Since when does the federal government get to pick and choose which states, companies, and even people must follow the law? The executive branch is charged with enforcing the law, regardless of race, sex or creed and Obama is failing to do so repeatedly. Is this political favoritism or dereliction of duty?
Friday, September 23, 2011
Michael Moore urges boycott of Georgia
Now this is an idea that could work. Let’s have Michael demand that all the liberals completely boycott red states. By completely I mean completely, pack up and leave for a blue state.
Red states can test children, and demand that schools improve while blue states fund teachers unions.
Red states can innovate while blue states fund failing solar panel and electric car projects.
Red states can manufacture while blue states fund labor unions.
Red states can close their borders while blue states fund illegal aliens education, homes, and healthcare.
Red states can encourage business while blue states tax them… until they leave for a red state.
Now you see the problem. With tax rates over 70% and no jobs no one will want to live in a blue state. Liberalism is not only self destructve, but it weakens the host. Liberalism can only survive while the host is strong enough not to care, or ignorant of the cost.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
"Gun free zones" only offer criminals freedom.
A Fighting Chance
Unable to carry a firearm for protection while on campus, concealed-carry permit holder Amanda Collins was brutally raped. Today, her fight to save other women from a similar fate is helping her along the road to healing.
Amanda Collins never had a chance.
If anyone could have physically resisted a six-foot-tall attacker with martial arts training, it would have been her. After all, she is a second-degree black belt in Tae kwon do.
“It took me a few years to realize that not everybody’s parents made them get their second-degree black belt to get their driver’s license,” Collins laughed during an exclusive interview with America’s 1st Freedom.
Collins, a concealed-carry permit holder, studied education and English at the University of Nevada, Reno. But there are two things that are against the law on Nevada college campuses—rape, and carrying a gun for protection against rapists. Like the vast majority of “enlightened” public universities nationwide, UNR prohibits lawfully armed citizens from protecting themselves on campus.
Just like thousands of other students, Collins was deprived of the right to defend herself.
On Oct. 22, 2007, Collins was on campus to take a late-night midterm. She parked in the same garage where campus police park their cruisers—less than 100 yards from the police station—to avoid having to cross campus after dark.
Leaving class after 10 p.m., the attractive 5-foot-2 junior dutifully followed the “safety in numbers” rule by walking with several classmates to the garage until they parted ways to their different levels.
Displaying the awareness inherent in a concealed-carry permit holder with a black belt in martial arts, Collins scanned the area around her car as she approached. She didn’t see the man hunched down between two vehicles, patiently waiting. In an instant, the man pulled Collins down, put a gun to her temple, clicked off the safety and ordered her not to say anything.
Amanda Collins never had a chance.
In January 2008, Reno came alive with volunteers desperate to find a young woman who disappeared not far from the University of Nevada, Reno campus. Brianna Denison, 19, was staying with a friend during winter break and went missing in the middle of the night.
The search came to an end when Denison’s body was found four weeks later. Authorities determined she’d been kidnapped, raped and brutally strangled. Her naked body was left to freeze, crudely hidden beneath a discarded Christmas tree.
Brianna Denison never had a chance.
Students on campus became increasingly fearful as time went by and no arrests were made. Authorities began to question if the attack was related to previous incidents. College officials issued the same feckless guidelines, such as “be aware of your surroundings,” “don’t walk across campus after dark” and “travel in groups.” They also attentively supplied “rape whistles” to female students. (Local gun shops reported a surge in more practical self-defense measures.)
After Denison’s murder, authorities spoke with Collins about similarities in the two cases. Collins gave a physical description to a police sketch artist, and within months police tracked down and arrested James Biela, a construction worker who at one point worked on campus near where both attacks occurred.
Collins spent the day before her graduation testifying at trial. During the sentencing phase of the trial, she read a statement saying she forgave Biela for his actions but believed he should face immeasurable consequences, just as he condemned her to endure.
On June 2, 2010, Biela was sentenced to death for the murder of Denison. He currently sits on Nevada’s death row while his case is appealed.
Months later, Collins approached the NRA about decriminalizing concealed carry at Nevada’s public universities. A bill doing so passed the state senate, but was ultimately defeated by Assembly Judiciary Chairman William Horne, who refused to bring the bill up for a vote. Arguing against the bill were faculty members and police officers—most of whom presumably had never been raped or strangled on campus—who raised concerns about their own safety if the same people who carried off campus exercised that right while on campus.
During a recent interview, Collins shared her thoughts on her attack, her fight to legalize campus carry and her road to healing.
