Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

By Rich Kozlovich - Originally published January 10, 2014 updated 12/23/15

In 2013 the United States Congress was criticized for not getting things done. The Congress “only” passed 65 new laws. Of course we have to understand that one year they passed over three hundred new laws.

What is really important to understand is when new laws are passed the baton of power is passed to the permanent bureaucracies, whose function is to make even more laws called – “rules”! In 2013 there was an average of 56 new regulations resulting from each law passed totaling 3659 new laws called – “rules”! That multiplier has been as low as 12 per new law, but that was in 2006 when Congress passed 321 new laws. If you average out the multipliers over the last ten years the average multiplier is 25.36.

So what’s the rest of the story? Last year the states passed over 40,000 new laws. If we make a broad assumption that the average multiplier applies to the states we now have a potential of 1,014,400 new laws called – “rules!” Rules created by unaccountable bureaucrats, with their own agendas and views of reality, and who, generally speaking, went to college and then into government.

During the first five years of the Obama administration regulatory costs increased by $500 billion dollars, “with $112 billion in regulatory compliance costs in 2013 alone, and a burden that has been predicted to increase this year to as much as $143 billion”.  The federal registry, where all the regulations are listed, contain 80,224 pages this year alone.  It’s estimated that in ten years at the current rate of regulatory growth there will generate approximately 900,000 new pages of regulations, which will be on top of the approximately 800,000 pages of regulations passed in the previous ten years.

All of these regulations do one thing for sure - create jobs – for non-productive bureaucrats.  It took government employees 10.38 billion hours to do “the paperwork for the federal government in 2013, and will take 78,000 full-time employees to complete the additional paperwork.”

We also have to look at who benefits from laws and the regulations they generate.  In this kind of hyper-regulatory, high tax economy many of these laws and regulations are promoted by businesses that want to make it harder for companies that will be, or already are, competitors.  As a result “all aspects of business, entrepreneurship degenerates into “bribery and diplomacy.” Instead of focusing on creating value for customers, entrepreneurs spend their time lobbying for favors or to avoid penalties, trying to discern the government’s next move, anticipating or adapting to the newest regulations.”

But this was to be expected from political parties that love big government and “more” laws and regulations - all the better to control our lives.  What about the administrations that have been considered conservative, anti-big government and opposed to all these regulations?  There were more regulations passed during George W. Bush’s administration than any president since Richard Nixon. Furthermore - this idea there's some sort of invisible divide between the left and the so-called right regarding regulations and the promotion of the all powerful state - is an illusion!

“The modern regulatory state is a bipartisan enterprise: During the half-century before President Obama's election, the greatest growth in regulation came under Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.  And the Bush administration set the stage for many of the Obama initiatives that Republicans are now attacking. Dodd-Frank's policy of designating some financial firms as "too big to fail" is a codification of the Paulson-Bernanke bailout approach of 2008. It was the Bush Treasury Department that first proposed a financial consumer-protection agency, and the Bush Environmental Protection Agency that first proposed regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Obama energy rules were authorized — and in some cases, such as the light-bulb ban, required — by a 2007 statute that President Bush vigorously championed.”

What about Richard M. Nixon?  Nixon was a strange man and still an enigma to many, and understandably so, because Nixon was the first to advocate what was called a New Federalism, which would ‘devolve’ power to state and local governments.  But he was the first one to jump on the environmental band wagon promoted by the first Earth Day in 1970.  He believed this was a precursor of public concern and he wanted to benefit from it politically.

Eventually he signed the Clear Air Act, the Clear Water Act the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, requiring environmental impact statements for federal projects.

He created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  All of which create a virtual lava flow of scientifically dubious regulations generating outrageous burdens on the American people and the American economy.

Furthermore, all these laws and agencies give rise to lawsuits by activists that plague economic development with lawsuits, legal costs, studies and delays, very often with collusion between the activists and federal agencies involved.  All in order to gain authority and power Congress never granted or intended.  To justify these actions all they have to say is,  "the court made us do it".  This is a gross form of corruption known as "Sue and Settle".  And the courts are party to this corruption. 

What is the cost of all these federal regulations to the nation’s people?  One point eight trillion dollars a year!  That's just at the federal level - I have no idea what kind of costs of all these state laws impose on society. 

 So what is the solution - at least at the federal level?

No one can fix this piecemeal because it is a foundational issue and until that foundational problem is recognized it will never be solved. So what is that foundational issue? Passage of the 16th and 17th amendments in 1913, which laid the foundation for national economic doom.

The 16th amendment gave the federal government the right to tax income.  This gave them the right to confiscate an unending amount of society’s money - which is called their fair share - and spend it like drunken sailors. That turned the federal government into an insatiable beast that can never be fed to satisfaction, creating debt that is threatening the stability of not only the nation, but the world.

The 17th amendment changed how Senators are chosen. The Founding Fathers were determined to prevent the federal government from becoming an all too powerful entity that was centralized and out of control. In order to do this they created a government that wasn’t supposed to do very much, thus creating a true balance of power between the central government and the state governments. In those days the word ‘state’ didn’t mean province, it meant an independent nation. So the Senators were chosen by the state governments to be ambassadors to the federal government in order to stop power grabbing by the central government.

After passage of the 17th amendment they would be elected by popular vote, exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid, because that was already what the House of Representatives was for. That amendment destroyed the balance of power, the 10th amendment notwithstanding. As long as the 17th exists the 10th is meaningless, and by misusing the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution the federal government can overturn any and all local authority, and individual rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

The almost complete deterioration of the Constitution’s separation of, and balance of power means it's the Fourth Branch of government - the bureaucrats - who are now really making the nation's laws - not Congress!  With the executive branch increasingly imposing its will and vision on the nation and President Obama and his administration repeatedly saying they are not going to "wait for Congress”

What about the Supreme Court?  Don’t they understand how the Commerce Clause is being misused?

