There is a widely held belief in the mainstream that “the debate has been settled” regarding Global Warming. If, however, you look at the financiers, beneficiaries and the tactics used to push forth with the Global Warming research and the associated policy, it gives one reason to be suspicious of what is really going on here.

More attention needs to be paid to non-conventional views on Global Warming. While the government has shelled out nearly $80 billion U.S. dollars to scientists, in order to generate research indicating man-made global warming is real; only $23 million U.S. dollars have been given to scientists with a skeptical angle.

Give a large swath of scientists a momentous sum of money and they will publish papers showing just about anything is true, whether or not that is actually the case. When you have a massively dis-proportionate sum going to one side of the argument; you will likely have the illusion of consensus and most people will believe that your research proves something concrete.

I’d like to present a few alternative views for your consideration. Now I’m sure these aren’t the be all end all proof of anything in particular; but at least they show an alternative viewpoint and provide a window into the kinds of individuals and organizations involved, as well as the motives, behind the push for Climate Change taxation and regulation.

The Skeptics Handbook II: Global Bullies Want Your Money

Global Warming Skeptics Handbook

It’s unthinkable. Big Government has spent $79 billion on the climate industry,
3000 times more than Big-oil. Leading climate scientists won’t debate in public
and won’t provide their data. What do they hide? When faced with legal requests
they say they’ve “lost” the original global temperature records. Thousands of
scientists are rising in protest against the scare campaign. Meanwhile $126 billion
turned over in carbon markets in 2008 and bankers get set to make billions.

Great Global Warming Swindle

Everything youve ever been told about Global Warming is probably untrue. From Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth to news reports from the popular media outlets and even public classrooms which, in chicken little fashion, seem to be screaming – the sky is falling. But is it really? This film blows the whistle on what may be the biggest swindle in modern history. We are told that Man Made Global Warming is the biggest threat ever to mankind and that it may even threaten our very survival; and, if we do not change our ways and reduce CO2 emissions – polar ice caps will melt, coastal areas will flood and hurricanes like Katrina will become common. With nearly Gestapo like tactics we are told not to question! There is absolutely no room for doubt because there is a “scientific consensus.” Anyone who questions the data or conclusion is an enemy of the state and humanity. Well, bring it on because this is exactly what this well documented film does. The Great Global Warming Swindle uses a plethora of leading scientists who will not bend to political or philosophical or ideaological pressure. So watch this film and make up your own mind.

CBC Documentary: Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

In this eye-opening documentary viewers will discover how the most respected researchers from all over the world explode the doom and gloom of global warming.

Humans stand accused of having set off a global climate catastrophe by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The prophecy of doom is clear and media pass on the message uncritically.

Now serious criticism has arisen from a number of heavyweight independent scientists. They argue that most of the climatic change we have seen is due to natural variations.

Source: Allegiance and Duty Betrayed

Ignorance, illiteracy, stupidity always have been relevant social factors. This has been the case in any historical human social organization one cares to name — from clan to nation-state.

In every civilization, there is a very thin upper stratum of the people who are concerned with questions of truth, justice, the good — in other words, with the life of reason, or of the human spirit if you prefer. Historically, such people have tended to believe these ultimate values have a claim on every man in terms of the constitution of the good order of his soul, and on the direction of his actions as they translate into the social sphere.

Such people are surrounded by a vastly larger mass of “stupid people” who simply do not see the world that way, generally because they are ignorant, thus personally disordered/disorderly, thus irresponsible — and (thus) ever needy. This mass of “stupid people” has been called: “slaves by nature.”

In Aristotle, we find the distinction between the mass of the people, the plethos — who basically function on the “stupid level” — and the spoudaioi — the prudent, virtuous, public-minded “mature men.” It is the latter class that actually maintains the civilization.

Nowadays, however, progressive educrats like Barack Obama’s old friend, Bill Ayers, teaches teachers to teach their pupils that these spoudaios characters are really nothing but a reactionary, usually male, usually white gang of fascist thugs who are selfishly trying to preserve their own interests against the just claims of disadvantaged people, who are usually either women or “people of color.” The spoudaioi are oppressors you see. Read the rest of this entry »

source: UK Telegraph

Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views ‘are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker.

