Sunday, August 31, 2014

Progressives Are On the Wrong Side of History

Progressives Are On the Wrong Side of History:

Burt Folsom:

On taxes, President Woodrow Wilson gave us the first progressive income tax. He and his progressive friends said raising tax rates would not hinder investments. But the year President Woodrow Wilson left office, the U.S. had a top tax rate of 73% and unemployment had skyrocketed to 12%. Because of high taxes, entrepreneurs refused to invest, the national debt spiraled upward, and the number of Americans reporting $300,000 in income declined from almost 1,300 in 1916 to fewer than 250 in 1921.
If you want more of something, subsidize it, and if you want less of something, tax it.

The American Left has been supporting, for a very long time now, higher taxes on the things that would make a civilized society go, and subsidies for the things that would bring it to a stop.

Dependency Nation: More Than One Third of Americans On Government Assistance

Dependency Nation: More Than One Third of Americans On Government Assistance:

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Let’s say Obama has a plan to build a permanent Democrat majority. A plan that will guarantee Hillary Clinton wins the White House in 2016. A plan which takes precedence over all other concerns, no matter what the cost to America’s short-term well-being or long-term prospects for security and prosperity.

I suspect he (well, actually, Valerie Jarrett) does, and I’d say it looks something like this.

Newly released Census data reveals nearly 110 million Americans — more than one-third of the country — are receiving government assistance of some kind.
The number counts people receiving what are known as “means-tested” federal benefits, or subsidies based on income. This includes welfare programs ranging from food stamps to subsidized housing to the program most commonly referred to as “welfare,” Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
At the end of 2012, according to the stats, 51.5 million were on food stamps, while 83 million were collecting Medicaid — with some benefitting from multiple programs.
Though the programs were created to help those in need, some analysts worry that the way they’re designed is, increasingly, incentivizing people not to work. They note that when recipients combine several government assistance programs, in many cases they pay better than going to work.
The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner said that in the eight most generous states, the benefits can be tantamount to a $20 minimum wage — which would exceed the $7.25 minimum wage in most states.
“So in many cases people could actually do better on welfare than they could in an entry level job,” Tanner said.
When people are beholden to the government for sustenance, they tend to vote for the politicians who promise them more of that sustenance.

And nobody is better at promising unlimited Free Stuff than today’s Democratic Party. Remember the woman who said Obama was going to pay her mortgage? The entitlement mentality is seductive, and contagious.

It’s also ridiculously easy to make promises, and then blame “evil Republicans” when you don’t deliver. The goal isn’t to help people; the goal is to keep people dependent, and voting your way.

In other words, the goal is Power. Power at any cost.

Barack Obama never intended to govern.

Barack Obama is a permanent campaigner, skilled at drumming up primal emotions, and then focusing them for the benefit of his Party. The incongruity of his Class Warfare rhetoric is lost on the guilty white liberal donors who pour millions of dollars into his coffers at every opportunity. And all that matters to Obama is that the money flows into electing, and re-electing Democrats.

Hence he eschews policies which might jeopardize their hegemony.

Building the Keystone Pipeline might piss off the econuts, and he needs their cash.

Fighting Islamic terrorists might piss off the kumbaya crowd, and he needs their cash too.

Promoting private sector job growth might dilute the culture of dependency, and he needs every vote he can get.

Helping businesses succeed might make the unions wonder why he isn’t raising taxes instead, and he needs their votes too.

Stopping the invasion on our southern border might upset La Raza, and he needs their anger and envy to keep them from wanting to embrace what we used to call The American Dream.

You know, there’s the really sad legacy of Obama and the Democrats.

Once upon a time it was said that the business of America is Business.

They’ve turned that old saw on its head. The business of America is dependency. Wealth transfer. Class envy. Business is a dirty word.

Why work? Vote Democrat and somebody else will do that. Then, as your reward, the government will mail you checks.

You gotta admit it’s a sweet deal.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. — Alexander Tyler
Or, as Lady Thatcher put it, sooner or later they’ll run out of other people’s money.

