Monthly Archives: May 2015

I Support Protecting Children From Abuse, But This Incident Does Not Seem To Be Abuse

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It is getting to the point where if your neighbor does not like you, he can report you to whatever authorities he chooses and there is a chance your children will be taken away. This is definitely government overreach.

Chicks On The Right posted a story today about a family living in Kentucky ‘off the grid.’ It seems that somehow living off the grid is an offense to local authorities, there have recently been a few cases of people being treated very badly because they are living off the grid.

The story reports:

According to that sourcelink, police seized 10 kids from their rural Kentucky home after receiving an anonymous tip to investigate the family’s “off the grid” lifestyle.

Joe Naugler happened to be away with eight of his children when the authorities arrived on the scene. Nicole Naugler, who happens to be five months pregnant, took their oldest children with her to drive away, but the authorities stopped her and took took them. She was arrested for “disorderly conduct and resisting arrest,” but she claims she was arrested after not allowing the officers to take her children without a “fight.” Officers told her husband he needed to hand over the other children or face felony charges, and he complied. 

Pace Ellsworth, a family friend, said he believes the Nauglers were targeted because the government disagrees with their “free” lifestyle of “unschooling,” which focuses on learning through life experience and each child’s individual strengths.

That sounds like the way we used to do it! The authorities seem to have some question as to whether or not the children’s needs were being met, but the neighbors and friends tell a very different story. The neighbors have stated that the children are being raised in a loving environment and are well taken care of.

The children were taken on an anonymous tip. If this was supposed to be an investigation, why were the children taken? Has anyone asked the children basic questions to see if their education is appropriate for their age levels? Has anyone compared the education of the children to the education children in public schools are getting?

It seems to me that unless there was actual evidence of abuse or neglect of the children, the authorities did not have the right to take them. I hope that when this is sorted out, the parents find a good lawyer, figure out who issued the order to take the children, who was responsible for the anonymous tip that resulted in the taking of the children, and proceed to become millionaires.

The Voters In Illinois Are Being Hoisted On Their Own Petard

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Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted an article about what is happening with public employee pension funds in Illinois. To quote a Chicago pastor, “The chickens are coming home to roost.”

The article reports:

The Constitution is not a suicide pact—except maybe in Illinois. On Friday the Illinois Supreme Court struck down modest pension reforms as a violation of the state constitution in a decision that tees up state taxpayers for years of tax increases.

The Court stated that the pensions were a contract “the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

So where did this begin? It began with a very cozy relationship between unions and Democrat politicians. Politicians promised the unions benefits that could not be sustained in exchange for the support of the unions.

The article explains:

Less than 40% of the increase in the state’s unfunded liability since 1995 is due to inadequate payments. The rest is due mainly to benefit growth and faulty actuarial assumptions such as investment rate of return.

The 2013 reforms at issue capped salaries of current workers that are used to calculate pensions at $110,600 (with a carve-out for collectively bargained increases) and raised the retirement age for workers in their 20s to the ripe, old age of 60. Compounded 3% annual cost-of-living increases were also tweaked for younger workers, a modification that courts in nearly every other state have upheld.

The article concludes:

All of this means that Illinois and its municipalities may soon have little choice but to raise taxes or restructure debts to pay for pensions. Chicago, whose credit rating is two notches above junk, faces a $20 billion unfunded liability for pensions and $1.1 billion balloon payment next year. Unions (and perhaps investors) were counting on a state bailout, but now they will probably beg Washington for a rescue.

Republican Governor Bruce Rauner has floated an alternative: a state constitutional amendment allowing pension modifications, which would require a public referendum and two-thirds vote of the legislature. Barring that, Illinois taxpayers may want to start contemplating Indiana or Florida residency.

The voters of Illinois have brought this upon themselves. In case you are in another state and laughing at their plight, don’t laugh too hard–this may be coming to your city or state soon. Most states and cities have unfunded mandates involving pensions for public employees which were given in union negotiations with politicians in exchange for union support. There has been a very unhealthy alliance between public employee unions and Democrat politicians for years in many cities and states. Although the Democrats and unions share a good part of the blame for this mess, the ultimate responsibility rests with the voters.

A representative republic needs informed voters. If voters are not informed, they are at the mercy of alliances such as these.

One Law For Me, One Law For Thee

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On Thursday the National Review posted an article about members of Congress’s fraudulent application to the District of Columbia’s health exchange. This application facilitated Congress’s “exemption” from ObamaCare, allowing lawmakers and staffers to keep their employer subsidies.