Until the Rehnquist court in 1995 SCOTUS never saw a law that exceeded Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause.  In fact, they held the view that no matter how slight the impact might be on commerce it would now be subject to federal control.  If there ever was a system for abuse and tyranny this was it, and now the states were powerless to do anything about it.

Roman Senator Cato the Elder was born in 234 BC and believed Carthage was too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Therefore he gave speeches ending in the phrase [no matter the topic of the speech] “Carthago delenda est”, “Carthage Must be Destroyed".

The 16th and 17th amendments are our modern Carthage – too dangerous to exist.   This is foundational. The only fix is the repeal of the 16th and 17th amendments.   After that - everything else will fall into place. But first we must be willing to recognize the 16th and 17th amendments really are the enemy - our modern Carthage!

Oh, one more thing.

Adding a 28th amendment creating age and term limits for the federal judiciary would do wonders for the nation.

“Demagoguery Beats Data”

By Rich Kozlovich - Originally published on September 4, 2009 and updated on 10/23/15

"What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way - "Demagoguery beats data." Thomas Sowell

The pest control industry seems to be faced with the same problem of ideology over reality. We are constantly told how we have to restrict pesticide use. We are told we must find alternatives to what we are using. We are told we must adopt “least toxic” (whatever that means) pest control programs. Why? Because they claim that pesticides may affect our health and the environment adversely.  This isn’t only from the environmental activists - it's a constant refrain from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  

It costs about three hundred million dollars to bring a pesticide to market!  Are we to assume that we don’t know what all the potential effects these products may have on people and the environment? Well....actually…..yes that’s exactly what we should assume!  Remember – we’re not allowed to test people, so we don’t really know what any product will do until it's in common use, which is true of every product produced.  In pesticides – ultimately the final testing ground will be agriculture.

Because of their effectiveness baits became common place in structural pest control.   Thirty  years ago the structural pest control industry used far more liquid pesticides than we do now, and we were only using 4% of all the pesticides manufactured at the time. Four percent doesn’t make much money when the cost of testing is so high. Therefore, any pesticide manufactured must be manufactured for large scale use such as on corn, tobacco, cotton, rice, wheat, soybeans, etc. or it isn’t manufactured.  If a pesticide is used in structural pest control it is because it has been used profitably elsewhere and for some time. We get it last. New technology in structural pest control is usually old technology everywhere else where pesticides are needed and used. So what must we conclude from that? These products have been used extensively for some time and the effect on people and the environment must “absolutely” be known to EPA by then.

So we must conclude they don’t care what the facts are. They apparently have made up their minds to advocate the view presented by the environmental activists and are not going to let facts stand in the way. Between the regulators, activists, universities, researchers, self serving politicians, and a compliant media they have managed to keep the public ignorant and frightened through “filtered facts” which has now given society a completely opposite view of what is actually occurring.

Their answer to any criticism about the veracity of their claims is ignored and we’re told we must adopt IPM or "green" pest control.  Neither of which can be truly defined because neither has a logical foundation. Name one thing you know for sure about IPM! !

Everybody has their own perception as to what it means, what products can be used, what techniques should be used, where and when they should be used - or if ever. This will always be debated because IPM is an “ideology, not a methodology” and "green" is nothing short neo pagan mysticism. 

I’ve been told over and over again by professional applicators they’re regularly using IPM techniques, tools and methods to protect homes, businesses and food.  I keep asking them to name one!  There are no pest control tools that are IPM tools.  There are no techniques that are IPM techniques.  There are no methods that can even remotely be defined as IPM methods.  Why?  Because IPM is an agricultural concept based on the logical foundation of threshold limits.  A certain amout of pests will cause a certain amout of damage. When that damage is large enough it justifies a pesticide application.  What's the logical foundation for IPM in structural pest control.  There is none!  If there is no logical foundation  for IPM in structural pest control - it doesn't exist - except the federal government demands we believe it exists - ergo - it exists illogically!  

If these products are so dangerous and EPA has the authority to remove products that are harmful from the market - and since they have traced the results of use of these products over the years - why don’t they do it? They clearly have the power and they certainly have the desire - why don’t they do it? It is quite simple, the facts must not support such an action.

Why are they promoting IPM to the tune of thousands of dollars a year in the form of grant money? Is it because there are no facts to support the elimination of these products and no matter how many times they change the rules (Food Quality Protection Act is one example) to make it impossible to use pesticides they still can’t find the science to support the ban of pesticides, so they attempt to do it through a back door called IPM, Deep IPM, organic or green pest control.

The public is constantly told by the media pesticides cause just all sorts of afflictions, which I will be addressing in future posts.  When it is discovered they were wrong or the facts were deliberately perverted, as in the Alar case, it's passed off as journalism. The activists jump up and down swearing it was good journalism. The media jumps up and down defending their right to say what they want to no matter where the real truth lies, no matter whose hurt, and in the Alar case, refusing to publically acknowledge their misconduct.

What are the facts regarding pesticides? There is no evidence that pesticides – used properly - have adversely affected the general health of the population! In fact, if you compared the world before modern pesticides and today we find that we are better fed and healthier than ever in this nation’s history. Only the countries who are unable or unwilling to adopt modern practices suffer the consequences of dystopia - poverty, misery, disease, squalor, hunger, starvation, suffering and early death.

There has been a great deal of talk regarding trace amounts of chemicals in our water and land - and even the trace amounts of over 200 manmade chemicals in our bodies. So what?  This must be a good thing since the advent of these products people are living longer and healthier lives. The appearance of chemicals has nothing to do with toxicity. The dose makes the poison.  If the molecular load too small cells simply will not respond to those molecules. It’s called the threshold principle which is referred to as the “no effect level”, operating “equally in the realms of atoms, cells, whole organisms and even in ecosystems”.

Still we have formally trained educated individuals with scientific degrees teaching (and being taught) in our schools and universities that manmade chemicals are the great evil and we need to go "green" or “natural” or “organic” - whatever those terms mean – and whatever new philosophical flavor of the day they adopt.

