Growth / Innovation Starts With Small Business : Obama Stifles Small Business

Minimizing innovation and business start ups is a strategy of the progressive socialists to reduce prosperity, forcing the economy into decline. It seems realistic to believe if the economy can be controlled by a central authority, the population will have to be subservient to that authority.

It sounds simple enough and so far it seems to be working as the last report on the growth of the economy was about 1%, and the labor participation rate at historical low levels. The average Growth rate is less the 2% for Mr Obama entire time in office, 2009 to the present. Recovery? Worse then in 1948. And worst of all maybe, the debt headed for $18trillion, triple what is was in 2009.

Still think Mr Obama and his friends in the democrat party actually have out best interests at heart? Is so, then you deserve what you will get for voting democrat year after year. Don't blame others, blame yourself. 

Start-Ups are Essential for Vitalizing the Economy
Source: Robert Samuelson, "Fewer Start-Ups Is An Ugly Economic Signal," Real Clear Markets, April 13, 2015.

April 14, 2015

There are many motives for mergers: to minimize competition; to reduce costs by elimination overlapping operations; to acquire a hot product or technology; to enter new geographic markets; or to get bigger. But the popularity of M&A actually involves economic weakness. Although buying another company may enhance the acquiring firm's innovation, it does not add much to society's. And society's capacity to innovate is crucial. It generates the wealth needed to raise incomes and dampen social conflicts.

The recent reductions in forecast growth imply a dimmer outlook for innovation, as measured by labor productivity. Weaker productivity growth in turn means weaker wage and income growth. Productivity's performance since the Great Recession has been abysmal. From 2009 to 2014, it has averaged a meager 0.9 percent annually. That is less than half the average growth of 2 percent since the late 1940s and one-third of the 3 percent rate of the first two decades after World War II. These differences have huge implications for wages and incomes. At 3 percent, incomes double in about 25 years; at 2 percent, about 35 years and at 1 percent, around 70 years.

Productivity occurs primarily through the private sector. If companies are hidebound, productivity will suffer. Evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is in decline and that U.S. firms are becoming older, more entrenched and less dynamic. Start-ups fell from 15 percent of all businesses in 1978 to 8 percent in 2011. Older firms jumped from 23 percent of businesses in 1992 to 34 percent in 2011.

Their share of jobs was even higher, almost three-quarters of all workers. Start-ups ultimately account for a disproportionately high share of new job creation and innovation. The vigor of these new firms is essential for the economy to revitalize itself.

Welfare Benefites & High Minimum Wage : Why Work?

This seems so much like the ideology of the progressive socialists democrats in that if they can increase the number of people depending on the local, state and federal government agencies for their well being instead of providing for themselves, the democrats can establish a permanent voter base of people that depend on government for survival.

Little wonder, as well, the democrats are demanding the free ride to citizenship for immigrants. No waiting. Come across the boarder and vote. 

Generous Welfare and Increasing Minimum Wage Decrease the Labor Force Participation Rate
Source: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, "More Americans Give Up Looking for Work," Economic Policies for the 21st Century, April 8, 2015.

April 14, 2015

The March jobs numbers were disappointing not only for the lower level of job creation, but for the continued decline in the labor force participation rate. It is now at 62.7 percent. Last year's average labor force participation rate was 62.9 percent.

Over the past few years, the trend of labor force participation rate has moved in one direction — down — despite steady but slow economic growth over the past few years. If America had the 2006 labor force participation rates with the same number of people employed, last year's average unemployment rate would have been 11.4 percent instead of 6.2 percent. In 2006, 91 percent of men ages 25 to 54 years old were in the labor force. In 2014 the share was 88 percent. Controlling for demographic shifts, three million fewer men are in the labor force now compared with seven years ago. Historically, about 25 percent of women work part time. The share of women ages 25 to 54 years working or looking for work has declined to 74 percent last year from 76 percent in 2006. That adds up to 2.6 million fewer women in the labor force.

The labor force participation rate for workers ages 20 to 24 years old was 75 percent in 2006 compared with 71 percent last year. That is 800,000 fewer young workers. The labor force participation rate for workers ages 16 to 19 years old was 34 percent last year, compared to 44 percent in 2006. Controlling for demographic shifts, that adds up to 400,000 fewer teens.

With broader eligibility for government-provided food stamps, health care, and disability benefits, it has become more advantageous for some people to stay home than to work. At the same time, increases in the minimum wage and burdensome regulations have made it harder for employers to hire more employees.

The solution is to move the provision of welfare benefits back to the states and leave regulations to the states.

National Debt Not Improving(CBO) : 2020 Deficit Over $1Trillion, Again

One has to wonder just when will congress and the American people begin to understand how serious a threat the debt is to our country's economic health? And worse maybe, when the time comes to pay the bill but there isn't anymore money to borrow, will the general public believe it?

Despite What Obama Says, the Federal Debt Is Not Improving
Source: Ron Haskins, "The Federal Debt is Worse Than You Think," Brookings, April 8, 2015.

April 13, 2015

When the Great Recession hit, the federal debt was equal to about 40 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, to fight the recession, Congress enacted an $800 billion dollar stimulus bill. Stimulus spending, combined with already enacted spending and tax policy, resulted in four years of trillion dollar deficits. As a result, the debt ballooned to 78 percent of GDP in 2013, almost twice the pre-recession level.

The annual deficit is now declining at a stately pace, but by 2016 it will begin increasing again, and by 2020 under Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) alternative fiscal scenario, we will once again return to annual deficits above a trillion dollars, thereby once again greatly increasing the national debt.

The accumulation of debt should prevent federal policymakers from feeling any sense of accomplishment. In fact, CBO estimates the debt will be well over 100 percent of GDP by 2039.
When CBO incorporates its estimates of the impact of the continuing large federal deficits on the nation's economy, it estimates the accumulated debt held by the public will reach an astounding 180 percent of GDP by 2039. One wonders if members of Congress or the President read these CBO reports.

Under the CBO estimates used by Congress, we have a huge debt hole. Under the more comprehensive fiscal gap measurement, we have a chasm. Nevertheless, Congress has no plans to deal with the notorious level of debt.


 

Interstate Tolling for Repair : Costs to $1Trillion

I wonder how this will actually work to repair or replace our highways given how the system that we have now is supposed to work but  in many cases is a slush fund for politicians to steal from when ever they need money for reelections.

And given all of the fraud that occurs in state and federal government with the highway funding, why should we believe any new system of funding wouldn't be abused like the last one?

Can Interstate Tolling Save U.S. Roads?
Source: Baruch Feigenbaum, "Grant User-Friendly Tolling Flexibility for Highways," National Center for Policy Analysis, April 20, 2015.

April 27, 2015

America's Interstate highways are reaching the end of their 50-year design life, and will all need to be reconstructed over the next several decades. The estimated cost of reconstruction and prudent widening is nearly $1 trillion — and no funding source exists for this purpose.

The U.S. has a tolling pilot program, but all the slots are currently used. To allow other states to rebuild their Interstates through tolling, expand the three-state Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program to all 50 states and allow participating states to use it to reconstruct all Interstate highways in their states, not just one.

To ensure the support of highway users, provide stronger protections to ensure that the tolls are pure user fees that can be used only for the capital and operating costs of the rebuilt rural and urban Interstates. These protections should include:

• Statutory limitation on use of the toll revenues to the rural and urban Interstates only;
• Beginning tolling only after an Interstate segment has been rebuilt;
• Requiring that tolling be all electronic and interoperable nationwide;
• And granting rebates of state fuel taxes to Interstate toll-payers for the miles driven on the newly tolled and rebuilt Interstates.

Since there is no identified source of funding for the $1 trillion cost of Interstate reconstruction, a major benefit of this change is to provide such a funding source, available to states that comply with the user-friendly provisions. Since a per-mile toll is a mileage-based user fee, if all 50 states opted in, that would convert 25 percent of all vehicle-miles of travel to mileage-based user fees, an important first step toward replacing per-gallon fuel taxes.

If the toll rates were limited to covering the capital and operating costs of the rebuilt system, highway users would pay somewhat more than they do now to use the Interstates, but would receive much better services.
 

