Breakfast – Biden Tax Hikes – Journalistic Ethics

America’s founding fathers established the weakest federal government possible.

Breakfast – Biden Tax Hikes – Journalistic Ethics

By: George Noga – April 25, 2021

This posting addresses FDA nutrition guidelines, the Constitution, Biden’s tax hikes and my letter to the editor of our local paper about journalistic ethics (oxymoron).

Breakfast and the USDA: One morning while enjoying my breakfast of orange juice, bacon, egg, buttered toast and coffee with cream, I had a Eureka moment, i.e. my government was wrong about every one of the seven items I was having for breakfast. The USDA warned Americans against eggs, butter and cream (cholesterol), coffee (caffeine) and bacon (fat). They encouraged consuming orange juice (fruit) and toast (grain). Every item they advised against now is deemed healthy, while both items they deemed healthy are now considered unhealthy, i.e. toast (carbohydrates) and orange juice (concentrated carbohydrates). Why would anyone trust, or want more of, a government that was wrong seven out of seven times – and that’s just for breakfast?

Constitution: Our founders intentionally wrote the Constitution to establish the weakest possible form of federal government – capable of performing only its essential and enumerated functions. This was for three fundamental and intertwined reasons. First, they understood government is inherently dangerous and the less power it has the better. Second, the states are closer to the people and more sensitive to regional needs and differences. Third, the states existed prior to the federal government. It was the people, through their states, that created the federal government, not the reverse.

Biden tax hikes on the rich wind up devastating the middle class.

Biden Tax Hikes: Democrats don’t really want to tax the rich and couldn’t do it even if they tried because of Hauser’s Law. Their real aim is political misdirection, to appear to be taxing the rich in furtherance of their class warfare agenda. And so it is with Biden’s proposed tax hikes on corporations and individual capital gains and dividends. Everyone knows corporations are merely vehicles for collecting taxes, but they don’t actually pay them. The tax burden falls on their customers in the form of higher prices. When capital gains and dividend tax rates rise, tax collections decrease as taxpayers modify their behavior. Biden’s taxes on the rich will devastate the middle class.

Packing the Supreme Court: The Constitution created three co-equal branches of government and provided for a separation of powers between them. If the court can be reconstituted whenever the executive and legislative branches change hands, there is a prima facie case the court not only is not independent but that there is no separation. Therefore, the Supreme Court should rule that court packing is an unconstitutional violation of: (1) separation of powers; (2) independence; and (3) co-equality.

Media Ethics: Our local newspaper recently wrote a self laudatory (and self delusional) puff piece touting the strength of its ethics policy. I wrote the following in response.

“I’m sure you have been in many restaurant rest rooms festooned with signs in uber large fonts commanding ‘Employees are required to wash their hands before returning to work.’ Such conspicuously placed signs are posted not to remind employees to wash-up but to disingenuously assuage customers’ concerns about sanitation. Just like the signs in restrooms, written codes of ethics are mostly window dressing. They are nothing more than platitudes from cans unless they are deeply embedded in the culture of the organization, scrupulously honored and strictly enforced. Enron had a 64-page code of ethics distributed to all its employees; how did that work out?”

“Your newspaper’s ethics are eerily similar to Enron’s, i.e. they are observed in the breech. Your ethical stricture to ‘make news decisions without the influence of any political preference’ is laughable. Every edition of your paper contains numerous and flagrant violations of this ethic. Your reporters and editors violate this policy with scorn and impunity because they understand it is only window dressing. When, if ever, was anyone sanctioned for violating this policy? As with restaurants, your paper doesn’t really care about clean hands. Your code of ethics is not intended for employees; it is for virtue signaling and maskirovka to hoodwink your readers.”


Next on May 2nd, in observance of May Day, we blog about socialism.

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

SunRail – Incivility – AOC – War on Religion

SunRail could buy a new Toyota Prius for every commuter and save $50 million!
SunRail – Incivility – AOC – War on Religion
By: George Noga – March 17, 2019

           SunRail: In our post of August 26, 2018, we provided the math showing how SunRail could pay every rider $35 for Uber and save money; go to www.mllg.us. to read it. But wait, it gets even uglier! SunRail could buy each rider a new Toyota Prius every two years and save $50 million. The math is simple. It costs SunRail $34 million annually to operate, or $68 million for 2 years. SunRail’s daily ridership is 3,500 and a basic Prius costs $21,500 less a $4,500 tax credit. SunRail could buy 3,500 Priuses for $60 million with $8 million left over. The used Priuses then can be sold for $12,000 each, netting $42 million and increasing the taxpayer savings to $50 million.

