Radio archives are here! Use the controls on our radio archive page to listen to past shows of note (archived shows are available for a limited time only). True North Radio airs daily on WDEV AM & WDEV FM from 11 am to noon.

Simple AGW Editorial Goes Global in 48 Hours
By James A. Peden

Never underestimate the power of the internet.  Here's a truly amazing story:

I, too became suspicious of the Global Warming Hype several months ago, and having a background in Atmospheric Physics ( long retired ), I undertook a personal study spanning many weeks of primarily internet research - including much valuable data and analysis from contributors to ICECAP. (many thanks)

As the editor of a regional community internet network (www.middlebury.net), I summarized my findings in an editorial specifically designed to be read and hopefully understood by the non-rocket-scientist, including, when necessary, short breaks of teaching some elementary physics as I went along so regular folks could follow the story without choking on 2nd order partial differential equations.

I next placed an isolated page on the server for examination (peer review) by a select circle of colleagues to whom I sent the URL.

Somehow it was leaked prematurely.  The web logs showed it started immediately spreading virally, virtually all over the globe.  The following morning, I received an email from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, indicating my still-under-review essay had been excerpted and distributed further.

"Scribblings" - An Occasional Newsletter from the Legislature
by Rep. Thomas F. Koch Barre Town

It’s called LEAF (Local Education Affordability Formula). One might suspect that the name was adopted to fit the acronym, rather than the other way around, but that wouldn’t be the first time that happened, and it might just be the most critical comment I have about this plan at the present time.

Developed with much hard work over many months, Reps. Hube of Londonderry, Branagan of Georgia, and McDonald of Berlin have brought forward a plan to replace Act 60/68. The plan is based on the premise that any successful education funding plan must conform to three principles.

Impact Fee: The Tax That Dares Not Speak Its Name
By Martin Harris

If there were (subjunctive contrary to all observable fact) a fully rational political environment, impact fees would be popular. The Left would like them because they’re yet another tax; what’s not to love? The Right would like them because they’re a form of user fee, which conservatives typically prefer over a broad-based tax-everybody-to-benefit-a-few formula wherein government collects a lot of money, keeps some to reward itself, and disburses the remainder to those it views favorably. The Center would like them, not for any consistent philosophical position, but just because, as long as they personally aren’t building a house, they won’t be affected. And yet, impact fees (IF’s) aren’t popular with the political class; unless cornered, they won’t even speak the two words. Whether IF’s are popular with their long-suffering taxpaying subjects, we don’t know; they almost never get a chance to vote on one. We do know, in exhaustive detail, what the construction industry, specifically the residential construction industry thinks of IF’s: not much.

The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up." -- Milton Friedman

Financing Your Future: 20s
From WCAXTV, Burlington Vermont, February 25, 2008

There's no shortage of people in their 20s spending money at the mall. But those saving money are harder to find.... Experts say it will take about $1 million to retire comfortably.

An Ironic Dilemma
Caledonian Record Editorial, February 25, 2008

The voters of Kirby are facing a truly ironic dilemma. Their school board has produced a budget that is the picture of responsibility. It is rising by 4 percent, and its average cost per student is smack on the average across Vermont. It will require only one vote because its spending is within the limitations of no more than the inflation rate plus one percent. Yet, the tax rate in Kirby is going up as much as 40 percent, thanks to the faulty assumptions that went into the creation of the Common Level of Appraisal. So, Kirby voters are in the position of rejecting a good budget because of an almost insane tax policy.

Last fall, VTNEA president Angelo Dorta and National NEA president Reg Weaver demanded that the Vermont Legislature repeal the "think twice" cost containment provision of Act 82. On October 19, 2007, the VTGOP asked in our newsletter, "VTNEA says jump. Will D's say how high (do you want us to raise property taxes?)… Vermonters, who are screaming for property tax relief, now have a crystal clear opportunity to see if the Democrat super-majority in Montpelier is capable of governing on behalf of the people, or if it is little more than a tool of this powerful, left wing, special interest group…."

Today we got our answer. Despite previous statements by Speaker Gaye Symington like, "I'mnot interested in repealing the law that we passed last year. We do need to contain the pace that school spending has increased and those decisions happen at the local level," (VPR, October 30, 2007) the house did the exact opposite. 

"This just goes to show that if Vermonters want any kind of meaningful property tax reform to come out of Montpelier, we should ‘think twice’ about who we vote for," said Rob Roper, Chairman of the Vermont Republican Party.
 