According to the world’s leading expert on polar bears, their numbers are higher than they were 30 years ago

Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: “it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition”.

Dr Taylor was told that his views running “counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful”. His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was “inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG”.

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of “scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice”. But also check out Anthony Watt’s Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year’s recovery from its September 2007 low, this year’s ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

Its interesting how the media will focus on the most trivial matters, such as a politician’s personal problems, or spin about how the economic improvement is “just around the corner.” In this situation, a couple of guys get caught smuggling $134.5 worth of bonds and you hear little to nothing in the press.

Most of you reading this have, at least a suspicion that something smells rotten in Denmark, when it comes to the integrity of the press during this day and age. Stories like this are confirmation of any suspicions you may have. This is a historic event, which we need to get to the bottom of and understand; because there is probably something important here that we need to know about.

Since the media is sweeping it under the rug, I suspect that the perpetrators may have been acting on the behalf of well connected individuals. Perhaps the media refuses to report real news altogether; opting instead to create a fantasy world, which acts as a sort of red herring. This keeps people from getting in the way of powerful individuals; since they wish to conduct their business undisturbed.

Personally, I think there is a little news that leaks in there, from time to time; but, for the most part, the world portrayed on television is a fantasy one used to control the behavior of those who watch. Accuracy and professionalism don’t really factor into the equation much anymore.

US government securities seized from Japanese nationals, not clear whether real or fake

Bonds worth US$ 134.5 billion are seized. This is the largest financial smuggling case in history. But are they real? Concern over ‘funny money’ or counterfeit securities is spreading in Asia. The international press is silent.

Milan (AsiaNews) – Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.
Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.

What caught the policemen’s attention were the billion dollar securities. Such a large denomination is not available in regular financial and banking markets. Only states handle such amounts of money.

The question now is who could or would counterfeit or smuggle these non-negotiable bonds.

In order to stop money laundering Italian law sets a ceiling of 10,000 euros per person for importing or exporting money without declaring it. The penalty for violating the law is 40 per cent of the money seized.

If the certificates were real, for Italy it would be like hitting the jackpot. The fine alone would amount to US$ 38 billion, five times the estimated cost of rebuilding quake-devastated Abruzzi region. It would help Italy’s eliminate its public deficit.

If the certificates are fakes the two Japanese nationals could get a very lengthy jail sentence for fraud.

As soon as the seizure was made the US Embassy in Rome was informed. Italian and US secret services were called in to assist the Italian financial police.

Some important international financial newspapers had already reported on the existence of ‘funny money’ circulating on parallel, i.e. unofficial, financial markets.

For AsiaNews a few points need considering:

1. When it comes to Italy the world press has tended to focus on Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s personal problems rather than on stories like the bonds smuggling affair which has been front page on Italian newspapers.

2. The fear of counterfeit bonds and securities has spread across Asia with the result that real securities are also considered with suspicion.

3. During the Second World War several countries at war printed and put in circulation perfectly counterfeit enemy money. It is also historically established that some central banks, like the Bank of Italy 65 years ago, issued the same securities twice (identical registered number and code). This way they could print more money with legal tender than they officially declared. The main difference though is that 65 years ago the world was involved in a bloody war, which is not the case today.

ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug traffickingFrom Andrew McLeod

source: Sunday Herald

AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France’s ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world’s most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio’s sprawling favelas.

Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.

Buenos Aires-born Dreyfus had been living in Rio since 2002, where he and his sociologist wife worked with the Brazilian NGO Viva Rio.

“Pablo will be remembered as a gentle and sensitive man with an upbeat sense of humour,” said the Small Arms Survey. “He displayed an intellectual curiosity and a determined work ethic that excited and enthused all who worked with him.”

According to the International Action Network on Small Arms Control (IANSA), Dreyfus’s work was instrumental in the introduction of landmark small arms legislation in Brazil in 2003. Under this legislation, an online link was created between army and police databases listing production, imports and exports of arms and ammunition in Brazil.