Thanks for talking with us, Amanda. Can you start by explaining your background with guns? I grew up with firearms in my household. They were never made a secret with my sister and me, and that’s largely due to my dad. He introduced them to us with a very healthy respect for them. I remember being down in his workshop when I was little, sitting up on the table while he was cleaning his firearms, and he would talk very frankly with me about them. I always had an understanding of their capability. I was about 5 or 6 when I started target practicing. I remember the first time I went shooting with Dad, he bought me a little chipmunk .22. My thumb wasn’t strong enough to pull back the hammer so he always had to do it for me every time. When I was in high school I tried out for the rifle team and made it, and participated in that for three years.
So you were allowed to handle firearms at high school but not college? Yeah. In a controlled environment, but yeah. That’s kind of crazy, huh?
What prompted you to get your concealed carry permit? I was raised by both my parents not to be an easy target. My parents did everything they could to make sure that if somebody wanted me, I wouldn’t be an easy target. As a petite woman, I realized that even with martial arts training, realistically, the only equalizing factor between me and an opponent much larger than myself would be a firearm, so I wanted the ability to actively and realistically participate in my own self-protection.
Did you ever face any threatening situations prior to your attack? Well, a lot of martial arts training emphasizes not putting yourself in that situation or putting yourself in that position where you have to be that close to somebody. If nothing else, it helped me avoid putting myself in a situation that would require that.
How did it strike you when you learned you couldn’t carry on campus? I found out in the concealed-carry class. I suppose at first it was troublesome and it kind of irritated me; I didn’t understand why I could be trusted at the deli shop across the street, and then as soon as I crossed that arbitrary line, I was suddenly deemed incompetent and unable to make sound decisions or untrustworthy for whatever reason by the same authorities who granted me the permission to carry in the first place.
Did you ask for permission [to carry before the attack]? I didn’t even know there was a system in place to ask for permission from the president to carry. I guess I just accepted it for what it was—not so happily. I took it for what it was and continued to be aware of my surroundings and ensure my safety. You don’t want to cause waves because in the end you want that pretty, expensive piece of paper to hang on your wall.
What did you do after your attack? Anyone who’s ever been raped can relate that you make a plan to survive. My plan at the time was denial—“this did not happen to me.” Everything I’d done up to this point was to prevent me from finding myself in that situation. I honestly don’t know how I made it home. I went to my sorority house and took a shower, because I just wanted to get all that filth off of me and just wash it all away. I drove home, went to bed, woke up and honestly did not remember what had happened. My brain had just allowed me to believe that I’d had the worst nightmare when I was sleeping. It wasn’t until two weeks later that I went back to the parking garage to park there for class and remembered everything that happened.
When did you finally tell someone? I confided in my roommate probably a week or so after that. I was very edgy, very angry, just not myself. She was my best friend at the time and knew something was off and could tell. She wanted me to go and report it, but I didn’t want to because I didn’t have any physical evidence at that point, and I knew that, and I really, really wanted to avoid it, avoid going to court, avoid going through the whole justice process. I felt there was no way I could give the police anything that could help them catch this guy. There was no DNA left, basically just my story.
What got you involved in the end? A young gal in the area went missing; her name was Brianna Denison. Her case was believed to be linked to another case that had occurred in December. My roommate had a gut feeling that it was the same guy who had attacked me, so she said, “You need to go and report this, because I think it’s the same guy.” And I said, “No, it’s not, just leave it be.” And so I didn’t make any efforts to call the detectives or authorities. She actually contacted them, told them what had happened and gave them my contact information. Once they approached me, I realized it was no longer just about me. They were trying to find Brianna. I really didn’t think that giving them my story would amount to that much. I went in and told them what happened, and there were enough similarities between the attacks for them to believe it was the same person; I was able to give a description to the sketch artist. That actually ended up being a very important piece of evidence in the trial. About 10 months later, they found their man.
Do you feel like the college is responsible for what happened to you? It’s interesting, because Adam Garcia, the chief of police, said they recognized that they had failed me miserably. If the college denies us the ability to participate in our self-defense, then they assume responsibility for every individual that comes onto their campus. My case is a perfect example of that. My inability to be able to carry allowed [Biela] to continue assaulting women, and ultimately he murdered one, too. So I think there is a shared responsibility in that. It’s like my mom has asked the chancellor of the university, “If guns aren’t the answer, then what is? Where were your police when my daughter was being raped?” Oftentimes, police officers only show up after the fact. First responders are good and essential and necessary—but instant responders are better. The university takes instant responders out of the equation.