Then what?
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The myth of the Arctic melt away. The billy club of leftist control of your life

The myth of the Arctic melt away. The billy club of leftist control of your life:

Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now



  • Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
  • An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
  • These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated


PUBLISHED: 17:04 EST, 30 August 2014 UPDATED: 03:56 EST, 31 August 2014


The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
Scroll down for video 
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To put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice.
The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres.
This was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 (see graph, right), and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent.
Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.
The satellite images published here are taken from a further authoritative source, the University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project.
They show that as well as becoming more extensive, the ice has grown more concentrated, with the purple areas – denoting regions where the ice pack is most dense – increasing markedly.
Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting. Professor Andrew Shepherd, of Leeds University, an expert in climate satellite monitoring, said yesterday: ‘It is clear from the measurements we have collected that the Arctic sea ice has experienced a significant recovery in thickness over the past year.
‘It seems that an unusually cool summer in 2013 allowed more ice to survive through to last winter. This means that the Arctic sea ice pack is thicker and stronger than usual, and this should be taken into account when making predictions of its future extent.’
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The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore (above) was apocalyptic. He said that the North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff and could be gone in seven years
Yet for years, many have been claiming that the Arctic is in an ‘irrevocable death spiral’, with imminent ice-free summers bound to trigger further disasters. These include gigantic releases of methane into the atmosphere from frozen Arctic deposits, and accelerated global warming caused by the fact that heat from the sun will no longer be reflected back by the ice into space.
Judith Curry, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said last night: ‘The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed.’
Those who just a few years ago were warning of ice-free summers by 2014 included US Secretary of State John Kerry, who made the same bogus prediction in 2009, while Mr Gore has repeated it numerous times – notably in a speech to world leaders at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, in an effort to persuade them to agree a new emissions treaty.
The ice cap is falling off a cliff. It could be completely gone in summer in as little as 7 years from now 
Mr Gore – whose office yesterday failed to respond to a request for comment – insisted then: ‘There is a 75 per cent chance that the entire polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.’
Misleading as such forecasts are, some people continue to make them. Only last month, while giving evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee inquiry on the Arctic, Cambridge University’s Professor Peter Wadhams claimed that although the Arctic is not ice-free this year, it will be by September 2015.
Asked about this yesterday, he said: ‘I still think that it is very likely that by mid-September 2015, the ice area will be less than one million square kilometres – the official designation of ice-free, implying only a fringe of floes around the coastlines. That is where the trend is taking us.’
For that prediction to come true it would require by far the fastest loss of ice in history. It would also fly in the face of a report last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which stated with ‘medium confidence’ that ice levels would ‘likely’ fall below one million square kilometres by 2050.
Politicians such as Al Gore have often insisted that climate science is ‘settled’ and have accused those who question their forecasts of being climate change ‘deniers’.
However, while few scientists doubt that carbon-dioxide emissions cause global warming, and that this has caused Arctic ice to decline, there remains much uncertainty about the speed of melting and how much of it is due to human activity. But outside the scientific community, the more pessimistic views have attracted most attention. For example, Prof Wadhams’s forecasts have been cited widely by newspapers and the BBC. But many reject them.
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An area twice the size of Alaska was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice after the arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in a row
Yesterday Dr Ed Hawkins, who leads an Arctic ice research team at Reading University, said: ‘Peter Wadhams’s views are quite extreme compared to the views of many other climate scientists, and also compared to what the IPCC report says.’
Dr Hawkins warned against reading too much into ice increase over the past two years on the grounds that 2012 was an ‘extreme low’, triggered by freak weather.
‘I’m uncomfortable with the idea of people saying the ice has bounced back,’ he said.
However, Dr Hawkins added that the decline seen in recent years was not caused only by global warming. It was, he said, intensified by ‘natural variability’ – shifts in factors such as the temperature of the oceans. This, he said, has happened before, such as in the 1920s and 1930s, when ‘there was likely some sea ice retreat’.
Dr Hawkins said: ‘There is undoubtedly some natural variability on top of the long-term downwards trend caused by the overall warming. This variability has probably contributed somewhat to the post-2000 steep declining trend, although the human-caused component still dominates.’
Like many scientists, Dr Hawkins said these natural processes may be cyclical. If and when they go into reverse, they will cool, not warm, the Arctic, in which case, he said, ‘a decade with no declining trend’ in ice cover would be ‘entirely plausible’. 
Peer-reviewed research suggests that at least until 2005, natural variability was responsible for half the ice decline. But exactly how big its influence is remains an open question – and as both Dr Hawkins and Prof Curry agreed, establishing this is critical to making predictions about the Arctic’s future.
Prof Curry said: ‘I suspect that the portion of the decline in the sea ice attributable to natural variability could be even larger than half.
‘I think the natural variability component of Arctic sea ice extent is in the process of bottoming out, with a reversal to start within the next decade. And when it does, the reversal period could last for several decades.’
This led her to believe that the IPCC forecast, like Al Gore’s, was too pessimistic.
‘Ice-free in 2050 is a possible scenario, but I don’t think it is a likely scenario,’ she concluded.

