Resistance and Life

Remember "Occupy?"

2012-01-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

Remember the self-absorbed "Occupy" movement? The parent organization, AdBusters, is calling for a redux this Spring in Chicago.

The Occupy movement will always remind me of that Occupy woman the television interviewer asked, "Why are you here?" He already had her full attention for several seconds at that point -- an eternity in television.

Her answer was "What?" and a blank stare.

Anyway, here is the email....

ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #25

Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Do you suppose they have an inflated sense of ego?

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.

Mmm... 50,000. Talk about a target rich environment.

And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … (1968? How old are these guys?.) nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.

And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.

"Guided by the Constitution" my eyeball. Criminal conduct is always unlawful.

They're apparently trying to get a number of their enthusiasts to stupidly offer their bodies so the Chicago hierarchy can go martial law. That will be just the stimulus Obama wants to justify himself to take (more of the) law into his own hands.

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear.

Gandhian ferocity? Gandhi was not an unreasoning criminal.

Jammers, pack your tents, muster up your courage and prepare for a big bang in Chicago this Spring. If we don’t stand up now and fight now for a different kind of future we may not have much of a future … so let’s live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens …

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

Adbusters issue #100 is hitting doorsteps and newsstands in a couple of weeks. Go online or call Nicole at 1-800-663-1243 to make sure you don’t miss it!

If you should see a copy of Adbusters, soil it. And call Nicole... repeatedly. Its an 800 number -- it only costs them. Lets see if they can take a jamming.

Dems Beef Up to "Tax the Rich"

2012-01-06T05:02:00.000-08:00

The Democrats insist rich don't pay their fair share of taxes. Every bitter Democrat is certain of that.

So in 2011 the Obama Administration beefed up the rate of audits on the rich from 8% of returns over $1 million to 12% of returns over $1 million. Those who earned less than $200,000 faced only a 1 in 100 chance of a skin and person audit.

The IRS stated the high percentage of audits were done only to demonstrate the tax laws were applied fairly against the rich. Whew.

So now we know for sure - The IRS audited the millionaires, and made sure they paid their fair share of taxes.

Obama proved it. In 2011, the millionaires paid their fair share.

~~~~~~~~

Its a certainty the Obama Administration will play the class envy card to crank up taxes on the rich. But anybody who can accounting will know that won't be enough.

So the tax increase on the rich will have to serve as a smokescreen for the increase on taxes on everybody else. 2012 will be the year of the economy crippling tax increases if we do not find a way to stop Obama and his thugs.

Obama crimes

2012-01-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

"We are not going to use signing statements as a way of doing and end run around Congress." - Barrack Obama, 2008

Obama says it is his "obligation to bypass Congress" to make a non-recess "recess" appointment of Richard Cordray as his financial watchdog. Obama stated the illegal appointment was happening because he (Obama) "refuse[s] to take no for an answer."

The law which created the agency requires the appointment to have Senate confirmation. Thus his appointment wasn't legal. Considering the Senate is controlled by the Democrats, Obama is apparently having a problem controlling his own party. The noise about the Republicans blocking all this is pure smokescreen.

The administration's cover story is the Cordray appointment protected consumers. Why doesn't this administration try to protect the Constitution and people of the United States?

The purpose of the Cordray appointment is to further cover up the Democratic Party's complicity in the 2007 financial meltdown, and subsequent maladministration by the current administration. The meltdown occurred because of the "Democratic" Party abuses of Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) in 2003, treating the government sponsored enterprise as a cash cow for Democrats.

When the Bush administration tried to investigate the abuses, Barney Frank (D) and the Democratic Party operatives started shouting. The Democrat raised enough ruckus, their willing accomplices in the Democratic Party controlled Press got the Bush administration to drop the inquiry.

That was a mistake. Ever since, the Democrats use the fact the Bush administration dropped the investigation to paint Bush as the subverter of the law.

Four years later we had the meltdown. Naturally, the Democrats did not care. Freddie and Fannie had served their purpose. and since the Democrats have controlled the Congress since that time, they effectively shut down all genuine investigation.

This is the exact type of action Obama claimed (lied, really) George Bush had done illegally. By his own mouth, Obama is a criminal.

~~~~~~~~

On a side point, many liberals say the Republicans were filibustering the appointment. Therefore Obama was taking a position against the Republicans. Still not so.

The Democrats controlled the Senate where the confirmation hearing would be, and they would have known the Republicans would filibuster the hearing. Putting two and two together, the Democrats were counting on the Republican filibuster so they would not have to block Obama themselves.

We'll see how this resolves. But the logical prediction is there will be scurrying in back rooms by the Left before a deal gets done to foster special corruptions for leftist bankers. Obama is clearly moving against some of his former Democrat allies.

~~~~~~~~

Many of Obama's supporters take the position that any problems which occur between now and election time are the Republicans fault. How? If Obama himself says he does not need the co-operation of Congress, every misery this government causes is entirely his doing.

News Story Sources
USA Today
Businesweek
Los Angeles Times
FOX News

Enlightening federal death sentence reprieve

2012-01-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

The sale of the incandescent light bulb was banned January 1, 2012. Why do we still see them for sale?

The Republicans managed to forbid the Obama Administration from spending any money to enforce the ban (This was a big part of the uproar over government spending in December). The ban is not repealed. The Obama Administration can still abuse your right to see the light, as soon as Obama can find money.

The "Democratic" Party backed ban had one of its intended effects; The United States has ceased all production of incandescent light bulbs. The "Party of the working man" has managed to put more workers out of a job.

Washington Times

Gary North's Tip of the Week

2011-12-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

shamelessly copied from Gary North

The deadline is in two weeks: no more 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. Congress has switched off the lights.

Light Bulb Addict

I have switched to LEDs. They cost $15 each. But they give off no heat, which is what I want in summer.

For those of you who still want to buy 100-watt incandescents, I recommend these. They last 20,000 hours. They cost $2.49 each. Shipping is free (the order form says).

Bulb-O-Rama

You better place your order today.

Gary "Brighter Than Congress" North

"Republicans! Where are the jobs?"

2011-12-16T11:37:00.001-08:00

"Republicans! Where are the jobs?" -- Says Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. Maddow is demanding the Republicans provide government employment for the victims of the Democratic Party controlled administration.

Not that the far Left needs reason to hate Republicans. In fact, "no reason" is a succinct summary of the Left's position on everything. Since the Democratic Administration's approach to unemployment wasn't working, the Republicans realized government meddling was the problem.

One year after the Republicans took control of the House of representatives, and plugged the Left's debauchery of government, the economy outlook in the US is starting to improve. Seems it was the Democrats causing great pain all along.

If Rachel Maddow would only settle down, she would see the jobs are being produced. Not phoney jobs in the bloated government but productive jobs in the private sector.

The Republicans have been able to block Obamunism since November 2010. Since then, the republicans have managed to fend off Obama's job crippling initiatives (usually called "jobs bills") and increase employment.

Data supplied by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that, as of November, the Republicans have reduced American unemployment by 1.2%.

Its a start, but we can do better. We need to get the Leftist politicians who want to control your life out of Washington DC. Vote for freedom.

The Full Alinsky – a wall of noise technique

2011-12-15T02:48:00.000-08:00

Normally I don't watch much television – its too depressing. But once in a while when I can't sleep, I brave the big knob. That is how I came to watch part of FOX news' Bill O'Reilly program.

O'Reilly's segment was about voter fraud – some states want to make it more difficult to commit fraud during balloting. Of course, election fraud is something no good American wants. But some people in politics have no scruple about their own power.

O'Reilly featured Caroline Heldman, a woman from the far Left. He asked Heldman why the “Democratic” Party objects to photo identification being used to reduce voter fraud. Then it was off to the races. Heldman insistently asserted voter fraud was not a problem, and that as many people are struck by lightning as will commit voter fraud (thus showing the “Democratic” Party is not even slightly interested in proper election procedure). She went on to assert that voter identification laws were being promoted by the Koch Brothers, which made them a bad idea. O'Reilly tried to make her explain the reference to the Koch Brothers (which makes no sense), but Heldman shouted him down.

Heldman steadfastly stonewalled any of O'Reilly's questions. When Heldman posed a question of her own, she shouted down O'Reilly when he began to reply. Heldman wasn't merely displaying bad manners, she was displaying the far Left's “discussion.”

From the instant she knew her microphone was live, the woman's mouth was full of accusations and attack. She stated that people should be allowed to vote without having to produce photo identification because some people and old people were unable to get photo identification. She cited some "study" which she said exactly proved her point. She would brook no questions; everything she said had to be accepted exactly as she said it or else it would provoke another blistering attack.

There was no moment of consideration, no thoughtful pause – just a relentless wall of noise.

Normal people prefer a more reasoned, calm approach that this terroristic style. This Leftist tactic is the mindless, uncaring attack style of The Full Alinsky.

You can watch the video here.

75% of Americans think the voter should show identification to vote.

~~~~~~~~

Afterthought.

You can recognize when you've been Alinskied: You will have conversation which turns into a confrontation. You feel as though you lost. That is what the left is after - to make you feel defeated. They know if America feels sad and down, we will feel depressed. If we feel depressed, we will have a harder time throwing off this economic depression. They hope we will become dependent on the government they control. So confound the DemocRats -- Smile and have a good time today.

The Scott Walker recall farce

2011-12-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

Democrats must be desperate to get Wisconsin governor Scott Walker [R] recalled. The Democrats launched a recall petition in November. They are so insanely desperate they are including signatures you'd naturally be a suspicious of, such as Mickey Mouse.

What's more astonishing is The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board will allow Mickey's signature to be counted if Mr. Mouse has a Wisconsin address.

The recall "effort" got 300,000 signatures in the first 12 days. Apparently, imaginary voters will be included -- that makes it pretty easy.

The damage Wisconsin Democrats are attempting against their state's democracy is almost beyond belief.

Citizens for Tax Justice 'Study' = Lie

2011-12-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

Leftist Newspeak has sunk to a new low. Not happy with distortion, the Left are speaking outright lies. The subject of the lies are so dreary, most people would rather catch a nap. But I trained as an economist, which makes me immune to nap-inducing rays (however I emit nap-rays).

At hand is a "Study" from the far left Citizens for Tax Justice about what they call Corporate tax dodging. The "Study" claims 30 companies in the United States paid less than 0% tax in one year pf the last three years. The "Study" implies this happened despite each companies profitable status.

So I checked them out.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the worst offender is PEPCO Holdings, the Potomac Electric Power Company. CTJ claims "Pepco Holdings had the lowest effective tax rate of all the companies in the study, at negative 57.6% (effectively, a tax refund) over the three year period." There is no way to match CTJ's claim with any reliable source.

PEPCO's published earnings report, as required by the US Government's Securities and Exchange Commission, states PEPCO paid:
$90 million in federal taxes in 2008,
$104 million in 2009,
$11 million in 201.
No time in the last three years has PEPCO experienced negative taxation.

The information is on page 148 of their annual shareholders report.

Citizens for Tax Justice is just badly messed up.

~~~~~~~~

Originally CTJ report attracted my interest because I expected to find evidence of state and federal corruption. I expected to find the government giving favorable tax treatment to their pet companies. CTJ seems to mistake government expenditure as direct tax relief.

Don't get me wrong, governments use tax credits to manipulate the market. Corruption's smoking gun will be when there is no discernible difference between two businesses, and one is getting a tax credit.

Consider corruption's smoking gun in the case of Gibson Guitar and Martin Guitar.

Earth Goddess requires sacrifices

2011-12-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

By Andrew Orlowski in The Register

Pagan gods traditionally required human sacrifices – preferably of children – and a West Country academy school appears to be leading the way. To give pupils a lesson in "sustainability" they'll never forget, headmaster Rob Benzie of Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, ordered a "No Power Day ... as an experiment to see if we can lower our carbon footprint".

It took place in December as temperatures plummeted to 1°C, and pupils students were permitted to cheat death by wearing as many jumpers as they could muster. All survived. Predictably, reactionary parents branded it as "barbaric" – ignoring the vital "awareness raising" potential of the experiment. An innovative game in Australia even advised children when they should pop off to help save the Earth Goddess.

Ansford Academy boasts of its Gaia-friendly credentials in its job advertisements, where we learn that "We frequently win awards for environment based work (Green Car, Young Engineers of the Year) and in July 2009 were the first school to run a ‘No Power Day’ in which we functioned without consuming any energy from non-renewable sources."

As This is Cornwall reported:

"Michael Eavis came into school to present the national 'Green Flag Award' which has given the school 'eco-status' for their work on reducing their carbon footprint and environmental work. He was present to watch the unfurling of the green flag and to see the school chickens freed into their new home currently in the school quad."

A marvelous moment.

We also learn that food and water were heated over high-CO2 emission charcoal – regrettably, not a very climate-friendly choice.

"Students will have learned a valuable lesson – that we should not take the power we use for granted, and if nothing else that we should be careful with what we use and reduce our consumption as much as we possibly can in order to best preserve the world's resources," the paper reports.

What's puzzling is why, after shivering in 1°C cold for a day, any student – who is not a masochist or latent sadist – would regard the "cause" as anything other than barmy dogma. Perhaps it's a subtle recruitment campaign for the fossil fuel industries.

Thanksgiving Proclamation 1777

2011-11-24T19:46:00.000-08:00

The first Thanksgiving Day was not the day before Black Friday, and certainly not "turkey day." Thanksgiving Day was a day of worship.

Americans have forgotten, or never been taught what the day is about. Here is the text of the Congressional proclamation from the first Thanksgiving proclamation.

IN CONGRESS
November 1, 1777

FORASMUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence; but also to smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased, in so great a Measure, to prosper the Means used for the Support of our Troops, and to crown our Arms with most signal success:

It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING and PRAISE: That at one Time and with one Voice, the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that, together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favor; and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD through the Merits of JESUS CHRIST, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance; That it may please him graciously to afford his Blessing on the Governments of these States respectively, and prosper the public Council of the whole: To inspire our Commanders, both by Land and Sea, and all under them, with that Wisdom and Fortitude which may render them fit Instruments, under the Providence of Almighty GOD, to secure for these United States, the greatest of all human Blessings, INDEPENDENCE and PEACE: That it may please him, to prosper the Trade and Manufactures of the People, and the Labor of the Husbandman, that our Land may yield its Increase: To take Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety, under his nurturing Hand; and to prosper the Means of Religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom, which consisteth "in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost. [Romans 14:17]"

And it is further recommended, That servile Labor, and such Recreation, as, though at other Times innocent, may be unbecoming the Purpose of this Appointment, be omitted on so solemn an Occasion.

Occupy Seattle

2011-11-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

BobOne filed this report

Watching a Seattle Access Channel recording of the "Occupy Seaddled" folks having a "general assembly".

They were fighting about whether they should do that idiot "human megaphone" repetition thing -- while trying to think of ways to streamline their process. All the while they were repeating everything.

They have a perfectly functioning PA system.

They tried to vote, but nobody could manage to count hands.

What a complete and total bunch of nut bags. No wonder I hate fruitcake....

Brave New Transnational Progressive World

2011-11-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

If you think Washington DC is too far away to hear us, wait until the "transnational progressives" get their way with us. Obama and his crew would be delighted to surrender American sovereignty, a the expense of the individual.

By Clifford D. May

It's coming --- if only Americans will submit to "global authorities" who will produce "global governance" with "global justice" under "global rule of law."

The attacks of 9/11/01 awoke Americans — by no means all — to the threat posed by totalitarian interpretations of Islam. John Fonte, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, has long been concerned about another ideology that is perhaps no less dangerous to free peoples.

It goes by names that sound either vaguely utopian, like "global governance," or too wonky to worry about, like "transnational progressivism." But in a new book, Sovereignty or Submission, Fonte makes clear how this ideology — widely embraced in Europe and, increasingly, among elites in the U.S. as well — is stealthily undermining liberal democracy, self-government, constitutionalism, individual freedom and even traditional internationalism, the relations among sovereign nation-states.

To put it bluntly: While the jihadists shout for "Death to the West!" the transnational progressives are quietly promoting civilizational suicide.

That may not be what they intend. In theory, they are only recognizing "global interdependence" and arguing that "global problems require global solutions." In practice, however, their project is to shift political and economic power from the citizens of nation-states and their elected representatives to the UN, unelected bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and NGOs. These individuals and institutions are to wield not only transnational authority — power "beyond" nations-but also "supranational authority" — power "over" nations.

Transnationals are not so much anti-democratic as post-democratic. They believe that in the 21st century, democracy should be updated to imply the enforcement of "universal principles of human rights" that they, of course, will enumerate and define. They talk not of surrendering sovereignty but of "sharing" it "collectively." The result, they assert, will be a new age of "global authority" that will produce "global justice" under "global rule of law."

Indeed, since the end of the Cold War transnational progressives have been establishing international laws -- really supranational laws -- that no voters can repeal or even amend. One way they accomplish this: A treaty is drafted. International pressure is applied to get the U.S. president's signature and the U.S. Senate's ratification. Judges — often from undemocratic countries — in transnational courts then interpret the treaty to mean whatever they want it to mean. There are no courts of appeal.

And if the U.S. rejects the treaty or agrees to only parts of it by issuing "reservations," the transnationals declare that that the U.S. is bound nonetheless — under what they call "customary international law" to which, they further insist, even the U.S. Constitution is "subordinate."

It is on this basis that the argument is made that the U.S. is violating the Geneva Accords by declining to classify al-Qaeda terrorists as Prisoners of War — despite the fact that the U.S. has never agreed that unlawful combatants are entitled to such honorable status.

Curiously and ominously, transnationals have been working hand-in-glove with Islamists to achieve such goals as a global prohibition of "Islamophobia" — which would represent an historic abridgement of free speech.

Fonte devotes an entire chapter to Israel on which the Islamists and the transnationals also find common ground. Israel, he writes, has become "the major target of transnational progressives who seek to expand global authority in determining the laws of war. If international law precedents could be established against Israeli security policies, these precedents could be used later to subordinate U.S. defense policies to global law as defined by the transnationalists."

Factions of the movement, including such major philanthropies as the Ford Foundation, such leading NGOs as Human Rights Watch, and sectors of the European Union are "complicit in the worldwide Islamist campaign to delegitimize Israel as an apartheid state through the 'boycotts, divestment and sanctions' strategy." Fonte observes that Israel "is the most vulnerable of the world's independent democracies, often targeted by the global governancers as a surrogate for the United States or for the independent democratic state generally."

The dream of transnational progressives, Fonte concludes, is for Americans to embrace "the brave new world of global governance," to voluntarily agree to "share" sovereignty with others and to demonstrate "leadership" by submitting to a "supranational global legal regime. In effect, the American caterpillar is transformed into a global butterfly."

Do any of the candidates running for office in 2012 understand this? Do any have the skills required to make it an issue — to ask voters whether they want to preserve what Alexis de Tocqueville admiringly called America's distinctive "sovereignty of the people" or whether they would prefer to share sovereignty with others around the world, including dictators and Islamists?

My guess is that most Americans — by no means all -- do not want to submit, do not want the 21stcentury to be a post-democratic and post-American era. But with an election year coming up, now would be a good time to begin the debate and find out.

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

Thank you to everyone who served to protect our God-given freedom. May God bless and protect America.

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

Occupy Oakland deposits $20,000 in Wells Fargo

2011-11-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

The Occupy Oakland protesters who picketed a downtown Wells Fargo Bank last week, breaking windows and spray painting messages, deposited $20,000 at another branch Wednesday.

Scratching 99 percent of your head? So are Occupy supporters and detractors.

The Oakland camp sought Wednesday to defend voting to put its largest donation into the same big bank that they have railed against since pitching their tents in Frank H. Ogawa Plaza more than a month ago.

The choice of bank has the Twittersphere abuzz and created a rift among some supporters, who call it PR suicide and sleeping with the enemy, especially since the group last week urged people to withdraw their money from big banks.

From the Contra Costa Times

Authoritarians

2011-11-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

I received a thoughtful message recently -- The person asked why I describe the Washington State Senators as authoritarian. The person challenged me on the grounds that since the Senators were elected, he thought they couldn't be authoritarian.

This goes to the root of America's present political illness. Too many people believe that since we have elections, government will be responsive and we will be free. This is a self-deception. There is no guarantee of freedom, except to vigorously limit the power and realm of government.

Authoritarianism requires the individuals to submit to authority – specifically, individuals are required to submit to the social organization built by those in power. In a democracy, “those in power” is determined by a majority, even if the majority is only 51%.

You may find yourself in the majority -- so what? Do you think just being in the majority gives you the right to regulate the minority? It is precisely authoritarian to make everyone conform.

The clash is between freedom and authoritarianism. Authoritarianism requires force to compel obedience. The more decision latitude the leaders desire, the more often force will be applied. A more free society will not force conformity as often. Freedom and democracy are not the same.

What's at stake is personal freedom -- your right to choose where you can go, where you can stay, what you can do with your life. For a society to be free, the people have to decide to let each other be free. People have to trust each other. Automatic hate and distrust cannot be.

If majority is to rule, then it must do so with respect for the rights of the minority. A free society is a better society.

The Unthinkable Is Coming

2011-11-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

The Obama Administration is promulgating regulation for commodities traders in the USA. The USA is the worldwide center of trade for commodities. The commodity doesn't have to originate here or land here; Brazilian coffee destined for Singapore is traded in the USA. Every trade generates tax for the US treasury.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration will insist on the right to interfere with such trading, to the point of shutting down trades which have nothing to do with the US market. Can you think of a more effective way to piss off foreign traders and send them to more trade friendly country?

Mr Obama's zeal to stick his nose in places it doesn't belong move will cost the US government Billions in taxes.