           Covington Students: This passage by C.S. Lewis, from 1952, (edited for length) is apropos to the incident involving the Covington students. “Suppose one reads a story of atrocities. Then suppose something turns up suggesting the story might not be true, or not so bad as first made out to be. Is one’s first feeling “Thank God, even they aren’t so bad as that.” or, is it a feeling of disappointment and a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second, it is the first step in a process which will make us into devils. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything as black and not be able to stop doing it and we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred.”

         AOC’s Green New Deal: Ocasio-Cortez was at it again stating, “The world will end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” She called the fight against climate change her generation’s “WWII”. Alarmists have predicted Armageddon for decades; in 2009, Al Gore said, “New York City will be under water by 2015.” If Earth’s 7.7 billion people are going to perish in 12 years, the only way to save the planet is to attack China and India to halt their CO2 emissions, which are 40% of the world’s. There is nothing the US and Europe can do on their own. What is the point of the green new deal, which affects only the US, if we all are dead by 2030. You will know AOC is serious when she publicly calls for attacking China and India.

        War on Religion: Diane Feinstein attacked Notre Dame law professor Amy Barrett saying, “The dogma lives loud within you“. This was followed by attacks from Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono on the Knights of Columbus and then by the entire liberal mob on Karen Pence. But 21st century progressivism is itself a rabid, militant religion and far more dogmatic than Christianity. It has its pantheon of gods: climate change, abortion-on-demand and group identity. It has a Garden of Eden where man fell from grace via toxic masculinity, heteronormativity, intersectionality, white privilege, cultural appropriation, microaggressions and lack of criticality.

         Its demons are guns, religion and CO2; its Great Satan is Donald Trump. Its angels are windmills and biofuels. Its sacraments are recycling and virtue signaling. Its eucharist is gluten free, non-GMO organic food. It seeks to silence, persecute and shame apostates. Salvation is only possible through sustainability, inclusion, diversity, empowerment, checking privilege, social justice, equity and tolerance. Whew!


Coming March 24th – Capitalism vs. Socialism in Theory and Practice.

Women’s Sports – Romaine – Matt Shepard

Transgender women are causing the end of women’s sports – and also homosexuality.
Women’s Sports – Romaine – Matt Shepard
By: George Noga – February 24, 2019

Micro Topics: The latest liberal angst involves the gender of robots. For example, assigning a security robot male attributes reinforces gender stereotypes. . . . . . Trump pardoned the White House turkeys because DNA testing revealed they were 1/1,024th bald eagle due to some monkey business 10 generations ago. Pocahontas (Warren) now claims Native American heritage because a great uncle owned a Jeep Cherokee. . . . . . You can’t email your doctor because government can’t figure out how to compensate them for email; yet progressives want the state to take over all of our health care.

Death Knell for Women’s Sports and homosexuality: Transgender women (born male) are winning more and more women’s sporting events at the high school, college and professional levels because of higher testosterone. But if non-trans women take testosterone injections, they are disqualified for using performance enhancing drugs. However, putting trans women on testosterone blockers is a human rights violation. There is no danger to men’s sports from trans men (born female) for obvious reasons; however, trans women are causing the end of women’s sports. If male and female are only social constructs and there is no way to distinguish between them, that is the death knell for women’s sports. Also, it would render homosexuality moot; wouldn’t it?

Lettuce and CDC: The CDC romaine lettuce ban caused $25 million of losses; but it protected our health; didn’t it? The data don’t support this narrative. Only 43 people were affected, none seriously. The odds of romaine making you sick were 1 in 11 million; if you ate romaine every day, you would get sick once every 77,000 years. The chance of a hole-in-one is 1 in 12,500. CDC never discloses risks, fearing ridicule if they did. People make tough decisions about risks all the time; we should have the freedom to decide whether or not to eat a salad without big brother interfering.

Matthew Shepard: We wrote about Shepard most recently in June 2018 (see website). In October, Shepard’s ashes were interred at Washington’s National Cathedral, an honor conferred on few Americans, and he was given a memorial service worthy of a hero. Everything reported in the media about Shepard’s murder is a lie. There was no hate crime. Shepard was murdered by his homosexual lover in a meth deal gone bad. While progressives clamor to destroy monuments to past heroes, who no longer conform to their values, they created a progressive hero based entirely on lies and identity politics.