GOOD NEWS FOR POLAR BEARS... 

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The apparent recovery in Arctic ice looks like good news for polar bears. 
If there is more ice at the end of the summer, they can hunt seals more easily. Yet even when the ice reached a low point in 2012, there was no scientific evidence that bear numbers were declining, with their estimated total of 20,000 to 25,000 thought to be higher than in the 1970s, when hunting was first banned.
In many Arctic regions, say scientists, they are in robust health and breeding successfully. 
Computer model predictions of decline caused by ice melt have also failed to come true. In 2004, researchers claimed Hudson Bay bear numbers would fall from 900 to fewer than 700 by 2011. In fact, they have risen to over 1,000.
However, the main international bear science body, the Polar Bear Specialist Group, admits it has no reliable data from almost half of the Arctic, so cannot say whether numbers are falling or rising.

Why Did British Police Ignore Pakistani Muslim Gangs Abusing 1,400 Rotherham Children? Political Correctness

Why Did British Police Ignore Pakistani Muslim Gangs Abusing 1,400 Rotherham Children? Political Correctness: A story of rampant child abuse—ignored and abetted by the police—is emerging out of the British town of Rotherham. Until now, its scale and scope would have been inconceivable in a civilized country. Its origins, however, lie in something quite ordinary: what one Labour MP called "not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat."


Original enclosures:

The Government’s Religion

The Government’s Religion:

