Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Monday, December 30, 2013
Coming Pension Meltdown: The 10 Most Troubled City Systems
oters in Cincinnati last week soundly defeated a ballot initiative which would have overhauled the pension system for public workers, leaving the city without a plan to deal with $872 million in unfunded liabilities.
Cincinnati is not alone.
Across the nation, cities and states are finding funding for basic services being crowded out of their budgets by the rising cost of retirees' pensions and healthcare.
The Cincinnati initiative would have turned the public pension system into a 401(k) style-plan and require the city to pay off its unfunded liabilities in 10 years.
It failed 78 percent to 22 percent, an example of the opposition that cities face when trying to tackle the politically sensitive issue of funding retirees' benefits.
More and more cities, counties, and even some states will face the harsh reality of having to fix their pension systems or deal with a Detroit-style bankruptcy.
"This is happening in too many cities and towns across America, where social services, because they can be cut, are cut. Because pensions and bonds constitutionally cannot be cut, they're the protected class," Wall Street financial analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.
"I think you're going to see a real issue of neighbor against neighbor on these very issues," said Whitney, who recently co-founded Kenbelle Capital LP, a New York hedge fund.
Whitney argues in her recently released book, "Fate of the States: The New Geography of American Prosperity," that cities and states which delay addressing the crisis will witness a continued decline in growth.
A study by the Pew Center earlier this year looked at 61 cities — those with populations over 500,000 plus the largest city in each state — and found a total gap of $217 billion between pension and retiree healthcare obligations and the funding saved to pay those costs.
According to Pew, those cities had a total pension liability of $385 billion, with 74 percent funded, leaving a $99 billion shortfall.
The situation regarding retiree healthcare benefits in those cities is far worse, with a total of $126.2 billion of liabilities that are only 6 percent funded.
But here’s the real rub: experts are warning that many pension systems, those claiming they are well funded and those who say they aren’t, have all been using rosy projections about future investment returns.
In a recent editorial in Barron’s, Thomas Donlan writes that pension funds have “hidden the results with dubious financial reporting.”
He cites as just one example Detroit, which claimed as late as 2011 that their pension funds were 80 percent fully funded. New auditors found a $3.5 billion shortfall, a hole that pushed the city into bankruptcy.
Detroit, he says, was using the standard 8 percent return on assets, widely used by other funds. Donlan argues that is foolhardy to claim an 8 percent rate of return.
Consider that since January 1, 2001, the Dow Jones has appreciated, on average, a paltry 2.2 percent, with the S&P growing just 1.36 percent.
Instead, Donlan suggests pension funds use a 4 percent rate, the blended rate for no-risk Treasuries or a 5.5 percent rate, consistent with current corporate bond payouts. But if pension funds were to be honest and use such numbers, real unfunded liabilities would jump by a third or more.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/city-pension-shortfall-underfunded/2013/11/11/id/536027
Cincinnati is not alone.
Across the nation, cities and states are finding funding for basic services being crowded out of their budgets by the rising cost of retirees' pensions and healthcare.
The Cincinnati initiative would have turned the public pension system into a 401(k) style-plan and require the city to pay off its unfunded liabilities in 10 years.
It failed 78 percent to 22 percent, an example of the opposition that cities face when trying to tackle the politically sensitive issue of funding retirees' benefits.
More and more cities, counties, and even some states will face the harsh reality of having to fix their pension systems or deal with a Detroit-style bankruptcy.
"This is happening in too many cities and towns across America, where social services, because they can be cut, are cut. Because pensions and bonds constitutionally cannot be cut, they're the protected class," Wall Street financial analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.
"I think you're going to see a real issue of neighbor against neighbor on these very issues," said Whitney, who recently co-founded Kenbelle Capital LP, a New York hedge fund.
Whitney argues in her recently released book, "Fate of the States: The New Geography of American Prosperity," that cities and states which delay addressing the crisis will witness a continued decline in growth.
A study by the Pew Center earlier this year looked at 61 cities — those with populations over 500,000 plus the largest city in each state — and found a total gap of $217 billion between pension and retiree healthcare obligations and the funding saved to pay those costs.
According to Pew, those cities had a total pension liability of $385 billion, with 74 percent funded, leaving a $99 billion shortfall.
The situation regarding retiree healthcare benefits in those cities is far worse, with a total of $126.2 billion of liabilities that are only 6 percent funded.
But here’s the real rub: experts are warning that many pension systems, those claiming they are well funded and those who say they aren’t, have all been using rosy projections about future investment returns.
In a recent editorial in Barron’s, Thomas Donlan writes that pension funds have “hidden the results with dubious financial reporting.”
He cites as just one example Detroit, which claimed as late as 2011 that their pension funds were 80 percent fully funded. New auditors found a $3.5 billion shortfall, a hole that pushed the city into bankruptcy.
Detroit, he says, was using the standard 8 percent return on assets, widely used by other funds. Donlan argues that is foolhardy to claim an 8 percent rate of return.
Consider that since January 1, 2001, the Dow Jones has appreciated, on average, a paltry 2.2 percent, with the S&P growing just 1.36 percent.
Instead, Donlan suggests pension funds use a 4 percent rate, the blended rate for no-risk Treasuries or a 5.5 percent rate, consistent with current corporate bond payouts. But if pension funds were to be honest and use such numbers, real unfunded liabilities would jump by a third or more.
| City | Total Liability | % Funded |
| Charleston, W. Va. | $270 million | 24 |
| Omaha, Neb. | $1.43 billion | 43 |
| Portland, Ore. | $5.46 billion | 50 |
| Chicago, Ill. | 24.97 billion | 52 |
| Little Rock, Ark. | $498 million | 59 |
| Wilmington, Del. | $364 million | 59 |
| Boston, Mass. | $2.54 billion | 60 |
| Atlanta, Ga. | $3.17 billion | 60 |
| Manchester, N.H. | $436 million | 60 |
| New Orleans, La. | $1.99 billion | 61 |
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/city-pension-shortfall-underfunded/2013/11/11/id/536027
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Social Discrimination
I am fascinated over the discussion surrounding Baldwin and Robertson situations. Most are outraged in some fashion or another but to me, what has happened in both instances is exactly the way the creation and observance of social mores should take place. It is indeed the way a business like Abercrombie and Fitch should be dealt with when they cross the sensibilities of the customer. This is the first time in a long time that the word ‘discrimination’ has not wound up in a court(although, unfortunately it still could). It is a rarity in American culture, at least over the last 30 years or so, that the court of public opinion decided an issue. It is exactly as it should be.
I know that some of you will reject what I am saying out of hand, but please, for the sake of civil discussion, try to understand what I am saying. Just as pfunky and Max have accused all people who disagree with homosexuality of having an ‘anus fixation’ (which is not true), don’t read this with a ‘southern, white supremacist’ fixation. It is not the case and if you look objectively at the history of argument with respect to the word ‘discrimination’ and the knockon effects of the way we see liberty and our pursuit of happiness you will come to understand that what you see as ‘rage’ is much more about concern. Concern for the path we are taking in law making in response to things some people feel are ‘offensive’.
Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there has been an undoing battle over the ‘right’ to discriminate. It is a ‘right’ you know. In anything that looks like a free country, it can’t be anything other than a right. A good many on the left will immediately think ‘Southern Racists’ but the fact of the matter is that a large number of people attacked the act on constitutional rather than racial grounds… as bad law, not bad intent. Now while it is completely true that some people in the south wanted slaves back and some wanted a legal division of ‘separate but equal ‘, a good many saw the segregationist laws of the south as no less insidious as the civil rights act with respect to a person’s right of personal association. That is, a law that insists that people do something against their will is no more correct than a law that prevents people from doing something that they want to.
The current issues in the news focus directly on our personal right to discriminate. We discriminate in the method of our religious worship which also encompasses political dogma. We discriminate in the choice of our friends. We differ in our tastes and likes, and yet nothing can be done about this for it is beyond regulation in the absence of a binding grant from us to our form of government…. This is a personal and constitutional right beyond the power of legislation.
Many people, in my opinion, rightfully interpret the 1964 act and subsequent rulings as a very dangerous encroachment on the essence of why the Constitution and its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, were written in the first place. The history of discrimination laws presents an ideal case study of extrajudicial constitutional development. Claims of a constitutionally grounded right to discriminate were all but laughed out of court, yet outside the courtroom these same claims resonate in almost all areas of our personal life; the things we do, what we by and what establishments we frequent.. are all a matter of choice decided my personal likes and prejudices… discriminating tastes.
While we can all agree that government… local, state and federal governments, MUST be blind as to race, sex and religion… that list has expanded to include just about everything under the sun up to people who THINK they are one sex but are biologically the other and have extended the word public to include any private business giving service to the ‘public’. This is a dangerous distortion in the use of the word public because the essence of business is private… private funding, private property and the ideas for the business and its plan in the first place are founded on personal choice and not by the public or public expectation. The success of the business or lack their of is or should be only the domain of public expectation and not law forcing public expectation.
Yet, no business has the right, any more, to build a business that rejects a segment of the population based on someone else’s legal list of requirements. Abercrombie & Fitch is a case where shunning has caused the company to change its product line which previously refused to offer plus size cloths (good) but would be taken to court if they refused to hire the very same people they refused to make products for (bad). The company should have whatever hiring process it desires… if the public are just as insulted as they are over the product line.. the company would change its hiring practice, but if public accepted the company’s exclusion of certain people, then so be it. It is not a case for the law but one of public opinion.
“To deprive a person of this basic right to pursue his calling … unless he furnishes labor or services for certain individuals for whom he does not desire to work is obviously coercion if not outright punishment. When an individual is either coerced into working for another or punished for failure to
do so, the inescapable conclusion is that such employment amounts to involuntary servitude.”
The problem with using laws to solve social problems is that once you determine it right to create a law ‘for’ something… someone else can create a like law ‘against’. It is very important that we understand the corrosive nature of this laws regardless of the context in which they are made. A case in point is the Lester Madox case of the Pickrick restaurant. No doubt Madox was a racist but that did not change that fact that he was a private business owner who catered to certain people and had every right to pursue that business model… even if it ultimately, in the court of public opinion, left him bankrupt. The case argued to and lost by, in my opinion, extra-judicial proceedings was grounded in the inherent first amendment right to discriminate and the fact that the 13th amendment was created to promote individual liberty and not equality. In the end, so convinced of the legal miscarriage of a person’s right to choose and right to association that Maddox closed his restaurant and erected a monument on that very same private property commemorating “the death of private property rights in America”.
