by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Mar 28, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
The Great Climate Change Revolution is headed for failure. You can tell because it was already in big trouble before the ultimate heavy lifting even started.
International accords, (i.e. Paris Agreement) passed with great fanfare to ensure cooperation on emissions reductions, are ignored by most of the signers, notably China. Consumers worldwide are balking at increased energy prices. Unsold EVs are piling up.
All this resistance is occurring well before the full rollout of the regulations and restrictions needed to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050, the agreed-upon goal of climate activists worldwide.
It may not seem at first glance like the climate change movement is struggling. After all, mainstream dogma still holds that man-made warming has us careening toward disaster, possibly an uninhabitable planet. The only solution is to “just stop oil” along with coal and gas.
As John Kerry explains, there is no alternative. Biden’s proposals have nothing to do with politics nor ideology. “It’s entirely a reaction to the science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening.”
It was no surprise, then, when Biden officials recently rolled out new CO2 emissions requirements, maintaining the same endpoint by 2032. The only way for auto makers to comply would be for gas-powered cars to comprise only 30% of new car sales.
But there’s a telling detail. The 2030 requirements have been relaxed, which means that they’re still going to put the squeeze on to force more EV sales, just not right now. But what’s going to change to make regulations more palatable in 2032 than in 2030? There’s no evidence that the demand for EVs will be greater or that consumers will be more interested in purchasing them.
EVs were envisioned as the cutting edge of the “zero by fifty” campaign. If we could replace the outmoded, smoke-belching anachronisms on the roads with sleek new vehicles lacking tailpipe emissions, the new atmospheric standards would be a piece of cake.
But there are problems. Consumers aren’t wild about EVs. After years of the feds promoting them and subsidizing them in every way thinkable, they still account for just 8% of new car sales.
They are still too expensive, refueling can be difficult and they have poor resale value. Moreover the giant batteries are a disposal nightmare. EVs increase soot pollution. Depending on the fuel source used to produce the electricity, they may produce no net carbon reduction anyway!
Auto makers for now are slashing prices on the mandated EVs and making up for it with profits from gas-powered cars. Ford alone lost $4.7 billion last year on EV production, a whopping $64,000 per EV sold.
Yet the Biden administration soldiers on, insisting EVs can capture 70% of all sales within eight years. Hint: they can’t. Look for other accommodations to reality to be made. Meanwhile they are doing a lot of economic damage, for no possible benefit.
Americans are less caught up in climate panic than ever. Surveys revealed that of all the issues in this year’s election, voters rank climate change 10th in importance. “We’re number 10” may not make an inspiring campaign slogan, but the massive media, academic, and governmental infrastructure dedicated to its promotion means the climate change industry won’t disappear anytime soon.
As Swedish economist Björn Lomborg points out, climate change is a problem but only one of several mankind must grapple with. Meta-analysis of all scientific estimates shows climate change costs will likely average one percent of GDP across the century, a figure sure to be dwarfed by anticipated economic growth. Meanwhile, the proposed solutions insisted upon by the panic advocates will average $27 trillion annually or seven times more than the problem itself.
Costs aside, we lead better lives because of fossil fuels. Abundant energy has more than doubled lifespans, dramatically reduced hunger, and increased personal income tenfold. Climate related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined an astonishing 97% over the last century.
The worst thing we could do is to drive ourselves into poverty by “following the (false) science.” We need to stay economically and technically strong to be able to accommodate change as needed. Human beings do that, you know.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Mar 15, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
During World War II, the civilians of the Axis nations suffered greatly. Their daily lives were disrupted by bombing. Severe food shortages were common. Families were separated. An estimated 2 million civilians died in Japan alone.
Yet the Allied powers would have thought it preposterous to provide humanitarian aid. These countries had attacked us and were committed to achieving world domination. Our only hope to save civilization was to force their surrender. Instead of sending relief packages, we dropped atomic bombs on them.
You know how it worked out. America and the Allies prevailed and proved to be unusually benevolent victors. Germany, Italy, and Japan eventually became functioning, prosperous nations.
During the war, the Allies, like combatants throughout history, realized it was lunacy to work against your own war aims by subsidizing your enemy. Yet that is precisely what America is forcing on Israel in the Gaza War with our persistent calls for ceasefires, which give the beleaguered Hamas forces the opportunity to regroup and resupply.