You can never go very far without running into someone who thinks Christianity must be denied any role in public life because of “separation of church and state”—as if the church carried some contagion from which the state must be protected.
In the now-famous example of the high-school kid who was suspended for saying “Bless you” after someone sneezed, a reader told me that the teacher “was only acting wisely to preserve the separation of church and state.” There are several big things wrong with that remark.
The words “separation of church and state” are not in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. If you don’t believe me, I don’t mind waiting while you look it up. There is no law mandating any “separation” between church and state; and anyone who says there is, is ignorant.
The First Amendment, rather than quarantining the public sector from the malefic influence of the gospel, says two things about religion. Congress, the United States Congress, “shall make no law” establishing a state church at the expense of other churches. (At the time, some states did recognize a particular denomination as its state church.) Secondly, Congress “shall make no law” to restrict anyone’s “free exercise of religion.”
Those two clauses are all the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, has to say about religion.
Most of you probably know that. It’s basic civics. But it’s been a long, long time since that was taught in public schools, and there’s a lot of ignorance out there—purposely instilled in the American mind by persons hostile to the Christian faith.
The phrase “separation of church and state,” or “wall of separation,” comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, to reassured them that the federal government would not disadvantage them in favor of some other Christian sect. Jefferson himself had some peculiar religious notions. But one thing we can be sure that Jefferson did not believe is that the public sector must be thoroughly sealed off from Christianity.
He wasn’t trying to abolish public prayer, nativity scenes, or saying “Bless you” to a sneezer. He was only trying to ensure that the federal government would not take it upon itself to lord it over people’s consciences.
Which, course, is exactly what we’ve wound up with, the very thing the First Amendment was enacted to prevent—the heavy-handed imposition of a state religion: in this case, the atheistic worship of the secular state.
And so our public schools are rabidly anti-Christian. Under color of a law that does not, in fact, exist, the teacher feels free to dictate that there shall be “no godly language” in her classroom. Under this non-existent “law” of separation, agencies of government ban prayer, Bible reading, Christmas parades, and any other free exercise of religion they can get their hands on. With anti-Christianity functioning as if it really were a law, government forces Christians to cater homosexual “weddings,” pay for abortions, and pay “teachers” to teach their children that Christianity is wrong. The public schools, which are the Sunday schools and churches of anti-Christianity, teach children about “gender choices” and urge them to experiment with aberrant and sinful forms of sexuality. If that is “part of who you are,” the school demands that it be “celebrated.” But if Christian faith is “part of who you are,” you’d better just shut up about it.
How many times have you heard an atheist complain that “you Christians are trying to force your ideas on everybody else”? That’s projection. It isn’t Christians who are doing that, but anti-Christians. These are the people, not Christians, who routinely succeed in forcing their ideas on everybody else, backed up by the coercive power of an aggressively secular state.
How many children, and even teachers, have been harshly “disciplined” by public schools and universities for failing to keep their religious beliefs rigorously private? Some of those “educators,” if you showed them a crucifix, would foam at the mouth and turn into bats. Maybe we ought to replace George Washington’s picture on the dollar bill with Dracula’s.
Why is a country populated by a Christian majority ruled over by an anti-Christian minority?
Because, to a “progressive,” religion is an obstacle to the establishment of the state as god—all-powerful, all-wise, supreme in its authority. The Bible denies such power to the state, and denies it to the state’s apparatchiks. So the Bible must go.
If there ever was a time for a massive, nation-wide “pray-in,” this is it.
Quite simply, things will not begin to get better for us until we turn whole-heartedly back to God. There is no other way for that to happen.
The post The Government’s Religion appeared first on BarbWire.com.

NYTIMES ADMITS FERGUSON IS ALL ABOUT DEM GOTV

NYTIMES ADMITS FERGUSON IS ALL ABOUT DEM GOTV:

NYTIMES FRONT PAGE: Democrats Seek to Rally Blacks in Bid to Retain Senate Control 
Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress.

RACE-BAITING IS ALL THE DEMS HAVE LEFT.

AND THEY DON'T GIVE A DAMN IF IT LEADS TO A RACE WAR AS LONG AS THEY HOLD ON TO THE REINS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT - SO THEY CAN CONTINUE TO LOOT THE NATION'S WEALTH.


Saturday, August 30, 2014

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.

But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
Marcus Tulius Cicero via Doug Ross @ Journal


Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now: Seven years after Al Gore's warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Arctic ice cap is far from vanishing and has expanded for the second year in succession.


Original enclosures:

Racism, Cowardice and Responsibility

Racism, Cowardice and Responsibility:

Cowardice has been variously described over the years. When asked for a definition Microsoft Word provided several, including one from Wikipedia that seems to cover all the bases:
Cowardice is a trait wherein fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good and of help to others or oneself in a time of need – it is the opposite of courage.
Note in the above definition indicates that cowardice overrides doing what is good or right; which is exactly what has been going on in America for decades. As one who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement years, I saw what happened all around me.
We can start with the 1950’s wherein Jim Crow still ruled much of the South, and needed to be removed. But at the time, Black Americans had advantages that they do not have today. Their families stayed together. They believed in hard work and doing your best at everything. They valued education. Brig. Gen. Ezell Ware, Jr., wrote in his autobiography, By Duty Bound, that during his youth his parents and his teachers, at a segregated school, stressed the need to outperform Whites in order to succeed. He did exactly that. Today, that work and education ethic is no longer emphasized. 1
This writer distinctly recalls in Jr. High and High School the few Black students who took studying seriously. The others, the majority, saw little purpose in applying themselves. They had no interest in becoming another Dr. Ben Carson. Today we see such people in gangs, regularly in trouble with the law, and uneducated, except in how to survive on the street. To these people traditional work is a foreign concept.
When one of these poorly educated and non-work oriented people ends up on the wrong side of a law enforcement incident the popular mantra echoes one heard many times, all those years ago; “I didn’t do nothin.” Aside from the double negative, the person making such a statement was generally caught red handed, and was falsely claiming innocence. When the individual is no longer able to make the claim for himself the community chimes in for him. Trayvon Martin was just an ordinary guy who was out taking a walk to the store. Michael Brown was a “gentle giant.” And so the case is made for “institutionalized racism” as the cause of the events in question.
Yes, there is “institutionalized racism” but the institutions involved are places such as the current US Dept. of Justice under Eric Holder. They are the organizations run by such people as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They are groups that exist to continue the rhetoric that blames everyone but the people actually responsible for the problems we are experiencing today.
If Jim Crow and segregation were eliminated in the South, purely on the basis that they created a population of second class citizens, and the people liberated from it went on to show their abilities, just like everyone else, today would be different. But between government attempts to subsidize people financially, educationally and otherwise, the granting of special privileges and the institutionalization of the grievance and dependency cultures, American shot herself in both feet. Worse still, the Jacksons, Sharptons and Holders took advantage of the situation to empower themselves and keep the people they were supposedly helping, down. They used these people as platforms, stepping on their backs to gain power. And the people being stepped on were and are unable to recognize it.
Applying this to Ferguson, Missouri, we see an 18 year old, who may have made it out of high school, but was obviously into the wrong side of things. The autopsy showed he had marijuana in his system. He had just committed, according to video camera evidence, a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store. The chances are that he had done it previously, but had not yet been caught. Further, if he had been walking on the sidewalk instead of the center of the street, he would not have attracted police attention. Finally, there is was the guy who accompanied him at the time, who also, purportedly had a criminal record. Brown was no dewy eyed innocent.
But if he had taken a different course in life; if he had pursued scholarship instead of gang culture, things would certainly have turned out differently. He would not have been where he was, and would not have done what he did. His life would not have been ended.
As a number of people, well placed to make such judgments; Ben Carson, Walter E. Williams, Larry Elder, and so on, would say, the matter is one of individual choice and responsibility. It isn’t a question of “white privilege” or of “institutionalized racism” that is the problem. It is the people who make choices to move their lives in a negative direction and take on a “gangsta” approach because they listen to the wrong radio stations, the wrong music, and idolize people who have made money off of it, but are a tiny minority, exploiting impressionable young folks who don’t know better than to follow a path to a dangerous future.
Alternatively, some people simply cash into the government dependency culture and do nothing to better themselves. They simply have no interest in or will to succeed.
We see other people such as Bill Cosby speaking the truth for which they are crucified for failing to follow a “party line.” The cowards who do this don’t want to see the Black American succeed. They want then to continue as victims; not of Whites, but of other, well placed Blacks; victims of the Jesse Jacksons, Eric Holders and Barack Obamas. These are people who become highly placed or influential, but claim that everyone else is held back by the attitude of the American people.
In truth, the average American doesn’t care a fig about skin color. What they care about was what Dr. King cared about and spoke about; the content of character. But content of character, in the positive sense, requires responsibility and accountability. It requires hard work and dedication to ideals. It does not have time for gangsta-ism, pants falling down around your knees and street language. It requires conformity to an ideal, that society has accepted, as a means to a better future. It is not a path for cowards, but for people who are willing to accept challenges, from themselves, from their colleagues and from the world at large. It means casting off the the blame game and excuses, and taking responsibility for yourself and your actions.
The Eric Holders want Black Americans to accept the idea that they have no control over their lives because doing so empowers the political class. That is why they are cowards. They don’t want to survive on their own merits; they want to do it on the backs of the people they oppress; the same people they pretend to care about. It is a coward’s and a despot’s approach to success; one that we should have outgrown, but didn’t because we relied on government to right wrongs that we should have allowed the communities to correct as a matter of individual responsibility.
1 The author met Gen. Ware several times before his untimely death of cancer. He was a cultured, articulate gentleman who deserved every success he achieved, and perhaps more.