Most people have been misled into thinking that "organic" foods are healthier, taste better and that they don’t have to worry about pesticides. Nothing could be further from the truth. Note the following information by Dr. Bruce Ames.

Dr. Bruce Ames (a biochemistry professor at the University of California) pointed out in 1987 that we ingest in our diet about 1.5 grams per day of {natural} pesticides. Those foods contain 10,000 times more, by weight, of {natural} pesticides than of man-made pesticide residues. More than 90% of the pesticides in plants are produced {naturally} by the plants, which help protect them from insects, mites, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi. Those natural pesticides may make up 5% to 10% of a plant's dry weight, and nearly half of them that were tested on experimental animals were carcinogenic. Americans should therefore feel unconcerned about the harmless, infinitesimal traces of synthetic chemicals to which they may be exposed. The highly publicized traces of synthetic pesticides on fruits and vegetables worried some people so much that they began to favor `organically produced'' foods, thinking that they would not contain any pesticides. Most people are not aware that organic gardeners can legally use a great many pesticides, so long as they are not man-made. They can use nicotine sulfate, rotenone, and pyrethrum (derived from plants), or any poisons that occur naturally, such as lime, sulfur, borax, cyanide, arsenic, and fluorine.

 Apparently this must be OK because its “natural”!   Chemicals are chemicals and have chemical names. If I presented you the following menu for a Thanksgiving meal would you eat it? By the way...all of these foods are known carcinogens.

 Cream of Mushroom Soup, Carrots, Cherry Tomatoes, Celery, Mixed Roasted Nuts, Tossed Lettuce and Arugula with Basil-Mustard Vinaigrette, Roast Turkey, Bread Stuffing (with onions, celery, black pepper & mushrooms), Cranberry Sauce, Prime Rib of Beef with Parsley Sauce, Broccoli Spears, Baked Potato, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Fresh Apples, Grapes, Mangos, Pears, Pineapple, Red Wine, White Wine, Coffee, Tea., Jasmine Tea. (Source: American Council on Science and Health)

Here are the chemicals that make up this natural meal.

 Hydrazines, aniline, caffeic acid, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, hydrogen peroxide, quercetin glycosides, caffeic acid, furan derivatives, psoralens, aflatoxin, furfural, allyl isothiocyanate, caffeic acid, estragole, methyl eugenol, heterocyclic amines, acrylamide, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural, dihydrazines, d-limonene, psoralens, quercetin glycosides, safrole,furan derivatives ,benzene, heterocyclic amines, psoralens,allyl isothiocyanate,ethyl alcohol, caffeic acid,ethyl alcohol, furfural,acetaldehyde, benzene, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural,benzo(a)pyrene, coumarin, methyl eugenol, safrole,acetaldehyde, caffeic acid, coumarin, estragole, ethyl alcohol, methyl eugenol, quercetin glycosides, safrole,acetaldehyde, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, d-limonene, estragole, ethyl acrylate, quercetin glycosides,ethyl alcohol, ethyl carbamate,benzo(a)pyrene, benzaldehyde, benzene, benzofuran, caffeic acid, catechol, 1,2,5,6-dibenz(a)anthracene, ethyl benzene, furan, furfural, hydrogen peroxide, hydroquinone, d-limonene, 4-methylcatechol,benzo(a)pyrene, quercetin

For those who read the chemicals listed above you will notice that some of them are repeated a number of times. I deliberately left the list that way because you are getting a multiple dose of those compounds in this meal.

Does that sound so bad now? It is unfortunate that so many in positions of authority and responsibility continue to allow filtered facts to become the conventional wisdom. More importantly, it’s impossible for any society to make intelligent long term decisions when preconceived notions are allowed to dictate what “facts” will be allowed to be presented.

Then again, facts are confusing and that certainly is the last thing the public needs - right? That  certainly is the last thing the environmentalists and their minions want. Can you imagine how that might interfere with all the scares activists are constantly presenting as eminent disasters? That in turn would foul up contributions and then the greatest disaster of them all would occur.

They would have to go out and get real jobs.

What we need is clarity and that can only be attained by making ourselves aware of the facts. Once we're prepared to follow the facts wherever they lead - then we have the truth - and truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.  Everything has an historical foundation and structure, and everything we’re told should bear some resemblance to what we see going in on reality.  If what’s presented to us fails in either category – it’s wrong!  We just need to develop the intellectual response to explain why it’s wrong.  And the truth isn't unkind. It's just the truth!

What I find most disturbing is the unwillingness of our industry's information deliverers to properly research these issues, find out what the truth is and then stand up to these people and publish the truth.  We need to ask ourselves these questions.   Are we appeasers and enablers who will eventually become traitors to our own industry? Or are we the hunters who keep the tribe healthy?  Do we believe we’re the thin gray line that stands on the wall telling the world - no one will harm you on my watch – or are we enabling an irrational, misanthropic and morally defective green movement to destroy us from within?  Our answer should be automatic - Not on my watch! 

My Personal Motto - De Omnibus Dubitandum - Question Everything

Let Me Tell You about Trofim Denisovich Lysenko

By Rich Kozlovich

I originally posted this on Sunday, December 20, 2009

Born on September 29, 1898 Lysenko died on November 20, 1976. He was a Ukrainian agronomist and director of biology under Joseph Stalin. Rejecting traditional thought regarding Mendelian genetics and embryology he “reinterpreted Darwin’s thoughts to “fit the framework of what he called the ‘new creation biology’.” The only views that could be “scientific” under Lysenko had to be “consistent with social theory”, i.e. Stalin’s thoughts.

He supported the hybridization theories of Ivan Michurin that gained support from Stalin, which of course made his views “truth” and altered the entire structure of Russian biological thinking. This dominated the Russian field of biology for about 30 years and along with collectivization of the Russian farms they managed to starve millions to death. As a Darwinian evolutionist (versus Neo-Darwinism) he believed that evolution could be “forced” through something he called acquired inheritance. Furthermore anyone who disagreed with him was a scientific outcast and purged from their position, their jobs and in some cases died in concentrations camps.

