Thursday, February 28, 2013
We're all crazy!!! Better take your SSRIs...
You’re Mentally Deranged – Every One of You – I can Prove it
by Nietzsches Cat
The American Psychiatric Association is set to approve a new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the Holy Bible of practicing psychologists, this spring. It’s the fifth such major revision and by far the most controversial.
DSM 5 adds hundreds of new diagnoses. Going by this book, almost everybody in America is mentally ill; most of us should be on medication, too. Following are a few issues raised by Dr. Allen Frances, MD. He was chair of the DSM 4 Task Force and is a professor emeritus at Duke University.
This is, of course, excellent news for the gun control activists. Now they will have a dozen reasons to lock up anybody for any reason anytime they want to.
You can read his full article here, at the Psychology Today website.
“1) Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder: DSM 5 will turn temper tantrums into a mental disorder- a puzzling decision based on the work of only one research group. We have no idea whatever how this untested new diagnosis will play out in real life practice settings, but my fear is that it will exacerbate, not relieve, the already excessive and inappropriate use of medication in young children.
2) Normal grief will become Major Depressive Disorder, thus medicalizing and trivializing our expectable and necessary emotional reactions to the loss of a loved one and substituting pills and superficial medical rituals for the deep consolations of family, friends, religion, and the resiliency that
comes with time and the acceptance of the limitations of life.
3) The every day forgetting characteristic of old age will now be misdiagnosed as Minor Neurocognitive Disorder, creating a huge false positive population of people who are not at special risk for dementia
4) DSM 5 will likely trigger a fad of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder leading to widespread misuse of stimulant drugs for performance enhancement and recreation and contributing to the already large illegal secondary market in diverted prescription drugs.
5) Excessive eating 12 times in 3 months is no longer just a manifestation of gluttony and the easy availability of really great tasting food. DSM 5 has instead turned it into a psychiatric illness called Binge Eating Disorder.
6) The changes in the DSM 5 definition of Autism will result in lowered rates- 10% according to estimates by the DSM 5 work group, perhaps 50% according to outside research groups
7) First time substance abusers will be lumped in definitionally in with hard core addicts despite their very different treatment needs and prognosis and the stigma this will cause.
8) DSM 5 has created a slippery slope by introducing the concept of Behavioral Addictions that eventually can spread to make a mental disorder of everything we like to do a lot. Watch out forcareless overdiagnosis of internet and sex addiction and the development of lucrative treatment programs to exploit these new markets.
9) DSM 5 obscures the already fuzzy boundary between Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the worries of everyday life. Small changes in definition can create millions of anxious new ‘patients’ and expand the already widespread practice of inappropriately prescribing addicting anti-anxiety medications.
10) DSM 5 has opened the gate even further to the already existing problem of misdiagnosis of PTSD in forensic settings.”
So, according to this President Obama’s ”recreational” use of cocaine as a teenager makes him a hard-core druggie. This is reinforced by his addiction to tobacco (he still smokes, even though he bulliesthe entire White House staff to not divulge this – those temper tantrums are a no-no.)
Thank you, DSM 5. Now I have proof that Obama belongs in a padded cell.
Link:
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/youre-mentally-deranged-every-one-of-you-i-can-prove-it/36428/
by Nietzsches Cat
The American Psychiatric Association is set to approve a new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the Holy Bible of practicing psychologists, this spring. It’s the fifth such major revision and by far the most controversial.
DSM 5 adds hundreds of new diagnoses. Going by this book, almost everybody in America is mentally ill; most of us should be on medication, too. Following are a few issues raised by Dr. Allen Frances, MD. He was chair of the DSM 4 Task Force and is a professor emeritus at Duke University.
This is, of course, excellent news for the gun control activists. Now they will have a dozen reasons to lock up anybody for any reason anytime they want to.
You can read his full article here, at the Psychology Today website.
“1) Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder: DSM 5 will turn temper tantrums into a mental disorder- a puzzling decision based on the work of only one research group. We have no idea whatever how this untested new diagnosis will play out in real life practice settings, but my fear is that it will exacerbate, not relieve, the already excessive and inappropriate use of medication in young children.
2) Normal grief will become Major Depressive Disorder, thus medicalizing and trivializing our expectable and necessary emotional reactions to the loss of a loved one and substituting pills and superficial medical rituals for the deep consolations of family, friends, religion, and the resiliency that
comes with time and the acceptance of the limitations of life.
3) The every day forgetting characteristic of old age will now be misdiagnosed as Minor Neurocognitive Disorder, creating a huge false positive population of people who are not at special risk for dementia
4) DSM 5 will likely trigger a fad of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder leading to widespread misuse of stimulant drugs for performance enhancement and recreation and contributing to the already large illegal secondary market in diverted prescription drugs.
5) Excessive eating 12 times in 3 months is no longer just a manifestation of gluttony and the easy availability of really great tasting food. DSM 5 has instead turned it into a psychiatric illness called Binge Eating Disorder.
6) The changes in the DSM 5 definition of Autism will result in lowered rates- 10% according to estimates by the DSM 5 work group, perhaps 50% according to outside research groups
7) First time substance abusers will be lumped in definitionally in with hard core addicts despite their very different treatment needs and prognosis and the stigma this will cause.
8) DSM 5 has created a slippery slope by introducing the concept of Behavioral Addictions that eventually can spread to make a mental disorder of everything we like to do a lot. Watch out forcareless overdiagnosis of internet and sex addiction and the development of lucrative treatment programs to exploit these new markets.
9) DSM 5 obscures the already fuzzy boundary between Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the worries of everyday life. Small changes in definition can create millions of anxious new ‘patients’ and expand the already widespread practice of inappropriately prescribing addicting anti-anxiety medications.
10) DSM 5 has opened the gate even further to the already existing problem of misdiagnosis of PTSD in forensic settings.”
So, according to this President Obama’s ”recreational” use of cocaine as a teenager makes him a hard-core druggie. This is reinforced by his addiction to tobacco (he still smokes, even though he bulliesthe entire White House staff to not divulge this – those temper tantrums are a no-no.)
Thank you, DSM 5. Now I have proof that Obama belongs in a padded cell.
Link:
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/youre-mentally-deranged-every-one-of-you-i-can-prove-it/36428/
OOPS!!! Global warming hits the UK...
So much for global warming! Four out of the last five winters have been COLDER than average
Over the last five years, only last winter saw the mercury rise above the 3.3C (38F) average - taken from 30 years of statistics from 1981.
Met Office says figures are 'part of normal weather patterns'
By Nick Mcdermott
Soaring gas prices are not the sole reason for our increasing heating bills - four out of the five past winters have been colder than average, the Met Office has revealed.
Today marks the start of spring in the meteorological calendar, with Met Office figures indicating the average temperature over the winter months was just 3.3C (38f).
With the exception of 2011/12, which was milder than the 30-year seasonal average of 3.7C (39f), every year since 2008 has been colder.
The figures are likely to be seized on by sceptics of man-made climate change, who claim that global warming has flatlined despite a large rise in greenhouse emissions in recent decades.
But Met Office officials suggested the recent crop of cold winters is part of normal weather patterns, which have previously been recorded in the 60s and 80s.
And looking further back, both 2006/07 and 2008/09 were two very mild winters with UK mean temperatures of 5.6C(42f) and 4.9C (41f) respectively.
Forecaster Helen Chivers said a cyclical phenomenon known as the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) could be contributing to the nippier seasons.
'This is the classic example of the variability that we can see in the British weather.
'If you look back past the last five years, then three out of the last seven winters were milder than average, while 2006/07 was the second warmest on record.
'The recent trend does suggest there are natural cycles that influence our weather, with a negative NAO also occurring in the 60s and 80s and resulting in colder winters.'
The last winter was a season of 'two halves', with more rain falling in December than in January and February combined.
Read more here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2286041/So-global-warming-4-5-winters-COLDER-average-reveals-Met-Office.html#ixzz2MErCiqlR
Over the last five years, only last winter saw the mercury rise above the 3.3C (38F) average - taken from 30 years of statistics from 1981.
Met Office says figures are 'part of normal weather patterns'
By Nick Mcdermott
Soaring gas prices are not the sole reason for our increasing heating bills - four out of the five past winters have been colder than average, the Met Office has revealed.
Today marks the start of spring in the meteorological calendar, with Met Office figures indicating the average temperature over the winter months was just 3.3C (38f).
With the exception of 2011/12, which was milder than the 30-year seasonal average of 3.7C (39f), every year since 2008 has been colder.
The figures are likely to be seized on by sceptics of man-made climate change, who claim that global warming has flatlined despite a large rise in greenhouse emissions in recent decades.
But Met Office officials suggested the recent crop of cold winters is part of normal weather patterns, which have previously been recorded in the 60s and 80s.
And looking further back, both 2006/07 and 2008/09 were two very mild winters with UK mean temperatures of 5.6C(42f) and 4.9C (41f) respectively.
Forecaster Helen Chivers said a cyclical phenomenon known as the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) could be contributing to the nippier seasons.
'This is the classic example of the variability that we can see in the British weather.
'If you look back past the last five years, then three out of the last seven winters were milder than average, while 2006/07 was the second warmest on record.
'The recent trend does suggest there are natural cycles that influence our weather, with a negative NAO also occurring in the 60s and 80s and resulting in colder winters.'
The last winter was a season of 'two halves', with more rain falling in December than in January and February combined.
Read more here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2286041/So-global-warming-4-5-winters-COLDER-average-reveals-Met-Office.html#ixzz2MErCiqlR
"The next time an Anti-conspiracy theorist tells you: "It's impossible for the government to hide something that big!" - show them this story!"
100,000 CONSPIRATORS WORKING IN 3 SECRET CITIES!
August 2nd,1939 - The world is still at peace when a letter, signed by Jewish scientist Albert Einstein, is sent to FDR. The letter was actually co-written with three other Jewish scientists (Szilard, Teller, and Wigner) In it, the mad scientists urge FDR to fund a research program for the purpose of developing an Atomic Bomb (to be used on Germany.)
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Later that year, FDR initiates the Briggs Advisory Committee to explore the matter. Out of Briggs grew the S-1 Uranium Committee. By 1942, S-1 grows into the "Manhattan Project."
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For nearly 3 years, many of the world's top scientists will be holed up in reclusive research facilities across the U.S. The Project is supported by the military and 100,000 workers (most of them kept ignorant of "the Big Picture"). It culminates with the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japan (Hiroshima, August 6, 45 and Nagasaki, August 10, 45)
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The Einstein letter had been kept secret. Briggs had been kept secret. S-1 had been kept secret. The 100,000 participants of the Manhattan Project had been kept secret. Even the actual detonation of a test A-bomb had been kept secret!
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So, you see, the government (with media complicity) IS indeed very capable of pulling off a massive CONSPIRACY! Compared to the Manhattan Project, events such as the JFK assassination, the 9/11 attacks, and the Sandy Hook shootings would be child's play!
Read more:
http://www.tomatobubble.com/manhattan_project.html
The enemy is us. Perpetuating the myths and fears of terror is a multi-billion dollar business they will never let go of. So new enemies and threats must be created and they are you...
Holder: Home-Grown Terrorists Threat Rivals Overseas
Chris Good, Jack Cloherty, Jack Date and Jason A. Ryan
ABC News
After years of security briefings and thwarting terrorist plots, national security still keeps Eric Holder awake.
“I still worry at night,” the U.S. attorney general told ABC’s Pierre Thomas in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview on Wednesday.
“I’m concerned about whether or not we have done all that we can to ensure that every threat has been adequately examined, that we put up our defenses in appropriate ways,” Holder said. “So, yeah, I still go to bed worried at night.”
America now confronts a very different terrorist threat than it did four years ago, according to Holder. While al Qaeda’s central leadership has been diminished, the group is more “widespread” geographically—and the threat of homegrown terrorists in the U.S. now rivals that of plots hatched overseas, Holder told ABC News.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/holder-home-grown-terrorists-threat-rivals-overseas.html
Chris Good, Jack Cloherty, Jack Date and Jason A. Ryan
ABC News
After years of security briefings and thwarting terrorist plots, national security still keeps Eric Holder awake.
“I still worry at night,” the U.S. attorney general told ABC’s Pierre Thomas in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview on Wednesday.
“I’m concerned about whether or not we have done all that we can to ensure that every threat has been adequately examined, that we put up our defenses in appropriate ways,” Holder said. “So, yeah, I still go to bed worried at night.”
America now confronts a very different terrorist threat than it did four years ago, according to Holder. While al Qaeda’s central leadership has been diminished, the group is more “widespread” geographically—and the threat of homegrown terrorists in the U.S. now rivals that of plots hatched overseas, Holder told ABC News.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/holder-home-grown-terrorists-threat-rivals-overseas.html
"Boys represent the majority of children diagnosed with ADHD, which suggests that the "disorder" might just be the excess energy that comes naturally with being a developing young man. So what is a parent to do?"
How to beat ADHD without prescription drugs
by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
The latest statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that more than 5.4 million American children between the ages of four and 17 living today have been diagnosed with the behavioral disorder known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). And among these, roughly 2.7 million are taking some sort of pharmaceutical-based psychostimulant for the condition, which includes powerful mind-altering drugs like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (amphetamine and dextroamphetamine).
While these drugs are typically marketed as an easy way to mellow out overactivity and impulsive behavior in children while focusing their inattentiveness, their side effects are often glossed over as inconsequential or even nonexistent. But such side effects include serious things like loss of appetite, sleeping problems, drastic mood swings, and loss of personality. Many parents have reported that their once creative and outgoing children become submissive robots upon taking ADHD drugs, with some even developing odd tics and other neurological misfirings.
Boys represent the majority of children diagnosed with ADHD, which suggests that the "disorder" might just be the excess energy that comes naturally with being a developing young man. So what is a parent to do? If your child suffers from behavioral problems that you are sure extend beyond just normal childhood excitement and curiosity, there are some simple dietary and lifestyle changes you can implement to tame this behavior naturally without the use of drugs.
1) Cut out the refined sugar, artificial colors, processed flours, and chemical preservatives. Most of the snack foods that parents and teachers alike shovel down children's throats from a very young age are loaded with additives that have been linked to hyperactivity and an inability to focus. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), for instance, which is found in virtually all conventional soda pop beverages, has been shown to spike blood sugar levels and alter normal metabolism. A 2007 study out of the U.K. also found that artificial food colorings and pesticides are both linked to ADHD in children (http://www.naturalnews.com/032077_food_dyes_ADHD.html).
"Nutritional issues may play a huge role in ADHD," wrote Daniel Burton in a 2008 paper for the Ohlone Herbal Center. "After genetics, diet may be the second most important factor. Nutritional deficiencies and excesses, as well as food sensitivities can have a huge impact on ADHD symptoms" (http://www.ohlonecenter.org).
2) Replace high-sugar junk foods with higher-protein, nutrient-dense "superfoods". Children with characteristic ADHD symptoms are often severely lacking in proper nutrition, which means it is essential to first reform their diets before taking any other drastic measures. According to Burton, high-glycemic, high-carbohydrate diets, which many American children today typically eat, are directly responsible for the epidemic of ADHD we are witnessing today.
Instead of feeding your children greasy, processed snack foods throughout the day, teach them instead to enjoy eating whole foods like raw almonds and almond butter, for instance, and fresh organic fruits and vegetables. Organic, grass-fed meats are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which directly feed the brain and balance neurological function, while nuts and seeds provide lasting energy and nutritional support. And even if they prefer not to eat it, teach your children to eat leafy greens like kale, spinach, and broccoli anyway, as these "superfoods" are packed with amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that directly combat behavioral problems.
Be sure to read the section of Burton's paper entitled "Nutrition," as it explains more fully how deficiencies in complex proteins, amino acids, essential fatty acids, trace minerals, and vitamins all play a role in ADHD:
http://www.ohlonecenter.org
Another factor involved in ADHD is food allergies. Modern, hybridized wheat varieties; genetically-modified organisms (GMOs); lactose and casein in processed milk products; petroleum-based food additives; and soy ingredients all lurk throughout the food supply, oftentimes in food items that you would least expect. Having your children tested for food allergies, and actively avoiding those foods for which they test positive, will be essential in keeping ADHD under control.
