Northwest Indiana Politics

Churches under attack, or fair separation?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 14:15:00 +0000

Two articles today caused me to pause and consider the nature of churches in our tax code, and in our post-modern American society.

On the one hand many of us feel that the separation of church and state brigade has gone too far in barring Christmas trees from city and state parks, or outlawing menorah's from town squares.   The government hasn't established a church or set up a state church just by celebrating a religious heritage or holiday. Taken to it's ridiculous, shouldn't government employees be required to work on Christmas if it falls on a weekday? Of course not.

On the other hand, we hear today two stories which do cause one to wonder if churches have too much of a good thing.   On the surface I think we all agree that a church shouldn't have to pay property, corporate income, or sales taxes.   But the devil as always is in the details.   In the case of the Porter County Indiana PTBOA investigating the tax exempt status of Preachit's $1 million plus home.   Do we think any organization ever should have residential home and get a religious tax exemption?

Or how about the case of pastors getting to write off the income they receive from their church as housing allowance, something no employee from a company or self-employed individual can do.    As conservatives, we stand at a crossroads.   I can hear the arguments brewing even now: "First take away the pastor's tax benefit, and next they will be taxing contributions to the church." and "Church's are no different than the United Way, they shouldn't get any special benefits besides non profit status." and "Who pays to put out the fire at the church, we do the taxpayers who are paying our taxes, they should pay property taxes too"

Where do you stand?

Illiana an ill wind for Lake County? Obamacare website is working - if the plan was to ruin the economy and endanger your personal information!!!

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 00:36:00 +0000

The Illiana Toll Road reveals, by its very name, that it will harm rather than help local economies. An expressway with off and on-ramps that would lure travelers to gas stations, motels and other local businesses like restaurants would be helpful to Lake County. A toll road that penalizes drivers for getting off and on will simply funnel traffic right past Lake County businesses. Who benefits then? Not us!!!

Pair of elected officials urge NIRPC to reject Illiana highway

By Carrie Napoleon Post-Tribune correspondent November 7, 2013 8:20PM

A sign reads "No Illiana Toll Road" in front of a home on Lake Julia on 163rd Avenue in Crown Point, Ind. Wednesday June 6, 2012. INDOT's preferred route for the Illiana roadway would greatly impact the area. The southern end of the preferred route would cut through the lake's dam, according to neighbors. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media

Article Extras

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Updated: November 8, 2013 2:00AM

CROWN POINT — Two elected officials representing south Lake County residents have come out against the proposed Illiana tollway, saying they have yet to see the benefit to the region. They are asking members of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission to do the same.

State Rep. Rick Niemeyer, R-Lowell, and Lake County Councilman Eldon Strong, R-Crown Point, came together at a news conference Thursday to say it was time they took a stand against the project that will negatively impact the constituents they represent and will serve only to benefit neighboring Illinois.

They are asking NIRPC members to listen to their concerns and not put the Illiana project in the agency’s 2040 plan, a necessary step for the roadway to move forward. NIRPC is set to vote on the plan in December. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning last month approved placing the roadway in its 2040 plan.

Niemeyer said he has been an elected official ever since efforts to build the highway began, first as a trustee, then a county councilman and now a state representative. Throughout the process he has asked how the roadway will benefit Indiana and to this day, he said, there has been no clear answer.

“I cannot see the benefit for this area, for the state of Indiana or for Northwest Indiana,” Niemeyer said.

Strong said the highway as it is proposed, a tollway, will do nothing to create long-term jobs for the region. Motorists use tollways to get from one place to the next and will not stop to shop.

“Development along a tollway is not beneficial. Any future development on the east end of this project will be costly as there are no nearby sewer and water utilities,” Strong said.

Money would be better spent to repair and improve the region’s aging infrastructure instead of investing money into something that will not benefit the region.

“Let’s fix what we have before we make new,” Strong said, adding money would be better spent on the Gary airport expansion, bridge repairs and revitalization of lakefront communities.

“I urge NIRPC to vote no on the Illiana and bring real jobs to Indiana,” Strong said.

Both men said they understand there often is not-in-my-back-yard resistance for major projects, but when the project benefits the greater good sometimes it must go forward.

“NIMBY is not the No. 1 driving issue on our stance,” Niemeyer said.

He said it might be different if this were an interstate project, but the tollway takes land from its current owners and turns it over to a private entity that will make a profit on it as a tollway.

Niemeyer said they, as public officials, have a responsibility to current residents as well as future residents. He described growth figures for south Lake County used in the Illiana studies as “so exaggerated.”

“It seems like they are pushing the investment in future growth and not taking into consideration the people who live here now,” he said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, back at the Obama Ranch, the disaster continues to grow!!!

From The Patriot Post (PatriotPost.US)

O'Care Success? Unfortunately Yes.

Obama's ACA Agenda Moving Forward

By Mark Alexander · November 7, 2013

"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." --Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 1 (1787)

Three weeks into the laughably catastrophic failure of Barack Obama's signature ObamaCare portal, Healthcare.gov, he proclaimed, "The Affordable Care Act is not just a website. It's much more."

This week, in congressional testimony about that failure, Marilyn Tavenner, who's responsible for overseeing the ACA technology, reiterated, "It's important to remember that the Affordable Care Act is more than just a website."

Indeed, it is much more, all of which poses an ominous threat to Essential Liberty, but for the moment, all eyes are on the cascading failures of ObamaCare.

The Lies and Cancellations:

In a 2009 health care reform speech before a joint session of Congress, Obama said, "If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out." This pathetic narcissist won't admit his own lies and duplicitous deceptions, so we'll call him out.

On 26 September, five days before the O'Care rollout, he declared, "I want to speak plainly, clearly, honestly, about what [ObamaCare] means for you and for the people you care about. Let's start with a fact. About 85% of Americans already have health insurance. If you're one of these folks, it's reasonable that you might worry that health care reform includes changes that are a problem for you, especially when you're bombarded with all sorts of fear mongering. So the first thing you need to know is this. If you already have health care you don't have to do anything."

Of course, we all now know that his oft-repeated lie -- "If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period." -- was a subterfuge to help push ObamaCare through the Democrat-controlled House and Senate.

To date, more than 4.1 million Americans have had their insurance policies cancelled. Worse yet, the Obama administration knew in 2010 that more than 90 million policies would be at risk of cancellation.

At present, Obama is fabricating new liesin an effort to cover up the old lies. Of his prevarications, National Journal's Ron Fournier, a long-time Obama acolyte from the Associated Press, wrote: "It might not seem possible that Obama could do more harm to his credibility ... than misleading Americans about health insurance reform. But he can. The president is now misleading the public about his deception."

Fournier also took note of Obama's pronoun substitution. In the first round of lies, it was all "I." But in the lies about lies, he has shifted to "We."

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) offered his assessment of Obama's lies: "You know, the president already has a Nobel Prize for peace; I think he's shooting for one in fiction." Indeed, if he wins a Pulitzer for fiction, it will be because he actually earned it this time.
The Sticker Shock and Awe:

Obama promised, "We're gonna lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year."

Well, not quite. For the truth about O'Care policy replacement costs, this interactive mapillustrates how the so-called "Affordable Care Act" will alter health insurance premiums. The latest report concludes that premiums will increase in 41 states, with some increases exceeding 100%.

The Security Breaches:

John McAfee, founder of the world's largest computer security company, offered this assessment of the scope of the Healthcare.gov failure: "Glitch is a minor annoyance. This is a catastrophic failure, not a glitch. There was no security testing, no quality assurance and no system emigration." McAfee notes that there are now more than 700 look-alike sites successfully scamming those pour souls who think they're at Healthcare.gov -- giving up lots of personal information. But it's not just the scammers that folks need to worry about. The information they'll be providing to the ObamaCare portal itself is at great risk of compromise.

In addition to the current O'Care debacles, I contend that there are very consequential political silver liningsbeyond all the lies, cancelations, price increases and security issues.
The real DemoCare liability is this: From October 1 forward, and with increasing frequency, Americans of every political stripe who have any issue with health care, whether a hangnail or heart transplant, a delay in a doctor's office or in critical care for a loved one, will tie blame for their discontent like a noose around the necks of Obama and his fellow Democrats, who were and remain solely responsible for forcing this abomination upon the American people.

So what's the success story for Obama?

The fact is, O'Care isachieving Obama's most coveted political objectives -- both the redistribution of wealth and the centralizing control and regulation of the U.S. economy, as outlined by his Marxist mentor, Saul Alinsky.

Despite the "glitches" plaguing the web launch, and other notable issues undermining whatever credibility Obama has left, his macro agenda for the so-called "Affordable Care Act" is on track to become the largest wealth redistribution scheme in American history, and a crushing burden upon the shoulders of free enterprise.

Obama's ACA is the Socialist Democrats'crowning achievement for "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" -- the greatest domestic threat to Liberty since Franklin Roosevelt's despotic regime.

As for the two most significant objections to ObamaCare -- the increasing cost of insurance coverage and the forcing of millions of people into part-time employment so employers can avoid the mandates -- Obama will roll out two solutions.

First, once enough people have lost their existing insurance, he will launch a populist proposal to substantially increase "subsidies."

Second, he will unilaterally create even more regulatory measures to redefine part-time employment as it pertains to avoiding O'Care mandates.

Both of these measures will be wrapped up in his rhetoric about "fighting for the middle class," his incessant vows to protect the average American from the ravages of free enterprise, and his efforts to ensure "economic justice."

Regarding objections from his union constituency, HHS quietly announced this week a planned reinsurance tax exemption for big union insurance plans.
Obama has already succeeded in swelling the rolls of those who are government dependents.

According to the latest census data, while there are 125 million Americans who depend primarily on earnings, there are now 100 million Americans who depend on the government for subsistence. Some 82 million receive Medicaid welfare (and that number is going up as a result of O'Care), almost 50 million receive food and shelter subsidies, and 5 million receive unemployment checks. (Note, these figures do not include the 50 million Americans who receive earned assistance in the form of Social Security, Medicare and Veteran's benefits.)

ObamaCare adds millions to his government-dependent constituency through insurance subsidies.

ObamaCare expands the ranks of unionized government employees, much as was the case when the Transportation Security Administration forged its alliance with the Democratic Party.

ObamaCare greatly inflates IRS power and scope.

ObamaCare hugely increases the expense burden on small businesses -- punishing entrepreneurs and their employees for engaging in free-market capitalism and supporting conservative principles.
ObamaCare massively expands the Medicaid entitlement, which will cost taxpayers trillions more.

Oh, and did I mention that ObamaCare is going to be a conduit for new (and fraudulent) voter registrations? Indeed, within ObamaCare's application for insurance subsidies is a checkbox for voter registration.

Now, it's not out of the realm of possibility to substantially amend or revoke ObamaCare.
In 1988, with the support of the AARP, Democrats in the House passed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act by a vote of 328 to 72. A year later, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, literally had to flee an angry mob of unhappy constituents. The law was repealed 16 months after passage by a vote of 360 to 66.

However, the only hope of rolling back ObamaCare is by way of a coalition of conservative and moderate Republicans who can win controlling majorities in the House and Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016. That means a cease-and-desist order regarding all the self-defeating Republican infighting.

In the meantime, we must do everything possible to contain Obama's overt and covert expansion of the ACA.

Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut Mors
Semper Fortis Vigilate Paratus et Fidelis

We have a new Lake County Assessor and she is Cedar Lake resident Jolie Covaciu!!!

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Reporting from the Lake County Government Center:

November 1st, 2013

Jolie Covaciu of Cedar Lake, Indiana is the new Lake County Assessor! In a caucus vote of Republican precinct committeemen and/or their vice-committeemen, Jolie was voted into office by a ~~56 to 44 margin~~. (The candidacy was covered by NWI.com and more information about the candidates is found in the article at the bottom of this post.) Update...the actual vote count announced at the meeting was 56-44. The count released to the public was 56-52. I am fact-checking this discrepancy. All indications is that the official vote was in fact 56-52.