In my opinion this discussion focuses too narrowly on the civil rights movement that tend to over emphasize the exceptionalism of the Jim Crow south and misses the much broader issue that has been argued in all parts of this country over housing, business and indeed personal association which find the public’s naturally inherent right to choose, on the wrong side of the singular issue of breaking the racist south.
Much like the struggle between the federalist and anti-federalist of their time, historians and legal scholars and pundits have given considerable attention to the movement’s transformational impact on constitutional development, yet most attention has focused on achievements of the movement’s protagonists. Not enough focus has been given to the constitutional arguments put forth by those who lost the critical battles of the day. In ignoring the significance of these arguments we eventually loose our direction and forget the reasons the court got involved in the first place. In doing so, we start building new law on old and sometimes bad precedent.
As a libertarian at heart, I see the continual march for equity to be most harmful to reasons and purpose for the formation of this great country. No one will truly be equal to another if for no other reason than the differences in intellect, interest and determination. Attempting forced equality at the expense of freedom of choice and liberty creates a never ending march to a totalitarian state. Some people like to differentiate socialist and totalitarian but both stipulate in broad stroke, with force, the conduct of its people and both are headed by chosen elitists who neither live by or are governed by the rules that they make. Laws must be created with the understanding that they may one day be used to oppress the things you do and think about. So many laws created today are band-aids for immediate problems what have unintended consequence tomorrow.
Of course there are people who oppose an individual’s right to oppose others or even speak of that opposition. We see in the aftermath of what Robertson said that Jessie Jackson had to stick his oar in the debate with an utterly stupid statement but one that resonates with a lot of people and creates the kind of animosity between races and groups of people who have genuine differences of opinion.
“These statements uttered by Robertson are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago,” Jackson said. “At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was ‘white privilege.’”
White privilege? Openly without the cover of law? Some people will hear this and actually believe him. I guess free speech and therefore the constitution is no longer the law and no longer within the reach of people or at least white people.
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson told GQ. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
Robertson was speaking as to his reality… His observations. Not once did he step outside of his personal experience. Not once did he say that slavery was good… but leave it to the people who love to stir racial hatred … leave it to the left to try to stifle anything that they disagree with. With this kind of warped ‘equality’, it is no wonder that people seem to think we have to change the constitution… we don’t need to change it, we just need to read and respect it.
The ‘right’ to not be discriminated against doesn’t, and can’t, exist alongside the First Amendment, but progressives always make up rights as they go along. Often, we cooperate when the fabricated right feels and looks innocent… “Hmm, a right to not be discriminated against? Well, that neither exists nor makes any sense at all, but it feels good, so I’m fine with it!” In the next phase, the made-up right is applied in ways that we don’t particularly enjoy, but we’ve lost the ability to oppose it. Of course, perhaps this is the very reason that people find the constitution out dated... Provisions like the first amendment allow people to much leeway in thought and behavour..
Of course now that A&E has backed down to public pressure to reinstate Phil, GLAAD’s panties are well and truly in a twist. Angry because A&E didn’t bow to their set of ‘moral’ rules, they accuse it of profit over bigotry…. Who, I have to ask is the biggest bigot in this argument, given that it are these types of organizations who try to use boycott as a preferred method of extortion…
As an aside. Had we, when the civil war was initiated, truly been interested in slavery.. the equality of all citizens, then we would have enforced the basic law rather than trying to contrive new ones. No state ever had the right to contravene the equality of men and once the word ‘men’ were rightly defined as both men and women of any color, the case should have been settled easily in all of the states. Creating a law that is an antithesis of a bad law… is a good law? Prejudice has been allowed to fester in this country for far too long. While color is a unique problem, immigrants from Italy, Poland, Ireland and Germany came to the US and created and lived in their own communities… as time elapsed they began to trade, to marry and to integrate naturally because they were all treated as equals under the law. Social mores were sorted out between them not by a law forcing everyone to eat Italian approved Schnitzel...or by forcing a Polish shop to hire an Irish person.
Of coarse all I have said above no doubt rings hollow to the statist… to the one who will not be happy until everyone believes and acts the same… and of course all of them scream with abandon… ‘Hail to the Chief’….
I know that some of you will reject what I am saying out of hand, but please, for the sake of civil discussion, try to understand what I am saying. Just as pfunky and Max have accused all people who disagree with homosexuality of having an ‘anus fixation’ (which is not true), don’t read this with a ‘southern, white supremacist’ fixation. It is not the case and if you look objectively at the history of argument with respect to the word ‘discrimination’ and the knockon effects of the way we see liberty and our pursuit of happiness you will come to understand that what you see as ‘rage’ is much more about concern. Concern for the path we are taking in law making in response to things some people feel are ‘offensive’.
Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there has been an undoing battle over the ‘right’ to discriminate. It is a ‘right’ you know. In anything that looks like a free country, it can’t be anything other than a right. A good many on the left will immediately think ‘Southern Racists’ but the fact of the matter is that a large number of people attacked the act on constitutional rather than racial grounds… as bad law, not bad intent. Now while it is completely true that some people in the south wanted slaves back and some wanted a legal division of ‘separate but equal ‘, a good many saw the segregationist laws of the south as no less insidious as the civil rights act with respect to a person’s right of personal association. That is, a law that insists that people do something against their will is no more correct than a law that prevents people from doing something that they want to.
The current issues in the news focus directly on our personal right to discriminate. We discriminate in the method of our religious worship which also encompasses political dogma. We discriminate in the choice of our friends. We differ in our tastes and likes, and yet nothing can be done about this for it is beyond regulation in the absence of a binding grant from us to our form of government…. This is a personal and constitutional right beyond the power of legislation.
Many people, in my opinion, rightfully interpret the 1964 act and subsequent rulings as a very dangerous encroachment on the essence of why the Constitution and its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, were written in the first place. The history of discrimination laws presents an ideal case study of extrajudicial constitutional development. Claims of a constitutionally grounded right to discriminate were all but laughed out of court, yet outside the courtroom these same claims resonate in almost all areas of our personal life; the things we do, what we by and what establishments we frequent.. are all a matter of choice decided my personal likes and prejudices… discriminating tastes.
While we can all agree that government… local, state and federal governments, MUST be blind as to race, sex and religion… that list has expanded to include just about everything under the sun up to people who THINK they are one sex but are biologically the other and have extended the word public to include any private business giving service to the ‘public’. This is a dangerous distortion in the use of the word public because the essence of business is private… private funding, private property and the ideas for the business and its plan in the first place are founded on personal choice and not by the public or public expectation. The success of the business or lack their of is or should be only the domain of public expectation and not law forcing public expectation.
Yet, no business has the right, any more, to build a business that rejects a segment of the population based on someone else’s legal list of requirements. Abercrombie & Fitch is a case where shunning has caused the company to change its product line which previously refused to offer plus size cloths (good) but would be taken to court if they refused to hire the very same people they refused to make products for (bad). The company should have whatever hiring process it desires… if the public are just as insulted as they are over the product line.. the company would change its hiring practice, but if public accepted the company’s exclusion of certain people, then so be it. It is not a case for the law but one of public opinion.
“To deprive a person of this basic right to pursue his calling … unless he furnishes labor or services for certain individuals for whom he does not desire to work is obviously coercion if not outright punishment. When an individual is either coerced into working for another or punished for failure to
do so, the inescapable conclusion is that such employment amounts to involuntary servitude.”
The problem with using laws to solve social problems is that once you determine it right to create a law ‘for’ something… someone else can create a like law ‘against’. It is very important that we understand the corrosive nature of this laws regardless of the context in which they are made. A case in point is the Lester Madox case of the Pickrick restaurant. No doubt Madox was a racist but that did not change that fact that he was a private business owner who catered to certain people and had every right to pursue that business model… even if it ultimately, in the court of public opinion, left him bankrupt. The case argued to and lost by, in my opinion, extra-judicial proceedings was grounded in the inherent first amendment right to discriminate and the fact that the 13th amendment was created to promote individual liberty and not equality. In the end, so convinced of the legal miscarriage of a person’s right to choose and right to association that Maddox closed his restaurant and erected a monument on that very same private property commemorating “the death of private property rights in America”.
In my opinion this discussion focuses too narrowly on the civil rights movement that tend to over emphasize the exceptionalism of the Jim Crow south and misses the much broader issue that has been argued in all parts of this country over housing, business and indeed personal association which find the public’s naturally inherent right to choose, on the wrong side of the singular issue of breaking the racist south.
Much like the struggle between the federalist and anti-federalist of their time, historians and legal scholars and pundits have given considerable attention to the movement’s transformational impact on constitutional development, yet most attention has focused on achievements of the movement’s protagonists. Not enough focus has been given to the constitutional arguments put forth by those who lost the critical battles of the day. In ignoring the significance of these arguments we eventually loose our direction and forget the reasons the court got involved in the first place. In doing so, we start building new law on old and sometimes bad precedent.
As a libertarian at heart, I see the continual march for equity to be most harmful to reasons and purpose for the formation of this great country. No one will truly be equal to another if for no other reason than the differences in intellect, interest and determination. Attempting forced equality at the expense of freedom of choice and liberty creates a never ending march to a totalitarian state. Some people like to differentiate socialist and totalitarian but both stipulate in broad stroke, with force, the conduct of its people and both are headed by chosen elitists who neither live by or are governed by the rules that they make. Laws must be created with the understanding that they may one day be used to oppress the things you do and think about. So many laws created today are band-aids for immediate problems what have unintended consequence tomorrow.
Of course there are people who oppose an individual’s right to oppose others or even speak of that opposition. We see in the aftermath of what Robertson said that Jessie Jackson had to stick his oar in the debate with an utterly stupid statement but one that resonates with a lot of people and creates the kind of animosity between races and groups of people who have genuine differences of opinion.
“These statements uttered by Robertson are more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago,” Jackson said. “At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law. Robertson’s statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was ‘white privilege.’”