As Director of the Institute of Genetics within the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences he stridently pushed the idea that plants could be forced to acquire characteristics they had not demonstrated before through what is known as "environmentally acquired inheritance", or theory of adaptation, originally promoted by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

It wasn’t just plants though. Lysenkoists believed that just as exercise could turn a normal man into a muscle man, training could “force” cows to “happily and naturally deliver 50 liters of milk per day” which would change their normal inheritable limits of production; genetics, which they rejected, notwithstanding, believing they could imprint acquired characteristics and skills from one generation could be passed on to the next generation. (it gets even more complicated and irrational as it goes along)

However, all his thinking was tied to the ‘social theories’ of Stalin and his communist cohorts. Bukharin, who was a “founding member of the Soviet Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a keen botanist”, stated in 1935 that “pure science pursued for its own sake would disappear, for the interests of scientists would spontaneously turn to problems of the current Five Year Plan”.

Lysenko believed that “amassing of evidence was substituted for casual proof as the means demonstrating the “correctness” of the underlying hypotheses” and those who failed to conform to the tenets of the new biology could be silenced or suppressed as enemies of the truth. It also did not concern him if his followers “manipulated” somewhat their data or their experimental results, since minor falsifications could still support the ideological cause, which represented a higher level of truth than the precise reporting of facts.”

In other words, if they could amass enough evidence to support their ideas it didn’t matter if it was factual or not, and if that which we actually see and that which is actually occurring was entirely different from their “evidence” - it simply didn’t matter. Sound familiar?

They never were able to “train” cows to deliver 50 liters of milk a day, but they did create some interesting grafting techniques that created a fruit that “looked like an apple, smelled like a rose and tasted like a prune!”

One example of this thinking was his work on rye grain. Bewteen 1928 and 1940 Stalin’s collectivization of farms starved millions to death, so getting more grain in more areas was vital. The claim was that they could turn wheat into rye by just planting it in climates “favoring the growth of rye”. Huge acreage was devoted to this program which was intended to “teach” wheat to become rye.

Literally hundreds of thousands of individual grains of wheat were examined, and some turned out to be rye. The fact that the harvesting machines used that year were used the previous year to harvest rye didn’t bother them in the least. And as for those foolish enough to point out that the rye grains may have been contaminants from the previous harvest - well…..things didn’t go well for them as truth wasn’t as important as promoting the ideological thinking, or if you will, the “consensus” science. They were silenced and branded lackeys of western imperialism and western biological thinking. Sound familiar?

What happened to the rest? For almost 30 years some of the finest minds in Russian biology either “became infected with this apparent madness” or “converted” to it. “Other scientists, who were skeptical, were threatened with loss of their working and publishing opportunities if they did not conform to these views. As a result they were forced to adjust the direction of their research or to contribute some kind of work which was in accord with the Stalinist ideology.” Some got around this by publishing entirely in Latin …of which the commissars were ignorant. Some refused to bend to the madness of the new biological ideology at all, and were permanently silenced.

Remember Bukharin? In later years he said “mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, with women and children" under forced collectivization and liquidation of kulaks as a class that dehumanized the Party members with "the profound psychological change in those communists who took part in the campaign. Instead of going mad, they accepted terror as a normal administrative method and regarded obedience to all orders from above as a supreme virtue... They are no longer human beings. They have truly become the cogs in a terrible machine." He later found out how true this was when his onetime close personal friend Stalin had him killed - after a trial of course.

Why do I bring this up? The views and thinking in the green movement and those within the political realm as compared to Lysenkoism and those monsters that murdered millions of innocent people with their policies are very similar.

Lysenko came to prominence because he was “discovered by a sensational journalist by the name of Fedorovich.” Articles appeared in Pravda praising his abilities, which mostly amounted to attacking real science and making promises that never had a chance of becoming reality based on his unfounded views of reality, which amounted to junk science.

Here is one such example of his meddling. They could only use seed potatoes from Northern Russia because a degenerative virus existed in Southern Russia. This was expensive so when Lysenko made the pronouncement that it wasn’t a virus causing this at all, but was in reality a problem with hot temperatures; the Politburo jumped on it.  His solution was to plant in the summer for a fall harvest and he claimed that this would eliminate the degeneration problem. The result was disastrous, in spite of the selectively favorable reports, which made the “studies” fit the preconceived conclusion that promoted his junk science.

In point of fact, Lysenko later proclaimed that there was no such thing as viruses, setting Russian virology back for years, and yet much of his work is now considered fraudulent. Not just wrong, but fraudulent, and he was the driving power in Russian agrarian science for almost 30 years. Thirty years of fraud, thirty years of watching disaster swirl around them, thirty years of knowingly manipulating the data to promote nonsense for personal gain.

How different is it today? Many have come into prominence in modern times promoting junk science in order to promote environmental issues, the “higher truth” if you will, in much the same manner. As Viv Forbes notes, ““The public has been misled on this issue by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests.” Truth is not the holy grail of science. It is grant money. Grant money that is only distributed to those who tout a certain “socially” acceptable line.

• Global warming will destroy the world.
• Global warming is caused by western industrialization.
• Global Warming can only be fixed if we give the rest of the world all our money and shut down our manufacturing plants.
• The world is reaching a “tipping point” from which we can’t recover, so we can’t wait.
• Cancer is on the increase as a result of modern lifestyles.
• Only solar and wind energy can save us because there is no oil any longer, and even if there was its use must be opposed.
• Eating meat causes global warming.
• Pesticides cause every known disease and infirmity that can be conjured up.
• Drinking water is contaminated and causes an unending list of ailments.
• Plastic toys impact reproduction.
• Vaccinations cause autism.
• DDT causes…..oh….just stick anything in there and it will be approved.
• And the one I really like the best; Multiple Chemical Sensitivity syndrome, which displays “the symptoms of every disease or disorder known [in] psychology, psychiatry, and the general medical profession." And there is no cure!