Anthony Blinken alone has made at least three trips pressuring Israel to give their enemy a fighting chance by providing humanitarian aid. President Netanyahu is widely criticized for not going along.
The American far left, which exerts an outsized influence on foreign policy in Democratic circles, holds large rallies calling for a complete ceasefire. For them, Israel’s only way to avoid international censure is to admit defeat and accept subjugation to their savage foe, an unthinkable option.
Netanyahu’s response to the unprovoked, horrific massacre orchestrated by Hamas on October 6 was transparent. Decades of seeking accommodation with them through negotiations had come to naught. Hamas, among the Islamist terrorist groups sponsored by Iran, has fighters who since birth have been taught to hate all Jews.
The only strategic goal of any interest to Hamas is the complete annihilation of the Jewish state. They put Israel into a position where it had to permanently destroy Hamas to have any hope for a safe, peaceful future.
America seemed to initially understand the Israeli position. Israel is a small, mostly Jewish state of 10 million residents surrounded by 24 hostile countries with 500 million Muslims, most of whom ascribe to an ideology that demands eradicating Judaism. Every day, Israeli Jews must defend their right to exist.
America’s initial support of Israel’s response to a massive act of war melted under pressure from the pro-Muslim left to end the collateral damage of civilian death and suffering. The Israeli military is considered one of the most careful anywhere, sometimes amending battle plans to avoid civilian casualties.
Hamas, on the other hand, uses civilians as human shields, often housing them in the same building as military targets. Hamas celebrates their deaths as public relations coups.
Wartime hostages are always a difficult issue. Few loved ones anywhere would act differently than those piteously begging now for the return of their family members.
Yet the cruel calculus of war is that ransoming hostages, especially in lopsided transactions, inevitably means more will be taken in the future. Only a policy of remorselessly attacking hostage takers can prevent future potential kidnappings.
At this point, it is clear that the Biden administration, once Israel’s ally, is now siding with Hamas. Biden publicly criticizes Netanyahu for not agreeing to an immediate ceasefire. He is planning to build a large port into Gaza to accommodate bounteous food shipments.
We seem not to know or care that this is handing victory to Israel’s enemy. If Hamas can escape consequences for the October 6 debacle and live to fight another day, their greatest dreams will be achieved.
America has not only been an inconstant friend to Israel, we did much to enable this Gaza war in the first place. Obama and Biden rescued Iran when it faced a serious domestic uprising. They also provided the subsidies for Iran to fund its proxies, which are now enthusiastically killing Americans. The dynamic duo has virtually assured that Iran will soon be nuclear armed.
At a time when the world order is changing and new alliances are being formed, America does itself great harm by proving such a weak and indecisive ally. Make no mistake, the world is watching.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Mar 1, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Legislative Republicans in Arizona are advancing a bill to terminate your right to vote…well at least from the “comfort of your kitchen table,” according to Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts. Arizona’s beleaguered voters would instead have to “schlep down” to actual polling places.
But wait – it gets worse! The bill also eliminates the ability to cast your vote anywhere you choose, or it won’t count. Of course, in the real world you would’ve been repeatedly notified of your polling station, and if you went to the wrong one anyway, poll workers would helpfully direct you to the correct one.
Why are Democrats motivated to concoct these exaggerated arguments against in-person voting, which has always worked just fine for Americans? It began in the age of COVID when, to prevent unnecessary mingling, voting in-person was discouraged. Voters instead were sent a ballot which they could return at their leisure
Then, magic happened. Suddenly, Democrats became more likely to win. Close elections turned blue at the last minute, sometimes even after the official account was completed. Underdog candidates, almost always Democrats, begin to eke out victories.
In-person voting came to be depicted as an onerous infringement on our fictitious right to convenience, much more difficult than a trip to the grocery store or a doctor’s office. Exceptions were readily granted for the elderly, infirm, or geographically unavailable. Still, requiring the able-bodied to vote in-person was nothing more than voter suppression, barely more tolerable than Jim Crow.
What difference does it make where you vote? Most Americans don’t realize elections must be rigorously protected from fraud. The election process to a political grifter is like a bank to a thief. Within lies wealth and influence if you can crack it. Every election produces mountains of anecdotal evidence of widespread fraud, although unfortunately no official statistics are kept.
Moreover, all this activity occurs in a system with no systematic method for detecting fraud. When it is sought, the results can be shocking. The multiple irregularities found too late in the 2005 Rossi/Gregoire gubernatorial election in Washington and the ineligible votes cast in Al Franken’s 2010 senatorial election in both cases would have been more than enough to change the outcome.