The college granted you a special right to carry after your attack, didn’t they? Right. We sent them a letter, and they called my dad. They told him that before [University of Nevada, Reno] President Milton Glick ever entertained the idea of someone carrying a gun on campus, I needed to undergo an interview process with the chief of police. My dad went with me, and they asked me a slew of questions. It boiled down to the fact that I was terrified to go on campus. We didn’t know where this guy was, we didn’t know if he was still following me because the police originally thought he knew my pattern and my behavior well enough to grab me in the way that he did. I didn’t know if I was being watched. It was just a lot of uncertainty. They ultimately ended up granting me the permission I asked for, but there were a lot of contingencies. I had to be a full-time student, I had to have my firearm inspected, I couldn’t tell anybody. If any one of those things had been violated, then the permission would be null and void.
So if you offered protection to one of your classmates, you would lose your own right to protection? Right, it’s almost like they took away my First Amendment rights in giving me my Second Amendment rights. If I had told anyone, “Hey, let me walk you to your car and then you can drive me to mine because I have the ability to protect us both,” then in theory it would have been null and void.
Are there any no-gun signs marked on campus? You know, I’ve never seen one. I know the parking garage has been lit up a lot more and they installed call boxes on campus. But a call box above my head while I was being straddled wouldn’t be any more help than the police were that night. What am I supposed to do, ask my attacker to hold on and then run and push the button, then fight off my attacker while telling the operator what’s going on?
The Las Vegas Review-Journal quoted you as saying you had thoughts of suicide. Can you explain that? What are the lingering effects of being defenseless on campus? I struggled with survivor’s guilt. Why did [Denison] lose her life and I didn’t? I struggled a lot—it still keeps me up at times. The unanswered question in my life will always be, “What would have been different if I had my firearm with me that night?” I can play that incident in my head over and over again, but there’s one outcome that will always be the same—two other rapes would have been prevented, and one woman would be alive today. The thoughts of suicide are really hard to talk about. I think it was, after being raped, just not wanting to process it through and not wanting to figure out how to find peace after what happened. It’s a lot of emotionally draining work. But also the stress of the trial caused my husband and me to endure two miscarriages and 16 months of infertility after that, not to mention all the internal turmoil.
How do you feel about the failure of legislators to pass the campus carry bill in Nevada? Disappointed. It would have been one thing to lose in a fair fight. It is quite another to be “sucker punched,” as my dad puts it. All of the support it received does give me hope that I will see the bill pass in the future, and I have to remind myself that women did not get the right to vote the first time around.
How have you found healing since your attack? What would you tell others facing similar issues? Healing will be a continual process for the rest of my life, and I would not have ever been able to come to this point without my faith in Jesus. My faith has been so crucial. I don’t know how people get through tragedy without it. That is not to say that my faith has made it easier or less painful, but I think my faith made it more bearable by allowing me to know that there was a greater purpose, even if I couldn’t understand it or see how any good could come from it.
It is so important to get help to process through everything. Finding a way to help others through my experience has been so helpful. Honestly, when I reached the point where I was willing to allow some amount of good to come from my most devastating experience, I never in a million years fathomed that I would be led down the path of advocating for campus carry. I truly thought I would become a part of someone’s support system and be able to help them walk through the healing process. It wasn’t until I was in a business writing class for school and was given an assignment to write a paper. I wrote about campus carry. I showed my dad a copy, and he asked me if I was serious about wanting that to change. My response was, “Well, yeah, but who am I? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” So my dad made some calls to the NRA and that was the conception of the Nevada Campus Protection Act.
I knew that this would require me to revisit my attack countless times and there are some days when it is a lot more painful than others, but the ultimate goal of saving lives and keeping others safe makes it worthwhile.
Following Biela’s arrest, news agencies reported that “girls on campus can finally feel safe.”
Unfortunately, events often highlight the difference between feeling safe and being safe. On July 15, 2011, police at the University of Nevada, Reno alerted students of an offender who attacked a student from behind and groped her buttocks and breasts.
Records indicate there are more than 500 convicted sex offenders living within Reno city limits, and nationwide averages tell us there are about nine sexual assaults every day on college campuses around the country—and that’s just the ones that are reported. Yet college professors and bureaucrats dare to claim fear of licensed permit holders over rapists, and pursue a political agenda that empowers criminals rather than victims.
Few of us require blood ties before stepping up to defend the innocent. But how would you feel if this was your family member? What regrets would plague your nights if your wife, daughter or sister were brutally violated?
“My dad was very supportive when I finally told him,” Collins said. “I think his heart was broken because he wasn’t able to protect me the way a dad should protect his daughter.”
Like the police, we can’t always be around to protect those we love. The least we can do is make sure the law doesn’t threaten them with prison for being prepared to protect themselves.
The least we can do is give them a fighting chance.
The real reason violent crime is dropping...