~~~~~~~~
By Andy Hecht, Editor, Commodity Trend Alert

Say what you will about the miserable U.S. dollar. No matter how it has declined over the last three decades, the world still considers the U.S. dollar the best reserve currency (for now).

That means central bankers continue to hold dollars in their reserves. It also means the dollar is considered the world’s most convertible currency.

As the most convertible currency, the dollar has the privilege of being the pricing mechanism for most commodities. It also makes the U.S. the unofficial hub of the global commodity markets.

It’s why we have the five biggest commodity future exchanges right here. We have the NYMEX that trades energy. The CBOT and CME trade grains and livestock. The NYBOT trades soft commodities. And the COMEX trades precious metals and copper.

All five future exchanges trade commodities in billions, if not trillions, of U.S. dollars every year. And, these exchanges make money and pay taxes to the U.S. government. It’s a pretty good system for the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, this is all about to change...

Right now, I’m seeing some disturbing new developments in Washington that could ensure global commodity traders will take their business elsewhere, far beyond the U.S. shores.

When that happens, it’s very possible the U.S. could lose one of its biggest assets - the fact that commodities are priced in our own devalued dollars.

It’s all thanks to some new market regulations that most investors will never hear about...
Washington Goes on a Regulation Spree

It’s no secret the U.S. is losing face in the global community. It’s partially due to our currency. The U.S. dollar has lost 42% of its value since 1985.

As nations lose respect for the U.S., our government has tried to blame their shortcomings on the market and speculators. Also, in recent years, Washington has been reacting to a number of scandals and the financial meltdown in 2008.

Washington’s brilliant response to all this: go on a regulation spree!

Now it’s worth noting that the U.S. government has never once been proactive in setting market regulation. It’s always been a knee-jerk response to some market event.

For example, the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 separated commercial and investment banking thanks to the Great Depression (then repealed it in 1999).

The Sarbanes Oxley Act, passed in 2002, set new standards, rules and regulations for publicly traded companies. Congress passed this Act because the world had just endured corporate scandals like Enron, Tyco and WorldCom.

The meltdown of the housing market, the subprime crisis and a massive governmental bailout of the financial community in 2008 resulted in the mother of all regulatory legislation.

It’s called the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Even the name is long, but not as long as the legislation itself.

It’s a 2,300 page document that outlines the rules and regulations of the so-called “free markets.” For the commodity markets, it’s given the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) regulatory powers like never before.

It’s these new regulatory powers that will chase commodity traders away from the U.S. and away from the U.S. dollar.
Say Good-bye to Traders,
and Commodities Priced in Dollars

The policymakers in Washington seem to forget that the commodity markets are global. Commodities may trade in the U.S., but they are often produced and consumed far outside U.S. borders.

For instance, West Africa and Brazil produce cocoa. Russia, South Africa, Canada and Australia all produce gold. Chile produces copper. The Middle East, South America, Asia and Africa all produce oil. The U.S. may produce grains - but so do Australia, Canada and Ukraine.

The entire world consumes these staples. Traders all over the world can get their hands on them outside the U.S. if they have to.

That’s exactly what they will do if our policymakers keep trying to police our free markets.

Mark my words. If our U.S. policymakers want to create onerous regulation like the Dodd-Frank Act, traders will go elsewhere for their commodities.

Any attempt to make the commodity market less than the free market it is, will have dangerous and wide ranging implications.

One of the most devastating is the dollar could lose its privilege of being the pricing mechanism for commodity markets.
The U.S. Winds Up a Big Loser

The U.S. is actually daring the commodity world to move the trading of important commodities away from its shores.

Once that happens, it will be a fast transition to pricing and transacting these commodities in different currencies and locations beyond the U.S. and the dollar.

New free market commodity exchanges will open in jurisdictions that are friendlier to business and support free market capitalism.

I expect that the commodity markets will gravitate away from the U.S. markets in years to come. Free markets operate optimally when governments supervise but do not impose rules to stop business activity.

The Party to Occupy Wall Street.

2011-10-11T13:39:00.001-07:00

Sex, drugs and open air latrines... what could be more fun? Did you really think the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were about Wall Street greed?

Just as the Democrats were trying to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street iPhone toting crowd, OWS became more unfocused. The Democratic Party must be pleased they have support of so many fugitives and hedonistic muddle heads.

There's crime, reported the New York Post:

“I got warrants. I’m running from the law,” boasted Dave, 24, a scrawny, unshaven miscreant in filthy clothes from Stamford, Conn. “I’m not even supposed to be here, but it’s as good a spot as any to hide.”

Wanted for burglary, the drug-addled fugitive said some of his hard-partying pals clued him in that the protest was a good place to be fed, get wasted and crash.

There's drugs and sex, reported the UK Daily Mail:

Conspicuously living among the politically active in the makeshift village in Zuccotti Park are opportunistic junkies and homeless people - making the most of the free food on offer.

Also present and infuriating the hard core of activists are a number of teens looking to turn the gathering into an urban rave.

Among the banners and flags are now discarded packets of condoms, cigarettes and bottles of spirits, while naked youngsters happily get together with just sleeping bags covering their modesty.

There's other parties demonstrations reported The Boston Herald.

The downtown protest group Occupy Boston threw its proverbial doors open yesterday, and played host to supporters of accused terrorist Terak Mehanna, who are looking to raise awareness of the Sudbury man’s upcoming trial.

The Daily Mail picked up on a less appealing event -- the Wall Street demonstrator taking the dump on the police car. The photo can be found here.

~~~~~~~~
If the ambition of the demonstrators is the destruction of Wall Street, they may get their way. The Atlantic Wire says 10,000 Wall Street employees could lose their jobs next year.

Taking Wall Street

2011-10-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

In the park

Demonstrators from Occupy Seattle lined the Westlake Mall. They were sunning themselves, having a nice time...and frightening some people. The signs they held said things like “Down With Capitalism” “End Corporate Greed” and “Tax the Rich.”

They crowd seemed to be mostly young, smart and far left. Mostly they wanted an exciting way to spend the afternoon, Some wanted gainful employment. They blamed companies for not hiring them, although that is a bad attitude to take to a job.

But the “occupiers” raise a valuable question; Why aren't American companies hiring? The per-fabricated answers about rich corporate greed are surreal. The actual cause is this administration has sucked the life out of the private sector with their massive spending spree.

Every dollar the government spent came from the private sector and therefore was not available to make private loans to private companies. Companies need cash for liquidity, buying raw materials, and hiring. They have to borrow money for those reasons, same as anybody. Money for loans was available overseas, so that's where the jobs went.

The only way to start job creation in the US is to cut federal spending. Proof of this is the fact that the Republicans resisted giving Mr Obama his massive federal $447 billion debt-laden “Jobs” package. Despite this employment is up last month anyway. By working to reduce federal spending and federal debt, the Republicans managed to create jobs. Its not magic, it good economics.

Governments are great wasters. Who else engages in war? Everything a government does is at somebody else expense, there is no felt need to conserve resource. Government waste, in money or human lives, goes on.

~~~~~~~~
Corporate Greed?

Greed is a human motivation. Maybe the complaint is all humans are greedy. Being made up of humans, corporations have no more than their share of greed. But as to why corporations are not hiring many people, we should consider their motivation is to make money, just the same as their employees. Weirdly, it is corporate greed which puts people to work.

But the corporations don't hire... enough. Why?

First, there is a monster tax coming on employees. “Free” health care has to be paid for. Mr Obama and his Leftist cohorts in Congress added taxes so employers would pay around $4500 more, per employee, per year. An up-front cost of $4500 per hire gives corporations some pause.

The self-employed face the same taxes. So many workers who thought they dodged the tax increases face a nasty surprise.

The second difficulty has already been touched upon. Credit and loans have been hard to get due to the credit crunch. To add to the misery, the administration made extra rules to make it harder for lenders to collect. What cash was available, the government sopped up. Thus every company has a cash crunch going on. Many face the decision to lay off people or not make the payroll.

But what about record profits? Companies have had to become internally supporting; they can't get loans anymore. Less-critical jobs were cut in order to build up a supply of cash required to make tax payments. Some manufacturing jobs were cut and sent overseas usually because of regulations, usually via the EPA, which reduced productivity. Worker productivity had to increase in order for the company merely to survive.

Profitability had to increase for two reasons, companies have to internally fund what they used to be able to get from banks. Companies must carry more cash than before. Secondly, much of that apparent surplus is going to go away as soon as all of Mr Obama's new taxes kick in. High unemployment is a result of new taxation, not profitability.

~~~~~~~~
Tax the rich

There is a persistent sour attitude toward wealthy people that makes no sense. In a free market, a successful person can be copied and all the copycats get richer. There must be a nasty twist on schadenfreude which makes people complain about the wealthy. Anyhow....

I examined Forbes listing of the 400 richest Americans, then checked their political affiliation (Its easy to do. Forbes provides the links.). The top 4 were solid Democrats, then the list becomes a mix. Overall, its fair to say that “the rich” in America do not devote themselves to one party or another.

Which means neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are likely to start taxing people just because they are rich. Members of each party realize there is not enough money in the rich to cure the national debt problem, so instead they curry favor with the wealthy. The Democrats talk about taxing the rich more than the Republicans, which suggest the wealthy Democrats suffer from battered spouse syndrome.

The China Blame Game

2011-10-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

What if the U.S. Launches Trade War With China

While the entire world is focused on the debt crisis in Europe, there’s another crisis quietly erupting here in the U.S. that could be just as dangerous. It has the potential to tip the whole global economy back into recession. We’ve seen it happen before, about 80 years ago.

After unemployment soared to 9% back in 1930, politicians were under a lot of pressure to create jobs. So the U.S. government implemented the Tariff act of 1930. This new act raised tariffs on imported goods to protect Americans’ jobs from foreign competitors.

The result? Seventeen countries responded with their own tariff plans. Suddenly, we had a trade war on our hands. That trade war caused a collapse in global trade, and ended up deepening the global depression and increasing unemployment.

Now the U.S. Senate could make the same mistake their predecessors made during the Great Depression. While this would be disastrous to the global economy, it all depends on what Congress does next.

The Bill that Would Guarantee a Global Recession
This past Monday, the U.S. Senate voted to open debate on a bill that would impose tariffs on imports from countries with undervalued currencies, such as China. In response, the Chinese government quickly warned this would lead to a trading war. As the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, this bill “will severely upset China-U.S. economic and trade relations.”

In other words, China is telling us that if we approve the bill, it will retaliate with protectionist measures. This is a fight where everyone loses.

The European debt crisis is getting out of control, and the U.S. is heading into another recession. A trading war between the world’s two largest economies is the last thing the global economy needs right now. But I wouldn’t be surprised if politicians approve the bill. After all, you can always count on them to do the wrong thing.

It’s all China’s Fault

The tensions between China and the U.S. can easily escalate in the months ahead, especially if the global economy continues to slow down. With the U.S. struggling to grow, there’s increasing pressure for politicians here to “do something.”

Instead of implementing the right policies here at home to promote job creation (reducing taxes and regulations), Washington prefers to blame China for our problems. It’s easier to say China is stealing “American jobs” by keeping its exports cheap.

Even Bernanke is now attacking China. This week, our Fed chief told Congress: “The Chinese currency policy is blocking what might be a more normal recovery process in the global economy. It is to some extent hurting the recovery.” After failing to help the U.S. economy with its monetary policies, the Fed is now also blaming China for our problems. Typical.

By Evaldo Albuquerque

~~~~~~~~
When The Shallow "Think"

The sudden interest in assigning blame for this government's failed policies to China is typical of this administration. The Obama Administration and the Democrats in the Senate seem incapable of thinking a problem through, so they blame. We know anything they do will have consequences; blithely ignoring personal responsibility does not reduce the burden the country will bear.

The Wall Street protesters are of the same mind set. A complete and thorough understanding of the situation would help them formulate useful policy, which would probably be to go home. Things are the way they are for a reason. Until you develop a sound understanding, anything you do will make the situation worse. But they appear to believe they can overcome problems by wishful thinking and ignoring them. Choruses for revenge for imagined wrongs is not helpful. The marchers mean nobody any good.

They are perfect suckers.

A Case of Narcolepsy

2011-10-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Narcolepsy is a nervous system disorder in which the person will suddenly go to sleep. A victim may be walking along the side walk and collapse in sleep.

Ms Cheryl Perich has narcolepsy. She also had a teaching position at Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School. In June of 2004, Ms Perich left her position during her diagnosis. In February of 2005 she wanted the teaching position back, but the school had filled it. Note the dates, June is the end of the school year and February is well after the start of the school year.

Ms Perich sued.

The church refused to rehire her, stating her position had been filled.

The church's position is the matter is protected by the First Amendment's free exercise of religion doctrine. A derivative doctrine, called the ministerial doctrine, explains the right of church autonomy in choice of staff thus: The courts are forbidden to determine cases “involving the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministerial employees.”

The Supreme Court heard the case Wednesday.

The Obama administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is taking Perich side. The EEOC implicitly stated the freedom of religion does not apply. What is at issue, they say, is Ms Perich's First Amendment right to freely associate.

"What?" the Supreme Court Justices said in unison.

The Obama Administration questions who should decide religious matters, the church or the government. Implicit the Administration view is the notion only government can decide whether government should be deciding.

The Obama Administration position, if accepted by the court, would practically eliminate freedom of religion in the United States. If the government wins, a church could be forced into hiring anyone for any position. A church could no longer "discriminate" between a believer and a circus sex act for an vacant pastor position.

The case is Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (10-553). A decision is expected by June.

~~~~~~~~
There is more to this -- there always is. Here are two views: One from the Big Government side Slate From other from the religious side Jewish World Review

The long staircase

2011-09-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

The economy is still spiraling down. This is a direct result of Obama's continuing attempt at Big Government take over of market functions.

Obama managed to eradicate trust in the American system of wealth generation. Without trust, there will be no wealth coming out from the free market system. So Obama will be able to take over economy based on him being the last man standing. Obama's system is being based on the thug's old reliable - force.

Obama's banking overthrow
People remember the “Democratic” Party's law to buy voter approval by complicating banks collection of their own money on home loans in default. (Canceled debt may be taxable) Similar law enacted to inhibit collection on unsecured credit cards in default.

Banks were prohibited from collecting the money they lent... often the same money they had borrowed from their depositors. Although sticking it to the banks is politically appealing, it is wrong. Obama is unfair. How can the banks trust this government to help them regain their property? With no recourse, bank loans became harder to obtain. Financial liquidity dries up.

Result: A marked increase in insolvency among banks. The Obama Administration got to take over quite a few small banks, thus clearing the way for a direct takeover of large national banks by the Party corruption machine.

Obama's attack on Trust
The breakdown in trust has made banks very cautious about making new loans. The banks can never tell when the Obama government might move in and declare the banks loans "noncollectable."

Inflation is significant. We the People cannot trust our dollars. Our currency is getting devalued via government sponsored inflation. When using the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, please remember the BLS calculation basis has been shifted to remove the impact of several CPI inflators. The net effect is, just when we need to be able to rely on our money retaining value, it doesn't. The administration wants it that way.

Trustworthiness is vital in economics. Without trust, the whole free enterprise system seizes up and stops working. Therefore, trust has been one of the Obama's administrations primary targets.

Obama's attack on Manufacturing
Everyone knows about the seizure of health care, but do you realize how much the EPA has been used to control economic functions? The EPA can invent an environmental impact result and quash the activity of any company Obama wishes to smash. The destruction of Gibson Guitar Inc. and its American jobs is one example. The feds seized Gibson Guitar property despite the fact that there are no charges filed. The administration is clearly abusing their power under law.

Update: Gibson Guitar And Martin Guitar use woods from the same sources. Only Gibson was raided. The reason? Gibson's CEO is a donor to the GOP. Martin's CEO is a Democrat. This is a criminal abuse of power by the Obama administration.

Restricting food supplies
Under Obama, creating food shortages has fallen to the EPA. For two years now, the EPA has conducted close inspections of a Lancaster County watershed farms operated by the Amish. Farmers in general are getting the putz by Obama's use of the EPA. Farmers are becoming reluctant to risk even putting seed in the ground for fear of expensive federal intrusion.

Control of labor
The Left continues to sideline workers by jobs control. This is a three pronged effort on its own. One is restricting access to jobs through union control. Two is the 2009 increase in the federal minimum wage to prohibit appropriate pay for entry level positions. Three is the ever-extending unemployment compensation - which is used to finance extended furloughs of workers while the workers forget the job they used to know. All of these regulations sound like compassion on the surface -- If so, why don't they work?

Obama's madcap government debt accumulation But of course
Obama's mad spending spree and the $4.4 Trillion in new debt. Ape-snot government spending is one of the things which got us into this mess in the first place. Another debt-laden "Stimulus" bill of any sort, and the country is sunk.

Obama - Avoiding blame – The political game
The old-line Left (and their puppets in the press) portray the themselves as victim of dark and sinister Republican forces. Its hard to imagine the Republicans, who are presently airing each others dirty laundry, as dark or sinister. Republicans are disorganized political neophytes – not ready to take on the power-at-any-cost “Democratic” Party.