The article reports:

The application said Congress employed just 45 people. Names were faked; one employee was listed as “First Last,” another simply as “Congress.” To Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter, who has fought for years against the Obamacare exemption, it was clear that someone in Congress had falsified the document in order to make lawmakers and their staff eligible for taxpayer subsidies provided under the exchange for small-business employees.

This is infuriating. The Small Business Committee chairman David Vitter needed a green light from the committee to subpoena the unredacted application from the District of Columbia health exchange. Five Republicans voted against that subpoena, as well as all of the Democrats on the Committee. The five Republicans were Rand Paul, Mike Enzi, James Risch, Kelly Ayotte, and Deb Fischer. In essence all of the Democrats on the Committee, as well as the five Republicans, were supporting ObamaCare fraud.

The article concludes:

 “I think it makes sense to find out what happened,” says Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs, a noted conservative health-care voice and a National Review contributor. “It would be pretty interesting to see whose name is on the forms,” he says. “It has to go beyond mid-level staffers.”

I am amazed and dismayed at the lack of integrity in our elected officials. The American voters can do better than this.

 

 

Is It Time For The IRS To Go?

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On Tuesday the Civitas Institute posted an article on its website about one example of recent IRS abuses in civil forfeiture cases. This particular case involved a small businessman in the town of Fairmont, N.C. Lyndon McLellan owns and operates a local convenience store in Fairmont. Last summer, his entire business bank account, totaling $107,702.66, was seized by the Internal Revenue Service.

The article reports:

Here’s how it works. Generally, any person who receives more than $10,000 in cash in a single transaction or a series of related transactions must complete a “Form 8300, Report of Cash Payments Over $10,000 Received in a Trade or Business.” Transactions are only considered “related” if they occur within a 24-hour period or if the recipient knows, or has reason to know, that each is one of a series of connected transactions. The idea is that large cash transactions might tend to have a criminal purpose, so the IRS requires recipients of such cash to declare their non-criminal purpose. This is not the rule that McLellan allegedly broke, because he received money in amounts that were less than $10,000 at a time and therefore was not required to report anything.

Instead, the IRS is alleging that Mr. McLellan did something called “structuring.” This is where cash transactions are structured in such a way as to avoid the $10,000 reporting requirement. The law exists because, once the IRS instituted the requirement, criminals could have easily structured cash payments in increments of $9,999 to fly under the radar.

However, Mr. McLellan’s case demonstrates a fundamental problem. Intended to catch criminals, the law ensnares small-business owners who are not trying to avoid reporting requirements, but are either simply trying to avoid burdensome paperwork or have no idea the structuring rule exists. This is why the IRS and Justice Department recently announced that they would cease using “structuring” as a reason to go after small business owners who are not suspected of crimes. So why is McLellan still having to fight for his hard-earned money?

First, the new rules were announced after Mr. McLellan’s assets were seized, and no provision was made for their mandatory retroactive application. Therefore, the announcement did not require any action on his case by anyone at the federal level.

I have done numerous stories on civil forfeiture in the past. If you put ‘civil forfeiture’ in the search engine on this website, you can see that this illegal seizure of property has gone on for some time.

The story at Civitas further reports:

Second, the federal prosecutor involved, Steve West, has declined to dismiss Mr. McLellan’s case. To be clear, he does have the power to drop the charges. Just this past December, federal prosecutors in Iowa dropped the charges against small-business owner Carole Hinders in a similar case. However, West has told McLellan’s attorney he needs to either resolve or litigate his case, and that no amount of publicity will lead to its dismissal. This despite the fact that  Congress and the IRS commissioner have specifically said his case fails to follow new federal forfeiture policies.

West’s idea of “resolving” the case would be for McLellan to enter into a settlement with the IRS in which he loses only half of his money – almost $60,000! It took McLellan over 13 years to earn this sum, and he is not giving it up without a fight.

This is no way to treat small business owners.

Meanwhile, the IRS and Justice Department recently announced that they would cease using “structuring” as a reason to go after small business owners who are not suspected of crimes. New Mexico has passed a law abolishing civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has been used as nothing more than a tool to take assets from innocent people. Everyone who has been involved in this practice needs to be kicked out of office as soon as possible.

 

Good News For Britain

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David Cameron has won a resounding victory in the British election. Prime Minister Cameron has spoken out strongly against terrorism and has been a leading voice in enunciating the threat that radical Islam poses.

Yahoo News is reporting today on some of the Prime Minister’s other policies:

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he would press ahead with a planned referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union and he promised Scotland the most devolution “anywhere in the world” after his resounding election victory.