USA Healthcare: Whenever I write about healthcare, my progressive readers remind me how bad things are because not all Americans have insurance. First off, many Americans make an informed choice not to buy insurance, a freedom not available to those with national health care. While some may lack insurance, everyone in America (citizen or alien) has immediate access to the very best treatment extant.

People under socialized medicine have insurance but often not timely care; they may be denied life saving treatment and/or drugs due to limited funds and they often receive outdated and insipid care. Which would you prefer, no insurance but immediate access to top-notch care, or nationalized insurance with rationing, long waits and possible denials? I get it; insurance is more dignified than public assistance, but insurance is no good if you can’t use it and having insurance is not the same as having healthcare.


Watch for our midweek posting: the first in our 2020 election coverage.

Man-Made Global Warming (1988-2017) R.I.P.

Man-made global warming, a/k/a climate change, was a political construct from its  inception in 1988. It now has run its five-stage course and is dying a political death. 
Man-Made Global Warming (1988-2017) R.I.P.
By: George Noga – July 22, 2018
       Progressivism feeds man’s neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing a path for moral redemption. It’s no different for global warming. This explains the fervor with which climate change was embraced – mostly in far left precincts. It now joins the pantheon of junk science in the dustbin of history. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was merely the end of a trend that was evident for some time.

      We will not recount the myriad reasons climate change has descended into the netherworld of liberal canards and environmental scare politics. We have been there, done that. There still is plenty of sound and fury emanating from warmists, but people tuned it out and quit listening some time ago. Most governments, if judged by their actions rather than their words, also are backing away from global warming paranoia.

        A five-stage life cycle for political movements was identified by political scientist Anthony Downs in 1972. Following is the life cycle for man-made global warming.

Stage 1 Public problem identified: Man-made warming was born on June 23, 1988 when NASA scientist, James Hansen, testified before Congress that he was 99% certain burning fossil fuels created a greenhouse effect that alters global climate and will affect life on Earth for centuries to come. Note: Hansen has been proven wrong.

Stage 2 Politicians and media embrace the issue: This is the messianic stage where activists jump in with a rush of dopamine, making it a spiritual, metaphysical and even an existential issue. They predict the end of the world unless we do what they want to save mankind from the over-hyped peril. This stage began immediately after Hansen’s testimony and peaked in 2006 with publication of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Stage 3 Pivot due to skepticism about costs, benefits and underlying facts: This stage, overlapping slightly with stage 2, began with the Kyoto Protocol taking effect in 2005. A gradual and spreading realization began to dawn on the public that the costs weren’t worth the putative and uncertain benefits. Many began to doubt the facts underlying man-made warming and noted the failure of warmists’ dire predictions to be realized.

Stage 4 Public interest wanes: As stage 3 morphs into stage 4, public interest wanes both in terms of public concern and intensity; this stage goes from circa 2012 to 2017. In recent years the public consistently has rated climate change dead last out of 20 issues of concern. Only 1 in 4 or 5 Americans now rate climate change a priority.

Stage 5 Post-problem stage is prolonged limbo: Man-made global warming died on June 1, 2017 when Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. The issue is effectively dead although there may be spasmodic recurrences of interest. Climate change’s death throes will be agonizing because it had such a maniacial following. We have reached the tipping point on climate change – just not the one warmists expected.

      Our first posting was about global warming and we have blogged about it more than any topic. We will miss global warming, much as we miss the former USSR, because it provided a soft, inviting and comedic target. Fear not; we will revisit climate change from time to time during its death throes. It was fun while it lasted; wasn’t it?

        As Eric Hoffer said: “Every cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Global warming has been a racket for quite some time with Al Gore and other rent-seeking environmentalists loading up at the trough. From the git-go, climate change was purely a political issue and whatever lives by politics, also dies by politics. Global warming (1988-2017) – rest in peace.

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Our next post revisits the the US debt crisis.

