Census Workers: What The Job’s Really About

CNSNews has a story with letters from census workers that describe what they’re actually doing and getting paid for.

True Confessions from America’s Census Workers

Wednesday, April 07, 2010
By Michelle Malkin
Listen to Commentary Podcasts

President Obama’s politicized, profligate U.S. census drive is so desperate for positive press that it has now recruited former Bush senior adviser Karl Rove to do public service announcements.

Rove pleads on video: “Please answer the 10 easy questions. They’re almost the same ones Madison helped write for the first census back in 1790.” Message: If you don’t join the census bandwagon, James Madison will have lost!

Sorry, Mr. Rove. Playing the Founding Fathers card isn’t going to quell conservative criticism of how the Obama administration has exploited the census boondoggle for both economic and ideological gain.

For the record, I have no beef with the constitutional mandate. I complied by filling out my census form and sending it back—with “American” in the blank for race/ethnicity to register my opposition to government racial classifications.

Despite apocalyptic suggestions by census officials and some Republican politicians that conservatives are recklessly boycotting the decennial head count, analysis by both the right-leaning Daily Caller and left-leaning Plum Line websites shows that return rates from conservative counties are in line with national averages.

So, what makes the Obama census campaign different from other census programs? First, its naked, left-wing special interest pandering. The White House is championing a “Queer the Census” movement by pro-gay marriage groups, for example, and the Commerce Department is working with open-borders leaders who want to use the census as leverage to stop all immigration raids.

The electoral stakes are high. Some $400 billion in federal funding and, most importantly, the apportionment of congressional seats are up for grabs. Instead of straightforward enumeration of the American population, Obama and the left’s identity politics-mongers are turning the $1 billion, taxpayer-subsidized census public relations drive into a government preferences lobbying bonanza.

More galling: the White House manipulation of census worker employment to goose the jobless rate. Last week, the government touted employment figures bolstered by the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. The Census Bureau anticipates it may add nearly 750,000 workers to its payroll by May. Liberal economist Heidi Shierholz exulted in The Hill: “This is the best-timed census you could ever dream of.” And Team Obama plans to milk it for all it’s worth.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve received e-mails from census workers across the country describing the directive from their managers to slow down, stall, waste time and stretch out their work unnecessarily. As a counter-public service announcement, I’m reprinting some of their letters:

— “…I have been working with the census for two weeks, and every day I shake my head at the blatant inefficiency and deliberate misuse of taxpayer money. Specifically, we have been doing enumeration for those who do not have a home, the homeless in shelters, soup kitchens and in targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations, such as parks, subway stations, etc. I personally have been sent to check on shelters that were already determined to be day programs during the preceding round of quality control, yet they pay me the mileage and hourly wage to go back and make sure that they are still only day programs. I walked through parks and parking lots looking for homeless people to enumerate, not even by talking to them, but just by observing their race, sex and approximate age. …

“…The way the process has been set up by government bureaucracy is so backward and prevents a person who is industrious and efficient from being able to work freely… This is the first job where I am encouraged to be slow and inefficient.”

— “Last summer I participated in the ‘address canvassing’ (AC) project. What this entailed was walking around a neighborhood, literally door to door, with a little handheld computer. My job was not to enter addresses so that these people could receive their form, but to make sure that the addresses that the first wave of people put into the system and appeared on the computer were actually there… Mostly, it was me getting paid $15.25/hour plus mileage to take my dog for a walk and push a few buttons.

“In an average suburban neighborhood where the houses are somewhat close to each other, it was no problem to do about 35 to 40 addresses per hour once you learned how to quickly enter data into the computer. The census said that I should be doing about 12 to 15 per hour. My direct bosses told me that I should NOT be doing 35 to 40, because it was making them and other people look bad. So instead of walking at a snail’s pace, I just did my 35 to 40/hour and doubled my time when I submitted my hours. Again, sorry for the tax dollar grab, but I was told not to be so darned efficient or else I’d be cut!”

