The Tea Party Has Not Yet Begun to Fight

/18 Comments/in , , /by

If the Tea Party has been weakened by the November election, why are the mainstream media expending so much effort attacking it?

The latest attempt is today’s front-page article by the New York Times, which alleges that the Tea Party is turning to “narrower” issues and suggests, none too subtly, that Congress should stop paying attention to it.

As proof, the Times offers the fact that Republican leaders “have embraced raising tax revenues in budget negotiations, repudiating a central tenet of the Tea Party.” It ignores the fact that Republican leaders could not muster the votes in the House to pass those proposals.

To the great frustration of the mainstream media and the GOP establishment alike, the Tea Party continues to hold the line against tax hikes and new bailouts. It also won a significant victory with the recent passage of right-to-work legislation in Michigan.

These are not “narrower” issues: they are the most fundamental issues concerning the nation’s fiscal health and economic future. It is the Times and the liberal gentry that it serves who cling to narrow, often contrived issues such as the co-called “war on women” to maintain their political clout. The ailing, indebted Times hates the Tea Party precisely because it is serious about economic realities the left would prefer to deny.

Read more from this article HERE.

Journalists’ Addresses Posted In Revenge For Newspaper’s Google Map Of Gun Permit Owners

/14 Comments/in , /by

A week after the Newtown massacre, The Journal News published an interactive Google Map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners in select New York cities. The bold move has escalated into a transparency arms race, after a Connecticut lawyer posted the phone number and addresses of the Journal‘s staff, including a Google Maps satellite Image of the Publisher’s home. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” read Christopher Fountain’s blog post. The double irony here is that open data was heralded as a tool of enlightened civic dialog, and has been co-opted for fierce partisanship, bordering on public endangerment.

The Journal‘s original publication of the map sparked nationwide outrage and thousands of angry comments. Gun permit holding is public information in New York, and can be acquired through a mere request via the Freedom of Information Act. But, coming on the heals of the Newtown shooting, the publication had a clear provocative intent. “New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and they also have a right to access public information,” said a defiant Hasson.

Given that Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle used in the School shooting was reportedly legally registered with the killer’s mother, the Google Map sparked a debate about whether gun owners should be labeled like other potential menaces to society, “The implications are mind-boggling,” said Marine Scott F. Williams to The Journal News, “It’s as if gun owners are sex offenders (and) to own a handgun risks exposure as if one is a sex offender. It’s, in my mind, crazy.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Disappearing American Father: 1/3 of US Children Now Born Without a Father at Home

/3 Comments/in , /by

Fathers are fast disappearing from American homes and one in three children, or approximately 15 million live without one according to the U.S. Census. The problem is especially pronounced in black families, where the figure increases to over half or around five million children.

In fact as the census recorded the fact that 160,000 new families with children were added, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million and nearly five million live without a mother. These astonishing figures can be unfavorably compared with 1960, when just 11 percent of all American children lived in homes without fathers.

Blame for the prevalence of low income families where children fall into crime and drugs has been laid at the door of these damning numbers.

‘People look at a child in need, in poverty or failing in school, and ask, ‘What can we do to help?’ said Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative.

‘But what we do is ask, ‘Why does that child need help in the first place?’ And the answer is often it’s because the child lacks a responsible and involved father’…

Men walking away from babies is a problem concentrated to the inner cities, with Baltimore having only 38 percent of families that have two parents and St. Louis has 40 percent of families that have two children. The primary indicator for the problem is income – 12 percent of black families who live below the poverty line boast two parents, while among poor Latino families that figure is 41 percent and 32 percent among white families.

In all but 11 states, most black children do not live with both their parents while across every state, seven out of ten white children do.

Read more from this story HERE.

Plea For Help From Chinese Labor Camp Worker Paid $1.61 per MONTH Found Stuffed in Oregon Woman’s Halloween Decorations from Kmart

/5 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: kent wang

Oregon mother Julie Keith expected to find Styrofoam headstones in the graveyard kit she bought at Kmart for Halloween. What she didn’t expect was a desperate plea for help from one of the Chinese laborers forced to make the holiday decorations in brutal conditions.