The chairman for the evening laid the ground rules for the speakers and explained the voting method, which was by secret ballot which was to be counted officially on site with neutral watchers on hand as the ballots would be tallied.

Debra Johnson was the first of two qualified candidates to file for the office and therefore spoke first. Mrs. Johnson was introduced to the audience by the widow of the late Hank Adams, Jean Shepherd. Debra was a friend of the Adam's family. We all were reminded that Hank had become the first Republican to win a County-wide office since the FDR Administration. Debra Johnson informed us that she knew Hank and knew his vision for the County and she intended to keep his initiatives going in his place. She also told the audience that she had graduated Davenport University.

Pete Karagan of Munster stood up to introduce Jolie and then Jolie Covaciu listed all of her various accomplishments and her experience in the field of assessments and audits and compliancy to government regulations and asserted that she would go after the backlog of work left undone by the Assessor's office and would quickly deal with appeals that had been left to approve or deny and also make sure that billings and collections would be professional and on time. She was happy to point out her 14 years as a Cedar Lake resident and her membership with Bethel Church, along with her husband and four children, and a long-time Republican voter and worker behind the scenes to help other candidates win public office.

After both candidates had spoken, the delegates came forward to vote by sections of the auditorium. The three sections closest to the door were for delegates and the fourth section was for interested onlookers. The Jolie Covaciu rooting section consisted of those of us who had been handing out information cards in the rain outside the Government Center before the meeting began. We outnumbered the Johnson delegation but, to their credit, they were personable people and we chatted comfortably with them as we waited for people to arrive so we could give them our candidate hand-bills.

Personal note: Jolie Covaciu and her family are friends. Jolie was NOT the candidate picked by the people who make decisions from a distance. But her array of accomplishments, her willingness to meet and talk to all comers and her professional, intelligent speech to the delegates completely won the day for her. Three cheers for Jolie Covaciu and we might as well plan on seeing her reelected, because I am sure she will accomplish a lot in a short time now that she is behind the wheel of the Assessor's office.

Many Republicans will take a Democrat ballot in primaries to vote for the lesser of two evils. Both Covaciu and Johnson had done this at times. However, Covaciu has lived in Lake County and owned property here for 14 years, whereas Johnson had purchased a lot late in October and, ironically, owes over $2,000 in back taxes on property that was just in the process of being officially processed as of October 31st. It would have been interesting to have chosen an Assessor who had to make a last-second purchase of land to even qualify to hold office and would come into the Assessor position owing Lake County a large tax bill on said property. The vote for Jolie Covaciu saved the Republican Party from an appearance of shenanigans.

The NWI article that preceded the caucus.

November 2nd Update: The NWI article concerning the Caucus results gives a different vote total than the count announced at the official results at the time of the caucus. That announced total was 56 to 44. The reporter, Bill Dolan, misspelled Pete Karagan's name and had a count that was at variance to the official count announced at the meeting. I have tried to find out where the eight extra votes for Johnson came from, votes that would not have changed the outcome. But I do commend Dolan for a fair report of the proceedings and I have reached out to him for clarity concerning the vote totals.

Jolie's message to the County in advance of the caucus:

Dear Republican Committeeman:

Make no mistake; Jolie Covaciu is seeking your vote at the upcoming Republican caucus.

Many of you know that I have volunteered and worked hard outside of the polls, for various Republican candidates over the years supporting their causes. I would be a strong Republican constituent for the future. I will help keep the momentum going forward for the Republican Party. My Republican beliefs are not simply a temporary convenience, but an important cornerstone of my personal values and composition. The voting record between me and my opponent are very similar and this is not the issue in this campaign. The issue is who will be an honest and fair Assessor, seeking uniform assessment for all the properties of Lake County.

I’ve done these things not for personal gain or political posturing, but as a direct outcome of my long-held politics, principles and creeds. Unlike others, I’ve never sought to be retained in office under a Democrat. I have been a homeowner for 14 years and have always paid my property taxes on time. One of the qualifications to become the Assessor under State Statute is you must be a property owner and property tax payer. I recently read in the newspaper article where my opponent purchased a vacant lot in Lake Station two days ago to become compliant. This was shocking to discover. I have had people come to me and ask how or why a candidate would buy a vacant lot just to get on the ballot. How can someone who hasn’t had the recent burden of paying property taxes in Lake County understand the importance of fair, equal and uniform taxation? I understand such a burden as I have had the financial pain and burden of paying property taxes.

The Assessor’s office is the most important office that impacts the property owners financially. I am dedicated to the property owners of Lake County and will not be controlled by any political machine or special interest group. By making that pledge, this is how I will make everyone’s property values fair, equal and just. Your opinion and your vote matter to me. I appreciate your willingness to consider all the facts before reaching a decision. Thank you for your consideration.

My Qualifications to become the next Assessor of Lake County are as follows;

· 18 years of assessing experience in Lake County

· Site inspections of tens of thousands of properties

· Deputy Assessor in Cedar Creek Township

· Property owner and taxpayer in Lake County for 14 years

· Mass Appraisal valuations for Lake and Jasper Counties

· Annual Adjustments, trending and Ratio Studies

· Volunteering for Republican candidates for over 30 years

I, Jolie Covaciu, respectfully ask for your vote and support this Friday November 1st at the Republican caucus. I understand that this is a very important decision in which you are making.

I will make a strong commitment, to fulfill both the duties as the Republican candidate in the upcoming years as well as assure you I am the person who can fill the role of County Assessor on your behalf, and for all the people of Lake County. If chosen by you I will strive to make the very best decisions to benefit and serve our fellow citizens. Thank you for your time and I very much appreciate for your consideration!

Best Regards,

Jolie Covaciu 219-730-2707 email: joliecovaciu@sbcglobal.net

Jolie A. Covaciu

7402 W. 129 Ave., Cedar Lake, IN 46303

Qualifications, Experience & Education:

· Level III Indiana State Certified Assessor/Appraiser

· 18 years including 14 years with Lake County Government, working in the assessing field

· State of Indiana Certified Tax Representative

· Valuation of both Real and Personal property

· Mass Appraisal valuation

· Tax Consultant; Project Manager; District Coordinator

· Site inspections and review of tens of thousands of Properties

· Annual Adjustments, trending and Ratio Studies

· Conducted three General Reassessments in Lake County

· Field assessment experience of both Residential and Commercial property

· Familiarity with the computer software used by the Lake County Assessor (Proval) as well as other programs important to the position, such as MVP Tax, Sidwell mapping,etc.

· Experience with resolving appeals in a timely manner

· Member of the International Association of Assessor Officers (IAAO) #10168682

· Assessment Administration Specialist (AAS) applicant with the IAAO

Recently attended courses and continuing education include:

9/30/2013 Income Approach to Valuation II	2/18/2011 IAAO 300 Fundamentals Mass Appraisal
8/30/2013 Agriculture land Review	11/8/2010 IAAO 400 Assessment Administration
8/29/2013 Defending your Assessment	9/01/2010 IAAO 151 USPAP (National)
8/29/2013 Multiple Regression Analysis	4/19/2010 IAAO 102 Income Approach
8/28/2013 Manufactured vs Stick Built Homes	3/15/2010 IAAO 101 Real Property Appraisal
8/28/2013 Gateway/Sales Disclosure	1/21/2010 Fast Food Assessment
5/01/2013 Income Approach to Valuation I	1/20/2010 IAAO 910 Valuation Convenience Stores
8/22/2012 Special Use Properties	2/24/2009 Personal Property
8/22/2012 Disasters- Deal with the Aftermath	12/9/2009 Cadastral Mapping
1/19/2012 Reassessment/PTABOA	4/30/2008 Intro to Income Approach
1/19/2012 Cost Tables 2012	1/18/2007 Winning Appeals at the PTABOA
1/18/2012 IAAO 911 Value Contaminated Property	1/18/2007 Sales Disclosure: Valid vs. Invalid
1/20/2011 Creating & Implementing a Land Order	1/17/2007 Stratifying by Home Style
3/09/2011 Level III Assessor-Appraiser	7/05/2006 Level II Assessor-Appraiser 6/06/2006 Level I Assessor-Appraiser

Obamacare, the threat to the American Public, may well be in trouble!!! Read and see for yourself...

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 18:07:00 +0000

Yes, the bloggers here are sporadic and I do apologize for my part in that. I thought this was well worth sharing. Since Obamacare has caused many companies to shed full-time workers or scale them to part-time and since many healthcare coverages promised by Obama to be qualified plans are not qualified according to the President despite his promises, this news is hopeful news for those of us who do not want to see the USA fall to pieces under the weight of debt and massive central government. The tick is getting bigger than the host!

A Stunning New Court Defeat for ObamaCare

By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, October 24 2013

Things just went from awful to worse this week for ObamaCare, and the Obama Administration more generally.

Nearly a month into its disastrous debut, it’s clear that the ObamaCare website isn’t just “glitching,” it’s completely melting down. This is quickly becoming a watershed moment, a failure so obvious and deep that it could permanently stain Obama’s presidential legacy among historians long after he’s gone. Among the familiar litany of failures throughout his tenure, healthcare legislation was the one signature legislative act to which he could point.

And now it is disintegrating before his very eyes.

In Florida alone, some 300,000 Florida Blue health insurance customers just received notice that their policies will be canceled due to ObamaCare because their coverage isn’t considered a “qualified health plan” under the new regulations. Although the Obama Administration continues to refuse to disclose how many people have actually enrolled in ObamaCare since October 1, whatever that number is appears to come far short of the Florida Blue cancelation alone.

And on that note, so much for the solemn pre-ObamaCare assurance that, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

Now, a new federal court ruling may legally doom ObamaCare before it ultimately collapses under its own unsustainable weight.

This week, a federal judge gave the green light for a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s structure of subsidies to proceed. Judge Paul Friedman also ruled that the case can proceed on an expedited basis, meaning that a final determination could occur before the March 2014 individual purchase mandate arrives.

The new lawsuit centers on a provision in the text of ObamaCare that allows subsidies to states participating in the program. By its terms, the subsidies do not cover those participating in the federal government’s program, but now that 34 states have refused to participate in ObamaCare, the Obama Administration is attempting to ignore the law and offer subsidies regardless of the law.

When ObamaCare was passed, Congress and the Obama Administration deliberately chose to empower individual states to carry out the law by creating health insurance exchanges, marketplaces in which those states’ citizens could buy insurance from authorized insurers. But because the Constitution doesn’t allow the federal government to force individual states to carry out its edicts, the law had to come up with another way to induce states to agree to participate. Consequently, the law offered individuals who chose to purchase insurance from state-run exchanges significant federal subsidies to persuade them to enroll.

There was one significant problem with that scheme: In states that chose to avoid participating in the looming catastrophe that is ObamaCare, residents would by law not be eligible for the subsidies offered to participating states.

As it turned out, some 34 states refused the Obama Administration’s offer. Consequently, the federal government is now on the hook for establishing exchanges for residents of non-participating states. But under the explicit provisions of ObamaCare itself, such individuals are not eligible for premium assistance subsidies.

So what did the Obama Administration decide to do?

Per habit, it sought to just ignore its own law via IRS fiat, as summarized by plaintiffs:

“Refusing to accept those consequences, the IRS promulgated the regulations at issue here, which base eligibility for premium assistance subsidies not on enrollment in coverage “through an Exchange established by the State,” as the statute requires, but rather on enrollment in coverage through any exchange, including the federally-established one. Of course, the federal government is not a “State,” as the ACA in fact expressly reiterates. Those regulations thus allow for the distribution of billions of dollars of federal funds that Congress never authorized. The IRS rule contradicts the plain text of the ACA, exceeds the agency’s authority, and is contrary to law.”

All of this presents a rich irony.

Throughout the government shutdown over ObamaCare earlier this month, the law’s supporters cried, “It’s the law!” Of course, the employer mandate was also “the law,” but the Obama Administration had no problem postponing it for a year. Similarly, the text of the law also mandated that members of Congress and their staffers were subject to its requirements. Yet the Obama Administration also had no problem granting an extralegal waiver, allowing subsidies that no other employees suddenly subject to ObamaCare’s provisions should receive.

