World Murder Rates and Gun Regulations

Looking at the murder rates around the world the highest is would you believe Turkey (184.053 per 1 million people). Since the Left likes to blame a lot of murders on guns (like that’s the only way to kill someone) let’s look at Turkey’s gun regulations. In Turkey, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms and semi-automatic firearms. Those are assault weapons aren’t they not?  Also,  in Turkey, private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is permitted under license. An applicant for a firearm license in Turkey must pass background checks which consider criminal, mental, domestic violence, medical, and addiction records.

Next highest murder rate per capita is Belarus. It’s rate is 100.35 per 1 million people. What about its gun regulations? In Belarus, civilians are not allowed to possess handguns unless awarded for military service. Belarus has background checks too. In Belarus, third party character references for each gun license applicant are required.  So, if only people with  military service are allowed to have guns why are there any gun homicides at all? The rate is low. The highest was 0.8 in 1995. But still you think it would be zero. Are the only ones committing gun homicides military people? I don’t think so.

The third highest murder rate per capita is Lithuania at 81.84 per 1 million people. In Lithuania, the right to private gun ownership is guaranteed by law. In Lithuania, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic weapons (category A), military sniper rifles, unmarked firearms, craft weapons, armor-piercing ammunition. Again these are categorized as assault weapons. Lithuania has background checks too.

Albania has the forth highest murder rate. It’s rate per capital is 80.637 per 1 million people. Here is it’s gun regulation policies: The regulation of guns in Albania is categorized as permissive. Not sure what “permissive” means. In Albania, licensed gun makers are required to keep a record of each firearm produced, for inspection by a regulating authority.

What about America’s murder rate per capita? I don’t know. I couldn’t find it on Nation Master.com. But America wasn’t listed in the top 37 countries. Although, Wolfram Alpha.com had the murder rate 5.65 murders per 100,000 people.

Now, if you are curious about gun homicides  around the world, the country with the highest count is South Africa. As of 2002, they had 31,918 gun homicides. That’s because of lax gun laws right? No, not really. In South Africa, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law. So, no 4th amendment for them. In South Africa, civilians are not allowed to possess semi-automatic firearms without special endorsement, automatic firearms and specifically modified firearms. In South Africa, private possession of fully automatic weapons is prohibited. In South Africa, only licensed gun owners (with competency certificate) may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition. S. Africa has background checks. You got to have 3rd party character reference to get a gun. Licensed firearm owners in South Africa are permitted to possess 1 firearm per firearm license. One other gun fact about South Africa: It has gun free zones.

Next highest in gun homicides (21,898) is Columbia. In Colombia, the right to private gun ownership is guaranteed by law. In Colombia, civilians are not allowed to possess pistols and revolvers of caliber superior to 9.652mm, automatic arms, semi-automatic rifles and carbines over 22 caliber LR, arms with military-style devices (infrared and laser sights, grenade launchers and silencers) and ammunition for these arms. Does the drug cartels in Columbia know this? In Colombia, private possession of fully automatic weapons is prohibited with only narrow exemptions. In Colombia, private possession of semi-automatic assault weapons is prohibited with only narrow exemptions. Again with the “narrow exceptions.” Applicants for a gun owner’s license in Colombia are required to prove genuine reason to possess a firearm, for example, personal protection, security, hunting, target shooting, collection. Like who is going to say their reason is to kill someone.  Yea, I am wanting to start up a hitman business. And yes Columbia has background checks too. It has gun free zones too. Actually, I counted 19 countries (America is one) that have gun free zones. Do these really work? I doubt it.

A lot of countries with high gun homicides either restrict assault weapons or ban them altogether. Most countries have background checks. A lot of countries you have to have a character reference and/or a genuine reason to own a gun. In countries where there is no “right to own a gun” like the United Kingdom, Japan and China there are still gun homicides. Why? I thought regulation is supposed to stop gun homicides. In the UK handguns are completely prohibited. In Japan you have to be an accomplished sports shooter to own a gun. All you amateur sports shooters are out of luck. In China you have to be a hunter and have permission. 

If you are wondering America is ranked 4th in gun homicides.

So, what’s the point of this essay? The point is gun regulation doesn’t really have that much affect on murders.

Surveillance USA

From the guardian.co.uk (June 5):

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. [read more]

Keep in mind that the gov’t is looking at all Verizon customer records not just some. If the NSA can look at records of Verizon what’s going to stop them from looking at the records of other cell phone company records?

The Obama administration justifies this surveillance on “national security” reasons. So, I guess all terrorists use Verizon phones, huh?

A NSA whistleblower William Binney told Glenn Beck on his radio show Friday that the NSA has been snooping on Americans for more than a decade and that they are not just looking at the records of the phone calls but the content of the phone calls and emails. Binney said that “the NSA is collecting data on 3 billion phone calls every single day.”

Well, it’s not like the NSA is tapping directly into servers of nine major American Internet companies (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple).  Oh, wait. It is. Not only them but so is the FBI. The agencies are not only looking at the content of emails, but almost everything else including video chat.

At least the Post Office is not photographing every mail it receives. Wouldn’t it be funny if the Post Office did that? The jokes on America. It does. That’s how the ricin suspect was tracked. As The Washington Post.com states:

According to FBI Agent James Spiropoulos, investigators accessed a Postal Service computer system that “incorporates a Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) program which photographs and captures an image of every mail piece that is processed.” Agents were able to obtain front and back images of about 20 mail pieces that had been processed “immediately before the mail piece addressed to Mayor Bloomberg.”

Highlights of Rand Paul’s Obamacare Rant

With the implementation of Obamacare, doctors will soon be required to use roughly 122,000 [my emphasis] new medical diagnostic codes to inform the federal government of injuries sustained by Americans.

The new codes include classifications for “injuries sustained from a turtle,” “walking into a lamppost” and “injuries sustained from burning water skis.”

312 new codes for injuries from animals; 72 new codes for injuries just from birds; 9 new codes for ‘injuries from the macaw.’

Injuries sustained from a turtle.

A code for … walking into a lamppost. There’s also a code for ‘walking into a lamppost, subsequent encounter.’

A code for injuries sustained from burning water skis.

[read more]

Senator Paul asks physicians around the country if they have ever seen injuries from a macaw. No one has.

As for turtles, he jokes that they are of course dangerous, but why have two codes for them? Your doctor has to inform the gov’t if you have been struck or bitten by a turtle.  Turtles can be dangerous if you let them. And because they are so slow they can sneak up on you quietly. Watch out for them. While you think they are being harmless munching on their lettuce or whatever they are eating, they are planning your demise. As the saying goes, a turtle’s hit is worse than it’s bite.

Rand Paul says this about the gov’t: “Your government just wants to take care of you. They don’t think you’re smart enough to make these decisions.” Duh. My thoughts exactly. The gov’t thinks its citizens are like Homer Simpson or worse like cows.

What Conservatives Are For

On April 22, 2013, Senator Mike Lee (R–UT) addressed an audience at The Heritage Foundation outlining a conservative vision of a free society based on American first principles. Two institutions lie at the core of American freedom, said Lee: free enterprise and civil society. American-style freedom brings people together, while big-government policies divide people into interest groups and turn citizens into dependents. Lee flatly rejects the liberal claim that conservatives oppose progress, and he makes the case that elected conservatives must do a better job of presenting the conservative vision to the American public.

