Monthly Archives: March 2013

Let’s Put The Budget Together Right After The Company Christmas Party

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Putting the budget together for a business right after the company Christmas party is ridiculous, right? Well, evidently the United Nations has done that consistently in the past.

ABC News posted a story today quoting Ambassador Joseph M. Torsella, who represents the U.S. on the U.N.’s budget committee.

The story reports:

Ambassador Joseph M. Torsella, who represents the U.S. on the U.N.’s budget committee, said Monday that the tense process of negotiating the world body’s annual budget is made more complicated by the number of diplomats who turn up drunk.

The U.N. budget is finalized in December, when holiday parties apparently lead to some revelry spilling over into budget negotiations.

The U.S. is making “the modest proposal that the negotiating rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone,” Torsella said during a private meeting of the budget committee. The U.S. mission released a transcript of his remarks.

It’s mostly American money, so why should they worry?Enhanced by Zemanta

Destroying The American Economy One Industry At A Time

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This article was written by a friend of mine who works in the fishing industry in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The article was published in South Coast Today on February 28.

By MEGHAN LAPP
Meghan Lapp lives in Dartmouth.

February 28, 2013 12:00 AM

In recent weeks, with utter destruction facing the New England groundfish fleet, newly appointed NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard, whom it was hoped by many would be a responsive voice of reason in the midst of governmental and scientific uncertainty and chaos, has instead used it to further demean and dismantle this nation’s hardworking families. At a time of crisis such as this, the leadership role he possesses could be used to avert disaster and preserve our community. But what we have seen is not only an indifference to the stark reality for fishing families but also to the federal fisheries law designed to protect them.

Regarding a talk at New Bedford’s Ocean Explorium a week or so ago, designed to discuss the state of challenges facing Northeast fisheries and fishermen, Mr. Bullard “jokingly told the Standard-Times” he hoped to face a bunch of third-graders rather than fishing families. Why? Does he think it is a joke that we have lost hundreds of boats in the last three years due to mismanagement by his agency? Does he think it’s a joke that fishermen and their families are losing their businesses? Does he think it’s a joke that they are losing their homes? Does he think it’s a joke that they are losing their retirement and life savings? Does he think it’s a joke that there have been documented cases of suicide attempts, divorces, and families and relationships collapsing because of the pressure of these regulations? Is it a joke to him that there have been documented cases of suicide attempts, divorces, and families and relationships collapsing because of the pressure of these regulations? Is it a joke to him that fishermen in New Bedford are still eligible for state unemployment while working full time on groundfish boats due to the fact that their paychecks are now so low? Is this a joke to him? It isn’t to the hundreds and thousands of people he is supposed to be representing in management.

In response to the newest cuts, which signal the end for New Bedford’s groundfishing fleet — which will essentially allow each boat to work for only a couple or few days next year — Mr. Bullard stated, “A plant shuts down. A person who’s worked there for 30 years all of a sudden goes to the factory door and it’s closed. You learn a new trade and you adapt.” I am dumbstruck by the indifference of this statement to our fishermen. Basically, it is “too bad.” But too bad for Mr. Bullard and his agency that the federal law protects fishermen and fishing communities in a way that factories do not. Maybe he has forgotten that.

The federal law governing our fisheries, The Magnuson-Stevens Act, states in Section 301(a)(8) that, “Conservation and management measures [which the newest cuts purport to be] shall “¦ take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities by utilizing economic and social data “¦ in order to (A) provide for the sustained participation of such communities and (B) to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.” The federal law demands that economic impacts be minimized on our fishing families, and make sure that they can continue to participate in the fishery. No factory I know of has such overt federal legal protection. Mr. Bullard and his agency seem to forget and disregard this part of the law — the law, not a suggestion — that binds their actions. To cut groundfish quotas by such draconian levels, based on science that continues to be debated as to accuracy and reliability, without any provision for the socio-economic impact and continued fishing opportunities for fishing families is, quite frankly, illegal.

Section 303(a)(9) of the same law states that “any” fishery management plan must “include a fishery impact statement for the plan or amendment … which shall assess, specify, and analyze the likely effects, including the cumulative … economic, and social impacts, of the conservation and management measures on, and possible mitigation measures for (A) participants in the fisheries and fishing communities affected by the plan or amendment.” I have seen no such statement, analysis, or mitigation measures put forward by Mr. Bullard or his agency. But they still plan to essentially annihilate the groundfish fleet by their so-called “conservation” measures. To ignore one side of the law while pretending to adhere to another side of the same law is just not good enough. It is not good enough for our fishing families. It is not good enough for the Port of New Bedford.