Dreyfus was an advocate of the stringent labelling of ammunition by weapons firms, arguing that by clearly identifying ammunition not only by its producer but also its purchaser, the likelihood of weapons being sourced by criminals from corrupt police or armed forces personnel is greatly reduced.

Though a Brazilian referendum on the right to bear arms was rejected in 2005, Viva Rio says the campaign should be considered a success because half a million weapons were voluntarily handed in to the authorities. Anti-gun activists put the referendum defeat down to fears criminals would circumvent the law and continue to gain access to small arms the usual way – through Paraguay and other bordering countries. This was not an irrational fear: until 2004, when Paraguay bowed to Brazilian pressure, even foreign tourists were allowed to purchase small arms simply by presenting a photocopy of their identity card. Dreyfus knew that many of the weapons from the so-called tri-border area between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina were reaching Rio drug gangs.

When unidentified gunmen made off with a stash of hand grenades from an Argentine military garrison in 2006, Dreyfus deplored what he said was lax security at military depots across the world. “If a supermarket can keep control of the amount of peas it has in stock, surely a military organisation could and should be able to do the same with equal if not greater efficiency with its weapons,” he said. “The key words are logisitics, control, security.”

When Rio agents smashed a cell of drug traffickers who had sourced their weapons from the tri-border area, Dreyfus noted its leaders were prominent businessmen living in apartments in the plush Rio suburbs of Ipanema and São Corrado, “not in the favelas”.

In a recent report posted on the Brazilian website Comunidade Segura (Safe Community), Dreyfus noted that the Brazilian arms firm CBC (Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos) had become one of the world’s biggest ammunition producers by purchasing Germany’s Metallwerk Elisenhutte Nassau (MEN) in 2007, and Sellier & Bellot (S&B) of the Czech Republic in March. This would not be particularly noteworthy but for the fact that CBC’s exports had tapered off in recent years due to legislation restricting exports to Paraguay, arms that often found their way back into Brazil and on to the Rio drug gangs – the “boomerang effect”, as Dreyfus called it. “The commercial export of weapons and ammunition from Brazil to the bordering countries stopped in 2001,” wrote Dreyfus. “CBC lost commercial markets in Latin America, but Brazil won in public security.”

However, manufacturers from other countries had moved in to fill the void, and before its purchase by CBC, S&B was already “one of the marks most currently apprehended” by Brazilian police. Dreyfus said that, in view of the fact the Czech Republic was bound by the EU Code of Conduct on weapons exports – which states that EU countries must “evaluate the existence of the risk that the armament can be diverted to undesirable final destinations”, CBC should “consider the risk that some of these exports end up, via diversions, feeding violence in Brazil”.

Though his focus was on Latin America, Dreyfus also advised the government of Mozambique and at the time of his death was preparing to do the same for the government of Angola, where stockpiles of weapons left over from the civil war continue to pose a security problem.

Dreyfus and Dreyer were on their way to Geneva to present the latest edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint editor. It was to have been their latest step in their relentless fight against evil.

Edgar J. Steele | NickelRant.com | March 25, 2009

MP3 Audio: Listen to the Entire Broadcast

“The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”
— Woodrow Wilson (Speech in New York, September 9, 1912)

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
— H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

We’ve come through the Looking Glass. On this side, however, is Wonderland with a decidedly Orwellian twist.

The Red Queen has morphed into a Marxist President (still red and still in charge, though).

The Mad Hatter is Little Timmy Geithner, wannabe Treasury Czar of the World, whose Tea Party is hosted on Wall Street while other “tea parties” are convened by patriots throughout America in response.

The maddening Cheshire Cat is our media, with that smile conveying nothing but misdirection and gibberish.

“Some are more equal than others,” said Orwell through his piggy little Animal Farm overseer. We know who are the “others.” Thee and me, of course. For extra points, guess who are the “some” of whom Orwell wrote.

Painting the Roses Red

“We’re painting the roses red,” sang the playing-card soldiers when asked by Alice why they were drenching all the white roses in the kingdom with bright red paint. All the minions of the new Administration are busy repainting roses throughout America.