The Obama Administration showed no greater deference for “the law” when it unilaterally announced that it would refuse to enforce settled immigration laws last year. Moreover, the very nature of a democratic republic is that settled laws can be revisited and often overturned, including by this administration. Think the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed by Bill Clinton, as just one example.

The court, however, wasn’t sufficiently impressed by the Obama Administration’s rationalization. Which raises the question of what will bring this unworkable law to an end first – it’s economic and logistical unsustainability, or judicial order. The latter would spare millions of Americans a great deal of unnecessary pain.

Municipal Finance 101 Series

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0000

For those that used to enjoy this blog for the daily debates and educational value, I realize much of the value has subsided.   Many of the original writers are now out of college and working in jobs that don't allow them to be quite so opinionated.   Some have been elected and are using their ideas as leaders.   I am working in a firm that does financial consulting for cities, towns, and counties in Northwest Indiana. One of the projects I've enjoyed most is working with the Porter County Assessor on procedural and system upgrades using EGov technologies.

We are looking ahead into the next year and perhaps even working with some other surrounding counties, and it was high time I checked the box marked certified for Indiana Assessor training.   So I'll be finishing up that process, as a way to make sure the procedural changes we're working on meet the regulatory requirements of the State.   No, I have no intention of running for Assessor or Auditor in Porter County, I am firmly behind both of them being re-elected in 2014 to continue the process they started three years ago.

You can follow along, since I've also decided to write a bit of a municipal tutorial along the way over the next couple months.   A Series on Understanding Indiana Municipal Government, especially finances.   Since I'm using the series to eventually build an interactive presentation to train new elected officials, I have no problem making changes, revisions, or adding stuff. If you think of questions, push them into comments here or over there at the Cender and Company blog.   Thanks

An Open Letter to Parents in Rensselaer County | Chuck and Kelly

noreply@blogger.com (Ken Davidson) — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 06:43:00 +0000

An Open Letter to Parents in Rensselaer County | Chuck and Kelly

Will Somebody please CARE about the REAL CLIMATE SCAM, the economy, truth and the continual attack on our energy sources???!!!

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:54:00 +0000

Sometimes these newsletters have so much punch I cannot help but want to share. How many of you realize that carbon dioxide is PLANT FOOD?! That the Earth has been cooling since this century began and that the ice cap this year is at a record level?

From Anthony Watts and Radaractive and you will see the graph, above, in context below.

As for Obamacare, the government employees, the big unions and the Congress and President do not want it for themselves, why should we have to put up with it?

If people continue to not care about politics and not care about what education their kids receive, then the Bill of Rights will be torn to shreds by activist judges and our Republic will become another Socialist State with a continually dwindling economy.

TEN YEARS OF ‘ACCELERATED GLOBAL WARMING’ ?

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Anthony Watts

Data doesn’t support Obama’s claim

Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

During the July 2013 U.S. Senate hearing at which Roger Pielke Jr. and Roy Spencer gave stellar testimony to the visible discomfiture of the climate-extremist witnesses, none of the “Democrat” Senators and none of the people they had chosen to testify before them was at all anxious to defend Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.

At a fund-raiser for the “Democratic” Congressional Campaign Committee in Chicago May 29, he had said, “We … know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago.” He had added, “I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change.”

Well, I deny that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago. But I deny it not because I take an aprioristic position opposite to Mr Obama’s aprioristic position, but because science is done by measurement, not by parroting the Party Line. And the measurements do not support the Party Line.

Let me demonstrate. First, what warming does the IPCC anticipate in its upcoming and much-leaked Fifth Assessment Report?

The graph above, adapted from Figs. 11.33ab in the draft report, for which I am an expert reviewer, shows that from 2005-2050 (most of the past ten years fall within that period) the models expect an approximately linear warming of about 0.4 to 1.0 Cº per 30 years (this range is also explicitly stated in paragraph 11.3.6.3). That is equivalent to 1.33 to 3.33 Cº/century, with a mid-range estimate of 2.33 Cº/century.

The IPCC’s models’ mid-range projection implies that around 0.12 Cº of warming should happen over five years, and o.23 Cº over ten years. An eighth to a quarter of a Celsius degree: those are the benchmarks. Previous IPCC reports made broadly similar near-term projections.

What, then, is the consensus among the monthly global mean surface or lower-troposphere datasets about whether the climate is warming “faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago”? Or whether it is warming at all?

There are three terrestrial datasets: HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC. There are two satellite datasets: RSS and UAH. To forestall the usual futile allegations of cherry-picking, we shall look at all five of them.

For each dataset, two graphs will be displayed: the most recent 60 months of global temperature anomalies, and the most recent 120 months.

The graph will display the spline-curve of the monthly anomalies in dark blue, with a thicker light-blue trend-line, which is simply the least-squares linear-regression trend on the data. Over short periods, no more complex trend need be determined.

Nor is there any need to allow for seasonality, not only because the graphs analyze data over multiples of 12 months but also because globally the seasons cancel each other out, so that natural variability tends to make any seasonal pattern near-impossible to detect.

Linear regression determines the underlying trend in a dataset over a given period as the slope of the unique straight line through the data that minimizes the sum of the squares of the absolute differences or “residuals” between the data-points corresponding to each time interval in the data and on the trend-line.

The graphs, therefore, give a fair indication of whether global mean temperatures at or near the surface have been rising or falling over the past five or ten years.

Note, however, that – particularly with highly volatile datasets such as the global temperature anomalies – a statistical trend is not a tool for prediction. It indicates only what has happened, not what may or will happen.

And what has happened is, as we shall see, grievously at odds with the Party Line.

We begin with the terrestrial datasets.

GISS, five years:

GISS, ten years:

HadCRUT4, five years:

HadCRUt4, ten years:

NCDC, five years:

NCDC, ten years:

The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, five years:

The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, ten years:

Now for the two satellite datasets. RSS, five years:

RSS, ten years:

UAH, five years:

UAH, ten years:

The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, five years:

The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, ten years:

The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, five years:

The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, ten years:

The only dataset that shows any warming at all is UAH over ten years. The warming is a not particularly dizzying one twenty-fifth of a Celsius degree over ten years, equivalent to two-fifths of a degree per century.

The RSS satellite dataset, on the other hand, now shows no global warming at all for an impressive 199 months, or 16 years 7 months:

Not much “acceleration” there. Will it reach 200 months? I’ll report next month.

Finally, here is the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index, which compares the projections backcast by the modelers to 2005 and published in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report with the real-world outturn as measured by the two satellite datasets.

The lower bound of the orange zone is the IPCC’s low-end projection. Warming should be occurring at a minimum of 1.33 Cº/century. The thick bright red line is the IPCC’s mid-range projection: warming should be occurring at 2.33 Cº/century.

The real-world trend, represented by the thick bright blue trend line, shows global temperatures declining since January 2005 at a rate equivalent to almost a quarter of a Celsius degree (half a Fahrenheit degree) per century.

You may think that going to the trouble of producing so many graphs is overkill. Yet when I first spoke up at the U.N. climate conference in Doha and pointed out that there had been no global warming for 16 years the delegates were furious. So were the news media. One reason for their unreason: they simply did not know the facts.

One would have thought that among all the hours of hand-wringing on the air and pages of moaning in print about “global warming”, most of the news media would be faithfully reporting the monthly temperature anomalies. But no. The facts do not fit the Party Line, so they are not reported. They are consigned to the Memory Hole.

As for Mr. Obama’s statement about “acceleration”, he was plain wrong. Instead of the warming equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century global warming that had been “anticipated”, there has really been no change in global temperature at all over the past five or ten years.

Will somebody tell the “President”?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

View online at: http://patriotpost.us/digests/20038

Friday Digest

September 13, 2013

THE FOUNDATION

"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right." --Thomas Jefferson

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Hope 'n' Change: Playing by the Same Rules

A level playing field?

On Thursday, the House passed the "No Subsidies Without Verification Act," 235-191, which would block ObamaCare insurance subsidy payouts until the Department of Health and Human Services implements a system to verify eligibility. Republicans aim to close a loophole that HHS created in July that allows people to apply for insurance subsidies without proving their income or whether their employer already provides federally approved health benefits.
HHS insists Republicans are overstating the opportunity for fraud and abuse because fear of future HHS and IRS audits will keep people honest. Yet this audit power hasn't prevented people from, for example, playing fast and loose with the Earned Income Tax Credit. The Treasury Inspector General estimates that a quarter of those credits go to ineligible recipients, and equivalent fraud in ObamaCare would mean $250 billion in wrongful income redistribution over a decade. Predictably, the Democrat-controlled Senate won't consider the House measure, though Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced it, and the White House issued a veto threat. Team Obama needs the bodies to make the program work, and they don't want stricter rules blocking folks from getting their "fair share."
In related news, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) submitted a bill to subject members of Congress to ObamaCare just like the rest of America. This summer, the Office of Personnel Management quietly issued a blanket exception that allowed Congress and congressional staffers to continue to receive their generous health benefits and be exempt from having to enroll in ObamaCare. The excuse was that if Swamp-dwellers had to contend with ObamaCare, they might leave government service and seek more lucrative employment in the private sector. Republicans, who could have used this outrageous exemption as a powerful weapon against ObamaCare, were mum until now. Given Democrats' enthusiasm for the law, it seems only logical that they be forced to enjoy it like everyone else. As for the concern about Beltway brain drain, repealing the exemption is a perfect opportunity to trim the fat -- and ensuring that DC elites get a good taste of their own medicine.
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NATIONAL SECURITY

Arming the Rebels in Syria

Syrian rebels

After months of delay, the CIA began delivering weapons to Syrian rebels over the last couple of weeks. The deliveries themselves mark an escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war, even without our own planes dropping bombs. Some may naïvely hope those arms are going to all the friendly good guys John McCain keeps telling us about, but the reality is that jihadis continue to make up a growing part of the opposition.
The Free Syrian Army is the largest rebel force, and McCain and John Kerry estimate that just 10-15% of its 100,000 fighters are al-Qaida affiliates. Senior U.S. military officials disagree, however, with one saying that Islamist groups now constitute "more than 50%" of the anti-Assad force, "and it's growing by the day."
Khaled Saleh of the Syrian Opposition Coalition says the support is welcome, "But if you compare what we are getting compared to the assistance Assad receives from Iran and Russia, we have a long battle ahead of us." Indeed, even as Vladimir Putin mocked Barack Obama and the U.S. in his bit of New York Times sophistry, and as Putin offered the phony deal on Syrian chemical weapons, he continues to aid his client, Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury for Barack Obama, Assad tacked on a new condition for turning over his chemical weapons stockpiles: "When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized," he told Russian state television. On the other hand, Obama threatens to strike if Assad doesn't turn over his weapons.
This sad saga just keeps getting worse for our feckless commander in chief.
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From the Department of Corrections

In Mark Alexander's essay yesterday, Spinning the Syrian Spin Again, he mistakenly said that, "when a senator, Obama voted against attacking Saddam Hussein." Obama was not elected to the U.S. Senate until 2006, and was still an Illinois state senator at the time of the Iraq resolution. He merely expressed his opposition from the safety of that position. Alexander regrets the error.

