Wyoming Senate unanimously passes law nullifying the federal government's power over firearms manufactured, sold and used in Wyoming, joining Tennessee and Montana.
ECONOMY:
This is why unemployment isn't getting better.
"Why would an employer want to hire when he must incur all of the following:
Pressures to hire on factors other than merit: gender, race, sexual orientation, older workers. And now, efforts are accelerating to passlaws that would prohibit an employer from not hiring someone just because he committed a felony.
Even if an employer's intent is non-discriminatory, if a decision to hire, promote, or terminate employees has "disparate impact," on one gender, racial group, or workers over 40, that may be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit against the employer.
Large and complicated payroll costs beyond salary: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Insurance (up to 79 weeks), plus various state and local levies.
Mandated leave: 12 weeks per year with rights of rehiring (the Family and Medical Leave Act) which may be expanded by the '"Healthy Families Act," which would mandate up to 56 hours of paid sick leave to take care of themselves or a family member very loosely defined: "anyone closely associated with an employee."
The Americans with Disabilities Act, in addition to adding pressure on employers to hire people with physical and mental disabilities, requires employers to provide "reasonable accommodations" for all such employees.
Laws granting plaintiffs lower burdens of proof regarding discrimination as well as sexual harassment. For example, an employer can be held liable for an employee's being harassed, even if the employer is unaware that the harassment occurred. The financial and human costs of defending such lawsuits are enormous.
The proposed health care legislation will force employers to pay for the ever-escalating health care costs.
New legislation makes it easier for workers to organize into unions, which, of course, increases employer costs while making it often prohibitively difficult to fire even low-performing employees.
If you ran a business, wouldn't all those mandates make you want to hire as few people as absolutely possible – even if the taxpayers gave you $5,000 per? That certainly wouldn't seduce me – I'd rather stay small than endure all those burdens and increased risk of having to close down my business."Government is doing everything wrong.
Any essay that begins like this, "If you believe that we have "escaped" from the mess that gripped this nation in 2008 and 2009, or that said mess "suddenly appeared" and "nobody saw it coming", stop reading now" is worth reading. Shortly after the crash hit, a few people in the press pointed out that the Austrians had predicted it. A year and a half later, the louder, false message that nobody predicted it has won out. Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and Paul Krugman failed to predict it, but we're counting on their expertise to get us out. Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and a host of Austrians predicted it, but nobody's listening to their advice on remedying the situation. In what world does that make sense?
"So let's cut the crap - we are in a Depression right now. We are pretending we are not, just like you can pretend you didn't really lose your job so long as your credit card does not reach its limit. We have been in that depression for about 18 months and there is no evidence that we will exit it, as we have yet to find a way to pull back the deficit spending without an instantaneous collapse in the economy.
Yet at some point we must and will stop. We will either do so of our own volition, or we will do so when the cost of borrowing skyrockets, as others get tired of funding our profligacy. If we attempt to "print" our way out of it the cost of petroleum products will shoot the moon and destroy our economy anyway."The truth hurts.
"It appears that AIG - the company we have bailed out (thus far) to the tune of some $100 billion plus, in fact isn't done. It appears they may have written credit protection on Greece. If this allegation by the German equivalent to The New York Times is true Americans are going to be asked to pay billions of dollars - or more likely, hundreds of billions (since Greece is almost certainly not the only place - try Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc) to bail out a bunch of FOREIGN NATIONS."Oh, man. I'll bet government never checked into that. This degenerates into a boring rant.
TAX AND SPEND:
Government bonds are another government Ponzi scheme.
More kids eating free lunch at schools. There's no such thing as a free lunch, but of course people are willing to take other people's money when government makes it legal.
Obama signs into law bill that will tax visitors to the US in order to promote visiting the US. You can't make this stuff up.
Transportation secretary says it's fun playing Santa Claus with other people's money. You really can't make this stuff up.
FEDERAL RESERVE:
It really is too bad that Rothbard and Friedman aren't alive to see Rothbard proven correct about the Great Depression and Friedman proven wrong. The Fed had no power to expand the money supply back then just like it has no power to expand it now. Banks wouldn't loan then just like they won't loan now.
