but I do have it.
The paper it was printed on had more value before it went through the press than it does now.
“I have that issue; where I don’t know — but I do have it.”
Hanging on the bathroom wall, where it belongs ?
Funny, you are.
27 Survival Uses for Common Mullein Besides Cowboy Toilet Paper
“I have that issue; where I don’t know — but I do have it.”
Stored with the rest of the emergency supply of combustible materials for when the power goes out and you need to start a fire to keep warm?
If Obama had actually worked to get a senate-ratified treaty signed, it would have made withdrawal harder for Trump. But He didn’t. He was either lazy, or did not have the political talent required to get it accomplished.
If He believed that a majority of voters were against it, and He would be unable to get it through Senate despite His incredible work habits and His unfathomable political talent, then that just means that the American people didn’t want it in the first place.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd–Hagel_Resolution
The real reason Obama didn’t go to the U.S. Senate to have the climate agreement ratified is he knew he didn’t have the votes to pass it.
The immediate reason that I cancelled my SA subscription was the 1986 Belle Glade, Florida and HTLV-III in mosquitoes article.
Slim’s Disease in Africa was transmitted by both mosquitoes and bedbugs according to WHO and the Merck manual. It was only after the public panic in discovering that slims disease was AIDS that science took a back seat to politics.
It looks more to me like President Trump is taking the USA away an agreement that would mandate the position of supporting the rest of the world to the detriment of the USA and toward a path where the rest of the world must share an equal financial responsibility. Is this a tyrannical act or a Patriotic act?
I consider it a patriotic act because he is preventing the taxpayers of the USA from wasting their money.
This was an easy call. Any patriotic American would do the same.
There’s an expert on an area I’m very interested in. His books are close to the definitive analysis of the topic and I respect his work greatly. He’s on Twitter, unfortunately, and all his tweets are now unhinged, bat-poop-loony anti-Trump diatribes. TDS has taken away his reasoning powers. It’s pathetic.
“Trump used executive authority without Congressional mandate to… to announce the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement despite treaty-bound US obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change…”
Mr Sachs, Hate to break it to you but the Paris Climate Agreement was not a treaty ratified by Congress. It was accepted by the pen of a President (Obama) and could be (and was) just as easily rejected by the pen of a President (Trump). As it was not a treaty (those have to be ratified by Congress) there was No “treaty-bound US obligation”. Next time do the hard work of getting it past Congress if you don’t want to risk a future president simply doing away with it with the stroke of a pen as is within their constitution authority.
“It was accepted by the pen of a President (Obama) and could be (and was) just as easily rejected by the pen of a President (Trump).”
Which is why much of what Trump has done will simply be undone by someone down the road. Might not even be a Democrat.
As most of what he’s done is undo the Executive orders that Obama made, you are correct. Another President with Obama’s views on certain issues can easily redo them. And another president after that can undo them again. The Mexico City policy aka the abortion global gag rule is a prime example, Reagan initiated it, Clinton removed it, GW Bush reactivated it, Obama removed it, Trump reactivated it again, and likely a future president will remove it again and on it goes.
Tyrant? Deflection!
Psychological Projection
Once again, progressives literally inverting the truth.
Here’s Jeffry Sachs (who served as the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia) giving an inaugural speech at the Party of European Socialists:
Here’s two links that show George Soros was an external
puppet masteradvisory board member at Columbia’s Earth Institute:http://www.earth.columbia.edu/news/2003/story04-17-03.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=1642886&privcapId=4245068
The Paris Climate Agreement was never a treaty. The reality is that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. The Paris Climate Agreement is a big waste of money that will have no effect on climate. The USA is currently a debtor nation with a huge federal debt, huge annual federal deficits and huge annual trade deficits. We should not waste money of stuff like this until we have paid off all of our outstanding debts.
I still remember when I was approached by a guy outside my calculus class who was handing out leaflets about ‘socialism, the unfinished revolution’. I quipped to him that it wasn’t finished only because it hadn’t killed everyone off with starvation or put them in a gulag yet. He proceeded to call me a Nazi. I asked him if he thought I was a national socialist party member or would ever vote for one, he said ” probably not”, I then asked him “Then why did you call me a ‘Nazi’?”