White privilege? Openly without the cover of law? Some people will hear this and actually believe him. I guess free speech and therefore the constitution is no longer the law and no longer within the reach of people or at least white people.
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson told GQ. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
Robertson was speaking as to his reality… His observations. Not once did he step outside of his personal experience. Not once did he say that slavery was good… but leave it to the people who love to stir racial hatred … leave it to the left to try to stifle anything that they disagree with. With this kind of warped ‘equality’, it is no wonder that people seem to think we have to change the constitution… we don’t need to change it, we just need to read and respect it.
The ‘right’ to not be discriminated against doesn’t, and can’t, exist alongside the First Amendment, but progressives always make up rights as they go along. Often, we cooperate when the fabricated right feels and looks innocent… “Hmm, a right to not be discriminated against? Well, that neither exists nor makes any sense at all, but it feels good, so I’m fine with it!” In the next phase, the made-up right is applied in ways that we don’t particularly enjoy, but we’ve lost the ability to oppose it. Of course, perhaps this is the very reason that people find the constitution out dated... Provisions like the first amendment allow people to much leeway in thought and behavour..
Of course now that A&E has backed down to public pressure to reinstate Phil, GLAAD’s panties are well and truly in a twist. Angry because A&E didn’t bow to their set of ‘moral’ rules, they accuse it of profit over bigotry…. Who, I have to ask is the biggest bigot in this argument, given that it are these types of organizations who try to use boycott as a preferred method of extortion…
As an aside. Had we, when the civil war was initiated, truly been interested in slavery.. the equality of all citizens, then we would have enforced the basic law rather than trying to contrive new ones. No state ever had the right to contravene the equality of men and once the word ‘men’ were rightly defined as both men and women of any color, the case should have been settled easily in all of the states. Creating a law that is an antithesis of a bad law… is a good law? Prejudice has been allowed to fester in this country for far too long. While color is a unique problem, immigrants from Italy, Poland, Ireland and Germany came to the US and created and lived in their own communities… as time elapsed they began to trade, to marry and to integrate naturally because they were all treated as equals under the law. Social mores were sorted out between them not by a law forcing everyone to eat Italian approved Schnitzel...or by forcing a Polish shop to hire an Irish person.
Of coarse all I have said above no doubt rings hollow to the statist… to the one who will not be happy until everyone believes and acts the same… and of course all of them scream with abandon… ‘Hail to the Chief’….
Friday, December 27, 2013
December 27th 1773
Background
Both the Boston Tea Party and the Philadelphia incident were the result of Americans being upset about Great Britain's decision to tax the American colonies despite a lack of representation in Parliament. The tax on tea particularly angered the colonists, so they boycotted English tea for several years, during which time merchants in several colonial cities resorted to smuggling tea from The Netherlands. It was generally known that Philadelphia merchants were greater smugglers of tea than their Boston counterparts.As a result, the East India Company appealed for financial relief to the British government, which passed the Tea Act on May 10, 1773. This Act of Parliament allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly and without "payment of any customs or duties whatsoever" in England, instead paying the much lower American duty. The resulting tax break allowed East India to sell tea for half the old price and cheaper than the price of tea in Great Britain, enabling the firm to undercut prices offered by colonial merchants and smugglers.
The Tea Act infuriated colonials precisely because it was designed to lower the price of tea without officially repealing the tea tax of the Revenue Act of 1767. And colonial leaders thought the British were trying to use cheap tea to "overcome all the patriotism of an American," in the words of Benjamin Franklin.
Prelude
Word was received in North America by September, 1773, that East India Company tea shipments were on their way. Philadelphians held a town meeting on October 16 at the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall).[2] This meeting was organized by Dr. Benjamin Rush, Colonel William Bradford, Thomas Mifflin, Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, and other local leaders and members of the Philadelphia Sons of Liberty. They adopted eight resolutions, one of which stated: "That the duty imposed by Parliament upon tea landed in America is a tax on the Americans, or levying contributions on them without their consent." The most important one read:| “ | That the resolution lately entered into by the East India Company, to send out their tea to America subject to the payment of duties on its being landed here, is an open attempt to enforce the ministerial plan, and a violent attack upon the liberties of America. | ” |
In Boston three weeks later, a town meeting at Faneuil Hall declared "That the sense of this town cannot be better expressed than in the words of certain judicious resolves, lately entered into by our worthy brethren, the citizens of Philadelphia." Indeed, Bostonians adopted the same resolutions that Philadelphians had promulgated earlier. The Boston Tea Party followed just a few weeks later, on December 16, 1773.
Event
On December 25, the British tea ship Polly sailed up the Delaware River and reached Chester, Pennsylvania. Commanded by one Captain Ayres, the ship carried 697 chests of tea consigned to the Philadelphia Quaker firm of James & Drinker. Several Philadelphia gentlemen proceeded to intercept the Polly and escorted Ayres to the city. Two days later, there was a mass meeting of 8,000 Philadelphians in the State House yard to address the situation. This was the largest crowd assembled in the American colonies up to that point. A number of resolutions were adopted, the first one being "that the tea... shall not be landed." It was further determined that the tea should be refused and that the vessel should make its way down the Delaware River and out of the Delaware Bay as soon as possible.Captain Ayres was probably influenced by a broadside issued by the self-constituted "Committee for Tarring and Feathering" that plainly warned him of his fate should he attempt to unload his ship's cargo. Dated November 27, the handbill read, in part:
| “ | You are sent
out on a diabolical Service; and if you are so foolish and obstinate as
to complete your Voyage, by bringing your Ship to Anchor in this Port,
you may run such a Gauntlet as will induce you, in your last Moments,
most heartily to curse those who have made you the Dupe of their Avarice
and Ambition.
What think you, Captain, of a Halter around your Neck—ten Gallons of
liquid Tar decanted on your Pate—with the Feathers of a dozen wild Geese
laid over that to enliven your Appearance? Only think seriously of
this—and fly to the Place from whence you came—fly without
Hesitation—without the Formality of a Protest—and above all, Captain
Ayres, let us advise you to fly without the wild Geese Feathers. |
” |
Perhaps due to the Quaker influence in Philadelphia, the "Philadelphia Tea Party" was relatively nonviolent and did not cause loss to any innocent merchants, since no tea was destroyed. In fact, local merchants may have even helped Captain Ayres with his expenses in returning to England.
Influence
Restrained as it was compared to Boston's, the Philadelphia Tea Party was one of the incidents that led to the calling of the Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia the following September. Furthermore, in 1809, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote to John Adams:| “ | I once heard you say [that] the active business of the American Revolution began in Philadelphia in the act of her citizens in sending back the tea ship, and that Massachusetts would have received her portion of the tea had not our example encouraged her to expect union and support in destroying it... The flame kindled on that day [October 16, 1773] soon extended to Boston and gradually spread throughout the whole continent. It was the first throe of that convulsion which delivered Great Britain of the United States. | ” |
wiki
Thursday, December 26, 2013
The Supreme Court Should Not Kill Obamacare: A Tea Party Perspective
Posted by Michael Lotfi
October 30, 2013
Some call me a conservative, some call me a libertarian & some call me a tea party member. I call myself a “conservatarian” (you can use it if you want). Regardless, there is something that needs to be known. It’s something the pundits of the left and right regularly ignore. Those who embrace it, are often accused of “neoconfederacy”, or my favorite “racism”. I’m talking about State rights. It’s odd that opponents of State rights who cry “racist!” regularly cite the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare. It seems they forget that the same court ruled African Americans were not human, but property in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
You see, it makes little sense to vest much value in Supreme Court decisions made after 1803. The Supreme Court has not ruled within its constitutional jurisdiction since Chief Justice John Marshall gave the majority opinion in Marbury v. Madison. In this case, Chief Justice John Marshall unconstitutionally expanded the power of the Court to rule on cases, which would apply to the entire country. This was not the original intent of the Supreme Court of the United States. Every case ruled on since then is null and void. Even so, it’s imperative to remember that the Court issues opinions, not decrees.
We know that America was founded on compact theory. This is made crystal clear by Madison, the father of the Constitution, when he drafted the Report of 1800. Compact theory dictates that the states compose the country. These states explicitly grant the federal government its power. Compact theory also sets the paradigm that the State has the authority to dictate whether or not a federal law is constitutional. If you asked Americans on the street today they would most likely tell you the opposite is true.
All that build up for what? Well, why wait for the Supreme Court to strike down the law? There are multiple cases making their way to the SCOTUS, which very well may cripple Obamacare. However, if we are a nation of principled citizens we should not rely on these Supreme Court opinions regardless of how they sway. As I said before, the SCOTUS is operating outside of its jurisdiction.
Individual states have the power to nullify Obamacare, if they so choose to take that path. However, there is another way the law can also be killed.
Let us consider that only 17 states are running their own health care exchange under the Patient Care Act (PCA). Another 26 are leaving it completely up to the feds, and the remaining few are doing a joint exchange. Now, in this case, it may seem that more states have opted for greater government control. Not so, because of text of the PCA states who opted for the federal exchange are actually on their way to opting out of Obamacare. This is why essentially every state run by republicans opted for the federal exchange. Many states are now in the process of trying to kill the medicaid expansion under Obamacare. If successful, with a few more steps, these states have effectively nullified Obamacare. These states are now in a stronger position to move on to the next phase–
Next, let us consider how many states are run by republicans. Democrats only have complete legislative control over 17 states. Also, they could soon be losing Virginia, as the gubernatorial race between McAuliffe (D), Cuccinelli (R) and Sarvis (L) tightens. A recent poll shows Sarvis dropping 1 point, and McAuliffe/Cuccinelli in a statistical tie Regardless of that race, republican ran states are on the rise. Since Obama took office, republican governors have taken over 9 states. If the trend continues, republicans will continue to gain ground in the states. Also, libertarian candidates are taking the field with relatively impressive results.
Given time, it’s more than possible that the magic number 38 could be reached. What is this number? It’s the number required for a constitutional amendment. If republican and libertarian state representatives, senators and governors held to the principles, which they claim are of their core convictions, then a constitutional amendment could be achieved. Such an amendment would block the healthcare law across the board. More so, the path of constitutional amendment is one of maintained principle.