The 42-year-old charity worker from Portland discovered the chilling letter hidden between the two novelty headstones when she opened the kit in October.

‘Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization,’ the unsigned note, that was folded into eighths, read.’Thousands people here who are under the persicution [sic] of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.’

The letter’s author said the Halloween product was made in Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang, China, where laborers are forced to work for 15 hours a day without time off on the weekends and holidays.

‘Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. [sic] Nearly no payment,’ they wrote in choppy English accompanied by Chinese characters. The plea said workers at the labor camp make only 10 yuan per month – the equivalent to $1.61.

The China director at Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, told The Oregonian that the origin or authenticity of the letter couldn’t be confirmed. ‘We’re in no position to confirm the veracity or origin of this,’ she said. ‘I think it is fair to say the conditions described in the letter certainly conform to what we know about conditions in re-education through labor camps.’

China’s re-education through labor is a system of punishment that allows for detention without trial. Masanjia labor camp is located in the industrialized capital of the Liaoning Province in northeast China.

Read more from this story HERE.

State Governments To Share the ‘Death Tax’ Loot If Feds Go Over Fiscal Cliff

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Falling off the “fiscal cliff” is a bad thing, right? Not necessarily for some state governments that could begin collecting more in estate taxes on wealth left to heirs if the United States goes over the “cliff,” allowing sharp tax increases and federal spending cuts to take effect in January.

In an example of federal and state tax law interaction that gets little notice on Capitol Hill, 30 states next year could collect $3 billion more in estate taxes if Congress and President Barack Obama do not act soon, estimated the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

The reason? The federal estate tax would return with a vengeance and so would a federal credit system that shares a portion of it with the 30 states. They had been getting their cut of this tax revenue stream until the early 2000s. That was when the credit system for payment of state estate tax went away due to tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush.

With the return of the credit system next year as part of the “cliff,” states such as Florida, Colorado and Texas — which have not collected estate tax since 2004 — could resume doing so. California Gov. Jerry Brown has already begun to add the anticipated estate tax revenue into his plans, including $45 million of it in his 2012-2013 revised budget.

Read more from this story HERE.

America Has a Brand-New Benedict Arnold

/23 Comments/in , /by

He single-handedly delivered the swing vote to approve Obamacare and perhaps even crushed the American health system that has been the envy of the world.

WND has selected U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. for its first-ever Benedict Arnold Award.

“There are lots of bad guys out there who would qualify as ‘Villain of the Year,’ but precious few candidates for the ‘Benedict Arnold Award,’” explained WND Vice President and Managing Editor David Kupelian. “Benedict Arnold, after all, was a good guy; he was an American general in the Revolutionary War who fought valiantly on behalf of the Continental Army – that is, until, for reasons yet unknown, he defected to the British side and betrayed the cause he had formerly served.”

Kupelian added, “That pretty much describes Justice Roberts, who gained the enthusiastic support of conservatives and other Constitution-lovers by virtue of his earlier rulings and judicial temperament, and yet betrayed that trust in a devastating way. And we still don’t know why he did it.”

On June 28, 2012, Roberts joined the left of the Court in a dramatic 5-4 decision to uphold President Obama’s signature legislation. The Court ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate is not constitutional under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, but is reasonably considered a tax valid under Congress’ authority to “lay and collect taxes.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Grant DC Statehood? Then Move Capitol to Louisville

/5 Comments/in /by

The Huffington Post reports that a bill to move the District of Colombia toward statehood has been introduced in the Senate. Buzzfeed says “the 51st state would be called New Columbia” and be granted full voting representation in the Senate and House. A group called DC Vote has launched a White House petition to call on President Obama to support. It is indeed time that DC voters become fully enfranchised as the 51st state. But it is also high time that the nation’s capital be moved from its quaint antiquarian, eastern enclave to the center of our country. Louisville would be the perfect spot for a “new District of Columbia.”