Here are this four key points:

1. The conservative vision of American freedom depends on free enterprise and civil society; the great obstacle to realizing this vision today is government dysfunction.
2. A new conservative reform agenda should center on three basic principles: equality, diversity, and sustainability.
3. Equality means everyone plays by the same rules with no more preferential policymaking. Diversity is another name for federalism. The federal government makes too many mistakes because it makes too many decisions. Most of them it doesn't have to make - and therefore shouldn't. The states, however, should.
4. Once we eliminate policy privilege and restore policy diversity, we can start ensuring policy sustainability. When the federal government stops doing things it shouldn't, it can start doing the things it shouldn't and do them better.

[read more]

The real-life tricorder

 

From the dailymail.co.uk (May 23):

The tricorder, a medical device that scan patients in seconds, originally shot to fame in Star Trek - but now a California firm has made it a reality.

The Scanadu Scout can measure your heart rate, temperature, blood oxygen levels, respiratory rate, blood pressure, ECG and emotional stress - just like Spock's handheld gadget.

It can be placed on the user’s forehead and within ten seconds uses Bluetooth to send the results direct to their smartphone after an array of sensors and a camera scan the patient.

It is also able to store previous results meaning that patients can track changes in their vital signs.

'The Scout puts your body’s information where it belongs: in your hands,' the firm says.

'Share it with your doctor and others to take health conversations – and discoveries – to a new level.' [read more]

Health discoveries to a new level? Hmmm. Don’t know if that sounds good or not. Discovering something about your body is usually not a good thing. Although, hypochondriacs would love this device.

Somebody commented that it needs to monitor blood sugar and hormone levels. Maybe in the next version.

I wonder if this gadget will be required when it gets fully developed and the Unaffordable N0-Care Act (Obamacare) kicks in. The gov’t could want all of its citizens to upload their health data using this device to a national database. Good for Scanadu (they make a lot of money) but not so good for the consumer.

How police can find your deleted text messages

From money.cnn.com (May 22):

Smartphone forensics experts can retrieve just about anything from any phone. Police will often seize and analyze phones for evidence of things such as indecent photos and videos, what calls were placed when and to whom, browser history, calendar events and explanations of a suicide or murder.

All of that can be uncovered whether or not a user deleted it from their phone.

"It makes it much, much harder, but wiping a phone doesn't always mean you can't get the data," said Courtney Lancaster, forensic analyst with IT consulting company TCS, at the CTIA wireless industry trade show in Las Vegas.

Forensic analysts have dozens of tools that allow them to access many layers of data on a device.

A so-called "physical" analysis can typically retrieve deleted information that is hidden deep within a smartphone's memory. When a photo is saved, for example, the device's operating system will typically store variations of that image in several different locations -- a thumbnail view may still be available even if the original isn't. [read more]

If computer forensic experts can look at a PC’s contents why not a smartphone’s contents? Both are basically computers. You have the right tools you can just about analyze any computer or smartphone.

Small Businesses Startups and Job Growth

The Kauffman Foundation has done extensive research on job creation. Kauffman Senior Fellow Tim Kane analyzed a new data set from the U.S. government, called Business Dynamics Statistics, which provides details about the age and employment of businesses started in the U.S. since 1977. What this showed was that startups aren't just an important contributor to job growth: they're the only thing. Without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. economy. From 1977 to 2005, existing companies were net job destroyers, losing 1 million net jobs per year. In contrast, new businesses in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs annually.

When analyzed by company age, the data are even more startling. Gross job creation at startups averaged more than 3 million jobs per year during 1992-2005, four times as high as any other yearly age group. Existing firms in all year groups have gross job losses that are larger than gross job gains.

Half of the startups go out of business within five years; but overall they are still the ones that lead the charge in employment creation. Kauffman Foundation analyzed the average employment of all firms as they age from year zero (birth) to year five. When a given cohort of startups reaches age five, its employment level is 80 percent of what it was when it began. In 2000, for example, startups created 3,099,639 jobs. By 2005, the surviving firms had a total employment of 2,412,410, or about 78 percent of the number of jobs that existed when these firms were born.

Source: The last chapter in John Mauldin’s 2011 book Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything.

Startups are fragile. It’s hard enough getting and retaining customers and trying to be better than your competitors. Then I read that start-ups are prime targets for cyberattacks. Geez.  And when gov’ts over-regulate and over-tax the start-ups it doesn’t make running a business any easier. More obstacles to overcome.  Then when they grow, the gov’t punishes them unless they do business with the gov’t—ie crony capitalism.

Is There a Moral Basis for Capitalism?

From FEE.org (August 1983):

The contemporary indictment of capitalism usually takes two basic forms. First, there is the economic indictment. Those who make the attack from this perspective argue that capitalism is not viable because it is afflicted with insurmountable contradictions which result in a permanent state of crisis, or problems which can only be temporarily resolved by palliatives. Second, there is the moral indictment. Capitalism, according to this view, is the exploitation of man by man, the profit motive and the rule of money supreme, with an inevitable cruel injustice everywhere manifest.

The claim that capitalism provides the best economic structure for man’s moral development, long a virtual article of faith in American life, is met with derision these days by politicians, journalists, university professors, and theologians. Clergymen daily rage with indignation against the “evils” and “injustice” of the competitive market. Capitalism is, so we are told, “intrinsically immoral.” “Soul dead, stomach well alive,” was Thomas Carlyle’s estimate of the market system, and all the cultured despisers of commercial civilization are in hearty agreement.

The critics are right when they demand that our economic system rest on a firm moral basis. If it can be shown that it does not, then we should abandon it immediately and seek to establish a more just order. At the outset, however, important distinctions and clarifications must be made. Arthur Shenfield calls attention to one of the most vital, viz., “the economic system called capitalism is a system of relationships. It is a composition of markets, and markets are by definition systems of relationships, not purposive bodies. It follows that we can apply the tests of morality to capitalism only by considering the behavior of individuals who operate within it, not as a system capable in itself of being moral or immoral.”

It is Shenfield’s contention that since capitalism is “a system of relationships it cannot be moral or immoral in the sense that a purposive group can be . . . .” He denies, however, that such a system is morally neutral. “If its essential characteristics on balance positively nurture or reinforce moral or immoral individual behavior, it is a moral or immoral system in its effects.”

Economic freedom is born and thrives only in nations or communities where reverence for all human life is widely held to be a supreme value, where the personal safety of the neighbor and his family is generally regarded as inviolably sacred, and where compassionate individuals, acting either alone or through voluntary associations, are encouraged to offer substantial assistance to the poor and needy. This differs radically from the command society of socialism, whose adherents are frequently found not only approving but actively promoting violence, terrorism, and the destruction of the middle class. In such societies (and this would include the Welfare State) “compassion” is institutionalized, and becomes a monopoly of the state.

The seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” teaches us, as does the ninth commandment, that contracts must be honored and double-dealing scorned. “The historic link between the biblical idea of binding covenants and the Western idea of binding contracts,” writes Gary North, “is obvious enough.” The very idea of contracting for joint benefit presupposes a high level of moral integrity and faithfulness on the part of all the parties engaged in the transaction.

In socialism the paternal state seeks to vitiate the necessity for the sanctity of contracts by substituting its omnipotent controls and decrees. Opportunity for moral development and the growth of trust between free men is thereby suppressed.