Although I do not agree with Obamacare, I would not support the Supreme Court striking it down. Why? Because, in doing so, the Supreme Court continues to act outside of its constitutionally delegated authority. With this avenue, it is only a matter of time until someone with differing values tries to impose those values onto the rest of the country. Again, this was never the intended purpose of the Supreme Court. Supreme Court opinions are not the “law of the land”. The Constitution is the law of the land. Madison, the father of the Constitution, has explicitly defined for us that the Constitution restrains the federal government through avenue of the people composing the states. The states give the federal government its power. The inverse is the greatest modern fallacy America faces.
The founders have given us a principled avenue to resolve overbearing federal government power. It is of paramount importance that Americans rediscover their resolve for true freedom. However, this resolve must be rooted in principle. It must not rely upon those who act without principle. If we simply rely on the Supreme Court we will lose. Whether the law is struck down or upheld is of no importance. The Supreme Court should have never been allowed to rule on the legislation in the first place and therefore we should not look to the problem for a solution.
America, the prisoner capital of the world
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg,
Apparently having 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners simply isn’t good enough for neo-feudal America. No, we need to find more creative and archaic ways to wastefully, immorally and seemingly unconstitutionally incarcerate poor people. Welcome to the latest trend in the penal colony formerly known as America. Debtors’ prisons. A practice I thought had long since been deemed outdated (indeed it has been largely eradicated in the Western world with the exception of about 1/3 of U.S. states as well as Greece).
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Happy Holidays
everyone, Merry Christmas and a hope for a most fruitful and happy new year. At times we spew venom at each other but we are all bound together by being lucky enough to be citizens of what is still the greatest country ever known to mankind. A country that allows us to come online and discuss the issues with no threat of repercussions from our government. Most of the world isn't so lucky. Have a wonderful time with your friends and families.
Rick
Rick
Monday, December 23, 2013
This Woman Has Balls!
Australia says NO -- This will be the second Time Julia Gillard has done
this!
She sure isn't backing down on her hard line stance and one has to appreciate her belief in the rights of her native countrymen.
A breath of fresh air to see someone lead with guts and determination. ...
She sure isn't backing down on her hard line stance and one has to appreciate her belief in the rights of her native countrymen.
A breath of fresh air to see someone lead with guts and determination. ...
Australian
Prime Minister does it again!!
The whole world needs a leader like this!
Prime Minister Julia Gillard - Australia
The whole world needs a leader like this!
Prime Minister Julia Gillard - Australia
Muslims
who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of
Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential
terror attacks.
Separately, Gillard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying she supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote:
Separately, Gillard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying she supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote:
'IMMIGRANTS,
NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT... Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation
worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since
the terrorist attacks on Bali, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the
majority of Australians.'
'This
culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories
by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.'
'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language!'
'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language!'
'Most
Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political
push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles,
founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate
to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you,then I suggest you
consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our
culture.'
'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'
'We will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us.'
'This
is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every
opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and
griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I
highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE
RIGHT TO LEAVE'.'
'If
you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to
be here. So accept the country that accepted you.'
Pigs at the Trough.
In wake of budget deal, Congress slices up trillion-dollar pie
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Capitol building is seen as budget
battles continue to rage inside over the looming shutdown of most of the
U.S. government in Washington, September 30, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Jim Bourg
Unlike the knock-down budget battles that paralyzed government for much of the year, this debate will largely take place within what one lobbyist calls a "cone of silence" with Republicans and Democrats aiming to minimize discord as they race to set spending levels for thousands of individual government programs.
It's a chance for Congress to demonstrate that it is capable of doing its job after two years in which lawmakers let the government run on automatic pilot when they weren't shutting it down or imposing indiscriminate spending cuts.
It has also touched off a lobbying blitz as defense contractors, hospitals, day-care providers and thousands of other groups push to maximize funding for the programs that affect them most directly.
Business groups will push to fund job-training programs, while advocates for the elderly will fight for increased Alzheimer's disease research and teachers' unions will argue to restore money that has been cut from education.
There may be only so much they can do to influence the process as lawmakers retreat into their chambers to write the complex spending legislation.
"They absolutely know what our priorities are," said Beth Felder, a lobbyist for Johns Hopkins University, the largest academic recipient of U.S. research money. "At this point I don't think their phones need to be ringing off the hook."
For some, it's a chance to restore funding that fell victim to across-the-board "sequester" cuts that took effect in March. For others, it's a chance to launch new initiatives that have been sidelined for years as Democrats and Republicans have opted to renew old spending plans through temporary "continuing resolutions," rather than write new ones.
At Johns Hopkins, programs funded through the appropriations measures cover some hospital patients' medical bills and help students pay for their education. Researchers build satellites and develop missile-defense systems for the government and rely on federal money to fund medical research projects.
Federal spending is far and away the most important topic for lobbyists and their clients who hire them. Lobbying firms reported working on behalf of 3,076 clients this year for budget and spending issues, nearly twice as much as any other issue, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Collectively, those lobbyists can claim a partial victory. The budget deal that passed the House of Representatives and the Senate this week gives lawmakers authority to spend $45 billion more than would have otherwise been available.
RISING TIDE FOR INTEREST GROUPS
Now those interest groups will be essentially competing with each other for a slice of the same pie.
"We cooperate because a rising tide lifts all boats," said Emily Holubowich, who heads a coalition of 3,200 organizations that have pressed for more domestic funding. "Then we're competing with one another for those limited resources."
The deal provides a ceasefire in the budget wars that have consumed Washington since Republicans won control of the House in 2010 on a promise to cut spending.
It gives lawmakers on the appropriations committees $1.012 trillion to spend, splitting the difference between the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
It's not clear how that money will be divided.
Lobbyists say they expect it will be split evenly between military and domestic programs, with the money being distributed proportionately between the 12 subcommittees that each oversee a portion of the government.
But they're not likely to learn much more than that over the coming weeks as lawmakers will try to keep their work as private as possible, said Jim Dyer, a longtime Republican appropriations staffer who now works as a lobbyist.
"If a decision gets out, there'll be five people to preserve it and 10 people to overthrow it. You have to be very careful about the information that goes out in the public domain at this time," he said.
Congress hasn't written proper spending laws for most domestic programs since December 2011, opting instead to fund wide swaths of the government under continuing resolutions that freeze operations in place.
A CHANCE FOR NEW INITIATIVES
As a result, new initiatives have been put on hold.
Among them, for example, is a plan that would use advanced molecular-identification techniques to identify and isolate outbreaks of food poisoning, influenza or other public health threats more quickly.
Obama requested $40 million for the program this spring, and the Senate approved spending for half that amount in the summer.
Lobbyist Peter Kyriacopoulos brought in state and local public health workers to pitch the program to lawmakers in March, and he's following up with phone calls to staffers now. But he says it may be tough to convince Republicans to sign off on new spending.
"The House has been operating in a very unique way, so we go in and say what we can and we hope for the best," he said. "But no one's told me to go away," he said.
Others are more optimistic. Armed with figures that show how many patients in each congressional district have been unable to get treatment due to the sequester cuts, David Pugach of the American Cancer Society has been pressing appropriators to restore medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health to its pre-sequester level.
"When appropriators are making decisions based on what they say is most important, funding for cancer research and prevention should be at the top of that list and in all likelihood would do rather well," he said.
As the sequester forced sharp cutbacks in the Head Start early childhood education program, backers across the country ensured the cuts were covered in local media and pressured lawmakers to restore funding. Hopefully, that will have generated enough momentum to restore the $400 million that has been cut, said Yasmina Vinci of the National Head Start Association.
"Our first, biggest, most glaring priority is restoring the cuts that happened," she said. "I'm hoping we have done our work."
I can’t explain why we shouldn’t murder disabled children
Posted on December 22, 2013
I don’t know.
I don’t know how else to explain this. Can I really formulate an argument that will explain why we shouldn’t murder disabled children? If you don’t immediately recognize the eugenic slaughter of handicapped babies as something severely troubling, I’m not sure that I can offer any insights to help you understand.
You see, this is the problem. This is why we can’t come to any agreements. This is why our arguments are fruitless. They don’t have to be — arguing could be a rather worthwhile activity. But a constructive argument, or debate, or dialogue, or whatever you want to call it, requires both parties to have some shared concept of right vs wrong and fact vs fiction. Without that, neither side can appeal to the other, because they both exist in entirely different universes.
So, me personally, I’m livin’ over here in a world where it’s never OK to execute a disabled baby, or any baby, for any reason. In fact, in my universe — a universe we might call “reality” — the murder of children could be, without hyperbole, classified as THE worst thing. It is the worst of all that is bad. It is the lowest of low. It is the ugliest of ugly. It is the Pinnacle of Wrong. If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else.
Let me say that again, because it’s a crucial point:
If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else.
Literally anything else.
Slavery? Genocide? How can they be condemned? Of what sort of moral standard have they fallen short? If the bar has sunken low enough so that infanticide can leap above it, then I doubt that any atrocity could find a way to limbo underneath.
Believe it or not, even politically incorrect comments about homosexuality have to be excused if we are to believe that baby killing is a moral act.
I’m often told that I need to be more understanding on this topic, but this is an unfair request. There are people — millions of them, in fact — who think it should be legal to murder babies, but then illegal to, say, pay a fast food worker less than minimum wage, or refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. How could I possibly understand this mentality? How could I wrap my head around the thought process that leads one to conclude that the latter cases are so atrocious — so dehumanizing — that they ought to be outlawed, but the former case is so acceptable that it ought to be vigorously defended, and even funded, by the federal government?
Understanding? No. I do not understand. I do not. And I hope that I never do. CS Lewis wrote about the Abolition of Man, and reading his book is the closest I can come to understanding a society that has devolved into this kind of murderous insanity. He wrote:
“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or ideologies all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”
We have arbitrarily wrenched certain values from the One Source of all values, and they have now swollen to madness in their isolation.
I say all of this because my initial intention was to sit down and write about the couple in Washington who just won a 50 million dollar “wrongful birth” settlement. Brock and Rhea Wuth sued a hospital because their son was born severely disabled. No, they were not alleging that the hospital caused the disability; they alleged that the hospital (and a lab testing facility) did not run the correct tests that would have detected the genetic defects while the child was still in the womb. Had they been given the correct tests, they would have known that the baby was “defective,” and then killed it. Tragically, they were robbed of the opportunity to abort their son, so the hospital must pay for the son’s care — for the rest of his life.