~~~~~~~~
Tell me it ain't so
Last month, the FDA moved to expand its regulation of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco to include cigars. If the FDA gets its way, new “cigar-killing” regulations could be put into effect as early as October.

I don't even smoke.

~~~~~~~~
The US has suffered so much incompetence and neglect seasoned with so much indifference, it will take years to recover. Let-them-eat-cake Obama is by far the least caring of any president ever.

AttackWatch - Obama's re-election site

2011-09-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

Obama has launched his re-election website. His condescending arrogance is almost unbelievable. See http://www.attackwatch.com/

Obama solicits you to "Join Attack Wire—and help stop the attacks on the President before they start." Imagine that, preemptive censorship -- from the most "transparent" administration.

Page at the Join AttackWire button

Attackwatch.com is an mudslinging attack site alright. Orwellian Newspeak is the language; everything is called exactly what it isn't -- with an atmosphere filled with paranoia and suspicion -- Obama's "changed" America in a nutshell. The site is chock full of distortions and hatred. In short, its almost a perfect snapshot of the Obama administration so far.

~~~~~~~~

The purpose of the site is to give Obama supporters a way to report "attacks" on the president, implying that any criticism is based on lies or misinformation.

Kabul under siege

2011-09-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

Obama's incompetence (or malice) bears fruit.

Taliban fighters fired rockets at the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on Tuesday and attacked police in three other areas in the biggest assault the insurgent group has mounted on the Afghan capital.

- AP report

In July of 2010, Obama chided Afghan President Karzai for the uptick in fighting. Obama effectively neutered Karzai, making him look like a foreign puppet.

For some time, Obama appears to have been trying to provoke Afghans into a nationalist backlash against foreigners.

~~~~~~~~

Afghanistan is in a violent part of the world. Nearly all the people who dwell there are Mohammedans, a religion susceptible to violence. Nevertheless, when Obama inserted his own policies into that conflict, the combat was largely over. Now that Obama has sidelined Karzai and provoked the "Arab Spring" debacle, we know Obama should have seen this present destruction as the inevitable result.

Leftist ideology is built on the idea of victim classes versus a victimizer class. Mr Obama hates Americans most; he views Americans as victimizers. So any policy he promulgates will seek to damage Americans.

Its likely there will be more.

Outrageous! Obama's Justice Dept. Keeping Islamic Bank Settlement Secret

2011-08-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

By Steven Emerson

The Justice Department has agreed to end its investigation into an international financial network with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and a Saudi prince in a settlement in excess of $30 million, sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

But DOJ officials refuse to release a copy of the settlement or make any comment on it.

"Unfortunately, we're unable to provide anything in connection with this matter," DOJ spokesman Charles Miller wrote in response to a query Aug. 16. He did not contest the existence of the settlement with the Islamic Investment Company of the Gulf (IICG). Repeated attempts to obtain the settlement, or at least a clear explanation of why it cannot be released when most government settlements are a part of the public record, have been unsuccessful.

"We will have no further comment," Miller said.

Read the rest

~~~~~~~~

To think, Obama promised the "most transparent administration in history." Just not when it comes to his buddies in terrorist organizations.

Seattle rain gardens go bad

2011-08-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

When the Obama Administration started handing out wads of cash to local governments (the "Stimulus"), Big Government Seattle hot-footed it to find ways to spend the money.

Seattle is the rain city. The city spent our debt on an unproven idea called "rain gardens." A rain garden is a catch basin built on a city street with shrubs planted in it. In order to work, a rain garden must have good drainage or else water simply swamps up and the garden rot.

Guess what.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported:

A year after subjecting a Seattle neighborhood to ugly swamps in a rain garden experiment gone awry, the city has proposed removing 10 of the gardens as part of a $500,000 fix.

The city filed notice of the proposal this week, which is part of strategy to fix its failed trial in curbing stormwater in Ballard. Seattle Public Utilities had installed about 50 rain gardens in the neighborhood last year, in hopes they would soak up stormwater runoff and prevent it from flooding sewers.

But instead of getting pretty, water-loving shrubs and grasses in front of their homes, residents got stark, muddy pools that failed to drain. The pools presented drowning risks for kids, breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and slopes that made it hard to find level footing when getting out of a car.

Officials acknowleged the failure earlier this year, saying they had cut corners in soil testing in order to fast-track the Ballard project and get $1.4 million in federal stimulus funds.

The total cost of the total fiasco - $2.1 million. Peanuts in comparison to most government waste, but still -- that's two millionaires worth of waste.

Nobody can waste resources like big government can waste resources.

Probably true humor

2011-08-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

Seattle has the Cascadia Fault.
California has the San Andreas Fault.
But, what caused the east coast earthquake?
According to Mr Obama and Nancy Pelosi, it was...

... Bush's Fault.

~~~~~~~~

Its a relief to know that the stock market has accurately predicted 14 of the last 9 recessions.

~~~~~~~~

Back to the seriousness tomorrow.

Obama the illegal gun runner.

2011-08-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Obama indulged himself in an attempt to frame citizen gun owners by spreading firearms among criminals. Obama ordered the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to start an illegal operation the BATFE dubbed "Fast and Furious." The illegal operation resulted in the death of one federal agent -- so far. The Democratic Party controlled press has been strangely silent.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down with a weapon traceable to Fast and Furious on December 14, 2010. That death changed everything. The BATFE allowed [illegal] straw purchasers to buy and distribute weapons among the criminal element in our society and throughout Mexico.

Interview with Rep. Paul Gosar - http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45593

Wisconsin schools buck union to cut health costs

2011-08-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

The Wisconsin riots and protests were all about the money... for the corrupt Wisconsin Education Association union bosses and their equally corrupt "Democratic" Party dancing masters. My dad was compelled to pay dues to the WEA and he despised it -- 90% for the Union Bosses, 10% for the teachers.

Reprinted from the Washington Examiner article, by Byron York.

The Hartland-Lakeside School District, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee in tiny Hartland, Wis., had a problem in its collective bargaining contract with the local teachers union.

The contract required the school district to purchase health insurance from a company called WEA Trust. The creation of Wisconsin's largest teachers union -- "WEA" stands for Wisconsin Education Association -- WEA Trust made money when union officials used collective bargaining agreements to steer profitable business its way.

The problem for Hartland-Lakeside was that WEA Trust was charging significantly higher rates than the school district could find on the open market. School officials knew that because they got a better deal from United HealthCare for coverage of nonunion employees. On more than one occasion, Superintendent Glenn Schilling asked WEA Trust why the rates were so high. "I could never get a definitive answer on that," says Schilling.

Changing to a different insurance company would save Hartland-Lakeside hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on key educational priorities -- especially important since the cash-strapped state government was cutting back on education funding. But teachers union officials wouldn't allow it; the WEA Trust requirement was in the contract, and union leaders refused to let Hartland-Lakeside off the hook.

That's where Wisconsin's new budget law came in. The law, bitterly opposed by organized labor in the state and across the nation, limits the collective bargaining powers of some public employees. And it just happens that the Hartland-Lakeside teachers' collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30. So now, freed from the expensive WEA Trust deal, the school district has changed insurers.

"It's going to save us about $690,000 in 2011-2012," says Schilling. Insurance costs that had been about $2.5 million a year will now be around $1.8 million. What union leaders said would be a catastrophe will in fact be a boon to teachers and students.

But the effect of weakening collective bargaining goes beyond money. It also has the potential to reshape the adversarial culture that often afflicts public education. In Hartland-Lakeside, there's been no war between union-busting bureaucrats on one side and impassioned teachers on the other; Schilling speaks with great collegiality toward the teachers and says with pride that they've been able to work together on big issues. But there has been a deep division between the school district and top union executives.

In the health insurance talks, for example, Schilling last year began telling teachers about different insurance plans, some of which, like United HealthCare's, required a higher deductible. "We involved them, and they overwhelmingly endorsed the change to United HealthCare," he says. But even with the teachers on board, when school officials presented a change-in-coverage proposal to union officials, it was immediately rejected. The costly WEA Trust deal stayed in place.

Now, with the collective bargaining agreement gone, Schilling looks forward to working more closely with teachers. "I would say the biggest change is we have a lot more involvement with a wider scope of teachers," he says. When collective bargaining was in effect, "We dealt with a select team of teachers, a small group of three or four who were on the bargaining team, and then the union director. Any information that went to the teachers went through them. Now, we feel that we will have a direct dialogue."

It's not hard to see why union officials hate the new law so much. It not only breaks up cherished and lucrative union monopolies like high-cost health insurance; it also threatens to break through the union-built wall between teachers and administrators and allow the two sides to work together more closely. The old union go-betweens, who controlled what their members could and could not hear, will be left aside.

Hartland-Lakeside isn't the only school district that is pulling free from collective bargaining agreements that mandated WEA Trust coverage. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Pewaukee School District, not far from Hartland-Lakeside, will save $378,000 by next year by leaving WEA Trust. The Menomonee Falls School District, farther north, will reportedly save $1.3 million. Facing state cutbacks, the districts can't afford to overpay for union-affiliated coverage.

Look for the unions to fight back with everything they have. If the Wisconsin situation has shown anything, it is that organized labor views the collective bargaining fight as a life-or-death struggle. If the unions lose in Wisconsin, the clamor for change could spread to other states. What happened in Hartland-Lakeside could become a model for other schools looking for new and better ways to do business.

Don't Read Bad News

2011-08-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

This is bad news.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Survey fell from +3.2 to -30.7. A reading that low has always signaled that a recession is coming in the near future.

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment plunged to 54.9. Again, a reading that low has always signaled that a recession is coming in the near future.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) surveys indicate contraction. That signals a recession is coming in the near future.

The stock market is taking a pounding.

The evidence points to another US recessionary hit. Its going to get worse.

~~~~~~~~
Is government the answer?

This recession is homegrown. When I talk to people about this, they say the world is going through hard times, so the US will too. This view forgets the US is still the dominant world economy. When the US catches cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia. It started here.

Aggravating the world's economic problems is the unresponsive Obama administration. Obama offered fertilizer in his recent Bus Tour campaign speeches -- he offered the same ideas which got us into this in the first place.

The downturn is being fueled by Obama's "Stimulus" package, enacted nearly three years ago. For example, in Washington State, the "Stimulus" gave the Gregoire government $2 billion to dig a tunnel under Seattle. Gregoire had to match the federal funds with a $4 billion increase in taxation. The tax increase is slowing the state economy in awful ways.

~~~~~~~~
The solution still is human freedom

The US must return to a free society and free economy -- Freedom is always a good thing. That will cause the world economy storm to subside and everyone everywhere will be better off.

Constitutional President-Eating Amoeba

2011-08-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

It turns out Obama has no idea what to do to improve the economic situation. He demonstrated this back during his campaign when he suggested "spreading wealth around" was good economics. If the money earners are not allowed to keep their treasure, they stop earning money.

America's tough straights will be over as soon as we get rid of the politics which say we can take from those who earn and give to those we think have need.

As soon as Obama is gone, we will see improvement.

That said, I don't know if we can wait for the next election cycle before we remove Obama. The framers built into the Constitution means of removal.

The impeachment process can properly be used for this. Impeachment is about the qualification to operate the office of president, not about criminal behavior. The words "impeach" and "convict" have criminal connotation. But in constitutional context, they simply mean the president is unable to do the job.

"Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law." [US Constitution, Article 1, Section 3]. Clearly, removal by impeachment is not a criminal action.

In that vein, impeach Obama now. Convict and remove him soon.

~~~~~~~~

That's not to say there aren't reasons to toss Obama in jail.

ObamaBus

2011-08-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

The ObamaBus Tour

President Barack Obama leaves the White House today for a three-day bus trip, talking job creation at small towns across the Midwest in hopes of distancing himself from the "partisan brinksmanship" he says has poisoned the economy.

(This is the same Congress which gave Obama everything he wanted.)

The trip isn't likely to be without bumps.

Obama appears to be trying out a campaign theme by blaming Congress — without a direction mention of Republicans — for the bitterness that led to an eleventh-hour debt limit agreement, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president was expecting to hear more anger on the road.

Polls find that the partisan feud over raising the debt ceiling, the stock market gyrations and a stubborn unemployment rate have left Americans more pessimistic about the economy and their future than at any time this year. Republicans already have accused Obama of mixing policy with politics by barnstorming in the battleground region — at taxpayer expense.

Read the rest.

The Enemy Advances On All Fronts

2011-08-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

The TEA Party was right, they foresaw this meltdown part deux, as the result of massive govt spending. Tea Party understood that intrusion of government into free market would corrupt the market, damage the natural economy and create a lack of confidence.

Confidence and trust are necessary to create wealth.

Government must shrink. The current levels of micromanagement have profited only a cadre of bureaucrats and politicians whose only motivation is personal power. Their massive micromanagement is shrinking the economy and making us all much more poor. This is current mayhem is the expected result when authoritarians enslave a market.

A free market economy works much better for every one. It is critically important that Congress work to restore a free economy. You can expect to hear a lot of posturing about government creating employment (it doesn't) and responsibility to socialist state dependents, but all of this is red herring. Government control of the economy is cracking it. Maintaining socialist spending habits and government micromanagement will only make things worse.

~~~~~~~~

How'd this happen?

Management of government benefit programs like SS and welfare have attracted a class of unscrupulous bureaucrats and politicians who only see personal profit. This is the expected motive. But the scale of the programs matter. Corruption is easier with the increasing scale of programs.

Free market motivation is also personal profit. The market forces the quest for personal profit into a compulsion to serve other people. The free market is far more flexible than government, so it can keep up with the natural shiftiness of people out for gain.

What is amazing is the free market does this without government oversight, and without much management at all. This works because it is in every one's self-interest to watch what is happening. If something goes wrong in the free market, the result is an opportunity. By way of contrast, if something goes wrong in a managed economy, it creates misery for millions.

The free market does not require participation – this is one reason its called free. There are millions of participants, and taken together they don't miss much. Improper activity is not tolerated.

Government control requires participation, at least as a sufferer – this is why government control is immoral. Government has a limited number of managers and they miss many important details. Even if the managers were perfect altruists, they could not be perfect observers.

~~~~~~~~

Life will go on, but it won't be as comfortable as it was before the enemy invaded our economic system. Like war, economic invasion always comes with a wasteful price tag. But eventually, we will prevail and we depoliticize the economy. The enemy will be driven out.

The World Ends - Again

2011-08-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

Financial catastrophe in the offing. The US debt has been downgraded from AAA to AA+. The United States government joins those of Belgium and Slovenia.

Wait a minute, an AA+ rating is not so bad. Yet.

The debt downgrade will be costly, especially if the government continues to spend like a drunken fool. Given Obama's financial sense, he will insist on more spending. His financial sense is like the joke about the person who insists he can't be overdrawn... he still has checks left.

Its time for us all to remind our elected officials to sober up, to cut federal spending and pay down national debt. We can't afford to sell America's future, 'cause we can't get a good price for it anymore.

~~~~~~~~~

Recent times the world ended.

- 12/31/99 - the Y2K bug, which fizzled.
- Hurricane Katrina. The Party controlled press blamed Bush.
- Floods in the Mississippi basin. The Democrats blamed Bush again.
- 9.2% unemployment. The Democrats blamed... oh, you know.
- Earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I don't make light of this one; real people got really hurt. But this was supposed to cause massive disruptions in manufacturing worldwide. So far, not much.
- Global warming - no global cooling - no climate change. There, that covers it.

Back in the early 1970s, there was a commercial on television which predicted mankind would be standing shoulder to shoulder across the face of the earth by 2072. Not only that, the commercial extrapolated we would be standing in 22 feet of beer.

I can't wait.

Personally, I look forward to Winter Solstice, 12/21/2012, when the world is supposed to end due to galactic alignments. If we have any luck, it'll really happen.

Fire Eric Holder

2011-08-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) launched Operation Fast and Furious, an illegal pipeline of thousands of arms to Mexican drug cartels.

Two of the guns that were allowed to "walk" across our border were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.

Attorney General Holder's Justice Department is now stonewalling a congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.

Attorney General Holder professed his ignorance of the operation. In light of these statements he is either incompetent or covering up crimes that were committed to advance the Obama Administration's gun control agenda.

Through his actions, Attorney General Holder has demonstrated that he cannot be trusted with the powers of his office, the law enforcement agencies he commands, or the lives of Federal agents.

Remove Attorney General Eric Holder from office. Click here to sign the NRA petition.

Debt Doomsday

2011-07-29T08:22:00.002-07:00

On July 12th, Obama warned that Social Security checks might not get paid on August 3rd if the debt limit is not increased.

Everyone knows the "Democratic" Party was taking money from the Social Security Trust to fund their two year, off-budget, spending spree in 2009 and 2010.

Obama is telling us the "Democratic" Party blew through your Social Security savings in only 2 years. Democrats already spent every nickel in the Social Security Trust fund -- so are we supposed to increase their debt limit?

I've got a better idea. Clearly Obama and his buddies have corrupted the balance sheet of America. Lets take Obama and the Democrats out of office and put them in prison where the other criminals are.

Debt Is for Suckers

Representative Porker of the Month.

2011-07-27T09:30:00.001-07:00

Citizens Against Government Waste named Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) July Porker of the Month. Markey accused proponents of federal spending cuts of indifference toward potential victims of weather emergencies. (What happened to racism?)

According to Rep. Markey, reducing expenditures for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – which contains the National Weather Service (NWS) – “will lengthen the time it takes to alert our citizens about an incoming storm, or reduce our ability to give our nation’s farmers the information they need to manage their crops…Yet these kinds of vital capabilities don’t seem to matter to House Republicans.”

Contrary to Rep. Markey’s accusations, spending at NOAA is greater than ever. Its budget is slated to reach $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2012, an increase of 46 percent since 2002.

Moreover, private organizations have been performing many of the functions of NOAA and NWS for decades. Companies like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel disseminate vital weather information on the Internet, television, and radio 24 hours a day.

“Rep. Markey, like many supporters of ever-expanding government spending, is under the impression that every federal outlay is essential. Just as reductions to the National Park Service budget will not automatically cause Abraham Lincoln’s stone likeness in South Dakota to crumble, cuts to NOAA will not abruptly put Americans unwittingly in the path of a tornado or tsunami” CAGW President Tom Schatz commented.

For insinuating that politicians and citizens keen to prevent a fiscal disaster are guilty of apathy toward weather disaster victims, Rep. Markey is the July, 2011 Porker of the Month.

The pause in the "recovery"

2011-07-11T08:56:00.000-07:00

The stock market predicts the future of the economy. Generally speaking, the more income generated by optimists in the stock market, the more successful America will be. The stock market average indices are thermometers of the future prosperity of America.

Its always important to follow the money -- the economy benefits everyone, as during an expansion, the money goes everywhere people want to work. If the economy benefits only a few, as during a contraction like we're in, it is important to see who is getting ahead. The politically connected Leftist 'ruling class' are getting ahead.

But political affiliation can blind some people and result in very odd economic analyses. The establishment-liberal Zacks Investment Research published this:

"Friday's dismal jobs report shocked investors. For the second month in a row, job creation wasn't even close to where it's supposed to be at this, or any, stage of the recovery cycle. It's almost hard to believe that it's been nearly 3 years since this crisis first began and jobs are still stuck in the neutral zone. Why isn't there more job creation?

