Why Would Anyone Trust the Government?

Liberals love to make up words like "(climate change) denier" or "Islamophobe" to make their conservative opponents seem crazy.  As events play out and the truth becomes plainer by the hour, however, some of these labels are losing their punch.

Will the left realize the error of their ways and convert to reality?  Of course not: instead, as they realize that fewer people than expected are flocking to their banners, liberals are complaining how stupid Americans are because they won't embrace the liberals' crisis of the day.

We've seen articles complaining that people are too stupid to do what they must to Save the Planet, eat correctly, or even get their kids vaccinated.  These liberals are either power-mad would-be tyrants or they have a childish faith in the power to government to do good, neither of which is subject to change by any rational argument or objective evidence.

Our question is: given the decades-long track record of incompetence, failure, and out-and-out-lies, why would any ordinary citizen believe anything the government says about climate change, diet, or vaccination?  The litany of government malpractice in all of these areas should make all of us wonder about hidden gotchas if we even considered doing what the government recommended.

Climate Change

Scragged readers will remember the leaked emails which showed how the high priests of global warming intentionally and blatantly fudged the data to show that temperatures weren't declining.  Prof. Phil Jones succinctly explains in one of the emails:

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.  [emphasis added]

Adding in fudge factors is definitely one way to make the numbers show whatever you'd like to "prove."  In this case, the real data they had showed that temperatures were going down instead of up, but they'd carefully coded their computer "simulator" to produce a neat hockey-stick increase regardless of what the actual data indicated.

They're still fudging.  For a decade or so, warming alarmists have been baffled by the fact that global warming was "arrested" some years ago when temperatures stopped going up.  The situation got so bad for True Believers that "global warming" had to be re-branded as "climate change."  On Dec. 29, 2014, page 46, Time Magazine said:

But while studies predict that the heightened chance of icy winters may persist over the next few decades, beyond that rising temperatures will eventually overwhelm those cold bursts, and global warming will win out as advertised.

The New Rule - for the next few years, global warming will lead to colder, more brutal winters.

Saying that global warming will bring colder winters until warming resumes sometime off in the future is nonsense on stilts!

Just as ordinary Americans were losing faith in the prophets of doom, NOAA rode to the rescue.  They published data showing that warming hadn't stopped after all.

This time the fraud was slightly more sophisticated.  Instead of fudging data to show that recent years were warmer than they had been, they went back in time and tweaked the data to show that earlier years were cooler than had been thought.  That made recent years look like warming was proceeding, just as their computer models insisted it would.

The Wall Street Journal points out:

It doesn't help that NOAA's sleight of hand here seems designed precisely to conceal the alleged "pause." The inconvenient hiatus in global warming showed up just as temperature measurement became more rigorous and consistent;

In other words, global warming "paused" right after measurement techniques got better.  They couldn't fudge the more recent data, so NOAA had to go back to a period when measurements weren't as accurate to wish the "pause" away.  The scientists at NOAA must know they're vulnerable - they're imitating Hillary and refusing to turn their emails over to a Congressional committee.

Why should anyone believe anything the government says about climate change or global warming?

Diet

For many years, the government's dietary advice was "Eat as wide a variety of foods as possible."  Farms weren't as productive as they are now; there was essentially no chance for mass obesity simply because there wasn't enough food available to make very many people fat.

By the 1970's, however, people were being urged to eat less meat because meat fats were considered bad for your heart.  Eating less meat meant that people ate more carbohydrates and sugars, of course, which we now know led to an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes and mass obesity.

The government finally admitted that their advice about meat fats had been wrong, but then the UN started telling people that bacon and other meats were carcinogenic.  Some unkind researchers studied the fine print and found that the statistical risk of bacon-driven cancer was extremely small if it existed at all, but that the authors of the report deplored the amount of greenhouse gases that came from raising cows, pigs, and other meat animals.  In other words, the recent anti-meat reports are global-warming alarmism in another guise.

Since listening to official gastronomic advice has proven hazardous to your health time and time again, why should anyone believe anything any government says about diet?

Vaccination

The pro-vaccine crowd is as intolerant of dissent as the global warming mob; so is the anti-vaccine gang.  Instead of both sides accepting the age-old traditional American principle that parents know what's best for their children and trying gentle persuasion of each other, which is known to work even for Saving the Planet, vaccinators are trying every form of coercion known to man.  They claim that the "science is settled," but the government's track record on matters medical is pretty spotty:

• President Ford told us that if we didn't get vaccinated against flu, there would be a lot of deaths.  Didn't happen.
• Dr. Koop, President Reagan's Surgeon General, asserted that AIDS would break out into the heterosexual population.  It didn't - as he admitted not too long afterward.
• Dr. Elders, President Clinton's Surgeon General, lied about a defective batch of condoms because she didn't want to undermine the credibility of her condom distribution program.  These incidents show that what we're told about AIDS is more political than medical.
• Waiting lists at the VA supposedly went down once the government put in an incentive program.  Turned out that the bureaucrats lied to get fraudulent performance bonuses, and many vets died while waiting for treatment.  The perpetrators were allowed to resign instead of being fired, much less sent off for a nice long stay in Club Fed as they deserved.
• Mr. Obama's multi-million dollar consultant, Prof. Jonathan Gruber, the genius from MIT, said that Obamacare had to be filled with lies because of the stupidity of the American voters.  When someone tells you they're lying, isn't it simple prudence to assume they're telling the truth?
• When Ebola reached Texas, the CDC, which had said they had everything under control, had to upgrade their protection protocol when the first nurse got it.  They had to upgrade the protocol again when the second nurse came down with Ebola.  The so-called proven protocols were anything but.

Parents can be forgiven for doubting what the government says about health in general or about vaccines in particular.  Why should anyone believe what the government says about anything?