He just stood there looking perplexed by my question.
I weep for the future.
I remember the days when African students pointed to Mugabe and Zimbabwe as the shining example of success in Africa, and the Yugoslav Fulbright student that thought they were superior, and the Arab students that looked to the Soviet Union as their counterweight to the U.S. and Israel. Time is cruel to the shallow minded.
…and the univ prof from Greece who thought Greek socialism was the greatest.
When I studied astronomy some decades ago I had a course based entirely on Scientific American Xeroxes. Now it is little more than a popular science magazine.
David,
And the American Geological Institute has morphed into the American Geosciences Institute, and the original journal, Geotimes, has likewise morphed into a younger sibling of SciAm. I actually enjoyed reading Geotimes. I can’t say the same about Earth Magazine. The are all turning into popular pablum.
Geosciences probably makes sense because many of the affiliated societies are geophysics-oriented (SEG, AGU, SSA) or from other branches of earth science (AMS, ASLO, AAG)…
https://www.americangeosciences.org/member-societies
That said, even the AAPG has been infected to some extent. The Explorer has become way too focused on STEM and trying to appeal to college students and the under-30 crowd. On the other hand, SEG’s Leading Edge has transformed from a pulp magazine that even had a crossword puzzle in the 1980’s to a pretty decent journal loaded with relevant case studies of exploration geophysics. Although, the more technical journal, Geophysics, has become unreadable for anyone other than computer programmers and Chinese mathematicians.
The was not written for none leftists, thats why the sophistry flows seamlessly,……..they lie, and then they lie some more.
Its fake news because it is either contrived or fake by omitting facts that would lead to the opposite conclusion they are led to.
Left in A Quasi reality that progressives thrive in.
I stumbled across some YouTube clips about SJW’s and their anti-Trump positions and they are absolutely hilarious. Their fails are monumentally funny! Presenters like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro absolutely shred their arguments.
I remember a clip where various college students were asked their opinion of Trumps SC nominee. (This was a week before the nominee was even announced.)
They regaled the reporter on how they had read in the paper and seen on the news that they guy was an avowed racist, sexist, and all kinds of other forms of evil.
These guys are definitely connected to a form of reality unknown to science have have lost the key for getting back.
Their reality check got lost in the mail.
That would be this link (is this real or are they actors…):
Sachs has in the past advocated for the developed countries to dedicate a percentage of their GDPs — 2 or 3% — to subsidize third world nations. He called it a Development Fund or something like that. Sachs at one time imagined that he would be at the apex of an organization that collected and distributed $300B-$500B a year. He said it was a moral obligation of the U.S. and other “rich” nations to transfer wealth to poorer nations. When Sachs saw climate change, I think he simply decided that it presented an expedient way for him and like-minded progressives to impose a regimen of annual wealth transfers. Of course, this is exactly what the Paris accords were, with the U.S. expected to pay something like $100B/yr for climate “adaptations” which were really bribes and bogus “reparations.” The conclusion I have drawn is that Sachs is just another “other people’s money” guy, always looking for ways to redistribute YOUR income and wealth to HIS pet projects, causes, pockets, cronies, and so on. In other words, he’s a complete fraud, despite his impressive academic record.
Here is a bit of tyranny from the wunderdogs running San Francisco, …https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/07/24/proposal-eliminates-employer-provided-lunches-in-sf-because-restaurants-cant-compete/
They are going to pass a law that new businesses can not have an employee cafeteria on the premises. These guys are totally insane.
Just when you thought you had seen it all from the left.
Cartoons for Jeffrey Sachs
Meh. Presidential comedy just ain’t what it used to be:
https://youtu.be/weJqe8m2m5g
Liars sure love to project their own pathology. Here’s the real ‘path to tyranny’…
“UN Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL.” – Rosa Koire
http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com
Sachs is some economist. His answer to every issue is more taxes and more government. Lots and lots of both. His last name should be Tax.
BTW off topic: Trump and EU Junker just made a Deal about US and EU trade tariffs.
Nobody in Germany expected it – but Trump is delivering.