At President Thomas Jefferson’s urging, Congress approved the first federally funded “National Road” to connect Cumberland, MD with Wheeling, WV on the Ohio River. Lorna’s talk was about the privately owned toll roads (called “pikes”) which connected Baltimore with Cumberland, MD and the “National Road” to the Ohio River. Difficulties were made easy by turnpikes that made communication and trade easier. Turnpike requirements were: surface (not be washed away by weather ), width, grade, and mile makers made of stone. Toll amounts were regulated, and fines and punishments were imposed for toll jumpers. The first McCadam road (named for its inventor) was from Boonsboro to Hagerstown, MD. The road bed was made of three specified sizes of stone. The largest stones were laid first, then the middle size, and last the small stones, so the road would withstand all types of weather.

In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution (Income Tax) was passed and the Federal Reserve was created. Both happened with great assistance from President Theodore Roosevelt (TR). Before 1913 the US had small government (funded mostly by tariffs on foreign goods) and vigorous free market capitalism. After 1913 the US evolved into big government with more and more control of business and the economy by government elites and bigger and bigger bureaucracy. Dave talked about the economic boom from 1865 to 1915 (50 years); the Yellow Journalist (muckraking) attracts on the “Robber Barons” ( Guild, J.P.Morgan, John D Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie): and TR’s trust busting and attracts on the “Industrial Overlords”, the “Tyranny of mere Wealth” (who demand immunity from Governmental control) for the “common good”.

David Fitzwilliam talked about the history of the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the effect of industrial CO2 on the predicted increase of global temperatures and sea level) and the counter and critical findings of NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) in its 2013 report. The talk is based on the September 2013 NIPCC report and 400+ climate change articles in Investor’s Business Daily since the October 2009 reveling of 3500 CC emails of Phil Jones ( Director of the Climate Research Unit at the East Anglican University, London) showing that they were cooking the CC books, CC scientists were jumping off the CC wagon, and that Micheal Mann’s “hokey stick” prediction that CC would cause the seas to rise one meter in 50 years and Manhattan would be under water if human caused CO2 rise is not controlled.