What is good enough is an emergency action, also provided by the law, to address the brink of disaster. Section 305(c)(1) gives the Secretary of Commerce the ability to issue emergency regulations and interim measures to address an emergency in the fishery. This is an emergency. If Mr. Bullard used his position, based on the above considerations, to request such emergency measures, perhaps fishing families could have a chance to survive the coming fishing year. And perhaps he would be more respected.

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It Was A Great Story Even If Some Of It Wasn’t True

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Argo was one of my favorite movies this year. I loved seeing the story of how a fake movie had such an impact on world events. However, evidently there was some serious poetic license taken with the story.

Saturday’s U. K. Mail told the story of the seizing of the American Embassy and the taking of hostages from another perspective. Martin Williams wrote the article. He was a  First Secretary at the British Embassy in Iran when militants invaded the US Embassy in November 1979. In the movie, the British were portrayed as refusing the help the Americans who had evaded capture during the storming of the embassy. Mr. Williams tells another story.

The article relates the role Mr. Williams played that day in 1979:

We continued to get regular anonymous threats, for while the Iranians considered America to be enemy No 1, or the Great Satan, Britain was the Little Satan.

So it was not entirely surprising when a mob stormed the American Embassy on November 4. We didn’t know then how long it would last.

But we had no hesitation in helping when, at about 5pm the following day, I was told that several people had evaded capture and I should go and find them. I set off in my dusty orange Austin Maxi, which Sue and I had driven all the way from England in late 1977. It was pretty distinct and the only one in Iran; it also had a prominent GB sticker on the back.

Please follow the link above to read the entire story in the U. K. Mail. It is an amazing story of people helping people in a very difficult time.

Mr. Williams concludes:

So what prompted Ben Affleck and his people, including producer George Clooney, to portray the Brits in such a derogatory way, I don’t know. If the film had portrayed what we did, it might have added even more dramatic tension.

Let me say that, although I was disappointed by the inaccuracies,  I thought Argo was a great piece of entertainment. I can see why it won the Oscar for Best Film, but it is a semi-fictional account only.

Not that I’m surprised by its narrow viewpoint, which was geared to show the CIA as the hero.

It is not the first time that Hollywood has chosen to depict a successful world event as entirely a result of their intervention.

As a boy I can remember one of my schoolmasters commenting on the fact that most war films  gave the impression that the Americans had won the Second World War single-handed.

But this time it’s personal. I was there and I took part, as did others.  So I am concerned that Argo could become accepted as the definitive historical account.

The truth is very different, and I think it only right to get the correct information out to the public.

Now we know the truth.

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How To Use The Sequester To Further Your Political Agenda

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I honestly have to admit that both Republicans and Democrats are quite capable of using the fact that the sequester has gone into effect for political gain. What I am deeply concerned about is how President Obama is putting aside the good of the American people in his quest to destroy the Republican party, have Democrats take full control of Congress next year, and put forth an agenda to the left of anything America has ever seen.

The Washington Examiner posted an article on that subject today.

The article at the Washington Examiner cites the Washington Post:

“The goal,” The Washington Post reports, “is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama’s thinking.”

The article in the Washington Examiner explains how President Obama plans to use the sequester:

For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.

Glen Reynolds at Instapundit has a very interesting take on this:

Somebody should really put in a FOIA request for communications between the White House and agencies about sequester implementation. There’s gold in those emails.

This is the price we pay for putting a community organizer who is not a leader in the White House. It is up to the voters next year to decide how they feel about President Obama’s plan.

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Because Land For Peace Has Worked So Well In The Past…

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President Obama is scheduled to visit Israel this month. Those of us who support Israel and her right to exist had hoped that the President would bring an olive branch to make peace after his anti-Israel actions and cabinet appointments. Unfortunately, those hopes have no relationship to reality.

Arutz Sheva reported today that the reason for President Obama’s trip to Israel might have more to do with setting a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. This information is based on an unconfirmed report by World Tribune.

The article at Arutz Sheva reports:

According to the report, Obama, who is scheduled to arrive in Israel on March 20, wants Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to present him with a detailed Israeli withdrawal plan during his visit to Israel. The sources said the Israeli plan “would be considered in what could be an imminent U.S. initiative to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 2014.”

 “Obama has made it clear to Netanyahu that his visit is not about photo-ops, but the business of Iran and a Palestinian state,” a source said. “The implication is that if Israel won’t give him something he can work with, then he’ll act on his own.”

Bad things happen to America when we pressure Israel to do things against their national interest. Giving up Judea and Samaria is definitely not in Israel’s best interest. This is Biblical land that is sacred to the Jews (and to Christians).  Based on the state that now exists in Gaza, Israel should not give up any land until the Palestinians prove that they can establish a state that is not a threat to the existence of Israel and that they are willing to provide the infrastructure a state needs. Giving more land to the Palestinians in their present form would be like giving a fourteen-year-old boy a driver’s license and a Lamborghini–it might be fun for the first thirty seconds, but it would go downhill quickly.