Antidote for Fake News: Fair Witnesses and Mentats

Journalism is dead. Fake news proliferates. Fact checkers are corrupt. Most people
want the truth but don’t know where to find it. This post offers a possible solution
Antidote for Fake News: Fair Witnesses and Mentats
By: George Noga – February 5, 2017
    More Americans believe Elvis is alive (8%) than trust the media (6%). Their distrust is not misplaced. Journalism schools are hothouses of progressive argle-bargle; they draw their students, who cling to illusions of adequacy, from the bottom deciles. The media have abandoned even the veneer of objectivity; they are irredeemably corrupt.
    Most Americans want to know the plain truth even if it shatters long and deeply held shibboleths. I exclude from that group the 24% who self-identify as progressives because their beliefs are based on religion and are thus impervious to facts or logic. Fortunately, there are solutions for the remaining 76% of Americans who want truth.
     All the main fact checking sources including Facebook, PolitiFact, and Snopes are debauched and unprincipled. We need an unimpeachable, competent and nonpolitical source for checking facts and determining truth. We need Fair Witnesses and Mentats.
     The Fair Witness concept is a creation of science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his book, Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein’s book takes place in the milieu of an overbearing government (familiar?). One way citizens could counter the overweening power of government was to hire a Fair Witness, a specially trained and recognized person who was so truthful and objective as to be unimpeachable. Anything observed or reported by a Fair Witness was universally accepted by government and the courts.
    Heinlein’s Fair Witnesses are professionals with an eidetic memory trained to make no extrapolations or assumptions; they wear distinctive white robes and are accorded deferential treatment by society. When a Fair Witness is asked the color of a house, he/she replies, “It is white on this side.” Heinlein’s book was published 55 years ago and the Fair Witness concept was only a small, obscure part of the book. However, if you search the internet for Fair Witness, there are 80 million entries – more than for the Kardashians, Pope Francis and Vladimir Putin. Obviously, it resonated with readers.
     Mentats, created by sci-fi writer Frank Herbert (Dune series), were specially trained to develop their cognitive and analytic capacities to unimaginable heights. They were the embodiment of logic and reason and only a few could qualify. It is thus a recurring sci-fi theme that society needs accurate, impartial arbiters of ascertainable facts.
    Clearly, the public, or at least 76% of it, is hungry (make that desperate) for a reliable way to separate fact from fiction. The potential is unlimited and there is no reason the Fair Witness/Mentat  concept could not be modified to work today. In fact, I have a blueprint for such a program but it is too lengthy to include herein. If someone successfully introduced such a concept (website) today, he/she could be the next internet billionaire. I would be tempted to try it if I were fifteen years younger.
     Imagine the possibilities! Fair Witnesses would transform public debate about any matter that lends itself to proof. It would be the death knell of progressivism – which is based on lies. Being untruthful would become unproductive. The thought of a news story being promptly rendered untrue might even make the media more circumspect. There are obvious applications for business and advertising. Note: I  plan to write a future post about what a Fair Witness might have to say about climate change.
     We have much to learn from obscure sci-fi tracts published long ago. Like all great science fiction, Stranger in a Strange Land and Dune speak to us today. Fair Witnesses or Mentats would shatter the Elvis myth but they also would bring about a renaissance in the media – currently trusted by only 6% of the most gullible Americans.

Next up from MLLG on February 12th – The Democrats’ War on Blacks

Plague or Pestilence?

Here are some final thoughts about the 2016 election and a far, far too early look at 2020.
Plague or Pestilence?
By: George Noga – November 6, 2016
      I have been a keen observer of US presidential elections beginning 56 years ago in 1960. This election is different than anything I have seen before; only 1968 comes remotely close. By any conventional method or measure, Clinton wins; nevertheless, there is a path still open for Trump if all the factors noted below break just right.
 –

     ##  The polls are wrong. For technical reasons (absence of landlines, etc.) polling is much less accurate than in past elections. Polling was notoriously wrong in many primaries, in the Brexit vote and most recently in the Colombian FARC treaty vote. Many people, especially Trump voters, do not divulge their true feelings to pollsters.

     ##  The massive global failure of government drives voters to make a change. Government is failing in the US, Europe, Japan, the Middle East and elsewhere. Change is in the air worldwide and the USA is not immune from this dynamic which was clearly manifest in the Brexit vote and in other recent European elections.

     ##  Voter turnout could produce a seismic swing if blacks and millennials stay home while evangelicals turnout in force. Polls do not properly account for turnout.

     ##  Obamacare is a festering wound and massive voter repudiation could happen.

A Ridiculously Early Look at the 2020 Election
Are you ready for President Tom Cotton?