ECONOMY

Regulatory Commissars: Another Bout of EPA Rules

The war on coal continues: The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing plans that would slap a carbon emissions rule on developing power plants. If this sounds familiar, that's because, fearing a legal backlash, the EPA earlier this year nixed a similar plan. You didn't expect that to stop them, did you?
Evidently going to bat for the Obama administration, The Washington Post began its report, "This month, the Environmental Protection Agency will propose standards that will establish stricter pollution limits for gas-fired power plants than coal-fired power plants (emphasis added)." Sounds like the EPA is making concessions to better accommodate the coal industry, right? Not exactly.
The Post continues: "The average U.S. natural gas plant emits 800 to 850 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, and coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds. According to those familiar with the new EPA proposal, the agency will keep the carbon limit for large natural gas plants at 1,000 pounds but relax it slightly for smaller gas plants. The standard for coal plants will be as high as 1,300 or 1,400 pounds per megawatt hour ... but that still means the utilities will have to capture some of the carbon dioxide they emit."
In other words, the EPA is offering a higher ceiling for natural gas plants that on average already produce emissions under the EPA's target of 1,000 pounds. For coal plants, however, the ceiling is significantly lower -- meaning the (intended) pressure is on the coal industry.
"As a practical matter, this means that the new proposal will still stop any new coal-fired power plants for the foreseeable future," observes former EPA employee Jeffrey R. Holmstead. "Given the cost of carbon capture and all the other problems associated with it, any rule that requires [it] will effectively prohibit the construction of new coal-fired plants." But that is Obama's goal, isn't it? Forever destroy the coal industry, the effect on America's economy be damned.
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CULTURE

Village Academic Curriculum: Racing to the Top of the Money Pile

Is our children learning?

In 2009, Barack Obama pushed a new educational initiative called Race to the Top as part of his stimulus program. Its goal was to improve educational outcomes for public school students by using federal money to entice states to meet certain standards. Three years later, a study by a group called Broader, Bolder Approach to Education -- an offshoot of the union-backed Economic Policy Institute -- conceded that the Race to the Top program has "fundamental flaws." "Even in the best of circumstances," the report notes, "Race to the Top could not achieve what it sets out to do." And while that sounds like damning criticism from an Obama ally, it's only because their report argues that the federal government doesn't go far enough.
The study defines four "mismatches" between the goals of Race to the Top and hard reality, with the key one being the gap between what states promised for federal money and what can be delivered for the meager share of state educational dollars the Race to the Top grants provided. In all but one of the cases cited, the grant was less than 2% of the state's total educational budget. Very little can be accomplished with that proverbial drop in the bucket.
Given the study's source, it's no surprise that the solutions advocated reach far beyond the classroom, as they cite reams of statistics supposedly showing the relationship between various aspects of socioeconomic status and student achievement. "[U]nless an accompanying set of student, family, and school supports is rolled out with the Common Core," they sniffle, "a policy agenda that again addresses only a minority of the drivers of race- and income-based achievement gaps will further widen those gaps."
But is there any reason to believe states won't continue saying they'll do anything in order to keep the spigot of federal dollars flowing? It seems to us that those 30 pieces of silver aren't really worth the strings that are always attached to a check from Uncle Sam.
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BRIEF OPINION

Essential Liberty

Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh: "It is because of this liberty and freedom that our country exists, because the Founders recognized it comes from God. It's part of the natural yearning of the human spirit. It is not granted by a government. It's not granted by Putin. It's not granted by Obama or any other human being. We are created with the natural yearning to be free, and it is other men and leaders throughout human history who have suppressed that and imprisoned people for seeking it. The U.S. is the first time in the history of the world where a government was organized with a Constitution laying out the rules, that the individual was supreme and dominant, and that is what led to the U.S. becoming the greatest country ever because it unleashed people to be the best they could be. Nothing like it had ever happened. That's American exceptionalism. Putin doesn't know what it is, Obama doesn't know what it is, and it just got trashed in the New York Times. It's just unacceptable."

Re: The Left

Columnist Jonah Goldberg: "Social liberalism is the foremost, predominant, and in many instances sole impulse for zealous regulation in this country, particularly in big cities. ... Seriously, who else do people think are behind efforts to ban big sodas or sue hairdressers for charging women more than men? Who harasses little kids for making toy guns out of sticks, Pop Tarts, or their own fingers? Who wants to regulate the air you breathe, the food you eat, and the beverages you drink? Who wants to control your thermostat? Take your guns? ... Who's in favor of speech codes on campuses and 'hate crime' laws everywhere? Who's in favor of free speech when it comes to taxpayer-subsidized 'art' and pornography (so long as you use a condom, if liberals get their way) but then bang their spoons on their high chairs for strict regulations when it comes to political speech? ... At the national level, who bypassed Congress to empower the EPA to regulate the atmosphere? Oh, and who pushed Obamacare on a country that didn't want it?"

Faith and Family

FRC's Tony Perkins: "As a former quarterback, Craig James isn't used to being on the defensive. ... The retired Pro-Bowler became the latest face of the war on religious liberty, when -- after one day on the job -- Fox Sports gave James the boot for his conservative views on marriage. And here's the kicker: he made the comments, not at the sports desk, but during last year's Senate campaign! ... High level executives felt he hadn't been properly vetted (or, properly excluded, depending on how you look at it). When the news broke, a Fox Sports spokesman tried to explain away the network's religious profiling. 'We just asked ourselves how Craig's statements would play in our human resources department. He couldn't say those things here.' First off, Craig didn't say them there -- or anywhere in his commentating capacity. He stated his position as a candidate for public office -- in response to legitimate constituent questions. ... Is the grip of religious hostility so tight that Americans can't even have an open debate for fear it'll cost them their jobs?"
For more, visit The Right Opinion.

CHRONICLE QUOTES

Upright

Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto: "Because America is so much mightier than Russia, the American presidency is a much stronger position than the Russian presidency. But a strong man in a position of weakness, if he is ruthless about taking advantage of his adversary's vulnerabilities, can get the better of weak man in a position of strength. Saul Alinsky understood that, and so does Vladimir Putin."

Insight

President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Nothing just happens in politics. If something happens you can be sure it was planned that way."

Demo-gogues

Sen. John McCain: "[Republicans are] not going to impeach the president. They're not that crazy. ... If [Obama] launched an attack on Syria without the endorsement of Congress, it would be vastly more complicated if Congress had already acted. If he acted without the agreement of Congress, you could make the argument before the resolution was passed ... that he is acting as other presidents have."

Dezinformatsia

Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "I can't believe the White House's strategy on Syria is working out this well. I doubt they can, either. ... Kind of amazed I'm saying this, but the White House may really be about to win on Syria."

From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File

CNN's Piers Morgan: "I'd like to suggest a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines the right NOT to be shot/killed by a gun."

This Week's 'Braying Jackass' Award

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "[T]he anarchists have taken over. ... We're in a position here where people who don't believe in government -- and that's what the Tea Party is all about -- are winning, and that's a shame."
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Village Idiots

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "[B]ased on past experience, there was not a lot of optimism about resolving this [Syrian conflict] diplomatically with Russia's help, given the role Russia had played in the past."

Short Cuts

Comedian Jay Leno: "You know the polls show many Americans are ill-informed about Syria. In fact, 9 out of 10 people surveyed thought Syria is the female voice in their iPhone."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

td>

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What do you expect from a pig other than an oink?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 13:58:00 +0000

In what could be a rather fun battle to watch, the Southshore tourism chief is picking up speed and momentum suggesting regularly that tourism marketing should be regionalized into one entity. Not everyone agrees, and surely many won't want Lake County to run the show.

LaPorte's chief is none too happy to hear the pithy quotes, although quite funny

Tourism Battle

What is worse for humanity, an atom bomb or decades of Liberal Democrats in power?

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 01:17:00 +0000

Which is Worse, an Atom Bomb or Liberals?

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Tad Cronn

With the 68th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, debate is still going on, mostly on the Left, over the use of the deadliest weapon of war ever developed.

By dropping the bomb, America probably prevented many months of further conventional fighting that doubtless would have cost thousands of lives. But there's no denying the price was steep. Thousands of lives, mostly civilian, were lost anyway, and the world was introduced to the horrors of atomic warfare. Gruesome imagery from the time shows the extent of the hideous, disfiguring wounds inflicted on the Japanese populace.

You're simply not human if you don't cringe at the suffering caused by that one bomb.

On the other hand, it almost certainly had to be done. The bombing may have prevented even more deaths than it caused, and it was probably the only way to awake Japan from the seeming spell it was under while the warmongering Japanese leadership was in charge.

A lot has happened since then, and Hiroshima today is barely recognizable as the same city that was flattened in an instant. Today, it is a thoroughly modern, thriving city that has been brought back to life and moved into the future thanks to the hard work of its citizens and government. The difference between then and now is easily seen in these photos:

Hiroshima then, above and now, below...

Around the time of the Hiroshima bomb, Detroit, Michigan, was a thriving city, home of the automobile industry and a valued contributor to the national economy and the American war effort.

Detroit's history, too, is a study in contrasts. Since the war, the city has fallen apart. A once thriving metropolis, one of the major cities of the world's formerly most powerful nation, Detroit has imploded to a point that it is indistinguishable from many a shanty town in Third World countries.

Except for a brief two-year period, the city had Republican mayors from 1933 to 1961. Since 1962, the city has reeled under an unbroken succession of Democrat mayors and city councils that have inflicted "Progressive" views and programs on the city. The result can also be shown in photographs:

Detroit in 1945 in these black and white photos

Modern Detroit...falling apart in full color...

So at the 68th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, while liberals worry and fuss about the long-term effects of atomic warfare, we need to reflect and ask ourselves a question.

Which has proved more destructive in the long run, a nuclear weapon or unchecked liberal power?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Substitute Detroit with Gary and Auto Industry with Steel Industry, but the key components are the same. Democrats in power, unions used to having their way unwilling to bargain and companies used to automatic marketshare finding themselves playing catch-up to competition. Mix in the deadly effects of the Carter Administration that helped both industries begin a decline and the gutter was the destination.

Christian morality was the foundation of the laws and rights of the United States of America that was formed by the Founding Fathers. They could not foresee the rise of Atheism and never thought that the First Amendment would be eroded by court rulings, as the courts were meant to enforce the law and protect the Constitution not rip it to shreds! They could not foresee our nation falling prey to the ridiculous concepts of Socialism and did not foresee a badly-educated mass of people sadly lacking in common sense arising some 200 years after the USA was officially founded.

But they all understood what would happen if the people were in a position to vote themselves a paycheck for doing nothing. They knew what would happen if a President came into power who would convince people that they deserved to be fed, clothed and housed by the State. Here we are today....

"For my own part, I am not so well satisfied of the goodness of this thing. I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. -- I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? -- On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent."

Benjamin Franklin

On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor

The London Chronicle

November 29, 1766

"[A] wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."

President Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural Address

The American Presidency Project

March 4, 1801

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

People with a modicum of intelligence understand that the behavior that is rewarded is what we should expect to get back. If we reward people for getting higher grades in school with acclaim and scholarships, students will (at least the ones both capable and willing) work to get higher grades. If someone will pay you ten dollars and hour to push a broom and twenty dollars an hour to drive a truck, won't you make sure you are qualified to drive the truck? If they'll give you thirty dollars an hour for being capable of being a dispatcher for a large trucking company, you will prefer that job.

But if you do one of those jobs and do NOT get paid, you will quit and look for work elsewhere.

So what has the Democratic Party been doing to the poor people of this country? Read the article linked below:

THE LEFT’S WAR ON BLACKS Written on Thursday, December 22, 2011 by Nathaniel Davidson

Excerpt: "...The Democrat war on blacks throughout history

The Democratic left has fortunately given up a lot of its anti-black policies of its history—historythat is now whitewashed (or should that be blackwashed?) by the “history” books in the government schools controlled by Democrat teachers unions: how their party supported slavery, opposed the 13th Amendment that banned it, supported racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, helped formed the KKK, turned fire hoses and dogs on peaceful black protestors, and filibustered Civil Rights legislation. And of course, see The Film Black Liberals DON’T Want You toSee. No, the liberals have a much more subtle method. They pretend to help blacks now, by giving them treats like welfare and affirmative action, which are really poisoned apples.

The liberal war on the black family Walter

Williams has often said that welfare could do what slavery, Jim Crow and government imposed racial discrimination could not: break up the black family. Today, he points out in the clip below, about 70% of black families are headed by a single parent. But from 1870, just after the slaves were freed, up to the 1940s, 75–90% of black families had two parents. It’s typical of leftists to blame the “legacy of slavery”, racism for the family breakup. But then, how come black families were healthier back then, when they were much closer to the time of slavery, and racism was far worse? Dr. Williams further shows that racism is not the reason, because in Sweden, “the mother of the welfare state”, illegitimacy is 54%, and these are “white” people...