"It all comes back to the very thing that started the financial crisis: housing. New home construction creates jobs. Right now, we're still near record lows for new construction starts. Until we get more new home construction, we won't see the big job growth we need to spark the economy."

-- Tracey Ryniec

This analysis shows how very turned around 'liberal' analysts can be. Housing did not start the current downturn. The US housing market was distorted by Leftist political manipulation into a bloated valuation. Think Barney Frank & Co. The dramatically increasing valuations of housing dragged along the value of everything else, resulting in a mass euphoria. Meanwhile everything became very pricey. When the political manipulation could not hold out the actual market anymore, mere anarchy was loosed. Housing values went into free fall.

Housing starts do not create wealth any more than Obama's "spreading wealth around" creates wealth. Housing is an indicator of how optimistic people are about the future, and how much cash they feel they have right now.

Sort of like the stock market, the housing market is a thermometer of the people's general expectations. The two markets should move more of less parallel each other. But one does not control the other. They both move in accord with expectation.

Things will recover some day, once we get a responsible government. Obama's method of punishing success in the market is not the way.

~~~~~~~~
Analysis and politics

Before the housing collapse, housing got very expensive. This fueled a despising of those who owned a house before valuations became ridiculous. Those who supplied housing, i.e., builders and banks, became political targets. Obama's "spreading the wealth around" sounded plausible to a majority of the electorate.

Clearly, the economy was out of hand - someone was to blame - Someone better take the fall! Too bad the public found solace with the same Leftists who corrupted the economy in the first place.

The country lurched left - and lives were ruined. Government was called upon to redistribute everything. Only the ruling class of politicians, crass manipulators, and the bureaucratic Left benefited. They Left has no idea how national prosperity is created, and that is not their interest anyway. The Leftist vision of "economic justice" is controlling who uses product and assigning blame. The Left fatten themselves on whatever they deem theirs.

The ongoing process of Leftist "deeming" means no government budget will guide government spending. Witness the 2 years of Democrat rule. There was no budget and government tossed billions of dollars after whatever they wanted. Mostly they gave money, our money, to their political allies.

Presently grabby Obama seeks more of the same. He and his cronies will crab about "Republican tax cuts for the rich" when those cuts will work to everyone's benefit. Obama and Co will complain about ruinous cuts in government spending, when those cuts are absolutely required for prosperity.

The Leftist Democrats had no idea how much they were spending; they had no budget to guide them. It bugs the ruinous Obama and the Left that control is slipping away.

The way out of the mess is the same as always. Take the control away form government and put it back in the personal hands of the people. The method was discovered centuries ago. It is the free market. Free markets have been involved in mass suffering, because the free market is the people, the free market is us.

Freedom has never caused any suffering. Its takes a self-absorbed politician to do that.

Renewed gun control effort

2011-07-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

The press reports the Obama administration is planning to unveil new gun control initiatives.

In a Thursday briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, "As you know, the President directed the Attorney General to form working groups with key stakeholders to identify common-sense [i.e. fear based] measures that would improve Americans' safety and security while fully respecting Second Amendment rights. That process is well underway at the Department of Justice with stakeholders on all sides working through these complex issues. And we expect to have some more specific announcements in the near future."

Carney provided no further details on the initiatives, but he isn't the only one saying something is in the works. U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) said, “I have spoken to the president. He is with me on [gun control], and it's just going to be when that opportunity comes forward that we're going to be able to go forward,” according to a related article on NPR.org.

And longtime anti-gun activist Sarah Brady said in March the president told her, “I just want you to know that we are working on [gun control] ... We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.” Brady had gone to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on high capacity magazines.

We knew this was coming, but why has Obama delayed so long? Perhaps gun control is the final puff on Obama's political capital, in his long list of planned failures for America.

Contains material from NRA-ILA Alerts

Violent Viking

2011-07-05T23:45:00.000-07:00

The VV sent in a couple of observations

~~~~~~~~
Casey Anthony

Casey Anthony is found innocent of murder! What a shocker!

You and I were not in the courtroom. All we know is what we were spoonfed by the press. We don't have the same information the jury had. And yet 77% of us are certain Anthony got away with murder.

Or did the press simply tailor its reporting? A mother killing her child is too terrible to contemplate, and sure to appeal to a large audience. Were the press simply pumping up sales?

Its too terrible to contemplate.

~~~~~~~~
Strauss-Kahn

This maid claimed that Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, one of the most powerful men in the world, sexually attacked her.

One of the first news reports stated that the Struass-Kahn machine tried to bribe her family which lives in Africa . Apparently that didn’t work even if it was true.

So now they have launched a vicious attack on her the source of this information is the “Post” yet every news agency reports this as if it were the absolute true.

The prediction wasn’t difficult; one news report from the Post calls her just about every bad thing you can think of including being a prostitute.

So we have one of the most powerful men in the world against a hotel maid.

You see why this wasn’t even a close call?

The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood

2011-07-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

by Frank McGaffney

Obama may not claim to be Muslim, but he longs for the US to submit.

"The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB, or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective."

Read the rest here.

Do millionaires evaporate?

2011-07-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

A recent study on U.S. wealth by the Spectrem Group concluded there were 8.4 million American millionaires at the end of 2010.

That’s 800,000 less than in 2007!

You might think the real estate bust explains the disappearance of these 800,000 millionaires… but that isn’t the whole story.

You see, the number of new millionaires in other parts of the world soared by 3.8 million over the same time.

So why is the wealth of Americans vanishing while the rest of the world gets richer?

America

2011-07-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Deception, hatred, what else?

2011-07-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

More telegraphy from the Left

How the Left uses intimidation and brownshirt tactics in their version of sweetness and light. From an article by Caroline Glick Unmasking the ‘international community’

On Sunday US Congresswoman and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann appeared on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopolous. Towards the end of her interview, Stephanopolous informed Bachmann that she can expect the media to begin attacking her family, and specifically the 23 foster children that she and her husband cared for.

As he put it, "I know you want to shield them [the foster children] but are they prepared and are you prepared for the loss of privacy that comes with the president [sic] campaign? And is that something you are concerned about for them?"

Stephanopolous's menacing warning was notable for what it says about the nature of the leftist-dominated media. In a recent interview First Lady Michelle Obama thanked the media for protecting her family from scrutiny. Yet Stephanopoulis had no compunction about threatening Bachmann's family with a journalistic lynch mob.

And this makes sense.

As fellow leftists, the Obamas get a free ride.

Puppy dog joke

2011-06-30T17:03:00.001-07:00

Obama was walking along the sidewalk in D.C. one day. A woman had a box of puppies on the sidewalk. Obama looked at the pups and asked if they were Democrats or Republicans.

"Democrats" the woman answered.

A week later, Obama noticed the same woman with the same box. He asked how the little Democratic puppies were doing.

"Just fine. But there no longer Democrats. They're Republicans."

"Why? Last week they were Democrats." Obama pouted.

"Last week they were," the lady answered. "This week their eyes are open."

Obama Plans Debt Catastrophe

2011-06-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Obama is unconsciously telegraphing what he intends to do about national debt. He is a very inept man. He is predicting national catastrophe as if increasing the debt ceiling were the only way to avert it.

This is Obama telegraph message. To give us the catastrophe Obama desires, the administration intend to attempt a forced default on current treasuries -- if Obama does not get the long-term catastrophe of more debt. The Obama way leads to catastrophe.

The debt ceiling is only a government problem. You and I will be affected by reduced spending, but we will pretty much able to carry on in our lives. But if the debt goes up as high as Obama wants it to go, we citizens will be swamped with taxes to pay off the debt.

Default or more debt are not the only options. Less spending is another option. The first use of all government funds should be to repay the debt. The Democrats will try to structure the situation so that somehow not laying more debt on American children will look unpalatable.

Their willing accomplices in the Party controlled press will tout increasing the debt as if no one has to pay for it. Except maybe the rich fairy-elf no one knows.

Whether or not the Big Government lie will work will depend on how many of us have realized the Left's war is upon all Americans, especially the middle class.

We must force reduced spending upon the Democrats. The government does not have to default on debt even if the budget talks fail. The administration can always reduce its stupid spending.

Email 'em. Use the links on the left side of the page. Tell 'em no more debt.

American Indepedence = Demanding Intrusion by Big Government!

2011-06-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

This excerpt is from Frank J. Fleming's The Real Story of America’s Founding. Political satire is the best satire -- It only offends those who ought to be offended.

Back before the Unites States was an independent nation, people lived in horrific conditions under British rule. The British weren’t providing very good free health care (wait time for a poor person to get an MRI was over 200 years), they were refusing to increase taxes on the rich, and they had very few laws dictating what colonists were allowed to eat, causing many to become obese on the high-fructose maize syrup the Indians taught them to make.

So the colonists kept demanding that the British give them big government to regulate their lives and provide for their basic needs while confiscating all their wealth. “We’re stupid,” they’d cry out to the British. “Please rule us and make us do what you think is best!” But the British kept refusing, saying, “No, you guys are doing okay by yourselves. We want you to have the freedom to run your own lives.”

It was this laissez-faire attitude that led to the Boston Massacre, in which five people died of heart attacks in Boston from eating fatty foods a proper government would never have let them eat in the first place. Finally the colonists had enough of not being bossed around and decided if the British weren’t going to provide them the all-encompassing government they wanted, they had to make it themselves.

They started by throwing tea into the Boston Harbor since they determined it had too much caffeine and people shouldn’t have been allowed to drink it. Then they formed militias to collect more taxes from the colonists to spend on welfare and government works projects. The British tried to strike back by ending regulations and giving tax rebates, but the colonists were now ready to fight to make sure some large entity would tell them what to do. And many were rallied to the cause by Patrick Henry’s cry of “Give me a large government telling me what I can and can’t do while spending most of my money, or give me death!”

Some leftists will make the classic Big Government error when they see this post. They'll be confused by social restrictions which are imposed on self, with political restrictions which are imposed on [nearly] everyone by someone else.

For example, if you didn’t like the odd stringency of the Puritans, you could drop that religion. Its much harder to drop all your property, not to mention your religion and friends etc, and move to another country.

Thanks to Bob1 in Seattle.

A Social Problem

2011-06-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

America has a problem. Though it seems the rest of the world is recovering from the recent financial meltdown, America is stuck in neutral. Our government has been inflicting cures on us which do not work, and here we are.

America is suffering from a malaise in the structure of our society. We do not reward the people who build society; the engineers, the doctors, the risk-taking entrepreneurs, and more. Instead, those people are driven into early retirement by fear.

You even see ads for the source of the fear generated on television. We are bombarded by the message "Who can you sue?" America has about 97% of the world's supply of lawyers. Does the presence of this arrogant aristocracy explain our economic and societal problems?

Lawyers start out to be lawyers. They never get any "real world" work experience. Like a micromanaging boss, they have no clue about the professions or businesses they sue. Instead, they are lawyers -- that makes them instant experts in in a profession which takes an ordinary mortal years to master.

The answer seems clear; we must find a way to reduce the numbers lawyers. I'm not going to suggest choking our rivers with their dead or something like that. Instead, there ought to be three requirements for the practice of law in the United States.

The applicant would be required

to finish law school.
to pass the exams.
to be at least 55 years of age.

~~~~~~~~

Adding the age requirement for the practice of law will force potential lawyers to gain real world experience. The practitioners of law will be more comprehending of the impact they have.

~~~~~~~~

I mentioned this idea to a fan of big government, i.e. a Democrat. He was thunderstruck by the notion that the lawyers who control his political party would be forced to learn about real life before practicing law. There may be hope.

The Road to Serfdom – Finally!

2011-06-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

What entices people to make poor bargains with their government? No serious adult expects another person to give his life purpose and meaning --- ordinary, well-meaning humans buckle under that amount of pressure.

But the American Left lays that requirement on government: The Left imagines the government can allocate resources and require production in a fair and efficient manner. That's a lot to expect of a government consisting entirely of saints. What if you have to get your politicians and bureaucrats from the human race?

Dictatorship can be defined as what happens when one person's preferences rule over others. Safety cannot be found in democracy, but only in abiding respect for the rights of others. But government is designed to rule; an abiding mistrust of governmental power is required to avoid dictatorship.

The Road to Serfdom imagines the process as if it were inevitable. It is not. But the case for potential abuse is clear when politicians are expected to structure everyone's lives. Until tyranny reaches the end-stage there is always the possibility to reverse course.

Never sell your soul to a politician. Reverse course now.

~~~~~~~~

In 1946, LOOK Magazine published kind of a comic book summary of theme of the classic political primer, Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich von Hayek. Many of the images were drawn from the then recent world experience with three very real dictatorships. (It has happened.)

War forces “national planning” to permit total mobilization of your country's economy, you gladly surrender many freedoms. You know regimentation was forced on you by your country's enemies.

Many want “planning” to stay. Arguments for a “peace production board” are heard before the war ends. Wartime “planners” who want to stay in power encourage the idea.

The “planners” promise Utopias. A rosy plan for the farmers goes well in rural areas, a plan for industrial workers is popular in the cities --- and so on. Many new “planners” are elected to office.

But they can't agree on one Utopia. With peace, a new legislature meets, but the win-the-war unity is gone. The “planners” nearly come to blows. Each has his own plan, each won't budge.

And citizens can't agree either. When the “planners” finally patch up a temporary plan months later, citizens in turn disagree. What the farmer likes, the factory worker doesn't like. Imagine that! Politicians using government power to buy favor with the constituency.

“Planners” hate to force agreement. Most “national planners” are well-meaning idealists, and balk at any use of force. The hope some miracle of public agreement for their patchwork plan.

They try to “sell” the plan to all. In an unsuccessful effort to “educate” people to uniform view, “planners” establish a giant propaganda machine – which the coming dictator will find handy.

The gullible do find agreement. Meanwhile, growing national confusion leads to protest meetings. The least educated – thrilled and convinced by fiery oratory, form a party or movement within a party.

Confidence in “planners” fades. The more the planners improvise, the greater the disturbance to normal business. Everybody suffers. People now feel – rightly – that “planners” can't get things done.

The “strong man” is given power. In desperation, “planners” authorize the new party leader to hammer out a plan and force its obedience. Later, they'll dispense with him, or so they think.

The Party takes over the country. By now the confusion is so great that obedience tot he new leader must be obtained at all costs. Maybe you would join the Party yourself to aid national unity.

A negative aim welds Party unity. An early step of all dictators is to inflame the majority in common cause against some scapegoat minority. In Germany, the negative aim was Antisemitism.

No one opposes the leader's plan. It would be suicide; the new secret police are ruthless. Ability to force obedience always becomes the number one virtue in the “planned state.” Now all freedom is gone. Noticed the new, sweeping power given to the Treasury Department or the TSA. And of course the Healthcare plan forced participation.

Your profession is planned. The wider job choice promised by the now defunct “planners” turns out to be a tragic farce. “Planners” never have delivered, and never will be able to.

Your wages are “planned.” Divisions of the wage scale must be arbitrary and rigid. Running a “planned state” from central headquarters is clumsy, unfair and inefficient.

Your thinking is “planned.” In the dictatorship, unintentionally created by the planners, there is no room for difference of opinion. Posters, radio, press – all tell you the same lies.

Your recreation is “planned.” It is no coincidence that sports and amusements have all been carefully “planned” in all regimented nations. Once started, the “planners” can't stop. You are only one of the masses.

Your disciplining is “planned.” If you are fired from your job, its might be by a firing squad. What used to be an error is now a crime against the state. Thus ends the road to serfdom.

From Look Magazine, 1946

One Health Care Law For All Some

2011-06-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

No liberty in ObamaCare, or anywhere else for that matter.

The most significant feature of republic is that everyone is equal before the law. No law is enacted or allowed which confers special privilege. Republic means equality before the law.

The Obama administration is all about inequality before the law. 78 million people will become uninsured due to ObamaCare. Nevertheless, Obama has now handed out ObamaCare Waivers, special legal status, to 733 of Obama's political allies, by the administration's own account.

Legitimate government has only one source of new law, and all law must be in accord with common law; the law of the People. In the American system, new law comes from the Congress. All law they enact must be in accord with the Constitution as understood by the common People.

ObamaCare grants waivers, but this feature does not exist in the law enacted by Congress. Instead the Department of Health and Human Services simply declared they have the power to grant favor to their political pets.

Apply for your own ObamaCare Waiver. This a genuine government information link.

ObamaCare must be repealed by Congress and the concept of government control of health care rejected by everybody. Government has no business trifling with the health of the People.

~~~~~~~~
Violating the Republic
A litany of violations

It takes amazing arrogance to circumvent the American Constitution and WIll of the People as Obama has done. The Left will continue to push to destroy personal liberty. Obama and Co. will use ObamaCare to invade the privacy of those in need of health care.

*
The Obama administration is presently requiring the ATFE to gather unlawful information about firearms sales in border states. They say this is the prevent firearms from slipping into criminal hands. The ATFE's Project Gunrunner was set up to smear the reputations of lawful gun owners in preparation to ban private gun ownership. Obama is also courting the UN to restrict private firearms ownership. (link)

*
The EPA, in 2010, restricted private landlords from painting their rentals in the name of lead abatement (Asbestos abatement is being used to the same end). The private landlord must register with the government, take special courses and pay a fee to be able to paint his own property. If we still lived in freedom, there would need to be some reason to regard the property as lead tainted before the regulation is applied. This despite the fact that serum blood lead levels in children have declined since 1980. (link)

*
The administration is causing economic uncertainty by flip-flopping on oil drilling, resulting in high oil prices. Although Obama presently says he will okay oil drilling in the gulf, his allies in the authoritarian Green Movement have come to Obama's rescue. (link) Seems deep sea drilling is still effectively banned.

Heavy industry requires time to set up and get going. Who will risk spending millions and millions of dollars if the government may ban the effort after the private funds are spent. This is plainly unfair. No one seriously believes the Obama Administration plans to be fair with American Industry.

~~~~~~~~

Not just the Federal government.

Liberal Washington State is a symptom of Obama style government. The state has descended into a morass of restriction, entitlement and state sponsored duplicity. (link) The state legislature adjourned having spent $5 billion more than they took in. Boeing removed their headquarters. Microsoft is shrinking. Business is abandoning the state for less restrictive ground. The Leftist effort is enforced by their ever-ready cadre of lawyers eager and willing to sue anyone who doesn't conform to government mandate (for a hefty fee, of course). In the "liberal" state, everyone is required to conform.

Liberal California, before it was so corrupted, used to be the 8th largest economy in the world and the largest state economy in the US. (link) But the home of Nancy Pelosi is economically shrinking, now placing behind New York State. If you look at the surface streets in California, you will notice a third world appearance. And potholes. Everything is rusting. Meanwhile, illegal aliens demand more, and public employees get pay increases.