Patent Abuse Reform : Congress Actually Working On it? WOW

This might be a little in the weeds of reforming the Patent system for most of us but it's interesting to understand how the system works and the abuses that take place. And that congress is actually taking the time to do something about it is amazing.

Patent Reform Could Soon End Abusive Behavior
Source: Will Rinehart, "Recent Developments in Patent Policy," American Action Forum, April 21, 2015.

April 27, 2015

Changes to the current patent law regime have been proposed to reduce a firm's ability to engage in abusive behavior. This concern spurred significant changes to patent law in 2011. Despite this recent legislation, Congress is again considering reforms, with the focus on so-called patent trolls. Patent trolls are entities that earn income off their patents from suing others for infringement.
Here is a closer look at the proposed changes:

• Fee shifting would change U.S. law so the loser in a patent infringement lawsuit would have to pay for the attorneys' fees of the winner as well. Only in those instances where the court determines that the loser advanced objectively reasonable positions would they be able to escape the attorneys' fees.
• Customer stay protections make it easier for the manufacturer of an allegedly infringing good to step in to defend its product while putting a temporary halt to proceedings against an end customer.
• Pleading standards are also another area slated for reform. At the beginning of a lawsuit, each side must formally submit their claims and defenses. The information required in patent cases is far less than in other parts of law. The question for Congress is whether it should issue a new standard or be subject to the broader standard.

Abusive claims accounted for over half of all patent litigation in 2012, while there was a nearly 40 percent increase in suits by non-participating entities (NPE) between 2007 and 2011.Thus, there has been pressure to change some of the aspects of patent laws to stop firms from engaging in abusive behavior.
 

Marriage Penalties & Bonuses In the Tax Code : Why?

Why would it so difficult to actually sit down and say we are going to change the way we do taxing and then do it? No wringing of the hands, no worrying about what the democrats will do or say or how it will effect your reelection chances. Just do what is best for the country.

Just do what you said you would do if you were elected and then when you took the oath of office. Why is that so hard to understand?

The U.S. Tax Code: Get Married and Face Potential Penalties
Source: Kyle Pomerleau, "Understanding the Marriage Penalty and Marriage Bonus," Tax Foundation, April 23, 2015.

April 27, 2015

One unintended feature of the United States' income tax system is that the combined tax liability of a married couple may be higher or lower than their combined tax burden if they had remained single. This is called the marriage penalty or marriage bonus.

Here are the details:

• A marriage penalty or bonus is the change in a couple's total tax bill as a result of getting married and thus filing their taxes jointly.
• Marriage bonuses typically occur when two individuals with disparate incomes marry.
• Marriage penalties occur when two individuals with equal incomes marry; this is true for both high- and low-income couples.
• Marriage bonuses can be as high as 20 percent of a couple's income, and marriage penalties can be as high as 12 percent of a couple's income.
• While research shows that marriage penalties and bonuses do not have much effect on whether a couple will marry, they do impact how much each spouse works.

Marriage penalties and bonuses are a way that the income tax code currently violates the principle of neutrality. These penalties and bonuses potentially affect people's behavior, especially whether to work. It is possible to completely eliminate both marriage penalties and bonuses, but it would require a significant overhaul of the tax code that drastically changes the current distribution of income taxes paid.

Short of a complete overhaul, it is possible to reduce marriage penalties in the tax code, such as a permanent extension of marriage penalty relief for the Earned Income Tax Credit and widening the income tax brackets for high-income taxpayers filing jointly.
 

Tax Fraud Exploding : Congress Blames Turbo Tax? What?

Even though we had a landslide victory for the Republican last November, the results seem to be no different then if the election had gone the other way. But to blame Turbo Tax for the failure of congress's inability to take responsibility for the business of the country is just more of the politics of 'business as usual'.

So what have we gained? McConnell and Boehner are  running the entire show now and what do we have to show for it is these two 'fiddle while America burns'.

Congress Blames TurboTax for Billion Dollar Tax Fraud
Source: Tom Giovanetti, "Blame the IRS and Congress, Not Software, For Tax Fraud," The Hill, March 12, 2015.

April 27, 2015

The federal government has never made fraud prevention a major focus. Instead, too often the incentive is to keep the voters happy by making sure the checks go out quickly — and worry about fraud later, maybe. Such a "pay and chase" approach was actually the official policy of Medicare until very recently, and even after the Affordable Care Act threw $77 million at the problem and instituted a glitzy new state-of-the-art anti-fraud center, Medicare fraud still climbed by $12 billion over 2010 levels.

It is not as if such fraud is particularly hard to detect. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in 2011 alone 54,000 tax refunds totaling over $86 million were issued to 10 physical addresses. You read that right — 54,000 tax refunds to only 10 addresses. A single address in Atlanta received 24,000 tax refunds in 2011. Such fraud should have been identified about the time the third check was issued to the same address.

The tax fraud problem — estimated to be $5.8 billion last year alone — is likewise a result of too much complexity and inadequate incentives on the part of administrators. Responsibility falls squarely at the feet of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to enforce existing law but ultimately to Congress, as it is within Congress\'s power to reform, simplify programs, and restructure administrator incentives to identify and prosecute fraud.

That is why it is shameful to see Congress pass the buck and attempt to pin the blame for tax fraud on . . . tax preparation software. That is right—according to some in Congress, apparently TurboTax is to blame.
 

Foreign Born Population Increased and Incomes Decreased : Who knew?

WOW - how cool is this? Oh and wait for it, now we have another 5 to 8 million more immigrants that will shortly be entering the legal job market and for goods and services as well, all demanding jobs or else. Oh and all will be voting for democrats that have promised them everything for free. More?

And when they all become citizens they can import all of their relatives as well. That's millions more ready for the good life at your expense. Feel better now?

What a good idea to elect a democrats that truly want to do you harm. Is Gruber right? Yikes!

As Foreign-Born U.S. Population Increases, Incomes Decrease
Source: Caroline May, "Memo: Since 1970 Foreign-Born Population Increased 324.5 percent, Incomes Declined," Breitbart, April 23, 2015.

April 24, 2015

According to a new memo from the Congressional Research Service, as the foreign-born population increased in the United States from 1970 to 2013, the lower 90 percent of income earners saw their wages decline.

Here are the facts:

• Between 1970 and 2013, the estimated foreign-born population in the United States increased from 9,740,000 to 41,348,066, respectively, an increase of 31,608,066 persons, representing a percentage increase of 324.5 percent.
• The reported income of the bottom 90 percent of tax filers in the United States decreased from an average of $33,621 in 1970 to $30,980 in 2013 for an aggregate decline of $2,641 or a percent decline of 7.9 percent.
• The share of income held by the bottom 90 percent of the U.S. income distribution declined from 68.5% in 1970 to 53.0% in 2013, an absolute decline of 15.5 percentage points.

The memo comes on the heels of a Center for Immigration analysis of Census data which found that in the next eight years the foreign-born population will reach a record high 51 million and will account for 82 percent of U.S. growth.

The U.S. already admits one million immigrants, a half million immigrant students, 700,000 guest worker foreign workers, and 70,000 refugees and aslyees (persons seeking or granted political asylum).
 

America's Second Revolution About Over : Did Obama's EPA Win?

How is it that the EPA can legislate and the congress sits on their collective hands? With the obvious criminal actions on the part of the EPA, it would seem reasonable that members of congress would find it important enough to take a stand on the floor of those hallowed halls to defend our countries Constitution.

But in reality that has not happened and is not likely to happen given that it's to easy to do nothing and collect their pay checks all the while they watch the country be raped by the democrats and their friends in the environmental industry.

What's really happening here is that America is in the last throws of the second American revelation, a silent revelation where the people are willingly allowing our country to be overthrown by the progressive socialist liberal democrats without comment or protest. Millions stand by while our country is torn apart and then being reassembled to reflect  a new reality, a new morality of a population accepting subsistence as a way of life.

Are we reality ready to accept this new norm? God help us!

Obama Seeks to Nationalize Each State's Electric Power Sector
Source: Kathleen Harnett White, "The Facts About the Clean Power Act," Texas Public Policy Foundation, April 2015.