— “I had the great pleasure of working for the address canvassing last spring. I was hired in early April for a job that was to be completed by the first week of July. I have a military background and a background in human resources, and the whole process left me with blood squirting from my eyes… I worked in the field for four days so that I would know what to do. The remainder of my time was spent sitting in a McDonald’s to have a daily progress meeting with each of the enumerators. I was paid from the time I left my house to the time I got home … plus mileage. I was told to pad the time or mileage to cover my McDonald’s food, since I was camping in a booth all day. For all that, I was paid $11.75 an hour. …We had a really good crew and were done by the second week of May… Philadelphia was going nuts because our region was getting done so fast, but there was nothing we could do to slow it down another two months.

“… I never saw such a mismanaged outfit in all my life. I just shook my head in total disbelief. Our work could have been done with half the people. We did have those that quit right after training, to the tune of $800 spent on nothing. I earned approximately $3,000. I will say, to be quite honest, it was the easiest money I ever made. On the exit interview, I was asked if I wanted to be called back for further work. I wrote ‘NO’ in big letters. I didn’t want to take any further part in what I saw to be a racket.”

What would Madison think now?

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ACLU, Santa Rosa School District Keep Plaintiff’s Identities Secret To Continue Enforcing Consent Decree

WorldNetDaily reports that a federal judge is demanding the ACLU and the Santa Rosa School District release the names of plaintiffs covered in a consent decree that prevents teachers at the school district from openly practicing their faith.  The ACLU and the school district have so far refused to identify the subjects so that they can keep enforcing the decree even though the plaintiffs no longer attend the school district, which would make the decree moot.

Judge to ACLU: Where are plaintiffs?

School district’s policy has forced teachers to pray in closets

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Posted: March 31, 2010
11:50 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Teachers say they are literally forced to pray in school closets to avoid contempt charges

A federal judge handling a case brought by the ACLU against a school district that has forced teachers to hide in closets if they want to pray now is demanding documentation about the status of the plaintiffs, whose identifies have been kept secret.

That’s because the case never was certified as class action, which means unless those for whom the case was brought remain in peril over the school’s actions, there are valid questions about “this court’s continued enforcement jurisdiction over the consent decree,” the judge wrote.

WND has reported on the case, which has included an order crafted by the ACLU requiring employees in the Santa Rosa School District to act in an “official capacity” whenever they are at a “school event” – including breaks, after-school events on or off campus and private events held on campus.

Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit Florida law firm, alongside Christian Educators Association International, is seeking to overturn the court order, which has resulted in three school officials being charged with contempt.

According to Liberty Counsel, school officials are strictly prohibited from showing agreement with anyone “communicating with a deity,” such as “bowing the head” or “folding hands.” “School officials” must also prohibit “third-parties” from praying, Liberty Counsel said.

Now, according to Liberty Counsel, the “anonymous plaintiffs” probably have “long since graduated.””But the plaintiffs’ permanent loss of legal standing hasn’t stopped the ACLU and the school district from continuing to defend the consent decree that has become irreversibly moot,” LC said in an announcement today.

“Having failed in its attempts to fine and jail school officials for praying, the ACLU, aided by the school district, has been opposing the efforts of Christian Educators Association International, represented by Liberty Counsel, to have the consent decree declared unconstitutional,” Liberty Counsel said.

The only problem is that the decree became legally moot – or of no consequence whatsoever – “on the day the ACLU’s clients graduated, less than four weeks after it was issued.

“Moreover, without clients that have a legal interest in the litigation, the ACLU was legally barred from continuing to litigate against the people of Santa Rosa County. The ACLU and the school district knew this but conspired to hide the fact that the two anonymous plaintiffs graduated. In the consent decree they jointly submitted to the court, they inserted provisions purporting to require the court to retain jurisdiction for at least five years, thereby inferring that their anonymous clients were much younger. They also asked the court to conceal the plaintiffs’ identity for another five years, so that no one would know they graduated,” according to Liberty Counsel’s report.