Leftist liberalism spreads malaise everywhere it goes.

~~~~~~~~

Until all Americans realize how government power is abused by liberalism and activism, we are screwed.

Not Homosexual Enough for Softball

2011-06-02T10:22:00.002-07:00

Who's on what?

A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by three men who claim they were disqualified from the 2008 Gay Softball World Series near Seattle for not being gay enough.

The men, members of a San Francisco softball team, say they were questioned in front of a room full of strangers about their sexual preferences after a protest was lodged alleging their team had violated a rule that limited to two the number of heterosexuals on any team.

The three men, who are bisexual, say the questioning was intrusive and allege in the lawsuit that the event's sponsor and its rule violate state anti-discrimination laws.

Link

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

Send a care package to our troops deployed on the front lines. It will mean more to them than you will ever know.

More ObamaCare Waivers

2011-05-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

The American Association of Retired Persons got an ObamaCare waiver. AARP will not have to carry health insurance for its corporate employees. ObamaCare is being used to pet political pets, exactly as planned.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) news release:

Citizens Against Government Waste named Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Porker of the Month, for the ill-defined process by which HHS grants or denies waivers from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as ObamaCare.

After aggressively supporting ObamaCare prior to its passage in 2010, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) recently requested and received a waiver from HHS.

AARP is just one of the 1,372 unions, businesses, and insurers, representing approximately 3.1 million Americans, that have received waivers from PPACA’s onerous regulatory burdens.

Numerous CEOs and business owners have voiced their concerns over PPACA, stating that its provisions and mandates will drastically increase their costs and force them to lay off workers in order to remain solvent.

On May 17, the White House attempted to justify its capricious waiver-granting process, stating that HHS has the power to “issue temporary waivers from the annual limit provision of the law if it would disrupt access to existing insurance arrangements or adversely affect premiums, causing people to lose coverage,” which is precisely what PPACA was "intended" to prevent.

“It is disgraceful that Secretary Sebelius is arbitrarily choosing when to enforce the mandates of a bill that just one year ago she claimed would be universally embraced by the American public… it has become clear that businesses are wary of what this bill will do to their bottom line, and that it will not control costs or improve healthcare outcomes,” CAGW President Tom Schatz observed.

For the incoherent manner with which her department has doled out regulatory relief to businesses seeking a reprieve from the increasingly sickly PPACA, CAGW names HHS Secretary Sebelius the May 2011 Porker of the Month.

Read more about the Porker of the Month.

New York election

2011-05-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

Democrat Kathleen Hochul won over Republican Jane Corwin in New York’s 26th Congressional District May 25th. The Democratic Party controlled press insists the Republican lost because she was intent on dismantling Medicare.

Democrat Hochul skipped over the fact that ObamaCare is built on the bones of Medicare. The Democratic Party raided Medicare for $500 billion to make ObamaCare. If Medicare is not fixed somehow, there is no alternative to ObamaCare.

How many people remember that ObamaCare, as enacted, required everyone to buy health insurance? The Republicans may have made a political error by removing that component of ObamaCare, thus removing the most odious of the Democrats sins.

Does the loss of the 26th district presage the Republicans will in 2012?

Hardly. The former representative, Chris Lee (R), posed shirtless on the internet. That behavior disgusted his conservative constituency and dirtied the Republican brand.

If people forget how Medicare was crippled; If people forget about 8-9 % unemployment; If people forget the loss of civil rights from 2 years of "Democratic" Party run wild; If enough people forget, the Republicans will be slaughtered in 2012. Shortly after a Party victory, the Demos will resume ransacking the economy, political rights, health care. Then the electorate would be forced to recall why they elected Republicans to the House in 2010.

If the People are as stupid as the "Democratic" Party seems to think they are, then the People will vote for Democrats.

26th district Vote tallies

Democrat Hochul won 47.1% of the vote
Republican Jane Corwin, 42.6%
TEA Party Jack
Davis, 9.2%
Green (Communist) Ian Murphy 1.1%

Obama's New Middle East

2011-05-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

The gullible, the guilty, and the ignorance of truth are crucial in advancing Obama's New Middle East

Obama's political filter seems to be convenience for Obama.

1967

2011-05-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

Obama sole proposal for Middle East Peace is that Israel ought to withdraw to its 1967 borders, before the Six Day War. His proposal completely ignores the UN resolution 242, which provides that Israel have defensible borders.

The borders (cease fire line, actually) which existed at the start of 1967 put Israel at a civil and strategic military disadvantage. Israel's enemies held all the high ground, which they used to pelt Israel with lethal attack even when not in a formal condition of war.

The civil disadvantage resulted from the Arab League's 3 year plan to divert water from the Galilee and Jordan basin, thus depriving Israel of most of its water supply. This would devastate Israeli agriculture and result mass civilian fatalities.

The Arab League called their scheme the Headwater Diversion Plan. Israel stopped the scheme with direct airstrikes on the Plan's dams located in Syria. The League planned massive retaliation for Israel's incursion.

The Arab League massed their militaries on Israel's borders with the stated intention of eradicating the state of Israel. But 3 years of Arab League activity had made Israel watchful. When it was clear the League intended to strike, Israel struck first. This is the 1967 War.

Despite being massively outnumbered, Israel won on all fronts. The military victory led to a political victory. The Arab League members squabbled about who was to blame for their military losses, which led to the eventual effective dissolution of the League.

The most significant gains for Israel was the taking of the Golan Heights from Syrian. Until then, Syrians military units used the Heights to rain death on northern Israel settlements. Many of those settlements were entirely within the UN established border for the state of Israel; these attacks were in complete violation of international law.

Probably the most significant gain for Israel in 1967 was the recapture of Jerusalem after nearly 1900 years. The city of gold, light and bronze was once again in Jewish hands.

Obama is asking the sovereign state of Israel to hand over Jerusalem to her enemies "for peace." Obama is showing the same grasp of international peace as he has of American economics. Spread it around a little, Obama.

~~~~~~~~

The Israeli government already has ceded substantial territories of its 1967 gains to the Palestinians. Those sectors have sunk into poverty and have become unsafe. Everyone ought to recognize ceding more territory to the gangster Hamas government will not buy peace.

Middle East Speech Muddle

2011-05-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Obama missed an opportunity to apologize for America. That's the only bright spot in an otherwise failed speech.

Middle Easterners have already grown distrustful of Obama. In their mind, he has frittered away the hope they had in him from his 2009 Cairo speech.

Obama claimed he was with the Egyptians from the beginning, a claim which rings hollow. Recall Obama's positions were so nuanced as to be meaningless. The widespread view in Egypt is he was with the Mubarak government, and the $2 billion in aid will have too many strings attached.

He told the Libyans they wanted to be free. The Libyans already knew that. Obama pledged US help, so I suspect that is one promise he load with so much nuance it cannot be kept.

Obama finally notice Bahrain was having uprising.

Syria is hearing the same sort of double talk the Egyptians heard. Obama told Syria's president Bashar al-Assad he must make nice. There was no stick or carrot. There'll be no good result, and Syrians democracy movement will be alienated from the US..

~~~~~~~~

Give away Israel

Obama insisted Israel pull back to its 1967 borders to achieve peace (this includes giving up Jerusalem). Picking on the little guy is Obama's specialty. If you are small and voiceless, he will use your dead bodies to get what he wants. For some screwy reason, American Jews do not mind if their brethren in Israel take a beating.

Israel have already given up much ground in exchange for peace which subsequently eluded them. The Hamas insists Israel to be removed from the map; they are not seeking peace. Since the Palestinian government is now Hamas hands, Israel has finally recognized land-for-peace swaps will not work.

Historically, such swaps never worked. Hitler said to give the Nazi's the Sudetenland and there would be no more demands. Chamberlain gave the Nazis that part of Czechoslovakia. We all know how well that worked out.

~~~~~~~~

The policy factory

Obama has only one policy matrix. It amounts to eating the unstylish, the voiceless, the un-Politically Correct. Its a policy approach which smashes the little guy and violates human hopes and aspiration. He used it to build his domestic policies, and he uses it to build international policy. Its superficial and dangerous.

~~~~~~~~

The Hope

"Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem."
-- from the Israeli national anthem

Meanwhile, in the Middle East....

2011-05-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
In Egypt, a 17-year-old was sentenced to death this week amid a wave of civilian cases tried by military tribunals. His trial took only five minutes.

Generally speaking, military courts should not have jurisdiction over civilians. Military trials of civilians only happens in brutalized civilization. Under the autocratic Mubarak, the military rarely tried any civilians.

So what's going wrong now?

~~~~~~~~

As usual, Obama waves billions of our dollars at the Middle East. In Obama's weltbild, American money dissolves Obama's world leadership responsibility. Its the best Obama can offer, since he is bereft of functional ethics or working morality.

Politcally Correct, Very Unhealthy, Light Bulb

2011-05-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

No one who truly cares about the environment can also despise the humanity in it. Political Environmentalism is a cash deal. Corruption was sure to follow.

Compact fluorescent reading lights are poison?

Energy saving light bulbs contain poisonous carcinogens that could cause cancer and should be “kept as far away as possible from the human environment,” according to a new study conducted by German scientists

But Americans will be forced to replace their traditional light bulbs with toxic CFLs ahead of a government ban set to take effect at the start of next year.

“German scientists claimed that several carcinogenic chemicals and toxins were released when the environmentally-friendly compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) were switched on, including phenol, naphthalene and styrene,” the London Telegraph reported (they have the same paternalistic government crap going on over there).

The money trail

GE, a major producer of CFLs, lobbied to have ordinary incandescent light bulbs banned in 2006. Another link. GE was among the top ten contributors to the Obama campaign in 2008.

The forced replacement of incandescent bulbs does not serve the People. But it never was meant to. Corruption always smells.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Obama cheerfully accepted the corporatist political point of view to further his vision of American in chains. Obama and his thug pals are the number one enemy of the American Public.

Most people who had their eyes open were expecting vast amounts of corruption from the Obama thug-ocracy. This is more reading on the general corruption.

~~~~~~~~~

A Dim Bulb Act?

I didn't forget Mr Bush was President when the incandescent light bulb legislation in the 2007 Energy Policy and Conservation Act was enacted. Mr Bush was a liberal (remember "New Tone"?), which makes his politics unpalatable to me. Mr Bush was a nice guy but he is no longer president. Our current public 'servant' should get back to serving the public.

The Republican majority of the House already has a attempt to repeal stupid portions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. The repeal is called H.R.91 -- Better Use of Light Bulbs Act. Email your representative and tell them to support H.R. 91, and get rid of stupid national policy.

Tantrum Politics

2011-05-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

No to Free Speech?

Last month, the U.S. Olympic Committee named Peter Vidmar, a former gold medalist in mens' gymnastics, as its "chief of mission" for the 2012 London Olympics. In this honored position, Vidmar would interact with other countries and the International Olympic Committee to ensure that our country's participation would come off without a hitch.

Almost immediately he came under public attack by proponents of same-sex "marriage," who called his selection "disgraceful." (Apparently, homosexual capering is not disgraceful.)

You see, Vidmar, acting upon his religious convictions about marriage, donated money to the proponents of California's 2008 marriage amendment, Prop. 8. Prop 8 was enacted by Californians to restore the traditional definition of marriage in that state.

The "progressive" Left says the US Constitution is a 'living document.' They mean they will scream and pout until you let them have their way. They've gotten so used to this infantile approach, they cannot understand that some people don't agree with them.

Peter Vidmar is entitled to freely speak his opinion, AND to freely exercise of his religious views. The Left should shut up on this one.

Cap'n Carl Writes Again

2011-05-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

Cap'n Carl is still not satisfied with the Obama Administration condescension to the American people.

Gang:

Having been involved in a number of ticklish situations in my other life I learned very quickly that the circumstances dictate your decision. In other words, you have no choice in the mater, no choice at all. Most of these situations create ulcers because of political ramifications.

Obama’s decision to take out Bin Laden was one of those. Once the intelligence people had absolutely pinpointed Osama's location and the military was ready to go what choice did Obama have? He had no choice whatsoever.

Yet it seems, by news reports he vacillated and equivocated. Remember this, these news sources are his biggest fans.

So to give him accolades for his actions is ridiculous.

~~~~~~~~

Not many people know this except for some ol' time cops.

But today we have two excellent methods of identification: DNA and fingerprints.

But before fingerprints we had ears. Yes, you heard that right -- ears.

It seems that the configuration of your ears is almost as unique as your fingerprints and literally impossible to change.

So to us old goats the Administration's refusal to show the photographs of the dead Osama raises some questions for us.

The Oily Boid Gets Woims ----

2011-04-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

Obama seeks take revenge on the oil companies for high oil prices. He will seek to remove tax "breaks" the oil companies enjoy. That will indirectly increase oil taxes by... $4 billion. Increasing taxes will help gasoline prices how?

A $4 billion tax break isn't even $.01 per gallon. So at least Obama's revenge on the oil companies won't be too expensive for us. Lucky us.

These so called breaks are not off the oil companies bottom line. The breaks are supposed to direct oil companies into doing certain kind oil business. The Obama Result will be oil companies will stop those kinds of business. There will be no increase in government revenue.

Revenge is bad public policy.

~~~~~~~~

High oil prices have slowed the national economy, no question. We need look for the cause of high oil no farther than Obama's policies: Destabilize the Middle East; Ban drilling in the Gulf; Ban drilling in ANWR.

We can't forget Obama's policy to devalue the dollar. The American dollar index is down 35% from just before Obama took office.

~~~~~~~~

All Obama has is revenge and hatred. Approval for his revenge scheme is pretty high. Obama has taken so much from the American public, revenge and hatred is all many have left. If only Obama weren't so skilled at directly the public's hatred.

Grandmother is eating dogfood.

2011-04-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

Due to inflation, all Grandmother can afford is dogfood.

Someone used inflation to sneak into Grandmother's banking account and stole all the value of grandmother's life saving. weirdly, the number of dollars remains the same -- the value of the dollars is being stolen.

But at least we know who that someone is --- Obama & Co, and their inflation making policies.

~~~~~~~~

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

--- John Maynard Keynes

How much money do you print a day?

2011-04-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

Inflation happens when a government prints more currency than the economy needs

To the title question - How much money do you print a day?

Last year, the Treasury printed about $700,000 – but this year the Federal Reserve asked Treasury for $1 billion.

$1 billion a DAY?

Treasury has 2,500 employees working ‘round the clock – 24 hours – just to keep up.

~~~~~~~~

Last week Patrick Bove took a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing – also known as the U.S. Money Factory, in Washington DC. These are his remarks.

When you stand there and watch a million bucks appear out of thin air… in less time than it takes to burn toast… it makes you think.

Why would anyone trade decades of hard work for a currency that’s bleeding value by the day?

Your guess is good as mine…

~~~~~~~~

Inflation is a sneaky tax. Instead of taking your money directly, the government takes the value out of money.

Sneaky people like Obama & Co know the People will blame the merchant, the baker, the candlestick-maker for increasing prices -- and demand government action!

In fact, the value of the money is slipping away -- from the government action that already occurred, when they printed extra currency. Used Obama's way, government is the thief.

Obama gets what he wants -- more power. We get screwed.

Lucky us.

Obama the Rigid & the Price of Oil

2011-04-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

Oil Companies are under attack by bonehead Obama. The attack was well timed. Exxon reports Q1 profit of 10,650, up from Q1 of 2010 of 6,300, a 69% increase. I'm glad someone in America is making money. Their company is profitable: Some American workers are secure in their jobs.

Oil is up, but this is not Exxon doing. Look to this administration’s policies instead.

From the Democratic Party environmental extremism position - Obama won't let oil companies do exploratory drilling in ANWR, even preliminary exploration indicates there are billions of barrels there.

Obama won’t allow oil exploration in Gulf

Democrats blocked development of Bakken in the northern tier states. But development proceeded at a snail’s pace, and we may get natural gas out of there by 2016.

Obama has worked to destabilize Arab states, Sort of as an environmental extremist insurance policy. The result is a cut in production. The consequence is those Middle East governments have increased oil prices so they can placate their people with more goodies and less work.

Just to prove he’s out of touch only six weeks ago Obama pushed his "green" tax on energy consumption.

Obama is obsessing instead of thinking. Rigid Obama is indifferent to people matters. So we get him posturing instead of producing some sound policy – witness his calls for investigation of oil companies. We are in for more rough time with Obama’s government micromanagement.

Big government "solutions" always create a large number of problems. Less micromanagement by government is a better idea. Smaller economic and political units (you and I) are more agile and responsive to change. Information is more timely when its personal. Obama may have a more erudite understanding of economics. But I bet not.

~~~~~~~~
Profit is for the Masses - already So Stay Calm People

The popular uproar against Exxon’s profitability gives insight into why so few products are made in America anymore. If a company is to employ workers, the company has to make a profit from those workers. But if an American company makes profit, the people react with scorn and anger. This is stupid.

Americans must change their attitude about profitable activity. Profit is not a dirty word. Profit is the result of making better use of time and materials, when the alternative is wasting time and materials. Too many Americans seem to think the two are the same.

A competitive, capitalist economy permits people to use their time and materials intelligently. People are free to use property to do with as they wish. If the property is wasted, only the people directly involved suffer economic loss. If the property is used intelligently, the people involved will gain. A pertinent observation at this point is people like to share when they have something to share. In a capitalist economy, there is more to go around. The rising tide floats all boats.

In a centrally-planned “workers’ paradise”, innovation is only permitted if it is planned for; that is, innovation will be stifled. Central planning always has been a failure in imagination. Stogy, uninformed, uninterested bureaucrats usually make the decisions which affect the common people. In the end, the common people lose the most and no one cares. The only plenty is poverty.

~~~~~~~~

misery for the masses or a barf certificate

"I don't want this presidency to end on the technicality of whether Barack Obama was born in Hawaii or on the Planet Krypton. I want the ideas on which he got elected to die. These ideas are killing your country." -Mark Steyn

Taxes, Growth and Government Revenue

2011-04-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

Most conservatives believe that less meddling by government is good for society. This belief includes taxation. Its even asserted that lower taxes increase government revenue.

I ran into the precisely opposite view by a professor named Robert Ricketts in an article titled, Do Tax Cuts Increase Revenue? The article stated,

"It is a widely held belief in the U.S. that cutting tax rates actually increases government tax revenues.... Regardless of the effect of changes in tax rates on the economy, it is important to recognize that the idea that tax cuts increase government revenues while tax increases decrease them is a myth."

The article cites this graph. Click on it to see it full sized. The graph states it is comparing outlays and revenue as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.

As Ricketts' graph shows, revenue decline as a percentage of GDP is the result to expect if the tax cut stimulates economic growth. Tax revenue still increases, despite (and because of) the fact that the tax bite is a smaller portion of growing GDP.

Ricketts claims his graph shows increasing taxes increases economic activity and government income. I don't know if Ricketts is confused or if he is trying to hide the fact that cutting taxes will help the economy grow and government income increase.

The key is that the tax cuts stimulates GDP growth. This makes government demands on the economy appear to shrink, even as the government coffers gain income.

~~~~~~~~

In each of the last three cuts in marginal tax rates, revenues received by the U.S. Treasury have increased. Coolidge cut tax rates in the 1920s, Kennedy cut marginal tax rates in the 1960s, and Reagan cut them in the 1980s.

Under Coolidge, marginal tax rates were cut from the top rate of 73% to 24%. The economy rewarded this policy by expanding 59% from 1921 to 1929. Revenues received by the federal treasury increased from $719 million in 1921 to more than $1.1 billion 1929. That's a 61% increase (there was zero inflation in this period). Growth averaged more than six percent annually. We are currently growing at 2.5%.