April 24, 2015

A new publication by Texas Public Policy Foundation's distinguished senior fellow Kathleen Harnett White identifies key points in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Power Plan (CPP).
Consider:

• The EPA's Clean Power Plan (CPP) is a sweeping as­sertion of federal power over states to radically overhaul the entire system of electric power.
• The federal government has nationalized the health care system through ObamaCare and nationalized banks through Dodd Frank. Now, the EPA would nationalize each state's electric-power sector.
• But there is a huge distinction between these laws and the proposed rule: ObamaCare and Dodd Frank Con­gress enacted new federal law. Here, with no new law, EPA has acted in spite of Congress's continual refusal to regulate CO2.
• The rule's purpose is to reduce carbon dioxide from the electric power sector by 30 percent. When you do the climate arithmetic, this rule would reduce supposed glob­al warming by 0.02 degrees Celsius. This is an irrelevant change.
• Compliance with the EPA's require­ments would cede fundamental state authority over elec­tric utilities. Commissioner Tony Clark of FERC testified to Congress that the EPA's rule fundamentally re-orders the longstanding relation between the feds and states to create a "mother-may-I" relationship that has never be­fore existed.

One of the nation's preeminent Constitutional schol­ars, Laurence Tribe at Harvard Law School, denounced this rule. His Wall Street Jounral editorial recently stated, "Frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA pro­posal."
 

Venezulan Oil Controlled By OPEC : American Energy Controlled by Obama

Since when has a communist country ever done the right thing for it people? Is this that much different in Cuba? Is it that much different then what is happening in America under the leadership of Mr Obama and the democrats?

Venezuela in Serious Need of Energy Reform
Source: Santiago Bello, "Feeling the Heat — Oil Export Stalemate in Venezuela," National Center for Policy Analysis, April 22, 2015.

April 24, 2015

Venezuelan oil production has not risen substantially in almost two decades. Why? Simply put, because of the country's involvement in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its incredible reliance on oil, which is estimated to be responsible for 96 percent of government revenue.

This is not the byproduct of a lack of private interest in the country: Exploration and extraction companies such as Chevron already operate within Venezuela and the Bolivarian government even claims grievances against ExxonMobil for resource theft by its international waters with Guyana.

This is not because the country is attempting to use its reserves more sustainably — Venezuela has the largest deposit of proven oil reserves, and owns over 17 percent of the world's oil. The combined lack of productivity and revenue is due to OPEC quotas, which have become a thorn in President Maduro's side. Venezuela's recent attempts to counter economic collapse and civil unrest have come in the form of two new deals: Much like Nicaragua and Venezuela's accord to trade coffee beans for crude oil, and Cuba and Venezuela's deal to trade oil for teachers and doctors, Uruguay has now agreed to begin trading food for oil India has joined China in becoming a key consumer of Venezuelan oil, with a long-term investment plan of $143.7 billion being put in place to develop infrastructure for oil production in Venezuela.

Apart from simply diversifying their economy and liberalizing the market, it is becoming increasingly urgent that Venezuela corresponds with the needs of its people rather than the whims of OPEC. The ailing nation should reduce these regulatory barriers such that its production more accurately reflects growth in global oil demand; it is after all one of the few oil-rich nations that has yet to do so.

Seniors In Retirement With Mortgages : Short Route to The Poor House

Rest assured seniors, if you think Social Security will carry you to the end even if you don't have a huge mortgages, then you have been Gruberized. But to carry a huge mortgage into retirement is not in your best interest, worse it will the shortest route you can take to the poor house.

And if that's not bad enough, if you haven't started to save, invest, for your retirement when you were in your twenties, you have made another very bad mistake. The amount of money you will need to just get by in our inflated markets is huge. A good estimate would be in the neighborhood of three quarters of a million dollars in today values. What will you need in thirty years? Triple that?

Think about that for a minute then make decisions for the future accordingly.

Debt Is Becoming a Growing Problem in Retirement
Source: Rodney Brooks, "Get Rid of that Debt Before You Retire," USA Today, April 22, 2015.

April 24, 2015

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the percentage of homeowners 65 and older with mortgage debt increased from 22 percent in 2001 to 30 percent in 2011. Among those 75 and older, the rate more than doubled, from 8.4 percent to 21.2 percent.

In addition, the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) says U.S. families carrying the highest levels of debt were those with heads of household aged 55 to 64. They had an average debt level of $107,060 in 2010.

For an age group nearing retirement, that is not a good thing. Moreover, that may be why Baby Boomers' confidence in having sufficient savings to last through retirement dropped to a five-year low. An Insured Retirement Institute survey reports only 27 percent of Boomers are highly confident that their savings will last.

Thomas Anderson, author of The Value of Debt in Retirement, says there are actually three kinds of debt:

• Oppressive debt — credit card debt or payday loans — has interest rates higher than 10 percent.
• Working debt includes mortgage debt, which usually has 3-5 percent interest rates.
• Enriching debt is debt people choose to take on but have the money to pay the balance.

However, mortgage debt can be the biggest issue for retirees and planners are mixed on whether it is better to pay off a mortgage or keep it for the tax benefits. On average, those entering retirement do so with an average of $100,000 in mortgage debt.

 

Home Mortgages Regulations : Gov. Again, Screwing Taxpayers

Just how stupid are we? We elected the Republicans to control both house of the government in order to fix our domestic problems from ObamaCare to the banking nightmare that is Dodd/Frank bank regulations bill that is killing off businesses in our country and destroying innovation.

And is the result of our faith in the Republicans, we in the trenches are told to pound sand. It's politics as usual.

Government Meddling In Home Mortgages More Now Than It Did In 2008
Source: Norbert J. Michel, "Status Quo On Housing Finance Keeps Failed System In Place," Heritage Foundation, April 22, 2015.

April 24, 2015

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the federal government spent decades instituting rules and regulations that ultimately dictated everything banks could do. Regulators even specified capital requirements that supposedly certified financial firms were safe.

On the eve of the crash, the federal government either insured or owned $6 trillion in home mortgages, with essentially zero capital in reserve in case anything went wrong. Nearly one decade later, The United States is in an even worse position.
Here is where things stand:

• Today, financial institutions have even more rules; there is a new regulator dedicated to making sure consumers are protected from paying off their debts, and taxpayers are explicitly on the hook for just about every new mortgage in the United States.
• Billions in taxpayer dollars have been used to prop up the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), an agency that now insures three times the amount of mortgages it did prior to the crisis. In addition, the FHA remains in violation of the law that requires it to maintain an adequate capital reserve against future losses.
• Taxpayers were forced to spend $200 billion to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that provide guarantees on mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Today, the GSEs remain under government control with an agreement that requires their capital reserve to be taken to zero by 2018.

Yet the prospects of Congress fundamentally reforming this system remain as dim as ever, even after the election that gave Republicans control of both chambers of Congress.

Most politicians have clearly revealed their preference for the status quo, and very few are willing to debate the fundamental issue: Should the federal government be involved in housing finance?
 

Constiutional Rights Of Marriage : Court Politicians to Decide our Fate?

What a great read on just where we are today in this country when it comes to deciding what we want and who we are in America.  What is so worrisome is we seem to have lost our way. Rather then facing our problems that will effect our futures, we bury our heads in our smart phones thinking others will solve the problem. The larger problem is there are those that are more then willing to solve the problems of our country, only their approach is detrimental to our way of life. Why are so many among us willing to allow that to happen? The high court meets today on this subject and their decisions will effect millions who believe marriage is not a right but a decision. And given that the court is all about the politics of the day, we have little hope for a positive outcome for those of us that believe marriage is between a man and a Woman. How is it that 9 politicians have the power to override the will of the people? Still there is hope the court will understand that more then 80 million of us have already voted against same sex marriage as a right in making their collective decision.

        

What You Need to Know About Gay Marriage and the Supreme Court
   Ryan T. Anderson / @RyanT_Anderson          

One week from today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about gay marriage. Here’s what you need to know.
1. There simply is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires all 50 states to redefine marriage. Whatever people may think about marriage as a policy matter, everyone should be able to recognize the Constitution does not settle this question.
Unelected judges should not insert their own policy preferences about marriage and then say the Constitution requires them everywhere.