The NFL Domestic Violence Policy Is An Overreaction To An Underreaction

The NFL Domestic Violence Policy Is An Overreaction To An Underreaction: A lifetime ban from a profession without any option to consider mitigating factors should not even exit in football even if the violations involve domestic violence.


Original enclosures:

Black cop shoots, kills white youth; media, race hucksters silent

Black cop shoots, kills white youth; media, race hucksters silent:

By Howard Portnoy

Imagine for a moment that Michael Brown had been white and the police officer who shot him had been black. Would the media coverage have been as all-encompassing? Would the reaction of the white community in the suburb where the shooting occurred been as visceral? Would racial provocateur Al Sharpton have sounded off as loudly — or at all, for that matter?

There is no need to imagine. From the Washington Times:

On the surface, the cases appear nearly identical: Michael Brown and Dillon Taylor, two young, unarmed men with sketchy criminal pasts shot to death by police officers two days apart.

But while the world knows of the highly publicized situation involving 18-year-old Mr. Brown, whose Aug. 9 death in Ferguson, Missouri touched off violence, protests and an angry national debate, most people outside Utah have never heard of 20-year-old Mr. Taylor.

Call it Ferguson in reverse, but minus the noise.

Let’s examine the facts in the lesser known case. Taylor, who has been described as white and Hispanic (where have we heard that before?), met his death at the hands of a black cop on Aug. 11, two days after the now-infamous shooting death of Michael Brown. The Taylor incident occurred outside a 7-Eleven in South Salt Lake, Utah. According to a quote at the Inquisitr made by South Salt Lake Police Sgt. Darin Sweeten:

Taylor [was given] verbal commands to reveal his hands, but Taylor failed to comply and was ‘visibly upset. Taylor was subsequently shot and died at the scene.

There’s not much more to go on because the media have largely ignored the Taylor shooting.

Read more: LibertyUnyielding.com

The post Black cop shoots, kills white youth; media, race hucksters silent appeared first on BarbWire.com.

UK Political Correctness Nurtures True Evil

UK Political Correctness Nurtures True Evil:

Recent official investigations in the UK reveal officials in Rotherham failed, though they’ve been aware of the evil  for 10 years, to stop the sexual extrapolation of children.  (ironic aside – this government body’s webpage is emblazoned with the slogan ‘Rotherham Where Everyone Matters)

Political correctness, abuse was centered in Rotherham’s Pakistani Muslim community, is sited as a factor for the Rotherham Council’s failure to act.

Official report – Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham

1997 – 2013

So much for it takes a village!

The post UK Political Correctness Nurtures True Evil appeared first on Ricochet.

Keynesian Central Banking Is An Economic Scourge: More Evidence From Japan

Keynesian Central Banking Is An Economic Scourge: More Evidence From Japan: The Bank of Japan has already been pressured by events to reduce its economic expectations for 2014. At the end of 2013 there was enough cautious optimism that Japanese officials went ahead with their dubious proposal to try to appear fiscally responsible. The tax increase was expected to create a mild contraction in GDP before [...]


A Lower Corporate Rate Is a Practical And Good Response to Inversions

A Lower Corporate Rate Is a Practical And Good Response to Inversions:

It boggles the mind to think that the United States now has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.

But it’s even more amazing that America arguably has the most punitive corporate tax rate in the entire world.

Here’s some of what I wrote on the topic for today’s U.K.-based Telegraph.

…the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world (and the highest in the entire world, according to KPMG, if you ignore the United Arab Emirates’ severance tax on oil companies). …The central government in Washington imposes a 35pc rate on corporate income, with most states then adding their own levies, with the net result being an average corporate rate of 39.1pc. This compares with 37pc in Japan, which has the dubious honour of being in second place, according to the tax database of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). …if you broaden the analysis, it becomes even more evident that the United States has fallen behind in the global shift to more competitive corporate tax systems. The average corporate tax for OECD nations has dropped to 24.8pc. For EU nations, the average corporate tax is even lower, with a rate of less than 22pc. And don’t forget the Asian Tiger economies, with Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong all clustered around 17pc, as well as the fiscal paradises that don’t impose any corporate income tax, such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.
I also explain that America’s system of “worldwide” taxation exacerbates the anti-competitive nature of the U.S. tax system for companies trying to compete in global markets.