Under Kennedy, marginal tax rates were cut from a top rate of 91% to 70%. In real dollar terms, the economy grew by 42%, an average of 5 percent a year from 1961 to 1965. Tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury increased by 62%. Adjusted for inflation, they rose by one-third.

Under Reagan, marginal tax rates were cut from a top of 70% to 28%. Revenues (from all taxes) to the U.S. Treasury nearly doubled. According to the Budget of the U.S. Government, FY 1997, Office of Management and Budget. Revenues increased from roughly $500 billion in 1980 to $1.1 trillion in 1990.

Mackinac Center

~~~~~~~~

The policy implication for Obama's tax increases bode badly for government revenue. Given the S&P rating reduction for US Government debt, we cannot raise the debt ceiling without grave results. And given that increasing taxes will reduce government income, the only thing left is to reduce government expenditure.

What Deficit Are They Looking At?

2011-04-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

Steve Reitmeister of Zacks

The main story on Monday was that Standard & Poors kept US government bond ratings at AAA, but cut its outlook from stable to negative. This sent stocks tumbling out of the gate to as low as Dow 12,093 before bouncing over a hundred points. Yet even that finish was still well into the red.

Personally I am shocked and dismayed by this reaction. Why? How could anyone think that our debt situation was actually in good shape?. In fact, how is [the US bond rating] still AAA and not lower? I assumed, falsely I now see, that everyone with an IQ above room temperature was working off the same premise that our deficit was raging out of control. And that, my friends, provides a valuable investing lesson. Don't assume anything.

My strong hope and desire is that this truly lights a fire under our politicians to take make aggressive deficit cuts soon. If not, then our debt ratings will drop while interest rates go higher. This will make financing the debt all the more difficult and wreak havoc on the economy. If we can show resolve to reign in our bad ways now, then this economic recovery can stay on track with stocks moving higher.

From What Deficit Are They Looking At?

~~~~~~~~

Incidentally, Obama's IRS return was released yesterday. He made a little more than $1,700,000 last year. I hope the Obamas can survive.

Downgraded US Government Debt

2011-04-18T11:09:00.002-07:00

Standard & Poor's rating agency downgraded US Government debt this morning. Immediately the stock market fell out of bed. Government debt was downgraded, not private debt.

Obama's speech on how to raise taxes is the reason the private market is suffering. The stock market is a bellwether of the economy. Obama will use the government debt downgrade to prop up is awful tax (and spend) policy proposal. So he will feel free to push his murderous tax package on the American people.

The damage is done; we have a fearsome price to pay for electing this rat. It is time to think of a way to limit him and the wild-ape government spending.

Email your Representatives and Senators and tell them to reduce spending now.

All “Non-Millionaires” Need to Know About Obama’s Tax Plan

2011-04-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

By Sean Hyman

Last Wednesday, my CPA finally sent me my tax forms so I could sign them and send them in by today. Man, I couldn’t believe how much I owed Uncle Sam this year.

Also, my CPA’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

My paperwork arrived just hours after President Obama revealed his new tax plan to the world - a plan that includes less tax breaks and higher taxation to come.

The president announced a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan, which on the surface sounds like a good thing. But this plan will force the Bush tax cuts to expire, and it calls for an ADDITIONAL $1 trillion to be taken (I mean taxed) from the top two income brackets.

I’m by no means a millionaire. But this new tax plan is going to affect me and you - and 300 million or so other Americans - whether they realize it or not.

In fact, it could nudge our still-fragile economy off a cliff. Let me explain...

Why Do They Think the Government Can Manage This Trillion Better than Other Trillions They’ve Wasted?

If you had $1 trillion to “fix” the economy, would you rather give it to savvy businessmen who would use it to expand and create countless jobs, or our “efficient” government to use at their discretion?

Personally, I’d choose the businessmen every time.

So that’s mistake #1. Obama is increasing the taxes for the wealthiest people in the country... a.k.a the businessmen who create jobs for the rest of us. He’s also going after businesses with his proposal to remove some business tax breaks. He’s cutting industry off at the knees. Take more of that money away and you create unemployment (more on that in a moment).

Mistake #2: Obama mentioned he wants to make the tax system fairer. That sounds great in theory, but here’s his thinking on what’s “fair.”

Obama proposes taking away all the tax breaks you get on your mortgage interest. He also wants to remove all the tax benefits you receive when you give some money away to churches and other charities.

Sound fair to you? In my world, that’s not fair.

Mistake #3 lies in the IRS’s definition of “rich.” It’s simply not rational. Obama wants to raise taxes for the top two tax brackets. That includes any single person making over $200,000 a year, or any married couple making $250,000 a year.

While that may be decent money in the great state of Texas where I live, nobody in California or New York making $200,000 a year would consider themselves “rich.” The cost of housing alone in those areas is so outrageous. That $200,000 may just be enough to consider themselves “middle-class.”

The Rich Create the Jobs...
Over-Tax Them & It Creates Unemployment

When you put it all together, it’s hard to disagree with the Congressman from Ohio who remarked, “Any plan that starts with job-destroying tax hikes is a non-starter.”

This sounds like a man who has his head screwed on straight. In fact, if “sound economics” could talk, I’m guessing it would say that too.

You see, most everyone works for a rich person. How many poor people employ others? None that I know of.

So if you over-tax the rich, you eat away at the heart of the job-creating system. Tax rich people more, and they have to make up for that somewhere. Where is the easiest place to make up for the additional loss of tax money? It’s cutting payrolls.

In the end, tax increases take money away from businessmen and hand it over to the government. Sadly, the government hasn’t been good at managing money in years (case in point: the $14 trillion in debt that this $4 trillion plan is not even likely to help).

Why Obama Could Learn a Few Things from Reagan

Former president Reagan knew how money traveled around in the economy.

Give the rich tax breaks and what do they do? They use the extra money to expand their businesses. They have to hire more people to do this, so more people find jobs. Meanwhile, their current employees get promoted and enjoy higher salaries. In the end, everyone made more money.

When businesses and individuals make more money, you can charge them more in income taxes. So the government makes more money on the back-end. But since everyone is making more money anyway, it’s easier to take.

As a side effect, businesses grow faster. That increases corporate earnings. That gives the stock market a boost - while you’re making more money for the government. Overall, you have a healthier economy.

On the other hand, tax increases are simply transferring wealth from people to the government. The government is one of the most wasteful, inefficient entities around, so that money goes nowhere.

That’s why no matter how high they have ever taxed the people, they still can’t work with that amount of money. If you or I got raise after raise - and we still couldn’t live within our means - our neighbors would think we were idiots. Yet the U.S. government does it and it’s okay? Not in my book!

Obama Reminds Us to Get the Heck out of the Dollar

Think the economy is shaky now?

Take away people’s mortgage interest deductions. Take away the breaks on their charitable contributions. Take away their corporate tax breaks. Then see if we’re on the road to economic expansion and lower unemployment.

Personally I don’t see how that’s possible. If anything I believe it could be a catalyst to send stocks plummeting later this year.

It’s also one more reminder to take some assets and get the heck out of the dollar.

Other nations don’t have these bizarre tax practices - or our dreams of paying off our debts without any kind of fiscal management. That’s why countries like Norway, Sweden, and Australia have some of the soundest currencies to buy and hold over the long-term.

Bottom line: Assuming this tax plan goes through, it could do more harm than good. Make sure you take cover as soon as possible.

Have a Nice Day.

Obama on the Attack!

2011-04-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

What? Again?

The Attack President

The nation is still in Depression. Obama proposed $1,000,000,000,000 in new taxes per year. Obama soothingly assured everyone he will only "tax the rich."

This is insane.

Does Obama think the rich in the US get $1 trillion per year? The nation's gross domestic product is only $14.66 trillion. Obama must think taking 7% more of every American's income a mere trifling.

If enacted, Obama's mad tax increases will condemn the United States to economic doldrums for years to come.

Obama is not a stupid man. Obama knows this will be the effect of his massive mismanagement. Therefore Obama must be seeking to devastate the American economy.

~~~~~~~~~

Under Obama's plan, the rich will be taxed. GE won't pay any federal income taxes on their $14 billions profit. GE's boss, Jeffrey Immelt, is a big supporter and close personal adviser to Obama.

To be completely accurate, about 28% of all American corporations, large and small (mostly very small), didn't pay any income tax last year. 28% is about the percent of corporations which failed to make any money last year.

~~~~~~~~~

Obama is Corrupt

Obama's "green" agenda is driving up energy costs, killing jobs, and making us more dependent on foreign oil. Gasoline prices are above $4 per gallon, and rising.

Despite the fact that Americans support more oil and gas drilling, the Obama White House has repeatedly banned, delayed, obstructed, and Obama even tried to tax production of American energy.

Last year, while Obama was trying to choke off domestic energy production, the BP oil spill happened. Obama let BP continue to pollute the Gulf for months. Then Obama tried to squelch information about his relationship with BP and the actual damage in the gulf. Then we discovered what motivated Obama: BP has donated $77,051 to Obama.

~~~~~~~~

Who is Obama working for?

No Privacy For Web-based Email

2011-04-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

Your email posted on any Internet service can be searched by the government without a warrant -- If the communication in an online account is older than 180 days, it is not protected. Either clean old email off web servers or lose your privacy.

The government still needs a warrant to search email archived on your computer.

Several on-line companies, including Google, are supporting legislation to prohibit the government from accessing any of your emails without a warrant. The Obama Administration is fighting this effort.

Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us

By David Kravets

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.

As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.

A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.

The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.

But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way.

The rest of this is posted at Wired.com

The Almighty Isn't Doing Well These Days

2011-04-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

Modern American politics has become the problem of good and evil. Socialists in the current administration think that they can control society in a way which is more "fair" than the natural state of society.

In their hubris, they obstinately insist they have the right to re-order society, economy and the nation as a whole. The Left has designated all the traditional ways of human conduct to the trash heap of history. Naturally, they have disposed of any belief in a higher power. They have tossed God out with the trash. Dennis Prager addresses this.

By Dennis Prager

The Almighty is not doing very well these days.

Here are four reasons:

The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither secularist nor political agenda.

That is why the more university education a person receives, the more he is likely to hold secular and left-wing views. The secular left argues that this correlation is due to the fact that a college graduate knows more and thinks more clearly and therefore gravitates leftward and toward secularism. But if you believe that the average college graduate is a clear and knowledgeable thinker as a result of his or her time at university, I have more than one bridge to sell you.

A radio talk show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they attended. It takes higher education to learn to believe that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc.

A second reason the Almighty is not doing well among Westerners these days is that many members of the Jewish and Christian clergy decided that their primary role was not to advocate their religion's moral and religious standards, but rather (1) to make congregants comfortable ("Don't call me 'Pastor,' Rabbi' or Father'; call me Jerry") and (2) to promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities.

A third reason the Almighty is not doing well is that most of the men and women who are products of this secular left-wing education (meaning a large majority of Western men and women) are theologically, intellectually and emotionally ill prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world. I will never forget a Swedish pastor's reaction to the 1994 capsizing of the Estonia, a ferry that sank in the Baltic between Estonia and Sweden, leaving 852 passengers and crew dead. He said he could not believe in a God who allowed such injustice to take place.

This pastor spoke for vast numbers of modern Western men and women. The existence of so much unjust suffering in the world has strongly contributed to their rejecting belief in the Almighty. And undoubtedly, the devastation caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has further reinforced many individuals' rejection of the Almighty.

Of course, none of us has a fully coherent solution to the problem of theodicy (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14569a.htm). But the problem is not exactly new — every great religion has dealt with it, and most of the brilliant minds in history retained their faith in the Almighty despite all the unjust suffering they saw.

The difference today is that life has been so good for most Westerners that suffering is no longer regarded as part of life, but as an aberration that can be done away with. Meanwhile, the liberal wings of Christianity and Judaism are too influenced by secularism to make an effective religious case for the Almighty, whom the religious left has largely rendered a celestial buddy.

The fourth reason is Islamic violence and the tepid response to it by the liberal churches and synagogues. It would seem pretty clear that a major, albeit almost never acknowledged, reason for the huge audiences for recent books advocating atheism has been the massive amount of evil in the Almighty's name committed by radical Muslims. Nothing creates atheism as much as evil done in the Almighty's name.

That is why the pathetically weak responses from within mainstream, i.e., liberal, Christianity and Judaism have only added to the contempt for the Almighty and religion sown by beheadings and suicide bombings in Allah's name. The liberal Christian and Jewish responses have been to attack fellow Christians and Jews who have focused on Islamist terror. Instead of drawing attention to the damage radical Islam does to the name of the Almighty, liberal Christians and Jews focus their anger on co-religionists who do speak out on this issue and label them "Islamophobes."

That the Almighty is not doing well in the Western world may trouble the Almighty. But it is we humans who should be most troubled. The moral, intellectual, artistic and demographic decline in Western Europe (secular countries don't even have the will to reproduce themselves) is only gaining momentum. And the consequences of that decline will be far more devastating than all the tsunamis and all the earthquakes that may come our way.

Porker for April

2011-04-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

No foolin'
From the press release
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Porker of the Month for his absurd belief that a federally-funded Cowboy Poetry Festival in Elko, Nevada (pop. 17,000) constitutes essential government spending.

The festival receives a portion of its budget from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), whose $146 million budget was defunded under H.R. 1, the Full-Year Continuing Resolution (funding act) for fiscal year 2011, that Sen. Reid helped defeat in the Senate.

During a floor speech in the Senate on March 8, 2011, Sen. Reid described the proposed termination as “mean-spirited,” stating that were it not for NEH’s federal money, the Cowboy Poetry Festival and “the tens of thousands of people who come there every year, would not exist.”

In response, Western Folklife Center Executive Director Charlie Seemann commented that NEH funds just 7 percent of the festival and that he and his fellow cowboys “could certainly continue if we lose that funding.”

For undervaluing the individual, entrepreneurial spirit that makes America great and believing that federal taxpayers should pay for everything, even those programs that can stand on their own, CAGW names Senate Majority Leader Reid the March Porker of the Month.

Allowing Collective Bargaining in Government

2011-04-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Allowing Collective Bargaining in Government
by Michael Reitz

President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

Nevertheless, while the labor movement first started to balance inequities between employees and employers in the private sector, most states eventually granted public employees the right to collectively bargain. Today, government employees represent the labor movement's most valuable class of employees—in the United States there are more union members in government than in the private sector, a recent topsy-turvy development.

Roosevelt talked about the problem of allowing union bargaining in government:

"Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of government activities," said Roosevelt.

"This obligation is paramount," he continued. "Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."

~~~~~~~~

The problem with unionizing government agencies is that unions are not constrained by the typical labor-managements incentives to cooperate for the longevity of the company. Government jobs can't be outsourced overseas or to a non-union state the way private industries can. And of course, unions in the government sector can invest billions to elect pro-labor politicians who will serve as their "employers" across the bargaining table.

Unions enjoy enormous privileges as representatives of government employees—they are legally permitted to force employees to pay for union services whether or not the employees want it. And employees are bound by the union's contract even if they'd like to seek services from another union.

The question is what to do when union contracts and benefits threaten to bankrupt entire states. The demise of the U.S. automobile industry is a frightening example of employers and unions negotiating themselves out of relevance. Do we want our cities and states to do the same? What's more important: protecting union privileges or a state's financial viability?

It's a choice political leaders in Washington state will soon face. Most will cave to the enormous pressure the unions generate. Taxpayers will be the real losers if the unions win.

Government by Bolsheviks

2011-03-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

A list o' facts:

1. Unions support Obama. According to Rasmussen Reports, the public employee [bureaucrats] unions are among his strongest supporters. Small wonder since Obama has handed them a million new federal jobs, fattening union coffers with workers dues.

2. A bureaucrat has no choice about union membership. If his job description calls for union membership, the worker must pay dues, even if he does not want to join.

3. There are or recently have been government bureaucrat unions involved in imbroglio in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and less well known in Washington State.

3. Government bureaucrats get their pay from taxpayers. The taxpayers also have no choice in the matter.

4. Government bureaucrat unions represent a small portion of American workers.

Now for a bit of history -

"Bolsheviks were a small minority in Russia during the chaotic period following the fall of the Czar. Yet they managed to plunge a great country into a nightmare that lasted nearly a century by pushing harder than anyone else. Similar people are pushing just as hard here — and thanks to arguably criminal mismanagement of the economy, similar chaos is on the horizon."
- Van Helsing

The Japan Earthquake in American Debt.

2011-03-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Japan is about to undertake one of the biggest rebuilding efforts since the end of World War II. The country has to replace everything from airports and runways to bridges, ports, roads, highways, train tracks, power stations, houses, shopping centers, schools, hospitals, utility and cell-phone towers, parking garages, post offices, production plants... the list would take pages to print out.

The effort is going to cost tens, and more likely, hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to accomplish.

Japan is fortunate in that it is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, and the citizenry is exceedingly patriotic. As such, Japan has the wealth to accomplish the mission Mother Nature has forced upon the island nation. And it has a population willing to put to work its own savings to rebuild Sendai, Minami-sanriku, Fukushima and others.

But just like pushing on an inflated balloon causes distortions elsewhere, Japan’s now singular focus on a domestic emergency means it has little interest in playing in U.S. Treasury and equity markets.

Indeed, it seems highly likely that Japan will be a net seller off U.S. debt and U.S. equities as Japan’s government, companies and citizens raise cash to fund the rebuilding.

That will have knock-on effects in America.

If Japan Disappears from the Treasury Market --- Then What?

All told, Japan owns an estimated $3 trillion of U.S. securities, both stocks and bonds. With $886 billion of U.S. Treasuries, Japan is the world’s #2-holder of U.S. debt. In the past year it’s bought, on average, $10 billion worth of Treasuries every month.

You don’t easily replace the second-largest buyer of Treasury bills, bonds and notes. Not many countries have pockets deep enough to step up with that kind of financial firepower.

China does, but it already owns more U.S. debt than it needs, and has been putting its cash into other currencies and gold out of a sense of financial prudence. Some of the Middle East nations could pick up some of the slack... but they have their own uprisings to quiet. They’re throwing bags of cash at protestors to quash the dissent, or at security personnel to quash the protestors.

The U.S. Will Have Little Choice But to Raise Interest Rates

A more likely scenario is that Japan largely disappears from the Treasury market, with China and a few others filling in some of that vacuum. And the Federal Reserve, which is slated to end it QE II campaign in June, will likely extend the remainder of its $600 billion buying program over several more months.

But it doesn’t seem likely that the willpower exists in Washington for the Fed to increase the size of QE II [and the resultant inflation]. And that means there will be some shortfall. And shortfalls are bad for the U.S. government because the government has a certain amount of debt it has to sell every month to fund all of its bloated spending commitments.

When the world is already stuffed with American paper, though, there’s only one way to bring buyers to the table: Higher yields.

As such, one of the aftershocks of the Great Sendai Quake will ripple 6,600 miles away, in Washington, DC, where the Treasury Department will have to pay more to access the money it needs to fund America’s overgrown spending demands.

That will make it even more expensive for America to fund its obligations.
Who knows what the ramifications of that will ultimately be? Will Congress accede to QE III? Will rising interest rates here be mildly inflationary (after all, the Fed can’t cut rates any lower)? Will Congress be more amenable to raising tax rates?