American elections in the last century have been designed to ensure security of the ballot. On election day, registered voters not claiming a hardship exemption present themselves to a local polling place with a signed photo ID. They are physically protected from inappropriate influence both inside and outside the polling booth. They would drop their completed ballot into a secured receptacle, the contents of which would be delivered to local election officers under strict chain-of-evidence protocols.
With bulk-mail voting, all the precautions vanish. Millions of unsolicited ballots are mailed to poorly maintained lists of voters, many of whom have moved or don’t exist. Nobody knows or can know what happens to the ballots until they are returned by mail. The notably unreliable signature verification process is the lone fraud protection.
Whether the ballot actually reached the intended recipient, who actually filled out the ballot, and whether any illegal aid was supplied to the voter are all categorical unknowns.
Still think bulk-mail voting is basically reliable? Read on.
A Rasmussen poll of 1,085 voters after the 2020 election revealed that fully 21% admitted to filling out a ballot on behalf of another voter. Also,17% said they voted in a state where they were not a permanent resident, and another 17% said they signed a ballot for someone else. Remember, too, the 2020 election was touted as our “most secure of all time,” and these survey numbers were obtained directly from voters who were unlikely to over-report themselves.
Up to 80% of Americans doubt our elections are secure. Some are conspiracy kooks fighting the wrong battle at the wrong time. But many others have justifiable concerns about a system increasingly dependent on bulk-mail voting.
Deep doubts about election validity are not healthy in a democracy. Although bulk-mail voting is popular, convenience-loving Americans should rethink their choice. Casting your ballot in person is a small price to pay for ensuring our republic.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Feb 16, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
The word “liberal” was once considered a compliment. It meant fair, principled, and thoughtful. The Age of Enlightenment was birthed by “classical liberals” with their then-fantastical notions about government by consent of the governed, legal equality of all, and individually owned rights.
Later as ideologies like collectivism and class oppression gained favor among the intelligentsia, the word “liberal” was hijacked and mangled beyond recognition. It was used to describe almost anything from well-meaning do-gooders to hard-bitten class warriors, from big government socialists to tyrants who silence and ostracize their opponents, for the good of society.
With time, “liberal” lost favor. When the label became a political epithet, Leftists dropped it like a hot potato, moving on to “progressive” as their new favorite label, even though “socialist” and “Marxist” are also accurate.
Here’s the point: in the unceasing war of democratic persuasion we call politics, what you say often matters less than how you say it and the phrasing you use. Somehow, the Left always seems ahead in the game of word messaging.
Take abortion. Since the heyday of the eugenics movement, Democrats have generally been for abortion and Republicans not. The two sides were labeled pro-abortion and pro-life.
Eventually Democrats, realizing that “pro-abortion” was off-putting to many, changed their label to “pro-choice” which made the decision to terminate a pregnancy seem more like a normal consumer transaction. “Pro-life” came to mean that Republicans demanded all babies must be carried to term.
Most Americans are abortions centrists, willing to support legal abortion up to 12 weeks or so. Yet Gallup polls reveal that 60% of “pro-choice” Democrats believe abortion should be legal at any time until the moment of birth, while less than a quarter of “pro-life” Republicans believe all abortions should be prohibited. Thus the Left, by the adroit use of labels, is able to obscure the fact that their views on abortion are much further from the mainstream than are Republicans’.
“Racist” might be the most abused word in the language. During the civil rights movement, there was a broad consensus that “racism” meant the practice of judging fellow humans by their skin color rather than by the “content of their character.”
But even as race relations broadly improved, for race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, that definition wasn’t good enough. They denied that color blindness was a positive goal in itself. They insisted instead that racial identity was our defining, inherent attribute that explained virtually all human behavior.
In support, the media and the Left subtly changed the language around racial equality. Equality before the law is a precious right bequeathed to all Americans under the Constitution. As a substitute, the Left devised a new definition for “equity,” now meaning equality of outcomes, a supposedly superior goal that assures permanent employment for the professionals in the field.
Nevertheless, the SAT, welfare reform, legitimate law enforcement, and anything smacking of merit were all deemed racist. Consequently, today the charge of “racism” has lost much of his coherence. “Playing the race card” is recognized as being bereft of real arguments for your point. Worse, if all racial discrepancies are blamed on “racism,” then the hard work of addressing the real causes of racial inequality can be deflected.