The right of private ownership is based on the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, this commandment requires “the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.” The commandment forbids “whatsoever doth or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbor’s wealth or outward estate.” The eighth commandment “means that the Bible countenances private property—for if a thing is not owned in the first place it can hardly be stolen.” [read more]

Just as I thought. God’s a capitalist. (Just joking! Then again…)

Variations, Stability, and the Economy

Variations also act as purges. Small forest fires periodically cleanse the system of the most flammable material, so this does not have the opportunity to accumulate. Systematically preventing forest fires from taking place “to be safe” makes the big one much worse. For similar reasons, stability is not good for the economy: firms become very weak during long periods of steady prosperity devoid of setbacks, and hidden vulnerabilities accumulate silently under the surface—so delaying crises is not a very good idea. Likewise, absence of fluctuations in the market causes hidden risks to accumulate with impunity. The longer one goes without a market trauma, the worse the damage when commotion occurs.

Source: Antifragile. Things That Gain from Disorder. (2012) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

It’s too bad the powers-that-be don’t learn the lesson above. They think and fear the “crises” will last indefinitely so they have to do something anything to prevent the crises from getting worse. But it does get worse when they interfere with the economy. That’s why the Great Depression wasn’t just a normal depression. The economy will self-correct in its own time. It’s non-linear.

Then there are those leaders who are just control freaks and love regulating the economy to death. Or near death.

The author lists what he calls people who have “skin in the game”: citizens; merchants, businessmen, artisans; entrepreneurs; laboratory and field experimenters; gov’t of city-states; writers. Those who have no skin in the game: Bureaucrats; consultants, sophists; business (my input: if businesses keep their entrepreneurial spirit they would be better off I think); corporate executives (with suit); theoreticians, data miners, observational studies; centralized gov’t; editors.

Mr. Taleb has a suggestion to deter “too big to fail” and prevent employers from taking advantage of the public:

A company that is classified as potentially bailable  out should it fail should not be able to pay anyone more than a corresponding civil servant.

He has a point. If you take money from the government don’t expect there won’t be any conditions or strings attached. If it is a loan and you pay back the loan then the strings should go away. Then that of course that means less power for the gov’t. Because if there are conditions then fewer businesses won’t go to the gov’t for money. Hence, no crony capitalism.

Finally, toward the ending of chapter 24 he has these thoughts:

       But the good news is that I am convinced that a single person with courage can bring down a collective composed of wimps.

       And here, once again, we need to go back into history for the cure. The scriptures were quite aware of the problem of the diffusion of responsibility and made it a sin to follow the crowd in doing evil---as well as to give false testimony in order to conform to the multitude.

The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer

From Heritage.org (May 6):

Executive Summary

Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Government provides four types of benefits and services that are relevant to this issue:

• Direct benefits. These include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation.
• Means-tested welfare benefits. There are over 80 of these programs which, at a cost of nearly $900 billion per year, provide cash, food, housing, medical, and other services to roughly 100 million low-income Americans. Major programs include Medicaid, food stamps, the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
• Public education. At a cost of $12,300 per pupil per year, these services are largely free or heavily subsidized for low-income parents.
• Population-based services. Police, fire, highways, parks, and similar services, as the National Academy of Sciences determined in its study of the fiscal costs of immigration, generally have to expand as new immigrants enter a community; someone has to bear the cost of that expansion.

The cost of these governmental services is far larger than many people imagine. For example, in 2010, the average U.S. household received $31,584 in government benefits and services in these four categories.

The governmental system is highly redistributive. Well-educated households tend to be net tax contributors: The taxes they pay exceed the direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services they receive. For example, in 2010, in the whole U.S. population, households with college-educated heads, on average, received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes. The average college-educated household thus generated a fiscal surplus of $29,250 that government used to finance benefits for other households. [read more]

All that money for future Democrat voters. What a waste. Maybe there should be provision that says for illegal immigrants: You can’t vote for 20 years until you make yourself legal. And from the Blaze.com (May 10), it looks like there is a biometric ‘national id system’ tucked inside the immigration bill:

The section in the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act called “Identity Authentication Mechanism,” which describes a “photo tool,” is what has some on alert.

The section states that an employer hoping to hire an individual would need to verify the identity of the said person “using the photo tool.” Such a tool would be developed and maintained by the Secretary of State allowing employers to “match the photo on a covered identity document provided to the employer to a photo maintained by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database.” [read more]

Nice. Real nice.

EU Proposes Now Controlling…Seeds

From The Blaze.com (May 8):

The European Commission is proposing legislation that would have the government regulate what can be planted to its “tested, approved and accepted” list of seeds. Some worry the legislation, in addition to being over-regulation by the government, would lead to less biodiversity and that it could set a precedent that could someday criminalize the average gardener planting so-called banned seeds.

According to the European Commission, the Plant Reproductive Material Law seeks to update existing legislation by cutting down 70 pieces of law to five and reducing “the red-tape on processes and procedures for farmers, breeders and food business operators (producers, processors and distributors) to make it easier for them to carry out their profession,” the press release stated.

The commission believes its package modernizes and simplifies rules “guiding the operation of the food chain” in the best interest of protecting health.

“The package responds to the call for better simplification of legislation and smarter regulation thus reducing administrative burden for operators and simplifying the regulatory environment. Special consideration is given to the impact of this legislation on SMEs and micro enterprises which are exempted from the most costly and burdensome elements in the legislation,” the press release stated. [read more]

This is all about control. Yea, I know the EU is regulating seeds to “protect” the health of the general population. So, they say. They know best, I guess. Well, nearly 43,000 people signed a petition saying “don’t tread on my seeds!” To be fair the seed Nazis EU made some concessions:

• Home gardeners are now permitted to save and swap unapproved seed without breaking the law.
• Individuals & small organizations can grow and supply/sell unapproved vegetable seed - as long as they have less than 10 employees.
• Seedbanks can grow unapproved seeds without breaking the law.
• There could be easier (in an unspecified way) rules for large producers of seeds suitable for organic agriculture etc, in some (unspecified) future legislation – maybe.

See, the EU is a nice bureaucracy after all. Instead of confining you to a small box they’ll confine you to a medium sized box.

Texas Doctor Sues U.S. Over Obamacare

From Bloomberg.com (May 7):

A Texas doctor sued the U.S. over President Barack Obama’s health-care reforms on claims the U.S. Supreme Court overlooked when it upheld the Affordable Care Act last year.

Steven Hotze of Houston claims the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, violates the U.S. Constitution’s origination and takings clauses, which weren’t part of arguments before the Supreme Court. The high court upheld the act by a 5-to-4 vote.

Hotze’s suit, filed today in federal court in Houston, targets the “shared responsibility payment” business owners will be required to pay the U.S. under the act if they choose not to provide government-approved minimum health coverage for their workers. That penalty kicks in on Jan. 1.

“Obamacare has become a redistribution of wealth scheme, where people are compelled to pay money to other people,” Hotze’s lawyer, Andy Schlafly, said in a telephone interview. “The government isn’t allowed to order one private party, a business owner, to pay money to another private party, an insurance company.” [read more]

Good for this doctor. More doctors should do this. It is a wealth redistribution scheme and a power trip.

The article had to admit the doctor is president of Conservative Republicans of Texas like that mattered. Which it doesn’t. The law is unconstitutional and it doesn’t matter who fights it. If the doctor had been a democrat would Bloomberg.com mentioned that? Probably not.