Modern Mythology: Five Myths About Gun Control
by Guy Smith
09/20/2011
A radio talk show host recently asked me to name the top five myths about gun control.
My response was “Why discuss only 0.0001% of the lies?”My statistical snideness aside, the question provoked some necessary thinking. After a decade of debunking such myths in Gun Facts, it would be easy to rattle off several fabrications about firearms, numerous misinformation points involving numbers, or even disclose that Chuck Schumer and his kindlier brother Beelzebub are no long on speaking terms. All those items would bore the average audience into comas and not enlighten discussions about that political perversion called the gun control “movement” (given the utter lack of dues paying members to any gun control organization, and given their backward “progress” in the last two decades, their “movement” is oddly immobile).
After long and painful consideration, I managed to distill gun control mythology into five rather straight forward points.
Myth #1 – gun control works: There are more data points detailing the failure of gun control than stars in the sky, grains of sand on the world’s beaches, or Nancy Pelosi’s Botox injections. The main myth is that the stuff works. Oddly, we have Bill Clinton to thank not only for endless new cigar jokes, but for kick-starting a five year study by the National Academy of Sciences that found zero evidence supporting a correlation between gun control and violent crime. After ingesting 253 peer-reviewed journal articles, 99 different books, 43 government publications, a survey of 80 different gun-control laws and some of their own independent research, they tossed a 328-page report that showed reducing firearm ownership rates does nothing to reduce criminal firearm misuse rates. Nobody with functioning neurons was surprised by the conclusion.
Myth #2 – “common sense” gun control laws: Dictionaries confound political discussions. My dictionary defines “common sense” as “sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge.” For any law to be “common sense” oriented, there must be a clear end result, an expectation that it will be enforced, and some validation that the scheme has the desired effect. No proposal from the Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, or Criminals for Societal Manipulation (a.k.a. Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns) meets the definition of “common sense.” The desired results all depend on the assumptions that criminals will not disobey new laws (such as filing off microstamping markers) or that the laws will be executed and enforced (such as catching criminals with altered guns … which they stole to begin with). Common sense requires incarcerating miscreants, not unviable and exotic technology.
Myth #3 – gun control reduces violent crime overseas: This Lie of Exotic Divergence was once popular in gun control cabals, until the Dutch Ministry of Justice performed a uniform multi-national survey of crime victimization, discovering that violent crime rates were higher in Australia, England, Scotland, Canada, Finland, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, France, Sweden and Holland (America ranked #13 of 17 nations for violent tendencies, with Japan, Portugal, Spain and barely Belgium below us). Our firearm homicide rate is higher in the USofA, but our own Bureau of Justice Statistics says that 94% of those homicides are gang- and drug-trafficking related. Eliminating Crips and Bloods – what a wonderful idea – might bring American violence levels down to Japan’s.
Myth #4 – concealed carry laws endanger the public: When Barack Obama told the Chicago Sun Times “There has not been any evidence that allowing people to carry a concealed weapon is going to make anyone safer,” intelligent and educated people were forced into impromptu BVD changes due to laughter-induced involuntary tinkling. In 1988 only 10 states allowed citizens to carry concealed firearms, and two of them had simply never bothered to outlaw the practice. Today 42 states provide for private pistol packing, and the violent crime rate is 32% lower than 23 years ago. Professor John Lott once told me that not a single peer-reviewed criminology paper showed violent crime rising in states that passed concealed carry laws (compared to national averages). Yet Barry Obama dislikes the idea, proving that the people who voted for him are as intelligent as he.
Myth #5 –– “we have to do something”: We have to do smart things, which means isolating and understanding the source of violence and, if you are myopic enough, the source of gun violence. Doing “something” for the sake of doing it means wasting grand gobs of tax money and police time chasing otherwise innocent citizens and not garden variety thugs. Given the number of firearm homicides, the fact that 94% of those homicides are gang related, and that gang suspects in homicides are the lead subject in an average of two more unsolved homicides, then most of the mess could be contained by incarcerating as few as 3,000 well known repeat violent offenders. That would be doing something smart
No North Slope Drilling? Are we nuts?
No North Slope Drilling? Are we nuts?
We must tap the Alaskan oil reserves as part of our real recovery
by Eric J. Andringa
09/20/2011
But the conservatives who support drilling are working every day. Only college students, teachers, professors, and the unemployed have the luxury of enough time on their hands to perpetually protest.
Now the current administration says drilling way up there won’t do any good because it will take 10 years before it will produce any oil.
Well then Duh! If that is true then what are we waiting for?