...As Dr Williams says, and what his good friend and fellow economist Dr Thomas Sowell has also said:

I don’t care what you think this [legislation] is going to do. What I care about is: What are you rewarding, and what are you punishing? Because you’re going to get more of what you’re rewarding and less of what you’re punishing.

The welfare laws reward women for having babies out of wedlock, and punish them by cutting off benefits if they marry the father. Yet liberals profess shock that illegitimacy has followed welfare, regardless of race, like flies follow a stench. See also the Patriot column, The Left vs the Poor.

Walter Williams shows why this is such a terrible problem:

There’s one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of their under-5-year-olds are poor.

There’s another segment of the black population that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.

Among whites, one population segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household. Another segment of the white population suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor..." The entire article is at this link.

Sharing Patriot Humor...Mirth in fhe face of looming disaster!

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:32:00 +0000

"A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right."
–Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

The below is from Patriot Post...subscription information included...

View online at: http://patriotpost.us/humor/19622

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Da Classiest Super McCheese of the Region

noreply@blogger.com (FergSense) — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 01:45:00 +0000

Edit: Please share this, email it to everyone. Da Region deserves to know!

I've never been more disgusted to be a Region Rat than I am now. I wish I had heard about this a few days ago. I would have gladly gone over to the Cal Ripken World Series Classic and showed my support for the Arkansas 12 year old baseball team that was berated by the Classiest Mayor in N.W. Indiana. What A MORON. And moron is about as polite as I can be. I have a few colorful four letter descriptive adjectives too that I'm sure Steve Dalton is happy that I won't use here that should be (with good intentions) directed at the Mayor of Hammond. What a spoiled ______ clown little _______ would say something so derogatory and offensive with regards to describing a 12 year old baseball team. Incensed isn't even the word I'd use to describe my emotions I have right now.

Some people know this about me, some don't. I used to coach 5th and 6th grade basketball program for my alma mater St. Paul's Lutheran in Munster when I was a much younger individual. At that age, confidence means more than talent. The only one who should criticize a young sports team or player is the coaching staff, of which they get plenty from us. Responsible coaches go to coaching clinics and do a lot of reading to know how to that constructively without ruining confidence. At the beginning of every year my staff and I would conduct a parents only meeting and stress that with them, along with other odds and ends. In fact the odds and ends really didn't matter as they could have been addressed in a letter. The whole reason for the meeting was to tell them that their child is getting plenty of criticism from myself and the staff and that the last thing they need from mom, dad, uncle or Mayor McCheesy peanut gallery is to be told how horrible they played or what they need to be doing right. Parents should only tell their kids that they love them and are proud that they did their best, and I mean that sincerely!!!!!

As reported by the NWI Gazette:

Two eyewitnesses have confirmed to the Northwest Indiana Gazette that Mayor Mcdermott said the Arkansas El Dorado Cal Ripken team “sucked.” Apparently, Arkansas fans were listening in on WJOB1230.com and heard the remarks. Cell phones lit up at the field and an interstate incident was born. Gohammond.tv cameras reportedly captured the event live, and WJOB quickly pulled the Mayor off the air.

One witness stated that the Mayor was “asked to leave” and threatened the leave with loss of funding for next years event.Since we arrived, the people of Hammond have been nothing but amazing. Beyond what we could expect. The ignorance and small mindedness of the Mayor has affected and put a bad mark on what the City has tried to Accomplish. We have not heard from him. We requested to speak with him. We promoted the website and radio station. The Mayor’s comments absolutely took us out of the game.

Please do go to the Gazette and read the full story. As for me, I'm think of organizing a rotten tomato throwing event at Hammond City Hall to vent my disgust with the Classiest Mayor in NW Indiana.

If anybody still subscribes to that "journalistic" outfit known as the NWI Times, how bout giving them a call and asking why they are protecting and not admonishing the ____ Clown Hammond has for a Mayor. I would, but I haven't subscribed for years because of the way that paper goes out of its way to protect ___ Clowns like McCheesy.

So politicos, does this warrant discussion?

Putin-Bush-Obamaology

noreply@blogger.com (FergSense) — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:20:00 +0000

Victor Davis Hanson of National Review gives decent insight into the hypocrisy and the self created paradox of the Obama administration's Foreign Policy.

However, what I find funny is that this author either outright ignores or forgets that invading Iraq has/had a consequence, namely the destabilization of the region. Granted, King Obama's (and neo-conservative war hawk's) foreign policies of interventionism has helped progress that destabilization, but none-the-less all this can be rooted back to the invasion of Iraq. I'm a libertarian leaning Republican and even Ron Paul said, go to Afghanistan and take care of business, however occupation was/is unwarranted. Afghanistan should have been exclusively fought with bombs, gunships and a well defined special forces incursions. Nation Building rarely works because it takes a populace willing to accept the help and the influence.

Reagan perhaps said it best:

“Perhaps we didn’t appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to Paradise was so foreign to our own values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the marines’ safety that it should have.

In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believe the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there. If there would be some rethinking of policy before our men die, we would be a lot better off. If that policy had changed towards more of a neutral position and neutrality [ie the position we should have taken with Libya/Syria... or what-have-you's], those 241 marines would be alive today.”

What blows my mind is people like McCain (stuck in Cold War mentality) who want to arm the Al Qaeda insurgency in Syria which will undoubtedly lead to those weapons and training eventually being used against our interests and our troops because we will undoubtedly keep pursuing interventionism.

Interventionism is the root of our foreign policy problems and why we are hated world wide. Reagan recognized this, why can't we all.

I await the peanut gallery nay-sayers. Perhaps this will warrant discussion?

Is it okay for students to form ‘White Student Union’?

noreply@blogger.com (FergSense) — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 19:04:00 +0000

Robby Soave of the Daily Caller postulates the question, "Is it okay for students to form [a] ‘White Student Union’?" On the surface, most people would answer that question with a simple but firm, NO. However, in our racially charged cultural hierarchy and in light of recent events, perhaps a simple but firm no has become evidently more complex.

Under most circumstances, I'd chorus right along with the best of them answering no, its not okay, but for a deviated reason than what is considered politically correct. Instead of a long winded answer from me, perhaps a long winded answer from a more articulate source who phrases most things better than I ever could, at least in writing (he's a stuttering fool in verbal debates):

"Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans only as members of groups and never as individuals. Racists believe that all individual who share superficial physical characteristics are alike; as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their intense focus on race is inherently racist, because it views individuals only as members of racial groups.

Conservatives and libertarians should fight back and challenge the myth that collectivist liberals care more about racism. Modern liberalism, however well intentioned, is a byproduct of the same collectivist thinking that characterizes racism. The continued insistence on group thinking only inflames racial tensions.

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. In a free market, businesses that discriminate lose customers, goodwill, and valuable employees — while rational businesses flourish by choosing the most qualified employees and selling to all willing buyers. More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct what is essentially a sin of the heart, we should understand that reducing racism requires a shift from group thinking to an emphasis on individualism." ~ Ron Paul

And with that, I open commenting to the peanut gallery if there is anybody paying attention?

Alright Steve, I answered your call. Lets see if anyone feels this warrants discussion.

Where do you go to debate these days?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 22:44:00 +0000

I remember the heady days of 2004 when blogs like this were hot and heavy with argument and terrific writing. Where do you go now for in-depth writing, interesting perspectives, and debate? Is it time to abandon the blog format altogether?

What are the true implications of Darwinism/Humanism? History, Our Founding Fathers and Kim Sandy speak the truth. Will you hear it?

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 20:58:00 +0000

The testimony of history...Oh, what foolishness is associated with Darwinism! The evil and depravity of evolution applied to society destroys it. Darwinism is the philosophy that rewards pride and sexual deviancy and the coveting of the property of others. What is Communism/Socialism but the taking of goods from the productive to give them to the unproductive? It rewards laziness and ignorance. It promotes tyrants. It depends upon ignorance and greed. There is a world of Al Gores and Al Sharptons pretending to care about others while simply growing their own bank accounts. Can you name one good thing Jesse Jackson, Jr has accomplished? Other than publicly disdaining the victims of Benghazi and standing for every stupid and idiotic Communist agenda out there, what good is Hilary Clinton? Oh, yes, there are so many politicians who claim to care for the poor and needy while living like kings and queens on YOUR money.

"Progressive" Democrats and RINOs want to give citizenship to illegal aliens because they expect the millions of new and uneducated voters will vote for them as they establish a new society that is modeled on the old Soviet Union. The dumber the voters, the more likely they fall for the sizzle and fail to inspect the steak (which turns out to be baloney)!

"Progressive" Democrats and RINOs support baby-murdering as a "right" of the mother to "choose" to kill our most innocent and helpless citizens. How different is that from Hitler's desire to "choose" to kill Jews and Christians and political enemies and handicapped people?

"Progressive" Democrats and RINOs support the oxymoron that is "gay marriage" while spitting in the face of God and the tradition and religious sacrament of the joining of man and woman established from the very first couple and on down through history. They can pass all the laws and make all the legal proclamations they want, two members of the same sex can no more marry than they can reproduce! It is an abomination and it is only the tip of an evil iceberg. Pedophiles are waiting to push for the "right" to "marry" children and then eventually people will try to call a three-way relationship a "marriage" and who can say you cannot "marry" a horse or a dog or a dead body?

"Progressive" thinking is actually regressive. This kind of immorality dates from long ago, and God flooded the entire planet once to stop it. Another time God rained fire and brimstone down on an area (Sodom and Gomorrah) to put an end to it. He sent his people to wipe out such a depraved society when the Children of Israel marched into Canaan. But they did not do this, they let some of the people live and thereby did not wipe out all the baby-murderers and temple prostitutes and other practitioners of evil. Therefore the Jews were eventually corrupted, conquered and carried away to Babylon. The powerful empire of Israel ruled by King Solomon became a wasteland that God would eventually allow His people to come back and rebuild as a shadow of its former glory.

Jerusalem would be rebuilt but Israel would never be powerful again and would eventually be overrun...until the Balfour Declaration of 1917 eventually led to the establishment of a new nation of Israel. But this Israel is a small island of freedom surrounded by bloodthirsty Islamic enemies. As America throws away its goodness and greatness, Israel realizes it is losing a valuable ally and we may see a nuclear war begin in the Middle East. Barack Obama may like blowing things and people up with drones, but he never targets the real enemies. He even made the killing of Osama Bin Laden into a political victory at the expense of actual tactical and informational advantages and left the poor Pakistani doctor who clued us in to be imprisoned and tortured and probably eventually killed in a Pakistani jail. By leaking the identity of Seal Team Six, he signed death warrants for many of those men as well. Anyone in the world of espionage knows that information you glean that the enemy doesn't know you have is the most valuable and that the hardest thing to develop is human intelligence agents. Obama gave away the intelligence advantage and threw our brave doctor to the dogs! Yes, that is the kind of thing a Christian would never do. Just exactly what Barack Obama is, other than a man who despises America and loves to live like a king, only God knows. But he has harmed the United States more than 50 Hurricane Katrinas could accomplish, for he has helped degrade our basic morality, our credit rating, our ability to defend and secure our borders and our reputation with our allies, those we still have.

Islamoterrorists with nuclear weaponry? The USA is letting it happen without doing anything but waving hands and producing hot air. The UN is more concerned about finding ways to keep Third World countries from becoming developed enough to compete with the "haves" while finding ways to skim riches from aid to poorer nations and promoting junk science like Anthropic Global Warming.

Rome did not fall because of bread and circuses. It fell because of the decline of the entire society. All forms of tyranny eventually fail but mankind keeps establishing new governments with powerful central authority and a large percentage of the population on the government dole and seemingly happy with a lazy poverty. Is this what America will become? Russia is now a land of impoverished people drowning their sorrows in vodka, selling their bodies for the money to live or involved in crime and various combinations thereof. Some of the most serious internet trojan/worm/virus/malware attacks are the result of organized crime gangs in the former Soviet Union area of the world, setting up and taking down servers and robbing you without your awareness. Your computer may be part of a botnet and you have no idea it is being commandeered and utilized...you just know it got slower somehow and, unless you are computer-savvy, will just purchase useless stuff you saw advertised on television to try to fix what you do not even know is not broken but rather stolen!