Key Things to Take Away From Wednesday’s Benghazi Hearing

1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one.* Special operations forces were told, twice, by their chain of command not to board aircraft to Benghazi to rescue the Americans then under attack. The U.S. deputy diplomat, Greg Hicks, testified that the military commander, Lt. Col. Gibson, had his team ready to go twice
2. Whistleblower ‘Effectively Demoted’ After Questioning Benghazi Talking Points. ^* Hicks told members of Congress that he has been “effectively demoted” from his position as deputy chief of mission shortly after he questioned United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice’s explanation that the Benghazi attack was the result of a spontaneous protest sparked by a YouTube video.
3. Benghazi Witness Told Not to Speak With Congressional Investigator Alone.^ Hicks on Wednesday also revealed that he was told by Obama administration officials not to talk with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) unsupervised.
4. Who Is Lt. Col. Gibson?^ Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks repeatedly brought up a man by the name of Lt. Col. Gibson. Other than the fact that he was a Special Operations Command (SOC) Africa commander, we don’t know much else about him.
5. State Department Official Fingered Terror Group Day After Attack.^ During the House Oversight Committee hearing on the Benghazi attack, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) read from an email sent by Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary for Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department, to Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks and other top administration officials. In it, she fingered Ansar al-Sharia, a radical Islamic terror group, as the perpetrator behind the attack after the Libyan government speculated that they might be ex-Gadhafi forces.
6. Hicks testified that Ambassador Stevens traveled to Benghazi to fulfill one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s wishes.* Despite the fact that security was worsening in Benghazi for months leading up to the 9-11 attack, Clinton wanted to make the post there permanent.
7. Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway.* Hicks also testified that he was shocked when Ambassador Susan Rice blamed a YouTube movie for inspiring the 9-11 attack.
8. “The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya.” * Hicks directly testified that the YouTube movie, for which a man remains in jail, was not in any way relevant to the attack in Benghazi. Why Obama, Clinton, Rice et al blamed that movie for the attack remains an unanswered question.

Sources: *7 Things We Learned from the Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing.

                 ^Here Are the 5 Key Things to Take Away From Wednesday’s Benghazi Hearing

This is starting to sound like a cover-up to me. As for who issued the stand-down order that would be the POTUS.  That’s what former ambassador Rep. Ann Wagner said. If that’s true (no reason to doubt her) why wouldn’t Obama try to send help to the embassy? Because it wasn’t important to Obama try to rescue those people in the embassy. Maybe, he thought something would go wrong and he would get blamed. I don’t know. It didn’t concern him. Also, keep in mind Libya was his “baby” and made people to believe he had Al Qaeda on the run. 

From the Blaze.com (May 10);

Then, the talking points used by Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday shows on the weekend after the 9/11/12 terror attack in Benghazi underwent at least 12 edits –  including revisions by the Obama administration’s State Department — new emails obtained by ABC News show. Those revisions included scrubbing all references to an Al Qaeda-affiliated group and all references to previous CIA warnings about a terror threat. [read more]

If this isn’t a cover-up then I don’t know what is anymore.

Chinese Hackers Infiltrate US Army Database, Compromise Safety Of Thousands Of Dams

From ibtimes.com (May 2):

Chinese hackers have infiltrated a sensitive U.S. Army database that contains information about the vulnerabilities of thousands of dams located throughout the United States. The hacking of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams (NID) has raised concerns that information gathered in the attack could help China carry out a cyberattack on the national electrical power grid.

An unauthorized user traced to China hacked the NID database in January but wasn’t discovered until sometime in April.  [read more]

The article doesn’t state if the hacker was from the gov’t or not, but it doesn’t matter. China not only ignores its hackers (as long as they are not hacking into China’s computer systems), but probably condones and encourages these hackers. China is not America’s friend. And China doesn’t respect the US since Obama has been in office (actually neither has any country really for that matter). It’s a good thing that the Army Corps was able to stop the hack pretty quickly. What about next time?

Talking about Chinese hackers, here are some headlines from Newsmax.com about China hacking America:

Jun. 2, 2011 - US Investigating Google Claim of China Hacking

Jan. 19, 2012 - Suspicion Grows China Hacked US Govt Emails

April 29, 2012 - Rick Perry Eyes 2016 Run; China Hacks US Fighter Jet Plans

Feb. 6, 2013 - Rupert Murdoch: Chinese Are Still Hacking the WSJ

May 7, 2013 - Pentagon Report Blames Cyberattacks Directly on Chinese Government

New adverts 'could track your eyes' in supermarkets

From the BBC.co.uk (April 30):

An advertising system which is able to track your eye movements while you shop has been created by researchers based at Lancaster University.

The Sideways project uses software to locate faces and eye movements of shoppers captured on camera.

It could allow for video screens which change adverts depending on what you look at in a shop.

The team told the BBC they hoped the technology would be in use in shops within five years.

The technology can also be used to allow people to use their eyes to control content on screens, such as scrolling through items on a list.

"The system uses a single ordinary camera that is placed close to the screen," explained senior researcher Andreas Bulling. "So we don't need any additional equipment.

"The system detects the faces of people walking by and calculates where the eyes are relative to the eye corners." [read more]

Interesting technology. Kind of creepy though. This technology is similar to the personalized advertising technology in the movie Minority Report. Is this an example of life imitating art?

Obama admin. could have “reacted and responded” to the Benghazi terrorist attack

From The Blaze.com (April 29):

The U.S. government had the ability to “react and respond” to the Benghazi terrorist attack and could have had forces on the ground before the second wave of the assault began, a special operator with knowledge of the response told Fox News in an exclusive interview. Due to the explosive nature of his allegations, the special ops member asked to remain anonymous.

“I know for a fact that C 110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise, not in the region of northern Africa, but in Europe. And they had the ability to react and respond,” he told Fox News.

The C 110 is a 40-man Special Ops force capable of rapid response and deployment, a group trained specifically for an event like the Benghazi attack, Fox News reports. The unit was training in Croatia on Sept. 11, 2012, just 3.5 hours away from Benghazi.

“They would have been there before the second attack,” the anonymous special operator said. “They would have been there at a minimum to provide a quick reaction force that could facilitate their exfil out of the problem situation.” [read more]

There were no help for the Benghazi ambassador and the other people that got killed because of Obama’s narcissism--Obama didn’t care to help out. That’s right I said it.  Either he felt that if he did help out something might go wrong and he would get the blame or he didn’t want to offend any Muslims or he just didn’t care. You choose.

I am not sure but I think an attack on embassy is almost like an act of war.

Common Core’s “English Language Arts” Appendix B

Common Core’s English Language Arts & Literacy [pdf] in History/Social Studies, 
Science, and Technical Subjects doesn’t sound too bad, but there are some “interesting” or peculiar topics that make me go “hmmm.”

First is, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/U.S. Department of Energy.
Recommended Levels of Insulation.  Really? You are going to make students read this? Now, if you want to read this as an adult. Fine, okay by me. “Enjoy” yourself. But students? If one had a suspicious mind one would think Common Core is trying to convert the students into environmentalists. Or even believers in big gov’t. Before you know it teachers will be telling students to have their parents follow this advice. You know for the sake of the planet. 

Next is, Calishain, Tara, and Rael Dornfest. Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter  Searching, 2nd Edition. Okay, I have nothing against this book or Google for that except Google isn’t the only search engine on the internet. For example, there is Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, Dogpile, DuckDuckGo (never heard of that one?), or even Blekko (another one you might not have heard of), etc. Okay, if you have to have search tips in a book, Yahoo! was the only other search engine that had a search tip book. (I actually checked on Amazon.com). Google actually has search tips on its website. Dharmesh Shah (don’t know him) has an “12 Quick Tips to Search Google Like an Expert” entry on his blog. So, you don’t even have to buy the Google Hacks book. Bing.com also has it own tips and tricks webpage. 

Then there is, U.S. General Services Administration. Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy,  and Transportation Management. More exciting reading. Not! Why make any student read this? Unless you’re trying to have them believe that over-regulating is a good thing. See what Big Gov is doing to for you!