“Yes, we will deliver that in-out referendum on our future in Europe,” Cameron said as he addressed the media after visiting Queen Elizabeth to start the process of forming a new government.

Cameron said he would move ahead as fast as possible with a plan to give more powers to Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly for the pro-independence Scottish National Party.

Congratulations, Prime Minister Cameron. Best wishes for a successful term.

The Obama Administration’s Economic Policies Are Not Working

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Zero Hedge posted a story today on the latest jobs numbers.

The article included the following charts:

https://www.rightwinggranny.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/not-in-labor-force.jpg

The article reports:

In what was an “unambiguously” unpleasant April jobs payrolls report, with a March revision dragging that month’s job gain to the lowest level since June of 2012, the fact that the number of Americans not in the labor force rose once again, this time to 93,194K from 93,175K, with the result being a participation rate of 69.45 or just above the lowest percentage since 1977, will merely catalyze even more upside to the so called “market” which continues to reflect nothing but central bank liquidity, and thus – the accelerating deterioration of the broader economy.

Our economy is not doing well. It is time for a change of policy.

The Rules Should Apply Equally To Everyone

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On Wednesday, the Washington Examiner reported that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees who cheated on their taxes were promoted–not punished.

The article reports on the finding of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration:

Nearly one-third of the employees from 2008 to 2013 caught cheating on their taxes received at least one bonus or raise within a year of being disciplined, investigators reported. These rewards include nearly $145,000 in bonuses, almost 900 hours of time-off awards and 30 temporary and permanent promotions.

…”Some employees had significant and sometimes repeated tax noncompliance issues, and a history of other conduct issues,” the report said. “Moreover, management had concluded that the employees were not credible. Nonetheless, the proposed terminations were mitigated by the IRS Commissioner.”

Federal law requires that IRS employees guilty of intentional tax law violations must be terminated, unless mitigated by the IRS commissioner. Since the IRS doesn’t have a policy to document the reason why intentional tax violators aren’t fired, it was unclear why the employees received lesser discipline.

It is time for Congress to come up with a tax code that abolishes the IRS. Aside from becoming political, which it was never supposed to be, it has also lost any moral bearing it might have had.

The Government Doesn’t Even Follow Its Own Laws

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The Washington Times is reporting today that the Department of Homeland Security had broken a judge’s order halting the administration’s new deportation amnesty.

The article reports:

The stunning admission, filed just before midnight in Texas, where the case is being heard, is the latest misstep for the administration’s lawyers, who are facing possible sanctions by Judge Hanen for their continued problems in arguing the case.

The Justice Department lawyers said Homeland Security, which is the defendant in the case, told them Wednesday that an immigration agency had approved about 2,000 applications for three-year work permits, which was part of Mr. Obama’s new amnesty, even after Judge Hanen issued his Feb. 16 injunction halting the entire program.

I really have nothing to add to this story other than to say that it is a disgrace. The Obama Administration has shown so little regard for the Constitution and the laws governing America, I guess this really should not be a surprise. However, it is extremely sad that the people charged with upholding our laws have chosen to break them.

If You Ever Wondered About The Media, Keep Wondering

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Breitbart.com posted an article today pointing out that the media is holding New England Patriot‘s quarterback Tom Brady to a higher transparency standard than they have set for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The article reports:

“If he had nothing to hide, then why not give Wells and his investigative team access to records that might help resolve the issue?” reacts a Newsday writer. “The fact that Brady would not surrender texts, phone records or emails suggests that there was plenty to hide.” If only Newsday’s reporters, op-ed writers, and editorial board applied the logic to the former Secretary of State.

The Wells Report validated Brady’s caution by publicizing salacious private emails extraneous to their investigation. What purpose, other than to embarrass him publicly and harm him professionally, did Ted Wells release emails between John Jastremski and his mother suggesting that the Patriots employee absconded with a ball of historic import earlier in the season as ownership believed it possessed the genuine article? “Funny…go to patriots.com,” Jastremski tells his mom. “They have an article about the 50,000 yard ball…if they only knew :).”

The media has forgotten its responsibility to expose corruption in government. Instead they have replaced that mission with political activism and celebrity sensationalism.

Sending Terrorists Back To Battle

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Fox News is reporting today that a Canadian judge has released Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, who in 2002 threw the grenade that killed U.S. Army medic Christopher Speer as Speer and four others cleared a building in the Khost province following an air raid. Khadr was fifteen at the time.