Hitler WAS a Darwinist, a Socialist/Fascist, a Tyrant and maniacally drunk on power. But as that page demonstrates, the concept of evolution was crucial to the philosophy of Hitler and his cronies:

In America, we called it Eugnenics (the ancestor of Planned Parenthood, by the way). Yes, the 20th Century was one of mass murders, atrocities, tyranny, wars and the popularization of Darwinism.

The shameful history of eugenics in America

Excerpt from- BETTER FOR ALL THE WORLD: THE SECRET HISTORY OF FORCED STERILIZATION AND AMERICA’S QUEST FOR RACIAL PURITY

By Harry Bruinius

REVIEWED BY CLAUDE R. MARX

Stephen King, meet your nonfiction counterpart. Some of the scariest things that one can read these days come straight from the history books, including this comprehensive look at the eugenics/racial purity movement.

Populated with characters from prominent American families and based on research from top-flight universities, the movement to mandate forced sterilization of those considered mentally inferior was a significant force in the United States during much of first half of the 20th century. It is a complicated story, but in the hands of Harry Bruinius, “Better for All The World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity” reads like an engaging, though eerie, novel.

Mr. Bruinius traces the movement from its intellectual origins in 19th- century Britain — where its founder was a cousin of Charles Darwin— to a woman still living in Colorado who was involuntarily sterilized while in a state mental institution.

Based on questionable scientific data, the movement caught on with Americans who who were worried that those of lesser intelligence would harm the nation’s gene pool by reproducing.

The book’s title comes from an opinion by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upholding a Virginia law that mandated sterilization of those deemed intellectually and morally inferior.

“It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind,’ Mr. Holmes wrote in Buck vs. Bell in 1927.

Mr. Bruinius, a journalism professor at Hunter College in New York City, is clearly quite aghast at the movement (which also fueled racial quotas and other prejudicial acts) and its popularity. He goes to great lengths to explain the intellectual and social contexts in which it thrived. He cites the increase in immigrants and the changing dynamics that these newcomers created as helping fuel concerns among those from old Yankee stock. Worries about the financial and social costs to society in caring for the mentally challenged also caused some to favor forced sterilization.

Such ideas helped inspire many of the policies that were prevalent in Nazi Germany, including killing people who were not part of the “master race’ and the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of citizenship and outlawed marriage between the races.

In America, forced sterilizations were by no means a fringe movement. At one point, 30 states had forced sterilization laws and some others made use of the practice when deemed necessary for “medical reasons.’ Some prominent people, many of whom were notable progressives like Theodore Roosevelt and Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, endorsed the idea. Among its most prominent opponents were fundamentalist Christians and Roman Catholics...

America, you did not start out this way...

Our Founding Fathers were ALL men of faith. From this website:

There were 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. There were 48 signers of the Articles of Confederation. All 55 delegates who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 are regarded as Founding Fathers, in fact, they are often regarded as the Founding Fathers because it is this group that actually debated, drafted and signed the U.S. Constitution, which is the basis for the country's political and legal system. Only 39 delegates actually signed the document, however, meaning there were 16 non-signing delegates - individuals who were Constitutional Convention delegates but were not signers of the Constitution.

There were 95 Senators and Representatives in the First Federal Congress. If one combines the total number of signatures on the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution with the non-signing Constitutional Convention delegates, and then adds to that sum the number of congressmen in the First Federal Congress, one obtains a total of 238 "slots" or "positions" in these groups which one can classify as "Founding Fathers" of the United States. Because 40 individuals had multiple roles (they signed multiple documents and/or also served in the First Federal Congress), there are 204 unique individuals in this group of "Founding Fathers." These are the people who did one or more of the following:

- signed the Declaration of Independence

- signed the Articles of Confederation

- attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787

- signed the Constitution of the United States of America

- served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)

- served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress

The religious affiliations of these individuals are summarized below. Obviously this is a very restrictive set of names, and does not include everyone who could be considered an "American Founding Father." But most of the major figures that people generally think of in this context are included using these criteria, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and more.

Religious Affiliation of U.S. Founding Fathers	# of Founding Fathers	% of Founding Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican	88	54.7%
Presbyterian	30	18.6%
Congregationalist	27	16.8%
Quaker	7	4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed	6	3.7%
Lutheran	5	3.1%
Catholic	3	1.9%
Huguenot	3	1.9%
Unitarian	3	1.9%
Methodist	2	1.2%
Calvinist	1	0.6%
TOTAL	204

NOTES: The table above counts people and not "roles," meaning that individuals have not been counted multiple times if they appear on more than one of the lists above. Roger Sherman, for example, signed all three foundational documents and he was a Representative in the First Federal Congress, but he has been counted only once.

The 21st Century has become the era of self-indulgent ignorance. Our nation is rotting like meat left out for flies to inject their eggs and maggots will soon be crawling out everywhere. Our Founding Fathers were right and we are wrong. For example:

John Adams

The people in America have now the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands that Providence ever committed to so small a number ... if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven ...

— 1787

We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Benjamin Franklin

In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors and sovereigns ...

Patrick Henry

An appeal to arms and the God of hosts is all that is left us. But we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations. The battle sir, is not to the strong alone. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religious, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here.

The great object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun.

— Virginia Convention on ratification of the Constitution

John Jay; first Supreme Court Justice

Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian Nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

Thomas Jefferson

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

— 1774

The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate ... the minds of the people at large, and more especially, to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that they may ... know ambition under all it shapes, and ... exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.

— 1779

History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.

— 1782

The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.

— 1810

Unless the mass [of people] retains sufficient control over those intrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression ...

— 1812

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Proverbs 16:18

English Standard Version (ESV)

Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.

The testimony of Kim Sandy:

The Paradox of Man

“Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you.” Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Saturday, 22 June 2013

Enemies of Evolution

Having previously studied for an honours degree in English Literature, and being a lover of books, I had come across Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, and his ideas, but until recently I had never heard of his brother Julian Huxley. It turns out that Julian was quite the academic. He was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, who was nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog" for his ferocious support of the theory of evolution and I imagine it was at his grandfather's knee that Julian first began to absorb evolutionary ideas. Julian shone brightly. He was educated at Eton College, received his degree from Oxford University, lectured at Kings College London and became president of the British Humanist Association... amongst a long list of other achievements!

Julian Huxley fascinated me for a while and I started reading some of his work. Initially I was quite impressed by his thought processes - albeit that he often sounded quite arrogant. You see, when an atheist denies God, he also denies a moral absolute and consequently a moral lawgiver. If there is no moral lawgiver and no moral absolutes then who can say what is right and what is wrong? Why should we even care about such things? I've seen people try for some wriggle room on this one, but it’s a major sticking point in the atheist's argument and often they find themselves 'borrowing' from Christianity when they defend their personal ideas of morality.

The crux of evolutionary ideology is the survival of the fittest, so if you are going to follow this thought through to its logical conclusion then how can rape, murder, theft, adultery, lying and a host of other ‘crimes’ be wrong when a person is just doing whatever he needs to do to survive or get ahead? Trampling over other people in order to get what we want should be the first law of evolution and be essential to our make up. For example, if I want to be selected for a particular job promotion, what is to stop me from killing off all the others short-listed for the position?

When I was debating this very point recently I was told that since we no longer live in the cave-man days we no longer have to kill or be killed. We have a measure of stability in our society and this allows us to to develop a pack mentality, so that it is no longer about what is good for the individual, but is now about what is good for the pack - or for society I presume. This apparently gives us room to care for people, to have compassion for our fellow human beings and even to show sympathy and empathy. I genuinely think it is a clever argument, but there is no denying that sympathy and empathy are enemies to evolution and could potentially destroy the 'pack' if we lose sight of the 'survival of the fittest' mentality. What would Huxley have to say about this?

Well, Huxley stood his evolutionary ground whilst promoting his humanist ideology. He claimed that humanism was a replacement for religion, but he made no bones about how we should further advance our society and didn’t shy away from the uglier side of evolution. In 1926 he published a collection of articles in a book entitled The Stream of Life. The articles had formerly been broadcast by Huxley over the radio - this surprises me, because I think it takes some gall to express his ideology publicly. Huxley told his audience exactly how we could improve the human race.

"But what are we to think when pity for suffering individuals leads us not only to preserve them, but to allow them to reproduce and so not only to lower the quality of the race, but to produce more suffering in individuals yet unborn? What is one to think of the misplaced kindness which, to give an actual recent case, takes an epileptic woman to hospital to be operated on to remedy sterility; or the sentimentality which rejoices at the 'happiness', so called, generated by the marriage of two deaf mutes?"[i]

Here, I think, would be an appropriate time to bring up the actual joy generated by 'the marriage of two deaf mutes' (although I would never choose to use the phrase 'deaf mute'). In the 1960’s a London Newspaper ran an article entitled: ‘Deaf Couple Marry’ which detailed the marriage of my own parents.

My parents met at a London deaf school where sign language was forbidden and deaf children who persisted in this deviant language were shunned by society, because apparently the ‘waving around’ of their hands made them appear mentally ill.

The education my parents received focused mainly on manual skills and speech therapy and therefore they left school with barely any education. My father had a qualification in woodwork and my mother a qualification in cake decorating. When they married my parents were not allowed to make their marriage vows to one another in sign language, but instead had to struggle to speak their vows orally to each other.

Despite their disadvantages they were hard workers and determined to build a good life together. Some years later my parents 'reproduced' two very healthy hearing children who went on to marry and have hearing children of their own. Their first grandson, Benjamin grew up adoring his grandparents and communicating with them in sign language. He was inspired by the determination and courage with which they faced life. Today Benjamin is in his 4th year as a medical student at Imperial College London - one of the top medical schools not only in the UK, but also in the world. Their second grandson, Joseph 17 is currently gathering work experience so that he too can study medicine - if this is what God wills, and guess what their 11 year-old grand-daughter wants to do? I am not saying that this means our family has more value than anyone elses, I am merely pointing out that doing away with the ‘undesirables’ is not progressive!

I'd like to put this real life example to Julian Huxley and ask him how the marriage and reproduction of my parents actually weakened the human race and how, in the face of what they have achieved, he can justify his comments recommending that society should be 'segregating defectives in special institutions' and forcibly sterilising them.’[ii]

Growing up and studying World War II at school I realised that had my parents lived in Germany at that time they most likely would have ended up in the gas chambers since the ‘cleansing’ that Hitler and Nazi Germany practiced was in alignment with Huxley's eugenic ideas. Joe Boot, author of A Time to Search cites historical philosopher John Koster who wrote:

"Darwin and Huxley's picture of man's place in the universe prepared the way for the Holocaust...Darwin the scientist directly inspired Nietzsche’s superman theory and the Nazi corollary that some people were subhuman...People have to learn to stop thinking of other people as machines and learn to think of them as men and women possessed of souls...History doesn't need another one hundred million deaths to prove that scientific atheism is a form of mental illness.”[iii]

Eugenics is the logical outworking of evolution. I can see why on paper the ideas make sense and might sound like ‘progress’. I can also see why people who argue against this sort of ideology might be considered to be ‘feeble minded’ – something Huxley and the early proponents of evolution despised but what you see in the Nazi concentration camps is eugenics in action. The devaluing of human life flows from the atheist position of rejecting the teaching of the Bible that tells us that people are made in the image of God and therefore all life is precious. Instead life is expendable and killing of the defectives, undesirables and weak is to be applauded. The Nazi concentration camps brought these ideas into sharp focus and taught us that such ideas have consequences and these consequences would frequently come back to haunt us.