Also, there is Ray Kurzweil’s “The Coming Merger of Mind and Machine.” Scientific American Special Edition January 2008. I have read this guy’s books. He’s an interesting writer. Basically, what he wants to do is in the future to have it so a person can upload his mind to a computer. Basically, this is a kind of immortality. You would have to have really good protection from viruses, worms, and other malware. Also, you would have to protect against cosmic rays and EMP attacks. Not sure if this technically feasible.

Finally, there is Atul Gawande’s “The Cost Conundrum: Health Care Costs in McAllen, Texas.” The New Yorker June 1, 2009. Guess what this is a plug for? You guessed it—Obamacare. There is even a quote from Obama saying that health care costs are threat to this nation’s balance sheet.

Economic Freedom and Christianity

                                                                      IEF                     F. House             % of Christians

Hong Kong	89.3	Partly free	10.0
Singapore	88.0	Partly free	14.6
Australia	82.6	Free	67.4
New Zealand	81.4	Free	53.5
Switzerland	81.0	Free	79.3
Canada	79.4	Free	70.3
Chile	79.0	Free	100.0
Mauritus	76.9	Free	32.2
Denmark	76.1	Free	98.0
United States	76.0	Free	78.0

 

IEF = Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom.  F. House = Freedom House.org. The percentage of Christians state comes from Nation Master.com.

 

If you notice most countries that have Christian majorities have the highest economic freedom. Almost all the countries that have Christian majorities except for Mauritus are completely free. Hong Kong is a mixture of local religions. If China takes over Hong Kong its freedom measurements will be zero or close to zero. Singapore is predominately Buddhist. Mauritus is predominately Hindu.

The United States should be number one on the economic freedom scale—not 10! What happened?! Oh, never mind. I know saying America should be #1 sounds bad to some not from America, but that’s my American patriotism coming out. Not that I begrudge any country having economic or any kind of freedom. It would be a better world if most countries did.

The Freedom House website isn’t too bad. Except it doesn’t rate countries for gun rights. Okay, you can’t have everything.

If you’re curious Iran’s IEF score is 43.2 and Freedom House says of course they are not free.  North Korea’s IEF score is 1.5 (wow!) and Freedom House says N. Korea is not free. Duh! How about Russia? It’s IEF score is 51.1 (not bad) and Freedom House says they are not free.

The Arms Trade Treaty

In November 2009, President Obama endorsed the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty aka The Small Arms Treaty. This is what the POTUS said:

We welcome agreement to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and urge that transfers of all conventional weapons be subject to the highest possible standards, so that they do not contribute to regional instability or support violations of human rights. We support the UN Program of Action to prevent, combat, and eradicate the illicit trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its aspects.

We are convinced that working together in the area of non-proliferation, disarmament and arms control, and cooperating with all our partners, will significantly contribute to a safer world. [read more]

On the surface it sounds okay--controlling illicit trade of small arms. But what this treaty will really do is make the 2nd amendment null and void.

This month the US Senate voted against the ATT 53-46 (this margin should be wider I think like no-one for the ATT. I know I am hoping. But I love and respect the Bill of Rights. It’s the conscience of America.)

So, who are senators who voted for the ATT? Except for two senators who were independents all were Democrats. You know the usual suspects: Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Patrick Leahy, Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin, Jay Rockefeller, etc.

Obama and the senators who voted for the ATT support the UN strongly at the least or support a world gov’t at worst. That’s why it’s important to vote for senators who support the constitution. Keep in mind to reverse any UN treaty that is passed is by passing a constitutional amendment or have the other signatories (which can be quite a lot) let America out of the treaty. If the other signatories are benefiting from the treaty do you think they would let America out of it? I doubt it.

As for Obama himself he told a guest on Hannity that if Obama had it his way (if not for that pesky document called the Constitution) he would out law guns. I kid you not. Not just the so-called assault weapons mind you but all guns. Then again he tells Sarah Brady that “I just want you to know that we are working on it [gun control]. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.” So, it’s not that surprising. I am sorry, but I don’t trust Obama. That’s sad to say about any president.

I don’t know why the US is still part of the UN. The UN is not a friend of America. You have a “human rights” expert from the UN say Boston deserved the bombing attack.  Maybe America can start its own association with other countries call it “Friends of Liberty” or something like that. Have Israel, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and other democracies join the association. Again I am dreaming. For that to happen you would need a POTUS that is not an UN advocate. Heck, I would like a POTUS that is an advocate for America. 

Obama’s Plan to Destroy America Hatched at Columbia Says Classmate

From The Blaze.com (April 19):

President Obama and I were college classmates at Columbia University, class of ’83. I know all too well how mindlessly leftist the students and faculty of that institution can be, and Barack Obama is certainly no exception. My time at Columbia made it crystal clear: leftists always believe they are morally superior. While they publicly state that their mission is to save the world from prejudice, patriotism, racism, greed, and inequality, they are, in fact, hostile and resentful towards anyone who has achieved self-made success through American values.  It is in this cesspool of intolerance that Obama and his Marxist cronies hatched their plan to destroy our country.

There are two things you need to know about Obama at Columbia University. First, he was Pre -law and a Political Science major- just like me. I thought I knew everyone studying Political Science during my four years at Columbia. Not Obama. I never met him, never saw him, never even heard of him. Strange.

Same major, same career path, and graduated on the same day– where was he? Was he busy attending communist party meetings? No need to guess. In his autobiography he proudly admits attending Socialist Party meetings at Cooper Union in downtown Manhattan. He also admits publicly in his own book to not wanting to meet or befriend anyone at Columbia who wasn’t black, Hispanic, gay, or a Marxist professor. His words- in print. So it’s possible he was so busy attending communist meetings and trying to avoid guys like me (white, straight, a guy who loved America) that our paths never crossed. Unlikely, but possible.

You see political science students at Columbia were taught a detailed plan designed by two former Columbia professors named Cloward and Piven to bring down “the system,” destroy capitalism, and turn America into a socialist state. We discussed it in class, wrote about it, and debated it outside class. It was a hot topic of discussion around the halls of Columbia for four years. [read more]

Obamacare: Death Warrant for Some

From the Independence Sentinel.com (April 19):

The government is going to regulate doctors’ pay under Obamacare and it will be based on the patient’s worthiness.

My doctor’s new patients will be young and healthy because he will be paid by his success rate with each patient.  He will get paid far less for patients who do not improve. How can he take people who can’t be cured, who will continually grow sicker or who are elderly? He has to make a living.

He is going to be paid in bulk. Patients who come back for the same problem will be included in the one-time bulk rate.

His pay will depend on patient report cards. Personalized care is out, government one-size fits all healthcare is in.

What person will go into medicine now? How will this help the doctor shortage?

What doctor will want the obese patient or the patient who smokes or drinks? It is now the government’s business. Patients will be tracked and some will be deemed unworthy of more extensive care because of their habits. That is what happens when the government is in charge. It already happens in the UK.

Beware the BMI! Patients will be subject to random BMI checks as CVS recently did with their employees. CVS was criticized but they are merely following Obamacare guidelines. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended mandated counseling sessions for obese people and if they don’t comply, they will pay for it with inferior treatment services. [read more]

And when the doctors turn away patients who will get the blame? Obama? The federal gov’t? No, on both counts. The patients, especially the l0w-information patients, will blame the doctors. Saying the doctors don’t care about them. (That’s why there is patient report cards.) And Obama will validate the patients feelings making sure the doctors get blamed—so he or the gov’t won’t.