Try applying for a grant that proves otherwise. What is sad is that so many have to suffer before everyone realizes that what has happened in the past is being repeated now. More subtly of course; after all, no one is being taken out and shot or sent to concentration camps for scientific disagreements, but those who haven’t touted the “acceptable” line have lost grants, jobs and been prevented from publishing articles in scientific journals critical of the “science” promoting these issues. The fact of the matter is Lysenkoism is a pattern of thinking that is the same today as it was then - and over the long haul just as deadly to humanity.

Sources:
Ecology Sanity, by Claus and Bolander
Sick of It All, by Michael Fumento
Wikipedia

I would also like to draw everyone's attention to a recent article; Politicizing science - Thomas Sowell: Do not expect disinterested search for truth when money's involved

The Power of Indefinable Words

By Rich Kozlovich

Originally published on March 8, 2009 and updated 11/2/15 

Words are powerful tools, especially when those words evoke an emotional response and yet can't properly be defined. Safe is one such word! After all, who is going to support un-safe products and practices? Everyone wants their families to be safe, and certainly everyone wants safe products.  

Well, what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that there can be no margin for error? Does that mean that nothing must ever go wrong? Yet tens of thousands of people have died on our nation’s highways year after year. So it’s clear – driving isn’t safe is it? Why then are we still driving?   Why do we still sell cars?  Why are we still building and repairing highways – which are clearly “unsafe”! Every year people die from accidental electrocution.  Is electricity safe? Every year a great many children drown. Is swimming safe? 

But what about products?  Is it possible to show that any product is safe? Actually ....... NO!

You can only prove something is unsafe – to demand proof of safety is asking someone to prove a negative, a factual impossibility. We can only prove what things (or people for that matter) do, not what they don’t do.   As an example - ask someone if they're cheating on their spouse, and when they say no - ask them to prove it!   You can only prove that someone is cheating, you can in no way prove someone isn’t cheating.

Yet we are being required to show that pesticides are safe before we use them. This is irrational, it’s unscientific and the activists know it. It's called proving a negative - scientifically impossible! Unfortunately this is being done with support from many in and around our industry. Why? Because demanding everything be safe unites people in a cause that makes them feel all warm and fuzzy - not mention the sense of moral superiority it gives them.

These issues surrounding DDT demonstrate the unintended consequences of such emotional causes. Even after all the evidence has shown most of what Rachel Carson said was inaccurate, even to the extent of misrepresenting the facts - even after everything she predicted turned out to be wrong - even after all the pain and suffering that has been, and is still being caused by the ban on DDT,  people will not properly connect the ban with the disasters banning DDT caused.

There are those who will still defend the ban with fallacious arguments and demand more bans and more restrictions in the name of safety, claiming it’s "for the children"! They simply refuse to admit they were wrong, in spite of all the pain and suffering, and mostly "to" the children. Why? It isn’t simply a matter of pride either. This refusal to admit that which should be obvious to the most casual observer is being driven by a misanthropic philosophy called environmentalism.

Call it an “organic” philosophy, call it a “green” philosophy, call it a return to nature, call it being at one with the bio-sphere, or simply call it IPM - it doesn’t matter - the goal is to eliminate products that allow more people to live longer, healthier lives, and they do it with fallacious health claims about pesticides - using our own values against us.

Thomas Sowell, in his book, Economic Facts and Fallacies, defined logical fallacies in the following manner. “Fallacies are not simply crazy ideas. They are usually both plausible and logical – but with something missing. Their plausibility gains them political support. Only after that political support is strong enough to cause fallacious ideas to become government policies and programs are the missing of ignored factors likely to lead to “unintended consequences,” a phrase often heard in the wake of economic or social policy disasters. Another phrase often heard in the wake of these disasters is, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.” That is why it pays to look deeper into things that look good on the surface at the moment-

Let’s take the Fallacy of Composition. It goes like this: DDT is found in birds, ergo, DDT must have killed the birds.  Ban DDT!  Since DDT was a pesticide, and it was found in birds that died, all pesticides must kill birds.  Ban all pesticides! Pesticides are chemicals, so chemicals must kill birds.  Ban all chemicals!  Logical fallacies are long on fallacies and short on logic! 

Our industry is so hot to be green and yet we don’t seem to have a clue as to what “going green” is going to mean to society as a whole. GO GREEN! GO GREEN! is the cry, but where is this leading? The activists never explain their motives or ultimate goals, and no one seems to ask them to do so.  So, what are those goals? Let us have no doubts the elimination of pesticides is one of them.   

 

The radicals in the environmental movement claim mankind is a “virus” that needs eradication, and the moderates within the movement offer no condemnation for these misanthropes.  Why?  Because the moderates within the environmental movement claim the world is over populated to the tune of between four and five billion people…....which they want to eliminate......and they’re the moderates!   Is it any wonder they’re against pesticides, chlorine in our water, inexpensive abundant energy and every other thing that makes our lives better and longer.  So much for their claims “it's for the children”!   

Actually, it should be immaterial to intelligent, knowlegeable, insightful and compassionate people whether these activists explain their goals or not. We should be able to see what their motives and goals are by the devastation they have wrought in the rest of the world.  An argument can easily be made they’ve been responsible for more deaths than the socialist monsters of the 20th century, like Castro, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pot Pol, which history records at 100 million.   

That doesn’t even count the unnecessary afflictions, pain and suffering their policies have inflicted on so much of humanity, which history records at hundreds of millions.  Dystopia follows environmentalism like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote – a madman!   

We know environmentalism isn’t safe. So tell me - do you think environmentalism should be banned?

Let Me Tell You About Mike Royko

By Rich Kozlovich - Originally Published on Saturday, November 21, 2009. Updated Sunday, October 25, 2015

I originally wrote this in conjunction with a series of articles dealing with bed bugs, and the torment they are causing. There is a large contingent of “experts” who have been spewing out absolute nonsense when they should know better. I intended to outline what was wrong with their views, and I intended to embarrass them. 