The article reports:

“Omar Khadr is a convicted Al Qaeda terrorist, guilty of war crimes,” Ezra Levant, author of “The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies, and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr,” told FoxNews.com. “He murdered a U.S. medic in cold blood. A jury sentenced him to 40 years in prison, but President Obama offered him a plea deal for just eight years, and now parole will reduce that further. This isn’t sufficient, especially given that Khadr has never publicly renounced terrorism or Al Qaeda, or his own father’s terrorism.”

Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Myra Bielby said Thursday there is no evidence of risk in releasing Khadr, now 28, who has been serving his time in an Innisfail, Alta., prison, after being moved from Guantanamo Bay.

When we release prisoners from Guantanamo, we are no longer in control of their prison terms. Because Khadr has never renounced terrorism, I have no doubt that he will rejoin the ‘war on terror’ in some capacity fairly quickly.

A Very Interesting Alliance

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Front Page Magazine reported yesterday that CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) coordinated its response to the terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The stated purpose (although in reality this is not necessarily the case) of the ACLU is to protect the civil liberties of Americans. I would assume that those civil liberties include free speech.

The article quotes a New York Times article:

Then she took calls from those she views as allies — other Muslim advocates, a Methodist minister, an organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union — to come up with a response that would walk a fine line: clearly condemning the extremists behind the attack, while also calling to account what they see as hatred decked out in free speech finery.

I know this may come as a shock to some people, but there is no law against hatred. There is also no reason to see a draw Mohammed contest as hatred–it is simply an exercise of free speech. The exercise of free speech is part of American law. If Muslims want to speak freely, they need to extend that right to those around them. If they don’t support free speech, I suggest they live somewhere other than America.

The article at Front Page Magazine observes:

You don’t normally denounce someone after they were nearly killed in an attack by your people, but that’s exactly what was going on here. As with Rushdie and Charlie Hebdo, elements of Muslim organizations that weren’t openly shouting “Death to America” instead doubled around to destroy sympathy for the targets of the terrorists.

And Salem is now pushing the ‘incitement’ line whose goal is to criminalize criticism of Islam. The ACLU’s organizer is apparently okay with that.

The New York Times swiftly spins this into Muslims being persecuted by being denied the power to impose Sharia law. Denying the power to oppress women is not usually considered oppression by the left… but there’s a special exception in there for Muslims.

I sense a double standard.

Just For The Record, This Is The Image That Won The Contest

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Datechguyblog posted the winning picture from the Draw Mohammed contest in Garland, Texas. This picture perfectly sums up the battle for free speech. The problem in Texas was not Pam Geller’s contest–it was the Muslims who felt that it was their duty to kill people exercising their right to free speech. P–s Christ is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. It was part of an art exhibit in New York. As offensive as it was, no one who was offended attempted to kill anyone. In the mid-1970s, Skokie, Illinois, was at the center of a case concerning the First Amendment right to assemble and the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi group. Skokie ultimately lost that case. Skokie had a sizeable Jewish population which objected to the Nazi-planned march. The march went ahead. Again, no one was killed. The First Amendment allows for freedom of speech. It does not protect anyone from being offended by that speech. The First Amendment should not be curtailed–if Muslims cannot live under the laws of America, they need to leave. If anyone comes to America, they need to be willing to live under the laws of America. The problem is not Pamela Geller–the problem is people living in America who are prone to violence and do not respect the rights of Americans.

 

draw-mohammad

This Sort Of Logic Makes My Head Hurt

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about Hillary Clinton’s latest stand on illegal immigration.

The article includes Mrs. Clinton’s latest statement on the subject:

Often times when I have conversations with people who are fearful about immigration reform, their fears are rooted in the feeling that they are losing jobs that are going to people who are undocumented. And part of the reason that fear has a reality to it is because if people can pay you six dollars an hour, because you are undocumented, then why would they pay somebody who already is a citizen what the minimum wage or the prevailing wage should be?

So my argument is, the quicker we can legalize the people who are here, the better the job market will be for everybody because you will not have a group of people who are taken advantage of, and you will not have others who feel as though, and to some extent it is true, they are losing jobs because this group that is being taken advantage of is paid so much less and being treated so much worse.

So my argument to people who worry about comprehensive immigration reform and the effect on their jobs is: it’s just the opposite. The sooner we can get to legalization, the better the job market will be for everybody.

The explanation not given is how adding millions of workers to a struggling jobs market will make things easier for Americans seeking jobs.

Yahoo News reported today:

The ADP (Automatic Data Processing) read came in below estimates at 169K for April vs. estimates of about 205K – the second monthly tally under 200K in a row after 11 straight months of coming above that level. Not only did the April jobs tally miss the mark, but last month’s already-soft reading was further revised down. This doesn’t bode well for Friday’s government jobs report the consensus expectation for the BLS report is for ‘headline’ gains of 220K (per Bloomberg.com), which includes government jobs. As such, this ADP report will most likely prompt folks to lower their estimates for the Friday jobs report.