Oh, but don’t judge them: they still “love” their child. They wish he was dead, they wish they had killed him, but they still “love” him. Make no judgments. Offer no stern words. They sued a hospital for not giving them the chance to kill their child, but do not think yourself qualified to condemn such a thing.
Or that’s what I’ve been told, anyway.
So I sat down and intended to write about this case. I was going to explore all of the angles. I was going to point out, as a secondary issue, how these “wrongful birth lawsuits” (this one is hardly the first) will serve to make it even more expensive to have a baby at a hospital. Think of the liability issues involved if medical establishments can now be sued for not killing your baby. I was going to explain how this story is an inevitable side effect of the death cult philosophy which tells us that human life is worthless, and a parent’s right to convenience and comfort can trump a child’s right to the life God gave it. I was going to point out how the Nazis also murdered the disabled for the same reason we do: to rid society of those who might be considered a “burden.”
Here’s an excerpt from Hitler’s Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring:
Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community.
I was going to say that abortion apologists have, in more than one way, aligned themselves with one of the most wicked political regimes in the history of mankind.
I was going to explain why this is not a good thing.
I was going to explain why disabled children shouldn’t be murdered.
I was going to explain why all children, disabled or not, should be protected.
I was going to, but I can’t. These facts are self evident, and I can’t explain a self evident fact. I’m not that good.
If you don’t understand, I can’t make you. All I can do is pray for your soul.
And I will. I promise.
Reposted in its entirety from: http://themattwalshblog.com/
I would like to add that one should read some of his articles. While decidedly from a Christian point of view, his comments are clear, rational and thought provoking.
I don’t know.
I don’t know how else to explain this. Can I really formulate an argument that will explain why we shouldn’t murder disabled children? If you don’t immediately recognize the eugenic slaughter of handicapped babies as something severely troubling, I’m not sure that I can offer any insights to help you understand.
You see, this is the problem. This is why we can’t come to any agreements. This is why our arguments are fruitless. They don’t have to be — arguing could be a rather worthwhile activity. But a constructive argument, or debate, or dialogue, or whatever you want to call it, requires both parties to have some shared concept of right vs wrong and fact vs fiction. Without that, neither side can appeal to the other, because they both exist in entirely different universes.
So, me personally, I’m livin’ over here in a world where it’s never OK to execute a disabled baby, or any baby, for any reason. In fact, in my universe — a universe we might call “reality” — the murder of children could be, without hyperbole, classified as THE worst thing. It is the worst of all that is bad. It is the lowest of low. It is the ugliest of ugly. It is the Pinnacle of Wrong. If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else.
Let me say that again, because it’s a crucial point:
If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else.
Literally anything else.
Slavery? Genocide? How can they be condemned? Of what sort of moral standard have they fallen short? If the bar has sunken low enough so that infanticide can leap above it, then I doubt that any atrocity could find a way to limbo underneath.
Believe it or not, even politically incorrect comments about homosexuality have to be excused if we are to believe that baby killing is a moral act.
I’m often told that I need to be more understanding on this topic, but this is an unfair request. There are people — millions of them, in fact — who think it should be legal to murder babies, but then illegal to, say, pay a fast food worker less than minimum wage, or refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. How could I possibly understand this mentality? How could I wrap my head around the thought process that leads one to conclude that the latter cases are so atrocious — so dehumanizing — that they ought to be outlawed, but the former case is so acceptable that it ought to be vigorously defended, and even funded, by the federal government?
Understanding? No. I do not understand. I do not. And I hope that I never do. CS Lewis wrote about the Abolition of Man, and reading his book is the closest I can come to understanding a society that has devolved into this kind of murderous insanity. He wrote:
“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or ideologies all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”
We have arbitrarily wrenched certain values from the One Source of all values, and they have now swollen to madness in their isolation.
I say all of this because my initial intention was to sit down and write about the couple in Washington who just won a 50 million dollar “wrongful birth” settlement. Brock and Rhea Wuth sued a hospital because their son was born severely disabled. No, they were not alleging that the hospital caused the disability; they alleged that the hospital (and a lab testing facility) did not run the correct tests that would have detected the genetic defects while the child was still in the womb. Had they been given the correct tests, they would have known that the baby was “defective,” and then killed it. Tragically, they were robbed of the opportunity to abort their son, so the hospital must pay for the son’s care — for the rest of his life.
Oh, but don’t judge them: they still “love” their child. They wish he was dead, they wish they had killed him, but they still “love” him. Make no judgments. Offer no stern words. They sued a hospital for not giving them the chance to kill their child, but do not think yourself qualified to condemn such a thing.
Or that’s what I’ve been told, anyway.
So I sat down and intended to write about this case. I was going to explore all of the angles. I was going to point out, as a secondary issue, how these “wrongful birth lawsuits” (this one is hardly the first) will serve to make it even more expensive to have a baby at a hospital. Think of the liability issues involved if medical establishments can now be sued for not killing your baby. I was going to explain how this story is an inevitable side effect of the death cult philosophy which tells us that human life is worthless, and a parent’s right to convenience and comfort can trump a child’s right to the life God gave it. I was going to point out how the Nazis also murdered the disabled for the same reason we do: to rid society of those who might be considered a “burden.”
Here’s an excerpt from Hitler’s Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring:
Since the National Revolution public opinion has become increasingly preoccupied with questions of demographic policy and the continuing decline in the birthrate. However, it is not only the decline in population which is a cause for serious concern but equally the increasingly evident genetic composition of our people. Whereas the hereditarily healthy families have for the most part adopted a policy of having only one or two children, countless numbers of inferiors and those suffering from hereditary conditions are reproducing unrestrainedly while their sick and asocial offspring burden the community.
I was going to say that abortion apologists have, in more than one way, aligned themselves with one of the most wicked political regimes in the history of mankind.
I was going to explain why this is not a good thing.
I was going to explain why disabled children shouldn’t be murdered.
I was going to explain why all children, disabled or not, should be protected.
I was going to, but I can’t. These facts are self evident, and I can’t explain a self evident fact. I’m not that good.
If you don’t understand, I can’t make you. All I can do is pray for your soul.
And I will. I promise.
Reposted in its entirety from: http://themattwalshblog.com/
I would like to add that one should read some of his articles. While decidedly from a Christian point of view, his comments are clear, rational and thought provoking.
Holding People To Their Word....
Previously, before I developed a couple of commingled and intermittent computer problems, which I might add has made my scalp just that much thinner, I was in a discussion about the veracity and importance of the federalist papers. Rather than respond to a long forgotten thread, I thought it relevant to just give my reply in a post. I had tried to do in on the 15th which was the 222nd anniversary of the Bill of Rights but the fore mentioned computer malfunctions prevented that attempt also.
Anyway, as we can probably all agree, we often get crossways with each other over the approach we take at looking at a particular problem. Of the divisions that seem to stymie agreement between us on most issues I tend to see honesty more than anything else the biggest problem. Now don’t get me wrong, for the most part I find the thought process of most people is essentially good, if perhaps misguided. We tend to listen to that which soothes our hearts and makes sense but if the message is manipulated, so to can our understanding of both the situation and our real beliefs. From the time I was a toddler, honesty was taught as a paramount virtue. While at the time, it didn’t seem right that I was praised for being honest but simultaneously punished for the confessed deed; it is now and has been for many a year proven to be a most important a character trait.
In a recent discussion over the Federalist papers it was brought to my attention (not that I haven’t had the point made several times before by several people of the same political bent) that they were only written as a sales pitch to the people of New York and Virginia for express purpose of smoothing the adoption of the constitution. The purpose was to allay any fears people might have about the potentially abusive provisions… To calm those people who knew that an over powerful federal or power centralized in a singular monarch, regardless the title, was not in their best interest as individuals and as a governed society. Anyway, this was presented to me as mere puffery which neither had nor has any relevance to the constitution or its rightful interpretation.
Essentially I was told that those writings were no more credible than a billboard advertising the “Satisfying, Clean and Relaxing Taste of a Winston Cigarette”. Well if the Federalist Papers are to be taken as nothing more than ad pitch of a cigarette package then the Anti-Federalist papers were the Surgeon General’s warning label. The attempt to sell these writings as harmless ad copy of a commercial enterprise shows either a desperate attempt to negate their relevance in a losing debate or a general weakness of resolve to hold our ‘leaders’ to their word.
You see, when you refuse to hold people to the honor of their words, you get mediocrity of character in return. The Federalist papers are relevant because the writers were promoting, not selling, (There is a distinct difference much like the words ‘Provide’ and ‘Promote’) the constitution and they were promoting it to all the American people because the ‘musings’ were reprinted and read throughout the colonies. Of the three authors Alexander Hamilton and James Madison should have been trusted emissaries for the ‘non legalize’ intent and interpretation of the drafted document and John Jay, considered a founding father and president of the Continental Congress was certainly more than a flack man hired to put forth a disingenuous spin on the nation’s basic law.
What people say matters… “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”(under oath) and “If you like your insurance, you can keep it” where lies known to the people who uttered them the instant they left their lips. Even “read my lips” was a lie if he even had any inkling that it might not be the case. If we allow and indeed except this kind of leadership… it is what we must come to expect. Just because the Federalist Papers do not fit with a desired interpretation of the constitution and the resulting federal government, does not minimize the words. This poses the question… if you believe and support the Federalist papers as no more than puffery to sell a document that would not have otherwise been ratified in the light of truth, can you be a friend of the people who voted to ratify it under such false pretense? If you deem the writers of the federalist papers as liars, deceivers, prevaricators or fabricators then you must ask… Why did they lie? Is it because people who seek unmitigated power and the ability to use force over others, must lie? … And more importantly, why do people defend the deception and support a position carried out by people they admittedly believe to have lied to achieve their aims?
As an aside”If you like your insurance, you can keep it” has been awarded the ‘Lie of the Year 2013’ award.