Read between the lines, what they mean to say is it won’t produce any oil in time to get me re-elected. Moreover, if there happened to be a spill, you don’t want to be the congressman or senator who authored, or even signed, that piece of legislation.
So Washington sees it as all risk and no reward. I think that they are all wrong.
There is a whole lot of reward that they are overlooking. If you are as old as I am, then you remember the building of the Alaska pipeline. Surveying started in 1970, the construction began in 1975, and it was completed in 1980.
That project cost around 8 billion dollars and employed tens of thousands of people. If you were an ambitious or unemployed healthy male, it was a place to go for good paying work. Gee, do you think that we could use something like that right now?
So, if they are right, and it will be ten years before the first drop of oil is produced, then my math says that is 10 years of guaranteed employment with decent paying jobs. Hey Washington, don’t tax the oil companies more (you’ll just piss that money away any how), instead, how about letting them employ tens of thousands of people on the north slope for 10 years or more?
Now the tie-dyed tree huggers will scream “What about the environment?” Here is the reality check, the oil companies get better and better at drilling all the time. It only makes good business sense. They hate oil spills more than any one, it is bad public relations and costs a fortune, so of course they will be as careful as possible. I have never heard anyone from Alaska say a word against drilling on the North Slope and it is in their beloved backyard. Well kind of.
The North slope is not the Alaska you see in postcards. It is not the mountains with bears catching salmon out of pristine streams. The North slope is a whole lot of nothing hundreds of miles from anywhere.
Finally, I am no economist, but I believe that the mere authorization to begin drilling might be enough to bring oil prices down some. What do we have to lose! That oil is like a gift from God that we are refusing to use at our own peril.
EPA Regulations Will Result in 1.44 Million Job Losses
EPA Regulations Will Result in 1.44 Million Job Losses
National Economic Research Associates (NERA) used the Federal Government’s own data in finding that Obama’s proposed EPA regulations would cost America over 180,000 jobs per year between 2013 and 2020.
This includes effects from the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) as well as Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) rules.
Here’s a break down of just a handful of the states affected by these regulations:
Projected Job Losses between 2013-2020:
Pennsylvania: 59,000
Ohio: 53,500
West Virginia: 38,500
Michigan: 40,000
Illinois: 48,000
Indiana: 51,500
Wisconsin: 24,500
Iowa: 26,500
Minnesota: 12,500
Florida: 135,000
Missouri: 76,000
Total nationwide will be in the range of 1.44 million jobs lost.
There are ways to help prevent this. If you haven’t heard of the TRAIN act, it may be voted on this Friday and it will hopefully be a way to reign in some of this tyrannical regulation:
The TRAIN Act (H.R. 2401, “Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act of 2011”) establishes an 11-member federal interagency committee, chaired by the Department of Commerce, to analyze the cumulative impacts of a number of major EPA regulations. A final report on the results of the analysis is due to Congress by August 1, 2012.It bears repeating, though I know I mention this every time, that this is precisely what President Obama said he would do. He is systematically destroying the coal industry, and the toll on American jobs is extremely high.
If an industry becomes obsolete, there is no preventing the shedding of jobs as the market transitions to a new good or service. That is not what’s happening here. What’s happening here is the targeting of a bedrock American industry by a President who thinks he’s saving mother Earth.
A Point Without Partisanship — A Scandal Everyone Should Be Concerned About
A Point Without Partisanship — A Scandal Everyone Should Be Concerned About
With the exception of CBS News, few media outlets have paid much attention to Operation Gun Walker a/k/a “Fast and Furious,” which has no relation to Vin Diesel.
The lack of media attention may be about to change. This is a huge and troublesome scandal. The left is, I think, afraid to touch it because of just how far up within the Obama Justice Department the scandal appears to go. The right has been focused more on other fights. The media is focused elsewhere. But the wind is shifting. Without throwing any partisan punches, let me just objectively get in to this business and why the left, the right, and the media should be paying attention.
I wrote about Operation Gun Walker back in March. In short, the ATF allowed Mexican drug lords to buy guns in the United States and walk them across the Mexican border. The too clever by half theory was that the American government would be able to then track the guns via their serial numbers and paint a picture of drug cartel activity by where the guns showed up.
The federal government never advised Mexico nor sought Mexico’s permission. Perversely, the ATF reported decided to then use the gun sales it authorized as evidence that the federal government needed more gun regulations.
As you might expect, the whole operation blew up in the ATF’s face. Using a Gun Walker gun, Mexican drug lords killed an American border patrol agent. Recently another murder on this side of the border turned up tied to a Gun Walker gun.
New evidence in the investigation conservative shows more than 200 murders linked to Operation Gun Walker guns.