Adding millions of people to the jobs market at this time is not a good idea. All it will accomplish is to put more people on welfare and unemployment programs and eventually bankrupt the federal budget. It would be better to encourage those here illegally to return to their home countries.

Congress Needs To Rethink Its Priorities

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Politico posted an article today about the appointment of Joe Dunford as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The article reports:

The Obama administration is counting on Dunford to take the lead in pushing a series of proposals designed to shrink the pay and benefits of troops as the Pentagon wrestles with the need to rein in its personnel costs.

There was a related article in yesterday’s New Bern Sun Journal.

The article in the Sun Journal explains where some of the cuts will take place. Military personnel who retire after 20 years will receive 40 percent of their basic pay rather than the 50 percent they currently receive. Military personnel who serve for 12 years will also receive a retirement benefit. I don’t know whose idea this was, but they need to rethink it. First of all, does the person who came up with this plan understand the sacrifices a soldier and his family make during that twenty years? Do they understand that a 40-something year old man retiring from the military will begin his business career at the bottom of the ladder competing with much younger men? Why are they taking money away from people who serve twenty years and giving money to people who serve only twelve? There is also an alternative 401k-type retirement plan proposed for new military members. I am fine with that as long as the benefits for those currently serving are not altered. The government signed a contract with our current military that promised certain benefits during their service and afterwards. Congress does not have the right to viod that contract.

Politico reports some of the other changes:

An even more controversial proposal, put forward by an independent commission, would overhaul the military health care system, known as TRICARE, so that dependents and retirees would choose from private insurance options that would be subsidized, rather than have the care provided through a government-run system.

I don’t oppose taking the health care system away from the government–I do oppose increasing the cost to military members, retirees, and their families.

There are better places to cut the federal budget. We have an all volunteer military force that includes many very dedicated people. Cutting their benefits will impact the number and quality of the people who join the military in the future.

Before we cut the benefits we give to those who serve in our military, let’s take a really good look at the perks we provide to Congress.

It Is Time The Government Defunded This Agency–They Lie

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John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line today about the scientific practices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Evidently, when data does not illustrate what they want it to, they simply alter the data.

Now Mike Brakey, an engineering physicist and heat transfer specialist, has caught NOAA revising historic temperature data for Maine–as always, to make the past look cooler and the present warmer by comparison:

Over the last months I have discovered that between 2013 and 2015 some government bureaucrats have rewritten Maine climate history… (and New England’s and of the U.S.). This statement is not based on my opinion, but on facts drawn from NOAA 2013 climate data vs. NOAA 2015 climate data after they re-wrote it.

We need only compare the data. They cooked their own books.

The article includes a chart illustrating that fact. Please follow the link above the view the chart.

The article also includes the following graph:

Brakey_2

We are paying taxpayer money to be lied to in order to promote a political agenda. It is time to take their money away.

Cutting The Apron Strings

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Unfortunately the federal government has developed apron strings that could hold up the George Washington Bridge. The federal government is always willing to fund things they want you to do (not mentioning that the money comes from the states to begin with) and often expects you pay back the loan or accept unfunded mandates as a result of the money given. The extension of unemployment benefits the federal government offered the states a while back was a classic example of this. States were encouraged to extend unemployment benefits for as much as two years. The federal government would pick up the tab. Unfortunately the money had to be paid back to the federal government. The way to do that was by increasing the unemployment taxes businesses pay. This, of course, cut down on the money businesses had to expand and hire people.

ABC11.com has the story of what has happened in the State of North Carolina:

At a news conference, McCrory thanked Republican leaders in the North Carolina House and Senate for coming up with reforms to help retire the debt.

“Let me give you a little history,” McCrory told a crowd of lawmakers and government higher-ups. “In February 2009, North Carolina started borrowing from the federal government to extend unemployment insurance benefits.”

The governor went on to sum up how the state found itself saddled with nearly $3 billion in debt and why paying it off matters. For starters, because each year the state didn’t pay off the debt, North Carolina businesses would end up paying incrementally more in taxes.

…McCrory said this year alone, with the debt paid off, North Carolina businesses would save $280 million in penalties.
Obviously there are those who are objecting to the cuts made in unemployment benefits and the length of time they can be collected. On July 1, 2013, extended unemployment benefits ended.
The chart below is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
 NCLaborStatsHeading
LaborStatisticsNorthCarolinaThere are two lessons here–first of all,there is no such thing as free money from the government and second of all, when you subsidize a behavior, it increases, when you take away the benefit, it decreases.
Congratulations to the Governor and Legislature of North Carolina.