And what of stocks? Japan owns more than $1 trillion in U.S. stocks, equal to about 6% of the total value of the New York Stock Exchange. Selling off any sizable portion of that will clearly put downward pressure on American equities.

from Jeff Opdyke

Japan

2011-03-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

The earthquake which shook Japan is one of the biggest recorded in history. Aftershocks have been as big as the Northridge earthquake which did so much damage to California a few years ago.

Predictably, liberals and other humanity haters have come forth about how the Japanese people deserved the earthquake for building nuclear reactors. (One Yahoo poster went so far as to say Mother Earth was punishing the Japanese for mistreatment. Sheesh!)

People of good will around the world are sending aid and comfort to the Japanese. Be careful that your donations go through a known site. Unscrupulous people will try to profit from the goodwill of others by setting up fake charity scams. I haven't vetted all the sites yet, but you are safe making donation to the Red Cross. Yahoo suggested some organizations you can donate to, to help out Japan.

There is always prayer. God listens.

The ghastly earthquake in Japan has repercussions around the world.

The US stock market is already in correction mode, so investors will give a lot more weight to every scrap of negative news. It's truly not surprising that the apocalyptic images of destruction in Japan put US investors in a sour mood Monday. This has us just under Dow 12,000 once again.

Even gold is diving. This is also to be expected. The Japanese people delight in the metal. Now many are selling their gold in order to help family and friends recover. Such a large influx of "fresh" gold has temporarily depressed the world price.

From an economic perspective, these events have been generally good for the local economy and their major trade partners. How's that? This will require a big national stimulus plan to rebuild the destroyed areas of Japan. This puts a ton of fresh money in the economy, people back to work and a new sense of pride and purpose.

That bodes well for the lagging Japanese economy and major trade partners like the US, China and South Korea. Long story short, yesterday's negative view of these events will evolve into a positive over time.

Lets pray Japan will have not have another serious earthquake for centuries to come.

blue remarks from Zacks

The call for action is fine.

2011-03-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

A friend sent one of those incensed call-to-action emails to me. The email said something tot he effect that something had to be done because of an injustice he'd noticed.

~~~~~~~~

The call for action is fine. But a call to action sometimes lead to government action. 'Government action' can be described as the use of force without regard for how facts may vary from allegation. In itself, the will to use force is very tolerant of distortion and lying. Politics is founded on lies.

For normal mortals like you and me, the free market is far less tolerant of lying. If we find out some manufacturer/seller sold us bad or overpriced product, we stop buying from that seller. If we have no choice from whom we buy, government is almost always involved.

This is evidence the old adage, "That government which governs least governs best" is a good idea. The less the government controls in life, the more accurate, honest and better our lives will be.

~~~~~~~

Restating that in the negative, governments screw up. Never trust a government to do what you can do for yourself. If you cannot do it for yourself, it is probably better left undone.

Governments have a history of making terrible mistakes even worse. If you really want things to go badly, call for government action. This wisdom is the foundation of conservative American politics - government inaction is better.

Wisconsin at the Barricades

2011-02-21T09:56:00.000-08:00

We live in a world of polarities -- there is room for compromise. But the Democratic Party calls it compromise when the other side completely loses.

The Wisconsin Senate plans to de-fang the public employees union by reducing the planned increases in public employees pay, and removing the right of public workers to strike.

The Democrats have other plans. They had trapped the people of Wisconsin. The Democrats wanted the people to pay massive tax hikes so the Democrats can claim they are 'giving' their public union buddies free stuff. And they want to fool the people into thinking the Democrats are not shielding their own rich.

The Party protesters insist they rally only to keep workers rights, not for higher pay. This is intentional deception. Part and parcel of collective bargaining rights is the right to strike for higher pay, more medical, child care, or whatever. If the Wisconsin public employees unions keep their right to strike, they will strike for these things.

Lets use the smell test: In Wisconsin, people can use the initiative petition to make law. If there is real backing for the Public Unions and the Democratic Party demands, they can do an initiative and force the Senate to increase pay.

But the people of Wisconsin would vote against that, so The unions and Democrats stage sleep-ins in the rotunda and get their Party controlled press to bark for them.

AP report

It’s Happening in America Too

2011-02-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

It was the “tweet” heard ‘round the world.

It’s a sign of the times when people online declare war on oppressors of freedom. And as we’ve all learned from watching events in Egypt over the last three weeks, a call to arms in cyberspace is no less effective than in a town square.

The end result is the same - an embattled dictator gave up power after stubborn refusals to leave a position he’s held for three decades.

Some say President Mubarak would still be in charge if not for the power of social networking. Sites like Facebook and Twitter served as critical tools for protesters seeking to topple the long-time ruler.

Mubarak knew this...and in a typically dictatorial move, the now-ousted president ordered the Internet shuttered and mobile phone services switched off.

It’s the kind of move one would expect of an oppressor - hardly the world’s poster child for freedom and democracy.

Could it happen in America?
It’s already happening...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week admonished Mubarak’s government for imposing an Internet blackout, calling it a baseless attempt to limit free speech during a time of social upheaval.

But President Obama is pressing for a similar law that would give him the power to use an Internet “kill switch?” It would allow the president to block access to the web if an Egypt-style revolt or other unrest occurred in the U.S.

This power-grab is only one example of the U.S. government’s latest incursions on our civil liberties.

Democratic power brokers including the Obama White House and Senators Feinstein and Leahy teamed up with Republican leaders in Congress to extend three provisions in the Bush-era PATRIOT Act that give the government sweeping surveillance powers.

Nothing like “bipartisan cooperation” in Washington, eh?
Obama Wants to Read Your Email

Not to be outdone, Obama’s Department of Justice wants a new law, too.

This one would require Internet companies to retain data and records of user activity online. In doing so, the Obama administration is supporting measures advocated by the Bush administration that pose a grave threat to free speech and freedom of the Internet. The sweeping legislation would cover cell phone service, Internet records, and email.

If this legislation is passed, it would jeopardize the privacy of millions of Americans who use the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, “A legal obligation to log users’ Internet use... would dangerously expand the government’s ability to surveil its citizens, damage privacy, and chill freedom of expression.”

Once again, congressional Republicans are more than happy to cooperate in passing such a law - anything to go after those awful terrorists... even if it shreds the U.S. Constitution.
Laptops Galore

Although they can cite no legal basis for their high-handed actions, the Department of Homeland Security claims that its agents have the right to look though the contents of an international traveler's electronic devices, including laptops, cameras and cell phones.

If only the injustice stopped there - agents can also keep the devices or copy the contents in order to continue searching them once the traveler has been allowed to enter the U.S., regardless of whether the traveler is suspected of any wrongdoing.

Documents obtained by the ACLU in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for records related to the DHS policy reveal that more than 6,600 travelers, nearly half of whom are American citizens, were subjected to electronic device searches at the border between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010.

No law authorizes this power nor is there any judicial or congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing. And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse - not even to have their property returned to them.

FBI Run Amok

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently reviewed nearly 2,500 pages of documents released by the FBI as a result of the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The EFF revealed what I would call alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices - FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than previously assumed.

The FBI’s flagrant legal violations included submitting false or inaccurate declarations to courts, using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoenas and accessing password protected documents without a warrant. In at least one fifth of the cases, specific violations of the U.S. Constitution were cited.

Very Long Distance

Perhaps you recall the major uproar over President George W. Bush’s use of massive telephone and wire tap surveillance after the 9-11 terror.

Well, surprise, dear reader. With little notice, Obama’s Department of Justice now asserts that the FBI can obtain telephone your international call records without any formal legal process or court oversight.

The DoJ’s legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that should’ve stopped with a law that was passed in 2006.

The telephone record controversy is leftover from the Bush administration's war on terror. A hypocritical President Obama is continuing many of those same tactics, which he formerly said he opposed.

One year ago, the Inspector General's Office issued a lengthy report detailing that the FBI, for the years 2003-2005, had used "National Security Letters" (NSLs) to gather information on thousands of Americans in violation of the law. Under the PATRIOT Act, NSLs permit the FBI and other federal agencies to obtain all sorts of invasive information from telecoms, Internet and email providers - even health care providers - without any warrants or oversight of any kind.

And if you think this power is being aimed solely at suspected terrorists, think again. No wonder that some Swiss and other offshore banks refuse to discuss by telephone their accounts with Americans.

Freedom of Speech

The so-called Shield bill, introduced in response to the WikiLeaks disclosures, would amend the Espionage Act of 1917 to make it a crime for any person knowingly and willfully to disseminate classified information “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States.”

This proposed law is constitutional as applied to government employees who unlawfully leak material to people who are unauthorized to receive it. But it violates the First Amendment to punish anyone who circulates the information after it has been leaked. At the very least, the act should be expressly limited to situations in which the spread of the classified information poses a clear and imminent danger to the nation.

A Plague on Both Houses

And by that I mean both political parties and both houses of the U.S. Congress - both of which seem to have lost their understanding of American history and an appreciation for the genius of our constitutional system.

Be assured that the Sovereign Society in this time of great troubles will continue to give you not only a truthful account of the threats we face - but also specific, legal ways and means to protect yourself, your family and your wealth.

By Bob Bauman JD, Legal Counsel, The Sovereign Society

ObamaKare is overturned

2011-01-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hooray!

At least for now.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed with the states that the new government issued health care regulation violates people's civil right.

But what to do about health care costs?

Get the lawyers out of the doctor's pocket will help. Doctors get sued so much of the time, about 1/2 of what they earn goes to lawyers and malpractice insurance.

- and -

Get the lawyers off the doctor's back. More than half of what you spend goes to testing the doctor wouldn't do if in their best judgment the test wasn't needed. But lawyers are breathing down the doctors neck insisting all these needless tests are done.

Plus the fact the people who check on all these transfers of money are actually working to see where it all goes - even though their efforts are actually a waste - and you have a huge bill that isn't even medically necessary. And the medicine isn't paid for yet.

That nightmare we need to back away from. Repealing ObamaCare is only a beginning. We must get government out of the armchair quarterback position. Then we need to remove the lawyers from the second guessing the doctor.

Health care should be between the patient and his/her provider.

~~~~~~~~

History of compulsory health care in the United States

The Leftists in the "Democratic" Party seemed to have been prepared for this. Already they have raised the point that Americans have been forced into buying health insurance in the distant past.

Have Americans really been forced to buy "health care" before? Well, sort of....

Private seamen were "forced" to buy health insurance.

"In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed - “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance."

Why?

In those days, impressment (compulsory service) of seamen was common. If the US went to war, the merchant men would all be pressed into the Navy. The Merchant marine was considered to be national property.

Americans had just expelled Great Britain from control of the original colonies. This fed overconfidence. Imperialist Americans like the second President, John Adams, was principle cause of the War of 1812. 1812 was the only war America lost until Lyndon B. Johnson led us into Viet Nam. (Read about John Adams. Does Mr Obama seem like Mr Adams?)

Impressment was evil and repellent to the American People, and it was outlawed by the 13th Amendment. The forced purchase of health care went away at that time.

The Dreariness of Pointless Change

2011-01-29T18:57:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a bone of hope to gnaw on….

What’s wrong with modern American liberalism and the “Democratic” Party.

A lot of people out there still think the purpose of government is to restrict/control people. Instead of a land filled with the possibilities of human life, America has become a land of "No, you can't."

The "can’t-ers" short circuit all the great prospects of life. Instead of affirming the people who soar high and open up the vista of life, they seek to cage life in little, safe packages. Mediocrity is enforced. Plainness is required.

Weirdly, this impulse to stifle is growing in intensity. Soon, all of life in the land of the formerly free will be dirty rat gray. No one will be allowed to excel, no one will be allowed to stand out.

An interesting historical footnote is that? Mr Ted Kennedy drafted much of the content of the Bush educational act popularly called "No child left behind." Teachers widely vilified the act as "No child gets ahead."

Compared to any of his brothers, the late Ted Kennedy was drab personality. Ever since his date with his secretary, and her consequent drowning at Chappaquiddick, Teddy used all of us who are still breathing. He orchestrated her death after he used her. He orchestrated the death of the vibrant American in the same spiteful sport.

It figures the alcoholic rat-gray Teddy Kennedy, running from his conscience, would draft the act which would suck the life out of American youth.

The paragon and hero of the "Democratic" Party sought this result to assure an enhancement of their power base among the helpless and plain. Its paying off very well for them.

~~~~~~~~

Under democracy, whatever the majority decides is law. The majority can change at any moment and the law changes in an instant. There is no stability, no security, no safety.

In a republic, basic rights are secured for everyone. The human rights part of law does not change and society grows on a firm foundation. In a republic, the strong are just, the weak secure and the peace preserved.

The best system would combine the strength of democracy and republic. The security of a republic, with the stability of protecting the rights of the minority, would be reinforced by the use of democracy to check the aggressions of an ambitious politician.

Yet, here in Bizarro world, the worst tyrannies call themselves "democratic republics."

The American system is failing because the People have been taught the democratic political system is all that matters. The republican ideal of equal right before the law is something to be taken away from people. They no longer care nor understand that the instability in a pure democracy will collapse the political system, destroy their wealth and make them miserable. Inevitably, the nation is headed into poverty, dictatorship and civil war.

Democide.

Legalize Abortion?

2011-01-27T08:58:00.000-08:00

Abortion is the death of a child, a life which will never see the light of life.

There is a story in the Christian Bible, the Gospel of Matthew, which tells a story story of innocence lost to the same fullness.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Herod slaughtered the innocent children in an effort to eradicate the King Herod saw as a threat. Herod missed killing Jesus, and you know the rest of the story. To this day, Herod is widely condemned for this atrocity.

Today in the USA there is a similar slaughter. More than one million innocents are slaughter every year because they are perceived as a threat to the "mother's" lifestyle. Modern people have even less justification than Herod: Herod was going insane; moderns kill children for convenience.

Abortion is legal, but it is wrong.

The State of the Union

2011-01-25T09:53:00.000-08:00

By Dennis Prager

Tonight, when you see President Obama give his State of the Union address, you will see four things: the president entering the hall, the president ascending the rostrum to be greeted by the vice president and the speaker of the House, the president giving his speech and the reactions of members of the Congress and others in the hall.

Here is the one thing you will not see and probably have never seen. You won't see what is behind the president and above the vice president and the speaker of the House. And because you won't see it, you won't know that you are missing something of surpassing importance.

Think about it for a moment. Why do television cameras never pull back and give a wide-angle view of the president delivering his speech? That is certainly routine for TV: It is considered uninteresting to TV viewers to have a fixed view of a subject.

Why, then, have almost no Americans ever seen what is located above the president, the vice president and the speaker of the House?

I discovered the answer when I attended President Obama's speech on health care to a joint session of Congress.

I saw chiseled in the marble wall behind the speaker and vice president, in giant letters, the words "In G0d We Trust."

My immediate reaction was to wonder: Why had I never seen that before? I have, after all, been watching presidential State of the Union addresses for about 40 years.

Here is my theory — and I say "theory" because I cannot prove it.

A generation of Americans has been raised to regard any mention of G0d outside the home or church as a violation of the deepest principles of our country. To the men and women of the left-leaning news media, in particular, "In G0d We Trust" is an anachronism at best, an impediment to moral progress at worst. The existence of those giant chiseled words so disturbs the media that, consciously or not, they do not want Americans to see them.

I do not for a moment believe that there is any conspiracy here. In some ways, I actually wish there were. I wish a handful of media executives had gotten together and conspired to instruct their various cameramen to avoid a wide-angle view of the president.

But, alas, no such conspiracy is necessary. The words "In G0d We Trust" emblazoned in giant letters behind the president of the United States just don't sit well with the secular media. So you won't see them.

We have been led to believe that America is supposed to be a secular country. But that was never the case. We were founded to be a G0d-centered, G0d-based country with a nondenominational government. And that is what those chiseled words affirm.

Yet millions of Americans — religious and secular alike — would be stunned to see what every member of the House sees almost every working day.

When I mentioned this to some congressman after I addressed the Republican members of the House two weeks ago, they told me that just as remarkable is the fact that when the president is speaking in the House chamber, he is facing a giant sculpted image of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.

Imagine how this scene would go over in American homes — behind the president of the United States are the words "In G0d We Trust," and in front of him is Moses carrying the Ten Commandments.

This would astound and even confuse an America raised to believe that the words "separation of church and state" are in the Constitution, that those words prohibit the government from acknowledging even a nondenominational G0d and that no speaker at any public high school graduation ceremony may say "G0d bless this graduating class."

That is why, I am convinced, no camera tonight will give you a long or wide view of the president. It might change more than Americans' views of the presidential rostrum. It might change Americans' views of America.

Chinese, the dollar and inflation

2011-01-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

The Chinese announced last Tuesday they are reducing their exposure to the the US dollar. Since November, China has visibly edged away from the dollar in favor a new world system which has yet to emerge, but doubtless will feature the yuan.

For the last 13 years, and especially in the last 24 months, the American government has beaten us up with a steady erosion of the international value of our currency. The Chinese are wisely stepping out of the way.

Inflation is a US government approved tax on your purchasing power. Inflation is not caused by grocers, banks or workers getting more than they deserve (or similar nonsense).

Inflation is not caused by cheap Chinese labor or NAFTA. It is a dilution of your purchasing power by government fiat. The government uses the Federal Reserve to print dollars, creating fake currency out of thin air.

Adjusted for inflation, the DOW Industrial average has increased only 2% since 2000.

~~~~~~~~

Examples of inflation since 1998

An average house cost $129,000. Now it’s $172,000 (33% increase)…and that’s after the real estate market crashed.
A gallon of gasoline was $1.15 and now it’s at $3.15 - 274% higher, almost three times what it was.
A loaf of bread was $1.26. It’s now $2.79 (121% higher).
A dozen eggs cost 88 cents, now $2.89 (228% higher).
A postage stamp was 32 cents - in 2011, 44 cents (38% higher).

What can we thank for the higher prices?

Well, as strange as it sounds in this current post-recession, still deflationary environment, inflation stole your dollar’s value over the last decade.

Inflation – especially over the years – is so subtle that most people don’t notice.

~~~~~~~~

Against the US dollar, 1998 – Present Day

Japanese yen: Up 57%
Aussie dollar: Up 51.9%
Swiss franc: Up 51.4%
Canadian dollar: Up 44%
New Zealand dollar: Up 31%
Norwegian krone: Up 26%
Euro: Up 22%
Swedish krona: Up 19%

Technical data adapted from Sean Hyman at Currency Cross Trader

He had a dream

2011-01-17T11:27:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King is many things to people. Mainly, he idealized equality, justice, and liberty. Those readers who are familiar with political concepts will immediately recognize republic is the concept in Dr King's speech.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

Excerpted from Dr Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" Speech. The whole speech is posted Here.

Arizona fantasy....

2011-01-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

My overseas cousin, PCX, emailed me about the Arizona murders. He wondered "If more people at the event were armed, the nut would not have been able to empty his Glock." PCX lives in Brazil, where personal possession of firearms is prohibited. The violent crime rate there is much higher than in the US.

Anyway, if another person at the event were armed, it would not have been politically correct. Guns are so icky-poo to to the left.

There are two reasons you might want to consider as to why this happening has so much play in the media.

First, it involves a "Democratic" Party gathering for its victims -- the obvious. But the push to blame the nut-bag's actions on the Republican/conservative movement has pretty much failed.