The reason the gov’t is using a “success rate” to measure the patients isn’t because the gov’t really cares about patients getting well. The success rate is being used to justify Obamacare. The gov’t then can point to a “good” (good being defined by the gov’t) success rate and say “Look Obamacare is working. People are being cured and getting well.” If the gov’t and the lame-stream-press doesn’t report the “success rate” then it is because the success rate is low.

The Saudi National Saga

From The Blaze.com (April 22):

• A Saudi national originally identified as a “person of interest” in the Boston Marathon bombing was set to be deported under section 212 3B — “Security and related grounds” — “Terrorist activities” after the bombing.
• As the story gained traction, TheBlaze’s Chief Content Officer Joel Cheatwood received word that the government may not deport the Saudi national, originally identified as Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi.
• Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to answer questions on the subject when confronted by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) on Capitol Hill.
• An ICE official said a different Saudi national is in custody, but is “in no way” connected to the bombings.
• A congressional source, however, says that the file on Alharbi was created, that he was “linked” in some way to the Boston bombings (though it is unclear how), and that documents showing all this have been sent to Congress.
• Key congressmen of the Committee on Homeland Security request a classified briefing with Napolitano.
• Fox News’ Todd Starnes reports that Alharbi was allegedly flagged on a terrorist watch list and granted a student visa without being properly vetted.  Sources close to the investigation also told him the Saudi is still set for deportation.
• New information provided to TheBlaze reveals Alharbi’s file was altered early Wednesday evening to disassociate him from the initial charges.
• Sources say the Saudi’s student visa specifically allows him to go to school in Findlay, Ohio, though he appears to have an apartment in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Sources tell us this will most likely now be kicked from the DHS to the DOJ and labeled an ongoing investigation that can no longer be discussed.

[read more]

Is this another cover up like Benghazi? It’s starting to sound like it.  Glenn Beck said this on his radio show yesterday:

“Wednesday at 5:35 p.m. the file is altered  This is unheard of, this is impossible in the timeline due to the severity of the charge….You don’t one day put a 212 3B charge against somebody with deportation, and then the next day take it off.  It would require too much to do it.”

That 3B charge is a serious charge. It means the gov’t knows that the person with that kind of charge is a known terrorist.

Obama admin. has SLASHED budget for domestic bombing prevention by 45 per cent

From Daily Mail.co.uk (April 16):

Barack Obama's administration has cut the budget nearly in half for preventing domestic bombings, MailOnline can reveal.

Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security had $20 million allocated for preventing the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by terrorists working inside the United States. The current White House has cut that funding down to $11 million.

That assessment comes from Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15 that killed three Americans and injured at least 173 others.

He told MailOnline that the Obama-era DHS is, on the whole, about as well-positioned as it was during the Bush administration to handle the aftermath of the April 15 bombings in Boston, 'but the Obama administration has continued to cut the budget for offices such as the Office for Bombing Prevention from $20 million started under Bush, to $11 million today.' [read more]

Of all the things to cut, the Obama admin. cuts national security. It would be one thing to cut waste in national security but no let’s cut bomb prevention. Couldn’t he cut oh, I don’t know, money from the EPA? or even the DoE or NEA? Oh, I forget. After Obama got elected the world became peaceful and the citizens of the world now like America. And the Boston bombings were caused by guys with mental problems—not because they are militant Islamists (That’s what the lame-stream-press might report anyway.) Uh, huh. Sure.

Why is it with the Left in a town or city whenever they have to cut some program they say emergency services (like the fire dept., police dept. etc.) are cut first? Seems like a reflex with them. What they are really saying is we don’t want to cut any program at all so if we have to we will make the citizens suffer. That is just pettiness.

Maryland’s Rain Tax

From The Gazzette.net (April 5):

Consider all the ways we’re taxed. When we’re born (birth certificate), when we die (death certificate), when we make money (income tax), when we spend money (sales tax), when we own property (property tax), when we sell property (capital gains tax), when we go to a concert or ball game (amusement tax), when we own a vehicle (license, registration, tolls, gas tax) and special taxes on cell phones, tobacco, alcohol, energy, etc. Then, when we die, they tax our income all over again (death tax). Heck, they even tax our bowel movements (flush tax).

But if you thought they ran out of ways to tax us you badly misjudged our lawmakers’ creativity. Get ready for their newest invention, the rain tax. Here’s what’s going on:

In 2010 the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered Maryland to reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay so that nitrogen levels fall 22 percent and phosphorus falls 15 percent from current amounts. The price tag: $14.8 billion.

And where do we get the $14.8 billion? By taxing so-called “impervious surfaces,” anything that prevents rain water from seeping into the earth (roofs, driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc.) thereby causing stormwater run off. In other words, a rain tax.

And who levies this new rain tax? Witness how taxation, like rain, trickles down through the various pervious levels of government until it reaches the impervious level — me and you.

The EPA ordered Maryland to raise the money (an unfunded mandate), Maryland ordered its 10 largest counties to raise the money (another unfunded mandate) and, now, each of those counties is putting a local rain tax in place by July 1. [read more]

The people of Maryland in certain counties have to pay this stupid/insane tax through their property tax. The article goes on to say that satellite imagery and geographic information systems measure your roof and driveway to determine your “impervious surfaces” so you don’t have to estimate the surface area. Isn’t that nice of the gov’t?

So, the new enemy of Mother Nature is people living houses and apartments. And the bigger the house (yea, I am speaking to you super rich) the bigger the property tax. The renters will see their rent increase because of this law. This is of course another cost to businesses.

This tax makes a good argument for getting rid of the EPA. Talk about abuse of power!

What Are the 5 Things to Know About the Obama Budget?

From Ask Heritage.org:

President Obama finally released his budget yesterday—more than two months late.

Heritage experts immediately went to work analyzing the mounds of new spending on education, manufacturing, “clean energy,” infrastructure, and small business.

Five key things to know about President Obama’s budget:

1. It hikes taxes by $1.1 trillion.
2. It underfunds defense.
3. It doubles down on Obamacare.
4. It doesn’t balance and never will.
5. It’s irrelevant.

           [read more]

So, it the same old tax and spend. Nothing new.

Obamacare’s 18 New Tax Hikes

[read more]

Congress is thinking about doing away with the excise tax on medical devices. Too bad they can’t think about doing away with all these taxes. Heck, just repeal Obamacare. It’s using a sledgehammer to kill an ant.

Survey Showing Law Enforcement Overwhelmingly Oppose Obama’s Gun Control Proposals

From The Blaze.com (April 10):

Law enforcement personnel in the United States overwhelmingly disagree with the controversial gun control measures being debated in Washington and across the country, according to a new survey [pdf] released by PoliceOne.

A law enforcement website with more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month and 400,000 registered members, PoliceOne asked more than 15,000 verified active and retired law enforcement personnel more than 20 questions about how they believe stricter gun control will impact the community.

The participants were spread out across the country, and about 80 percent were current law enforcement, 20 percent former/retired.

Here are some of the results of the survey, which was conducted between March 4 and March 13:

• Nearly 96 percent said that a ban on standard capacity magazines with more than 10 rounds would not reduce violent crime
• More than 81 percent said that “gun buy-backs” do not reduce gun violence.
• Nearly 80 percent said that a ban on private transfers of firearms between law-abiding citizens would not reduce violent crime.
• 71 percent said that a ban on “assault weapons” would have no impact on reducing violent crime.  20.5 percent said it would actually have a ​negative ​impact.
• More than 70 percent opposed the idea of a national database of legal gun sales.
• More than 76 percent responded with either a 4 or 5 when asked on a scale of 1-5 how important legally armed citizens are to reducing overall crime.