2. The overarching question before the Supreme Court is not whether a male–female marriage policy is the best, but only whether it is allowed by the Constitution. The question is not whether government-recognized same-sex marriage is good or bad policy, but only whether it is required by the Constitution.

 

Those suing to overturn male-female marriage laws thus have to prove that the man–woman marriage policy that has existed in the United States throughout our entire history is prohibited by the Constitution. They cannot successfully so argue.

3. As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito pointed out two years ago, there are two different visions of what marriage is on offer. One view of marriage sees it as primarily about consenting adult romance and care-giving. Another view of marriage sees it as a union of man and woman—husband and wife—so that children would have moms and dads.
Our Constitution is silent on which of these visions is correct, so We the People have constitutional authority to make marriage policy.

The debate over whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships is unlike the debate over interracial marriage. Race has absolutely nothing to do with marriage, and there were no reasonable arguments ever suggesting it did.
Laws that banned interracial marriage were unconstitutional and the Court was right to strike them down. But laws that define marriage as the union of a man and woman are constitutional, and the Court shouldn’t strike them down.

4. The only way the Court could strike down state laws that define marriage as the union of husband and wife is to adopt a view of marriage that sees it as an essentially genderless institution based primarily on the emotional needs of adults and then declare that the Constitution requires that the states (re)define marriage in such a way.
Equal protection alone is not enough. To strike down marriage laws, the Court would need to say that the vision of marriage that our law has long applied equally is just wrong: that the Constitution requires a different vision entirely.
But the Constitution does not require a new vision of marriage.
Advocates for the judicial redefinition of marriage cannot reasonably appeal to the authority of Windsor, to the text or original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, to the fundamental rights protected by the Due Process Clause, or to Loving v. Virginia. So, too, one cannot properly appeal to the Equal Protection Clause or to animus or Lawrence v. Texas.
Nor can one say that gays and lesbians are politically powerless, so one cannot claim they are a suspect class. Nor can one say that male–female marriage laws lack a rational basis or that they do not serve a compelling state interest in a narrowly tailored way, as explained in Heritage Foundation legal memorandum “Memo to Supreme Court: State Marriage Laws Are Constitutional.”

5. Everyone in this debate is in favor of marriage equality. Everyone wants the law to treat all marriages in the same ways.
The only disagreement our nation faces is over what sort of consenting adult relationship is a marriage. Since the U.S. Constitution doesn’t answer that question, the people and their elected representative should.
And they should democratically enact laws that define marriage as the union of man and woman, husband and wife, mother and father.

6. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife, to be father and mother to any children their union produces. Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and woman are distinct and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children deserve a mother and a father.
Marriage is society’s best way to ensure the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other—and to take responsibility for their children.

7. Redefining marriage to make it a genderless institution fundamentally changes marriage: It makes the relationship more about the desires of adults than the needs—or rights—of children. It teaches that mothers and fathers are interchangeable.

8. Rather than rush to a 50-state “solution” on marriage policy for the entire country, the Supreme Court should allow the laboratories of democracy the time and space to see how redefining marriage will impact society as a whole.
There is no need for the Court to “settle” the marriage issue like it tried to settle the abortion issue. Allowing marriage policy to be worked out democratically will give citizens and their elected representatives the freedom to arrive at the best public policy for everyone.

As the 6th Circuit noted when it upheld several states’ marriage laws, “federalism…permits laboratories of experimentation—accent on the plural—allowing one State to innovate one way, another State another, and a third State to assess the trial and error over time.” Judges should not cut this process short.

At the end of the day, this is a debate about whether citizens or judges will decide an important and sensitive policy issue—in this case, the very nature of civil marriage. Read more about it in our legal memo.

Ukraine Arms Everyone : Obama Refuses to Help - America Shamed

America has been shamed to such a degree that we might not be able to recover. Mr Obama's ideology has driven us into a state of decline where our economy and foreign policy has become a source of fear for our allies and a joke for our enemies.

With world on fire at home and overseas, there is little to hope for given Mr Obama has nearly two years left in office and the prospect that another progressive socialist democrat will become president and therefor our country as we know will be gone.

That Mr Obama refuses to give even defensives weapon to defend themselves, a promise that America would defend the Ukraine if they gave up their nuclear weapons, has blind-sided the Ukrainians and left them to their own resources. This is unacceptable for a country the prides itself for offering freedom to all that seek it. Worse, we promised the Ukrainians but now told them we don't care what happens to them.

Is this what we have become under the leadership of the democrats? What ever happened to our pride in our country? How do we explain to the survivors of all of our wars for freedom that they died in vain!

Click on the link below, then try and understand what is happening to us and what we stand for now anymore.

‘If the Russians Come, We Will Destroy Them': Ukrainian Civilians Prepare for War
Nolan Peterson / @nolanwpeterson

http://click.heritage.org/CHn00V0te0XM0rsN3y0bT06

Scientists Investigate Adjusted Climate Change Facts : They Lied, Again - Still

This is really good read and to understand just how bad the 'changers' and 'warmers' are using this false narrative of climate change to benefit their ideology of fear, and all the while making themselves rich. It is imperative to understand how and why we are being used by the environmental industry and our government to force our country into decline.

Ignore the findings of these scientists that seek the truth at your own peril. Read this article and then decide what the truth is or isn't on man made climate change. Don't willingly be used as tools for the advancement of an ideology of hate and fear. Prove to the world you haven't been Gruberized. Take control.

Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures

The Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry
 By Christopher Booker

8:14PM BST 25 Apr 2015

Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed “its hottest March since records began in 1880”. This year, according to “US government scientists”, already bids to outrank 2014 as “the hottest ever”. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).

But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”.

An adjusted graph from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were “Climategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warming” and “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandal”.

My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAA’s GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.

So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.


The panel is chaired by Terence Kealey, until recently vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham. His team, all respected experts in their field with many peer-reviewed papers to their name, includes Dr Peter Chylek, a physicist from the National Los Alamos Laboratory; Richard McNider, an emeritus professor who founded the Atmospheric Sciences Programme at the University of Alabama; Professor Roman Mureika from Canada, an expert in identifying errors in statistical methodology; Professor Roger Pielke Sr, a noted climatologist from the University of Colorado, and Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist whose many papers on climatology have included studies in the use of “homogenisation” in data records.

Their inquiry’s central aim will be to establish a comprehensive view of just how far the original data has been “adjusted” by the three main surface records: those published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), the US National Climate Data Center and Hadcrut, that compiled by the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (Cru), in conjunction with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction. All of them are run by committed believers in man-made global warming.

Below, the raw data in graph form

For this the GWPF panel is initially inviting input from all those analysts across the world who have already shown their expertise in comparing the originally recorded data with that finally published. In particular, they will be wanting to establish a full and accurate picture of just how much of the published record has been adjusted in a way which gives the impression that temperatures have been rising faster and further than was indicated by the raw measured data.

Already studies based on the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Arctic and South America have suggested that this is far too often the case. But only when the full picture is in will it be possible to see just how far the scare over global warming has been driven by manipulation of figures accepted as reliable by the politicians who shape our energy policy, and much else besides.

If the panel’s findings eventually confirm what we have seen so far, this really will be the “smoking gun”, in a scandal the scale and significance of which for all of us can scarcely be exaggerated.
More details of the Global Warming Policy Foundation's International Temperature Data Review Project are available on the inquiry panel's website www.tempdatareview.org

Electronic Comm. Privacy Act Outdated and Invasive : ECPA Intrudes on Enternet

Like most other outdated laws and regulation that are on the books, as long as they serve the purpose of a select few they will remain. It will be up to those with the courage to make the hard decisions against the 'politics as usual' crowd to make the necessary changes that will prevent further spying on individual citizens like the NSA has in the past.

But if history of change in congress is any indicator, this will be a hard slug.

Online Activity Vulnerable Due To Outdated Laws
Source: Tom Giovanetti, "Without ECPA Update, Feds Will Spy on You Like It's 1986," The Hill, April 15, 2015.