However, as observed by Shakespeare, “What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Bush’s policies still are the same, regardless of the spin now being accorded them by the Obamatrons. We’re still in Iraq. Gitmo still is in business. America’s southern border still is wide open. The Bush bailouts continue unabated, but now are on steroids.

It’s enough to make your head spin, isn’t it?

Each week brings a fresh batch of outrageous events and news items that further marginalize an ever-growing percentage of Americans. Last week brought a bumper crop, headed by an incredible document leaked by someone in the Missouri police bureaucracy. Entitled “The Modern Militia Movement,” the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) document popped up on Alex Jones’ web site and promptly sent shock waves throughout the patriot community.

You’re a Terrorist Now

Have you ever supported in any way Republican Ron Paul of Texas? How about last year’s Libertarian Party Presidential candidate, Bob Barr? Or the Constitution Party’s Presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin? According to MIAC, you are a “militia-influenced terrorist.” Yep, you heard me right. You are a terrorist. Look, I couldn’t just make up stuff as outlandish as is this sort of thing. Truth continues to be stranger than fiction. We’re painting the roses red.

Better go scrape that bumper sticker off your car, because MIAC specifically identifies it as evidence that you should be watched and approached with caution. MIAC is just one of 58 “fusion centers” funded throughout America by the federal Department of Homeland Security with over a quarter-billion dollars, tasked with identifying “potential trends or patterns of terrorist or criminal operations” (per the MIAC web site) in America.

Are you opposed to the coming North American Union (NAU), whereby America is subsumed within a new government encompassing all of North America? How about the New World Order (NWO), whereby America surrenders her Constitution altogether in favor of becoming just another cog in a world government? Speak out against either the NAU or the NWO in any way and you are a terrorist, says MIAC, courtesy of your tax dollars spent in its support. Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the most corrupt professions on the planet are at work here: banking and accounting. Its funny that they should even call it “accounting” anymore; as it is meant to provide for “accountability” and the “rule of law.” Instead we are stuck with “deceivability” and the “rule of men.”

As you will soon learn, if you haven’t already; there is no reason whatsoever to hold the securities of most of the corporations today. They simply don’t have to account for the value of their assets anymore. If there is no real accountability, then there will be no confidence. If there is no confidence, then there will be no speedy recovery.

This depression will languish for years. People are getting FED-UP with these kinds of cheap, inbred bankster shenanigans; they are starting to buy real hard assets to squirrel away what they are able, to whether the coming storm.

What? You thought the recovery is around the corner. Do you honestly believe what these people who have been repeatedly wrong are telling you once again, like a broken record? The recovery, as you may picture it, is not going to happen.

People are going to have to change their habits to adapt to the new paradigm. They are going to have to cut out the waste, become more sufficient unto themselves, manage their own money with sound economic principles. They must be guided by a understanding of just how perverted the whole economic system has become, over the past couple of decades.

Accounting Brothel Opens Doors for Banker Fiesta

Jonathan Weil | Bloomberg News

March 19 (Bloomberg) — The banks demanded that the accountants give them leeway in how they report losses to investors. The accountants responded by giving away their souls.

This week, the Financial Accounting Standards Board unveiled what may be the dumbest, most bankrupt proposal in its 36-year history. If it stands, the FASB ought to change its name to the Fraudulent Accounting Standards Board. It’s that bad.

Here’s what the board is floating. Starting this quarter, U.S. companies would be allowed to report net-income figures that ignore severe, long-term price declines in securities they own. Not just debt securities, mind you, but even common stocks and other equities, too.

All a company would need to do is say it doesn’t intend to sell them and that it probably won’t have to. In most cases, it wouldn’t matter how much the value was down, or for how long. In effect, a company would have to admit being on its deathbed before the rules would force it to take hits to earnings.

So, if these rules had been in place last year, a company that still owned shares of American International Group Inc. or Fannie Mae, for instance, could exclude those stocks’ price declines from net income entirely. It would make no difference that the companies were seized by the government last year, or that both are penny stocks. The loss would get buried away from the income statement, in a balance-sheet line called “accumulated other comprehensive income.” Read the rest of this entry »

These are supposed to be the “best and the brightest,” or so the conventional wisdom goes. It is interesting how these students would pay so much money to go to Harvard, only to find that the “education” is nothing more than a glorified big-pharma infomercial, pitching dangerous and unnecessary medications and therapies.