[read more]

The police out in the streets more than any other people would know more about gun violence because that is their job. They deal with it almost every day. I hope, but not holding my breath, that politicians would consult the police community before making any rash laws about guns. Or even look at this poll. Or heck even use common sense and make sure any gun law doesn’t violate the 2nd amendment.

FDR, The Great Depression and The New Deal

How bad was the Great Depression? Over the four years from 1929 to 1933, production at the nation’s factories, mines and utilities fell by more than half. People’s real disposable incomes dropped 28 percent. Stock prices collapsed to one-tenth of their pre-crash height. The number of unemployed Americans rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to 12.8 million in 1933. One of every four workers was out of a job at the Depression’s nadir, and ugly rumors of revolt simmered for the first time since the Civil War.

The Great Depression was not the country’s first depression, though it proved to be the longest. Several others preceded it.

A common thread woven through all of those earlier debacles was disastrous intervention by government, often in the form of political mismanagement of the money and credit supply. None of these depressions, however, lasted more than four years and most of them were over in two. The calamity that began in 1929 lasted at least three times longer than any of the country’s previous depressions because the government compounded its initial errors with a series of additional and harmful interventions.

Though modern myth claims that the free market “self-destructed” in 1929, government policy was the debacle’s principal culprit. If this crash had been like previous ones, the hard times would have ended in two or three years at the most, and likely sooner than that. But unprecedented political bungling instead prolonged the misery for over 10 years.

Unemployment in 1930 averaged a mildly recessionary 8.9 percent, up from 3.2 percent in 1929. It shot up rapidly until peaking out at more than 25 percent in 1933. Until March 1933, these were the years of President Herbert Hoover — a man often depicted as a champion of noninterventionist, laissez-faire economics.

Did Hoover really subscribe to a “hands-off-the-economy,” free-market philosophy? His opponent in the 1932 election, Franklin Roosevelt, didn’t think so. During the campaign, Roosevelt blasted Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions on the dole. He accused the president of “reckless and extravagant” spending, of thinking “that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible,” and of presiding over “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” Roosevelt’s running mate, of socialism.”¹  Contrary to the conventional view about Hoover, Roosevelt and Garner were absolutely right.

The platform of the Democratic Party, whose ticket Roosevelt headed, declared, “We believe that a party platform is a covenant with the people to be faithfully kept by the party entrusted with power.” It called for a 25 percent reduction in federal spending, a balanced federal budget, a sound gold currency “to be preserved at all hazards,” the removal of government from areas that belonged more appropriately to private enterprise and an end to the “extravagance” of Hoover’s farm programs.²  This is what candidate Roosevelt promised, but it bears no resemblance to what President Roosevelt actually delivered.

Roosevelt did indeed make a difference, though probably not the sort of difference for which the country had hoped. He started of on the wrong foot when, in his inaugural address, he blamed the Depression on “unscrupulous money changers.” He said nothing about the role of the Fed’s mismanagement and little about the follies of Congress that had contributed to the problem.

Crisis gripped the banking system when the new president assumed office on March 4, 1933. Roosevelt’s action to close the banks and declare a nationwide “banking holiday” on March 6 (which did not completely end until nine days later) is still hailed as a decisive and necessary action by Roosevelt apologists.³

The Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Fed’s unconscionable monetary mischief were primary culprits in producing the conditions that gave Roosevelt his excuse to temporarily deprive depositors of their money, and the bank holiday did nothing to alter those fundamentals. “More than 5,000 banks still in operation when the holiday was declared did not reopen their doors when it ended, and of these, over 2,000 never did thereafter,” report Friedman and Schwartz.

One morning, as Roosevelt ate eggs in bed, he and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau decided to change the ratio between gold and paper dollars. After weighing his options, Roosevelt settled on a 21 cent price hike because “it’s a lucky number.” ⁴

The minimum wage law prices many of the inexperienced, the young, the unskilled and the disadvantaged out of the labor market. (For example, the minimum wage provisions passed as part of another act in 1933 threw an estimated 500,000 Current blacks out of work).

Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace personally gave the order to slaughter 6 million baby pigs before they grew to full size. The  administration also paid farmers for the first time for not working at all.

From the White House on the heels of the Wagner Act came a thunderous barrage of insults against business. Businessmen, Roosevelt fumed, were obstacles on the road to recovery. He blasted them as “economic royalists” and said that businessmen as a class  were “stupid.”⁵  He followed up the insults with a rash of new punitive measures. New strictures on the stock market were imposed. A tax on corporate retained earnings, called the “undistributed profits tax,” was levied. “these soak-the rich efforts,” writes economist Robert Higgs, “left little doubt that the president and his administration intended to push through Congress everything they could to extract wealth  from the high-income earners responsible for making the bulk of the nation’s decisions about private investment.”

During a period of barely two months during late 1937, the market for steel — a key economic barometer — plummeted from 83 percent of capacity to 35 percent. When that news emblazoned headlines, Roosevelt took an ill-timed nine-day fishing trip. The New York Herald Tribune implored him to get back to work to stem the tide of  the renewed Depression. What was needed, said the newspaper’s editors, was a reversal of the Roosevelt policy “of bitterness and hate, of setting class against class and punishing all who disagreed with him.” ⁶

The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the irresponsible monetary and fiscal policies of the U. S. government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These policies included a litany of political missteps: central bank mismanagement, trade-crushing tariffs, incentive-sapping  taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle and coercive labor laws, to recount just a few.  It was not the free market that produced 12 years of agony;  rather, it was political bungling on a grand scale.

Source: Great Myths of the Great Depression (1981) by Lawrence W. Reed.

The notes below are my own comments.

¹ See, espousing conservative themes really do work even if you don’t mean them. Evidently, FDR and his running mate never had RINO republicans advising them.

² More faking to the right. Then again FDR lied about getting America into WWII. But that’s another story for another time…

³ Does this scenario sound familiar? Think: Cyprus.  And the so-called “experts” say this could not happen in America. It did already. When leaders don’t trust the free-market system will resolve its issues in its own time this over-reaction happens. Then again these kind of interventionist actions happen when leaders don’t trust the population over all.

⁴ I wonder if this how the minimum wage amount is created. Something to think about.

⁵ Obama anyone? Just like Obama FDR never had any businessmen as his advisors. Go figure.

⁶ Obama again.

Life in Germany 1923

Basic necessities were now priced in the billions-a kilo of butter cost 250 billion; a kilo of bacon 180 billion; a simple ride on a Berlin street car, which had cost 1 mark before the war, was now set at 15 billion. Even though currency notes were available in denominations of up to 100 billion marks, it took whole sheaves to pay for anything. The country was awash with currency notes, carried around in bags, in wheelbarrows, in laundry baskets and hampers, even in baby carriages.

It was not simply the extraordinary numbers involved; it was the dizzying speed at which prices were now soaring. In the last three weeks of October, they rose ten thousandfold, doubling every couple of days. In the time that it took to drink a cup of coffee in one of Berlin’s many cafés the price might have doubled. Money received at the beginning of the week lost nine-tenths of its buying power by the end of the week.

It became meaningless to talk about the price of anything, because the numbers changed so fast. Economic existence became a race. Workers, once paid weekly, were now paid daily with large stacks of notes. Every morning big trucks loaded with laundry baskets full of notes rolled out of the Reichsbank printing offices and drove from factory to factory, where someone would clamber aboard to pitch great bundles to the sullen crowds of workers, who would then be given half an hour off to rush out and buy something before the money became worthless. They grabbed almost anything in the shop to barter later on for necessities in the flea markets, which had sprung up around the city.