The Threat

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Andrew McCarthy posted an article in National Review yesterday about the shootings in Texas at the Draw Mohammed event.

The conclusion of the article is the most important point:

You may not like the provocateurs’ methods. Personally, I am not a fan of gratuitous insult, which can antagonize pro-Western Muslims we want on our side. But let’s not make too much of that. Muslims who really are pro-Western already know, as Americans overwhelmingly know, that being offended is a small price to pay to live in a free society. We can bristle at an offense and still grasp that we do not want the offense criminalized.
It would be easy, in our preening gentility, to look down our noses at a Mohammed cartoon contest. But we’d better understand the scope of the threat the contest was meant to raise our attention to — a threat triggered by ideology, not cartoons. There is in our midst an Islamist movement that wants to suppress not only insults to Islam but all critical examination of Islam. That movement is delighted to leverage the atmosphere of intimidation created by violent jihadists, and it counts the current United States government among its allies.

The First Amendment does not give you the right not to be offended. It is almost guaranteed that if the First Amendment is followed you will be offended at some point. That is not the point. The point is that in a free society, everyone has the same right of free speech. If the Muslims who live in America cannot accept free speech, they need to return to a place where it is not honored. If we cave into the threat of violence, then we are in danger of losing our First Amendment rights.

Kindness Seems To Be A Bit One-Sided

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I am not going to print any excerpts from the article I am referencing. I am simply asking you to follow the link and read the article itself. The article contrasts the reactions of various people when Rush Limbaugh went into drug rehabilitation after becoming addicted to pain bills taken for a back problem with the reactions when Bob Beckel took a break from The Five for a similar problem. The difference in the responses is amazing. The differences in the situations are very minor.

The Jobs Report In Wisconsin

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Right now, Scott Walker is the top Republican fund raiser in the Presidential primary. He is also a favorite of the conservatives, which makes him a prime target of attack for the Clinton machine and anyone out there on the liberal side of the spectrum that has designs on the presidency. Get ready for the attacks–here are some of the facts.

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an article about his record on employment in Wisconsin. Scott Walker took office in 2011. He faced a recall almost immediately, which he won. Despite the opposition, he continued his policies of cutting spending and lowering taxes.

The article reports the results:

Yet Wisconsin’s employment-population ratio has jumped 2.5%—significantly more than the national improvement rate. Wisconsin is also gaining ground against other states. In February 2011 Wisconsin ranked 12th in employment-population ratio. It now ranks ninth.

…The U.S. employment-population ratio has grown 1.5% since Mr. Walker took charge.

The article further explains:

Some will rightly point out that the unemployment rate fails to account for people who can’t find a job and stop searching. And so a low unemployment rate is more meaningful if it is accompanied by high participation in the labor force. Since February 2011, the national labor-force participation rate has dropped to 62.7%, from 64.2%. Wisconsin’s rate, much healthier than the national average, has also declined but by significantly less, to 68.4% from 69.1%.

Wisconsin’s current 68.4% labor-force participation rate is particularly noteworthy because it represents an uptick over the past year from a low of 68.1%. Nationally, the average labor-force participation rate has declined to lows last seen during the Carter administration.

Given that Wisconsin’s unemployment has dropped to 4.6% from 5.6% in the past year, the state is in the enviable position of having lowered unemployment while increasing labor-force participation. Not surprisingly, this has helped Wisconsin move up to eighth place in state labor-force participation, from 12th in 2011.

Keep these figures in mind as you hear the attacks on Scott Walker that will be coming from the political left. I have not yet made up my mind as to whom I am supporting in the Republican presidential primary, but these are impressive statistics.

The Supreme Court Gets One Right

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The Attleboro Massachusetts Sun Chronicle is reporting today that the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Robert Kosilek to have the taxpayers pay for his sex-change operation. Robert (now being called Michelle) is serving a life sentence for killing spouse Cheryl Kosilek at their Mansfield condo in 1990. He then placed her body in her car and drove her to Emerald Square Mall in North Attleboro, and took a taxi home. He then reported her missing.

The article reports:

The inmate has waged a lengthy fight for the surgery she says is necessary to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder.   

Last year, a divided federal appeals court in Boston overturned a first-in-the-nation court order for the state to provide the sex-reassignment surgery. Courts around the country have found that prisons must evaluate transgender inmates to determine their health care needs, but most have ordered hormone treatments and psychotherapy, not surgery.