And I warn why making “inversions” illegal is a misguided and self-defeating response.

Blocking inversions…is like breaking the thermometer because you don’t like the temperature. It simply masks the underlying problem. In the long run, the United States will lose jobs and investment because of bad corporate tax policy, regardless of whether companies have the right to invert.
In other words, America desperately needs a lower corporate tax rate.

The crowd in Washington, however, says American can’t “afford” a lower corporate tax rate. The amount of foregone revenue would be too large, they claim.

Yet let’s look at what happened when Canada lowered its corporate tax burden. Here’s a chart prepared by the Tax Foundation.



The Tax Foundation augmented the chart with some important commentary on why companies are attracted to Canada.

Part of the attraction is the substantial tax reforms that occurred over the last 15 years in Canada. First among these is the dramatic reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 43 percent in 2000 to 26 percent today.
What about tax revenue?

The U.S. currently has a corporate tax rate of 39 percent, but lawmakers are reluctant to do what Canada did, i.e. lower the tax rate, for fear of losing tax revenue. …According to OECD data, corporate tax revenue increased following Canada’s corporate tax rate cuts that began in 2000. …Corporate tax revenue as a share of GDP in Canada has averaged 3.3 percent since 2000, while it averaged 2.9 percent over the years 1988 to 2000, when Canada’s corporate tax rate was 43 percent.
My colleague Chris Edwards also reviewed this issue (and he’s a former Canadian, so pay close attention).

Here’s his chart showing the corporate tax rates imposed at the national level by both the U.S. government and the Canadian government.

As you can see, the rates were somewhat similar between 1985 and 2000, with the Canadians having a slight advantage. But then Canada opened up  a big lead over America by dropping the central government tax rate on corporations to 15 percent.



So what happened to corporate tax revenue?

As you can see from his second chart, receipts are very volatile based on economic performance. But the Canadian government is collecting more revenue, measured as a share of total economic output, than the American government.

In spite of having a lower tax rate. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the Canadians are generating more corporate tax revenue because of the lower tax rate.



In other words, the Laffer Curve is alive and well.

Not that we should be surprised. Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute estimate that the revenue-maximizing corporate tax rate is about 25 percent, far below the 39.1 percent rate imposed on companies in the United States.

And Tax Foundation experts calculate that the revenue-maximizing rate even lower, down around 15 percent.

P.S. Don’t forget that when politicians impose high tax burdens on companies, the real victims are workers.

P.P.S. And since America’s corporate tax system ranks below even Zimbabwe, we’re in real trouble.

True Stripes: Racist Democrats & Colorblind Republicans

True Stripes: Racist Democrats & Colorblind Republicans:

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”  —Abraham Lincoln

The Democrats: Roots of Racism and Violence 

Before the American Civil War, there were the Democrats, who supported the right of states to choose slavery, and the Whigs, who were divided on the issue.  The Whigs divided could not stand, and the Republican Party replaced them.  Before Lincoln Republicans took over in Washington, however, many horrible occurrences took place.

sumner2During one such occurrence, on May 22nd, 1856, US Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who had helped establish the Republican Party, was assaulted in the Senate.  Democrat Congressman Preston Brooks approached Senator Sumner, in that chamber, while Sumner was sitting at his desk.  Brooks took his gold-headed cane and beat the senator.  His efforts were so vigorous that he toppled Sumner’s desk.

Sumner, blinded by blood, staggered down the aisle in an attempt to escape the chamber.  Brooks beat Sumner to the floor and struck Sumner until the cane broke.  Some Senators tried to aid Sumner, but Democrat Congressman Laurence Keitt brandished a pistol.  Upon his death, on March 11th, 1874, it was revealed of Senator Sumner that he never had fully recovered from the injuries of May, 22nd, 1856.  But Sumner had lived out his life in accordance with his anti-slavery beliefs.