April 23, 2015

The federal government is engaged in surveillance of electronic data transmission to a more massive extent than most people would have guessed, and much of it is almost assuredly outside of Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and a specific warrant.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) is the main federal law that governs data stored electronically, including email, business data, your photographs, social media, etc. But ECPA literally predates the Internet, so it predates the widespread use of home computers, email, and social media. It predates cloud storage. Almost any 30 year-old law probably requires updating, but ECPA is so out-of-date that it demands it.

Because ECPA is so outdated, right now virtually all of your electronic life is subject to warrantless search and seizure.

Here's the good news: Short of resolving these major disagreements over the NSA, FISA courts and warrantless wiretaps, Congress can still make a down payment on Americans' electronic privacy.
As proof of its bipartisan appeal, Sen. Pat Leahy (Vt.), a liberal Democrat, and Sen. Mike Lee (Utah), a Tea Party Republican, have co-sponsored legislation to bring ECPA up-to-date with current and future communications technology.

Updating ECPA for the Internet Age would allow Congress to show that it is sensitive to Americans' privacy concerns and to reaffirm Fourth Amendment protections. It would clarify the law so that law enforcement agencies could obtain access to what they need by following proper, constitutional procedures, and it would protect individuals and small businesses that do not have the resources to navigate the ambiguities unnecessarily created by the current ECPA's outdated provisions.
 It would give users of cloud services confidence that the data they upload has at least basic constitutional privacy protections. And it would give Congress an opportunity to work together and actually get something done that the American people would almost universally see as beneficial to their daily lives.
 

-

Light Rail and Trolley Systems Fail : But History Is Ignored

Just what do city controllers use for common sense when they decide to build transpiration systems that where ever they are installed, fail? It looks like some in city politics have a vested interest in doing this believing they can profit from the influx of federal funds. That the history of light rail or trolley systems leaves the taxpayers to make the payments for the failed systems is of no concern for the politicians. This about making a quick buck at the expense of others.

The trolley that is going forward in Milwaukee is a good example of the lack of concern for the taxpayers even in the face of overwhelming evidence it will fail to meet expectations. What this looks like, and fits the situation, is the old saying, 'take the money and run'.

Heavy and Light Rail Wasting Taxpayer Dollars
Source: Randal O'Toole, "Rails and Reauthorization: The Inequity of Federal Transit Funding," Cato Institute, April 21, 2015.

April 23, 2015

Federal transportation aid programs often create perverse incentives for states and metropolitan areas. The worst incentives are created by discretionary funds that encourage state and local governments to adopt wasteful programs in order to get the largest possible share of those funds.

For example, instead of encouraging cities and transit agencies to spend funds efficiently, the New Starts capital grants program encourages them to build the most expensive projects. By building a wildly expensive rail transit system, for example, Salt Lake City has collected $2.17 in federal funds per transit rider over the last 22 years. In comparison, by focusing exclusively on buses, Milwaukee has collected only 26 cents per transit rider.
Here is a sample of the costs:

• A 2.3-mile extension of an existing line in Denver is expected to cost nearly $100 million.
• In Seattle, a 3.3-mile route is expected to cost $628 million.
• In the 1980's. heavy-rail lines built in Atlanta, Baltimore, Miami and Washington cost an average of $140 million per mile (about $265 million in today's dollars.) In 2016, however, the expected cost is $340 million per mile.

Such expensive projects not only waste federal transportation dollars, they impose huge burdens on local taxpayers. As a result, far from promoting urban growth, regions that build rail transit end up growing slower than ones that do not.

To fix these problems, Congress should convert the New Starts and other discretionary funds to formula funds. To encourage states and regions to build transportation systems that respond to user needs, Congress should incorporate user fees into the formulas.
 

Supreme Court Decisions Political : How Will Roberts Vote?

I have always wonder how just nine people can decide what the enter country must believe what ever they say is the truth of a matter that is disputed among the citizens?

Aren't the judges just a political as the rest of us?

The worst case is Judge John Roberts decision on the ObamaCare mandate is a tax just because he didn't want the court to look partisan, he believed the past decision on the election in 2000 might have been partisan. He had to know the mandate was unconstitutional but decided to show how fair he was by siding with the opposition forces. The chief justice bowing to politics?

So given how the court can be manipulated by outside forces, I think the next big case to be decided this coming week will be more about politics then Constitutionality.

Monetary Stimulus A Political Tool? : What Happened to Market Forces?

Who knew? The central bank deciding monetary policy is not good especially when it appears to be motived by politics.

Instead of letting the economy finding it's own levels through competitive market forces, the Federal Reserve take the reigns to manipulate the outcome by falsely holding back real market forces that could show real growth in the economy instead of the stagnate economy that we have now, where some are getting rich while others are struggling to make ends meet.

One has to wonder if this same situation, free money to stimulate the economy, would exist if a Republican was president? I wonder to what will happen on the day after a Republican president is elected in 2016? Will the federal reserve raise interest rates immediately? I think we all know the answer to that.

Monetary Stimulus Does Not Compensate for Real Wealth Creation
Source: James Dorn, "Monetary Stimulus Creates Only Pseudo Wealth," Investors.com, April 20, 2015.

April 23, 2015

The European Central Bank's (ECB) decision to follow the Federal Reserve's footsteps and embark on a massive program of quantitative easing to lower interest rates, encourage risk and inflate asset prices seems to be working for the moment.

New wealth appears to be created even though simple economic logic tells us that monetary stimulus cannot permanently increase a nation's productive capacity or real income. Central bankers are engaged in pseudo, not true, wealth creation.

The wealth effect of central bank "stimulus" will be short-lived. When rates return to normal, as they must, asset bubbles will burst, major losses will be incurred and the distortions in capital markets will become evident.The Eurozone's negative real interest rates are not natural; they are the result of government policy — in particular, the ECB's unconventional monetary policy.

In a normally functioning market economy, with monetary equilibrium, nominal interest rates will be close to natural rates. However, when central banks cause an excess supply of money or an excess demand, monetary disequilibrium leads to a divergence between nominal and natural rates.
The main factor today resulting in negative real rates (i.e., financial repression) is the failure of central banks to adhere to a monetary rule. We live in a world of pure discretionary government fiat monies, and a political environment in which the focus is short-term palliatives rather than long-run solutions.

Economic freedom, not central bank intervention, is the driving force of wealth creation and widespread prosperity. Waiting a little longer with a hope that central banks know how to create wealth is a dangerous gambit.
 

Tax Gathering at Record Levels : But Gaps Exist - Why & Who?

Interesting in that the hated top 1% pay more then 35% of the total tax burden and the top 50% pay nearly all the taxes, seems to be lost on many that don't have access to the controls of the money making machine. But to others the system is completely understood.

That the economic conditions that exist today does not provide a good path to success for workers in the middle and lower classes that it might have in the past, is because of a top heavy mentality of government corporate cronyism providing virtually free money to government benefactors on Wall Street, and other financial entities, that proved funds for political machines as payback.

Ever wonder way Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve continues to hold interest rates at or near zero? Who benefits the most from a zero interest rate even though they may pay the most ins taxes?

If you are invested in the market, your are probably doing well, but if you live from pay check to pay check because you have to sustain the incredible inflation of food and other commodities to support yourself and your family, life takes on a completely different view then those that control the resources.

Little wonder then, with the present attitude of the progressive socialist liberal democrat government where life is all about gaining power by supporting those that can feed the need of the progressive party in power, the gap between those that have and those that don't is getting larger.

The more taxes that are collected the more access the progressives have to sustain control by spending more to feed the subsistent classes that votes for their benefactors. Taxes are the life blood of the progressive and there are never enough.

The progressive believes in controlling the masses from the top, and the best way to do that is to limit the options that the other classes have to gain a foot hold in the American dream of self sustained prosperity.

The progressive socialist understands individual freedom to chose ones own destiny with unlimited opportunity for prosperity is a killer for their ideology and therefore is attacked at every opportunity.