Now, even more damning evidence is showing up in the form of secret recordings obtained by CBS News. According to the tapes, made between ATF Agent Hope MacAllister and a gun dealer named Andre Howard, Agent MacAllister admitted she had suggested the ATF hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to persuade Grassley to stop investigating the ATF.
Now forget all the partisan points for a minute. We have more than 200 deaths attributed to this operation and an ATF agent on tape saying she thought the ATF needed to dig up dirt on a U.S. Senator to stop him from investigating the ATF. At some point we all, left, right, and center, need to recognize when the inmates have taken over the asylum.
This is the federal bureaucracy out of control and it needs a brighter spotlight on it.
The lack of media attention may be about to change. This is a huge and troublesome scandal. The left is, I think, afraid to touch it because of just how far up within the Obama Justice Department the scandal appears to go. The right has been focused more on other fights. The media is focused elsewhere. But the wind is shifting. Without throwing any partisan punches, let me just objectively get in to this business and why the left, the right, and the media should be paying attention.
I wrote about Operation Gun Walker back in March. In short, the ATF allowed Mexican drug lords to buy guns in the United States and walk them across the Mexican border. The too clever by half theory was that the American government would be able to then track the guns via their serial numbers and paint a picture of drug cartel activity by where the guns showed up.
The federal government never advised Mexico nor sought Mexico’s permission. Perversely, the ATF reported decided to then use the gun sales it authorized as evidence that the federal government needed more gun regulations.
As you might expect, the whole operation blew up in the ATF’s face. Using a Gun Walker gun, Mexican drug lords killed an American border patrol agent. Recently another murder on this side of the border turned up tied to a Gun Walker gun.
New evidence in the investigation conservative shows more than 200 murders linked to Operation Gun Walker guns.
Now, even more damning evidence is showing up in the form of secret recordings obtained by CBS News. According to the tapes, made between ATF Agent Hope MacAllister and a gun dealer named Andre Howard, Agent MacAllister admitted she had suggested the ATF hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to persuade Grassley to stop investigating the ATF.
Now forget all the partisan points for a minute. We have more than 200 deaths attributed to this operation and an ATF agent on tape saying she thought the ATF needed to dig up dirt on a U.S. Senator to stop him from investigating the ATF. At some point we all, left, right, and center, need to recognize when the inmates have taken over the asylum.
This is the federal bureaucracy out of control and it needs a brighter spotlight on it.
The folks who are getting the free stuff, don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.
The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!
Now... The people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
So... The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free stuff in the first place.
We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.
The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 235 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that. In 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.
ELECTION 2012 IS COMING
The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!
Now... The people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
So... The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free stuff in the first place.
We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.
Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.
The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 235 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that. In 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.
ELECTION 2012 IS COMING
A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!
I'M 100% for PASSING THIS ON!!!
Let's take a stand!!!Obama: Gone!Borders: Closed!Language: English onlyCulture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!
Free market schools
School spending has doubled over the past 30 years. Yet what do we get? More buildings and more assistant principals -- but student learning? No improvement. If you graph the numbers, the spending line slopes steeply, while the lines for reading, math and science scores are as flat as a dead man's EKG.
Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a government monopoly, and monopolies don't improve.
And yet I'm happy to announce some good news: Cool things are starting to happen in classrooms.
I was surprised to meet kids who said they like school. What? I found school boring. How can it be that these fourth-graders tell me that they look forward to going to school and that math is "rockin' awesome"?
Those kids attend one of those new charter schools. Charters let them escape the bureaucracy of regular schools, including, often, teachers union rules. These schools compete for kids because parents can always choose another school. That makes them better.
Not every charter school is good, but the beauty of competition is that bad ones go out of business, while good ones expand. Then good schools teach more kids. Choice and competition produce quality. Anyone surprised?
Government schools rarely improve because no matter how bad they are, they still have captive customers.
The Harlem charter schools admit kids that bureaucrats label "at risk of failure." But these kids learn. And they do it at lower cost.
I visited another charter chain, American Indian Public Charter Schools in Oakland, Calif., that gets similar top results, also at lower cost.
"Kids in American Indian Public Charter Schools score so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn't even a word for it," says Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom.
Those schools use methods different from the charters in Harlem. For example, they pay some kids to tutor other kids.
Both charters do something that regular public schools rarely do: fire teachers. One charter principal calls it "freeing up a person's future."
You cannot maintain quality unless you can fire people, said Deborah Kenny, founder of Harlem Village Academies.
While bad teachers might get fired, (SET ITAL) good (END ITAL) teachers are given freedom.
"They can choose their textbooks, teaching methods -- as long as they, every quarter and every year, make sure that the students are learning what they need to learn," Kenny said.