My grandmother, who was not a believer, told me that she was glad she didn't know that my mother was going to be deaf because if she had she would have made a terrible mistake and would have aborted her baby as an 'act of kindness'. My grandmother had no time for God, but she had unwittingly absorbed Darwinian ideas, which she didn’t fully understand but believed that they gave her license for her atheism. Millions of other people have hung their atheism on the same ‘respectable peg’ for as Richard Dawkins said, ‘Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.’[iv]

The teaching of Christianity is in direct contrast to the harsh demands of evolution leading to eugenic ideologies and it is no wonder that Hitler himself rose up to declare:

"I regard Christianity as the most fatal, seductive lie that ever existed.’[v]

I find it hard to believe that anyone would claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian. I do not deny that he was born a catholic, but it is clear that Hilter’s intention was to wipe out Christianity.

"Altogether Hitler’s killing machine murdered 5 million Jews, and 7 million Christians — a little published fact that caused Jewish historian Max Dimont to declare that “the world blinded itself to the murder of Christians” by Nazi Germany.”[vi]

Why?

I have no doubt that many supporters of evolution do not hold to the extreme eugenic ideas of the likes of Huxley, or Hitler for that matter, but I truly believe that for the evolutionist there is not a lot of ‘wriggle room’ here. As Edward Simon said (1983), “I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust possible.”[vii].

I believe that the grace of God covered my family and that we are living proof that Huxley couldn’t have been more wrong – I absolutely do rejoice over the happiness brought about by the marriage of my wonderful deaf parents.

© Kim Sandy 2013

[i] Julian Huxley (1926). The Stream of Life, cited by Boot, J. (2002). A Time to Search: Discovering meaning and purpose in life, Eastborne, Kingsway Publications, p.106.

[ii] Ibid., p.106

[iii] John P. Koster, Jr,.The Atheist Syndrome (1989), cited by Boot, J. (2002). A Time to Search: Discovering meaning and purpose in life, Eastborne, Kingsway Publications, p.111

[iv] Dawkins, R. (1989) The Blind Watchmaker, London, Penguin Books (this edition 2006), p.6

[v] Alolf Hitler, cited by Larry Azar, Twentieth Century in Crisis (1990), Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, p.155.

[vi] Dimont, Max I (1994) cited by Bergman (2006) in ‘Was Adolf Hitler a Christian: A common objection to creationism.’ [online] available at http://www.trueorigin.org/hitler01.asp (last accessed 22^nd June 2013).

[vii] Edward Simon, "Another Side to the Evolution Problem," Jewish Press, January 7, 1983, p. 248

Picture of Juilian Huxley: The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason: his image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.

Or else they will act like it is true!

We need America back...and we need Lake County to be rescued from the crooks.

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Sun, 12 May 2013 07:14:00 +0000

Why has the criminal Democratic Machines ruled North Lake County for decades? You think a County Income tax is anything but a grab by crooked politicians from Gary and East Chicago and Gary to continue to fund their scams by stealing it from South Lake County. The only way to save Lake County and Indiana is to fix Washington and Indiana as well as Lake County, too. We need to be smart and fight. Be smart and fight. Be smart and fight!!!

Obama Versus the Founding Fathers

There is perhaps no other American president who stands in such stark contrast to the US Founding Fathers than Barack Hussein Obama. By almost every measure, his reign of error is completely at odds with what the Fathers envisaged.

Whole books could be written about Obama’s demolition job on the American vision, his desecration of the US Constitution, and his utter disregard for the basic principles upon which the nation was founded. In fact, they already have been written.

So let me here just focus on his latest act of blatant anti-Americanism. On Sunday he delivered a commencement address at Ohio State University. In it he said this: “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works; they’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

Now isn’t it odd that a president who seems to be doing his best to turn America into a PC dictatorship should tell these graduates to not listen to those who warn about these very things? This is of course the exact opposite of what the Founding Fathers said.

America of course was established as an act of resistance to tyranny. And this right to be wary, to be on guard, to be vigilant, and if need be, to resist tyrannical rule, was at the very heart of the thought and practice which went into America’s founding. Consider just a few – of many – representative quotes:

-“Rebellion to tyrants is Obedience to God.” Benjamin Franklin
-“A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.” George Washington
-“It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.” James Madison
-”The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” Thomas Jefferson
-“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” Thomas Jefferson
-“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson
-“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.” Thomas Jefferson
-”The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” Patrick Henry
-”If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.” William Penn
-”…no civil rulers are to be obeyed when they enjoin things that are inconsistent with the commands of God…. All commands running counter to the declared will of the Supreme Legislator of heaven and earth are null and void, and therefore disobedience to them is a duty, not a crime.” Jonathan Mayhew

These sentiments could not be further afield from those expressed by BHO. He seeks a submissive, compliant populace which asks no questions, dares not rock the boat, and slavishly does whatever their political masters tell them to do. The Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves to hear such idiocy.

Ben Shapiro has just commented on this. He says, “Government, in Obama’s view, is the great guarantor of rights. Never mind that government – yes, government in America – has routinely stripped its citizens of rights. Never mind that state governments stripped black people of their basic personhood for decades, enshrining slavery with the help of the federal government. Never mind that for a century after slavery, state governments, with the silent assent of the federal government, enshrined Jim Crow. Never mind that the federal government stripped thousands of Japanese citizens of their rights during World War II and the unborn of their rights in 1973.

“None of that matters to Obama. He said, ‘This country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition.’ The Founders believed, to the contrary, that government’s job was to protect our most basic rights so that we could pursue the individual dreams and ambitions that truly make America great – the dreams and ambitions that created Edison and Ford, Jobs and Gates.”

He concludes: “Obama’s rhetoric here is more than perverse — it is supremely dangerous. American rights cannot be removed by a limited government. They can be, and have been, removed by a government actively seeking to remove rights. The Founders knew that. That’s why the system they set up was designed to check interest against interest, to prevent consolidation of power in any one branch or any one person. The Founders were skeptical of government and feared government tyranny. That’s why they rebelled against the British crown. And that is why the system of checks and balances they created – a system that has gradually been overthrown and replaced by leftists from Woodrow Wilson to Obama – was designed to stop such tyranny through complexity and balance.

“A people that does not fear government oppression is not a free people. It is a subject people. A people that believes that the government somehow invariably guards rights is not an American people – it is a Rousseauian rabble prepared to accept the yoke of tyranny. God gave us rights. The Founders gave us a messy system of government to allow the government to protect those rights while preventing the government from usurping them. Worshipping government achieves neither of those purposes.”

And Gary DeMar asks these questions: “Would Barack Obama have spoken out against Stalin or Hitler before their governments degenerated into full-orbed tyrannies? Would the President have supported the Polish Solidarity movement over against the Communist tyranny?

“Would he have joined the 52 signers of the Declaration of Independence? Here’s the opening paragraph: ‘When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.’

“In fact, the signers of the Declaration described the king of England as a tyrant: ‘The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world’….

“The Second Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from forbidding people in the various states from ‘keeping and bearing arms’ for ‘the security of a free state.’ It is the duty of the states to protect its citizens against the usurpation of their constitutional rights. Ours is a slow moving tyranny. An iron fist in a velvet glove.”

We have nothing to fear from a citizenry zealous to defend freedom and guard against tyranny. But we do have very much to fear from a president who criticises such people, and claims their concerns are simply unfounded.

www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/us/politics/obama-tells-ohio-state-graduates-hes-optimistic.html?_r=0

townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2013/05/08/will-tyranny-ever-come-to-america-n1590337

politicaloutcast.com/2013/05/president-obama-sometimes-tyrannies-do-lurk-around-the-corner/

There will be an income tax in Lake County

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:19:00 +0000

The County Commissioners opted not to veto the Council's income tax (1.5%) and now Lake County becomes the final county in the state to adopt an income tax.

Thoughts?

Just in from Indianapolis

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:28:00 +0000

For Immediate Release

April 25, 2013

GOVERNOR PENCE CALLS AGREEMENT FOR 5 PERCENT INCOME TAX CUT AND INHERITANCE TAX REPEAL “GREAT VICTORY” FOR HOOSIER TAXPAYERS

“Today Hoosier taxpayers won a great victory. The agreement reached between our administration and legislative leaders will be the largest state tax cut in Indiana history. The combination of a 5 percent individual income tax cut, inheritance tax repeal and additional tax relief for businesses is the right tax relief at the right time and will give a much needed boost to working families, small businesses and family farms.

I am grateful for the leadership of Senate President Pro Tem David Long, Speaker Brian Bosma and other key fiscal leaders for working diligently with our administration to craft this historic package of tax relief. Their efforts demonstrate the commitment of the General Assembly to put taxpayers first.”

Chavismo

noreply@blogger.com (Michael T. Stulac) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 17:50:00 +0000

We in this blog, and almost all conservatives on the whole, try to win the electorate over by convincing them of the bare, dry facts. Liberals tug at the heartstrings and try to win with emotion. Conservatives also aim for consistency in their candidates and officials, and readily throw out those who let them down with their personal behavior as well as public voting record. Liberals don't care what the person is like as long as they get their liberal points advanced.

This is shown often in Region politics. A sitting Lake County surveyor had the FBI raid his office and copy all of his records, and he waves it away saying, "It's important for everyone not to jump to any conclusions. This is not the first time the FBI has been in a governmental office here, nor will it be the last time, I'm sure."[1] He wins reelection handily. A person who the county Democrat chairman begged to get off the ballot due to the controversies surrounding her barely lost the county race for Assessor.[2] Over the state line, Jesse Jackson III (with his $43,000 Rolex watch) easily won re-election to the U.S. Congress in spite of his lack of campaigning since he was in the nuthouse during the race.[3]

Do conservatives miss the boat by trying to win people with facts rather than charisma? Why can't we find someone who we know backs our take on the issues while at the same time make the voters swoon? Bueller? Where are you, Bueller?

Watching the fuss and fluster over the Hugo Chavez funeral got me thinking about this. In spite of the litany of destruction his policies effected, a huge contingent of the population loves him still. Read this short list and visit the source at [4] for the homework. Venezuela:

Is the second world's unfriendliest country toward visitors and tourists (1st. unfriendliest, Evo Morales' Bolivia) World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2013.

Is at the bottom in global competitiveness, 126th of 126.

Is the fourth from the bottom in Economic Freedom (Ahead of Zimbabwe, Cuba, and North Korea, but behind Eritrea) - 2013 Index of Economic Freedom.

Ranked 165 of 176 in perceived corruption (Ahead of Iraq but behind Haiti. Haiti!!)

Ranked 117 of 179 in press freedom (Ahead of Nepal but behind Macedonia).

Ranked an average of 89 of 97 of 8 factors defining Rule of Law. In the Criminal Law factor alone, it ranked at the botom, 97 of 97.

Major drug-transit country, facilitated by pretty much all of the above.

A liberal gets these results, and yet is worshiped to where they're looking to embalm and display him so he could still be there for the people who he ~~ruined~~ loved. Liberals ruined Detroit and Gary with unopposed policy setting, yet only a liberal can win in those cities. A conservative can beat a liberal like a rug over every issue, yet it does not win him or her the election. Biden can make gaffes three times a week and it's ok, but the biggest gaffe Palin made she did not even make, and it's held against her for life: Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live in a skit said, "I can see Russia from my house."

How can one be a conservative, yet win like a liberal?

Bibliography:
[1] Times article about the Surveyor's raid
[2] Times article about Carol Ann Seaton
[3] Mr. & Mrs. Jackson charges
[4] Vivicat blog post with the list

Is the United States a Nation of Frogs?

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:55:00 +0000

My friend Solomon P. (aptly named) recently wrote an essay and I would like to present it to you. We certainly have a lot of frogs and sheep in this nation but that is not all...if we had more lions, this nation would not stand for the boneheads and users and good old beltway boys that populate our government! Solomon identifies seven animals that typify the population of our nation.

Nation of Frogs?

The other day I saw an old and a bit overused analogy about how we don’t notice our rights being eroded and our wealth being stolen, because it’s happening so slowly, the analogy compared us to frogs in a pot.

I disagree with this analogy I believe that just as we have many points of view, we have a myriad of different animals to choose from when it comes to comparing our nation.