"A short, terrible downturn may have been turned into a decade's worth of agony or worse. Of course, it doesn't have to be that bad for everyone. We can still buy gold and silver and take delivery. We can trim our debts and streamline our finances. We can do for ourselves, all the sensible things that government – and those who stand behind it – will not."Friedman seemed a big enough man to admit he was wrong unlike all the poseur economists of today, and that might have saved us all from this Greater Depression government is hell bent of forcing on us.
HEALTH CARE:
According to Boortz, Obama and Democrats have declared health care war on America. I've been making the case that our government is conquering America, and we're empowering it to do so. This is more evidence. It's the aristocrats versus the people, it's been that way for 100 years (more actually), and we're losing big-time. We're not losing just because Barack Obama won the White House. He's wielding all the power we've surrendered to government since the Constitution was ratified against us. We've surrendered power to Congress after Congress and president after president, and consequence of our failure to defend our rights and our freedom for the last 230 years is Barack Obama and Democrats attacking us on all fronts. This isn't one anomalous data point. It's the inevitable culmination of the votes of generations of Americans who didn't take their freedom seriously, who didn't understand the nature of government and who looked to one party to protect them from the other instead of looking to themselves to protect every American from government. President Obama didn't make half the people in America dependent on government. That took 100 years of voters enabling it to happen.
"I put the primary blame government schools for leading us down this path. For generations they have brainwashed millions of children into believing that government exists to solve all of our problems. What would you expect, though, from a government school?
Maybe you've never thought about this way ... but let's draw some comparisons on different types of education:
If you send your child to a Catholic school it stands to reason that they're going to learn that the Catholic church ought to be the very foundation for their lives.
If you send your child to a Hebrew academy they're going to be taught the religion and culture of Judaism.
So ... if you send your child to a government school why in the world would you expect them to be taught anything but that government is to be their very foundation and religion?
When troubles arise the person who went to the Catholic school will turn to his Catholic faith; the person educated in a Jewish school will turn to his Jewish faith, and the person educated in a government school will turn to ... what else? The government."That's super insight, but it's not complete. It wasn't just government schools. The eroding of constitutional rights and the rule of law began the day the Constitution was ratified. John Adams signed the blatantly unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts. Abraham Lincoln killed 600,000 Americans so he could rule over the southern states. Then in 1917 they passed the income tax, created the Federal Reserve and began the popular election of Senators. This process began long before the government monopoly on schools, but that certainly accelerated the process.
I just got an email from a guy about writing letters, making phone calls and honking horns to remind Congress we don't want Obamacare forced down our throats. That's fine as far as it goes, but it's not enough. In fact, it's the kind of distraction that could help Obama because it makes us think we're doing something when the something we're doing is not nearly enough. Here's the reply I sent him:
"These ideas are OK, but they're too wimpy for the Chicago-style political war being waged against us. They know what we want. They just don't care. They're counting on us bringing petitions to a gun fight, and that's what you're advocating. We need a powerful response to this powerful threat. We need to organize a couple of million people to march on Washington before this vote carrying plastic pitchforks and torches. We need civil disobedience. We need more than letters and honking horns, we need substance and we need it now or it's going to be too late. We need to make it clear they are pushing the American people over a line they don't want us to cross."The first organization that sells plastic pitchforks and torches is going to make a fortune. If we could get millions into D.C., we could block every street radiating out from the capital, keeping legislators from reaching Congress. That's civil disobedience that would get their attention.
Obama appoints brother of Democrat undecided on health care as Appeals Court judge. It's nice to be the king.
Obama has to overcome three groups of Democrats in the House: liberals, moderates and anti-abortionists.
Democrat says that health savings accounts, people keeping their own money and spending it on health care, go against Democrat's principles.
GLOBAL WARMING:
Obama to seize 10 million energy rich, productive acres of land from Montana to New Mexico by executive fiat. Obama is a monster, and all those people who didn't realize that before the election should never vote again.
WAR ON DRUGS:
How the US war on drugs destabilizes Mexico.