What really disturbs me about all of this is it appears we have entirely too many pest control professionals, (we used to be exterminators, but now we're pest control professionals) who have lost sight of reality when it comes to bedbugs. I still really want to exterminate them…really I do......I know, I know….I have a serious attitude problem! But, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves what constitutes a professional – what we call ourselves - or is it the service we perform and the outcome of that service?

Mike Royko, the great columnist for the Chicago Tribune, once wrote about our industry saying, “I preferred exterminators because that was specific. Pest control could mean anything from a school teacher to a tavern bouncer.” I wonder what he would have thought about Pest Management Professionals or Entomological Consultants, or Environmental Specialists. I bet he could have had a field day with Integrated Pest Management, Green Pest Control and all these Green Shields. He wasn’t impressed with anyone’s image of professionalism unless they “kilt” the bugs - everything else followed.

Royko was “the voice of the Everyman Chicago. Although caustically sarcastic, he never condescended to his readers, considering himself one of the people and maintaining a healthy skepticism about elites of all kinds.”

“We could use more Roykos now. His columns are prophetic. In the book's foreword, Studs Terkel, also of Chicago, also of the people, writes that it was "the real" that Royko searched out typically from the perspective of "somebody up against it."

“Royko saw America become laminated; its politicians phony, its values spiffed up and over-starched, its social discourse spooked by political correctness. It gnawed at him from his first column on.”

“He cared about privilege, street-level fairness and hypocrisy.” Royko got more difficult , more caustic, and more insensitive as the years went by (although I think it was society that changed…Royko was always Royko, just older, crabbier and tired of being “nice”…that last part was a joke by the way) “because of the superficial glitz of contemporary society. The ballplayers were in it for the money, the baby boomers were in it for the self-indulgence, and the politicians were in it for the polls. Whatever happened to the people behind the polls--to Royko's people?”

I didn’t always agree with him, but I really miss Royko! He understood what everyday people were suffering and had a way of cutting right past the smoke screen of nonsense spewed out by those who are prominent and right into the fire. Have we lost sight of what's real in favor of the philosophical flavor of the day? Are we capable of seeing past the claptrap that has become a substitute for accomplishment? I can tell you that exterminators haven’t, although I am not so sure about Pest Management Professionals!

Efficacious chemistry in everyone’s hands was the answer in 1946 and it will have to be the answer once again in 2010 or there will be no answer. That is the historical lesson. People are fond of saying that “history repeats itself”. As someone once said - that is a falsehood!  History doesn’t repeat itself - people just fail to grasp the lessons of history.

At my age people like for things to go smoothly in their lives!  Well life has become very complicated for me. My own fault too! But at least I haven’t forgotten that I am an exterminator and that is what I will continue to be. I just hope I never desire life to be so “smooth” I forget Royko’s people.

Quotes from Wikipedia and an article by JACK C. DOPPELT, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. 

Editor’s Note:  Mike’s son David sent me this note - davidroyko said... I see many blog comments and commentaries about Dad, almost daily (thank you Google Alerts!), and I very rarely comment on them, but I really enjoyed yours. I think Dad would have too. Thanks, and keep on exterminatin'!
Dave Royko www.davidroyko.com

Unnecessary Regulations: The Vanguard to Dystopia

By Rich Kozlovich on July 10, 2013 updated October, 16, 2015

 On July 9, 2013 Ryan Young published an article titled, Regulatory Inflation, starting out saying that; “Turns out bad regulations have a rather large side effect.” He goes on to explain the reality of regulations, which also explains why increased taxes of the ‘rich’, and the ‘corporations’ is in reality a hidden tax on the least able to afford increases in the things they buy. He says:

 

In their book Democracy in Deficit, Nobel-winning economist James Buchanan and co-author Richard Wagner observed that government spending can create inflation “[t]o the extent that resources utilized by government are less productive than resources utilized by the private sector…”The same principle applies to regulation…

Imagine a simplified economy that consists of just two things: 100 dollars and 100 apples, with the price of an apple being one dollar each. If new regulations pass that make it harder to produce apples, the next year there are only 90 apples produced. Their price goes up from $1 to $1.11.

In the real world the ‘rich’ don’t pay taxes - they increase prices. The same is true regarding regulations. It’s all part of the cost of doing business and any business that fails to increase their prices in face of increasing costs due to tax increases or regulations will eventually go out of business. But ultimately all these costs will fall right on to the backs of the poor.

The analysis in this article I liked the best was dealing with EPA regulations regarding energy production. He states;

Here’s an example. Last year [2012], the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule concerning coal power plant emissions that it estimated would cost about $9.6 billion per year. The only demographic that would receive any potential health benefits from this regulation is truly niche: the unborn children of subsistence-level fisherwomen who consume more than 225 pounds per year of self-caught fish exclusively from 90th percentile most-polluted bodies of inland freshwater. And by the EPA’s own analysis, the biggest benefit is an additional 0.00209 IQ point per fisherwoman’s child. This is literally too small to be measured.

The EPA has never identified any such person, so the rule is almost purely wasteful (its unstated purpose is to give fossil fuels an artificial competitive disadvantage). Since the money supply isn’t reduced to match this wealth reduction, the result is an EPA-induced $9.6 billion reduction in purchasing power among everybody who uses fossil fuels —that is, the entire U.S. economy.

So who benefited from these unnecessary regulations? The so-called alternative energy groups, who can’t begin to match the production of traditional energy producers, but society as a whole suffers another jab at the general welfare of its citizens.

Think of all of the nation’s wealth as a pie. Every time one of these expensive valueless regulations is passed it takes a small slice out of that pie. Remember that this is not an investment that will create more wealth, no matter what EPA directors and green misfits say - these unnecessary regulations - which are growing to the tune of approximately 80,000 pages a year at the federal level eating up two trillion dollars a year of the nation’s wealth.  A  continuing and unending leech on our national economic health.  And the poor suffer the most.