America to Pay Its Tax Bill on April 24
Source: Kyle Pomerleau, "Tax Freedom Day® 2015 Is April 24th," Tax Foundation, March 30, 2015.

April 23, 2015

Tax Freedom Day is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. Tax Freedom Day takes all federal, state, and local taxes and divides them by the nation's income. In 2015, Americans will pay:

• Some $3.3 trillion in federal taxes and $1.5 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total bill of more than $4.8 trillion, or 31 percent of the nation's income.
• Tax Freedom Day is one day later than last year due mainly to the country's continued steady economic growth, which is expected to boost tax revenue especially from the corporate, payroll, and individual income tax. 
• Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2015 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.
• If you include annual federal borrowing, which represents future taxes owed, Tax Freedom Day would occur 14 days later on May 8.
• Tax Freedom Day is a significant date for taxpayers and lawmakers because it represents how long Americans as a whole have to work in order to pay the nation's tax burden.

This year's Tax Freedom day comes one day later than it did last year and four days later than in 2013. Why? It is mainly to the country's continued steady economic growth. Higher wages and corporate profits are expected to boost tax revenue from the corporate, payroll, and individual income taxes.
 

Occupational Trades A Success : College Degrees Worth Quesitoned

This has been discussed on several other occasions in that many that attend college do not belong there. They have no idea what they want to do or capable of doing, especially their mental attitude and understanding what it will take to provide for themselves and a family in the actual real world of the competitive work force.

The labor force is screaming for skilled works, tradesmen, to fill thousands of good paying jobs, but the prevailing attitude of the new student and parents is they can not become a success without a college degree, no matter how worthless it will be after five or even six years of their lives in school and tens of thousands of dollars, if not a lot more, in debt.

If the truth be known, it's been programed into the general public that a skilled job is for the leaser individuals among us, and if you want to become one of those that calls the shots in the work force instead of having to the bidding of others to make a living, college is the only option you have.

Yikes!

Occupational Training Programs: A Viable Alternative to a College Degree?

Source: Andrew P. Kelly, Kevin J. James, Daniel K. Lautzenheiser, KC Deane and Rooney Columbus, "Building Paths To The Middle Class: Innovations In Career and Technical Education," American Enterprise Institute, April 2015.

April 23, 2015

There is currently more focus than ever on the importance of earning a college degree. At the same time, many students and parents are dubious that America's expensive, one-size-fits-all higher education system can adequately educate students for an ever more diverse and sophisticated world of work.

American Enterprise Institute's Center on Higher Education Reform commissioned four case studies on high-quality occupational training programs at U.S. schools—including one high school and several higher education institutions—that strive to equip students with marketable job skills and prepare them for the world of work.
General takeaways include:

• Austin Polytechnical Academy—a high school that formerly received high praise for offering a manufacturing and engineering curriculum to a traditionally low-performing, urban student population—is a telling example of the successes and struggles of establishing, at the secondary education level, new pathways to college and careers.
• Several automotive manufacturers with major US plants have collaborated with community colleges to design and implement factory-specific training programs. Mercedes-Benz's partnership with Shelton State Community College, for example, place students on a clear pathway from college to employment at the partner's factory.
• Stackable credentials are an emerging trend where colleges break up associate or bachelor's degree programs into smaller, more discrete certificates that can build on each other to provide students with more efficient and flexible educational pathways leading to lucrative careers in local industries. In particular, Brazosport College, a community college in Texas, successfully employs a stackable credentialing model in two programs.

Even still, many policymakers are hesitant to endorse tracking students into occupational training programs, and parents tend to have higher aspirations for their children than technical training.

Energy Proposal Shifts Control to States : Common Sense Works?

Good idea, for the most part, to let the states make the decision on 'fracking', but like so many other proposals that effect all of us, politicians can not allow the citizens to make important decisions as they believe we are too stupid and uninformed, as we all know how smart politicians are, we have to let others do the heavy lifting.

The fact that remains is carbon dioxide(CO2) is not a problem and as far as I can tell never has been, even though the environmentalist fascists drive home the notion are planet is being consumed by man-made climate change due to increased CO2 from fossil fuel consumption.

Climate change rhetoric is a tool for control and a source of revenue to sustain a mentally malignant few in power. Their misinformation and outright lies have cost, wasted, the taxpayers $billions of dollars that could have been spent on porjects that actually helped our country's environment.

The good news is this bill, if approved, will start us back on the road to prosperity. The bad news is this proposal will have little or no chance of passing as long as the progressive socialist democrats have the power to stop it. The collective democrat party will be steadfast against anything that changes the dynamics of the party ideology where power and control must remain in the hands of the few.

Once the power to control outcomes shifts back to the citizens, the states, the progressive socialist  liberal democrat part will cease to exist. The democrats aren't stupid, they know this and will do 'by any means necessary', stop this proposal from seeing the light of day.

New Energy Proposals Could be A Game Changer
Source: Santiago Bello, "American Energy Renaissance Act — Why Oil and Gas Matte," National Center for Policy Analysis, April 8, 2015.

April 10, 2015

The American Energy Renaissance Act of 2014 proposes many drastic changes to the status quo surrounding energy and environmental regulations. Energy proponents would laud passage of the bill, and while as a whole, it would be no victory for traditional environmentalists, one of its provisions stands out, as it seeks to phase out engine-damaging ethanol fuel and create a higher standard for fuel economy.
Those proposals include:

• Giving only states the right to regulate hydraulic fracturing;  
• Preventing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, water vapor and nitrous oxide emissions;  
• And repealing regulations on crude oil exports.

Transportation, which is second only to the electric power sector in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, could see significant long-term reduction in emissions while creating a surplus in disposable income for Americans and business owners.

Natural gas, while still not yet as widespread as coal, is very cost competitive, with liquid natural gas (LNG) at less than $10 per British thermal unit (Btu) while normal gas flirts with numbers around and below $5. Furthermore, if natural gas cannibalized market share from the coal it would help both the economy and the environment.

The consumer free market response to any good or service in production is to demand quality proportional to whatever price level that consumer is willing and able to pay. With time, more countries are joining the ranks of developed nations who — like the United States — are characterizing themselves as more than willing to pay premiums on energy for better environmental quality.

Clintons Caught In A Bind : The Media Runnig Scard?

I wonder how and why they have skated for so many years? Even now with over whelming evidence of criminal activity they will probably come out of this without a scratch.

The remaining question now is why is the main stream press going after the dynamic duo? After all they are democrats, corrupt, shameless and immoral with the best of them, and the press loves democrats, as they are all democrats, corrupt, shameless and immoral as well, then why attack such a lovable couple as the Clintons?

Why would good democrats eat their own? It's a real puzzle.

NPR Edits Perino Interview : NPR Edits Compassion

This is just another glimpse into the heart of the progressive socialist liberalism - it's not about real compassion for another individual, it's just about the words but not the deeds.

Expressing one's compassion for another person in words is enough. Mr Obama is the best example. To actually reach out to touch others is not something the progressive liberal can physically  do.

It's not who they are, and to watch or listen to others showing compassing for the human condition is disgusting to them.  NPR is just doing the only thing they can when something that opposes their ideology and that's to turn away, pretend it never happened.

Editing life is progressive liberalism.

NPR Cut Dana Perino’s Heartwarming Story About George W. Bush
Rob Bluey / @RobertBluey   ( The Daily Signal)       

Dana Perino’s new book features a touching encounter between President George W. Bush and an injured—and intubated—Marine receiving the Purple Heart. She follows it with another story involving a dying soldier’s mother yelling at the president about the war.

Both stories were recounted by Perino in an excerpt from “And the Good News Is…” that was published by The Daily Signal this week. But if you listened to NPR’s interview with the former White House press secretary on “Morning Edition” today, you would’ve only heard one.
 Dana Perino: Why George W. Bush Let a Soldier’s Mom Yell at Him

NPR’s edited version of the interview that aired included the story about the mother who yelled at Bush, but not the more uplifting story about the Marine, who happened to be intubated in his hospital bed but opened his eyes upon Bush’s comments to the Marine’s son.