It does not concern me whether or not Robert has the operation he desires. What does concern me is that a murderer expects the taxpayers to fund optional surgery. It is obvious that Robert has some serious issues, whatever they may be, but I do not think it is up to the taxpayers to resolve them with extreme elective surgery. I am also not convinced that anything will resolve these issues. It is one thing to want a sex-change operation, it is quite another thing to murder your wife and try to get away with it. This is one case in which I wish Massachusetts had the death penalty. Mr. Kosilek needs to be shown the same amount of mercy that he showed his wife.

Where Is The Money Going?

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On Wednesday, the National Review posted an article showing where the donations are going in the Republican Presidential Primary. The results are somewhat surprising.

Here is the chart:

The article points out:

In the 2016 presidential race, Scott Walker has a couple advantages based on his electoral experiences alone: His back-to-back election victories after changing the state’s public-union rules drew attention and support from grassroots conservatives across the country, and to help win those races, he was all over the country raising millions of dollars from big national Republican donors. No other Republican contender has fought a national fight like that. It’s hard to measure grassroots cred, but just how dramatic is Walker’s first-contact advantage with big donors?

Frankly, I think there is a message here. Many conservative Republicans are getting very tired of being expected to vote for the establishment candidate. It has become obvious that establishment Republicans don’t want to cut spending in Washington–they simply want to control the money instead of the Democrats. Conservatives are getting tired of voting for Republicans and watching government grow and taxes increase. Scott Walker is a Republican who represents the conservatives within the party. Hopefully the establishment will not try to undermine his candidacy. (Although they are already moving to dilute conservative influence in the Republican primary–see rightwinggranny).

When People Are Not Optimistic, They Don’t Have Children

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Breitbart.com posted an article today about the declining birthrate in America.

The article reports:

The birth rate among that group dropped 15 percent between 2007 and 2012. The study postulated that the reason for the decline in births was the recession. Nan Marie Astone, one of the report’s authors, said, “It’s hard to think that [the economic decline] wasn’t the reason.”

The period in question saw a “dramatic decline in birth rates among unmarried” black and Latino women and a concomitant drop in the number of white married women. Latino women’s births plummeted 26 percent, black women’s 14 percent, and white women’s 11 percent.

The report stated, “We calculate that in 2012, women in their twenties had births at a pace that would lead to 948 births per 1,000 women, by far the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history… If these low birth rates to women in their twenties continue, the U.S. might eventually face the type of generational imbalance that currently characterizes Japan and some European countries, but it is too early to predict or worry about that eventuality.”

People who are not optimistic about the future tend to put off having children.

Another aspect of this story:

Of course, the study ignores one salient fact. According to the Guttmacher Institute, over 5.6 million abortions were performed between 2007 and 2011.

There is another aspect of the decline in the birthright that should be mentioned. Since the 1960’s women have told that they need to work outside the home to be ‘fulfilled.’ Motherhood has been devalued. At the same time, the tax burden on the American family has risen sharply due to the War on Poverty (which we seem to have lost) and the Great Society. As a society, we have been dealing with this mindset and these economic forces for fifty years. I believe that the drop in the birthrate is a reflection of this mindset and those forces. Until we begin to see the value of the two parent family in a traditional marriage, we will continue to see the building blocks of our society weakened. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and right now our government is that hand. Parents need to be aware of who is raising their children and begin to take back the responsibility of having and raising their children. We can restore the family by shrinking the role of government and cutting taxes. Look at the percentage of people’s income that went to taxes before we declared war on poverty. Look at the number of intact poor families before we declared war on poverty.  Our values need to change so that women have the option of staying home if they choose to (without it being a financial strain on the family). At that point, we will see the birthrate come back to a level that is healthy for our society.

Losing Friends In The Middle East

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Yesterday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about shifting alliances in the Middle East. The article pointed out that Israel and Saudi Arabia have both had strained relationships with America under President Obama.

The article comments on both of these relationships:

Each relationship would become special in its own way: one based on the need to protect access to Saudi oil and stability in the Persian Gulf; the other driven by support for a Jewish state in the wake of the Nazi genocide and what would increasingly be seen as shared values and interests with the region’s only democracy. Over the years there were significant tensions in both relationships, but more predictability and consistency were demonstrated than change.

Shifts in the Middle East have produced unprecedented stresses in both relationships. The Arab Spring, particularly the fall of Hosni Mubarak and perceptions that the Obama administration had facilitated his ouster, alienated the stability-driven Saudis. Growing tensions between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration on settlements and the peace process strained U.S.-Israeli ties.