The other reason is if someone else were armed, it would have been resolved pretty quickly, as you suggest. The story would have been played out immediately. The Party controlled media would not be able to stand the idea that anyone should be capable of self-defense. The fact that it happens all the time pokes a hole in their whole people-must-be-controlled-by-government riff.

Still, one wonders....

~~~~~~~~

I am glad Rep. Giffords is making a recovery. Since ObamaCare won't kick in for two more years, this horrible shooting shows what a fine medical establishment he and the "Democratic" Party have screwed with. Lets hope we can undo the damage.

Free speech will cost you.

2011-01-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

Is this a threat to Congress?

Robert Brady (D-PA) introduced legislation in the Congress to criminalize "language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress" according to The Examiner today.

Imagine that, if you use rough speech letting your Congressman know where you stand on an issue, you are a criminal.

They only accept bribes.

Its an obvious attempt to capitalize on the fresh blood in Arizona. Rep. Brady is a vile creature.

Be the sheepdog

2011-01-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

by Mike Piccione

The Arizona tragedy illustrates there is so much wrong with the human condition. People can use objects to harm others.

Ever since man realized he could take the life of another man we have been killing each other for benefit or revenge. Frequently we justify these actions on a disagreement of another's belief system.

What is so sad now is that people are using this tragic shooting as an opportunity to raise funds to help their political prospects or fill their organizational coffers.

Yes, guns kill. That is what they are designed to do. Many are specifically designed to kill people. Murder existed long before guns were made and it exists in places where guns are outlawed.

Guns can take lives and guns can save lives.

Someday there may be a world that doesn't need guns. Someday there may be a world where you don't need to protect yourself from someone that intends you harm. Until the human condition allows us to live in peace, we are dependent upon the sheepdog.

Be the sheepdog. Protect those that can't protect themselves. To those that want to harm others either for profit or for philosophy-to the best of our ability we won't let you. To those that would disarm the sheepdog, remember the wolves are out there and they will find you. You can't negotiate with them. You can only die.

Life is precious; never deny anyone the opportunity to ensure their self preservation or the protection of the innocent.

~~~~~~~~

For more reading - Guns And Public Health: Epidemic Of Violence Or Pandemic Of Propaganda?

Obama's insincerity, and murder in Arizona

2011-01-09T22:29:00.000-08:00

Phil Boehmke originally posted this on The American Thinker

Rush Limbaugh has often said "I thank God for my enemies" and the future former president just could not refrain from proving the King of Talk Radio correct. On Good Friday's edition of the "Early Show" on CBS (an administration approved venue) Mr. Obama took time out of his busy schedule for an exclusive one on one interview with Harry Smith (an administration approved TV personality).

Smith asked the president if he was "aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation about you." Obama replied, "When you've listened to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck it's pretty apparent." The rancor is "troublesome," he said...

[...]

Walking with Smith on the grounds of the White House, the president said that he is "concerned about a political climate in which the other side is demonized" and that "everybody has a responsibility, Democrats or Republicans, to tone down some of this rhetoric."

[...]

"I do think that there is a tone and tenor that needs to change, where we can disagree without being disagreeable or making wild accusations about the other side."

Much as it pains me, I am forced to agree with Mr. Obama. There really is "a tone and tenor that needs to change." It is extremely "troublesome" to hear statements like "if they bring a knife to the fight-we bring a gun," "I want you to go out and get in their face," "the Cambridge Police acted Stupidly," or "Don't you think we're not keeping score, brother." Isn't it just a tad disagreeable to have a website such as flag@whitehouse.gov used as a "snitch line" to report political dissent? Yes, it is very "troublesome" when the president sounds like a Chicago politician or an SEIU thug (not that there is a difference).

To be fair, Mr. Obama is not entirely to blame for all of the vitriol, the "vast right wing conspiracy" that populates the talk radio airwaves (and Fox News) has played a major role as well. Instead of sticking to the MSM script and the party line, those annoying right wingers keep digging up embarrassing facts and (worse yet) sound bites which make the future former president and his comrades look like...what they really are.

Regarding Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, their genuine love for America and tireless work to expose the enemies of freedom will not go unpunished. In singling them out Mr. Obama has forced them to deal with the consequences of his vociferous disapproval, which based upon past experience means that they will be saddled with even higher ratings!

Phil Boehmke
~~~~~~~~

We need to be reminded to what depth this Administration and the "Democratic" Party is willing to sink.

The Left has already started rolling in the fresh blood in Arizona, turning the loss of innocent life into political gain.

They have cowed the Republican controlled House into dropping health care repeal for now.

The Left-most elements of the party are demanding suspension of the right of free speech and registration of all firearms.

As long as the hypnotized droids of the Party controlled press worship at the altar of Big Government, we're going to get more of this.

Still, we must repeal government controlled health care. We must defend the right to free speech and firearms ownership. Its going to be a long haul.

Sorrows

2011-01-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot yesterday.

The local authorities claim the gun man was targeting Representative Giffords, but she is expected to survive.

But we have dead to mourn -- U.S. District Judge John M. Roll; Greene; Giffords aide Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Scheck, 79.

Please pray for the families and the survivors. We need to trust again.

~~~~~~~~

The gunman ranted, hated religion and loved dope, and did heinous violence. May his name be forgotten.

The authorities say he targeted Giffords, but that doesn't make sense. More likely he saw a crowd as his target.

~~~~~~~~

The leftist totalitarian press has already started beating the drum for more stupid firearms restriction. AP repeatedly makes a point the gunman used a "Glock 9-mm handgun semi-automatic." Why name the brand? Why name the caliber? Why mention the type? What difference does it make?

But continuing AP vile guilt-by-association: The AP gasps that Sarah Palin had Representative Giffords on her 'target" list. For the AP's information, that was a target for un-election, not [character] assassination.

Filled with deception and malice, the AP wallows in their fresh blood, vilifying the liberty loving people of the land.

~~~~~~~~

This is a time for measured responses. Ever opportunistic to move against freedom, the Obama government may insist on presidential edict, more "emergency" gun regulation, and violation of the US Constitution. Mr Obama has shown himself willing to act without legislation in order to further the destruction of free society.

Please be careful that we don't set up a "can't win" scenario where there is no way out. The haters must lose.

Gun Control

2011-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Since taking office two years ago, Obama has bypassed Congress and has taken government control of almost every aspect of our lives. Mr Obama is the victimizer. We are the victims.

Now to Eradicate the Second Amendment.

Citing the invasion of violence on the border, the ATF issued an "emergency order" requiring any store that sells more than two self-loading firearms within a five-day period to report the names, addresses and serial numbers of those transactions if the firearms are greater than .22-caliber, semi-automatic, with the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

If it's so important, why didn't Obama allow Congress to vote on it?

Congress wouldn't touch it. If it's all in the name of border security, as Mr Obama insists, why does it apply to every state and not just border states?

This regulation is expected to take effect Wednesday, January 5th.

Mr Obama is attempting to regulate a fundamental, individual right guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. But there is no surprise. He's done nothing but "regulate" us to death since he's been in office.

"To death" ... unfortunately, an accurate choice of words.

~~~~~~~~

Email your Congress people and tell them what to do about this latest invasion from Mr Obama.

Keep your powder dry.

Quantitative Easing-II and History’s Ominous Parallels

2011-01-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

2011 begins, the debate over Quantitative Easing-II continues

Bernanke argues that Fed purchases of T-bonds is the only way to end the Great Recession. Some opponents cry that QE2 equates to printing dollars out of thin air, thereby seeding long-term inflation.

Helicopter Ben adamantly denies that quantitative easing is the same as printing money. “Look,” he says, “the money supply has not increased.” Other critics say QE2 simply won’t work, while Warren Buffett praises Bernanke and Geithner for saving the economy. And the lone voice of reason in Congress, Ron Paul, continues his campaign to abolish the Fed altogether.

The brouhaha rages, but for the sovereign People it is so much sound and fury—the debate will have no effect. Bernanke’s critics will fail, and the central bank will continue with QE2 (doubtless to be followed with QE3). We must concentrate on the effect Bernanke’s actions will have on us as investors and citizens. Where do we turn for clues about what lies ahead?

History
If We Forget Our Mistakes of the Past, We are Doomed to Repeat Them

We can look to history. For thousands of years the consequences of money creation have been the same whether money was gold, silver, paper, or ciphers on a computer hard drive. There have been no exceptions.

Three hundred years before the birth of Christ, Roman emperors experimented with QE by continually reducing the gold, silver, and copper content of the coinage. From the point the denarius coin was introduced in 211 BC, the silver content was persistently reduced until the amount of silver in the original denarius eventually produced 150 denarii. As the coin supply increased, the price of goods did so as well, in direct proportion—the quantity of wheat that had sold for one denarius in the second century increased to 200 denarii a century later.

As prices rose, Roman emperors blamed price inflation on public greed, and attempted to stop it by making rising prices illegal. In 301 A.D., with the survival of the state at risk, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict that set price ceilings on over 1,000 products and set death as the penalty for profiteers and speculators who tried to evade the controls.

In America

In 1775, with the American colonies rebelling against the British Crown, the Continental Congress needed money to pay the army. It printed “continental dollars” promises to pay silver out of "future tax revenues." The result was the hemisphere’s first hyperinflation. As George Washington noted toward the end, "A wagonload of currency will hardly purchase a wagonload of provisions."

Following Diocletian’s model, the Massachusetts Provisional Council declared that anyone who refused to accept these notes was an "enemy of the country." The states enacted price controls, and made it a crime to refuse paper money, demand a premium in paper, or charge lower prices for payments in specie.

Then, in Europe

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the French National Assembly authorized the printing of assignats, paper notes backed by the lands confiscated from the church. The intermittent burst of printing (read quantitative easing) led to hyperinflation which, as always, the authorities blamed on greed. Wage and price controls were imposed along with increasingly draconian penalties, ultimately including death by the guillotine for violators.

And thus it has gone from ancient Rome to modern day. Colonial America, Revolutionary France, post-war Germany, Argentina, Hungary, Brazil, and China, and a hundred other countries repeated the process of money creation leading to price inflation leading to laws against individual choice. Like me, you may remember the 1970s during which, after decades of continuous monetary expansion, pent-up inflation struck and the political answer was, once again, wage and price controls.

No Matter How It’s Done, It’s Theft

Money creation, whether under the cover of stimulus or quantitative easing, is pure theft carried out through sapping the purchasing power of money. The first consequences of quantitative easing must be price inflation. You can be certain that as soon as it rears its head in earnest, the attack on individual liberty will escalate.

To paraphrase Thomas Paine, now is the time for all good men (and women) to become sovereign individuals.

By John Pugsley, Chairman, The Sovereign Society

~~~~~~~~

The Obama Administration insists the Recession is over. They point to the "recovery" in the Dow Jones Index (Unemployment still hovers at 9.7%). But the numbers really tell a story of weakness, not strength.

Consider the dollar cost of all things: They "prices" in dollars are going up, because the dollar's value is going down. People are pouring money into the stack market in order to protect the value, of their wealth, not the dollars.

Mr Obama's Quantitative Easing-II is a massive tax on your purchasing power. This tax is hard to see but too painful to feel.

Tomorrow we get a Cap &Trade tax imposed by this Administration without the required Congressional enactment.

We are getting taxed without representation.

Things have not changed; King Obama still hates America.

Happy 2011?

2011-01-01T00:02:00.000-08:00

Its 2011. You're already $4,700 behind in your new federal "free" health care tax. Whoopee!

Historical note -- In the ancient American system, the master paid for the slaves' health care out of the profit the master got from owning the slave. Used up and old slaves were allowed to die after "end of life consultation". After all, the slaves were the master's property.

Future inflation news.

2010-12-31T09:49:00.000-08:00

Jeff Opdyke

"This will be the year for Japan because of what’s happening inside the halls of the William McChesney Martin Building, on the corner of 20th and C Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. That’s the home of the Federal Reserve.

In the next 12 months, the Japanese stock market will get a HUGE boost from the Fed’s never ending quantitative easing. With the unlimited amount of dollars Mr. Bernanke is clearly willing to create, the Fed is obviously trying to stimulate inflation here at home. In fact, Mr. Bernanke recently said the Fed is essentially aiming for annual inflation in the 2% range.

I’m very confident that the Fed will succeed in that quest.

But tinkering with an economy isn’t a precise recipe. It’s more of an art, and the Fed governors have never been particularly artistic. So I’ll go out on a limb and say that their target of a 2% inflation rate is probably closer to the floor than it is the ceiling.

When the Fed governors realize they’ve “over-stimulated” the economy, they will have to correct their blunder by raising interest rates to cool things down.

As a result, this will widen the spread between U.S. and Japanese interest rates. And since money always flows toward the biggest yields. Investors will sell the yen and buy U.S. dollars.

Thus, as inflation sets foot upon American shores in 2011, [the Japanese] currency on the far side of the Pacific will begin to weaken."

~~~~~~~~

That will be good news for Japan. Their exports will increase.

And the whole episode is bad news for the USA. If we don't correct our basic economic problem of production, the malaise will linger.

Our problem is pointless environmental regulation governmental micromanagement, based on poor understanding of the environment; hyperactive occupational safety regulation, based on the notion that worker are stupid about their own safety; and the crying need for taxes an overspending government has. Seems they lavished too many gifts on their buddies in their rush to corruption. Now we have to pay the piper.

~~~~~~~~

Best wishes for your New Year.

The First Christmas

2010-12-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

It came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.

Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

"Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!"

So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.

Luke 2:1-20 NKJV

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

Freedom is the ability to express our thoughts without fear of legal repercussions, to live as our conscience and faith dictate, and to pursue happiness as we define it.

Truth does not give way to opinions or fads, does not need to be popular, and is self-evident.

And it is our duty to protect and preserve freedom for the next generation.

Evergreen Freedom Foundation

Inflexibility Is Built In

2010-12-22T23:49:00.000-08:00

The outmoded thinking of the "Democrats" is to regulate what works until it doesn't work anymore.

Chevron announced the discovery of a giant oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico in September 2006. The Jack Field is estimated to hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil. That would increase American proven reserves 50%.

The Obama administration banned further drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. No political move would be more effective to squelch the nascent economic recovery in the US. In response, oil started to nudge upward. Some experts predict $110 per barrel by next summer. That suggests gasoline at about $4.25 per gallon.

~~~~~~~~

Food "Safety" bill passed the Senate and then derailed for illegally creating new taxes. Which is fine. The Food Safety bill would dramatically expand the power of the Food and Drug Administration in a massive regulatory overreach.

Seriously, why regulate what is not a problem? Why create a problem out of thin air? The evidence is clear the "Democratic" Party was playing a word game to steal our civil rights.

~~~~~~~~

The Federal Communications Commission, under "Democratic" Party control, has deemed the internet their plaything. There is no federal statute to back up the claim. Nonetheless, the FCC illegally "enacted" a series of regulations to restrict innovation and development of new technologies in the internet. Specifically targeted is the service technique called "prioritizing" (The FCC uses this term).

There is spreading realization that the new internet regulations will be used to enforce a "Fairness Doctrine" style censorship on internet content. The Fairness Doctrine was used to promote endless repetition of the Leftist views in broadcast media until it was revoked in the 1980s.

The net result is innovation and new thinking are dead on the internet. The dead are so much easier to control the Democrats could not resist. Free speech on the internet is at risk. FaultlineUSA also discusses this.

The Democratic Party is clearly looking for push back. To sign an internet petition go to Grassfire's online petition.

~~~~~~~~

The "Democratic" Party is the lawyer party. Very few Democrats who get elected have real world experience. Most of them are either lawyers or über-rich. Their fantasies run rampant. The rules they concoct have little to do with reality, but we really get to live under those rules.

America is on her away to becoming an irrelevancy in the modern world. All because the Obama Administration Democrats could not restrain themselves. They decided to live out pipe dreams of "making a difference." They threw out the lessons of history because the past showed there was no future in their fantasy. Force is substituted for understanding and we lose.

Emergency Firearms Registration

2010-12-18T21:06:00.001-08:00

Ho Ho Ho Here they come to backdoor register your guns! Do you still think Mr Obama will not try to seize your firearms?
~~~~~~~~

The ATF has proposed to require gun dealers to provide directly to the ATF the names, addresses, and serial numbers for every purchase of two or more semi auto, mag fed rifles within a five day period!! They are trying to force this in by January 5th, without any approval from Congress, calling it a needed "emergency" regulation. This is backdoor registration of guns and gun owners.

Here is a quote from the notice by the National Shooting Sports Foundation ( NSSF ) regarding this burdensome and illegal move:

"The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is moving to require federally licensed firearms retailers to report multiple sales of modern sporting rifles beginning January 5, 2011. Specifically, the ATF requirement calls for firearms retailers to report multiple sales, or other dispositions, of two or more .22 caliber or larger semi-automatic rifles that are capable of accepting a detachable magazine and are purchased by the same individual within five consecutive business days."

We are encouraging everyone to contact the relevant officials to protest this move. The office that approves regulation changes like this that bypass Congress is the Office of Information and Regulation affairs of the DOJ and they can be reached at 202-395-6466. You can call your Senator and Representative at the US Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Or see the links page on the left side of this page

The NSSF offers the following points to make when calling"Multiple sales reporting of long guns will actually make it more difficult for licensed retailers to help law enforcement as traffickers modify their illegal schemes to circumvent the reporting requirement. Traffickers will go further underground, hiring more people to buy their firearms. This will make it much harder for retailers to identify and report suspicious behavior to law enforcement."

"Long guns are rarely used in crime (Bureau of Justice Statistics)."
"Imposing multiple sales-reporting requirements for long guns would further add to the already extensive paperwork and record-keeping requirements burdening America’s retailers – where a single mistake could cost them their license and even land them in jail."
"Last year, ATF inspected 2,000 retailers in border states and only two licenses were revoked (0.1%). These revocations were for reasons unknown and could have had nothing to do with illicit trafficking of guns; furthermore, no dealers were charged with any criminal wrongdoing."
"According to ATF, the average age of a firearm recovered in the United States is 11 years old. In Mexico it’s more than 14 years old. This demonstrates that criminals are not using new guns bought from retailers in the states."
"Congress, when it enacted multiple sales reporting for handguns, could have required multiple sales of long guns – it specifically chose not to."

Read the full notice by the NSSF here.

Read the full ATF document proposing this illegal move here (PDF)

report by J&G Sales

Congress Loots Another Trillion.

2010-12-16T00:22:00.000-08:00

Its reminiscent of looters when they realize the jig is up, and they have only a little more time to finish stealing. This is criminal behavior. Alas, it is too frequent in the Congress of the United States.

Another trillion dollars in debt. Merry Christmas America. Your "Democratic" Party controlled Congress is doing its worst to sell your future. Congress has added another trillion dollar, stupid spending bill to their lengthy gravy train. More than 6500 earmarks are in this one, amounting to over $48 billion in pork. Its all payoff for special interests who helped elect these squealing frauds. "$247,000 for virus-free grapes in Washington State." Sakes!

It is criminal behavior. Porking on this level is adding to the crippling effect this Congress has had for the last four years they have made the law of the land. Added to all their reckless spending and stupid regulation, it'll be a wonder if we don't hang them for treason.

~~~~~~~~

Please visit Just_a_conservative_girl's Porker Hall of Shame. There you find a list of those who ought to be in the dock - a list of the porkers.