3) Put away the video and computer games and spend time with your kids outside. Once you have already addressed the potential nutritional and environmental triggers, a promising next step in the fight against ADHD will be to encourage your children to engage in more physical activities. Too many children these days are allowed to "zombie" themselves out in front of the television set or in front of the computer screen for hours on end, which has been linked in numerous studies to behavioral problems. Teach your children to enjoy physical activities like playing outdoors and riding their bicycles, and raise them in an environment where they are able to spend lots of quality time with their friends, siblings, and other family members in an engaging way.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039282_ADHD_natural_remedies_prescription_drugs.html#ixzz2MClCduW3
by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
The latest statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that more than 5.4 million American children between the ages of four and 17 living today have been diagnosed with the behavioral disorder known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). And among these, roughly 2.7 million are taking some sort of pharmaceutical-based psychostimulant for the condition, which includes powerful mind-altering drugs like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (amphetamine and dextroamphetamine).
While these drugs are typically marketed as an easy way to mellow out overactivity and impulsive behavior in children while focusing their inattentiveness, their side effects are often glossed over as inconsequential or even nonexistent. But such side effects include serious things like loss of appetite, sleeping problems, drastic mood swings, and loss of personality. Many parents have reported that their once creative and outgoing children become submissive robots upon taking ADHD drugs, with some even developing odd tics and other neurological misfirings.
Boys represent the majority of children diagnosed with ADHD, which suggests that the "disorder" might just be the excess energy that comes naturally with being a developing young man. So what is a parent to do? If your child suffers from behavioral problems that you are sure extend beyond just normal childhood excitement and curiosity, there are some simple dietary and lifestyle changes you can implement to tame this behavior naturally without the use of drugs.
1) Cut out the refined sugar, artificial colors, processed flours, and chemical preservatives. Most of the snack foods that parents and teachers alike shovel down children's throats from a very young age are loaded with additives that have been linked to hyperactivity and an inability to focus. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), for instance, which is found in virtually all conventional soda pop beverages, has been shown to spike blood sugar levels and alter normal metabolism. A 2007 study out of the U.K. also found that artificial food colorings and pesticides are both linked to ADHD in children (http://www.naturalnews.com/032077_food_dyes_ADHD.html).
"Nutritional issues may play a huge role in ADHD," wrote Daniel Burton in a 2008 paper for the Ohlone Herbal Center. "After genetics, diet may be the second most important factor. Nutritional deficiencies and excesses, as well as food sensitivities can have a huge impact on ADHD symptoms" (http://www.ohlonecenter.org).
2) Replace high-sugar junk foods with higher-protein, nutrient-dense "superfoods". Children with characteristic ADHD symptoms are often severely lacking in proper nutrition, which means it is essential to first reform their diets before taking any other drastic measures. According to Burton, high-glycemic, high-carbohydrate diets, which many American children today typically eat, are directly responsible for the epidemic of ADHD we are witnessing today.
Instead of feeding your children greasy, processed snack foods throughout the day, teach them instead to enjoy eating whole foods like raw almonds and almond butter, for instance, and fresh organic fruits and vegetables. Organic, grass-fed meats are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which directly feed the brain and balance neurological function, while nuts and seeds provide lasting energy and nutritional support. And even if they prefer not to eat it, teach your children to eat leafy greens like kale, spinach, and broccoli anyway, as these "superfoods" are packed with amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that directly combat behavioral problems.
Be sure to read the section of Burton's paper entitled "Nutrition," as it explains more fully how deficiencies in complex proteins, amino acids, essential fatty acids, trace minerals, and vitamins all play a role in ADHD:
http://www.ohlonecenter.org
Another factor involved in ADHD is food allergies. Modern, hybridized wheat varieties; genetically-modified organisms (GMOs); lactose and casein in processed milk products; petroleum-based food additives; and soy ingredients all lurk throughout the food supply, oftentimes in food items that you would least expect. Having your children tested for food allergies, and actively avoiding those foods for which they test positive, will be essential in keeping ADHD under control.
3) Put away the video and computer games and spend time with your kids outside. Once you have already addressed the potential nutritional and environmental triggers, a promising next step in the fight against ADHD will be to encourage your children to engage in more physical activities. Too many children these days are allowed to "zombie" themselves out in front of the television set or in front of the computer screen for hours on end, which has been linked in numerous studies to behavioral problems. Teach your children to enjoy physical activities like playing outdoors and riding their bicycles, and raise them in an environment where they are able to spend lots of quality time with their friends, siblings, and other family members in an engaging way.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039282_ADHD_natural_remedies_prescription_drugs.html#ixzz2MClCduW3
OOPS!!! People waking up to fact that it isn't getting colder becasue it is getting warmer...
Green fatigue sets in: the world cools on global warming
Worldwide concerns about climate change have dropped dramatically since 2009
Sam Masters
Public concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low since the financial crisis, a global study reveals.
Fewer people now consider issues such as CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, animal species loss, and water shortages to be “very serious” than at any time in the last two decades, according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US...
Read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-sets-in-the-world-cools-on-global-warming-8513826.html
Worldwide concerns about climate change have dropped dramatically since 2009
Sam Masters
Public concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low since the financial crisis, a global study reveals.
Fewer people now consider issues such as CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, animal species loss, and water shortages to be “very serious” than at any time in the last two decades, according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US...
Read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/green-fatigue-sets-in-the-world-cools-on-global-warming-8513826.html
Obamacare destroys business creation...
Subway Founder: Subway Would Not Exist If Started Today Due to Government Regulations
Deluca: Payroll tax increases, Obamacare pose challenge to small business
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
President and founder of Subway Fred Deluca described some of the challenges payroll tax increases and Obamacare have presented small business franchisee owners Wednesday on CNBC.
Deluca said the number one issue facing Subway franchisee owners is how Obamacare will impact their expenses, noting any increase in costs will be passed along to the consumer through higher prices.
Additionally, when asked about the modern business climate for young entrepreneurs, the Subway founder stated “Subway would not exist” if he started it today due to onerous government regulations:
SIMON HOBBS: It’s 13 years since you wrote the book “Start Small, Finish Big” which was about grass roots entrepreneurship. Do you think the environment for those chasing the American dream by setting up their own business has gotten worse or better in those 13 years?
FRED DELUCA: It’s continuously gotten worse, because there’s more and more regulations. It’s tougher for people to get into business. Especially a small business. I tell you, if I started Subway today, Subway would not exist, because I had an easy time of it in the ’60s when I started. I just see a continuous increase in regulation.
Read more here:
http://freebeacon.com/subway-founder-subway-would-not-exist-if-started-today-due-to-government-regulations/
Deluca: Payroll tax increases, Obamacare pose challenge to small business
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
President and founder of Subway Fred Deluca described some of the challenges payroll tax increases and Obamacare have presented small business franchisee owners Wednesday on CNBC.
Deluca said the number one issue facing Subway franchisee owners is how Obamacare will impact their expenses, noting any increase in costs will be passed along to the consumer through higher prices.
Additionally, when asked about the modern business climate for young entrepreneurs, the Subway founder stated “Subway would not exist” if he started it today due to onerous government regulations:
SIMON HOBBS: It’s 13 years since you wrote the book “Start Small, Finish Big” which was about grass roots entrepreneurship. Do you think the environment for those chasing the American dream by setting up their own business has gotten worse or better in those 13 years?
FRED DELUCA: It’s continuously gotten worse, because there’s more and more regulations. It’s tougher for people to get into business. Especially a small business. I tell you, if I started Subway today, Subway would not exist, because I had an easy time of it in the ’60s when I started. I just see a continuous increase in regulation.
Read more here:
http://freebeacon.com/subway-founder-subway-would-not-exist-if-started-today-due-to-government-regulations/
Generals and Admirals Demand A Plan...
Mark down every one of their names, the traitors are making it easier to identify themselves.
Source:
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/generals-and-admirals-demand-a-plan/36348/
Source:
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/generals-and-admirals-demand-a-plan/36348/
Education news...
Handcuffing Seven-Year-Olds Won't Make Schools Safer
by Chase Madar
The School Security America Doesn't Need: After Newtown: Turning Schools Into Prisons
Outrage over the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre may or may not spur any meaningful gun control laws, but you can bet your Crayolas that it will lead to more seven-year-olds getting handcuffed and hauled away to local police precincts.
You read that right. Americans may disagree deeply about how easy it should be for a mentally ill convicted felon to purchase an AR-15, but when it comes to putting more law enforcement officers inside our schools, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and liberal Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer are as one. And when police (or “school resource officers” as these sheriff’s deputies are often known) spend time in a school, they often deal with disorder like proper cops – by slapping cuffs on the little perps and dragging them to the precinct.
Just ask the three nine-year-old girls and an eight-year-old boy who got into a fight at their Baltimore elementary school – then got arrested by real police. Or Salecia Johnson, age six, cuffed and arrested for throwing a tantrum at her elementary school in Milledgeville, Georgia. Or Wilson Reyes, a seven-year-old at a Bronx, New York, elementary school who last December 4th was cuffed, hauled away, and interrogated under suspicion of taking $5 from a classmate. (Another kid later confessed.)
The last of these incidents made the cover of the New York Post, but the New York City Police Department still doesn’t understand what they did wrong – sure, the first-grader spent about 4 hours handcuffed in a detention room, but that’s “standard for juvenile arrest.”
Which is precisely the problem: standard juvenile misbehavior (a five-year-old pitching a fit, a 12-year-old doodling on a desk, a 13-year-old farting in class, a class clown running around the football field at halftime in a banana suit) is increasingly being treated like serious crime, resulting in handcuffs and arrest. If you can’t understand why such “consistency” is crazy, please desist from reading the rest of this article.
It seems grotesque that the horrific slaughter of those 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, will result in more children getting traumatized, but that’s exactly where we’re headed – with firm bipartisan support.
In his amazing post-Newtown speech last December, Wayne LaPierre, the CEO and executive vice president of the NRA, called for armed guards in all schools – a demand widely hailed as jaw-droppingly nutty. A few weeks later, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) proposed $50 million in federal grants to install more metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and National Guard troops in schools, but made her pitch in the caring cadences of a Marin County Democrat. And when President Obama ordered more police in schools (point 18 in his 23-point Executive Order responding to the Sandy Hook tragedy), it was all over.
So here’s an American reality of 2013: we will soon have more police in our schools, and more seven-year-olds like Joseph Andersons of PS 153 in Maspeth, New York, getting arrested. (He got handcuffed after a meltdown when his Easter egg dye-job didn’t come out right.)
The School-to-Prison Pipeline
In fairness to the feds, similar kinds of local responses were already underway before the La Pierre-Boxer Axis of Tiny Handcuffs even arose. Across the country, from Florida and Connecticut to Tennessee, Indiana, and Arizona, despite tough budgetary times, municipal governments are now eagerly scrounging up the extra money for more metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and armed guards in schools. (The same thing happened after the Columbine shooting 14 years ago.) No one keeps national statistics, but arrests of the 10-and-under set do seem to be on the rise since Sandy Hook. A typical recent case: in January, a seven-year-old at a Connecticut school was arrested by the police for “threatening” a teacher. Jitters are understandable after the trauma of Sandy Hook – but arresting a seven-year-old?
Truth be told, we were already well on our way to turning schools into carceral fortresses before the Sandy Hook slaughter even happened. In fact, the great national infrastructure project of the past 20 years may be the “school-to-prison pipeline.” After all, we are the nation that arrested Isamar Gonzalez for being in her high school early to meet with a teacher, then arrested her principal, Mark Federman, when he tried to intervene.
The stats speak as loudly as the anecdotes: of the Chicago School District’s 4,600 arrests in 2011, 86% were for misdemeanors. That school system spends $51.4 million on security guards, but only $3.5 million for college and career coaches. And for every incident that makes the news, there are scores that don’t. Despite a growing body of damning research by civil libertarians of the left and the right, including Annette Fuentes’s excellent book Lockdown High, political opposition to the school-to-prison pipeline has proven feeble or nonexistent. Brooklyn State Senator Eric Adams, who represents one of the most liberal districts in the country, has staked out the civil libertarian outer limit by helpfully suggesting that Velcro handcuffs might be more suitable than metal ones for arresting young children.
The metal detector at the schoolhouse door is threatening to become as iconic an American symbol as baseball or type 2 diabetes. Not that metal detectors in place were capable of preventing the massacre at Red Lake High School in Minnesota in 2005: young Jeffrey Weise just barged right in and shot six people dead; nor could the metal detectors at George Washington High School in Manhattan or Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn prevent teens from getting stabbed. Yet metal detectors and school police proliferate across the country.
One state, however, truly leads the way. Self-satisfied Yankees have traditionally slandered the state of Mississippi as a jerkwater remnant of the past. As for me, I say Mississippi represents the American future. A new report by advocacy groups shows how the Hospitality State is leading the nation in cruel and draconian school over-policing. Felony assault charges for throwing peanuts on the school bus! Dress codes enforced by handcuffing a child to a railing for hours for the crime of not wearing a belt! Cops escorting a five-year-old home for wearing the wrong color shoes! And constant arrests of kids for “disorderly conduct.”
Yes, the “Mississippi model” of non-union teachers plus “zero tolerance” discipline is the kind of schooling that some of the best and brightest among our education “reformers” have been touting – and what they are increasingly getting. In fairness, Governor Rick Perry’s Texas is struggling with Mississippi for vanguard status, with cutting-edge surveillance of students and 300,000 misdemeanor arrests in 2010 for “crimes” like tossing a paper airplane. And Massachusetts is a strong contender for third place.
Safe Schools Without Police or Metal Detectors
The over-policing of our schools is particularly grotesque because it’s so unnecessary. All schools need order and all students need self-discipline (as do adults), but putting police and metal detectors in a school often just adds another layer of violent chaos to an already tough situation. In my own policy research on school security overkill in New York City, I’ve found plenty of high schools, and not in the fancy parts of town, that do just fine without police or scanners.
In fact, they do better than fine: one report I coauthored with advocates from the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform found that schools without police or metal detectors actually get significantly better educational results (higher graduation rates, lower truancy) than their heavily policed counterparts.
So why aren’t these low-impact schools being held up as models? Why don’t City Hall and the New York City Department of Education seem to want to know about these more effective – not to mention cheaper – models? Alas, despite a steady 15-year nationwide drop in crime, politicos continue to score points with voters by showing that they aren’t afraid to crack down on children, especially the working-class Black and Latino youth who bear most of the brunt of these policies. The psycho-racial-political dynamics are pretty much the same throughout the country.
But there are proven, demonstrably better, ways to do school discipline. Ask Judge Steve Teske whose visionary common sense has brought down referrals to juvenile court by 70% in Clayton County, Georgia, by forcing schools to handle minor disciplinary infractions without handcuffs or police arrests. (In the same period in that county, serious weapons charges, like bringing guns and knives to school, have fallen by 80% – further evidence that restraining a police presence actually makes schools safer.)
For another example of the right way to respond to school violence, look no further than Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, site of the 1999 massacre of 12 students and a teacher by two heavily armed students. In response, the school made the choice not to add a phalanx of armed guards. (Columbine actually had an armed school resource officer on duty the day of the killings, and he was unable to slow, let alone stop, the carnage.)
In fact, Columbine today remains an open campus with no metal detector at the front door. Instead, its administration has worked hard to improve communications with the student body, trying to build an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. Columbine parents have supported this approach for a simple reason: they don’t want their children treated like criminals. Because Littleton, Colorado, is a largely affluent community with political muscle, they’ve been able to resist the avalanche of punitive measures that have been generated by every school massacre since the one that took place at theirs.
Other schools – particularly urban ones with working-class African-American and Latino students – are not so lucky. When President Obama announced his pledge of more “resource officers” in schools, he was quick to qualify it with an “if they want them.” A laudable sentiment that doesn’t really reflect how things usually work on the ground.
One Brooklyn high school principal I interviewed told me of the constant pressure he experienced from higher up in the New York City Department of Education to put in a metal detector and more police personnel. Another school security success story I profiled back in 2008 has since had a metal detector rammed down its educational throat despite its immaculate disciplinary record. Now, its students are made to feel like potential criminals from the moment they arrive every morning. The logic is, in its way, all-American: crazy white kids go on shooting sprees, and then the screws tighten on Black and Latino kids.
Resisting the Axis of Tiny Handcuffs
Is there any hope of preventing the rush to put more first graders in handcuffs? Yes, but don’t expect any help from the NRA, which is actively promoting a heavily armed vision of heaven on Earth in which armed guards will be everywhere, with all public space turned into an airport security line. As for Barbara Boxer, evidently she wasn’t as struck as I was by the t-shirts that Sacramento’s school security police made with the slogan “U Raise 'Em, We Cage 'Em” emblazoned on the image of a child behind bars. Or maybe she should talk to constituents like five-year-old arrestee Michael Davis or the seven-year-old in San Mateo whom a cop blasted in the face with pepper spray for climbing a bookshelf. It remains to be seen if the NRA and Boxer, united, can ever be defeated.