Lincoln's Advocacy of a Colorblind, Civil Society 

President Lincoln, the first Republican elected president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863.  In 1865, he secured passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery for all time.  100% of Republicans voted for the amendment.  Only 23% of Democrats voted for it.  Democrat John Wilkes Booth, enraged at what Lincoln had done, slew the president out of racist revenge.

The Klan: Democrat Terrorists

In 1865, the Ku Klux Klan was created in Pulaski, Tennessee, by Democrats.  Democrats wished to establish a terrorist group to instill fear in the hearts of Blacks and Republicans in the South.

The Texas Republican Party was founded mainly by Blacks in 1867.  These African Americans were high-minded and colorblind.  They wanted their party to be welcoming to all, not just Blacks.  Twenty Whites immediately signed up.  Throughout the South, other Blacks followed the example of African-American Texans and started up Republican Party branches to oppose the racist Democrat power structure and its enforcement arm, the KKK.

Republican Guarantees of Civil & Voting Rights

In 1868, the 14th Amendment was adopted, giving African Americans full civil rights.  This federal guarantee of equality limited Democrat-controlled states from being able to limit the rights of Blacks.  Every voting Republican, in the House and in the Senate, voted for this law.  Not one Democrat did.

The 15th Amendment was passed when many Democrat-controlled states tried to get in the way of the 14th Amendment by blocking voting rights.  Once again, every single Republican voted for the amendment, and every Democrat opposed it.

Democrat & KKK Mischief

In 1872, the Congress investigated the Klan and the charge that its activities were linked to the Democrat Party.  Democrats ended admitted that they had founded the Klan.  The KKK was of serious concern to Republicans, because it intimidated Blacks into not voting.  The Klan made terroristic threats, used physical violence, and staged brutal lynchings.

byrdUp until 1875, the Republican majority in Congress passed laws guaranteeing civil rights to African Americans.  But, in 1876, Democrats won control of the House and thus were able to block any further actions to pass civil rights legislation.  In 1892, Democrats took control of the House, the Senate, and the White House all at once.  The Democrats proceeded to repeal all the civil rights gains for African Americans that had been passed by colorblind Republicans.

With Democrats in charge in Washington, DC, the Southern states began to pass Jim Crow laws requiring Blacks to take literacy tests to qualify for their rights and forcing them to pay unaffordable poll taxes to vote.  Racist officials also withheld from Blacks permits to carry firearms.

Democrat Inroads Into the Black Community

Harry Truman changed the minds of many Blacks, when he began the desegregation of the armed forces.  As a result of this, he garnered 77% of the Black vote, in 1952, and beat Dewey for another four years in office.

Kennedy voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while a US Senator, as did Democrat Senator Al Gore Sr (father to Al Gore Jr, who later would run for president).  And, after becoming president, Kennedy actively opposed Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington.

But just before the presidential election of 1960, something happened that would tip the electoral scales in Kennedy’s favor.  Although there had never been a warm relationship between MLK and JFK, a phone call from John Kennedy’s campaign manager, Bobby Kennedy, to a Georgia judge, in order to get Dr. King released from jail, paid dividends.

All the prior history between Nixon and King no longer seemed to matter.  The fact that it was Nixon and the Republicans who had pushed so hard for the Civil Rights Bill, since 1957, was not being discussed.  This was the beginning of the flight of Blacks to the Democrat Party as a loyal constituency.

Republicans Are Still the Champions of Civil Rights

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the Democrats had improved a great deal, and 65% of them voted for it under pressure from President Johnson.  But over 80% of Republicans voted to enact the new law—and the one in five who voted no reported doing so only because they thought that the wording of the law, allowing it to be applied to private institutions, was a case of federal overreach.  Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat and former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, personally filibustered the act.  It passed anyway.

Matters improved yet again, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed with significant Republican leadership.  It saw 94% support from the Republicans but only 71% from the Democrats.

Still Colorblind After All These Years 

To this day, Republicans continue to favor colorblind policy-making, which, contrary to liberal propaganda, is the exact opposite of racism.  Indeed, the Party of Lincoln remains committed to freedom from dependency, as well as justice for all.