Showing posts with label scare tactics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scare tactics. Show all posts

Steve Chapman: False Fears About Free Trade

Demonizing freedom is always a mistake. Political debates often pit fear against hope, and when it comes to international trade agreements, many Democrats prefer to scare. It's a durable strategy that they can't relinquish—even though it usually fails. If you're going to make a horror movie, you need a villain who can make your blood run   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Stormy Weather And Politics

The political utility of dire predictions.    It was refreshing to see meteorologists apologize for their dire — and wrong — predictions of an unprecedented snow storm that they had said would devastate the northeast. It was a big storm, but the northeast has seen lots of big snow storms before and will probably see lots of big snow storms  ... MORE

Radley Balko: Horrifying Civil Liberties Predictions - 2015

Sound familiar? Sometimes, real life can be stranger than parody. This can be particularly true when it comes to the beat we cover here at The Watch, civil liberties. With that in mind, I’ve gone out on a limb to make some predictions about what might happen on the civil liberties front in 2015. I realize that some of these prognostications may seem a   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: The 5 Best Drug Scares of 2014

Drunks, e-cigs, pot and more.        The history of drug control in America is a series of panic-propelled policies, most of which have not turned out very well. Those of us who support a calmer, more tolerant approach to psychoactive substances therefore spend much of our time defusing scares aimed at justifying or expanding the         ... MORE

John Stossel: Climate Catastrophe

The real world effects of fossil fuel.   People argue about whether the "consensus" of scientists is that we face disaster because of global warming. Instead of debating whether man's greenhouse gasses will raise temperatures, we should argue about how we gauge disasters. If you take most environmentalists and climate scientists at their word,   ... MORE

Do People Really Hand Out Pot-Laced Halloween Candy?

by Jacob Sullum.     The urban legend continues. Last week the DPD posted a video in which Patrick Johnson, proprietor of Denver's Urban Dispensary, warns that "there's really no way to tell the difference between candy that's infused and candy that's not infused" once the products have been removed from their original packages.      ... MORE

Ed Krayewski: The Role of the Media in the War on Drugs

The strategic air support.     The media's often called the fourth estate. Where's that come from? In the Middle Ages in Europe the first estate was the nobility, the second estate was the clergy, and the third estate was peasants, everyone else. Together the three estates constituted a feudal "realm." The king existed outside the     ... MORE

John Stossel: Omission Control

The American Pravda.        Reporter Sharyl Attkisson's story sounds familiar to me: A major network got tired of her reports criticizing government. She no longer works there. The CBS correspondent reported on Fast and Furious, the shifting explanation for the Benghazi, Libya, attacks and the bungled rollout of the Obamacare website.   ... MORE

Only 18 Confirmed US Flu Deaths In 2001. What?!

by Jon Rappoport.       What happened to the "36,000 die from flu every year" bit. It’s always interesting when official agencies’ statistics come back to bite them. Hard. In December of 2005, the British Medical Journal (BMJ online) published a shocking report by Peter Dosh, which created tremors through the halls of the Centers for Disease   ... MORE

Another Inconvenient Truth For Global Warmists

by Mark Prigg.    Great Lakes finally ice-free after record freeze. It has been a long, cold winter for much of America - but the Great Lakes have really suffered. Forecasters finally revealed today that all of the Great Lakes including Lake Superior are now ice free. It marks the end of a record breaking 7 month stretch where the lakes were covered    ... MORE