The academic “system” has a pyramid-like control structure, as with most of the tightly controlled edifices of our civilization. The bullshit that issues from the “ivy league” schools, is generally accepted as fact by the “lesser” schools; because they are thought to be the “best and the brightest, after all.”

There are so many broad-daylight conflicts of interest in “medicine” that it positively boggles the mind that people trust it with their lives and well-being. Many of these medical professionals actually have their educations financed by the pharmaceutical industry!

Guess what? The whiz kids at Harvard finally realized that they’ve been sold a phony bill of goods!

Harvard Medical School Finally Concerned About Drug Company Influence On Campus

source: nonprofitsoapbox.com

A fascinating article in the New York Times last week told the story of Matt Zerden, a student at Harvard Medical School who was troubled when he heard his pharmacology professor repeatedly promote the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.

Mr. Zerden later discovered that the professor, a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, was also a paid consultant to ten different drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments. “I felt really violated,” Zerden says. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”
Read the rest of this entry »

The spell-bound American citizenry must realize what is really going on with their new president.  They need to sit down and do their research; to realize what is truly happening here.  The so-called populist president, Barrack H. Obama, has appointed to his administration the very architects of the financial disaster we are now engaged in.

Most of these supporters are well meaning; they just want something to believe in.  They want to feel like we’re turning a new leaf as a country and as a civilization; but we will not be able to achieve any measure of “change” until the a critical mass of people realize how things really work in this paradigm and begin to think for themselves, instead of this cattle-like group-think that got us into this mess in the first-place.

First you had Bush, who used the 9/11 inside job to buffalo the population into a perpetual war, after which, Bush ran roughshod over the people of this nation, with policies that trashed every tradition that our fore-bearers worked so hard for.

Now we have Obama, who takes advantage of the people’s desire to have a feel-good sort of attitude; because they want you to allow what is now taking place to happen, without objection.  You might ask what is happening?

The bankers are taking trillions out of the economy every week.  And while Gitmo may now be closing, what you failed to realize is that they are moving these types of operations on shore, where you are likely to one day be threatened with incarceration without the due process of law.

I’ve got news for many of you out there.  Nothing changes overnight, although the media will use every tool in their arsenal to convince you that it has.  The corruption that plagues this planet is deep-seated, and it has been around for several thousand years.

If we really want to do something about this corruption, we have to rely on our own selves and our independant thoughts.  We have to return to our constitutional roots and become sovereign individuals, instead of idolizing one individual or institution.

The United States, Presidency, Federal Reserve, AMA and many other institutions that pervade your lives are not here to help you.  They are specifically designed to control your thoughts and actions, with the eventual goal of extracting your sweat equity and preventing your ability to self-actualize.

by Anthony Gregory | Campaign for Liberty

Questions as to whether Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary, has paid all his taxes or followed immigration law concerning his housekeeper raise an interesting point. The scrutiny surrounding confirmation hearings presents one of the only opportunities politicians get to see what it is like to be harassed like a normal American citizen. Only during scandals like these are government officials given a taste of their own medicine, and it is such a bitter taste that the more humane among us might sympathize even with our would-be rulers as their lives and finances become open to inspection and public criticism.

Consider the rich irony in Geithner’s case. He seeks to be the head of the Treasury, and thus the head of the IRS, which commands an apparatus of staggering intrusiveness nearly unparalleled in all of human history. The IRS notoriously enjoys a certain exemption from the standards of Anglo-Saxon law; the presumption with tax cases is that you are guilty until proven innocent. Every year, millions of good Americans are terrorized by the organization. Many have their homes, their savings, their businesses confiscated, all supposedly in the name of creating a great society for all. IRS agents give the wrong advice to Americans filling out their taxes about a third of the time, but getting it wrong under their instruction is no excuse when error is found.