U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers now has ordered that the participants “shall submit memoranda to the court by the close of business on April 7, 2010, advising the court on the status of the named plaintiffs’ continued interest in this litigation, the continued validity of the injunctive consent decree, and the basis for this court’s continued enforcement jurisdiction over the consent decree.”

The plaintiffs have always been identified only as “Minor I Doe” and “Minor II Doe.”

“It has been brought to the court’s attention that the two plaintiffs may have graduated from high school and thus no longer suffer a threat of harm from the school board’s policies and practices,” the judge warned.

This, he said, “raises questions regarding the court’s continued enforcement jurisdiction over the decree as well as the validity of the continuing nature of the injunctive relief provided by the consent decree. This case was not a class action. Even though the plaintiffs prevailed on the merits of their cause oef action … if the named plaintiffs no longer have a continuing interest in the suit, there is a genuine issue regarding mootness … which must be addressed.”

Liberty Counsel’s report said, “The ACLU’s conspiracy is now unraveling. Liberty Counsel raised the issue of mootness last year and then again in the motion earlier this year. The federal court that entered the consent decree, which has literally forced teachers and staff to hide in closets to pray, has now demanded an explanation from the ACLU and the school district as to why it should continue to enforce that consent decree.”

Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, said, “The errors in judgment by the ACLU and the school district are stunning. The school district agreed to enter into an unconstitutional consent decree that was legally effective for less than one month, then agreed to pay the ACLU a whopping $200,000, and then expended a great deal of additional resources to oppose Liberty Counsel’s intervention and defend the unconstitutional and moot consent decree.

“From the beginning, our position has been that this order should be set aside. We will not rest until that happens. If the school board does not come to its senses and seize the opportunity before it to make things right, the voters of Santa Rosa County will hold them accountable in the next election.”

As WND reported, Michelle Winkler, a clerical assistant, earlier faced contempt charges after her husband read a prayer at a private banquet held at a Naval base to honor noninstructional school-district employees. The judge eventually found that Winkler’s husband’s prayer at a voluntary gathering outside of school did not violate any court order.

During her testimony, Winkler broke down on the witness stand as she told a story about how her co-worker sought comfort from her after losing her 2-year-old child.

The two hid behind a closet door to pray, for fear they would be seen and held in contempt of the court order.

Denise Gibson, an elementary teacher for 20 years, testified that the order requires her to inform parents that she cannot respond if they mention church or their faith. She said she is prohibited from replying to e-mails from parents if they contain Bible verses or even “God bless you.” Instead, she said, the district has instructed her to open a separate e-mail to answer the parents rather than hit “reply.” The district calls for the action to eliminate any trace of religious language in school communication.

Liberty Counsel earlier successfully defended Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman against criminal contempt charges after the ACLU complained when Freeman gave a 15-second blessing for a lunch meal for 20 adults with no students present.

The men had faced penalties of up to six months in jail and $5,000 in fines each.

The case began in August 2008 when two anonymous students sued with the help of the ACLU over longstanding practices at the school allowing prayer at some events. The school’s separate counsel had agreed to a consent decree that “essentially bans all Santa Rosa County School District employees from engaging in prayer or religious activities,” Liberty Counsel reported.

Members of the 2009 graduating class at Florida’s Pace High School expressed their objections to the ACLU restrictions on statements of religious faith at their school by rising up en masse at their ceremony and reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Nearly 400 graduating seniors at Pace, a Santa Rosa County school, stood up at their graduation, according to Staver. Parents, family and friends joined in the recitation and applauded the students when they were finished, Staver told WND.

“Many of the students also painted crosses on their graduation caps to make a statement of faith,” the organization reported.

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Rhode Island PUC Passes On Wind Energy, Says It’s Too Expensive

CNSNews tells us that Rhode Island’s PUC bypassed an opportunity to purchase power from a proposed wind farm because it would be too expensive, 3x the cost of other energy sources.  This is part of the core problem with “green” technology, it’s too inefficient and too expensive.  With the Democrat’s socialist agenda on the rise, adapting such technologies now without giving them time to develop (read: cap-and-trade) would only seek to further the burden American taxpayers in a time when our economy is weakened and our Socialist overlords have just burdened us with European-style health care.