This response to the Newtown massacre is of a piece with a developing post-9/11 American national-security-lockdown mentality – the belief that an armed response will solve most of our problems, domestic and foreign. It’s a habit of thought that leads not figuratively but quite literally to a police state. The over-policing of schools is just a part of the increasing militarization of the police nationwide, which in turn fuels the smoldering paranoia that drives civilians to stock up on AR-15s and the like.
Ending this cycle of armed fear and violence will require getting police out of the schools along with the whole battery of security state accessories. The only way to get there will be via the broadest possible civil libertarian coalition: Black community groups and Ron Paul types, immigrants' rights activists and teachers and principals unions that see the big picture, liberals and conservatives united against the nanny/thug state.
There could be no finer spokesperson for such an ecumenical gathering than the newly crowned Miss America, Alabama-raised Brooklyn-residing Mallory Hytes Hagan. After wowing the pageant judges with her terpsichorean prowess, she demonstrated the soundest policy judgment. Asked if she thought it was a good idea to bring armed guards into schools, Ms. Hagan’s response was clear. “No, I don’t think the proper way to fight violence is with violence.” According to the New York Daily News, she said it “firmly.” Let people of goodwill rally behind this model citizen to end all the grotesque violence in our schools.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt455.html
by Chase Madar
The School Security America Doesn't Need: After Newtown: Turning Schools Into Prisons
Outrage over the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre may or may not spur any meaningful gun control laws, but you can bet your Crayolas that it will lead to more seven-year-olds getting handcuffed and hauled away to local police precincts.
You read that right. Americans may disagree deeply about how easy it should be for a mentally ill convicted felon to purchase an AR-15, but when it comes to putting more law enforcement officers inside our schools, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and liberal Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer are as one. And when police (or “school resource officers” as these sheriff’s deputies are often known) spend time in a school, they often deal with disorder like proper cops – by slapping cuffs on the little perps and dragging them to the precinct.
Just ask the three nine-year-old girls and an eight-year-old boy who got into a fight at their Baltimore elementary school – then got arrested by real police. Or Salecia Johnson, age six, cuffed and arrested for throwing a tantrum at her elementary school in Milledgeville, Georgia. Or Wilson Reyes, a seven-year-old at a Bronx, New York, elementary school who last December 4th was cuffed, hauled away, and interrogated under suspicion of taking $5 from a classmate. (Another kid later confessed.)
The last of these incidents made the cover of the New York Post, but the New York City Police Department still doesn’t understand what they did wrong – sure, the first-grader spent about 4 hours handcuffed in a detention room, but that’s “standard for juvenile arrest.”
Which is precisely the problem: standard juvenile misbehavior (a five-year-old pitching a fit, a 12-year-old doodling on a desk, a 13-year-old farting in class, a class clown running around the football field at halftime in a banana suit) is increasingly being treated like serious crime, resulting in handcuffs and arrest. If you can’t understand why such “consistency” is crazy, please desist from reading the rest of this article.
It seems grotesque that the horrific slaughter of those 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, will result in more children getting traumatized, but that’s exactly where we’re headed – with firm bipartisan support.
In his amazing post-Newtown speech last December, Wayne LaPierre, the CEO and executive vice president of the NRA, called for armed guards in all schools – a demand widely hailed as jaw-droppingly nutty. A few weeks later, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) proposed $50 million in federal grants to install more metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and National Guard troops in schools, but made her pitch in the caring cadences of a Marin County Democrat. And when President Obama ordered more police in schools (point 18 in his 23-point Executive Order responding to the Sandy Hook tragedy), it was all over.
So here’s an American reality of 2013: we will soon have more police in our schools, and more seven-year-olds like Joseph Andersons of PS 153 in Maspeth, New York, getting arrested. (He got handcuffed after a meltdown when his Easter egg dye-job didn’t come out right.)
The School-to-Prison Pipeline
In fairness to the feds, similar kinds of local responses were already underway before the La Pierre-Boxer Axis of Tiny Handcuffs even arose. Across the country, from Florida and Connecticut to Tennessee, Indiana, and Arizona, despite tough budgetary times, municipal governments are now eagerly scrounging up the extra money for more metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and armed guards in schools. (The same thing happened after the Columbine shooting 14 years ago.) No one keeps national statistics, but arrests of the 10-and-under set do seem to be on the rise since Sandy Hook. A typical recent case: in January, a seven-year-old at a Connecticut school was arrested by the police for “threatening” a teacher. Jitters are understandable after the trauma of Sandy Hook – but arresting a seven-year-old?
Truth be told, we were already well on our way to turning schools into carceral fortresses before the Sandy Hook slaughter even happened. In fact, the great national infrastructure project of the past 20 years may be the “school-to-prison pipeline.” After all, we are the nation that arrested Isamar Gonzalez for being in her high school early to meet with a teacher, then arrested her principal, Mark Federman, when he tried to intervene.
The stats speak as loudly as the anecdotes: of the Chicago School District’s 4,600 arrests in 2011, 86% were for misdemeanors. That school system spends $51.4 million on security guards, but only $3.5 million for college and career coaches. And for every incident that makes the news, there are scores that don’t. Despite a growing body of damning research by civil libertarians of the left and the right, including Annette Fuentes’s excellent book Lockdown High, political opposition to the school-to-prison pipeline has proven feeble or nonexistent. Brooklyn State Senator Eric Adams, who represents one of the most liberal districts in the country, has staked out the civil libertarian outer limit by helpfully suggesting that Velcro handcuffs might be more suitable than metal ones for arresting young children.
The metal detector at the schoolhouse door is threatening to become as iconic an American symbol as baseball or type 2 diabetes. Not that metal detectors in place were capable of preventing the massacre at Red Lake High School in Minnesota in 2005: young Jeffrey Weise just barged right in and shot six people dead; nor could the metal detectors at George Washington High School in Manhattan or Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn prevent teens from getting stabbed. Yet metal detectors and school police proliferate across the country.
One state, however, truly leads the way. Self-satisfied Yankees have traditionally slandered the state of Mississippi as a jerkwater remnant of the past. As for me, I say Mississippi represents the American future. A new report by advocacy groups shows how the Hospitality State is leading the nation in cruel and draconian school over-policing. Felony assault charges for throwing peanuts on the school bus! Dress codes enforced by handcuffing a child to a railing for hours for the crime of not wearing a belt! Cops escorting a five-year-old home for wearing the wrong color shoes! And constant arrests of kids for “disorderly conduct.”
Yes, the “Mississippi model” of non-union teachers plus “zero tolerance” discipline is the kind of schooling that some of the best and brightest among our education “reformers” have been touting – and what they are increasingly getting. In fairness, Governor Rick Perry’s Texas is struggling with Mississippi for vanguard status, with cutting-edge surveillance of students and 300,000 misdemeanor arrests in 2010 for “crimes” like tossing a paper airplane. And Massachusetts is a strong contender for third place.
Safe Schools Without Police or Metal Detectors
The over-policing of our schools is particularly grotesque because it’s so unnecessary. All schools need order and all students need self-discipline (as do adults), but putting police and metal detectors in a school often just adds another layer of violent chaos to an already tough situation. In my own policy research on school security overkill in New York City, I’ve found plenty of high schools, and not in the fancy parts of town, that do just fine without police or scanners.
In fact, they do better than fine: one report I coauthored with advocates from the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform found that schools without police or metal detectors actually get significantly better educational results (higher graduation rates, lower truancy) than their heavily policed counterparts.
So why aren’t these low-impact schools being held up as models? Why don’t City Hall and the New York City Department of Education seem to want to know about these more effective – not to mention cheaper – models? Alas, despite a steady 15-year nationwide drop in crime, politicos continue to score points with voters by showing that they aren’t afraid to crack down on children, especially the working-class Black and Latino youth who bear most of the brunt of these policies. The psycho-racial-political dynamics are pretty much the same throughout the country.
But there are proven, demonstrably better, ways to do school discipline. Ask Judge Steve Teske whose visionary common sense has brought down referrals to juvenile court by 70% in Clayton County, Georgia, by forcing schools to handle minor disciplinary infractions without handcuffs or police arrests. (In the same period in that county, serious weapons charges, like bringing guns and knives to school, have fallen by 80% – further evidence that restraining a police presence actually makes schools safer.)
For another example of the right way to respond to school violence, look no further than Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, site of the 1999 massacre of 12 students and a teacher by two heavily armed students. In response, the school made the choice not to add a phalanx of armed guards. (Columbine actually had an armed school resource officer on duty the day of the killings, and he was unable to slow, let alone stop, the carnage.)
In fact, Columbine today remains an open campus with no metal detector at the front door. Instead, its administration has worked hard to improve communications with the student body, trying to build an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. Columbine parents have supported this approach for a simple reason: they don’t want their children treated like criminals. Because Littleton, Colorado, is a largely affluent community with political muscle, they’ve been able to resist the avalanche of punitive measures that have been generated by every school massacre since the one that took place at theirs.
Other schools – particularly urban ones with working-class African-American and Latino students – are not so lucky. When President Obama announced his pledge of more “resource officers” in schools, he was quick to qualify it with an “if they want them.” A laudable sentiment that doesn’t really reflect how things usually work on the ground.
One Brooklyn high school principal I interviewed told me of the constant pressure he experienced from higher up in the New York City Department of Education to put in a metal detector and more police personnel. Another school security success story I profiled back in 2008 has since had a metal detector rammed down its educational throat despite its immaculate disciplinary record. Now, its students are made to feel like potential criminals from the moment they arrive every morning. The logic is, in its way, all-American: crazy white kids go on shooting sprees, and then the screws tighten on Black and Latino kids.
Resisting the Axis of Tiny Handcuffs
Is there any hope of preventing the rush to put more first graders in handcuffs? Yes, but don’t expect any help from the NRA, which is actively promoting a heavily armed vision of heaven on Earth in which armed guards will be everywhere, with all public space turned into an airport security line. As for Barbara Boxer, evidently she wasn’t as struck as I was by the t-shirts that Sacramento’s school security police made with the slogan “U Raise 'Em, We Cage 'Em” emblazoned on the image of a child behind bars. Or maybe she should talk to constituents like five-year-old arrestee Michael Davis or the seven-year-old in San Mateo whom a cop blasted in the face with pepper spray for climbing a bookshelf. It remains to be seen if the NRA and Boxer, united, can ever be defeated.
This response to the Newtown massacre is of a piece with a developing post-9/11 American national-security-lockdown mentality – the belief that an armed response will solve most of our problems, domestic and foreign. It’s a habit of thought that leads not figuratively but quite literally to a police state. The over-policing of schools is just a part of the increasing militarization of the police nationwide, which in turn fuels the smoldering paranoia that drives civilians to stock up on AR-15s and the like.
Ending this cycle of armed fear and violence will require getting police out of the schools along with the whole battery of security state accessories. The only way to get there will be via the broadest possible civil libertarian coalition: Black community groups and Ron Paul types, immigrants' rights activists and teachers and principals unions that see the big picture, liberals and conservatives united against the nanny/thug state.
There could be no finer spokesperson for such an ecumenical gathering than the newly crowned Miss America, Alabama-raised Brooklyn-residing Mallory Hytes Hagan. After wowing the pageant judges with her terpsichorean prowess, she demonstrated the soundest policy judgment. Asked if she thought it was a good idea to bring armed guards into schools, Ms. Hagan’s response was clear. “No, I don’t think the proper way to fight violence is with violence.” According to the New York Daily News, she said it “firmly.” Let people of goodwill rally behind this model citizen to end all the grotesque violence in our schools.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt455.html
What the federal government has in store for you...
How To Disarm Citizens
The feds' have plans, lots of goals and plans
Read document here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep4/hot-to-disarm-citizens.html
The feds' have plans, lots of goals and plans
Read document here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep4/hot-to-disarm-citizens.html
OOPS!!! Why your electric bill will rise and why Americans will freeze to death...
Coal Plants Likely the First Targets of Climate-change Executive Orders
Written by Brian Koenig
In a contentious effort to bypass the Republican-led House of Representatives, President Obama has embarked on a unilateral campaign to curb the impact of so-called climate change, in what could be a potentially fatal blow to the coal industry. The president’s new energy policy, and the forthcoming regulations that will accompany it, could in fact terminate all blueprints for new coal-fired plant facilities.
The president’s apparent desire to bankrupt the coal industry is part of a two-step process. According to James McGarry, a policy analyst at the environmental activist group the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the EPA “is probably going to set standards that any new power plant that's built in the U.S. has to achieve a certain carbon dioxide emissions rate per unit of energy produced."
Those likely standards, which will potentially be unveiled in the coming weeks, could stamp out all plans to build new coal-fired power plants. "That's huge, because just to look at the numbers, coal fired power plants emit around 2,200 pounds per megawatt hour where a new gas-fired, natural gas power plant is about 900 pounds per megawatt hour," McGarry notes. "So in order for any new coal to be built in the U.S. in 2013-2014, they would have to have some sort of carbon-capture technology, which at the moment is economically unrealistic."
In recent years, many Democrats in Congress have sought to increase regulations on coal plants and other conventional energy-production facilities. In 2009, House Democrats (who controlled the chamber at the time) passed a landmark climate change bill that was ultimately shot down in the Democratic-led Senate. And now with Republicans controlling the House, efforts to pass meaningful climate change legislation will be an even greater challenge.
President Obama is clearly adopting a new strategy — that is, to rule by executive order, circumventing Congress and bypassing the Constitution’s restraints on presidential power, as he has already done on a range of issues, including a brazenly unconstitutional power to detain and indefinitely imprison Americans who have not been charged with any crime.
"If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will," the president continued in his SOTU address. "I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."
Many environmentalists weren’t ecstatic with Obama’s “green” performance in his first term, particularly with regard to legislation intended to reduce climate change. One of the most valuable assets to the climate-alarmist community was Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Lisa Jackson, who during her tenure unleashed a flurry of new EPA regulations, before she resigned from her post earlier this month. And while environmentalists were dismayed over Jackson’s resignation, Obama’s nomination of Gina McCarthy as Jackson’s successor seems to indicate a vast expansion in the EPA’s regulatory regime. As the National Journal put it:
McCarthy, an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts with a thick South Boston accent, a ready sense of humor, and a tough-talking style, would come to the job after 30 years of working on environmental regulations at the state and federal level. During Obama’s first term, as he and Jackson came under fire from Republicans for waging a “war on coal” by regulating power-plant emissions, it’s been McCarthy who’s done the real work of writing and rolling out rules. Some environmentalists have nicknamed her “Obama’s green quarterback.”
Furthermore, other environmental efforts the Obama administration has contemplated could add to the already damning regulatory burden on existing power plants. And Obama’s energy agenda could be even more damaging if he, yet again, shrugs off TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would generate tens of thousands of jobs while decreasing Americans’ energy dependence on corrupt Middle Eastern regimes.
While the economic impact could be immense, all this neglects to address the flagrantly unconstitutional use of unilateral action in enacting such regulations. As noted in Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Note that the Constitution does not say some law-making powers should reside in Congress. Indeed, asserting that all legislative powers shall be vested in Congress seems to indicate that none is left for the president.
Of course, beyond the unconstitutionality of the president ruling in such a manner, Congress neither has the authority to legislate these federal regulations, as they violate the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are preaching Armageddon over the looming fiscal “sequester,” which is slated to shave some $85 billion off the federal budget, or less than two percent of the overall budget. But the less visible casualties of Washington’s political agenda are the regulatory burdens now streaming through the pipeline.
Eighty-five billion dollars off the federal budget spells global catastrophe, lawmakers and political pundits say. But they neglect to mention the $100 billion that the EPA’s newly-enacted mercury policy will cost Americans every year — not to mention the billions of dollars more that will emanate from the Obama administration’s hyper-regulatory, and explicitly illegal, environmental agenda.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/14633-coal-plants-likely-the-first-targets-of-climate-change-executive-orders
Written by Brian Koenig
In a contentious effort to bypass the Republican-led House of Representatives, President Obama has embarked on a unilateral campaign to curb the impact of so-called climate change, in what could be a potentially fatal blow to the coal industry. The president’s new energy policy, and the forthcoming regulations that will accompany it, could in fact terminate all blueprints for new coal-fired plant facilities.
The president’s apparent desire to bankrupt the coal industry is part of a two-step process. According to James McGarry, a policy analyst at the environmental activist group the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the EPA “is probably going to set standards that any new power plant that's built in the U.S. has to achieve a certain carbon dioxide emissions rate per unit of energy produced."