In addition to the nightmare of mid-April, the Treasury and other departments have burdened Americans with thousands of regulations that invade every facet of financial life. Democrats are even worse rhetorically than Republicans in this regard. In response to cries for immigration reform, the most common proposal from Democrats is to crack down on employers, to spy on them and threaten them with fines and imprisonment if they do not pry into all their employees’ lives to ensure none are illegal aliens. Aside from being a threat to the freedom of contract, this guarantees increasing government involvement into business and erosion of privacy and civil liberties. Much of the rationale behind the horrific Real ID Act can be attributed to this particular desire to ferret out illegal immigrants.

And so what a scene we have: A national Democratic leader in potential trouble for violating employment regulations; the chosen chief of the Treasury, which brings in trillions of dollars annually by taking it by force from those who earned it, himself accused of not putting in his fair share.

From the standpoint of freedom, however, Geithner’s true rip-off of the American people is not in his alleged tax evasion. All by itself, not paying taxes is not a scandalous crime. An everyday taxpayer would not deserve media attention for this. And as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner did far more to compromise economic fairness than he could have possibly done with his tax forms; as Treasury Secretary, he would undoubtedly do much more. Furthermore, from the perspective of liberty, Geithner’s villainy is not in the fact that he might have hired an illegal alien so much as it is in the hypocrisy by which he and so many other government officials hold themselves to a standard of law radically different from that to which they hold the rest of us.

A little hypocrisy is ubiquitous in nearly any society, but the issue of government always raises the stakes and makes it all the more egregious. It may be an insult for someone to verbally criticize you for a vice, such as smoking, only to light up himself minutes later. But for the government to impose the will, the ethics, the standards of some politicians on you by force even as they do what they claim should not be done—that is a different, much worse form of hypocrisy altogether.

Which brings us to William Corr, Obama’s choice for the second slot at the Department of Health and Human Services. Corr is an anti-smoking advocate and both he and Obama seem to support an agenda, to be carried out by the Democratic Congress, of “increasing federal regulation of cigarettes, raising taxes on tobacco products and approving an international tobacco control treaty,” as the New York Times puts it.

Obama has gotten attention as the first open cigarette smoker to be elected president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and yet he seems to have no problem pushing around smokers, making their habit more expensive (tobacco taxes always hurt the poor the most), and even internationalizing an issue that should not even be dealt with at the national level under our Constitution. In a free society, tobacco, along with other drugs, would be handled locally, and ideally by the family and community, and not at all through the criminal justice and regulatory systems. Yet politicians who drink alcohol or smoke tobacco or even have tried illegal drugs think very little of taxing, regulating, harassing and even jailing their fellow citizens for doing the same.

It has long been frustrating to watch a politician who smokes tobacco or drinks alcohol champion the war on drugs, all to stem the tide of chemicals that don’t kill nearly as many people as tobacco and alcohol do. Perhaps it is even more frustrating to see a president who smokes cigarettes wave the anti-smoking banner. Government crusades against drugs, cigarettes or other vices always fail to uplift the moral character of the people, but they are great ways to destroy liberty and personal responsibility and are reliable sources of high hypocrisy.

Just this week we have seen two exemplary cases of political hypocrisy pop up in the area of Obama’s political appointments. Again, such appointments are one of the few occasions when the media really explore the hypocrisy saturating the personal lives of politicians. If they were watched this closely year round, we would find ever more examples all the time. But in all such cases, whether it is Al Gore consuming enough electricity for 20 people as he flies around condemning carbon emissions, or a Republican leader caught straying from the very family values he has claimed should be imposed on us all by national planning, the real problem in the hypocrisy is not usually the politicians’ personal indiscretions, which usually fall short of any offense against the public safety or liberty. No, the real problem with such hypocrisy is that it is borne by politicians who implement their plans for a Brave New World on their compatriots without considering the human costs, the destroyed wealth, the uprooted lives, the lost liberties, the jailed innocents. If Geithner agreed to butt out of our finances, and Obama agreed to let people smoke as they will, it is doubtful we would not happily reciprocate and leave them alone as well.