Too Expensive: Wind Power Contract Rejected by R.I. Public Utilities Commission

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
By Susan Jones, Senior Editor

(CNSNews.com) – The R.I. Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday rejected a contract that would have allowed Rhode Island’s largest electric utility to buy power from a wind farm that’s planned for the waters off the R.I. coast. It would have been the first project of its kind in the United States, the Providence Journal reported.

The three-member commission voted unanimously against the power-purchase agreement, saying the price of power agreed to by the two sides was too high and that the overall deal was not “commercially reasonable.”

According to the Providence Journal, “The crux of the proposed agreement was a sale price of 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly three times the price National Grid pays for energy from fossil-fuel fired power plants and nuclear facilities. Over the 20-year contract, the price would have escalated by 3.5 percent annually, so, by the final year, it would have been 48.6 cents per kilowatt hour. Combined with a 2.75-percent markup on clean energy that National Grid was allowed by Rhode Island law, it would have meant hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs to the state’s 480,000 ratepayers over two decades.”

Read report from Providence Journal and see Newspaper Roundup

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Obamacare First, VAT Next

Letter from the Capitol has a piece describing how Obamacare is just the first step in transitioning America’s citizens into paying a Value Added Tax (VAT) on goods on top of income tax in order to support our new Democratic Socialist future.  The last section on describing Obama’s impact on history is a lot nicer than I would have put it.

March 31, 2010

ObamaCare: Stalking Horse for VAT Taxation

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels says we must live “like good Europeans” as ObamaCare stifles choice & raises costs.  Which may explain why Fidel Castro called ObamaCare “a true miracle” and compared it to Cuba’s CastroCare….

Charles Krauthammer divines the true method behind ObamaCare’s fiscal madness: force adoption of a European-style Value Added Tax, creating a womb-to-tomb European Welfare State, with high taxes, high unemployment & high benefits allocated by government:

American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.

Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama’s triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan’s strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes — then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.

Obama’s strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast and then feed it. Spend first — which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.

And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.

As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.

One reason for a VAT is that, as economist Alan Reynolds writes, the administration’s plan to extract $1.2TR from rich taxpayers over the next decade will not work.  Such filers already pay over 50 percent of income taxes.  Reynolds explains:

President Barack Obama’s new health-care legislation aims to raise $210 billion over 10 years to pay for the extensive new entitlements. How? By slapping a 3.8% “Medicare tax” on interest and rental income, dividends and capital gains of couples earning more than $250,000, or singles with more than $200,000.

The president also hopes to raise $364 billion over 10 years from the same taxpayers by raising the top two tax rates to 36%-39.6% from 33%-35%, plus another $105 billion by raising the tax on dividends and capital gains to 20% from 15%, and another $500 billion by capping and phasing out exemptions and deductions.

Add it up and the government is counting on squeezing an extra $1.2 trillion over 10 years from a tiny sliver of taxpayers who already pay more than half of all individual taxes.

It won’t work. It never works.

The maximum tax rate fell to 28% in 1988-90 from 50% in 1986, yet individual income tax receipts rose to 8.3% of GDP in 1989 from 7.9% in 1986. The top tax rate rose to 31% in 1991 and revenue fell to 7.6% of GDP in 1992. The top tax rate was increased to 39.6% in 1993, along with numerous major revenue enhancers such as raising the taxable portion of Social Security to 85% of benefits from 50% for seniors who saved or kept working. Yet individual tax revenues were only 7.8% of GDP in 1993, 8.1% in 1994, and did not get back to the 1989 level until 1995.

Put simply, taxpayers alter their investment, tax & work strategies to minimize the impact of punitive levies.

Herb London warns of ObamaCare’s threat to liberty.  A WSJ 3/30 editorial explains what I missed last week; ObamaCare does not explicitly call for hiring 16,500 IRS agents.  The figure is a GOP extrapolation from the IRS budget, to derive an estimate of what will be needed to enforce compliance on the new levies; if the IRS is left at present levels of resources revenues will be lost.