"Bear in mind that anti-Americanism thrives here and throughout Latin America. Much of it is justified; some of it isn’t. The US population, the most comprehensively ignorant of the advanced world, knows nothing of the reasons or of the countries. But the hostility is real. Shrugging it off could prove a mistake.
If Mexicans had to choose between the drug lords, who are often seen as counter-culture heroes, and the US, seen as an enemy too dangerous to be openly called an enemy, many would go with their compatriots in the drug trade. A repertoire of narco-corridos, songs glorifying the narcos, exists. Los Tigres del Norte in Sinaloa have specialized in these.
...
There is something called the Merida Initiative, in which the US supplies money and advice to transform Mexican society to combat the narcos."Another example of just how badly our government is hurting our country through bad domestic policy and foreign intervention.
POLICE STATE:
On what grounds does the police department order a family to cover their nude Venus de Milo snow sculpture, embarrassed or not? If a neighbor doesn't like it, the neighbor can look the other way.
New York City cops arrest teens to fill quotas.
"Adil Polanco, a five-year veteran of the NYPD’s 41st Precinct in the Bronx, confirmed to WABC that police are under relentless official pressure to make arrests and issue summonses in order to meet arbitrary quotas.
“We are stopping kids walking upstairs to their house, stopping kids going to the store, young adults … [i]n order to keep the quota,” discloses Officer Polanco. “Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.”"Cops brutalize people, commit perjury and get away with all kinds of other bad acts, but I bet this guy gets fired for telling the truth.
"An unjustified arrest is an act of kidnapping. What Officer Polanco describes and WABC documents is nothing less than the systematic abduction of innocent people under color of state “authority.”"The problem is the law allows them to get away with this stuff.
"Five years ago Cincinnati police officer Vincent George filed a grievance with the police union against the department’s use of arrest and ticket quotas. Like other Cincinnati police officers who failed or refused to meet those quotas, George suffered immediate professional retaliation in the form of a demotion to overnight desk duty."That's how it works.
"As the Greater Depression deepens, municipal revenue streams are being choked off and job opportunities are evaporating. Thus police are under ever-increasing pressure to carry out the predatory practice of “taxation by citation” – with the prospect of financial ruin if they fail to produce the required number of “criminals.”"Ohio is leading the way in funding government through fines. It's crazy. For the overwhelming majority of Americans, the most dangerous situation they will ever face is dealing with the uniformed tax collectors.
WAR:
Muslim cleric issues fatwa condemning terrorism. That's great, and we'd see more of this if we'd quit waging war against half the Middle East.
Pakistan army claims victory against Taliban and al Qaeda at key point on Afghan border. That's good news.
Afghan's skeptical of the government-in-a-box being forced on them by US marines. Sometimes it just seems unbelievable what the US has become.
FOREIGN POLICY:
The US should not get involved in a conflict between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falklands. Britain would be smart to negotiate giving the Falklands back.
POLITICS:
The ethics investigation of Charlie Rangel is expanding. Prosecutors should be investigating.
It looks like unelected New York Governor Patterson is being pressured to resign. Maybe the people of New York should just get rid of the position of governor or at least change it's name to Chief of Corruption. Maybe they can appoint Charlie Rangel.
MISC:
Atheists at UT San Antonio are trading porn for bibles.
Revel in the hypocrisy.
"An anti-gay California state senator was placed under arrest for drunk driving after leaving a gay bar. A male passenger was in the vehicle along with the lawmaker was not arrested, reported Sacramento CBS affiliate Channel 13."He doth protest too much. This cracks me up. The article goes a long time before pointing out the hypocrite is a Republican.
Why is Congress debating the Armenian massacre? I guess this is what Obama means when he says he's focused on jobs. Where does the US government get the authority to pass judgment on the Armenian massacre? Turkey recalls US ambassador over vote. This is what we get for government sticking its nose in something that's not its business.
Scientists discover 60,000 year old writing on egg shells.
New technology can read touches on your arm to control devices.
Why do we let people who can't make a living other than by taking money from us by force tell us what we can and can't do?
Cato scholar in online debate about trade.
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