FACT: Connecticut’s current budget year is deep in the red and next year’s deficit has risen to $2.2 billion.
FACT: Governor Malloy asserts that Connecticut depends too much on its wealthy residents and wealthy residents are leaving.
FACT: Paul LePage is not planning to move to Connecticut and run for governor in 2018.
FACT: On Sunday, May 8 Rep. Maxine Waters received wild cheers at an MTV Awards Ceremony.
FACT: No kidding, it was recorded live.
FACT: In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years.
FACT: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has published these figures for thousands of barrels produced per day in the United States:
2011: 5,646 2012: 6,487 2013: 7,468 2014: 8,764 2015: 9,415 2016: 8,875
FACT: In 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.
FACT: In 2014, the EIA estimated that the U.S. had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, covering about a century of consumption.
FACT: In 1968, Prof. Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, prophesying a famine in the 1970’s with hundreds of millions dying. His highly scientific book sold 2 million copies in its first two years.
FACT: A paperback copy of this work can be had through Amazon.com for as little as $80.00.
FACT: On September 29, 1980, Paul Ehrlich bet economist Julian Simons that the prices of copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten would rise by September 29, 1990.
FACT: Between 1980 and 1990, while the world population grew from 4.5 to 5.3 billion, the average prices of copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten decreased by about 30 percent.
FACT: In October 1990, Prof. Ehrlich mailed Prof. Simon a check for $576.07 and called him an idiot.
FACT: On Earth Day 1970, Harvard Professor George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology, told us, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
FACT: Wald ended in 1995; civilization continues to the present day.
FACT: In September 1970, Harrison Brown, a nuclear chemist, geochemist and political activist, published a chart in Scientific American showing that mankind would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver were to disappear before 1990.
FACT: Brown stopped consuming Earth’s natural resources in 1986.
FACT: In May 2016, the International Wrought Copper Council’s forecast that copper mine production might be 18.935 million tonnes, with an expected increase of 3.4 percent to 19.572 percent in 2017.
FACT: In December 2016, Generation Citizen announced the launching of New York’s Vote16USA, a drive to lower the voting age to 16.
FACT: There’s no data conclusively demonstrating that 15-year-olds are less responsible or more politically aware than 16-year-olds.
FACT: In 2013, Michael Moore memorialized Hugo Chavez’s death with this tweet: “Hugo Chavez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all.”
FACT: The New York Times reported that between 2012 and 2015, “the rate of death among babies under a month old increased more than a hundredfold in public hospitals run by the Health Ministry,” and “The rate of death among new mothers in those hospitals increased by almost five times in the same period.”
FACT: When Hugo Chavez died in 2013 Jimmy Carter praised him for “improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen.”
FACT: In 2013, David Sirota, an occasional Morning Sentinel columnist, wrote an article entitled “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle,” explaining that Col. Chavez’s “full-throated advocacy of socialism,” had “racked up an economic record that . . . American president[s] could only dream of achieving.”
FACT: Today, Venezuela suffers 800 percent inflation, a -19 percent annual GDP growth rate, and interest rates of over 20 percent. Children die for lack of decent food and medicine. Crime is rampant and the murder rate is now the highest in the world.
FACT: Last month, Barack Obama agreed to a $400,000 keynote speaker fee from Cantor Fitzgerald LP, one of Wall Street’s fatter fat cats.
FACT: Calvin Coolidge accepted an invitation to serve on his own insurance company’s board of directors. He was compensated with two gold pieces and two days at the Vanderbilt Hotel for every meeting he attended.
FACT: Harry Truman declined all invitations to serve on corporate boards.
FACT: Today’s Presidents receive pensions and other supports estimated at $2.5 million in total value.
FACT: When Harry Truman left the White House, he was entitled to a $112.56 monthly pension for commanding a company in World War I. The 1958 Former Presidents Act established a pension for ex-presidents and tied in amount to the salary of members in the cabinet.
