In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming.  Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly.  Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up. 

~ From Lorne Gunter in the National Post

Bottom Line:  Global warming is a natural, cyclical phenomenon that is nothing new to our planet.  It is caused primarily from solar activity and is not man-made.  Government has used it as a scare tactic to con the public into accepting more control over our actions and our lives.  So go buy an SUV!

Ryan Borchers at the Creightonian writes about JobFox’s recent report of the Top 20 Most Recession-Proof Professions.  It doesn’t take a high SAT score to realize that those jobs that survive a slow economy are those where people are producing the maximum level of value.  Here are the top four professions on the list:

1. Sales Representative/Business Development
2. Software Design/Development
3. Nursing
4. Accounting & Finance Executive

My colleague Tim Bastian was interviewed for this piece.  Here is a key excerpt:

“I gotta tell you, if you’re coming out of college, and you’re thinking that ‘I’ve gotta get a recession-proof job’ and ‘I want to go work for a company that has really great benefits,’ … I’m going to probably find you really boring,” [Bastian] said.  The way to really be recession-proof is to be a person who adds a lot of value.”

There are a few tricks to adding value to a company, Bastian said, such as making yourself look good while making your boss look good, too.  Also, try to put yourself in your boss’ shoes.  Bastian said you should ask yourself, “If I own this business, what would I want me to do today?”

LESSON OF THE DAY:  Demonstrating value in any economy is king.   

If you are in the work force, here are a couple big picture action steps you should be doing to enhance the value you deliver:

- Give more of yourself.  I’ve been sharing my knowledge about investing and the wealth building process with the public for free for over 30 years now.  Doing so has created a community of clients and friends that no amount of money could buy. 

- Build a success library.  How many books have you read in the past year that will help you reach your personal and financial goals?  My guess is not enough.  Your time is precious so invest it; don’t spend it.

- Reach out to the top people in your profession and learn what they do to maximize value.  Reinventing the wheel can be done but it’s tough.  An easier path is to seek out people who are the very best at what they do.  Ask them about their successes and apply what they say to what you do.      

- And last, be patient but always hustle.  The microwave was probably the worst thing that ever happened to delayed gratification.  It provided us with one of life’s necessities - food - in a just a few seconds.  No matter what your job is, you have a personal brand.  And the development of your brand takes hard work and time. 

If you are able to put these pieces together, serious value will be generated on your part leading to serious success later on.  I promise. 

Growth was solid in Q2.  Common sense analysis showing why second quarter economic growth may come in way beyond everyone’s expectations. 

Senator Obama’s Social Security Tax Plan.  Wonderful video presentation from The Center for Freedom & Prosperity Foundation explaining the economic risks of expanding Social Security payroll taxes.   

Smartest advice I ever got.  40 successful leaders share the top money lessons they’ve learned.

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis.  Good article from the WSJ paralleling the global warming hoopla to a wacky theology.   

The Founding Fathers:  Smugglers, Tax Evaders, and Traitors?

During patriotic holidays, the news media applaud the Founding Fathers.  But rarely does anyone mention some important facts about them:  that they were smugglers, tax evaders, and traitors.

Not only is this important, it is also praiseworthy; it produced the most advanced civilization ever known. 

The Revolution is often said to have begun in 1775 at the Battle of Lexington.  In truth, it began in the 16th century when the first colonists began traveling to the New World.  Consider the hardships these people faced.  Abandoning their relatives and friends, they boarded small leaky boats like the Mayflower - which was only as long as six automobiles - to spend months crossing 3,000 miles of storm-tossed ocean.

Many of these tiny, primitive vessels went down, yet as the years passed, more and more colonists risked their lives to make the journey.  In THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, historian Samuel Eliot Morison tells us;

Gottlieb Mittelberger, who came to Philadelphia in 1750, described the misery during his voyage: bad drinking water and putrid salt meat, excessive heat and crowding, lice so thick that they could be scraped off the body, sea so rough that hatches were battened down and everyone vomited in the foul air; passengers succumbing to dysentery, scurvy, typhus, canker, and mouth rot.  Children under seven, he said, rarely survived the voyage, and in his ship no fewer than thirty-two died.  One vessel carrying 400 Palatinate Germans from Rotterdam in August 1738 lost her master and three-quarters of the passengers before stranding on Block Island after a four-month journey.

Why?  What in Europe could have been so horrible that rational people would risk their lives and their children’s lives to escape it?

Continue Reading »

From KUSI in San Diego - You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas.  It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline.  All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth.  What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

Bottom Line:  I used to think the global warming paranoia would go away because the scientific evidence doesn’t hold up, but since the media, Hollywood, and the far left are pushing it, the public now accepts this new eco-theology.

Hopefully reason will prevail before more of this ideology makes its way into future government policy decisions that you will end up paying for.  

Update:  Can you pass the Global Warming Test?