President Obama is not a friend of Israel.

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I Don’t Believe This, But It Will Make The Discussion More Interesting

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CNS News is reporting that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has predicted that federal revenues for 2013 will exceed $2.7 trillion in 2013, slightly higher than the $2.6 trillion the government collected in 2007, when the last recession officially began.

The article reports:

Government revenues had fallen by nearly $500 billion during the recession to $2.1 trillion in 2009, contributing to the $1.5 trillion deficit that year. However, federal revenues have been recovering since the recession ended in June 2009, and the CBO now projects that they will slightly eclipse their pre-recession peak.

In fact, the $2.7 trillion in revenue will be the most money the federal government has collected in history.

Obviously, if government revenue is the highest it has ever been in history, why do we have to increase taxes?

The article reports:

“Democrats say we should replace the president’s ‘sequester’ with revenue increases, or delay it.  Republicans say we should replace [it] with responsible reforms that will help put us on a path to balance the budget in 10 years,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Frankly, I would love to see federal revenues increase, but I am not convinced they will. Unemployment is still high, and the number of people working part-time who want to work full-time is at an all time high. Much of the revenue the government gets comes from personal income taxes, and if the unemployment situation does not change, I don’t think the revenues will change significantly. The CBO does its calculations based on the numbers it is given. It would be interesting to know where they got the numbers that convinced them 2013 was going to be a banner year for tax revenue.

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Insantity In Our Public Schools

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I am about to cite two very different stories, but both show a real need for common sense on the part of the people who run America‘s schools.

Yesterday The Blaze posted an article about a Florida high school that suspended three students for wrestling a loaded gun aimed at another student away from the gunman.

This is the story:

The 16-year-old Cypress Lake High student in Fort Myers, Fla. told WFTX-TV there was “no doubt” he saved a life after grappling for the loaded .22 caliber revolver being aimed point-blank at another student on Tuesday.

“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the suspended student, not identified by WFTX because of safety concerns. “Not taking no pity.”

The student said the suspect, a football player, threatened to shoot a teammate because he had been arguing with his friend.

Authorities confirmed to WFTX the weapon was indeed loaded, and the arrest report stated the suspect, identified by WVZN-TV as Quadryle Davis, was “pointing the gun directly” at the other student and “threatening to shoot him.”

That’s when, the teen told the station, he and two others tackled the suspect and wrestled the gun away. The next day, all three were suspended.

The three were suspended “for being involved in an “incident” with a weapon.”

The article states that “the student accused of pointing the weapon has been charged only with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon “without intent” to kill.”

The second story was posted at reason.com on Friday. It involves a 7 year-old who was suspended from school for two days because he bit the pastry he was eating into a shape the teacher said looked like a gun.

The article reports:

7-Year-Old Joshua was suspended this morning from Park Elementary School in Brooklyn Park. Joshua says he was eating a pastry during snack time and trying to shape it into a mountain, the teacher said it looked like a gun and took him to the principal’s office. Joshua’s parents were called, he has been suspended for two days. Joshua’s father says it’s ridiculous since no one was threatened or harmed by the pastry. A letter will be going home to all students of Park Elementary School this afternoon. School officials declined to comment due to privacy issues.

Where is common sense?

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It Was Worse Than We Previously Thought

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This article is based on two stories–one posted at the New York Times yesterday and one posted at the New York Daily News today.

The Holocaust is a horrible part of history. It is hard to understand how any person could let this happen to his neighbors and fellow countrymen. The picture painted has always been that the majority of Germans didn’t know what was going on–the camps were in isolated areas and the citizens thought that they were simply work camps. I am not sure if anyone actually believed that, but that is the story that I was told. My father was one of the soldiers who liberated one of the camps (I don’t know which one), and when I read somewhere that General Eisenhower made the citizens of the neighboring town walk through one of the camps to see what was going on there, my father confirmed that this was true.

Both the Times and the Daily News posted articles explaining that research done by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has found that there were many more camps than historians had previously been aware of.

The New York Times reports:

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

The Daily News cites the story in the New York Times:

The research team uncovered 30,000 slave camps, 1,150 Jewish ghettos, 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps, 980 concentration camps, 500 sex-slave brothels and thousands of other camps serving a myriad of wicked ends: forced abortions, mandatory euthanasia of the elderly and ill, “Germanisation” and transportation hubs to murder sites, according to the Times.

The New York Times article concludes:

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

How could the citizens of Germany let this happen? I don’t think we will ever have the answer to that question.