In earliest days Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. were correctly viewed as the centers of America; benign centers of countervailing regions, nominally North and South, with dividing overviews; industrialization and manufacturing in Hamilton’s NY, provincial agrarianism in Jefferson’s South. So Victoria balanced Canada and Washington the Colonies. It was the perfect marriage of “harmony and tension” with these organic opposites held together by a benign center; a center intended to be free of the anxieties and warring oppositions of either and providing a holistic connection to both. But once it was filled with its own warring forces, the center had been passed through.

And that was not today with Joe Lieberman’s bill, cosponsored by Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). I couldn’t help notice that these lions of the Senate are all liberals. Obviously, they seek new liberal Senators by colonizing DC, much as the Southern secessionists in the 1800s hoped to bring new states in from South America to counter the North. The center had already been compromised by then. It is obliterated today. The armies of journalists today who gather in D.C. are fully partisanized; a “nerd prom” in Sarah Palin’s phrase, and Mark Steyn, who speaks passionately for mainstream conservatives, claims that there is not but one worth listening to.

Our states have lost their center and that is because the western states have risen to relevance since post-war and we are no longer a North/South country. But truly today we are an East/West country. We no longer look exclusively across the Atlantic to the rest of the world and not a day goes by when the Pacific doesn’t rise to greater relevance. It is elementary that America come into rebalance and greet face to face the rising century, coined the “Pacific Century” by Ambassador Mike Mansfield. The western states and regions must be met as equals in a new balance of east and west. Already there are grumblings in the heartland and the west, which clearly suggest those of the Jackson period and beyond.

My suggestion, a Supercommittee of Governors and former governors to discuss from those who have already brought the issues of western relevance and state sovereignty to the public forum: Arnold Schwarzenegger of California who compared California to Athens and Sparta in his inaugural address, Rick Perry of Texas who questions why a state with a surplus must support those in deep and growing debt, Sarah Palin, who singularly rose Tea Party issues of heartland America to relevance, Butch Otter of Idaho, Jodi Rell of Connecticut who with Arnold challenged the feds on auto emissions and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Three men, three women, to meet to discuss in Louisville on the great, historic Ohio River, the center of America and the world surrounding: East, West, South and the Great White North.
_________________________________________________
Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

Social Security Ran $47.8B Deficit in FY 2012; Disabled Workers Hit New Record in December: 8,827,795

/10 Comments/in , /by

(CNSNews.com) – The Social Security program ran a $47.8 billion deficit in fiscal 2012 as the program brought in $725.429 billion in cash and paid $773.247 for benefits and overhead expenses, according to official data published by Social Security Administration.

The Social Security Administration also released new data revealing that the number of workers collecting disability benefits hit a record 8,827,795 in December–up from 8,805,353 in November.

The overall number of Social Security program beneficiaries—including retired workers, dependent family members and survivors and disabled workers and their dependent family members—also hit a record in December, climbing from 56,658,978 in November to 56,758,185 in December.

In 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was an average of 112.556 million full-time workers in the United States, of whom 17.806 million worked full-time for local, state or federal government. That left an average of only 94.750 million full-time private sector workers in the country.

That means that for every 1.67 Americans who worked full-time in the private sector in 2011, there is now 1 person collecting benefits from the Social Security administration.

Read more from this story HERE.

Blind Fairbanks Dog Reunited With Owners After Weeks in Arctic Cold

/1 Comment/in /by

When their blind eight-year-old dog went missing from their remote Alaskan home in a heavy snowstorm, the Grapengeter family felt sure they’d never see her again. But after more than a week of searching in temperatures as low as minus 40C, Abby, a brown-and-white mixed-breed whom the Grapengeters rescued from an animal shelter as a puppy, turned up safe and sound at the home of a local vet.

Abby first disappeared from the family’s five-acre property near Fairbanks on 13 December. Given she’d gone blind a year ago, McKenzie Grapengeter and her three children held out little hope for her return. But on 23 December they received a call saying Abby had been found more than 10 miles away – and without even a trace of frostbite.

Neighbours had planned to set live traps to find her, but in the end the dog found her own way along a winter trail to the house of Mark May, a local dog musher and vet.

Read more from this story HERE.