Those likely standards, which will potentially be unveiled in the coming weeks, could stamp out all plans to build new coal-fired power plants. "That's huge, because just to look at the numbers, coal fired power plants emit around 2,200 pounds per megawatt hour where a new gas-fired, natural gas power plant is about 900 pounds per megawatt hour," McGarry notes. "So in order for any new coal to be built in the U.S. in 2013-2014, they would have to have some sort of carbon-capture technology, which at the moment is economically unrealistic."
In recent years, many Democrats in Congress have sought to increase regulations on coal plants and other conventional energy-production facilities. In 2009, House Democrats (who controlled the chamber at the time) passed a landmark climate change bill that was ultimately shot down in the Democratic-led Senate. And now with Republicans controlling the House, efforts to pass meaningful climate change legislation will be an even greater challenge.
President Obama is clearly adopting a new strategy — that is, to rule by executive order, circumventing Congress and bypassing the Constitution’s restraints on presidential power, as he has already done on a range of issues, including a brazenly unconstitutional power to detain and indefinitely imprison Americans who have not been charged with any crime.
"If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will," the president continued in his SOTU address. "I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."
Many environmentalists weren’t ecstatic with Obama’s “green” performance in his first term, particularly with regard to legislation intended to reduce climate change. One of the most valuable assets to the climate-alarmist community was Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Lisa Jackson, who during her tenure unleashed a flurry of new EPA regulations, before she resigned from her post earlier this month. And while environmentalists were dismayed over Jackson’s resignation, Obama’s nomination of Gina McCarthy as Jackson’s successor seems to indicate a vast expansion in the EPA’s regulatory regime. As the National Journal put it:
McCarthy, an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts with a thick South Boston accent, a ready sense of humor, and a tough-talking style, would come to the job after 30 years of working on environmental regulations at the state and federal level. During Obama’s first term, as he and Jackson came under fire from Republicans for waging a “war on coal” by regulating power-plant emissions, it’s been McCarthy who’s done the real work of writing and rolling out rules. Some environmentalists have nicknamed her “Obama’s green quarterback.”
Furthermore, other environmental efforts the Obama administration has contemplated could add to the already damning regulatory burden on existing power plants. And Obama’s energy agenda could be even more damaging if he, yet again, shrugs off TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would generate tens of thousands of jobs while decreasing Americans’ energy dependence on corrupt Middle Eastern regimes.
While the economic impact could be immense, all this neglects to address the flagrantly unconstitutional use of unilateral action in enacting such regulations. As noted in Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Note that the Constitution does not say some law-making powers should reside in Congress. Indeed, asserting that all legislative powers shall be vested in Congress seems to indicate that none is left for the president.
Of course, beyond the unconstitutionality of the president ruling in such a manner, Congress neither has the authority to legislate these federal regulations, as they violate the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are preaching Armageddon over the looming fiscal “sequester,” which is slated to shave some $85 billion off the federal budget, or less than two percent of the overall budget. But the less visible casualties of Washington’s political agenda are the regulatory burdens now streaming through the pipeline.
Eighty-five billion dollars off the federal budget spells global catastrophe, lawmakers and political pundits say. But they neglect to mention the $100 billion that the EPA’s newly-enacted mercury policy will cost Americans every year — not to mention the billions of dollars more that will emanate from the Obama administration’s hyper-regulatory, and explicitly illegal, environmental agenda.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/14633-coal-plants-likely-the-first-targets-of-climate-change-executive-orders
Just answer the question John...
Rand Paul’s Third Letter to the CIA: Can You Kill with Drones in the USA?
Source: Liberty Blitz
This letter is a few days old, but is very important for every American to be aware of. Essentially, Rand Paul is threatening to filibuster Barack Obama’s nominee for the CIA, John Brennan, due to his refusal to answer a simple question:
Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?
This should not be a complicated question to answer, yet it seems Obama, Brennan and pretty much every other little power consumed bureaucrat is incapable of doing so. Below is Rand Paul’s letter reprinted in full (my emphasis added).
February 20, 2013
John O. Brennan
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Brennan,
In consideration of your nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), I have repeatedly requested that you provide answers to several questions clarifying your role in the approval of lethal force against terrorism suspects, particularly those who are U.S. citizens. Your past actions in this regard, as well as your view of the limitations to which you are subject, are of critical importance in assessing your qualifications to lead the CIA. If it is not clear that you will honor the limits placed upon the Executive Branch by the Constitution, then the Senate should not confirm you to lead the CIA.
During your confirmation process in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), committee members have quite appropriately made requests similar to questions I raised in my previous letter to you-that you expound on your views on the limits of executive power in using lethal force against U.S. citizens, especially when operating on U.S. soil. In fact, the Chairman of the SSCI, Sen. Feinstein, specifically asked you in post-hearing questions for the record whether the Administration could carry out drone strikes inside the United States. In your response, you emphasized that the Administration “has not carried out” such strikes and “has no intention of doing so.” I do not find this response sufficient.
The question that I and many others have asked is not whether the Administration has or intends to carry out drone strikes inside the United States, but whether it believes it has the authority to do so. This is an important distinction that should not be ignored.
Just last week, President Obama also avoided this question when posed to him directly. Instead of addressing the question of whether the Administration could kill a U.S. citizen on American soil, he used a similar line that “there has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil.” The evasive replies to this valid question from the Administration have only confused the issue further without getting us any closer to an actual answer.
For that reason, I once again request you answer the following question: Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?
I believe the only acceptable answer to this is no.
Until you directly and clearly answer, I plan to use every procedural option at my disposal to delay your confirmation and bring added scrutiny to this issue and the Administration’s policies on the use of lethal force. The American people are rightfully concerned, and they deserve a frank and open discussion on these policies.
Sincerely,
Rand Paul, M.D.
United States Senator
Link:
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/02/27/rand-pauls-third-letter-to-the-cia-can-you-kill-with-drones-in-the-usa/
Source: Liberty Blitz
This letter is a few days old, but is very important for every American to be aware of. Essentially, Rand Paul is threatening to filibuster Barack Obama’s nominee for the CIA, John Brennan, due to his refusal to answer a simple question:
Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?
This should not be a complicated question to answer, yet it seems Obama, Brennan and pretty much every other little power consumed bureaucrat is incapable of doing so. Below is Rand Paul’s letter reprinted in full (my emphasis added).
February 20, 2013
John O. Brennan
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Brennan,
In consideration of your nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), I have repeatedly requested that you provide answers to several questions clarifying your role in the approval of lethal force against terrorism suspects, particularly those who are U.S. citizens. Your past actions in this regard, as well as your view of the limitations to which you are subject, are of critical importance in assessing your qualifications to lead the CIA. If it is not clear that you will honor the limits placed upon the Executive Branch by the Constitution, then the Senate should not confirm you to lead the CIA.
During your confirmation process in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), committee members have quite appropriately made requests similar to questions I raised in my previous letter to you-that you expound on your views on the limits of executive power in using lethal force against U.S. citizens, especially when operating on U.S. soil. In fact, the Chairman of the SSCI, Sen. Feinstein, specifically asked you in post-hearing questions for the record whether the Administration could carry out drone strikes inside the United States. In your response, you emphasized that the Administration “has not carried out” such strikes and “has no intention of doing so.” I do not find this response sufficient.
The question that I and many others have asked is not whether the Administration has or intends to carry out drone strikes inside the United States, but whether it believes it has the authority to do so. This is an important distinction that should not be ignored.
Just last week, President Obama also avoided this question when posed to him directly. Instead of addressing the question of whether the Administration could kill a U.S. citizen on American soil, he used a similar line that “there has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil.” The evasive replies to this valid question from the Administration have only confused the issue further without getting us any closer to an actual answer.
For that reason, I once again request you answer the following question: Do you believe that the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial?
I believe the only acceptable answer to this is no.
Until you directly and clearly answer, I plan to use every procedural option at my disposal to delay your confirmation and bring added scrutiny to this issue and the Administration’s policies on the use of lethal force. The American people are rightfully concerned, and they deserve a frank and open discussion on these policies.
Sincerely,
Rand Paul, M.D.
United States Senator
Link:
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/02/27/rand-pauls-third-letter-to-the-cia-can-you-kill-with-drones-in-the-usa/
"The truth is that even if the sequester goes into effect, the U.S. government will still take in more money than ever before in 2013 and it will still spend more money than ever before in 2013."
All Of This Whining And Crying About The Sequester Shows Why America Is Doomed
Mike Snyder
If we can't even cut federal spending by 2.4 percent without much of the country throwing an absolute hissy fit, then what hope does America have? All of this whining and crying about the sequester is absolutely disgraceful. The truth is that even if the sequester goes into effect, the U.S. government will still take in more money than ever before in 2013 and it will still spend more money than ever before in 2013. So it is a bit disingenuous to call what is about to happen "a spending cut", but for the sake of argument let's concede that point. Even if the budget really was being "cut" by 85 billion dollars, that only would only amount to a "cut" of 2.4 percent to federal spending. It would barely make a dent in the federal budget deficit for 2013. The U.S. government would still accumulate about as much new debt in fiscal year 2013 as it did in all the years from the inauguration of George Washington to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan combined. Our debt to GDP ratio would continue to soar. The sequester cuts would essentially only be a minor bump on the road to financial oblivion. But if you listen to Barack Obama and his allies, they would have you believe that we are facing a great national crisis because of these impending cuts. They would have you believe that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs and that many government agencies will no longer be able to operate effectively. They would have you believe that "granny won't get her lunch" and "roofs blown off by Hurricane Sandy won't get repaired". Well, if all of that is true, then what in the world would our country look like if we actually cut a trillion dollars from the federal budget this year and started living within our means?
Have you ever known people that are already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and yet go out and regularly blow thousands more dollars on wild shopping sprees?
Such debt addicts may be very proud of their new homes, their new cars, their new clothes and all of their fancy electronic gadgets, but it was all purchased with debt. When a "day of reckoning" finally arrives, many debt addicts lose absolutely everything and end up in the street.
That is what America is like today.
Our politicians like to show off all of the stuff that our government is spending money on, but the truth is that we are spending gigantic mountains of money that we simply do not have. We are literally stealing from our kids and our grandkids so that we can continue to enjoy a massively inflated standard of living that we have not earned.
But we can't stop ourselves. Americans are absolutely addicted to big government. They want a gigantic government that sends out free money to more than 100 million Americans every month, but they absolutely do not want to pay for it. They would rather steal money from their children and their grandchildren to pay for it.
This has got to stop, because we are literally destroying the future of this country.
If Americans really want a massively bloated government that takes care of everyone from the cradle to the grave then they should pay for it.
If Americans don't want to pay for it, then they should reduce the size of the government to a level where they are willing to pay for it.
But stealing money from future generations of Americans to pay our bills is absolutely disgraceful.
As I talked about in a previous article, we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.
Is there anyone out there that is willing to stand up and defend that kind of theft?
But the vast majority of Americans don't want to do anything to stop it, because they don't want to harm "the economy" (i.e. our ridiculously bloated standard of living).
Will the sequester cuts hurt the economy a bit?
Of course.
Government spending cuts always hurt the economy.
If we raised taxes to help pay the bills that the federal government has been racking up, would that hurt the economy?
Of course.
Tax increases always hurt the economy.
But if we continue on the path that we are today, America is doomed.
The U.S. national debt is the biggest single debt in the history of the world. It is now more than 16.6 trillion dollars, and it has gotten more than 23 times larger since Jimmy Carter first entered the White House.
If our politicians suddenly decided to go to a balanced budget today, our debt-fueled "bubble economy" would disappear and we would immediately plunge into a deep economic depression.
Do the American people have the character to be able to handle that kind of an "adjustment" to our standard of living?
Of course not.
That is why so many of our politicians are scared to death of doing anything about the debt.
And even these small sequester "cuts" are freaking everyone out. Many of our politicians and many in the mainstream media are openly declaring that "the sky is falling". Just check out the following short excerpt from a recent New York Times article...
The owner of a Missouri smokehouse that makes beef jerky is worried about a slowdown in food safety inspections. A Montana school district is drawing up a list of teachers who could face layoffs. Officials at an Arizona border station fear that lines to cross the border could lengthen. And if Olympic National Park in Washington cannot hire enough workers to plow backcountry trails, they may stay closed until the snow melts in July.
But that is nothing compared to what others are saying. CNN is declaring that if the sequester cuts happen, "granny won't get her lunch" and "roofs blown off by Hurricane Sandy won't get repaired".
And check out these ominous warnings from Barack Obama about what will happen if the sequester cuts go into effect...
"Emergency responders like the ones who are here today -- their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings."
The Obama administration has even decided to release hundreds of illegal immigrants in anticipation of the cuts...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have released “several hundred” immigrants from deportation centers across the country, saying the move is an effort to cut costs ahead of budget cuts due to hit later this week.
Announcing the news Tuesday, ICE officials said that the immigrants were released under supervision and continue to face deportation. After reviewing hundreds of cases, those released were considered low-risk and “noncriminal,” officials said.
The claims about the sequester cuts just seem to get more ridiculous with each passing day. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is warning that the cuts will make the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and Obama recently decided not to send an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of "budget concerns".
Apparently he sees no problem with using the U.S. military to score political points.
And Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that the budget cuts will result in "less actual deficit reduction in the short run".
Really?
How stupid do they think we all are?
Yes, the sequester cuts will have an impact on the economy, but they won't cause the sky to fall.
The following is what the CBO says the economic impact of the cuts is likely to be...
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will cost 750,000 jobs and hit growth by 0.6 percentage points, assuming the cuts remain in effect for the remainder of the fiscal year. Some economists expect a slightly bigger impact.
Remember, these are actually very small cuts.
In fact, according to U.S. Representative Lynn Jenkins, the U.S. government will actually be spending more money in 2013 than it did in 2012 even if the sequester cuts go into effect...
“There’s a fact that says we are going to take in more money this fiscal year than we have ever taken in before,” Jenkins said. “The budget this year, we will spend more money this year than we spent last year even if the sequester goes into effect. We will spend more money even if the sequester goes into effect.”
So why is everyone whining and crying over such a very small amount of money?
If you want to get upset about something, why not get upset about things that are increasing our debt by trillions of dollars?
For example, according to a Government Accountability Office report that was just released, Obamacare is going to cause the federal debt to rise by $6.2 trillion.
Why aren't more people getting upset over that?
Sadly, it is because America is a debt addict. Most Americans don't really care much when federal spending skyrockets out of control, but if anyone tries to slow down the spending a little bit they throw hissy fits.
And please don't tell me that "the big government Republicans" are much better than "the big government Democrats" on budget issues. The Republicans have caved in and have gone along with all of this wild spending every single time.
On March 27th, they will have another opportunity to do something. That is when the current continuing resolution expires.
At that time, the Republicans could refuse to pass anything but a balanced budget.
Or they could at least refuse to pass anything except a budget that would cut the federal budget deficit in half.
But they won't do anything once again. They will cave in and go along with the status quo because they are cowards.
So we will continue to rip off future generations to fuel our current bloated standard of living.
Thomas Jefferson understood that government borrowing is theft from future generations. He once made the following statement....
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Shame on you Democrats.
Shame on you Republicans.
Shame on you America.
You are destroying the future of America for your own selfish reasons.
If future generations get the chance, they will look back on what you did to them and they will curse you for it.
For much more on our exploding national debt, please see the following article: "55 Facts About The Debt And U.S. Government Finances That Every American Voter Should Know".
Not that living within our means would be easy.
Like I said, it would mean a deep economic depression, and it would also likely mean a tremendous amount of societal chaos.
Even now, while we are still living in the boom times, things are really starting to get crazy out there. Just check out what is going on in Oakland...
Oakland’s crime problems have gotten so bad that some people aren’t even bothering to call the cops anymore; instead, they’re trying to solve and prevent crimes themselves.
KPIX 5 cameras caught up with a half dozen neighbors in East Oakland’s Arcadia Park neighborhood Monday as they walked the streets on the lookout for crime. The vigilance has never seemed more necessary than now; 25 homes in the neighborhood have been burglarized over the last two months alone.
In a neighborhood that has started to feel like the wild west, people have even started posting “wanted” signs.
“You have to walk around in your house with a gun to feel safe here,” said Alaska Tarvins of the Arcadia Park Board of Directors.
If this is how bad things are now, how bad will they be when a day of reckoning for our economy arrives?
And a day of reckoning is coming.
Our politicians can try to keep kicking the can down the road for as long as they can, but eventually time will run out. Just take a look at what is happening in Greece and Spain. Meanwhile, all of this can kicking is just making the eventual crisis even worse.