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Intimidating The Press

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Yesterday Peter Wehner at Commentary posted an article about the recent dust-up between President Obama’s White House and the press. He cites an article in the National Journal posted on Thursday and written by Ron Fournier. Mr. Fournier details some of his encounters with an official in the Obama White House.

The article at National Journal reports:

As editor-in-chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Politico characterized as a veiled threat. “You will regret staking out that claim,” The Washington Post reporter was told.

Once I moved back to daily reporting this year, the badgering intensified. I wrote Saturday night, asking the official to stop e-mailing me. The official wrote, challenging Woodward and my tweet. “Get off your high horse and assess the facts, Ron,” the official wrote.

Mr. Fournier responded with the following:

“I asked you to stop e-mailing me. All future e-mails from you will be on the record — publishable at my discretion and directly attributed to you. My cell-phone number is … . If you should decide you have anything constructive to share, you can try to reach me by phone. All of our conversations will also be on the record, publishable at my discretion and directly attributed to you.”

He has not heard from the official since. Cockroaches scatter when you turn on the light.

Mr. Fournier concludes at the end of his article:

This can’t be what Obama wants. He must not know how thin-skinned and close-minded his staff can be to criticism.

Peter Wehner at Commentary has a different conclusion:

I actually believe this conduct can be what Mr. Obama wants. He is himself quite thin-skinned and closed-minded, so it makes perfect sense for his staff to be as well. And while the press coverage they get often ranges from favorable to fawning, it is never good enough for them. The job of intimidation is a full-time one, after all, and it clearly works with some journalists.

One of the extraordinary talents the president has is projecting an image of decency and civility while giving home to staffers who are known for being abusive and threatening.

It’s perfectly appropriate to judge a president by his White House staff. And Ron Fournier has done us the favor of lifting the curtain, just a bit, on this one.

I truly believe that we currently have a White House full of Chicago thugs.

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Why Sequestration Was Necessary

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CBS News reported yesterday that the national debt has risen by more than $6 trillion since President Obama took office. During the eight years George W. Bush was President, the debt grew by $4.9 trillion.

The ‘cuts’ in sequestration are not the best cuts that could be made. There were better ways to do this. The most obvious improvement would have been to actually cut the budget. Although sequestration cuts the budget from now until June by about $40 billion (to keep things in perspective–aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy was  $50 billion), it only cuts the future rate of growth–it does not cut future spending. Next years budget is larger than this years budget.

The Independent Journal Review posted an article listing five basic things all Americans need to know about the sequester:

1. The cuts are small, and most of them take place in future years. We know how that generally works.

2. Government spending is still increasing, even with the cuts.

3. The Pentagon budget will be about $500 billion, not counting war-related and emergency appropriations.

4. One example of how badly the government manages money is that the  one program which the sequester cuts by $2 million ended last year and does not even exist anymore.

5. The sequester was the President’s idea. The President and the media should not be allowed to use the sequester as a battering ram against the Republicans. First of all, runaway spending should not be a political issue–it impacts all of us.

Since the current leadership in Washington does not want to put the welfare of the country over their own petty politics, both parties need new leadership. Sequester happened because there was no one with the courage (or possibly the will) to cut government spending. Until Americans elect more people who are willing to stand up for the rights of working Americans who pay taxes, we will only have more spending, more debt, and eventually, bankruptcy.

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The Real Numbers On The Sequester

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Yesterday Senator Rand Paul posted an article at Investors.com detailing some of the actual numbers in the sequester. Senator Paul reminds us that the sequester cuts the federal budget by only 2.3%–leaving 97.7% of the budget intact.

Senator Paul states:

The sequester barely begins to skim the surface of the problem. Since taking office, President Obama has increased federal domestic agencies’ budget by 17%. This 17% increase since 2008 will have to endure a 5% cut.

Even with the sequester, the federal government will spend more in 2013 than it did in 2012 — or more than $15 billion.

This expansion of government is equivalent to the entire chain of Whole Foods or Macy’s department stores, in just one year.

President Obama has dramatically expanded our federal government, and the American taxpayers should not have to endure more tax increases to fund it.

We have to start cutting back.

Unfortunately, there are some people in government who do not want to see any cuts at all–they simply want to take more money out of the pockets of working Americans. The scare tactics are everywhere–from releasing prisoners to threatening longer lines at airports. Unless Americans wake up and realize that the Obama Administration and the majority of the news media are lying about the impact of these cuts, we can expect further increases in both taxes and spending and an economy that is simply not growing at an acceptable rate. The voters will determine the future of our country by how they vote in 2014. I think that the voters in that election will decide whether we become Greece or remain America.