A WSJ editorial last week offered emerging examples of diminished health care choice, already underway due to ObamaCare.  At NRO Rich Lowry warns that deteriorating finances will force choosing between guns and butter, and that Obama clearly will choose to preserve the latter.  Nobel economist Gary Becker’s WSJ interview presents an optimist, but one who fears, as in the old joke about optimism & pessimism, that his optimism may be unjustified.

A WSJ editorial notes major companies already writing down their asset values due to anticipated ObamaCare impact–$14B during 2010, according to one consultant.  Naturally, a senior Obama administration hack calls these “irresponsible” while California thug-Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hillbillies) plans an April 21 kangaroo-court show trial of major CEOs.  NRO’s Rich Lowry adds detail on Waxman’s efforts to muzzle companies hit by ObamaCare.

A WSJ editorial today describes just how outrageous this pressure is–companies are required by law to do what Waxman warns them not to do:

So the wave of corporate writedowns—led by AT&T’s $1 billion—isn’t caused by ObamaCare after all. The White House claims CEOs are reducing the value of their companies and returns for shareholders merely out of political pique.

A White House staffer told the American Spectator that “These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general. Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative Web sites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It’s BS.” (We called the White House for elaboration but got no response.)

In other words, CEOs who must abide by U.S. accounting laws under pain of SEC sanction, and who warned about such writedowns for months, are merely trying to ruin President Obama’s moment of glory. Sure.

Presumably the White House is familiar with the Financial Standard Accounting Board’s 1990 statement No. 106, which requires businesses to immediately restate their earnings in light of their expected future retiree health liabilities. AT&T, Deere & Co., AK Steel, Prudential and Caterpillar, among others, are simply reporting the corporate costs of the Democratic decision to raise taxes on retiree drug benefits to finance ObamaCare.

Mark Steyn notes that one firm is heading for incorporation in Canada, no less–yes, CANADA:

In 2003, Washington blessed a grateful citizenry with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, it being generally agreed by all the experts that it was unfair to force seniors to choose between their monthly trip to Rite-Aid and Tony Danza in dinner theater. However, in order to discourage American businesses from immediately dumping all their drug plans for retirees, Congress gave them a modest tax break equivalent to 28 percent of the cost of the plan.

Fast forward to the dawn of the ObamaCare utopia. In one of a bazillion little clauses in a 2,000-page bill your legislators didn’t bother reading (because, as Congressman John Conyers explained, he wouldn’t understand it even if he did), Congress voted to subject the 28 percent tax benefit to the regular good ol’ American-as-apple-pie corporate tax rate of 35 percent. . . . I refer you to the decision last year by the doughnut chain Tim Hortons, a Delaware corporation, to reorganize itself as a Canadian corporation “in order to take advantage of Canadian tax rates.” Hold that thought: “In order to take advantage of Canadian tax rates”—a phrase hitherto unknown to American English outside the most fantastical futuristic science fiction.

Another little-noticed provision in ObamaCare: Money for long-term care will be automatically deducted from worker paychecks unless employees opt out; it is an estimated $146/month payment to give $75 daily care; some cost estimates peg the deduction at $240/month.  Cost at the lower figure is estimated at $100B.

Weekly Standard editor Matthew Continetti sums up what ObamaCare will do to Obama’s historical reputation:

The liberal line is that President Obama has secured his place in history by signing into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. And secured it he has. Henceforth Obama will be remembered as the man who accelerated America’s mad dash toward bankruptcy. He will be remembered as the leader who promoted a culture of dependency. He will be remembered as the figure who sacrificed a dream of national unity upon the altar of big government liberalism. It’s true: Obama is now a president of consequence. And almost all of those consequences are bad.

The fiscal picture was bleak before Obama made it worse. Government debt is 60 percent of the gross domestic product and climbing. The deficit is projected to remain above 4 percent of GDP for the next decade. The week before the president signed his health care reform into law, Moody’s warned that America’s AAA bond rating may be downgraded. The day before the signing ceremony, the nation learned that Warren Buffett is a safer investment than U.S. treasuries. One needn’t look across the Atlantic, where a penniless Greece is a supplicant to the IMF, to see our future. Look to California, where the economy is crippled by high taxes, high spending, and burdensome debt….