We can borrow our way to prosperity for a while, but in the end there is always a very bitter price to pay for doing so.
I would love to tell you that there is a chance that all of this will be turned around, but the truth is that all of this whining and crying about the sequester shows that America is doomed.
I hope that you are getting ready.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/all-of-this-whining-and-crying-about-the-sequester-shows-why-america-is-doomed#sthash.dC79zmcH.dpuf
Mike Snyder
If we can't even cut federal spending by 2.4 percent without much of the country throwing an absolute hissy fit, then what hope does America have? All of this whining and crying about the sequester is absolutely disgraceful. The truth is that even if the sequester goes into effect, the U.S. government will still take in more money than ever before in 2013 and it will still spend more money than ever before in 2013. So it is a bit disingenuous to call what is about to happen "a spending cut", but for the sake of argument let's concede that point. Even if the budget really was being "cut" by 85 billion dollars, that only would only amount to a "cut" of 2.4 percent to federal spending. It would barely make a dent in the federal budget deficit for 2013. The U.S. government would still accumulate about as much new debt in fiscal year 2013 as it did in all the years from the inauguration of George Washington to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan combined. Our debt to GDP ratio would continue to soar. The sequester cuts would essentially only be a minor bump on the road to financial oblivion. But if you listen to Barack Obama and his allies, they would have you believe that we are facing a great national crisis because of these impending cuts. They would have you believe that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their jobs and that many government agencies will no longer be able to operate effectively. They would have you believe that "granny won't get her lunch" and "roofs blown off by Hurricane Sandy won't get repaired". Well, if all of that is true, then what in the world would our country look like if we actually cut a trillion dollars from the federal budget this year and started living within our means?
Have you ever known people that are already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and yet go out and regularly blow thousands more dollars on wild shopping sprees?
Such debt addicts may be very proud of their new homes, their new cars, their new clothes and all of their fancy electronic gadgets, but it was all purchased with debt. When a "day of reckoning" finally arrives, many debt addicts lose absolutely everything and end up in the street.
That is what America is like today.
Our politicians like to show off all of the stuff that our government is spending money on, but the truth is that we are spending gigantic mountains of money that we simply do not have. We are literally stealing from our kids and our grandkids so that we can continue to enjoy a massively inflated standard of living that we have not earned.
But we can't stop ourselves. Americans are absolutely addicted to big government. They want a gigantic government that sends out free money to more than 100 million Americans every month, but they absolutely do not want to pay for it. They would rather steal money from their children and their grandchildren to pay for it.
This has got to stop, because we are literally destroying the future of this country.
If Americans really want a massively bloated government that takes care of everyone from the cradle to the grave then they should pay for it.
If Americans don't want to pay for it, then they should reduce the size of the government to a level where they are willing to pay for it.
But stealing money from future generations of Americans to pay our bills is absolutely disgraceful.
As I talked about in a previous article, we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.
Is there anyone out there that is willing to stand up and defend that kind of theft?
But the vast majority of Americans don't want to do anything to stop it, because they don't want to harm "the economy" (i.e. our ridiculously bloated standard of living).
Will the sequester cuts hurt the economy a bit?
Of course.
Government spending cuts always hurt the economy.
If we raised taxes to help pay the bills that the federal government has been racking up, would that hurt the economy?
Of course.
Tax increases always hurt the economy.
But if we continue on the path that we are today, America is doomed.
The U.S. national debt is the biggest single debt in the history of the world. It is now more than 16.6 trillion dollars, and it has gotten more than 23 times larger since Jimmy Carter first entered the White House.
If our politicians suddenly decided to go to a balanced budget today, our debt-fueled "bubble economy" would disappear and we would immediately plunge into a deep economic depression.
Do the American people have the character to be able to handle that kind of an "adjustment" to our standard of living?
Of course not.
That is why so many of our politicians are scared to death of doing anything about the debt.
And even these small sequester "cuts" are freaking everyone out. Many of our politicians and many in the mainstream media are openly declaring that "the sky is falling". Just check out the following short excerpt from a recent New York Times article...
The owner of a Missouri smokehouse that makes beef jerky is worried about a slowdown in food safety inspections. A Montana school district is drawing up a list of teachers who could face layoffs. Officials at an Arizona border station fear that lines to cross the border could lengthen. And if Olympic National Park in Washington cannot hire enough workers to plow backcountry trails, they may stay closed until the snow melts in July.
But that is nothing compared to what others are saying. CNN is declaring that if the sequester cuts happen, "granny won't get her lunch" and "roofs blown off by Hurricane Sandy won't get repaired".
And check out these ominous warnings from Barack Obama about what will happen if the sequester cuts go into effect...
"Emergency responders like the ones who are here today -- their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings."
The Obama administration has even decided to release hundreds of illegal immigrants in anticipation of the cuts...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have released “several hundred” immigrants from deportation centers across the country, saying the move is an effort to cut costs ahead of budget cuts due to hit later this week.
Announcing the news Tuesday, ICE officials said that the immigrants were released under supervision and continue to face deportation. After reviewing hundreds of cases, those released were considered low-risk and “noncriminal,” officials said.
The claims about the sequester cuts just seem to get more ridiculous with each passing day. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is warning that the cuts will make the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and Obama recently decided not to send an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of "budget concerns".
Apparently he sees no problem with using the U.S. military to score political points.
And Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that the budget cuts will result in "less actual deficit reduction in the short run".
Really?
How stupid do they think we all are?
Yes, the sequester cuts will have an impact on the economy, but they won't cause the sky to fall.
The following is what the CBO says the economic impact of the cuts is likely to be...
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will cost 750,000 jobs and hit growth by 0.6 percentage points, assuming the cuts remain in effect for the remainder of the fiscal year. Some economists expect a slightly bigger impact.
Remember, these are actually very small cuts.
In fact, according to U.S. Representative Lynn Jenkins, the U.S. government will actually be spending more money in 2013 than it did in 2012 even if the sequester cuts go into effect...
“There’s a fact that says we are going to take in more money this fiscal year than we have ever taken in before,” Jenkins said. “The budget this year, we will spend more money this year than we spent last year even if the sequester goes into effect. We will spend more money even if the sequester goes into effect.”
So why is everyone whining and crying over such a very small amount of money?
If you want to get upset about something, why not get upset about things that are increasing our debt by trillions of dollars?
For example, according to a Government Accountability Office report that was just released, Obamacare is going to cause the federal debt to rise by $6.2 trillion.
Why aren't more people getting upset over that?
Sadly, it is because America is a debt addict. Most Americans don't really care much when federal spending skyrockets out of control, but if anyone tries to slow down the spending a little bit they throw hissy fits.
And please don't tell me that "the big government Republicans" are much better than "the big government Democrats" on budget issues. The Republicans have caved in and have gone along with all of this wild spending every single time.
On March 27th, they will have another opportunity to do something. That is when the current continuing resolution expires.
At that time, the Republicans could refuse to pass anything but a balanced budget.
Or they could at least refuse to pass anything except a budget that would cut the federal budget deficit in half.
But they won't do anything once again. They will cave in and go along with the status quo because they are cowards.
So we will continue to rip off future generations to fuel our current bloated standard of living.
Thomas Jefferson understood that government borrowing is theft from future generations. He once made the following statement....
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Shame on you Democrats.
Shame on you Republicans.
Shame on you America.
You are destroying the future of America for your own selfish reasons.
If future generations get the chance, they will look back on what you did to them and they will curse you for it.
For much more on our exploding national debt, please see the following article: "55 Facts About The Debt And U.S. Government Finances That Every American Voter Should Know".
Not that living within our means would be easy.
Like I said, it would mean a deep economic depression, and it would also likely mean a tremendous amount of societal chaos.
Even now, while we are still living in the boom times, things are really starting to get crazy out there. Just check out what is going on in Oakland...
Oakland’s crime problems have gotten so bad that some people aren’t even bothering to call the cops anymore; instead, they’re trying to solve and prevent crimes themselves.
KPIX 5 cameras caught up with a half dozen neighbors in East Oakland’s Arcadia Park neighborhood Monday as they walked the streets on the lookout for crime. The vigilance has never seemed more necessary than now; 25 homes in the neighborhood have been burglarized over the last two months alone.
In a neighborhood that has started to feel like the wild west, people have even started posting “wanted” signs.
“You have to walk around in your house with a gun to feel safe here,” said Alaska Tarvins of the Arcadia Park Board of Directors.
If this is how bad things are now, how bad will they be when a day of reckoning for our economy arrives?
And a day of reckoning is coming.
Our politicians can try to keep kicking the can down the road for as long as they can, but eventually time will run out. Just take a look at what is happening in Greece and Spain. Meanwhile, all of this can kicking is just making the eventual crisis even worse.
We can borrow our way to prosperity for a while, but in the end there is always a very bitter price to pay for doing so.
I would love to tell you that there is a chance that all of this will be turned around, but the truth is that all of this whining and crying about the sequester shows that America is doomed.
I hope that you are getting ready.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/all-of-this-whining-and-crying-about-the-sequester-shows-why-america-is-doomed#sthash.dC79zmcH.dpuf
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Another war-monger wins peace prize...
After Invading Mali, Socialist French President Wins UN Peace Prize
Alex Newman
In an Orwellian move that has already been widely criticized and ridiculed by analysts across the political spectrum, the United Nations announced February 21 that Socialist French President François Hollande would be awarded a UN “Peace Prize” for his government’s invasion of Mali to support a military coup-installed regime battling separatist rebels. Human rights groups say the controversial international military intervention, led by Hollande in France but heavily supported by the UN and Obama, has already resulted in civilian massacres and possibly war crimes.
The largely discredited international prize, awarded by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), was offered to Hollande for his alleged “valuable contribution to peace and stability in Africa.” That “contribution,” of course, was the French government’s bloody military campaign that began earlier this year in defense of the illegitimate regime ruling parts of Mali out of the capital city of Bamako. Unlike Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, however — awarded before he escalated and began multiple unconstitutional wars — Hollande earned his award only after starting a war for “peace.”
The armed intervention in Mali — justified under the guise of fighting “Islamic extremism,” defending “democracy,” and enforcing UN decrees — included aerial bombings of rebel targets and thousands of French troops deployed on the ground. As The New American has documented, however, even as Hollande claims to be waging a war on terror in Mali, his government has beenamong the most vocal supporters of brutal Islamic jihad in Syria targeting the secular dictatorship of Bashir al-Assad.
Considering the UNESCO jury that awarded the prize, though, analysts were not surprised that it went to a socialist now described by critics even on the hard left as a warmonger and even a war criminal. In typical UN fashion, the chairman of the global organization’s “Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize” jury was former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano — a founding member of the Marxist terror group-turned ruling Communist political party known as the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).
“After analyzing the global situation, it is Africa that held the attention of the jury with the various threats affecting the continent,” Chissano said in a statement released by the UN after the jury’s meeting in Paris. “Having assessed the dangers and the repercussions of the situation on Africa, and on Mali in particular, as well as on the rest of the world, the jury appreciated the solidarity shown by France to the peoples of Africa.”
The jury also cited Hollande’s efforts to unify the poverty-stricken African nation, condemning the alleged “violation of Mali’s territorial integrity” by secessionist rebels in the north. Amid a military coup led by a U.S.-trained officer that overthrew the elected Malian government, Tuareg separatists in the northern regions of the country — apparently loosely allied with various Islamist factions — declared independence from the regime in Bamako early last year.
For the UN, France, and the Obama administration, however, that was unacceptable — the long-oppressed nomadic tribesmen, who have been seeking an independent state for generations, would have to submit to the internationally backed central regime, or face invasion. By the end of last year, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for armed international intervention in Mali to oust the ragtag rebels, who, ironically, perhaps, obtained heavy weapons during a previous UN-approved military invasion in northern Africa involving the French government — that war was to support self-described al-Qaeda leaders in Libya against the late strongman Muammar Gadhafi.
Selecting Hollande to receive the prize was also appropriate considering the nature of the award itself. According to UNESCO, the “Felix-Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize” — created in 1989 and named after the totalitarian-minded “president” who ruled the Ivory Coast for over 30 years — is “intended to honor living individuals and active public or private bodies or institutions that have made a significant contribution to promoting, seeking, safeguarding or maintaining peace, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution of UNESCO.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, other notable recipients of the dubious UN “Peace Prize” — which consists of $150,000, a “peace diploma,” and a gold medal — include a range of communists and former terrorists who have played key roles advancing socialism, globalism, or both. Among the most well-known laureates: Former South African President Nelson Mandela, now a proven Communist Party leader who led an armed, Soviet-backed terror campaign against the Apartheid government before taking over the nation with his communist allies. Today, South Africa is facing the threat of genocide and full-blown communist tyranny.
Another notable recipient of the UN prize was former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Among other accomplishments, the former Workers’ Party (PT) of Brazil chieftain founded the shadowy Foro de São Paulo (FSP) — an alliance of socialist and communist forces that now dominates Latin American politics — with communist tyrant Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas, Marxist narco-terror groups like the FARC, and others. Today, with a few exceptions, the region is almost completely controlled by socialist and communist forces thanks in large part to Lula’s work.
Of course, it may not have been surprising that UNESCO — infamous for promoting global governance, immorality, bogus climate alarmism, subversive propaganda aimed at children, and more — would give a “peace prize” to a socialist warmonger whose primary international achievement is starting a brutal war in Mali while backing bloody jihad in Syria. Still, critics from the all across the political spectrum lambasted the UN decision to honor Hollande, recalling George Orwell’s infamous “War is Peace” slogan from the dystopian book 1984.
In a piece entitled “Another ‘War is Peace’ Award (This Time Hollande Wins!)” on the popular libertarian site LewRockwell.com, analyst Daniel McAdams noted sarcastically that honoring the Socialist French leader was entirely “appropriate” considering the circumstances and the nature of UNESCO. Citing other experts, he also suggested that the bizarre but deadly military campaign — based almost entirely on fantasy and fiction — could have something to do with promoting the new French Rafale fighter jets or other nefarious machinations.
“After having invaded the African country of Mali under false pretenses, with no legal justification …, where a bloody trail of that nation’s destruction lies in the wake, what better way for the ‘international community’ to honor French President Francois Hollande than to give him an international peace prize,” McAdams wrote. “War is peace! And it brings bigger dividends!”
Other critics pointed out that France’s top terror court judge, Marc Trevedic, is sounding the alarm about the potential blowbackfrom the controversial invasion. The judge, who has been warning about the increased risk of terrorism sparked by the war since before it officially began, says Hollande’s latest assault may well lead to terrorist attacks in France. Even French citizens with ties to North Africa, which has been ravished in recent years by at least three brutal international invasions aided by France, may decide to perpetrate domestic terror attacks, Trevedic warned.
On the left, opponents of Hollande’s war and his “peace prize” were also fuming. “To say this was absurd and outright insanity would be putting it mildly,” noted U.K.-based author and radio host Jason Liosatos in a widely cited analysis of the UN announcement, where he argued that the French invasion of its former colony was really about securing resources rather than terror. “If this all seems like cynicism let us take a close look first and see the facts and realize there is a great difference between cynicism and reality.”
Domestically, of course, Hollande is also working fiendishly to advance socialism, cultural relativism, internationalism, and other key UN goals. From foisting a 75-percent tax on the “rich” and using the force of government to re-define marriage to demanding that France “march toward a unified Europe,” the Socialist French president has become a primary darling of the international socialist establishment. Despite mass protests and even an exodus of productive citizens, however, Hollande appears determined to advance the controversial agenda.
Analysts from across the world and from every point on the political spectrum have pointed out the irony of giving Hollande, theEuropean Union, Al Gore, and Obama so-called “peace” prizes. However, with cover from the establishment press, it appears that the UN and its allies will continue rewarding those who faithfully advance statism and globalism with dubious “prizes” — regardless of how many people are killed or how absurd it may sound to clear-thinking individuals.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/14618-after-invading-mali-socialist-french-president-wins-un-peace-prize
Alex Newman
In an Orwellian move that has already been widely criticized and ridiculed by analysts across the political spectrum, the United Nations announced February 21 that Socialist French President François Hollande would be awarded a UN “Peace Prize” for his government’s invasion of Mali to support a military coup-installed regime battling separatist rebels. Human rights groups say the controversial international military intervention, led by Hollande in France but heavily supported by the UN and Obama, has already resulted in civilian massacres and possibly war crimes.