First there are the Sheep-

Sheep are lead to the slaughter with no hesitation. These are the ones out yelling; “raise my taxes, take away my guns, and do it for the children.” They have no idea about freedom or wealth or economics or even the true sources of crime.

Next we have the Hermit Crab-

He seeks refuge in his shell of ignorance. He doesn't want to be bothered with politics, and insists he can’t change anything anyway. He doesn't understand that many of our forefathers felt the small and insignificant at one point or another in their life and they broke free from the insignificance only to construct the greatest nation on the planet. He also doesn't realize that by doing nothing, he’s doing just what his enemies need him to do, as they push him further into insignificance.

Next we have the Pig-

This guy makes a lot of noise but in all reality is very lazy. Not only is he lazy but often finds himself in the mire of the left whilst he thinks only of himself. He waits for his government check every month while talking on a tax payer funded phone to his friends and neighbors and refuses to even try to work, after all he shouts there just aren't any jobs to be had. Often times the pig is illiterate and teaches his offspring to be the same.

Number 4 is the Parrot-

Here is an animal that loves to be heard, and loves to repeat that which others tell him. The problem with the parrot is that he can’t really think for himself and his source of information is tainted by liberal spin. One week he’s worried about Sequester and the next he’s worried about banning guns, never looking past the diversions and never repeating anything worth hearing.

Eagles are next on the list-

These beautiful birds are the envy of the natural world held aloft by an economy never seen in the history of the world, but most of them don’t realize that with the winds of chance they will soon plummet to the ground and become extinct, at least here in the USA. There wealth may allow them to stay elevated beyond that of the average animal down here but when that’s been taxed away, that’s when that real pain begins.

Next is the Lion-

Lions are become far rarer every day. Lions are self sustaining, independent and above all else leaders. They know no one else will give them the lifestyle they want so they have to go get it, themselves. They are innovators and industrialist thriving despite the negative spiral the politics of today. They roar the truth of Individual liberties and the responsibility everyone has to themselves and to their family. Lions are not happy with mediocrity they are constantly striving to better their lot as they eye the next prey. Lions feed on truth and innovation.

Finally we have the Jackals-

These are fierce and ugly, but they are mere scavengers and only hunt when there are no carcasses to pick clean. They have a little bit of fight in them but when face to face with a lion they will back down more often than not. Jackals are known for a conniving attitude. They will write laws they are above. They despise the truth for it doesn't further their lifestyle. Do not be fooled, just because they haven’t turned toward you drooling in angst and hunger as tax dollars dwindle, doesn't mean they won’t. Jackals run in packs to keep outsiders from exposing them. They pass bills that are overly complicated so as to impose their will in a malicious manner. They use diversion, subversion and propaganda to build the pile of taxes higher and higher. Bitter from birth, they will not rest until they have all the spoils they are entitled to.

Roar if you are a lion.

Solomon P.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you believe you have the right to succeed, good for you! If you think you deserve to succeed, you are mistaken. There is no right to be fed or housed or to receive medical care. No one deserves the government to support them. The amount of people in this country who think otherwise is appalling!

So I would say there is also the Wolf - The same people who are taught to expect the government to care for them are the ones who do not believe they could care for themselves. So they accept living in a run-down apartment or trailer and perhaps sell drugs, prostitute themselves, rob houses, play the numbers and other underground economy activities typical of the poor parts of cities and large towns. Really, if we pay women to have children but punish them if they marry, do we expect the traditional family model to thrive in the ghetto? Do we expect fatherless children to succeed in life? Why do you think gangs prosper? It isn't just the peer pressure, it is also the concept that a gang is kind of a family unit. Gangs actually rule areas of some cities near my location. I know areas the police try to avoid and will warn people to stay away from in Chicago and Gary for certain.

During my long life, I have spent time living in the ghetto and also spent a couple of years walking the mean streets seeking to give the gospel of Christ to anyone who would listen. There are a lot of kids who think that, unless sports or music can take them to fame and fortune, the only thing to do is join a gang and be a banger for the rest of their lives. Some of them attempt to do both at once. I promise you that there are many more murders in Chicago than the official totals. There are people living in places the city doesn't know about and there are plenty of people who wind up in landfills, unreported deaths by gangsters of one stripe or another. I am not even mentioning the old-fashioned organized criminals who are like leeches on the typical big city Democratic Machine and "wet their beaks" through intimidation. These folks know how to do it while looking legitimate.

Go ahead, check out any big city with an entrenched Democratic Machine running things. Chicago may be the most effective of them all, as they manage to let the big animal keep enough blood to be effective. But places like Gary and Detroit are, well, you would almost have to see it to believe it. Detroit has a population of wild dogs that have actually become speciated enough to be identifiable. They resemble the Wild Dog of Africa! Detroit and Gary have many places where buildings are crumbling, any power is being used is stolen from the power company, dogs and gang-bangers run the streets and God help you if you get lost and drive into the area. If you are spotted, you may not live to see another day. More likely you will be deliberately smacked by a vehicle and, when you get out to exchange insurance information you will be robbed.

There should be a special place in hell for Lyndon Baines Johnson and everyone who helped him craft the Great Society legislation that created a mass of pigs and sheep in the inner cities. Now walking tall and looking for trouble, the wolves that are inner city gang-bangers run in packs and feed off of the sheep and pigs and any other animal weak enough to be defenseless against them. Now imagine how many good people are stuck in the inner cities and try so hard to raise their children right? Burdened by tax foolishness if they are married, sending kids to schools where few teachers give a rip, looking for a way to afford to get the heck OUT OF THERE!

I do my best to inform the sheep and pigs and crabs and get the parrots to THINK for once. Eagles think they do not have anything to worry about so rarely do they deign to even read something like an obscure worldview blog. I am usually fighting the parrots and jackals. I am a lion. I work for my living, I have built my own business despite a couple of horrific accidents that would have allowed me to go on the government dole. I have not even considered it and only use the handicapped moniker to allow me to park right in front of stores. I believe this nation was founded by lions and every man and woman in the USA ought to be lions!

However, there are lions who disagree with me, I do not mean to say a "Progressive" or a "Darwinist" cannot be a lion. I believe any such lions will eventually come over to my side because I am for traditional morals, the Constitution of the United States, capitalism and innovation and against a strong central government but rather believe that more power should go to the state and local governments. Lions tend to be individuals who cherish the freedom to succeed and are willing to work for it. So my hope is all the Lions will eventually join forces and become Kings of the Jungle again, and in doing so returning power to the people = One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all...with power distributed to the States and Local entities as the Founding Fathers had envisioned us.

I think Solomon only missed one other animal:

The Hyena - They are opportunistic and carnivorous and love to eat what another animal has caught by outnumbering the predator and chasing him away. One on one, a lion will defeat a hyena and so would a leopard or a tiger. But a pack of hyenas can chase away outnumbered big cats.

Washington, DC has a lot of lions, but they also have a lot of jackals and hyenas...and parrots. There are also the jackasses but everybody knows there are going to be a lot of them in politics! Hmm, I suppose there are jellyfish because some politicians I know have no backbone? In any event, while this post is a bit off the subject, consider for yourself what the USA has become. We were once a nation populated by lions, but the other animals have reproduced much faster than the lions and therefore the gullible and the uncaring have helped begin the destruction of the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet.

Kevin Tracy on why you should be a Republican

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 19:49:00 +0000

A three part series that some of you may have missed this month, all three worth reading and pondering:

Why Libertarians Should Vote Republican

Why Young Voters Should Be Republicans

Why Union Workers Should Vote Republican

Love him or hate him, his writing draws debate and conversation to the surface.

Charley Reese's Final column! Food for thought...

noreply@blogger.com (AmericanVet) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 23:49:00 +0000

Charley Reese's final column for the Orlando Sentinel... He has been a journalist for 49 years. He is retiring and this is HIS LAST COLUMN.

This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. It's a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering!

545 vs. 300,000,000 People
-By Charlie Reese

"Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. ( The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.)

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?( John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. ) If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. [The House has passed a budget but the Senate has not approved a budget in over three years. The President's proposed budgets have gotten almost unanimous rejections in the Senate in that time. ]

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ..

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees... We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!"

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

Hat tip to this link

The Fiscal Cliff or Sky is Falling Syndrome

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 13:30:00 +0000

As all the news networks and tax planners will be focused on the so called fiscal cliff for the next 48 hours, I thought it might be nice to take a deep breath.

First, we missed the end of the world on December 21st, the one the Mayans projected ... and we will skip this end of the world too.   Sure it makes for good news content, and gives otherwise slow news days something to crow about.   But the fiscal cliff is a made up event, made up by the very people who are acting all upset about trying to find a solution - The President and The Congress.

There's no way from Indiana to guess if the Republicans will blink and cut a last minute deal, or if the Democrats will give a little and accept a deal in the next 48 hours.   I hope neither side gives in, and they drive off the cliff! I see almost no way possible that we'll ever get real cuts in the size of the federal government without this round of cuts.   We need the cuts more than we need to protect earners over $250,000 annually.

The economy is already improving, housing of course is going to lead the way on job creation, and small businesses will create the remaining. Big businesses are becoming less important once again to the economy.   Entrepreneurs need only some measure of confidence to go out and borrow, raise funds, and start new businesses.   I am one such entrepreneur, finally looking to start a company in 2013. And I am not thinking even a small amount about the $250,000 income level tax problem ... I'd love to have that problem in 2013!

Let's all take a deep breath and accept that cuts are important, caps on spending even more so, a constitutional amendment to balance the budget would be a dream for all of us.   The dollar will improve in strength, causing gasoline to drop in price. Interest rates will be maintained, even too low in my opinion, to protect housing and auto sales.   And cutting pay-offs to farmers by the way is a good thing.   $7 milk is another sky if falling exaggeration ... there is still such a thing as supply and demand.

Time to raise interest rates

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:05:00 +0000

{EAV:7dc4b9afdd1e6a5a}
Sounds crazy doesn't it?

But, with the recent strengthening of the economy, including true job growth finally, and the need for dollar strengthening, I would firmly propose that the Fed get ahead of the inflation curve now and begin raising rates slowly.

This will signal to the world that the economy of the most important economy in the world is on the rise
This will firmly restrict inflation looking forward
This will begin to reduce the pressure on the dollar and let it move to free floating

Feel free to disagree, or get all upset about the role of the Fed, but real estate is beginning to recover and rates are too low actually right now. It's time for rates to begin their natural tendency back toward 6% on 30 year mortgages.

What say you?

First post-election thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Dalton) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:51:00 +0000

In no particular order, and perhaps an edit will come later today when all the details become more clear.

It would appear voters and citizens actually want divided government. In choosing mainly Republican Governors and then re-electing President Obama they seem to signal that gridlock and the checks and balances of our constitution feels safer.
No one comes out of last night with a mandate. Not the President, not Congress, not any individual state leader. We are a nation that is split very close to 50/50 on the hard questions of policy ... but not necessarily vision. It feels like we agree on a vision of limited government, it's just that some want to use government to get us through the bumps and others want it out of the way.
At the local level the Democrats basically ran the table in Porter County, even though the statewide trends went Republican and the legislators elected are for the most part Republican. Again voters seem to be signalling an interest in divided and balanced government. But something more, negative campaigning at the local level probably backfired. More on this in future posts about policy in NW Indiana, but negative campaigning doesn't work as well when we all know each other in a small community.
We stand ready for a dramatic recovery, similar to Clinton second term and Bush Jr first term. Watch for deals to finally be cut that reduce deductions and regulations. Watch for education funding at the state level to be contentious as inner city schools get cut and closed. Watch for job creation to drive the middle class back into the arena of public thought, they weren't there this year, they were focused on paying bills.
For me and my house, we're watching closely the real estate and construction markets now. Watch for a dramatic recovery in housing as rates are still low, taxes in Indiana are capped, home prices are almost too affordable, rents are too high, and it's been 5 years since this sleeping giant industry woke up and started hiring. When they do it will be big.