     Believe it or not, I honestly think I can make a fairly accurate assessment of the 2020 election. Just as it can be easier to see longer term movement in stock prices, the same thing is possible in politics – especially given conditions and trends in the USA.

     Assuming Hillary wins in 2016, her policies will be a continuation of the failed Obama regime. The US economy will remain in a low (or negative) growth mode and lucky to avoid recession. Recessions occur every 7 or 8 years and 2020 would be 12 years since the last one. Hillary’s tax, regulatory and trade policies will prove disastrous and at some point this will be reflected in the financial markets. Obamacare will fester for four more years leading to massive voter repudiation. The global anti-government movement will build steam and morph into an unstoppable force.

     By 2020 the US will be an economic basket case with immense underemployment, stagnant (or even declining) middle class incomes and debt and deficits nearing critical mass. Malaise will define the national mood. The country will have suffered through 12 years of one party rule; historically this means change – which would have occurred in 2016 had anyone but Trump been nominated; it is merely being delayed four years. Did I mention a weak military, foreign conflagrations and a worsening of terrorism?

     It is ridiculously premature to predict who the president will be in 2021, but my bet is firmly on Tom Cotton. Remember, you read it first in this post. Heck – I am going to go all in on Cotton. Not only will Cotton win big in 2020, he will go on to lead a Reaganesque revival in America – provided America still is recognizable in 2021.


We are skipping next week; the next post is scheduled for November 20.

Inequality in America III – The $15 Minimum Wage

Advocates of the $15 minimum wage agree it is bad economics but justify their support on moral grounds. What is moral about putting poor people out of work?

By: George Noga – May 15, 2016

   The reference in the preheader is to California Governor Jerry Brown. His actual quote is: “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense but morally, socially and politically it makes sense. . . .” The previous year Brown stated raising the minimum wage would “put a lot of poor people out of work“. It seems that for progressives, creating more unemployment among the poor now has become a moral imperative.

    Governor Brown has company. As with all progressive causes, there are two groups of supporters. At the core there always are special interests, in this case labor unions. Many union contracts contain automatic built-in differentials over minimum wage. Unions also support it because it prices the poor and minorities out of the labor market, reducing competition for lower paying jobs. The second group consists of do-gooders who are both soft-hearted and soft-headed; they are, in-effect, shilling for the unions.

    Minimum wage has been a leitmotif in America since 1938 when it began at $.25 per hour. In nearly eight decades since, it has been thoroughly studied by economists and there is virtual unanimity among them that the economic effects are harmful. Economics doesn’t get more basic than when the price of anything (labor) is increased, there will be less of it. Children with lemonade stands understand this. Following are some other things you may not know about minimum wages in America.

1. Minimum wage affects less than one percent of all workers and most who earn the minimum wage do so for six months or less before receiving raises. Virtually no heads of households or full time workers earn the minimum wage.

2. The average household income for a family with someone earning the minimum wage is $50,000. Most receiving the minimum wage aren’t poor; they are spouses or teenagers living at home, like the kid who delivers pizza to buy gas for his BMW.

3. A majority of those in poverty don’t work; they need jobs, not a higher minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage makes it much harder for them to find jobs.

4. The young, poor, minorities and unskilled are disproportionately harmed by raising the minimum wage. Raising the minimum reduces the EITC (earned income tax credit) thereby negating much or all of the benefit of a higher minimum wage.

5. There is consistent and copious empirical evidence that raising the minimum is a death-knell for the poor and minorities; every time it goes up, they lose hundreds of thousands of jobs. With each increase, business has more incentive to automate or to relocate (if it is a state increase) and to put even more people out of work.

    It seems clear enough that raising the minimum wage does not reduce inequality in America; it does the opposite. Even though only one percent of workers earn the minimum, that still amounts to 1.25 million people. The last increase resulted in over 300,000 jobs lost – nearly all poor and minority. That is a recipe for more inequality.

    Progressives claim a moral imperative to raise the minimum wage, even knowing it puts poor people out of work. They do this for their own self esteem. However, the real minimum wage always is zero, zilch, nada and not what progressive kool-aid drinkers deign to make it. And zero, zilch, nada is exactly the wage many more poor people will receive with a $15 minimum wage. I have one word to describe this: immoral!


Part IV of Inequality in America – Reality versus Rhetoric – will be posted May 22.