The largely discredited international prize, awarded by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), was offered to Hollande for his alleged “valuable contribution to peace and stability in Africa.” That “contribution,” of course, was the French government’s bloody military campaign that began earlier this year in defense of the illegitimate regime ruling parts of Mali out of the capital city of Bamako. Unlike Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, however — awarded before he escalated and began multiple unconstitutional wars — Hollande earned his award only after starting a war for “peace.”
The armed intervention in Mali — justified under the guise of fighting “Islamic extremism,” defending “democracy,” and enforcing UN decrees — included aerial bombings of rebel targets and thousands of French troops deployed on the ground. As The New American has documented, however, even as Hollande claims to be waging a war on terror in Mali, his government has beenamong the most vocal supporters of brutal Islamic jihad in Syria targeting the secular dictatorship of Bashir al-Assad.
Considering the UNESCO jury that awarded the prize, though, analysts were not surprised that it went to a socialist now described by critics even on the hard left as a warmonger and even a war criminal. In typical UN fashion, the chairman of the global organization’s “Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize” jury was former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano — a founding member of the Marxist terror group-turned ruling Communist political party known as the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).
“After analyzing the global situation, it is Africa that held the attention of the jury with the various threats affecting the continent,” Chissano said in a statement released by the UN after the jury’s meeting in Paris. “Having assessed the dangers and the repercussions of the situation on Africa, and on Mali in particular, as well as on the rest of the world, the jury appreciated the solidarity shown by France to the peoples of Africa.”
The jury also cited Hollande’s efforts to unify the poverty-stricken African nation, condemning the alleged “violation of Mali’s territorial integrity” by secessionist rebels in the north. Amid a military coup led by a U.S.-trained officer that overthrew the elected Malian government, Tuareg separatists in the northern regions of the country — apparently loosely allied with various Islamist factions — declared independence from the regime in Bamako early last year.
For the UN, France, and the Obama administration, however, that was unacceptable — the long-oppressed nomadic tribesmen, who have been seeking an independent state for generations, would have to submit to the internationally backed central regime, or face invasion. By the end of last year, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for armed international intervention in Mali to oust the ragtag rebels, who, ironically, perhaps, obtained heavy weapons during a previous UN-approved military invasion in northern Africa involving the French government — that war was to support self-described al-Qaeda leaders in Libya against the late strongman Muammar Gadhafi.
Selecting Hollande to receive the prize was also appropriate considering the nature of the award itself. According to UNESCO, the “Felix-Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize” — created in 1989 and named after the totalitarian-minded “president” who ruled the Ivory Coast for over 30 years — is “intended to honor living individuals and active public or private bodies or institutions that have made a significant contribution to promoting, seeking, safeguarding or maintaining peace, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitution of UNESCO.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, other notable recipients of the dubious UN “Peace Prize” — which consists of $150,000, a “peace diploma,” and a gold medal — include a range of communists and former terrorists who have played key roles advancing socialism, globalism, or both. Among the most well-known laureates: Former South African President Nelson Mandela, now a proven Communist Party leader who led an armed, Soviet-backed terror campaign against the Apartheid government before taking over the nation with his communist allies. Today, South Africa is facing the threat of genocide and full-blown communist tyranny.
Another notable recipient of the UN prize was former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Among other accomplishments, the former Workers’ Party (PT) of Brazil chieftain founded the shadowy Foro de São Paulo (FSP) — an alliance of socialist and communist forces that now dominates Latin American politics — with communist tyrant Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas, Marxist narco-terror groups like the FARC, and others. Today, with a few exceptions, the region is almost completely controlled by socialist and communist forces thanks in large part to Lula’s work.
Of course, it may not have been surprising that UNESCO — infamous for promoting global governance, immorality, bogus climate alarmism, subversive propaganda aimed at children, and more — would give a “peace prize” to a socialist warmonger whose primary international achievement is starting a brutal war in Mali while backing bloody jihad in Syria. Still, critics from the all across the political spectrum lambasted the UN decision to honor Hollande, recalling George Orwell’s infamous “War is Peace” slogan from the dystopian book 1984.
In a piece entitled “Another ‘War is Peace’ Award (This Time Hollande Wins!)” on the popular libertarian site LewRockwell.com, analyst Daniel McAdams noted sarcastically that honoring the Socialist French leader was entirely “appropriate” considering the circumstances and the nature of UNESCO. Citing other experts, he also suggested that the bizarre but deadly military campaign — based almost entirely on fantasy and fiction — could have something to do with promoting the new French Rafale fighter jets or other nefarious machinations.
“After having invaded the African country of Mali under false pretenses, with no legal justification …, where a bloody trail of that nation’s destruction lies in the wake, what better way for the ‘international community’ to honor French President Francois Hollande than to give him an international peace prize,” McAdams wrote. “War is peace! And it brings bigger dividends!”
Other critics pointed out that France’s top terror court judge, Marc Trevedic, is sounding the alarm about the potential blowbackfrom the controversial invasion. The judge, who has been warning about the increased risk of terrorism sparked by the war since before it officially began, says Hollande’s latest assault may well lead to terrorist attacks in France. Even French citizens with ties to North Africa, which has been ravished in recent years by at least three brutal international invasions aided by France, may decide to perpetrate domestic terror attacks, Trevedic warned.
On the left, opponents of Hollande’s war and his “peace prize” were also fuming. “To say this was absurd and outright insanity would be putting it mildly,” noted U.K.-based author and radio host Jason Liosatos in a widely cited analysis of the UN announcement, where he argued that the French invasion of its former colony was really about securing resources rather than terror. “If this all seems like cynicism let us take a close look first and see the facts and realize there is a great difference between cynicism and reality.”
Domestically, of course, Hollande is also working fiendishly to advance socialism, cultural relativism, internationalism, and other key UN goals. From foisting a 75-percent tax on the “rich” and using the force of government to re-define marriage to demanding that France “march toward a unified Europe,” the Socialist French president has become a primary darling of the international socialist establishment. Despite mass protests and even an exodus of productive citizens, however, Hollande appears determined to advance the controversial agenda.
Analysts from across the world and from every point on the political spectrum have pointed out the irony of giving Hollande, theEuropean Union, Al Gore, and Obama so-called “peace” prizes. However, with cover from the establishment press, it appears that the UN and its allies will continue rewarding those who faithfully advance statism and globalism with dubious “prizes” — regardless of how many people are killed or how absurd it may sound to clear-thinking individuals.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/14618-after-invading-mali-socialist-french-president-wins-un-peace-prize
Do you still get your information from TV news???
Media Reacts: Rising Gas Prices Edition - CONAN on TBS
Education news...
Dispelling Some Homeschooling Myths
Survival Blog
The Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act – or so it is characterized in the 6th grade curriculum widely used in my beloved state of Texas. The Pledge of Allegiance – in Arabic? The national anthem – well, some schools have banned it for being “too offensive…” At least the flag is still there – oh, wait, that’s the Mexican flag…Speaking of flags, let’s design a flag – for a new Socialist country. Why is patriotism under attack in America’s public school system?
Better yet, why are kids under attack in America’s public school system? Hugs are banned as a form of sexual harassment, yet condoms and STD screenings are offered at middle schools and high schools. Sex acts go unnoticed in the classroom, worse yet predators posing as teachers go unnoticed in the classroom. School shootings, kids bullied to death, mandatory GPS trackers on school kids, children medicated at younger and younger ages on psychotropic drugs, unfit union teachers who can’t be fired, teachers who refuse to take tests because they don’t measure anything, school officials changing student standardized test answers, and the latest trend – kids being suspended, some even arrested, for brandishing Lego guns, toy guns, bubble guns, drawings of guns, screen saver guns, imaginary guns – really!? These are just a few of the headlines making news lately, and if that’s not enough to make you want to homeschool, I don’t know what is. So as a homeschooling mom to a 9 year old who dang sure knows a terrorist from a patriot, I thought I would share my 2 cents on the subject and dispel some myths:
It has become the norm for American children to attend public school, as their parents did, and as their grandparents did. But it wasn’t always so. Before there were government schools, there were homeschools and homeschool co-ops held in little one-roomed schoolhouses funded and controlled not by the government, but by the parents. And those primitive, humble homeschools produced many of our most cherished American icons and heroes, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson, George Washington Carver, Eli Whitney, Clara Barton, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Thomas Paine, Frank Lloyd Wright, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and Mark Twain.
But then in the late 19th century, the idea of forced mass education was introduced, and families were told to sacrifice personal liberty for the “good” of the children – sounds like similar arguments being made in favor of gun control today. In “Why Schools Don’t Educate,” John Taylor Gatto, award winning public school teacher and critic of compulsory education, describes the creation of government schools in America: “Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.” From that point forward, literacy rates dropped in the state, and have not since recovered.
So began a new era in American history. And I wonder, how would our Founding Fathers and iconic American heroes have fared in today’s government school system. How would the world have fared? Would Abe Lincoln be told to put away those silly books – they aren’t on this year’s required reading list? Would the Wright brothers be told to stop fiddling with that machine so they could finish their standardized testing? Would George Patton or Robert E. Lee be told to quit playing hero, as it violates the school’s policy on imaginary fighting?
So many of the people who shaped the world were home-educated, and I wonder to what extent their success was shaped by freedom to explore their curiosities and talents and passions.
But such freedom is no longer the norm, even here in “the land of the free.” Now, we have been conditioned to forfeit our freedom and our individual choice, and to hand over more and more of our parental responsibility to the government school system. We have been conditioned to believe we are not capable of educating our own kids, and that our kids are not capable of thinking for themselves. Today, the government education authority, strangers to our children, decide when our children go to school, what they learn, when they learn it, the time allotted to learn it, how they can prove they have learned it, what school they will attend, in which classroom they will sit, which teachers and subjects they will be assigned, when to eat, sometimes what to eat and whether they can even speak during lunch, when they can use the bathroom, what they can wear, and in many cases what to think and believe. After all, between a 7-hour school day, extra-curricular activities and homework, school kids spend more time with their teachers than their parents. School has become the pseudo-parent – sometimes out of necessity, but many times out of convenience – a one-stop shop for raising our children – for education, transportation, day care, meals, health care, sex education, mental health services and counseling, exercise, extra-curricular activities and even socialization.
But more and more families are pushing back, seeking alternate forms of education for their kids. According to the US Department of Education, there are now well over 2 million homeschooled kids nationwide, an increase of over 35% in just 4 years. But it is amazing how little the average person knows about homeschooling. Let’s examine the myths…
Myth: “Isn’t it illegal to homeschool?” No…I’m not a criminal! Actually homeschooling is legal in all 50 states in some form – but beware that each state has its own education laws and regulations. The good news is that almost half of our United States are very homeschool-friendly. Those with virtually no regulation include AK, TX, CT, NJ, ID, OK, MO, IL, IN, and MI. The states that only require notification to the school district of the intent to homeschool include CA, AZ, NV, NM, UT, MT, WY, NB, KS, WS, KY, MS, AL, DE, as well as Washington, D.C. The remaining states have some hoops to jump through with various regulations ranging from home visits to standardized testing to time tracking to curriculum approval. For a complete listing of state homeschooling laws visit www.hslda.org/laws/summary_of_laws. Vote with your feet!
For those parents that are concerned about drawing suspicion from nosy neighbors or authorities that confuse homeschooling with truancy, some good advice can be found at www.hsc.org/how-can-homeschoolers-avoid-truancy-officers-or-cps.html. Even here in homeschool-friendly Texas, I tend to keep a low profile during school hours. I avoid taking my son on non-school related errands until after 3 PM just to avoid comments such as “you don’t look sick – why aren’t you in school?” It has also been my experience that families that homeschool from the beginning don’t face as much harassment from the school district as families who withdraw their child, and thus the school’s source of funding.
For peace of mind, consider joining the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (www.hslda.org). For $115 per year, members receive legal advice, court representation, advocacy, conflict resolution, as well as perks such as member discounts, homeschooling advice, and a magazine.
Myth: “Homeschooled kids do not get enough socialization.” Since when is it the government’s job to provide my kid with friends? And since when does going to public school guarantee popularity? We have all known kids that that are lonely, shy, or friendless despite being in a classroom full of other kids day after day, year after year.
There is actually very little socialization occurring at today’s government schools, unless by socialization you mean “indoctrination” or “institutionalization.” Recess is becoming a thing of the past, and even lunch period has become a no talking zone in my local school district, with “silent lunch” in effect. The fact is that today’s schools have very little resemblance to the schooldays you may reminisce about.
But homeschooling is whatever you make it to be. The social opportunities are out there through co-ops, churches, extra-curricular activities, you just have to be motivated enough to get your child involved. How do you find other homeschooled kids? When you are out and about during the day and see other school-aged kids, chances are they are homeschooled – introduce yourself and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Search Google or Yahoo Groups for homeschool groups in your area, and if you don’t find one, start one. Ask your local library or teacher supply store if they know of other homeschooling families. Book sales and churches are another good place to start. As you become involved in extra-curricular activities like scouting or sports, ask around – there are probably other homeschooled kids there, too. Soon enough your calendar will be full of play dates and field trips and park days. Good thing our school day is half the length of the public school day and we don’t have homework – now we actually have much more time to socialize with friends and family – a perfect segue into the next myth...
Myth: “I do not have time to homeschool.” The public school day may last 7 hours, but since when was the government efficient? “We’re not trying to do ‘school at home.” We are trying to do home school. These are two entirely different propositions. We’re not trying to replicate the time, style or content of the classroom. Rather we are trying to cultivate a lifestyle of learning.” – Steve and Jane Lambert
Homeschooling doesn’t have to take all day. Here’s why:
My family homeschools year round. We do not take off for 3 months during summer, or for 2 weeks in winter or a week in spring, or for Columbus Day or early release days or snow days or teacher in-service days. Therefore we can afford to spend fewer hours per day, spread out over more days per year, and we do not have to make up for learning lost over long holidays. When the weather is nice and most kids are busy in school, we can take off and spend more time outdoors and on field trips, without the crowds and Texas heat.
We have a one-to-one student to teacher ratio, with no distractions.
We do not have to budget time during our school day for busy work, lunch, recess, safety drills, roll call, morning announcements, standardized testing or test prep, bathroom breaks, changing classes, lining up, wasted substitute teacher days, bus routes or special assemblies. There is no red tape in the way of our homeschooling (at least in Texas). As a result, we have no homework.
We do not impose artificial timelines or time limits. We have a list of lessons to complete each day, and it takes as long as it takes. Some tasks we breeze through, in which case my son isn’t punished with busy work as he might be at school. Others tasks may take a little longer, and that’s OK – I have the freedom to flex something off the list when need be. My son has learned that if he lollygags, that means less free time, so he has an incentive to stay focused. The beauty of homeschooling is that we can focus on knowledge rather than grades or unnecessary work. When he gets it, he gets it.
With that being said, I spend about 4 hours per day homeschooling my son, as well as a few hours each weekend preparing for the coming week. We spend about 2 hours in the morning with lessons in civics, math and geography. After a lunch break, we spend another 2 hours or so on reading, writing, spelling, grammar and history. Science happens all the time. In addition to those hours, we have been active with a homeschool group which offers weekly social activities, and my son is always enrolled in at least one extra curricular activity, such as swimming lessons, day camps, zoo classes or Tae Kwon Do. When I’m not feeling well my son is allowed to use educational software on the computer, but I prefer old-fashioned pencil and paper work.
Myth: “I am not a teacher, therefore I am not qualified to homeschool my kids.” “There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.” –Mahatma Gandhi
Legally speaking most parents are qualified to homeschool. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, “forty-one states do not require homeschool parents to meet any specific teacher qualifications. The other nine states require only a high school diploma or GED and include GA, NC, ND, NM, OH, PA, SC, TN and WV.” For more information visit www.hslda.org/laws/summary_of_laws.
For skeptics who believe that parents aren’t qualified teachers – if graduating from the government school system renders people incapable of teaching their own children, what does that say about the system? I graduated from high school with honors, went on to earn my Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree, yet, until recently, I couldn’t name all the presidents or states, I couldn’t have told you anything about the War of 1812 other than it had something to do with the year 1812…My tests scores did not reflect my mastery of each subject or lack thereof, but rather my mastery of taking tests! A decent short term memory was enough to get me a seat in the National Honor Society. So the bottom line is even though I don’t have a degree in public education, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do any worse.