In Harlem, 43 percent of eighth-graders pass state math tests. In Kenny's schools, 100 percent pass. So if charters work, why aren't there more of them? Because teachers unions hate them. The president of the Newark Teachers Union, Joseph Del Grosso, doesn't want charters in what he calls "his schools."
"Over my dead body, they're going to come there," he told me.
Because of that attitude, people who try to start charter schools often find that bureaucrats make it hard. But in one city, most kids now attend charters. How did that happen?
It happened because when Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, it also destroyed the school system. Some school reformers thought that might be a blessing.
"It was probably one of the worst school districts in the country," said Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state superintendent of education. The state faced a choice: Rebuild the old system or build something new. It built something new. Opening charters became easy. Today, most kids in New Orleans attend charter schools, and test scores are better.
Ben Marcovitz started a charter school called Sci Academy.
"We have complete control over the quality of our instruction."
At first, only a third of his students were proficient on state tests. Now, Sci Academy's test results are among the best in the city.
Competition drives schools to try different things in order to succeed. It's similar to what happens with consumer goods -- computers, refrigerators, cars -- that get better every year.
If charter schools do this well, imagine what a really free and competitive system -- one without compulsory tax financing and bureaucratic chartering procedures -- could do.
Our kids deserve a free market in education.
Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a government monopoly, and monopolies don't improve.
And yet I'm happy to announce some good news: Cool things are starting to happen in classrooms.
I was surprised to meet kids who said they like school. What? I found school boring. How can it be that these fourth-graders tell me that they look forward to going to school and that math is "rockin' awesome"?
Those kids attend one of those new charter schools. Charters let them escape the bureaucracy of regular schools, including, often, teachers union rules. These schools compete for kids because parents can always choose another school. That makes them better.
Not every charter school is good, but the beauty of competition is that bad ones go out of business, while good ones expand. Then good schools teach more kids. Choice and competition produce quality. Anyone surprised?
Government schools rarely improve because no matter how bad they are, they still have captive customers.
The Harlem charter schools admit kids that bureaucrats label "at risk of failure." But these kids learn. And they do it at lower cost.
I visited another charter chain, American Indian Public Charter Schools in Oakland, Calif., that gets similar top results, also at lower cost.
"Kids in American Indian Public Charter Schools score so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn't even a word for it," says Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom.
Those schools use methods different from the charters in Harlem. For example, they pay some kids to tutor other kids.
Both charters do something that regular public schools rarely do: fire teachers. One charter principal calls it "freeing up a person's future."
You cannot maintain quality unless you can fire people, said Deborah Kenny, founder of Harlem Village Academies.
While bad teachers might get fired, (SET ITAL) good (END ITAL) teachers are given freedom.
"They can choose their textbooks, teaching methods -- as long as they, every quarter and every year, make sure that the students are learning what they need to learn," Kenny said.
In Harlem, 43 percent of eighth-graders pass state math tests. In Kenny's schools, 100 percent pass. So if charters work, why aren't there more of them? Because teachers unions hate them. The president of the Newark Teachers Union, Joseph Del Grosso, doesn't want charters in what he calls "his schools."
"Over my dead body, they're going to come there," he told me.
Because of that attitude, people who try to start charter schools often find that bureaucrats make it hard. But in one city, most kids now attend charters. How did that happen?
It happened because when Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, it also destroyed the school system. Some school reformers thought that might be a blessing.
"It was probably one of the worst school districts in the country," said Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state superintendent of education. The state faced a choice: Rebuild the old system or build something new. It built something new. Opening charters became easy. Today, most kids in New Orleans attend charter schools, and test scores are better.
Ben Marcovitz started a charter school called Sci Academy.
"We have complete control over the quality of our instruction."
At first, only a third of his students were proficient on state tests. Now, Sci Academy's test results are among the best in the city.
Competition drives schools to try different things in order to succeed. It's similar to what happens with consumer goods -- computers, refrigerators, cars -- that get better every year.
If charter schools do this well, imagine what a really free and competitive system -- one without compulsory tax financing and bureaucratic chartering procedures -- could do.
Our kids deserve a free market in education.
The CEO Who Got Fined For Hiring Too Many People
The CEO Who Got Fined For Hiring Too Many People
How the government kills jobs.
by John Hayward
09/21/2011
Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, testified before the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight, and Government Spending on September 13. He was there to speak on the subject of job creation, but Schiff also knows a few things about how the government can destroy jobs. In his remarks before the subcommittee, which he also published in full at Forbes, he explained how he was fined for hiring too many people:
Regulations have substantially increased the costs and risks associated with job creation. Employers are subjected to all sorts of onerous regulations, taxes, and legal liability. The act of becoming an employer should be made as easy as possible. Instead we have made it more difficult. In fact, among small business owners, limiting the number of employees is generally a goal. This is not a consequence of the market, but of a rational desire on the part of business owners to limit their cost and legal liabilities. They would prefer to hire workers, but these added burdens make it preferable to seek out alternatives.