Gone is the charismatic young man who told the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston that there was no Blue America and no Red America, only the United States of America. All that remains is a partisan liberal Democrat whose health care policy bulldozed public opinion, enraged the electorate, poisoned the Congress, and set into motion a sequence of events the outcome of which cannot be foreseen.

This tarnished White House complains incessantly about the crises it inherited from its predecessor. Crises? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The latest public health care horror show from the UK–presaging America’s ObamaCare future: nurses declining to bring a dying patient a glass of water.

CAN’T WAIT, CAN YE?

Bottom Line.  Coupled with America’s rapidly deteriorating financial position, ObamaCare is a massive, potentially fatal economic train wreck in the making.

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NASA Admits Their Temperature Data Is Worse Than ‘Climate-Gate’

Fox News brings us a story where “NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.”

NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits

By Blake Snow

– FOXNews.com

NASA was able to put a man on the moon, but the space agency can’t tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA’s temperature records are in even worse shape than the besmirched Climate-gate data.

E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.

The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA’s data “was more accurate” than other climate-change data sets, NASA’s Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said “the National Climatic Data Center’s procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate,” admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings.

“My recommendation to you is to continue using NCDC’s data for the U.S. means and [East Anglia] data for the global means,” Ruedy told the reporter.

“NASA’s temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA,” wrote Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Horner is skeptical of NCDC’s data as well, stating plainly: “Three out of the four temperature data sets stink.”

Global warming critics call this a crucial blow to advocates’ arguments that minor flaws in the “Climate-gate” data are unimportant, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion — that the Earth is getting warmer. But there’s a good reason for that, the skeptics say: They all use the same data.

“There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other’s results,” says James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute.

“The different groups have cooperated in a very friendly way to try to understand different conclusions when they arise,” said Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the same 2007 e-mail thread. Earlier this month, in an updated analysis of the surface temperature data, GISS restated that the separate analyses by the different agencies “are not independent, as they must use much of the same input observations.”

Neither NASA nor NOAA responded to requests for comment. But Dr. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, still believes the validity of data from NASA, NOAA and East Anglia would be in jeopardy only if the comparative analysis didn’t match. “I see no reason to question the integrity of the raw data,” he says. “Since the three organizations are all using mostly the same raw data, collected by the official weather agency of each individual country, the only issue here is whether the corrections done to the raw data were done correctly by CRU.”

Corrections are needed, Masters says, “since there are only a few thousand surface temperature recording sites with records going back 100+ years.” As such, climate agencies estimate temperatures in various ways for areas where there aren’t any thermometers, to account for the overall incomplete global picture.

“It would be nice if we had more global stations to enable the groups to do independent estimates using completely different raw data, but we don’t have that luxury,” Masters adds. “All three groups came up with very similar global temperature trends using mostly the same raw data but independent corrections. This should give us confidence that the three groups are probably doing reasonable corrections, given that the three final data sets match pretty well.”

But NASA is somewhat less confident, having quietly decided to tweak its corrections to the climate data earlier this month.

In an updated analysis of the surface temperature data released on March 19, NASA adjusted the raw temperature station data to account for inaccurate readings caused by heat-absorbing paved surfaces and buildings in a slightly different way. NASA determines which stations are urban with nighttime satellite photos, looking for stations near light sources as seen from space.

Of course, this doesn’t solve problems with NASA’s data, as the newest paper admits: “Much higher resolution would be needed to check for local problems with the placement of thermometers relative to possible building obstructions,” a problem repeatedly underscored by meteorologist Anthony Watts on his SurfaceStations.org Web site. Last month, Watts told FoxNews.com that “90 percent of them don’t meet [the government’s] old, simple rule called the ‘100-foot rule’ for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we’ve got documentation.”