As a homeschooling parent I know what my son has learned, I know his strengths and struggles – I have been there each step of the way. In contrast, a friend of mine doesn’t know whether her child has learned the states or where he is on a map because she leaves it to the school to teach him those things. It’s as if it is none of her business. Educating my son is my #1 business, and through research I have learned that there is no “one size fits all” method of education. Children have different learning styles, different strengths and weakness, and there is only so much a classroom environment can do to accommodate a room full of individuals. But homeschooling can be adapted to the individual child, and who knows that child better than his or her own parents? Parents are always their children’s first teachers, and homeschooling is just an extension of that. Homeschooling allows us as parents to provide consistency, rather than changing teachers from year to year or class to class. And for those subjects that we struggle to teach or that our kids struggle to learn, we can always do a little homework or ask for help.
Partner with other homeschoolers: One of the best resources that we have is other parents in the homeschool community, whether locally or on-line. There are endless opportunities for on-line discussion groups and forums. When I find myself struggling with something, Google usually finds an answer, or at least something different I could try. Joining a local homeschool group or co-op is invaluable for support and advice and even pooling resources and skills for joint classes or private tutoring led by parents in their areas of expertise.
Partner with community resources: There are endless learning opportunities right in your own backyard for PE (martial arts classes, gymnastics classes, tennis lessons, swim lessons, YMCA or city league sports clubs, public pools, walking trails, parks), fine arts (art competitions, art festivals, art museums, lessons at Michael's/Hobby Lobby, community theatre, acting camps, piano lessons, community band, church/community choir, orchestra performances, dance performances/lessons, photography workshops), scouting, science (zoos, wildlife refuges, nature preserves, state park presentations, 4H, museums, planetariums, farm and factory tours, TV weather station tours), history (re-enactment events, museums, renaissance fairs, heritage festivals, historical building tours, living history events), social studies (cultural celebrations, parades, museums and events), civics (voting, welcome home soldier events, public rallies, patriotic events, museums, memorials, tours of post office, fire station, etc, volunteering), language arts (book clubs, read alouds at libraries and book stores, literacy councils, spelling bees, writing competitions), geography (geo-bees, geocaching), not to mention summer camps and workshops in every subject under the sun. So, you see, it is quite easy to take the “home” right out of homeschooling.
There are countless internet and software resources available for learning everything from foreign language to flight simulators...
Read the rest here:
http://www.survivalblog.com/2013/02/dispelling-some-homeschooling-myths-by-lori-r.html
Survival Blog
The Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act – or so it is characterized in the 6th grade curriculum widely used in my beloved state of Texas. The Pledge of Allegiance – in Arabic? The national anthem – well, some schools have banned it for being “too offensive…” At least the flag is still there – oh, wait, that’s the Mexican flag…Speaking of flags, let’s design a flag – for a new Socialist country. Why is patriotism under attack in America’s public school system?
Better yet, why are kids under attack in America’s public school system? Hugs are banned as a form of sexual harassment, yet condoms and STD screenings are offered at middle schools and high schools. Sex acts go unnoticed in the classroom, worse yet predators posing as teachers go unnoticed in the classroom. School shootings, kids bullied to death, mandatory GPS trackers on school kids, children medicated at younger and younger ages on psychotropic drugs, unfit union teachers who can’t be fired, teachers who refuse to take tests because they don’t measure anything, school officials changing student standardized test answers, and the latest trend – kids being suspended, some even arrested, for brandishing Lego guns, toy guns, bubble guns, drawings of guns, screen saver guns, imaginary guns – really!? These are just a few of the headlines making news lately, and if that’s not enough to make you want to homeschool, I don’t know what is. So as a homeschooling mom to a 9 year old who dang sure knows a terrorist from a patriot, I thought I would share my 2 cents on the subject and dispel some myths:
It has become the norm for American children to attend public school, as their parents did, and as their grandparents did. But it wasn’t always so. Before there were government schools, there were homeschools and homeschool co-ops held in little one-roomed schoolhouses funded and controlled not by the government, but by the parents. And those primitive, humble homeschools produced many of our most cherished American icons and heroes, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson, George Washington Carver, Eli Whitney, Clara Barton, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Thomas Paine, Frank Lloyd Wright, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and Mark Twain.
But then in the late 19th century, the idea of forced mass education was introduced, and families were told to sacrifice personal liberty for the “good” of the children – sounds like similar arguments being made in favor of gun control today. In “Why Schools Don’t Educate,” John Taylor Gatto, award winning public school teacher and critic of compulsory education, describes the creation of government schools in America: “Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.” From that point forward, literacy rates dropped in the state, and have not since recovered.
So began a new era in American history. And I wonder, how would our Founding Fathers and iconic American heroes have fared in today’s government school system. How would the world have fared? Would Abe Lincoln be told to put away those silly books – they aren’t on this year’s required reading list? Would the Wright brothers be told to stop fiddling with that machine so they could finish their standardized testing? Would George Patton or Robert E. Lee be told to quit playing hero, as it violates the school’s policy on imaginary fighting?
So many of the people who shaped the world were home-educated, and I wonder to what extent their success was shaped by freedom to explore their curiosities and talents and passions.
But such freedom is no longer the norm, even here in “the land of the free.” Now, we have been conditioned to forfeit our freedom and our individual choice, and to hand over more and more of our parental responsibility to the government school system. We have been conditioned to believe we are not capable of educating our own kids, and that our kids are not capable of thinking for themselves. Today, the government education authority, strangers to our children, decide when our children go to school, what they learn, when they learn it, the time allotted to learn it, how they can prove they have learned it, what school they will attend, in which classroom they will sit, which teachers and subjects they will be assigned, when to eat, sometimes what to eat and whether they can even speak during lunch, when they can use the bathroom, what they can wear, and in many cases what to think and believe. After all, between a 7-hour school day, extra-curricular activities and homework, school kids spend more time with their teachers than their parents. School has become the pseudo-parent – sometimes out of necessity, but many times out of convenience – a one-stop shop for raising our children – for education, transportation, day care, meals, health care, sex education, mental health services and counseling, exercise, extra-curricular activities and even socialization.
But more and more families are pushing back, seeking alternate forms of education for their kids. According to the US Department of Education, there are now well over 2 million homeschooled kids nationwide, an increase of over 35% in just 4 years. But it is amazing how little the average person knows about homeschooling. Let’s examine the myths…
Myth: “Isn’t it illegal to homeschool?” No…I’m not a criminal! Actually homeschooling is legal in all 50 states in some form – but beware that each state has its own education laws and regulations. The good news is that almost half of our United States are very homeschool-friendly. Those with virtually no regulation include AK, TX, CT, NJ, ID, OK, MO, IL, IN, and MI. The states that only require notification to the school district of the intent to homeschool include CA, AZ, NV, NM, UT, MT, WY, NB, KS, WS, KY, MS, AL, DE, as well as Washington, D.C. The remaining states have some hoops to jump through with various regulations ranging from home visits to standardized testing to time tracking to curriculum approval. For a complete listing of state homeschooling laws visit www.hslda.org/laws/summary_of_laws. Vote with your feet!
For those parents that are concerned about drawing suspicion from nosy neighbors or authorities that confuse homeschooling with truancy, some good advice can be found at www.hsc.org/how-can-homeschoolers-avoid-truancy-officers-or-cps.html. Even here in homeschool-friendly Texas, I tend to keep a low profile during school hours. I avoid taking my son on non-school related errands until after 3 PM just to avoid comments such as “you don’t look sick – why aren’t you in school?” It has also been my experience that families that homeschool from the beginning don’t face as much harassment from the school district as families who withdraw their child, and thus the school’s source of funding.
For peace of mind, consider joining the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (www.hslda.org). For $115 per year, members receive legal advice, court representation, advocacy, conflict resolution, as well as perks such as member discounts, homeschooling advice, and a magazine.
Myth: “Homeschooled kids do not get enough socialization.” Since when is it the government’s job to provide my kid with friends? And since when does going to public school guarantee popularity? We have all known kids that that are lonely, shy, or friendless despite being in a classroom full of other kids day after day, year after year.
There is actually very little socialization occurring at today’s government schools, unless by socialization you mean “indoctrination” or “institutionalization.” Recess is becoming a thing of the past, and even lunch period has become a no talking zone in my local school district, with “silent lunch” in effect. The fact is that today’s schools have very little resemblance to the schooldays you may reminisce about.
But homeschooling is whatever you make it to be. The social opportunities are out there through co-ops, churches, extra-curricular activities, you just have to be motivated enough to get your child involved. How do you find other homeschooled kids? When you are out and about during the day and see other school-aged kids, chances are they are homeschooled – introduce yourself and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Search Google or Yahoo Groups for homeschool groups in your area, and if you don’t find one, start one. Ask your local library or teacher supply store if they know of other homeschooling families. Book sales and churches are another good place to start. As you become involved in extra-curricular activities like scouting or sports, ask around – there are probably other homeschooled kids there, too. Soon enough your calendar will be full of play dates and field trips and park days. Good thing our school day is half the length of the public school day and we don’t have homework – now we actually have much more time to socialize with friends and family – a perfect segue into the next myth...
Myth: “I do not have time to homeschool.” The public school day may last 7 hours, but since when was the government efficient? “We’re not trying to do ‘school at home.” We are trying to do home school. These are two entirely different propositions. We’re not trying to replicate the time, style or content of the classroom. Rather we are trying to cultivate a lifestyle of learning.” – Steve and Jane Lambert
Homeschooling doesn’t have to take all day. Here’s why:
My family homeschools year round. We do not take off for 3 months during summer, or for 2 weeks in winter or a week in spring, or for Columbus Day or early release days or snow days or teacher in-service days. Therefore we can afford to spend fewer hours per day, spread out over more days per year, and we do not have to make up for learning lost over long holidays. When the weather is nice and most kids are busy in school, we can take off and spend more time outdoors and on field trips, without the crowds and Texas heat.
We have a one-to-one student to teacher ratio, with no distractions.
We do not have to budget time during our school day for busy work, lunch, recess, safety drills, roll call, morning announcements, standardized testing or test prep, bathroom breaks, changing classes, lining up, wasted substitute teacher days, bus routes or special assemblies. There is no red tape in the way of our homeschooling (at least in Texas). As a result, we have no homework.
We do not impose artificial timelines or time limits. We have a list of lessons to complete each day, and it takes as long as it takes. Some tasks we breeze through, in which case my son isn’t punished with busy work as he might be at school. Others tasks may take a little longer, and that’s OK – I have the freedom to flex something off the list when need be. My son has learned that if he lollygags, that means less free time, so he has an incentive to stay focused. The beauty of homeschooling is that we can focus on knowledge rather than grades or unnecessary work. When he gets it, he gets it.
With that being said, I spend about 4 hours per day homeschooling my son, as well as a few hours each weekend preparing for the coming week. We spend about 2 hours in the morning with lessons in civics, math and geography. After a lunch break, we spend another 2 hours or so on reading, writing, spelling, grammar and history. Science happens all the time. In addition to those hours, we have been active with a homeschool group which offers weekly social activities, and my son is always enrolled in at least one extra curricular activity, such as swimming lessons, day camps, zoo classes or Tae Kwon Do. When I’m not feeling well my son is allowed to use educational software on the computer, but I prefer old-fashioned pencil and paper work.
Myth: “I am not a teacher, therefore I am not qualified to homeschool my kids.” “There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.” –Mahatma Gandhi
Legally speaking most parents are qualified to homeschool. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, “forty-one states do not require homeschool parents to meet any specific teacher qualifications. The other nine states require only a high school diploma or GED and include GA, NC, ND, NM, OH, PA, SC, TN and WV.” For more information visit www.hslda.org/laws/summary_of_laws.
For skeptics who believe that parents aren’t qualified teachers – if graduating from the government school system renders people incapable of teaching their own children, what does that say about the system? I graduated from high school with honors, went on to earn my Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree, yet, until recently, I couldn’t name all the presidents or states, I couldn’t have told you anything about the War of 1812 other than it had something to do with the year 1812…My tests scores did not reflect my mastery of each subject or lack thereof, but rather my mastery of taking tests! A decent short term memory was enough to get me a seat in the National Honor Society. So the bottom line is even though I don’t have a degree in public education, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do any worse.
As a homeschooling parent I know what my son has learned, I know his strengths and struggles – I have been there each step of the way. In contrast, a friend of mine doesn’t know whether her child has learned the states or where he is on a map because she leaves it to the school to teach him those things. It’s as if it is none of her business. Educating my son is my #1 business, and through research I have learned that there is no “one size fits all” method of education. Children have different learning styles, different strengths and weakness, and there is only so much a classroom environment can do to accommodate a room full of individuals. But homeschooling can be adapted to the individual child, and who knows that child better than his or her own parents? Parents are always their children’s first teachers, and homeschooling is just an extension of that. Homeschooling allows us as parents to provide consistency, rather than changing teachers from year to year or class to class. And for those subjects that we struggle to teach or that our kids struggle to learn, we can always do a little homework or ask for help.
Partner with other homeschoolers: One of the best resources that we have is other parents in the homeschool community, whether locally or on-line. There are endless opportunities for on-line discussion groups and forums. When I find myself struggling with something, Google usually finds an answer, or at least something different I could try. Joining a local homeschool group or co-op is invaluable for support and advice and even pooling resources and skills for joint classes or private tutoring led by parents in their areas of expertise.
Partner with community resources: There are endless learning opportunities right in your own backyard for PE (martial arts classes, gymnastics classes, tennis lessons, swim lessons, YMCA or city league sports clubs, public pools, walking trails, parks), fine arts (art competitions, art festivals, art museums, lessons at Michael's/Hobby Lobby, community theatre, acting camps, piano lessons, community band, church/community choir, orchestra performances, dance performances/lessons, photography workshops), scouting, science (zoos, wildlife refuges, nature preserves, state park presentations, 4H, museums, planetariums, farm and factory tours, TV weather station tours), history (re-enactment events, museums, renaissance fairs, heritage festivals, historical building tours, living history events), social studies (cultural celebrations, parades, museums and events), civics (voting, welcome home soldier events, public rallies, patriotic events, museums, memorials, tours of post office, fire station, etc, volunteering), language arts (book clubs, read alouds at libraries and book stores, literacy councils, spelling bees, writing competitions), geography (geo-bees, geocaching), not to mention summer camps and workshops in every subject under the sun. So, you see, it is quite easy to take the “home” right out of homeschooling.
There are countless internet and software resources available for learning everything from foreign language to flight simulators...
Read the rest here:
http://www.survivalblog.com/2013/02/dispelling-some-homeschooling-myths-by-lori-r.html
More on guns...
Anarchy, State, and Gun Ownership
by David Greenwald
The controversy over whether the Federal Government should ban the possession by citizens of certain types, or all types, of firearms has been raging back and forth for a very long time. I remember as a child seeing news coverage of horrific acts of violence involving firearms. I also remember the seemingly interminable “national conversation” that inevitably followed these events. It seemed, and still seems, to rouse people’s emotions in a way that few other issues do. My parents, like most of their friends, firmly supported gun-control legislation, which meant that I did as well. When I was ten, our Buick LeSabre sported an anti-NRA sticker on the rear fender. I should know – I put it there.
Not much has changed since then. The LeSabre is long gone, but the occasional mass shootings continue, each followed by yet another acrimonious round of national self-flagellation and soul-searching. The first time guns were featured on the cover of Time Magazine was in 1968. They ran the same cover again in 1998.
The arguments, for and against, gun control also don’t seem to be any different under Barack Obama from what they were under Lyndon Johnson. Then as now, there were:
Property-rights-based justifications for gun ownership (e.g., guns are like any other property and so anyone may own them, provided they are not used to violate the person or property of others), as well as for gun prohibition (except as a decorative candle holder, an AK-47 seems unlikely to be used for any purpose other than to violate the person or property of others).
Utilitarian reasons for a ban (it would increase safety by reducing the overall number of guns in society), and also for laissez-faire (prohibition would at best disarm only peaceful citizens, rendering them easy prey for criminals while creating yet another lucrative black market for organized crime).
Civil-liberties-based arguments for leaving the citizen free (I have a right to defend myself), and for regulating him (I have a right to walk down the street without fear of being shot).
And today, four and a half decades and nine gun-related Time covers later, here we are again, still shaking our heads in disbelief at the violence we see around us, and still asking the same question: who is right?
My position, as a libertarian anarchist, is that everyone is right. There is no perfect solution to the problem of the use of firearms for criminal purposes, and there are valid points on both sides of the debate. This is one of the reasons why this issue never has been and never will be resolved as long as we turn to the state to solve it for us instead of solving it for ourselves.
Federal law by nature imposes one solution on all members of society. Whether a ban is enacted on all firearms for all citizens, on only some types of guns, or for only some categories of citizens, all must live under the same set of rules. Yet because only imperfect solutions are possible, and because individual preferences rest on subjective value judgments, the fastening of a single policy on all parties by force of law must create social conflict. The only way out of this impasse is to abolish the state’s monopoly on the production of law and law enforcement and replace it with a cooperative legal system – or, more accurately, with the vast and complex matrix of voluntary contractual arrangements known as the market law society.