 

Here’s part of that story:

Everyone stood silently while the military aide in a low and steady voice presented the award. At the end of it, the Marine’s little boy tugged on the president’s jacket and asked, “What’s a Purple Heart?”
The president got down on one knee and pulled the little boy closer to him. He said, “It’s an award for your dad, because he is very brave and courageous, and because he loves his country so much. And I hope you know how much he loves you and your mom, too.”
As he hugged the boy, there was a commotion from the medical staff as they moved toward the bed.
The Marine had just opened his eyes. I could see him from where I stood.
The CNO [Chief Naval Officer] held the medical team back and said, “Hold on, guys. I think he wants the president.”
The president jumped up and rushed over to the side of the bed. He cupped the Marine’s face in his hands. They locked eyes, and after a couple of moments the president, without breaking eye contact, said to the military aide, “Read it again.”
So we stood silently as the military aide presented the Marine with the award for a second time. The president had tears dripping from his eyes onto the Marine’s face. As the presentation ended, the president rested his forehead on the Marine’s for a moment.

Perino told The Daily Signal she recounted the whole story to NPR’s David Greene when he asked about the hospital visit. When The Daily Signal reached out to NPR to understand why it chose to feature only part of Perino’s interview, a spokeswoman told us this:

Dana Perino told many anecdotes in her wonderful interview. It’s too bad we could not include them all because of time constraints.
She spoke, for example, of the president’s graciousness with her father. She also spoke of a mother who yelled at him—and then described how the president quite deliberately stayed and listened and absorbed the woman’s anger. It was an interaction the president himself remembered on Marine One, as Dana recounted. For these reasons, we chose to include it, while making sure to highlight that the reaction in that room was an exception.

You can find the entire story—and more—in Perino’s excerpt on The Daily Signal.

Obama Loves His Country : But America Isn't His Country

I know Mr Obama loves his country, that's not in question. It's just that America isn't his country.

Hillary Clinton Makes Decision to Run : Flying Not A Problem

Hillary decides to toss her hat into the ring along with others that have announced their intentions to run for president.

According to the news report, she will fly into Kansas for her first contact with the general public.

Welfare & Social Insurance Expansion : The Progressive's Agenda for Decline

Who knew? I know who knows and it's the progressive socialist that are now running hog wild in our government with new ways to increase the number of workers that find it much easier to stay home and not work, and at the same time bring into the fold those that have to sustain themselves in their new life style by voting for the progressive socialist agenda, ever more free stuff.

It works every time it's used and it its working now as there are more then 48 million on food stamp, 92 million underemployed and unemployed, Social Security Disability Insurance exploding, and a worker participation rate that is lower then in 1948.

I wonder if those that voted for the progressive socialists, many twice, have any second thoughts about their decision to willingly throwing themselves under the bus?

Welfare and Social Insurance Lead to Declining Desire to Work
Source: Regis Barnichon, Andrew Figura, "Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation," National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2015.

April 22, 2015

The U.S. labor market has witnessed two apparently unrelated trends in the last 30 years: a decline in unemployment between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and a decline in labor force participation since the early 2000s. A substantial factor behind both trends is a decline in desire to work among individuals outside the labor force, with a particularly strong decline during the second half of the 90s.

The decline in the number of nonparticipants who want to work is due mainly to prime-age females, and, to a lesser extent, young individuals. Moreover, the decline is mainly a low-income and non-single household phenomenon, and is stronger for families with children than without.

Changes in the provision of welfare and social insurance (notably disability insurance) explain about 50 percent of the decline in desire to work, which suggest a possible role for the major welfare reforms of the 90s — the 1993 Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) expansion and the 1996 reform of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program — which precisely affected low-income households with children.

Changes in the provision of welfare and social insurance explain about 60 percent of the decline in desire to work among prime-age females, and attribute between 50 and 70 percent of the decline in mothers' desire to work.

Two mechanisms could explain the results:

• The EITC expansion raised family income and reduced the secondary earner's incentives to work.
• The strong work requirements introduced by the AFDC/TANF reform would have left the "weaker" welfare recipients without welfare and pushed them away from the labor force and possibly into disability insurance.

 

FDA Regulates the Control for Desturction of Drug Innovation

Innovation in new drug development has nothing to do with the cost of R&D, this is just gaining a larger voter base for the progressive democrat bureaucrat power structure. The FDA is much like the EPA in that they have the reigns of power and they set the time line and the regulation costs.

And as a result the need for reasonable cost for drug research and development is not necessary, and therefore must succumb to the loss of revenue that the drug companies could use for development, is sucked into the hands of the democrat political machine to feed the larger need of government officials to subject others to the will of the powerful.

The ever growing government is the problem here and the bureaucrats that control it.

To simple to understand as just the politics of control? All progressive politics is about the need to control others, and therefore events that will afford them more power and more control. Everything the progressives do is based on this premise of their need for power. Nothing is off limits. Nothing!

Inventing New Drugs Is Costly, but Not Inventing Them is Costlier April 22, 2015
Source: Merrill Matthews, "The High Cost of Inventing New Drugs — And of Not Inventing Them," Institute for Policy Innovation, April 2015.

April 22, 2015

There is a financial cost to developing new drugs—and it's a big one.  There is also a big cost to not developing new drugs, and that cost can be both financial and human.  People may be able to live with the pain that an undiscovered drug might have alleviated, but they may not be able to do all the things they would have.  A cancer patient might still have a few productive years after a diagnosis, but how much would it be worth to the patient—and to society (think Steve Jobs)—if a new drug meant that extended life could be indefinite?
Those costs may include:

• The total cost to develop and gain marketing approval for a new drug is an estimated $2.6 billion.
• It can take 10 to 12 years for that new drug to get through the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval process and hit the market.
• Once the drug has made it to market, there is often post-approval research and tests to evaluate dosing strength and a host of other factors.  DiMasi et al estimate those efforts can add an extra $312 million to the cost of a drug, for a grand total of $2.87 billion (in 2013 dollars).

The good news is that drug companies are proceeding with their research to create new and innovative drugs; the bad news is that it costs a lot to do that—however you calculate the costs.  But the public won't get more innovative drugs by imposing price controls, which is one of the critics' primary solutions to the high cost of drugs.

If the cost of creating new drugs is high, the cost of not having any new drugs is immeasurable.

Republicans Join Democrats Approving ObamaCare? : What? Who Knew!

Does this mean we will now be subservient to government for generations to come? Does this mean that we are willing to give up personal freedom for a promise of government bivalence?

Does this mean that the America that came before and gave million unbelievable prosperity is now a thing of the past? We know that the progressive socialist democrats want to do us harm, but the Republicans have joined in with them to reek havoc in our country as well?

Is Obamacare Winning Over Republican Lawmakers?
 Source: John R. Graham, "Have House Republicans Cast Their First Vote for Obamacare?" National Center for Policy Analysis, April 1, 2015

April 1, 2015

 Former Speaker of the U.S. Representatives Newt Gingrich said something last week that many feared, but few have been willing to admit: Republicans in Congress have no intention of repealing and replacing Obamacare with patient-centered health reform.

Now that we are in the twilight of the Obama presidency, and Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress, they should be able to put such charges to rest, says NCPA senior fellow John R. Graham. Unfortunately, last week's overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of
Representatives for a deal to lock in Obamacare's way of paying doctors sends a terrible signal.

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) was secretly negotiated by Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, while House and Senate Republicans debated their budget resolutions in public. Importantly, the House budget resolution embraced the so-called Ryan Medicare reform, which would improve Medicare for those entering the program in 2024 and subsequent years by giving us a much greater choice of health plans. For years, President Obama has consistently attacked this proposal, and this year has been no exception. MACRA also rejects this reform, which explains why President Obama has already indicated his eagerness to sign the new bill.

As a consequence, the House budget resolution looks like pantomime, while MACRA is clearly the real deal - adding half a trillion dollars to the debt and confirming the Obamacare vision of Medicare. Fortunately, the Senate still has to vote on MACRA. Senators will have to solve both MACRA's fiscal problems and increasing federal control of the practice of medicine if they want to avoid the charge of endorsing Obamacare.