Still, “confidence” is not the same as scientific law, something the public obviously recognizes. According to a December survey, only 25 percent of Americans believed there was agreement within the scientific community on climate change. And unless things fundamentally change, it could remain that way, said Taylor.

“Until surface temperature data sets are truly independent of one another and are entrusted to scientists whose objectivity is beyond question, the satellite temperature record alone will not have any credibility,” he said.

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Obamacare: A Glimpse Of The Future Is Here

The Alliance Defense Fund brings us news that they secured an agreement with Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia to keep a disabled 40-year-old woman on dialysis after the hospital’s so-called “death board” “ethics board” determined to stop dialysis treatments over the objections of the family. This is just a glimpse of what is to come under Obamacare.

ADF-allied attorney secures agreement with hospital to extend vital care for 40-year-old woman

Family agrees to seek transfer to new medical facility by April 9 when hospital may discontinue life-sustaining treatment
Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 12:00 AM (MST) |
ADF Media Relations | 480-444-0020

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MORGANTOWN, WV — An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney secured an agreed-upon court order Friday that extends care for a 40-year-old woman on dialysis at Ruby Memorial Hospital after the hospital originally said it would end treatment on March 27 against the wishes of the woman’s family.The hospital agreed to continue care while the family of Rebecca Bennett locates another medical facility willing to continue treatment. The family agreed that if the transfer does not occur by 5 p.m. on April 9, they will no longer oblige the hospital to continue dialysis treatment for the seriously disabled woman, but the hospital will still continue her other basic care. So far, another facility has not been found.

“A hospital should not be allowed to cease care for a family’s loved one when state law gives the family the right to make medical decisions in such circumstances. Becky’s family simply wants to honor their mother’s wishes,” said Jeremiah Dys, general counsel of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia and one of more than 1,600 attorneys in the ADF alliance.

“We were pleased to assist the family in securing this agreement; however, Becky seriously needs life-sustaining dialysis treatment beyond April 9,” Dys explained. “It’s our hope that another facility will be found that is willing to work with the family to give Becky a chance to fight for her life.”

Bennett went into a coma due to complications from diabetes. The hospital’s board of ethics decided that it would stop dialysis on March 27, despite the expressed objections of Sierra Kisner, a member of the family acting as her legal surrogate. ADF attorneys argued that the hospital’s decision violated West Virginia law, which gives the surrogate decision-making power and which requires the hospital to continue care or cooperate in obtaining a transfer. It does not allow the hospital to unilaterally determine that care will cease.

The complaint and motion for temporary restraining order in Kisner v. West Virginia University Hospitals was filed with the Circuit Court of Monongalia County Friday and led to the agreed order issued the same day.

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith.  Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

www.telladf.org facebook.com/AllianceDefenseFund twitter.com/AllianceDefense

Note: Facts in ADF news releases are verified prior to publication but may change over time. Members of the media are encouraged to contact ADF for the latest information on this matter.

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Physicians Sue Over Health Care Bill

WorldNetDaily tells us that the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has brought a lawsuit against the passage of the health care bill H.R. 3590.

Physicians group sues over health-care law

Says it violates Constitution in several ways

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Posted: March 29, 2010
11:09 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

WASHINGTON – The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons became the first medical society to file suit to overturn the newly enacted health-care law.“If the [law] goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it,” said Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of AAPS. “Courts should not allow this massive intrusion into the practice of medicine and the rights of patients. There will be a dire shortage of physicians if the [new law] becomes effective and is not overturned by the courts.”

The law requires most Americans to buy government-approved insurance starting in 2014, or face stiff penalties. The AAPS says insurance-company executives will be enriched by this requirement, but it violates the Fifth Amendment protection against the government forcing one person to pay cash to another.The group also charges violations of the Tenth Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the provisions authorizing taxation.

AAPS asks the U.S. District Court to enjoin the government from promulgating or enforcing insurance mandates and require Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue to provide the court with an accounting of Medicare and Social Security solvency.

The group bills itself as “a voice for patient and physician independence since 1943.”

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