I have said it before. A politician sells me only one thing… integrity. All of the words and all of the rhetoric mean absolutely nothing without integrity. I don’t care what kind of money is thrown around Washington, if you elect people with integrity, it doesn’t matter. I would much rather elect someone who I agree with only partially but can count on to do what they say, than a person who will tell me what I want to hear and do just the opposite because it advances their own ambitions. And I despise leaders who twist and evade the spirit and intent of the constitution to put forth an agenda that is, in the long term, harmful to the liberty and freedom that tens of thousands of men and women have died to preserve.
Perhaps people are correct… perhaps the words of the federalist papers were indeed no more than puffery to induce a people to do something they would not otherwise do… does that mean that we just say ‘oh well, we’ve been duped’ and happily allow the ‘real’ intent to be adopted, or do we hold that constitution and the ‘ad copy’ to its word? I don’t disagree that these men saw a greater good in ratifying the constitution but I do disagree with allowing dishonesty to pass just because it helps a devious group to achieve an unstated goal. Much like the deceptions that created the 16th and 17th amendment, we must not allow these deeds and people to be forgotten because if we do, then others of bad character will follow to further their dishonesty.
If we believe that the men who constructed the constitution were liars,,, deceivers, then we must believe that every provision of the constitution is a lie… including the bill of rights. And if we have no Bill of Rights between us and our government, we have truly advanced no more than the people who fled England in the first place. Of course, if you aspire to have a nation or a borderless region of the world devoid of our written constitution … then you should be honest… you should stand up and say that you don’t like the constitution and that it should be scrapped. If you think the constitution should be modified, at least be forthright about how it should be changed to become a ‘modern’ constitution… perhaps though, because many see the plot of the left, it is unwise to have that kind of honesty... Perhaps we are not politically correct enough.
Anyway, as we can probably all agree, we often get crossways with each other over the approach we take at looking at a particular problem. Of the divisions that seem to stymie agreement between us on most issues I tend to see honesty more than anything else the biggest problem. Now don’t get me wrong, for the most part I find the thought process of most people is essentially good, if perhaps misguided. We tend to listen to that which soothes our hearts and makes sense but if the message is manipulated, so to can our understanding of both the situation and our real beliefs. From the time I was a toddler, honesty was taught as a paramount virtue. While at the time, it didn’t seem right that I was praised for being honest but simultaneously punished for the confessed deed; it is now and has been for many a year proven to be a most important a character trait.
In a recent discussion over the Federalist papers it was brought to my attention (not that I haven’t had the point made several times before by several people of the same political bent) that they were only written as a sales pitch to the people of New York and Virginia for express purpose of smoothing the adoption of the constitution. The purpose was to allay any fears people might have about the potentially abusive provisions… To calm those people who knew that an over powerful federal or power centralized in a singular monarch, regardless the title, was not in their best interest as individuals and as a governed society. Anyway, this was presented to me as mere puffery which neither had nor has any relevance to the constitution or its rightful interpretation.
Essentially I was told that those writings were no more credible than a billboard advertising the “Satisfying, Clean and Relaxing Taste of a Winston Cigarette”. Well if the Federalist Papers are to be taken as nothing more than ad pitch of a cigarette package then the Anti-Federalist papers were the Surgeon General’s warning label. The attempt to sell these writings as harmless ad copy of a commercial enterprise shows either a desperate attempt to negate their relevance in a losing debate or a general weakness of resolve to hold our ‘leaders’ to their word.
You see, when you refuse to hold people to the honor of their words, you get mediocrity of character in return. The Federalist papers are relevant because the writers were promoting, not selling, (There is a distinct difference much like the words ‘Provide’ and ‘Promote’) the constitution and they were promoting it to all the American people because the ‘musings’ were reprinted and read throughout the colonies. Of the three authors Alexander Hamilton and James Madison should have been trusted emissaries for the ‘non legalize’ intent and interpretation of the drafted document and John Jay, considered a founding father and president of the Continental Congress was certainly more than a flack man hired to put forth a disingenuous spin on the nation’s basic law.
What people say matters… “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”(under oath) and “If you like your insurance, you can keep it” where lies known to the people who uttered them the instant they left their lips. Even “read my lips” was a lie if he even had any inkling that it might not be the case. If we allow and indeed except this kind of leadership… it is what we must come to expect. Just because the Federalist Papers do not fit with a desired interpretation of the constitution and the resulting federal government, does not minimize the words. This poses the question… if you believe and support the Federalist papers as no more than puffery to sell a document that would not have otherwise been ratified in the light of truth, can you be a friend of the people who voted to ratify it under such false pretense? If you deem the writers of the federalist papers as liars, deceivers, prevaricators or fabricators then you must ask… Why did they lie? Is it because people who seek unmitigated power and the ability to use force over others, must lie? … And more importantly, why do people defend the deception and support a position carried out by people they admittedly believe to have lied to achieve their aims?
As an aside”If you like your insurance, you can keep it” has been awarded the ‘Lie of the Year 2013’ award.
I have said it before. A politician sells me only one thing… integrity. All of the words and all of the rhetoric mean absolutely nothing without integrity. I don’t care what kind of money is thrown around Washington, if you elect people with integrity, it doesn’t matter. I would much rather elect someone who I agree with only partially but can count on to do what they say, than a person who will tell me what I want to hear and do just the opposite because it advances their own ambitions. And I despise leaders who twist and evade the spirit and intent of the constitution to put forth an agenda that is, in the long term, harmful to the liberty and freedom that tens of thousands of men and women have died to preserve.
Perhaps people are correct… perhaps the words of the federalist papers were indeed no more than puffery to induce a people to do something they would not otherwise do… does that mean that we just say ‘oh well, we’ve been duped’ and happily allow the ‘real’ intent to be adopted, or do we hold that constitution and the ‘ad copy’ to its word? I don’t disagree that these men saw a greater good in ratifying the constitution but I do disagree with allowing dishonesty to pass just because it helps a devious group to achieve an unstated goal. Much like the deceptions that created the 16th and 17th amendment, we must not allow these deeds and people to be forgotten because if we do, then others of bad character will follow to further their dishonesty.
If we believe that the men who constructed the constitution were liars,,, deceivers, then we must believe that every provision of the constitution is a lie… including the bill of rights. And if we have no Bill of Rights between us and our government, we have truly advanced no more than the people who fled England in the first place. Of course, if you aspire to have a nation or a borderless region of the world devoid of our written constitution … then you should be honest… you should stand up and say that you don’t like the constitution and that it should be scrapped. If you think the constitution should be modified, at least be forthright about how it should be changed to become a ‘modern’ constitution… perhaps though, because many see the plot of the left, it is unwise to have that kind of honesty... Perhaps we are not politically correct enough.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Raising the minimum wage, what's the impact?
How Minimum Wage Causes Unemployment
First, the graph:
A minimum wage is considered a price floor. In other words, it is a level below which the price of something is not allowed to fall.
Conversely, a price ceiling is a level above which the price of something is not allowed to rise. Think of rent control as a price ceiling.
Take a look at this graph of the labor market. The price of labor (shown on the y-axis) is of course, the wage rate. The point where the two black lines cross is equilibrium. At this point, the quantity of labor supplied by individuals is equal to the quantity of labor demanded by firms. Let's say it's 6 mil jobs at a rate of $15 per hour.
Think of the supply curve from your own personal perspective. It slopes upward because at higher wage rates you'll choose to work more, right? This is not always true due to the opposing influences of the income and substitution effects and something called indifference curves. However, we won't get into all that right now.
The demand curve can be thought of from the point of view of a firm. It slopes downward because the firm hires more workers at lower wage rates.
So it seems like a happy situation - no one is unemployed and the company has enough workers to meet product demand.
Now let's assume that legislation (a minimum wage law) is passed that requires firms to pay workers $20/hour.
At this wage rate, the demand curve tells us that the company only demands about 4 mil workers. However, the supply curve shows that 6 mil people are interested in working (because they will get $20/hour instead of $15/hour). So we have demand for labor equal to 4 mil and supply of labor equal to 6 mil. What do you think happens to the 2 mil extra people who can't get jobs at the company? They are unemployed.
But if minimum wage causes unemployment then why do minimum wage laws exist? The answer has to do with many things but politics probably plays the biggest role. Politicians would never get elected if they said, "Let's get rid of minimum wage!" Another part of the answer is that a complete lack of unemployment is not desirable.
Having said all of that, is raising the minimum wage still an advisable thing to do?
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Florida rejects Satan
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Officials overseeing holiday displays at the Florida Capitol have allowed a Nativity scene, a Festivus pole and even a chair holding fake pasta with eyeballs and an accompanying "provherb" from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
But they are drawing the line with Satan.
The Department of Management Services emailed The Satanic Temple on Wednesday, telling the group its proposed display of an angel falling from heaven into an open fire was "grossly offensive."
Co-founder Lucien Greaves says the group asked what was offensive, acknowledging they might be willing to alter the display, but they didn't get a response Thursday.
Several groups have been allowed to put up displays in the Statehouse rotunda because the area is considered to be a public forum.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
MSNBC Host Martin Bashir's Career-Wrecking Rant Wins Quote of the Year
RESTON, VA – The Media Research Center (MRC) is proud to
announce the Best Notable Quotables of 2013: The 26th Annual Awards for
the Year’s Worst Reporting, with former MSNBC host Martin Bashir taking
home the “Quote of the Year” honor for a disgusting, misogynist rant
aimed at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:
“One
of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from
the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious
notes for 39 years....In 1756, he records that ‘a slave named Darby
catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made
Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as
‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of
the slave owners’ savagery and inhumanity....When Mrs. Palin invoked
slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if
anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas
Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.”
Not
only did Bashir’s November 15 quote take the year’s top prize, he won
by one of the largest margins in the 26-year history of Notable
Quotables.
This year’s winners were selected by a distinguished panel of radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers. The runner-up after Bashir is his MSNBC comrade Ed Schultz, who on September 30 – the eve of ObamaCare’s disastrous rollout – touted Healthcare.gov’s ease of use:
This year’s winners were selected by a distinguished panel of radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers. The runner-up after Bashir is his MSNBC comrade Ed Schultz, who on September 30 – the eve of ObamaCare’s disastrous rollout – touted Healthcare.gov’s ease of use:
“This
is the Web site folks, HealthCare.gov. If you go to this Web site, you
will find out how easy it is to read, how easy it is to navigate all the
information, all the basic questions, and all the direction you need to
take to get involved, to get health care. This is a great guide, if I
may say, for any of you out there who feel so confused by all of these
right-wing commercials that are just permeating through your television
screen.”