In 1996 the Food Quality Protection Act was passed and the pest control industry lost two categories of pesticides, carbamates and organophosphates. The result? Bed bugs are now a national plague. Who benefitted from this? Surprisingly, it was the pest control industry, because the cost of bed bug work skyrocketed right through the atmosphere. As a result I am confronted by angry owners of companies from my industry who don’t want effective old chemistry returned, and resent those who are working toward that end.

Municipalities pass regulations regarding use of pesticides on public property making emotional claims that are misleading and ultimately false. But nonetheless they demand that everyone who provides services to their community must 'go green', or adopt Integrated Pest Management standards. What happens? The costs triple or more. So who benefits? Believe it or not it's the pest control and lawn care people who benefit because their making more money than ever. As a result I am seeing far less resistance to these foolish costly regulations. But who suffers? Society as a whole as this eats away at the pie of common wealth.

As these things continue at some point the nation’s wealth will have been consumed by government and a small corrupt elite. You may wish to read the article 'A Toxic System': Why Austerity Still Isn't Working in Greece – and Austerity Means Cuts, Not More Spending. What brought the Greeks to this nightmare? Over regulation, massive debt, large incompetent bureaucracy, sweetheart deals for major corporations and incompetent leadership.  Sound familiar?

He ends this article with this statement; Perhaps some regulatory deflation is in order. I agree, but that can’t happen as long as the EPA exists and all these other agencies exist. The Interior Department, which supposedly has oversight of the EPA, is rampant with green misfits - as a result nothing will change until the EPA is dismantled.  And it shouldn't end there.  When you see the abuse of American’s rights by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corp of Engineers - it’s clear they need purged also. 

The Great Cranberry Scare of 1959

By Rich Kozlovich

Like so many, in my younger years - before I learned better - I believed the green propaganda, including the junk science promoted by the Mother of Junk Science – Rachel Carson - in her science fiction best seller Silent Spring.  Now that we've grown up we need to stop feeding on pablum and eat solid food.  It’s time we abandoned the green litany, and I use the word litany deliberately because "green" isn't a science based philosophy - it's a secular religion bordering on neo-pagan mysticism.

For years I have been distressed at the lack of aggressive reporting by the information deliverers of our industry for not dealing with all of these health scares involving pesticides that are nothing more than junk science. Future articles will deal with scares that haven’t been properly defended against by our industry. There will be articles dealing with pesticides and cancer, autism, asthma, endocrine disruption, multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, IQ, and even that most elusive scare of them all known as the “window of vulnerability”.

For all of my adult life I have heard about products that “must” cause cancer because they have been tested for carcinogenicity on rodents.  How did all of this scare mongering get started?

A weed killer known as aminotriazole was applied to cranberry crops in 1957, although it hadn’t yet been approved for that application until the following year. Tests showed that when aminotriazole was fed to rats, at a concentration of 100 parts per million, cancer could be induced in the thyroid, therefore it was declared carcinogenic by the Food and Drug Administration.

What does that really mean? The human equivalent would mean that human beings would have to ingest 15,000 pounds of cranberries every day of their lives for years. We have come to understand the insanity of this kind of testing in recent years, but the mentality still prevails. We also seem to fail to recognize that mice are not little rats and rats are not little people! Just because some product tests positive in mice doesn’t mean that it will even test positive in a rat; let alone people!

The EPA is aware of this, but they still insist on using these kinds of tests to determine what is and what isn’t carcinogenic. This isn’t the best science required by the Information Quality Act, but the EPA claims that these determinations don’t fall under the IQA because this is a matter of EPA policy, not science. I will be dealing with this in another article.

Although there were no detected residues in 1958, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Arthur Fleming announced on November 9th, 1959 that cranberries from Oregon had been contaminated with aminotriazole and warned that other shipments from Washington and Oregon (which was 9% of the overall crop) may also be contaminated. He noted that Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New Jersey berries were not contaminated but he recommended that no one buy any cranberries at all ........15 days before Thanksgiving.

People went right over the edge. Michigan, Kentucky and Washington State called for “voluntary suspensions”. Ohio banned cranberry sales entirely. So also did San Francisco and Chicago. Restaurants and grocery stores purged their pantries and shelves of cranberry products and a nightclub in Chicago maintained a one to a customer limit on cranberry cocktails.

Although growers agreed to work with the FDA over this, they were furious at Secretary Fleming and demanded apologies and some even demanded he be dismissed from his post. The backtracking started immediately! In those days farmers were a whole lot more important to the politicians than green scare mongering activists.

Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson publically stated that he would have cranberries for Thanksgiving. Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy, both running for President of the United States, really got into the act. Nixon had four helpings of cranberry sauce and Kennedy drank two glasses of cranberry juice. This made a huge difference! Although there were very real losses, it was far less than the 45 to 50 million (Fifty million dollars in 1959 had the buying power of about 365 million dollars today) than was anticipated. Far different from the fraudulent Alar scare of 1989 when farmers became far less important to politicians than green scare mongering activists!

We have learned that these types of risks are “infinitesimal” due to the “enormous” amounts fed to rats. “Dr. Edwin Astwood, a professor of medicine at Tufts University, noted that certain turnips naturally contained 100 times as much anti-thyroid potency as did any cranberries contaminated with aminotriazole.”

This pattern plays out all though nature in the foods we eat. Real scientists have always known this! However the public is just now coming to this understanding, in spite of claims of activists, the bureaucrats, the media and the political element that doesn’t care about anything except getting elected.

This event did exacerbate the public’s already chemophobic mentality because of “wildlife and conservation groups and … pure food enthusiasts, who believe that chemical residues on agriculture products pose a threat to (human) health”.

To put this in its proper perspective, Dr. Bruce Ames, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, states that a cup (one cup mind you) of coffee contains 11 different carcinogens, and in that one cup of coffee you will consume more carcinogens than all the pesticide residue on all the food you will consume in one year.