There are still read questions about the role President Obama played in the ouster of Hosni Mubarak and the support of the Muslim Brotherhood government that replaced him. When the government of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was ousted, Washington voiced its displeasure.

The article concludes:

The administration’s view that Iran may hold the key to stability on the nuclear issue, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen has opened a divide with traditional allies who see things quite differently. As the administration looks more and more toward Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia will look beyond Barack Obama–biding their time, furthering their own agendas, and hoping that the next president, regardless of party, will see Tehran in a different light.

Unfortunately it will take some time to repair the damage done both internationally and nationally by President Obama and his policies. Hopefully the next President will be up to the task and will bring change instead of more of the same.

The Justice System Works–Sometimes The People In It Don’t

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Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a rather blunt statement by Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (D). He stated that the charges brought against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray were “George Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse case all over again” and said “these cops are political prisoners, offered up as human sacrifices, thrown like red meat to an angry mob.” He made this statement on Friday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.

This sounds like an inflammatory statement until you really examine it.

The article reports:

Clarke said of the charges, “it’s a miscarriage of justice. This neophyte prosecutor stood up there and made a political statement, Neil, and I say that because she’s chanting or voicing some of the chants from this angry mob. Her job is to tune that out. She said, I hear the voices. She’s not supposed to hear anything as she reviews this case that is not consistent with the rule of law and our system of justice. Look, I’m an experienced and a veteran homicide detective. I’ve had — I’ve participated in charging conferences. There is no way I have ever gotten a criminal charge within 24 hours after taking over all the reports and evidence to a prosecutor. A prosecutor who is thorough needs several days to sift through hundreds of pages of reports. They usually want to interview some of the witnesses themselves, in person, and they have to sift through all of the evidence, piece by piece, and they have to wait for some of the forensics evidence to conclude, to come back and that’s why I say on a minimum, three to four days. She just got this case yesterday. This is political activism. She’ll never prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, and I’m not going to silently stand by and watch my brother officers, offered up as human sacrifices, thrown like red meat to an angry mob, just to appease this angry mob.” And that “she rushed this thing through.”

In case you have forgotten, the Duke lacrosse case occurred in 2006. It involved false charges of rape filed against three members of the Duke lacrosse team. As a result of the accusations, the remainder of the 2006 lacrosse season was canceled. Remember, the charges were false and the men were innocent. Meanwhile, where do they go to get their reputations back (or their athletic scholarships)? We are watching the same thing happen in Baltimore. When the dust clears, it may become obvious that the police may have been negligent in following procedures closely (there are rumors about a seat belt that was not fastened that should have been), but from here it does not look like whatever happened in Baltimore is deserving of the media attention or the protests it is getting.

It is unfortunate that there is injustice in our society, but it has always been there and always will be there. Since the police involved were both black and white, I don’t see how this can be logically seen as a racial issue. It may be seen as a racial issue if one chooses to do so, but I am not convinced there is any logic to that point of view.

If conditions in Baltimore are that bad, the answer is found in the ballot box–not in looting and destroying personal property.

 

The Corruption Goes On

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On Wednesday, Front Page Magazine reported that Gehad el-Haddad, who left the Clinton Administration for a position with Egypt’s jihadist Muslim Brotherhood has received a life sentence in Egypt for seditious activities.

The article reports:

According to the New York Times, the defendants “were reportedly accused of joining a command center” during an Aug. 14, 2013 Islamist sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square “that sought to spread chaos across Egypt in defiance of the government.” The Muslim Brotherhood-led protest was in support of President Obama’s Islamist ally, the now-deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Morsi, whose rhetorical repertoire seems limited to calling Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs,” himself received a 20-year prison sentence this month and his Muslim Brotherhood organization is now officially banned in the Arab republic.

Gehad el-Haddad was the lead English-language spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood. He is the son of Essam el-Haddad, who was foreign affairs adviser to then-President Morsi. Gehad’s brother, Abdullah el-Haddad, serves as spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in London, England.

Hillary Clinton, of course, headed the U.S. Department of State during the “Egyptian Revolution of 2011″ that ousted longtime U.S. ally and anti-Islamist Hosni Mubarak and cleared the way for Obama pal Mohamed Morsi.

On March 8, I reported that (rightwinggranny.com) Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking any and all communications – including emails – from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Chief of Staff Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00321)).

Both the Clinton Administration and the Obama Administration have had very cozy relationships with a number of people inside the Muslim Brotherhood. It is encouraging that one of these Muslim Brotherhood operatives is now in jail, even if he is in jail in Egypt rather than America.