Second runner-up is moonbat New York Times columnist Tom
Friedman who made the baffling claim on April 21 that the Boston
Marathon bombing could have been prevented with the carbon tax:
“Until
we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated
the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any
policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts
to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant
counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young
men....And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.”
MRC President Brent Bozell reacts to this year’s winners:
“For
the liberal media, 2013 will be long remembered as a year that began in
triumph and ended in tragedy. After whistling past the IRS, Benghazi,
and NSA scandals, Barack Obama’s press corps of cult-like devotees
marched face first into the rancid mess of ObamaCare – a rat’s nest of
lies and incompetence so big and so rank that even the president’s loyal
media cheer squad couldn’t hide its cloud of toxic stink.
“And then there’s our ‘winner,’ the detestable Martin Bashir, whose unrepeatable verbal assault against a proudly conservative woman has earned him a permanent place in MSNBC’s pantheon of disgraced so-called ‘journalists.’ Good riddance to another nasty little cog in the liberal media hate machine.”
“And then there’s our ‘winner,’ the detestable Martin Bashir, whose unrepeatable verbal assault against a proudly conservative woman has earned him a permanent place in MSNBC’s pantheon of disgraced so-called ‘journalists.’ Good riddance to another nasty little cog in the liberal media hate machine.”
The
winners were selected by a panel of 42 judges, including nationally
syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, Wall Street Journal editorial board
member James Taranto, nationally syndicated talk radio host Mark Levin,
Fox News Channel news analyst and national radio host Monica Crowley,
nationally syndicated talk radio host Lars Larson, Weekly Standard
senior writer Stephen Hayes, GMU professor of economics Walter E.
Williams, and SiriusXM radio host and Fox News Channel contributor David
Webb among many others.
**For audio and video clips of the broadcast quotes, to access full quotes, or see winners and runners up, please visit www.MRC.org**
Other “winners” include:
“The Tea Party Terrorists Award”
“We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too....We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.”
“We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too....We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.”
— Ex-Boston Globe Magazine writer Charles Pierce in a post on Esquire.com’s “The Politics Blog,” October 1.
“The Audacity of Dopes Award, for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year”
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children....We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children....We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
“The Audacity of Dopes Award, for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year”
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children....We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children....We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
— MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry in an early April “Lean Forward” spot.
“The Kamikaze Award, for Disparaging Conservatives During the Shutdown”
“Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America.”
“The Kamikaze Award, for Disparaging Conservatives During the Shutdown”
“Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America.”
— Politico’s chief political columnist Roger Simon in an October 14 column.
“The Ku Klux Con Job Award, for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges”
“What does your study tell you about the nature of the racial piece here of the Tea Party?...Is it sort of a resumption of the Old South, of the way things were before the Civil War, for example? Is it like that old dreamy nostalgia you get in the old movies, Gone With the Wind? Is it that kind of America they want to bring back or what? When there were no gays, where blacks were slaves, Mexicans were in Mexico? I mean, is this what they want?”
“The Ku Klux Con Job Award, for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges”
“What does your study tell you about the nature of the racial piece here of the Tea Party?...Is it sort of a resumption of the Old South, of the way things were before the Civil War, for example? Is it like that old dreamy nostalgia you get in the old movies, Gone With the Wind? Is it that kind of America they want to bring back or what? When there were no gays, where blacks were slaves, Mexicans were in Mexico? I mean, is this what they want?”
— Chris Matthews to author Christopher Parker on MSNBC’s Hardball, March 20.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
No more anti-bacterial soap.
I love government over reach.
For generations, Americans have safely used bacteria-killing products to protect us from germs. Anti-bacterial hand washes and soaps are used every day in our schools to stop the spread of viruses and keep our kids healthy. Hospitals use similar products to maintain sterile environments. Dentists have safely used anti-bacterial mouthwashes for years in the treatment of gum and other oral diseases.
The EPA, under pressure from Congressman Ed Markey and several environmental extremist groups, is considering banning Triclosan, a key ingredient safely used in antibacterial products since the 1950s. Triclosan is also found in products such as trash bags, toys, tennis shoes, and cosmetics to prevent bacteria growth and the spread of illness. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) itself has found Triclosan to be safe for use by humans.
With all that is currently going on in our country and across the globe, we would hope that this administration, Congressman Markey, and the EPA would have higher priorities on their agenda. Perhaps they could focus on making government more efficient, eliminate a little fraud here and there.
As a side note stock on you incandescent light bulbs. Jan. 1 is the date when imports will no longer be allowed. We ended all light bulb production in the US. Hope you like your CFL's remember to toss them in the trash when defective, maybe the EPA will step in and ban them.
For generations, Americans have safely used bacteria-killing products to protect us from germs. Anti-bacterial hand washes and soaps are used every day in our schools to stop the spread of viruses and keep our kids healthy. Hospitals use similar products to maintain sterile environments. Dentists have safely used anti-bacterial mouthwashes for years in the treatment of gum and other oral diseases.
The EPA, under pressure from Congressman Ed Markey and several environmental extremist groups, is considering banning Triclosan, a key ingredient safely used in antibacterial products since the 1950s. Triclosan is also found in products such as trash bags, toys, tennis shoes, and cosmetics to prevent bacteria growth and the spread of illness. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) itself has found Triclosan to be safe for use by humans.
With all that is currently going on in our country and across the globe, we would hope that this administration, Congressman Markey, and the EPA would have higher priorities on their agenda. Perhaps they could focus on making government more efficient, eliminate a little fraud here and there.
As a side note stock on you incandescent light bulbs. Jan. 1 is the date when imports will no longer be allowed. We ended all light bulb production in the US. Hope you like your CFL's remember to toss them in the trash when defective, maybe the EPA will step in and ban them.
Bullitt County History 1912 School Exam
This copy of the Eighth Grade Exam for Bullitt County Schools in 1912 was donated to the museum. We thought you might like to see what the test looked like a hundred years ago. Obviously it tested some things that were more relevant at that time than now, and it should not be used to compare student knowledge then and now. http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912.html
Note that there are several typesetting mistakes on the test including a mistake in the spelling list. The word "eneeavor" should be "endeavor." This version of the exam was probably a master version given out to the schools (note that the spelling words wouldn’t be written on a test.) The museum has been told that the exam was handed out in a scroll form (that is why the paper is long.) The typos would have been corrected simply by contacting the teachers and telling them to mark their copies accordingly, much like would be done today. And there might not be quite as many typos as you think; "Serbia" for example was indeed spelled "Servia" back then.
GLOBAL SEA ICE EXTENT AT HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE 1994
The southern hemisphere sea ice areal extent continues its recent impressive run at daily record high levels when compared to all prior years in the satellite record-keeping era which began in 1979. This stretch of daily record high sea ice areal extent in the southern hemisphere has actually been occurring for the past several weeks. In fact, the southern hemisphere sea ice areal extent has had quite an amazing run during the past few years from below normal levels to the current well above normal values (above map courtesy University of Illinois “cryosphere”). On a global basis, sea ice areal extent is currently above normal and, in fact, has now reached levels not seen since around 1994 – thanks in large part to the happenings in the southern hemisphere.
The northern hemisphere sea ice areal extent is still below normal for this time of year although it has gained significantly compared to one year ago. In general, the northern hemisphere sea ice areal extent has been at below normal levels since the mid 1990’s. Two distinct trend lines can be seen in the northern hemisphere sea ice areal extent dating back to 1979. First, the northern hemisphere sea ice areal extent featured an “above normal” and general “sideways” trend until the mid 1990’s and then, following that point in time, there has been an overall downward trend to the current below normal values. This directional change in trend during the mid 1990’s correlates quite well with a northern Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature cycle that is tracked by meteorologists through an index called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Indeed, the Atlantic Ocean has a significant impact on northern hemisphere sea ice and the AMO index flipped in phase during the mid 1990’s from negative (cold) to positive (warm), and the northern hemisphere sea ice areal extent has been in a general downward trend ever since. Once the northern Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures flip back to cooler-than-normal values – perhaps 5 or 10 years from now – the northern hemisphere sea ice areal extent should return to the normal or above normal levels seen prior to the mid 1990’s.
Our do-nothing Congress
I found this to be interesting.
If you measure Congress’s productivity as pay earned per law passed, the typical member this year earned $3,053 per law. The 106th Congress (in office from 1999 to 2000) passed 604 laws, earning the typical member just $460 per law passed. The 101st Congress (1989-1990) passed 666 laws, for a scant $281 per law.
In that regard, no Congress in modern times has been paid more for doing less than the current group. We may even be paying them to do harm, since the 16-day government shutdown in October cost the economy about $20 billion. Other Congressional behavior, such as the “fiscal cliff” standoff at the end of 2012 and the showdown over raising the federal borrowing limit in 2011, rattled financial markets while discouraging businesses and consumers from spending.
In Congress’s first year, 1789, members were in session for 168 days. They got paid $6 per day, the equivalent of a $26,000 salary today, and when Congress adjourned that fall, many members went home to help run the family farm or business. That group of part-time legislators, perhaps the most important Congress ever, passed many of the laws that formed the framework of the U.S. government for the next 220 years.
In 2013 members of Congress worked less, got paid a lot more and struggled to produce anything of significance. If America really is in decline, it starts on Capitol Hill.
Rick Newman’s latest book is Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback To Success . Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman .
If you measure Congress’s productivity as pay earned per law passed, the typical member this year earned $3,053 per law. The 106th Congress (in office from 1999 to 2000) passed 604 laws, earning the typical member just $460 per law passed. The 101st Congress (1989-1990) passed 666 laws, for a scant $281 per law.
In that regard, no Congress in modern times has been paid more for doing less than the current group. We may even be paying them to do harm, since the 16-day government shutdown in October cost the economy about $20 billion. Other Congressional behavior, such as the “fiscal cliff” standoff at the end of 2012 and the showdown over raising the federal borrowing limit in 2011, rattled financial markets while discouraging businesses and consumers from spending.