Claus and Bolander note that “There are approximately 2 million organic compounds known. (This was printed in 1972. Currently there are over 4 million and 100,000 new compounds being produced every year and although, “the division between "organic" and "inorganic" carbon compounds while "useful in organizing the vast subject of chemistry... is somewhat arbitrary". I am not sure what are the significance of those numbers, since there “is no "official" definition of an organic compound. Some text books define an organic compound as one containing a C-H bond. Others state that if a molecule contains carbon it is organic.” It is enough to be said that the number of organic compounds is large, but whether the number is two million or ten million, natural or synthetic, is immaterial to the principles stated below.)

The majority of them are natural, but some have been produced in man’s laboratories. It is often stated that there is a clear difference between man-made chemicals and those which occur naturally, but the borders are actually fluid...many chemicals which were synthesized and first identified in laboratories were later found to occur in nature. Again the principle questions to be considered when talking about contamination with organic compounds are: how great are the amounts to which humans are exposed and what are the relative risks when compared with “natural” contaminants?”

The consequences of this scare are being felt today because it gave impetus to the 1958 Delaney clause, which was an amendment to The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which “codified the ‘mouse-as-a-little-man’ principle” and that massive amounts of any product fed to rodents would have the same effect as “moderate doses” in human beings and the FDA’s (and Secretary Fleming’s) hands were tied.

We know this isn’t true! At some point the molecular load of any agent is far too small for cells to begin to respond to their presence. This is known as the “Threshold Principle”. “When the causative agent or source is below the threshold, one speaks of the ‘no-effect level’. In nature, the threshold principle operates equally in the realms of atoms, of cells, of whole organisms, and even in ecosystems.”

But the “public has been taught to fear trace amounts of chemicals regardless of the actual human health risk. And this boggy little brouhaha laid the groundwork for scares yet to come.”

Sources:

The American Council on Science and Health, Facts Versus Fears, pgs. 6, 7.
Ecological Sanity, by Claus and Bolander, pgs. 188, 189, 212

The Alar Story

By Rich Kozlovich

The Alar story is a most enlightening account of how abuse of bureaucratic power, scare mongering by the media, and self enrichment by the green activists can create a real mess. If you ask most people who are somewhat familiar with this story how it all got started they will tell you that it was the 60 Minutes broadcast that did it. That is inaccurate!  Although the 60 Minutes segment set the story on fire, if you dig deeply into the whole Alar story you find that it takes so many twists and turns that it is hard to believe - but this is how the whole thing started.

In 1982 the EPA got caught up in a superfund scandal. By March of 1983 EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford resigned after finding herself in a bureaucratic mess between the EPA and the Department of Justice in an attempt to deal with this scandal. One prominent EPA staffer was fired and others left.

What has this to do with Alar? Everything! Because of the black eye EPA received over this it was decided that something had to be done to restore their credibility to the public. So what did they do? They felt that they needed to ban something, and since anti-pesticide activists love anyone who wants to ban something, they started looking around and viola - Alar was to be the target.

Why Alar? It had been used successfully as a growth regulator to keep apples from falling off trees since 1963. In 1983 the EPA placed Alar under “special review” and in 1984 they claimed that Alar was a potential carcinogen for children because after administering massive doses of Alar to mice tests showed that that it might cause cancer. It might be noted that rodent testing as a determinate as to what is carcinogenic has come under attack from the scientific community. Although critics of this procedure don’t disavow the value of using rodent testing, they dismiss the idea that EPA should be determining what is carcinogenic based on rodent testing alone.

On August 23, 2005 the American Council on Science and Health petitioned the EPA to “eliminate "junk science" from the process by which it determines whether a substance is likely to cause cancer in humans” under the Information Quality Act (IQA), which requires the government to use the best science available. Nearly five months later the EPA responded by “claiming that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” If their policy guidelines aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on? What were they based on in 1985?

The reality is that in 1985 the EPA's own “Scientific Advisory Panel” concluded that the laboratory animal studies of Alar were too flawed to use.” However, the anti-chemical people became involved to “help” EPA to ban Alar, because no matter how much they studied the matter EPA couldn’t develop enough evidence to justify banning Alar.

Eventually facts and studies were irrelevant. The NRDC, through Fenton Communications, a public relations firm that seems to specialize in representing radical environmental groups, approached 60 Minutes with this unwarranted health scare.

“Following the release of a report called “Intolerable Risk” — which claimed that Alar was “the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply” and blamed the chemical for “as many as 5,300” childhood cancer cases — Fenton and NRDC went on a five-month media blitz. The campaign kicked off with a CBS 60 Minutes feature seen by over 50 million Americans. Despite the fact that the claims were completely unfounded, hysteria set in. Apples were pulled off of grocery shelves, schools stopped serving them at lunch, and apple growers nationwide lost over $250 million.”

However, “from the standpoint of the NRDC and Fenton Communications, the campaign against Alar had been a phenomenal success. The public had been panicked, the product had been destroyed, and a major media organization, 60 minutes, had been a willing tool in carrying out the operation. Furthermore, membership and contributions to the NRDC increased.” Worse yet, “after the election of President Clinton, the EPA ceased being an unwitting participant in the toxic scare campaign.”

“The Wall Street Journal printed one of David Fenton’s internal memos, after the Alar-on-apples scandal was publicly debunked. Here’s Fenton in his own words: “We designed [the Alar Campaign] so that revenue would flow back to the Natural Resources Defense Council from the public, and we sold this book about pesticides through a 900 number and the Donahue show. And to date there has been $700,000 in net revenue from it.”

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan states that “the Alar scare was totally without scientific merit. By the early 1990s, authorities ranging from the World Health Organization to U. S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop confirmed that there was never any health risk posed by the use of Alar. Even the late Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes, told me that he regretted having done the Alar segment, but Ed Bradley, the producer of the piece, refused to retract it.”

When junk science becomes policy it is because the policy was already a conclusion in search of data. And when there is no data available - then apparently any old conclusion will do.