Institutions typically don’t like to admit that they use gender and racial discrimination in personnel decisions. Rather than come clean about their practices, however, they adopted the term “affirmative action” which did exactly the same thing. A majority of Americans are neither fooled nor amused.
There is obviously a world of difference between the legal immigration that has nurtured and defined America and the tsunami of lawlessness now plaguing us. Yet media commentators use “immigrant” to describe lawbreakers and lawful immigrants alike, as if only bigots believe there are real differences.
Finally, congressional bills are often given intentionally deceptive names. The Inflation Reduction Act was a recent laughable example. The bill was actually a package of green subsidies still chasing the climate chimera and other outrageous handouts that had zero possibility of reducing inflation.
Words can be powerful tools in the pursuit of truth or falsehood. Classical liberals should call out those who deliberately use words to lie.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Feb 2, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Americans are feeling growing unease about the accumulating dysfunctions afflicting us which seem to elude governmental solutions. The combination of weak leadership and irresolute voters has led to diminished standing internationally, inflation, rising crime rates, energy shortages, the hollowing out of once-great cities, and persistent racial disparities.
Yet the greatest threats of all to our future are the national debt and illegal immigration, both of which are wildly out of control. These two dangers, if not soon contained, threaten to consign our beloved nation to second-tier status.
Yes, it could happen. Americans tend to believe that everything will be OK, because this is America where everything naturally gets better.
But there’s nothing inevitable about our good fortune. Yes, we have a fortuitous history, but the music could stop at any time if we habitually neglect the discipline necessary for successful self-government.
There’s even an ominous question of whether the debt and illegal immigration are even solvable at this point. Yes, we’ve carried high debt loads before, notably after World War II. Strong economic growth rescued us then. Innovation and improved productivity are again our only realistic hope of avoiding sharp economic decline.
But we’ve worked ourselves into a dangerous situation, where our annual debt service has reached $1 trillion. We are forced to borrow to make interest payments while our debt continues to grow – a death spiral normally leading to bankruptcy. Creditors will soon demand higher interest payments, and many may refuse to buy our debt altogether.
The effects of the massive migration of the last few years will also be difficult to reverse. Even if we ended illegal immigration today, the 20 million new residents among us aren’t going home, and deportation of this scope may be impossible.
At least two million are “gotaways” who intentionally avoided border check points, for reasons we can easily guess. This means not only will our lives become more dangerous, but social, educational, and criminal justice systems will all be undergoing stress tests just at a time when we are running out of money (see above).
Sure, Democrats have enthusiastically led the open borders craze. They ludicrously claim there is nothing they can do unless Republicans will legislate more, spend more, and agree to comprehensive immigration reform, a.k.a. universal amnesty.
But Republicans had their chance to close the border and didn’t. Instead of cutting back immigration, the Trump administration could have used executive authority to close the border entirely to unauthorized entry, as the law requires.
Americans’ traditional respect for the Rule of Law is a linchpin of our national success. We ignore it to our detriment. We now will pay an awful price for keeping the door cracked a little open when the law is clear.
Democrats have also led the charge for irresponsible spending for false reasons (COVID) or for pure political gain (student loan forgiveness). But Republicans have failed to be the adults in the room, quailing at the threatened “government shutdowns” during spending debates, sneakily supporting spending abuses like earmarks, and generally refusing to expend political capital on spending reductions.
When you’re in a hole, stop digging, right? The first orders of business are to close the border and balance the budget. Both require prodigious amounts of political will, and these are just the first steps.
There is some hope in the sudden transformation of the formerly sanctimonious sanctuary city jurisdictions. When faced with the realities of millions of unvetted, unskilled dependents demanding…well, everything, they are swiftly losing their enthusiasm.
For now, the self-described humanitarians are demanding more help in processing and caring for illegal immigrants, but it’s likely they will become more realistic before long. We’ll see. Voters clearly respond more constructively to crises which affect them personally, which our unmanageable debt will also soon begin to do.
Many historians believe we are seeing the inevitable decline of a still great civilization, a highly successful republic that by choice never became an empire yet achieved dominance and wealth. Like many before us, prosperity produced softness and self-indulgence in the citizenry and so we too may sink into the dustbin of history.
Somehow, we must not – we cannot – let that happen.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