Beohner & Pelosi's Secret Doc Fix : More Bad news

I wonder if anyone can conjure up a more horrifying scenario then watching Boehner and Pelosi sitting together working out a proposal that will benefit the people in the trenches? This is just one of the problems that troubles our country. We have for all tense and purposes one party rule, it's just that the players are called by different names.

We know who Nancy Pelosi is and what she believes, the tyranny of the few, but Boehner is suppose to represent the opposition to tyranny.

Boehner and Pelosi's Medicare Doc Fix to Cost Billions
Source: John R. Graham, "Budget Gimmicks Hide the $213 Billion Cost of Medicare Doc Fix," National Center for Policy Analysis, March 30, 2015.

March 31, 2015

The headline of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) damning assessment of the fiscal damage done by H.R. 2 — the so-called Medicare doc fix negotiated secretly by House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — is that the deal will add $141 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.

Even this appalling outcome is sugarcoated. After unpacking the gimmicks underlying the estimate, the actual result is much worse, says NCPA senior fellow John R. Graham.

First, the worst gimmick: The bill increases spending on the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by almost $40 billion. Yet, the CBO only includes less than $6 billion in its estimate of the bill's costs. How did over $34 billion of CHIP spending simply vanish into thin air? Easily! Much of it was already in the baseline.

Welcome to the weird world of federal budgeting, where the so-called baseline is the source of much mischief. Recall the entire reason Congress had to patch Medicare payments to doctors at least once a year for over a decade is because the budget baseline was determined by an unrealistic formula called the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR).

Because that formula would have led to pay cuts that would have made it uneconomical for physicians to see Medicare patients, Congress had to increase physicians' fees beyond the baseline. Most importantly, until now, those pay increases have been paid for by spending offsets.
Physicians never had their Medicare pay cut to the level dictated by the baseline. There was simply no crisis that had to be averted by last week's budget busting Medicare doc fix.

CHIP, on the other hand, has a permanent baseline of $5.7 billion per year, even though current law only funds CHIP through 2015. How can this be? According the CBO:

• Current law provides no new budget authority for CHIP after 2015.
• Following the rules for developing baseline projections of programs with such expiring funding authority, CBO's projections reflect the assumption that CHIP will continue to be funded so as to operate as it will under the law in effect immediately before the date after which no new budget authority is provided.

The baseline derives entirely from an assumption that CHIP will continue, even though there is no legal basis for that assumption. For the Medicare doc fix, on the other hand, which is continuously re-authorized, there is no such assumption.
 

President George W Bush : The Man AND The President

What a great testament to George Bush and what he stood for as president and as a man. But what exactly what does it mean to be President of the United States? What are the obligations and moral responsibilities of the person and the office?

I wonder how Mr Obama would answer these questions?

Why George W. Bush Let a Soldier’s Mom Yell at Him
Dana Perino / @DanaPerino          

News of America’s military men and women were wounded and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan almost overwhelmed me on some days. I may have sounded strong when I was talking to the press, but sometimes I had to push my feelings way down in order to get any words out of my mouth to make statements and answer questions.

The hardest days were when President Bush went to visit the wounded or families of the fallen. If it was tough for me, you can only imagine what it was like for the families and for a president who knew that his decisions led his troops into battles where they fought valiantly but were severely injured or lost their lives.
He regularly visited patients at Walter Reed military hospital near the White House. These stops were unannounced because of security concerns and hassles for the hospital staff that come with a full blown presidential visit.

 ats that respect your time...and your intelligence.

One morning in 2005, Scott McClellan sent me in his place to visit the wounded warriors. It was my first time for that particular assignment, and I was nervous about how the visits would go.
The president was scheduled to see twenty-five patients at Walter Reed. Many of them had traumatic brain injuries and were in very serious, sometimes critical, condition. Despite getting the best treatment available in the world, we knew that some would not survive.

George W. Bush announces that Dana Perino will take over the post of White House Press Secretary in 2007. (Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters/Newscom)

We started in the intensive care unit. The Chief Naval Officer (CNO) briefed the president on our way into the hospital about the first patient we’d see. He was a young Marine who had been injured when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. After his rescue, he was flown to Landstuhl U.S. Air Force Base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. At his bedside were his parents, wife, and five-year-old son.
“What’s his prognosis?” the president asked.

The military aide presented the Marine with the award for a second time. The president had tears dripping from his eyes onto the Marine’s face.

“Well, we don’t know sir, because he’s not opened his eyes since he arrived, so we haven’t been able to communicate with him. But no matter what, Mr. President, he has a long road ahead of him,” said the CNO.
We had to wear masks because of the risk of infection to the patient. I watched carefully to see how the family would react to President Bush, and I was worried that they might be mad at him and blame him for their loved one’s situation. But I was wrong.
The family was so excited the president had come. They gave him big hugs and thanked him over and over. Then they wanted to get a photo. So he gathered them all in front of Eric Draper, the White House photographer.
President Bush asked, “Is everybody smiling?” But they all had ICU masks on. A light chuckle ran through the room as everyone got the joke.

George W. Bush shakes hands with soldiers after finishing his speech July 4, 2006, during his visit to Fort Bragg, N.C. (Photo: Andrew Craft/UPI/Newscom)

The soldier was intubated. The president talked quietly with the family at the foot of the patient’s bed. I looked up at the ceiling so that I could hold back tears.

After he visited with them for a bit, the president turned to the military aide and said, “Okay, let’s do the presentation.” The wounded soldier was being awarded the Purple Heart, given to troops that suffer wounds in combat.
Everyone stood silently while the military aide in a low and steady voice presented the award. At the end of it, the Marine’s little boy tugged on the president’s jacket and asked, “What’s a Purple Heart?”
The president got down on one knee and pulled the little boy closer to him. He said, “It’s an award for your dad, because he is very brave and courageous, and because he loves his country so much. And I hope you know how much he loves you and your mom, too.”

George W. Bush visits with Army Sgt. Nicholas McCoy at the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. (Photo: John Davenport/ZUMAPress/Newscom)

As he hugged the boy, there was a commotion from the medical staff as they moved toward the bed.
The Marine had just opened his eyes. I could see him from where I stood.
The CNO held the medical team back and said, “Hold on, guys. I think he wants the president.”

The president said, ‘That mama sure was mad at me.’ Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter. ‘And I don’t blame her a bit.’

The president jumped up and rushed over to the side of the bed. He cupped the Marine’s face in his hands. They locked eyes, and after a couple of moments the president, without breaking eye contact, said to the military aide, “Read it again.”
So we stood silently as the military aide presented the Marine with the award for a second time. The president had tears dripping from his eyes onto the Marine’s face. As the presentation ended, the president rested his forehead on the Marine’s for a moment.
Now everyone was crying, and for so many reasons: the sacrifice; the pain and suffering; the love of country; the belief in the mission; and the witnessing of a relationship between a soldier and his Commander in Chief that the rest of us could never fully grasp. (In writing this book, I contacted several military aides who helped me track down the name of the Marine. I hoped for news that he had survived. He did not. He died during surgery six days after the president’s visit. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery and is survived by his wife and their three children.)
And that was just the first patient we saw. For the rest of the visit to the hospital that day, almost every family had the same reaction of joy when they saw the president.

George W. Bush speaks with members of Soldier Ride 2005 National Tour Team. Soldier Ride 2005, comprised of wounded service members, is a 4,200-mile, cross-country bike ride to raise money and support to help prepare wounded soldiers for long-term rehabilitation. (Photo: Eric Draper/White House/ZUMA Press/Newscom)

But there were exceptions. One mom and dad of a dying soldier from the Caribbean were devastated, the mom beside herself with grief. She yelled at the president, wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed.
Her husband tried to calm her and I noticed the president wasn’t in a hurry to leave—he tried offering comfort but then just stood and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish, to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could.
Later as we rode back on Marine One to the White House, no one spoke.
But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said, “That mama sure was mad at me.” Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter. “And I don’t blame her a bit.”
One tear slipped out the side of his eye and down his face. He didn’t wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.
This is an excerpt from “And the Good News Is…: Lessons and Advice from the Bright Side” by Dana Perino. Reprinted by permission of Twelve Books (c) 2015.