Related: Douglas Administration Opposes Effort to Repeal Property Tax Containment Provision - Measure would be a step backwards for over-taxed Vermonters

An Issue Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing
Caledonian Record Editorial, February 27, 2008

The recommissioning of the Vernon nuclear plant, Vermont Yankee, is one of these issues. There is really nothing substantive, here. The conflict isn't really about Vermont Yankee. The conflict is between those who are rabidly opposed to nuclear power under any circumstances and those who recognize that nuclear power is absolutely necessary in today's world. Vermont Yankee is simply the current battleground in the zealots' secular religious war that has been going on for decades.

A Regulatory Mugging?
From VermontTiger.com, March 03, 2008

Viewed as a fight between the Act 250 regulatory regime and the robust and idealistic Intervale Center, can there be any doubt that the bad guys won?  As to the charge that this was a politically motivated hit job ... who knows?  Certainly no Vermont grown-up can doubt that the regulatory apparatus has, on occasion, been capriciously employed to take out enterprises that someone just didn't like.  Logging, for instance.

A Return To First Principles
Caledonian Record Editorial, March 03, 2008

The late Cola Hudson, the long time Republican representative from Lyndon, was asked once, during the last weeks of the 2007 legislative session, to predict how a particularly controversial bill would fare in the end, after all the skirmishing was done. He paused and said he really couldn't predict how a bill would end up anymore, whether it would pass or not, and whether different members would vote for it or against it. He said he once had a good feel for how most of his fellow legislators felt about a bill and had some confidence predicting the bill's success during a final vote. He explained that today's Legislature was now so dominated by political maneuvering and "gotcha" politics that very few legislators could be counted upon to vote in accordance with their own long-established personal political principles.

From Elsewhere

A Profoundly Consequential Life
By Mona Charen, The Washington Post, February 28, 2008

The word "journalist" does not begin to encompass Bill Buckley's profoundly consequential life. In 1949, six years before the founding of National Review, critic Lionel Trilling spoke for the establishment when he wrote in "The Liberal Imagination": "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation." Conservatives, Trilling continued, didn't so much have ideas as "irritable mental gestures."

And then came Bill Buckley, an intellectual starburst. Gathering a few refugees from the left to the masthead of National Review, Buckley famously announced in the 1955 maiden issue that his mandate was to stand "athwart history, yelling Stop." That's not precisely what happened -- not even the talents of Bill Buckley and his thousands of acolytes could hold back the tide of liberalism that swept the nation during the 1960s and 1970s. But the magazine did plant a flag -- and it did it with such style!

Cold Water On 'Global Warming'
By Thomas Sowell, GOPUSA, February 28, 2008

It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather. But stampedes and hysteria are no joke -- and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis." 

They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis. 

McCain's Econ Brain
Economic conservatives take heart: Phil Gramm is influencing the candidate's platform.
By Shawn Tully, Editor-at-large, CNN Money.com, February 18, 2008

But economic conservatives should take heart. McCain's chief economic adviser - and perhaps his closest political friend - is the ultimate pure play in free market faith, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. If McCain follows Gramm's counsel, and most of his current positions are vintage Gramm indeed, his policies as president would represent not just a sharp departure from the Bush years, but an assault on government growth that Republicans have boasted about, but failed to achieve, for decades.

Veterans Become Pro-War Candidates
Associated Press, February 27, 2008

"Despite the war's unpopularity, Americans still support their troops, and facing a veteran on the campaign trail can be difficult, said Michael Dejak, campaign manager for Summers' challenger in the Republican primary, Dean Scontras."

Clinging To Defeatism
Washington Times Editorial, February 27, 2008

Senate Democrats yesterday provided yet another sorry illustration of the fact that they are thoroughly invested in the defeat of U.S. military forces in Iraq. This happened despite the growing evidence that the troop surge is damaging al Qaeda, and that the Iraqis are making remarkable progress on the political front as well. ...

Zell Sees Start of Housing Recovery in the Spring
From CNBC.com, February 26, 2008

The US economy will avoid recession as the housing market begins to recover this spring, according to billionaire investor Sam Zell. 

Trade Tirade
By Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2008

...[I]t's hard to make nicey-nice with the global community when you are stiffing it on trade. Ask Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who clearly tuned into the Ohio Democratic debate long enough to catch Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton threatening to withdraw from Nafta unless his country rolled over for their new demands.

Related: Trade Charade: Clinton and Obama are peddling false hope with their proposed NAFTA rollback