In Congress’s first year, 1789, members were in session for 168 days. They got paid $6 per day, the equivalent of a $26,000 salary today, and when Congress adjourned that fall, many members went home to help run the family farm or business. That group of part-time legislators, perhaps the most important Congress ever, passed many of the laws that formed the framework of the U.S. government for the next 220 years.
In 2013 members of Congress worked less, got paid a lot more and struggled to produce anything of significance. If America really is in decline, it starts on Capitol Hill.
Rick Newman’s latest book is Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback To Success . Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman .
Monday, December 16, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
The Climate Debate Shame Shit Different Day
Flashback 1974: NCAR Blamed ‘Dramatic Climate Anomalies’ on Growing Arctic Ice – Called Global Cooling The ‘New Norm’ – - 2013: Warmists Blame Climate Disasters On Melting Arctic Ice
Friday, December 13, 2013
Yo, all Global Warmests still hanging on to a bogus climate scare
CAIRO -- Snow coated domes and minarets Friday as a record Middle East storm compounded the suffering of Syrian refugees, sent the Israeli army scrambling to dig out stranded motorists and gave Egyptians a rare glimpse of snow in their capital.
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snow-israel-egypt-20131213,0,1691393.story#ixzz2nNcsZW1g
Nearly three feet of snow closed roads in and out of Jerusalem, which is set in high hills, and thousands in and around the city were left without power. Israeli soldiers and police rescued hundreds trapped in their cars by snow and ice. In the West Bank, the branches of olive trees groaned under the weight of snow.
In Cairo, where local news reports said the last recorded snowfall was more than 100 years ago, children in outlying districts capered in white-covered streets, and adults marveled at the sight, tweeting pictures of snow-dusted parks and squares. In other parts of the city, rain and hail rocketed down.
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snow-israel-egypt-20131213,0,1691393.story#ixzz2nNcsZW1g
South Carolina Summary: Freedom of Health Care Protection Act
South Carolina General Assembly
120th Session, 2013-2014
Indicates New Matter
H. 3101
STATUS INFORMATION
General Bill
Sponsors: Reps. Chumley, Taylor, G.R. Smith, Huggins, Wells, Henderson, Crosby, Atwater, Long, Wood, Toole, Willis, Clemmons, Hardwick, Hardee, Goldfinch, Bedingfield, D.C. Moss, Loftis, Nanney, Pitts, Putnam, V.S. Moss, Owens, Barfield, H.A. Crawford, Stringer, Hamilton, Burns, Tallon, Kennedy, Allison, Murphy, Delleney, Horne, Daning and Brannon
Document Path: l:\council\bills\nbd\11021vr13.docx
Companion/Similar bill(s): 147
Introduced in the House on January 8, 2013
Introduced in the Senate on May 2, 2013
Last Amended on April 25, 2013
Currently residing in the Senate
Summary: Freedom of Health Care Protection Act
HISTORY OF LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS
Date Body Action Description with journal page number
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/11/2012 House Prefiled
12/11/2012 House Referred to Committee on Labor, Commerce and Industry
1/8/2013 House Introduced and read first time (House Journal-page 83)
1/8/2013 House Referred to Committee on Labor, Commerce and Industry
(House Journal-page 83)
1/9/2013 House Recalled from Committee on Labor, Commerce and Industry
(House Journal-page 21)
1/9/2013 House Referred to Committee on Judiciary
(House Journal-page 21)
1/9/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Bedingfield,
D.C.Moss, Loftis
1/10/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Nanney, Pitts
1/16/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Putnam
1/17/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: V.S.Moss
1/23/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Owens, Barfield
1/29/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: H.A.Crawford
3/20/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Stringer,
Hamilton, Burns
4/10/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Tallon,
Kennedy, Allison, Murphy
4/10/2013 House Committee report: Favorable with amendment Judiciary
(House Journal-page 30)
4/11/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Delleney
4/16/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Horne
4/16/2013 House Requests for debate-Rep(s). Delleney, Skelton, Toole,
Atwater, Balentine, Felder, DC Moss, Robinson-Simpson,
Hamilton, Mack, Hixon, Owens, JR Smith, Lucas,
Gilliard, Neal, Wells, RL Brown, Anderson, Hosey,
Clyburn, GA Brown, Weeks, Douglas, McEachern, King,
Cobb-Hunter, JE Smith, Jefferson, Daning, Sellers,
Sabb, WJ McLeod, Crosby, Pope (House Journal-page 16)
4/17/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Daning
4/24/2013 House Member(s) request name added as sponsor: Brannon
4/25/2013 House Amended (House Journal-page 101)
4/25/2013 House Read second time (House Journal-page 101)
4/25/2013 House Roll call Yeas-65 Nays-34 (House Journal-page 114)
4/26/2013 Scrivener's error corrected
5/1/2013 House Debate adjourned (House Journal-page 148)
5/1/2013 House Read third time and sent to Senate
(House Journal-page 206)
5/1/2013 House Roll call Yeas-65 Nays-39 (House Journal-page 206)
5/2/2013 Senate Introduced and read first time (Senate Journal-page 14)
5/2/2013 Senate Referred to Committee on Finance (Senate Journal-page 14)
5/29/2013 Senate Recalled from Committee on Finance
(Senate Journal-page 59)
5/29/2013 Senate Roll call Ayes-26 Nays-19 (Senate Journal-page 59)
5/30/2013 Senate Special order, set for May 30, 2013
(Senate Journal-page 45)
5/30/2013 Senate Roll call Ayes-28 Nays-16 (Senate Journal-page 45)
View the latest legislative information at the LPITS web siteVERSIONS OF THIS BILL
12/11/2012
4/10/2013
4/25/2013
4/26/2013
5/29/2013
May 29, 2013
H. 3101
Introduced by Reps. Chumley, Taylor, G.R. Smith, Huggins, Wells, Henderson, Crosby, Atwater, Long, Wood, Toole, Willis, Clemmons, Hardwick, Hardee, Goldfinch, Bedingfield, D.C. Moss, Loftis, Nanney, Pitts, Putnam, V.S. Moss, Owens, Barfield, H.A. Crawford, Stringer, Hamilton, Burns, Tallon, Kennedy, Allison, Murphy, Delleney, Horne, Daning and Brannon
S. Printed 5/29/13--S.
Read the first time May 2, 2013.
Whereas, the people of the several states comprising the United States of America created the federal government to be their agent for certain enumerated purposes, and nothing more; and
Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people of the several states to the federal government, and all power not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution of the United States is reserved to the states respectively, or to the people themselves; and
Whereas, Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides in pertinent part that "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States"; and
Whereas, the judicial decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" directly contravenes Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution because, in upholding the law by re-characterizing the Act as a tax even though Congress specifically refused to identify it as a tax, the United States Supreme Court legislated new law in violation of Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution; and
Whereas, the assumption of power that the federal government has made by enacting the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" interferes with the right of the people of the State of South Carolina to regulate health care as they see fit and makes a mockery of James Madison's assurance in Federalist #45 that the "powers delegated" to the federal government are "few and defined", while those of the states are "numerous and indefinite". Now, therefore,
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:
SECTION 1. The General Assembly declares that authority for this act is the following:
(1) The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the United States federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers delegated to it in the Constitution.
(2) Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States provides that laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land provided that they are made in pursuance of the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution.
(3) It is the stated policy of the South Carolina General Assembly that provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 grossly exceed the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution.
(4) The provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 which exceed the limited powers granted to the Congress pursuant to the Constitution, cannot and should not be considered the supreme law of the land.
(5) The General Assembly of South Carolina has the absolute and sovereign authority to interpose and refuse to enforce the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 that exceed the authority of the Congress.
(6) The Fourteenth Amendment provides that the people are to be free from deprivation of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
SECTION 2. Chapter 1, Title 1 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
(B) The General Assembly of the State of South Carolina is empowered to take all necessary actions to ensure that the provisions of subsection (A) are adhered to by all agencies, departments, and political subdivisions of the State."
SECTION 3. Article 1, Chapter 7, Title 1 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
"Section 1-7-180. Whenever the Attorney General has reasonable cause to believe that a person or business is being harmed by implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and that proceedings would be in the public interest, the Attorney General may bring an action in the name of the State against such person or entity causing the harm to restrain by temporary restraining order, temporary injunction, or permanent injunction the use of such method, act, or practice. Unless the Attorney General determines in writing that the purposes of this section will be substantially impaired by delay in instituting legal proceedings, the Attorney General shall, at least three days before instituting a legal proceeding as provided in this section, give notice to the person or entity against whom the proceeding is contemplated and give such person or entity an opportunity to present reasons to the Attorney General why a proceeding should not be instituted. The action may be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction. Whenever the court issues a permanent injunction in connection with an action, which has become final, the court shall award reasonable costs to the State."
SECTION 4. Chapter 6, Title 12 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
"Section 12-6-3579. A South Carolina resident taxpayer who is subjected to a tax by the Internal Revenue Code under 26 U.S.C. Section 5000A of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act shall receive a tax deduction in the exact amount of the taxes or penalty paid the federal government pursuant to 26 U.S.C. Section 5000A. The tax deduction allowed by this section must be used in the year the federal tax or penalty is paid."
SECTION 5. Article 1, Chapter 71, Title 38 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:
"Section 38-71-44. (A) 'Health Care Exchange' means an American Health Benefit Exchange established by any state or political subdivision of a state, as provided for in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
(B) Neither South Carolina nor a political subdivision including, but not limited to, counties, municipalities, or special purpose districts of the State may establish a Health Care Exchange for the purchase of health insurance.
(C) Neither South Carolina nor a political subdivision including, but not limited to, counties, municipalities, or special purpose districts, may participate in or purchase insurance from a health care exchange established by a nonprofit organization.
(D) A health insurance contract purchased or established in violation of this section is void and must not be enforced by the courts of this State."
SECTION 6. Chapter 1, Title 43 of the 1976 Code is amended to read:
"Section 43-1-300. No agency, department, or other state entity, including, but not limited to, the Department of Social Services and the Department of Health and Human Services, may authorize an employee, contractor, vendor, or any other person acting on behalf of the department to conduct or participate in an involuntary maternal, infant, and early childhood in-home visitation pursuant to Section 2951 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and any subsequent federal act that amends that section or that may refer to an entity or a process established pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010."
SECTION 7. This act takes effect upon approval by the Governor.
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