In my own business, securities regulations have prohibited me from hiring brokers for more than three years. I was even fined fifteen thousand dollar expressly for hiring too many brokers in 2008. In the process I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to mitigate a more severe regulatory outcome as a result of hiring too many workers. I have also been prohibited from opening up additional offices. I had a major expansion plan that would have resulted in my creating hundreds of additional jobs. Regulations have forced me to put those jobs on hold.
In addition, the added cost of security regulations have forced me to create an offshore brokerage firm to handle foreign accounts that are now too expensive to handle from the United States. Revenue and jobs that would have been created in the U.S. are now being created abroad instead. In addition, I am moving several asset management jobs from Newport Beach, California to Singapore.
(Emphasis mine.) Noting that an increasingly hostile business environment in the United States will naturally lead him to move capital, jobs, and tax revenue abroad, Schiff offered suggestions for an alternative approach:
To encourage real and lasting job growth the best thing the government can do is to make it as easy as possible for business to hire and employ people. This means cutting down on workplace regulations. It also means eliminating the punitive aspects of employment law that cause employers to think twice about hiring. To be blunt, the easier employees are to fire, the higher the likelihood they will be hired.
Schiff’s detailed proposals for promoting job growth are not timid: he suggested replacing all corporate and personal taxes with a national sales tax, abolishing the federal minimum wage, repealing mandated employment benefits like overtime pay and leave time, and shutting down extended unemployment benefits. He also thinks interest rates are too low, and should be “raised to bring on a badly needed restructuring of our economy,” which he admits would be painful at first, but would “lay the foundation upon which a real recovery can be built.”
That’s some pretty strong medicine, but it’s worth pondering in the context of endless political promises to “pivot to job creation.” If we really value job creation as a top priority, we should be willing to consider doing away with factors that impede job creation, no matter how traditionally accepted they might be. For example, here’s how Schiff addresses the federal minimum wage:
Minimum wages have never raised the wages of anyone and simply draw an arbitrary line that separates the employable from the unemployable. Just like prices, wages are determined by supply and demand. The demand for workers is a function of how much productivity a worker can produce. Setting the wage at $7.25 simply means that only those workers who can produce goods and services that create more than $7.25 (plus all additional payroll associated costs) per hour are eligible for jobs. Those who can’t, become permanently unemployable. The artificial limits encourage employers to look to minimize hires and to automate wherever possible.
In other words, as with every other form of price control, decreeing that labor must be purchased for at least $7.25 does not make all labor suddenly become worth $7.25. Why is it considered “normal” to force taxpayers to pay almost five million dollars per job to create 3500 “green” jobs, but relaxing the minimum wage law is unthinkable?
In a similar vein, Schiff offers tough and provocative talk about mandatory workplace benefits:
Employment is a voluntary relationship between two parties. The more room the parties have to negotiate and agree on their own terms, the more likely a job will be created. Rules imposed from the top create inefficiencies that limit employment opportunities. Employee benefits are a cost of employment, and high value employees have all the bargaining power they need to extract benefits from employers. They are free to search for the best benefits they can get just as they search for the best wages.
Companies that do not offer benefits will lose employees to companies that do. Just as employees are free to leave companies at will, so too should employers be free to terminate an employee without fear of costly repercussions. Individuals should not gain rights because they are employees, and individuals should not lose rights because they become employers.
What do Americans value more: job creation, or all the social “benefits” built into the federally-mandated cost of labor? Schiff’s overall point is that people respond to incentives. When labor is artificially transformed into an expensive and risky resource, employers purchase less of it. Politicians who talk about jobs as their “highest” priority really mean that jobs are somewhere in their top 20 priorities, and might crack the top 10, if their poll numbers drop low enough.
No amount of political grandstanding or short-term “stimulus” spending can re-program large numbers of human beings away from rational economic behavior. The high-minded intentions behind government regulation are often quite at variance from the behavior it actually encourages, or discourages, among those who don’t make business decisions based on the moral postures struck by politicians.
It’s also a cold truth, often forgotten during heated moments of class warfare, that job creators have a variety of options for responding to perverse incentives. Americans too often discuss employment from within a very narrow box… but escaping that box is not impossible. Just ask the CEO who started sending jobs overseas, when the U.S. government fined him for hiring too many people.
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