Having to calculate and recalculate prices in the billions and trillions made any sort of reasonable commercial calculations almost impossible. German physicians even diagnosed a strange malady that swept the country, which they named “cipher stroke.” Those afflicted were apparently normal in every respect except, according to the New York Times, “for a desire to write endless rows of ciphers and engage in computations more involved than the most difficult problems in logarithms.” Perfectly sensible people would say they were ten billion years old or had forty trillion children. Apparently cashiers, bookkeepers, and bankers were particularly prone to this bizarre disease. Most people simply turned to barter or to using foreign currency. Every middle-class housewife knew up to the latest hour the exchange rate for the mark against the dollar. At every street corner, in shops and tobacconists’, even in apartment blocks, minute bureaux de change sprang up, with blackboards outside, advertising the latest exchange rates.

With the mark falling faster than domestic prices were rising, foreigners were able to live grotesquely well. Berlin apartments worth $10,000 before the war could be bought for as little as $500. Malcolm Cowley, an American literary critic then living in Paris, in Berlin to visit his friend the journalist Matthew Josephson, wrote, “For a salary of a hundred dollars a month, Josephson lived in a duplex apartment with two maids, riding lessons for his wife, dinners only in the most expensive restaurants, tips to the orchestra, pictures collected, charities to struggling German writers-it was an insane life for foreigners in Berlin and nobody could be happy there.” For one hundred dollars, a Texan hired the full Berlin Philharmonic for an evening. The contrast between the extravagance of foreigners, many of them French or British, but also Poles, Czechs, and Swiss, and the daily struggles of the average German to make a living only fed the resentment against the Versailles settlement further.

Inflation transformed the class structure of Germany far more than any revolution might have done. The rich industrialists did well. Their large holdings of real assets-factories, land, stocks of goods-soared in value while inflation wiped away their debts. Workers, particularly the unionized, also did surprisingly well. Until 1922, their wages kept up with inflation and jobs were plentiful. It was only in the last stages, from the end of 1922 into 1923, when the implosion of confidence caused the monetary system to seize up and the economy reverted to barter, that men were thrown out of work.

Those who made up the backbone of Germany-the civil servants, doctors, teachers, and professors-were hit the worst. Their investments in government bonds and bank deposits, carefully accumulated after a lifetime of prudence and discipline, were suddenly worthless. Forced to scrape by on meager pensions and salaries, which were decimated by inflation, they had to abandon their last vestiges of dignity. Imperial officers took jobs as bank clerks, middle-class families took in lodgers, professors begged on the streets, and young ladies from respectable families became prostitutes.

Source: Lords of Finance. The Bankers Who Broke The World (2009) by Liaquat Ahamed.

And then Hitler came in power.

Bullets That Snag DNA

From Popular Science (Jan. 2013):

A team of nanomaterials scientists led by Paul Sermon, of Brunel University in England, has developed a bullet that captures the DNA of anyone who touches it—and leaves a tracer on the person, too.

Scientists dipped a bullet in a formaldehyde-urea resin, creating a microscopic scratchy surface that snags skin cells. When fired in lab tests, the bullet retained 53 percent more analyzable DNA than an untreated one. [read more]

Interesting idea but like someone said in a comment what will this do to the price of bullets? And since different guns use different bullets will every type of bullet have this ability? Probably. And if someone uses gloves to load a gun then there won’t be any DNA on the bullets especially if a careful criminal finds out about the technology.

Big Brother is Going to Monitor Your Kids

From The Blaze.com (March 27):

TheBlaze has been at the forefront in uncovering the disturbing details of the nationalized curriculum standard known as Common Core. One of the most troubling aspects of this federal program is that government bureaucrats are currently mining sensitive and highly personal information on children through Common Core’s tracking system.

The data will then reportedly be sold by the government to outside sources for profit.

According to the conservative think tank American Principles Project, Common Core’s technological project is “merely one part of a much broader plan by the federal government to track individuals from birth through their participation in the workforce.” As columnist and author Michelle Malkin has pointed out, the 2009 stimulus package included a “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” to provide states incentives to construct “longitudinal data systems (LDS) to collect data on public-school students.”

In other words, an aggregation system to mind personal data on children including information about their health, family income, religious affiliation and homework. [read more]

The article goes on to say one data mining in the future could use fMRIs and “cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges [a child's] posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

That’s just plain unnerving. The old Soviet Union would have loved this kind of monitoring. The Soviet Union determined from mandatory tests what job you can have and where you can work. You couldn’t quit or even retire until the State gave you permission. After all being employed was a right.

I wonder if the powers-that-be have the same thing in mind for education. The State will decide what universities or trade/tech schools you go to if the State determines you worthy of further education. The powers-that-be will probably even choose your curriculum for you too. After all they know what’s best for you.

A mother called up the Glenn Beck show on Friday and said her child’s school wouldn’t even tell her what they are teaching her child. Basically, told her it is none of her business.

Welcome to the brave new world America.

Individual Health Policy Premiums Going Up

From The Blaze.com (March 26):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies under President Barack Obama’s overhaul, the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts has estimated.

That’s likely to increase premiums for at least some Americans buying individual plans.

The report by the Society of Actuaries could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act.

While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers. [read more]

The Act should be called the Unaffordable No-care Act. The article goes on to say that by 2017 estimated increase would rise to 62% for California (Wow! Those CA residences are really going to be stuck with high costs. Then again maybe that’s what they want.) 80% for Ohio, and more than 20% for Florida and 67% for Maryland. The premiums for most states goes up. New York premiums goes down –13.9%. The Society of Actuaries has an infographic where you can look at all the states premium changes.

So, what’ll happen is this: Most people will pay the gov’t fine for not having insurance which is less than the insurance premiums. That drives out the insurance companies eventually. Then the gov’t increases its fine because now it is a health insurance monopoly. Which is what The Left always wanted.

Still think the private sector can compete against the public sector? It can’t. The public sector makes the rules.

I wish this was an April Fool’s joke. But it isn’t. The joke is on the taxpayer.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 28

• The Left believes that big government helps those who won’t help themselves. Then again big gov’t doesn’t want people helping themselves.
• Don’t be surprised if property crimes rise when you have people in power talk about “economic justice” or “spreading the wealth” or “you didn’t build that.”
• Raising the tax rate in America would be a tough sell for the Left if it were a flat tax because every tax payer would be paying a higher tax if that happened.
• Do you think Isamo-fascist Leftists (if there is such a thing) shout “Big gov’t is great!” then raise your taxes? Just wondering.
• The Left plays the law of averages when it comes to gov’t pgms and spending money. Even if those actions work the tax payer would have to be immortal to see any payoff.
• If a person with a mean expression comes toward me with a switchblade, brass knuckles, and a baseball bat I am not going to think to myself he isn’t going to hurt or kill me because he isn’t carrying a gun. I believe the result would be the same.
• The term “collective bargaining” makes me nervous. Just how does a group of people bargain? That means everyone in that group would have to want to same thing. You stop being individual instead you are like a cell in a biological organism. That’s very close to group think. 
• I think political consultants should work on a contingency basis. If trial lawyers can do that why not political consultants? Either that don’t hire a consultant unless the person has 90% or better winning track record.
• Instead every Leftist is a conservative that is bound, gagged, and ridiculed that wants to come out.
• Jesus once said: “Those who praise themselves will be humbled.” I am still waiting for Obama to be humbled. Too many “mind guards” maybe?