An analysis of all the different possible types of institutions and contracts that could arise in such a society for the settlement of disputes is beyond the scope of this article.[1] We will focus instead on two less technical points: (1) how the state’s monopoly on the enforcement of law actively promotes firearm ownership even among those who, ceteris paribus, would prefer not to own them, and (2) how a competitive law enforcement market would rectify this problem in a way that would largely satisfy both “liberals” and “conservatives.”
How the State’s Enforcement Monopoly Influences Gun Ownership Patterns
There are at least two ways in which the state’s arrogation of police power, to the exclusion of all potential competitors, encourages individuals to own firearms who would not otherwise wish to do so. First in this group are people who either consider themselves underserved (or, in the worst case, not served at all) by their state or local police departments or are distrustful or afraid of the police. Not surprisingly, such people tend to be concentrated in poor urban areas where police may be disinclined to patrol regularly and, in some instances, may not even respond to calls for help. (Ironically, these also tend to be the areas most plagued by violence stemming from the state’s prohibition on drugs.)
Under such conditions, it is inevitable that some individuals will turn to gun ownership as the only viable alternative to adequate police protection. Given that these are persons of modest means who would otherwise probably not wish to own firearms, it is also likely that many of them will be reluctant or financially unable to undergo training in marksmanship and gun safety, and will tend to avoid additional expenditures on safety features such as trigger locks or gun vaults. The result must be a marked increase in both gun theft and accidental shootings, the latter often involving children. It is ironic that such incidents are often invoked as a justification for the forced disarming of citizens by the state, when it is precisely the black markets created by the state’s prosecution of victimless crimes (e.g., drug use), together with its procurement of substandard security services, that drives the demand for private gun ownership in the first place.
The second way in which government promotes firearm ownership follows from the fact that, as the sole supplier of security services within its jurisdiction, its officers cannot be everywhere at once. They generally do not know that a crime is in progress until notified by someone already at the scene. This produces a significant response time lag.
This is not to say that police are necessarily slow to respond. For example, in 1996 the New York Times reported average response times for New York's Finest of between 6 and 11 minutes, depending on the borough – not too shabby, considering the size and congestion of the Big Apple. Nevertheless, a present good is, ceteris paribus, always preferred to a future good, and being kidnapped, raped, or robbed at gunpoint tends to raise a person's time preference for police protection rather sharply. As impressive as a 6-minute response time may be, to the victim of a violent crime in progress, it is an eternity. The greater the perceived likelihood of becoming such a victim is, the greater will be the discount on the present value of police services which, from the moment the need for them first arises, will not become available until (at least) 6 minutes into the future. The incentive will then be that much greater to supplant the discounted future services with a present .357 Magnum.
Of course, the reverse is also true: the very existence of a government security force will also tend to discourage gun ownership among those who live in more affluent, low-crime areas and who generally trust the efficiency and professionalism of the police. Here we have in view individuals who would become gun owners if there were no government police, but who, because such a force does in fact exist (and because they are compelled to pay for it despite its relatively low marginal utility), elect to forego the added expense of self-defense preparedness. Not surprisingly, most advocates of gun control fall into this category. Since, however, the police response time lag still exists even for them and can never be reduced to zero, the effect may be to induce a false sense of security among such people, leaving them unprepared for those rare instances of violent crime that do occur. Some of the more recent mass shootings may be cited as examples.
To Ban or Not to Ban: Guns and Market Law Enforcement
Since everyone’s real concern is security, what is needed is a set of voluntary social arrangements that balances the widely divergent and sometimes mutually exclusive conditions under which different people feel “safe.” As those who self-identify as conservatives on the whole tend to associate security with gun ownership, such arrangements would have to allow for the private ownership of firearms. However, since “liberals” tend to feel threatened by virtually anyone (except the government) owning a gun, these same agreements would also have to promote conditions under which even the most hoplophobic would feel generally at ease, despite living among many potentially armed neighbors.
I submit that only a market-law approach to this problem has any reasonable prospect of achieving this balance. There are several reasons for this, two of which I will address here.
Monopoly vs. Competition
The first result of ending the state’s monopoly on police protection, and replacing it with a competitive market composed of multiple private security firms, would be an immediate and dramatic improvement in quality of service. Not only would there be little reason for anyone to fear harassment or brutality by employees of private security firms, which would depend for their revenues on the voluntary patronage of consumers, but also, in stark contrast to government policing, the biggest markets for such firms would be where crime is most prevalent, i.e., the inner cities. Indeed, many security firms might well be “neighborhood-owned” and specialize in serving (and hiring from within) those areas most neglected by government police.
Moreover, the introduction of competition and price transparency would necessarily lead to a vastly more efficient allocation of capital resources. As a result, it is not unthinkable that most or even all of the (now lower) cost of residential security services might be borne, not by the residents themselves, but by area businesses, since the economic gains they would reap from enhanced protection would easily offset the cost of a subscription to a security service from which all would benefit. Much as businesses today often pay for the “premium” edition of a software program, thereby financing the free “basic” version designed for home use, so shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and other inner-city entrepreneurs might well be happy to pay a premium for better security (e.g., more frequent patrols, officers on site, sophisticated surveillance and communication systems, and so on) that would cover at least the greater part of the cost of the same firm’s patrolling of residential neighborhoods. This, in turn, would significantly reduce call response times, making this easily one of the best “free rider problems” ever.
All this taken together would add up to a marked reduction in the demand for firearms among private individuals, especially those least competent to use them safely. Those on the left who are presently pushing for stricter gun laws would therefore be doubly satisfied: first by better protection services (and the resulting lower crime rates), and second, by the overall decline in gun ownership. Meanwhile, traditional conservatives could still maintain a strict from-my-cold-dead-hands posture if they wished, without fear of being forcibly disarmed by the collectivist zeal of their neighbors. But they would no longer have either poor policing or the looming threat of state tyranny as a justification for doing so.
In sum, under conditions of untrammeled competition among private security firms, all contracting parties would get at least some of what they wanted, and just as importantly, all could claim in some sense to be “right.” The ultimate result would be a decline in social conflict and an increase in the tendency among the population at large to turn to cooperative decision-making rather than to unilateral coercion as the primary means of arriving at solutions to complex social problems.
Conclusion
It is only by accepting the responsibility for solving a problem that one can hope to solve it. That is ultimately why the market works and legislative fiat does not. Market solutions to any social problem require honest inquiry and widespread voluntary participation in an unfathomably complex and spontaneously-evolving process of trial and error until a set of arrangements emerges that works, as far as possible, to the satisfaction of everyone. They also require that the provisions thus arrived at be continually adapted to meet the demands of an ever-changing world.
Legislated solutions require someone to give an order, and someone else to enforce it under threat of violent reprisal. And if the results are not favorable, it is the world that is expected to adapt to the legislation, and not vice-versa.
If we must have yet another “national conversation” on the subject of firearms and violence, this is what it should be about. Otherwise, I’m afraid Time will be running the same cover for a third time in 2028.
Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/greenwald2.1.1.html
by David Greenwald
The controversy over whether the Federal Government should ban the possession by citizens of certain types, or all types, of firearms has been raging back and forth for a very long time. I remember as a child seeing news coverage of horrific acts of violence involving firearms. I also remember the seemingly interminable “national conversation” that inevitably followed these events. It seemed, and still seems, to rouse people’s emotions in a way that few other issues do. My parents, like most of their friends, firmly supported gun-control legislation, which meant that I did as well. When I was ten, our Buick LeSabre sported an anti-NRA sticker on the rear fender. I should know – I put it there.
Not much has changed since then. The LeSabre is long gone, but the occasional mass shootings continue, each followed by yet another acrimonious round of national self-flagellation and soul-searching. The first time guns were featured on the cover of Time Magazine was in 1968. They ran the same cover again in 1998.
The arguments, for and against, gun control also don’t seem to be any different under Barack Obama from what they were under Lyndon Johnson. Then as now, there were:
Property-rights-based justifications for gun ownership (e.g., guns are like any other property and so anyone may own them, provided they are not used to violate the person or property of others), as well as for gun prohibition (except as a decorative candle holder, an AK-47 seems unlikely to be used for any purpose other than to violate the person or property of others).
Utilitarian reasons for a ban (it would increase safety by reducing the overall number of guns in society), and also for laissez-faire (prohibition would at best disarm only peaceful citizens, rendering them easy prey for criminals while creating yet another lucrative black market for organized crime).
Civil-liberties-based arguments for leaving the citizen free (I have a right to defend myself), and for regulating him (I have a right to walk down the street without fear of being shot).
And today, four and a half decades and nine gun-related Time covers later, here we are again, still shaking our heads in disbelief at the violence we see around us, and still asking the same question: who is right?
My position, as a libertarian anarchist, is that everyone is right. There is no perfect solution to the problem of the use of firearms for criminal purposes, and there are valid points on both sides of the debate. This is one of the reasons why this issue never has been and never will be resolved as long as we turn to the state to solve it for us instead of solving it for ourselves.
Federal law by nature imposes one solution on all members of society. Whether a ban is enacted on all firearms for all citizens, on only some types of guns, or for only some categories of citizens, all must live under the same set of rules. Yet because only imperfect solutions are possible, and because individual preferences rest on subjective value judgments, the fastening of a single policy on all parties by force of law must create social conflict. The only way out of this impasse is to abolish the state’s monopoly on the production of law and law enforcement and replace it with a cooperative legal system – or, more accurately, with the vast and complex matrix of voluntary contractual arrangements known as the market law society.
An analysis of all the different possible types of institutions and contracts that could arise in such a society for the settlement of disputes is beyond the scope of this article.[1] We will focus instead on two less technical points: (1) how the state’s monopoly on the enforcement of law actively promotes firearm ownership even among those who, ceteris paribus, would prefer not to own them, and (2) how a competitive law enforcement market would rectify this problem in a way that would largely satisfy both “liberals” and “conservatives.”
How the State’s Enforcement Monopoly Influences Gun Ownership Patterns
There are at least two ways in which the state’s arrogation of police power, to the exclusion of all potential competitors, encourages individuals to own firearms who would not otherwise wish to do so. First in this group are people who either consider themselves underserved (or, in the worst case, not served at all) by their state or local police departments or are distrustful or afraid of the police. Not surprisingly, such people tend to be concentrated in poor urban areas where police may be disinclined to patrol regularly and, in some instances, may not even respond to calls for help. (Ironically, these also tend to be the areas most plagued by violence stemming from the state’s prohibition on drugs.)
Under such conditions, it is inevitable that some individuals will turn to gun ownership as the only viable alternative to adequate police protection. Given that these are persons of modest means who would otherwise probably not wish to own firearms, it is also likely that many of them will be reluctant or financially unable to undergo training in marksmanship and gun safety, and will tend to avoid additional expenditures on safety features such as trigger locks or gun vaults. The result must be a marked increase in both gun theft and accidental shootings, the latter often involving children. It is ironic that such incidents are often invoked as a justification for the forced disarming of citizens by the state, when it is precisely the black markets created by the state’s prosecution of victimless crimes (e.g., drug use), together with its procurement of substandard security services, that drives the demand for private gun ownership in the first place.
The second way in which government promotes firearm ownership follows from the fact that, as the sole supplier of security services within its jurisdiction, its officers cannot be everywhere at once. They generally do not know that a crime is in progress until notified by someone already at the scene. This produces a significant response time lag.
This is not to say that police are necessarily slow to respond. For example, in 1996 the New York Times reported average response times for New York's Finest of between 6 and 11 minutes, depending on the borough – not too shabby, considering the size and congestion of the Big Apple. Nevertheless, a present good is, ceteris paribus, always preferred to a future good, and being kidnapped, raped, or robbed at gunpoint tends to raise a person's time preference for police protection rather sharply. As impressive as a 6-minute response time may be, to the victim of a violent crime in progress, it is an eternity. The greater the perceived likelihood of becoming such a victim is, the greater will be the discount on the present value of police services which, from the moment the need for them first arises, will not become available until (at least) 6 minutes into the future. The incentive will then be that much greater to supplant the discounted future services with a present .357 Magnum.
Of course, the reverse is also true: the very existence of a government security force will also tend to discourage gun ownership among those who live in more affluent, low-crime areas and who generally trust the efficiency and professionalism of the police. Here we have in view individuals who would become gun owners if there were no government police, but who, because such a force does in fact exist (and because they are compelled to pay for it despite its relatively low marginal utility), elect to forego the added expense of self-defense preparedness. Not surprisingly, most advocates of gun control fall into this category. Since, however, the police response time lag still exists even for them and can never be reduced to zero, the effect may be to induce a false sense of security among such people, leaving them unprepared for those rare instances of violent crime that do occur. Some of the more recent mass shootings may be cited as examples.
To Ban or Not to Ban: Guns and Market Law Enforcement
Since everyone’s real concern is security, what is needed is a set of voluntary social arrangements that balances the widely divergent and sometimes mutually exclusive conditions under which different people feel “safe.” As those who self-identify as conservatives on the whole tend to associate security with gun ownership, such arrangements would have to allow for the private ownership of firearms. However, since “liberals” tend to feel threatened by virtually anyone (except the government) owning a gun, these same agreements would also have to promote conditions under which even the most hoplophobic would feel generally at ease, despite living among many potentially armed neighbors.
I submit that only a market-law approach to this problem has any reasonable prospect of achieving this balance. There are several reasons for this, two of which I will address here.
Monopoly vs. Competition
The first result of ending the state’s monopoly on police protection, and replacing it with a competitive market composed of multiple private security firms, would be an immediate and dramatic improvement in quality of service. Not only would there be little reason for anyone to fear harassment or brutality by employees of private security firms, which would depend for their revenues on the voluntary patronage of consumers, but also, in stark contrast to government policing, the biggest markets for such firms would be where crime is most prevalent, i.e., the inner cities. Indeed, many security firms might well be “neighborhood-owned” and specialize in serving (and hiring from within) those areas most neglected by government police.
Moreover, the introduction of competition and price transparency would necessarily lead to a vastly more efficient allocation of capital resources. As a result, it is not unthinkable that most or even all of the (now lower) cost of residential security services might be borne, not by the residents themselves, but by area businesses, since the economic gains they would reap from enhanced protection would easily offset the cost of a subscription to a security service from which all would benefit. Much as businesses today often pay for the “premium” edition of a software program, thereby financing the free “basic” version designed for home use, so shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and other inner-city entrepreneurs might well be happy to pay a premium for better security (e.g., more frequent patrols, officers on site, sophisticated surveillance and communication systems, and so on) that would cover at least the greater part of the cost of the same firm’s patrolling of residential neighborhoods. This, in turn, would significantly reduce call response times, making this easily one of the best “free rider problems” ever.
All this taken together would add up to a marked reduction in the demand for firearms among private individuals, especially those least competent to use them safely. Those on the left who are presently pushing for stricter gun laws would therefore be doubly satisfied: first by better protection services (and the resulting lower crime rates), and second, by the overall decline in gun ownership. Meanwhile, traditional conservatives could still maintain a strict from-my-cold-dead-hands posture if they wished, without fear of being forcibly disarmed by the collectivist zeal of their neighbors. But they would no longer have either poor policing or the looming threat of state tyranny as a justification for doing so.
In sum, under conditions of untrammeled competition among private security firms, all contracting parties would get at least some of what they wanted, and just as importantly, all could claim in some sense to be “right.” The ultimate result would be a decline in social conflict and an increase in the tendency among the population at large to turn to cooperative decision-making rather than to unilateral coercion as the primary means of arriving at solutions to complex social problems.
Conclusion
It is only by accepting the responsibility for solving a problem that one can hope to solve it. That is ultimately why the market works and legislative fiat does not. Market solutions to any social problem require honest inquiry and widespread voluntary participation in an unfathomably complex and spontaneously-evolving process of trial and error until a set of arrangements emerges that works, as far as possible, to the satisfaction of everyone. They also require that the provisions thus arrived at be continually adapted to meet the demands of an ever-changing world.
Legislated solutions require someone to give an order, and someone else to enforce it under threat of violent reprisal. And if the results are not favorable, it is the world that is expected to adapt to the legislation, and not vice-versa.
If we must have yet another “national conversation” on the subject of firearms and violence, this is what it should be about. Otherwise, I’m afraid Time will be running the same cover for a third time in 2028.
Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/greenwald2.1.1.html
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