What to Do About America’s Low Sky Workforce

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review Some bad news for America, not on the political front this time, but in what corporate executives call human resources.

It’s from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report on adult skills, based on 166,000 interviews in 24 economically advanced countries in 2011 and 2012.

The verdict on the United States: “weak in literacy, very poor in numeracy, but only slightly below average in problem-solving in technology-rich environments.”

On literacy, just 12 percent of U.S. adults score at the top two levels, significantly lower than the 22 percent in largely monoethnic and culturally cohesive Japan and Finland. American average scores are below those in our Anglosphere cousins Australia, Canada, England, and Northern Ireland.

One-sixth of Americans score at the bottom two levels, compared with 5 percent in Japan and Finland.

Read more from this story HERE.

As Washington Crumbles, This Senator’s Rise To The Presidency Is Almost Assured

/10 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Standard CompliantToday is a rainy, gloomy day in Washington.

And as John Boehner is up at the White House negotiating the unconditional surrender of House Republicans, I unexpectedly ran into Senator Ted Cruz outside of Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel.

Cruz was smiling and said he was invigorated by the outpouring of support for his campaign against Obamacare.

Of course, you may be wondering why Cruz is happy while the Republican leaders around him are groping for a lifeline from Obama and a way to settle the dispute.

The reasons are simple…

Read more from this story HERE.

Republicans Can Say “We Told You So” as Obamacare is Inflicted on America

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Irish Central President Obama and his Democrat colleagues must take all of the credit as Nancy Pelosi’s promise: “we will find out what is in Obamacare after it is passed,” starts to become reality.

Since not one Republican voted for Obamacare and Republicans were shut out of putting any input into Obamacare, the credit and or blame will fall appropriately

The President made all kinds of promises as he sold Obamacare to the people of the United States.

But Seems like most of them have fallen by the wayside as promises face the dawning of reality.

Were these claims the President made, honest miscalculations? Or were they cynical lies designed to get a gullible public to accept a government takeover of our healthcare system?

According to the latest estimates, Obamacare will cost around $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, nearly $1.7 trillion more than Obama’s initial promise of $900 billion.

President Obama’s claim that if you like your existing healthcare plan, you can keep that plan is proving utterly false as Obamacare gets unveiled. Millions of Americans are getting rude shocks as employers start to drop their plans and force employees into the new healthcare exchanges.

He also promised if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor…Period! But of course that whopper has fallen to the wayside as people are kicked off their existing healthcare plans and new plans don’t include their doctor.

President Obama claimed the average healthcare premium savings would be 2,500 per family. That claim is proving to be bogus as families get sticker shock from the new healthcare plans with Obamacare mandates. To add insult to injury, many of these plans have huge deductibles that must be paid before the insurance kicks in.

Most Americans will soon forget this latest budget impasse and the resultant government “shutdown.” The negativity directed toward the Republicans who tried to block or make changes to Obamacare before it gets implemented will swiftly pass in the coming weeks and months.

But in a little over a year, the all important midterm elections will occur; with House and Senate seats up for grabs…

The quotes below from two naive supporters of Obamacare just discovering huge increase in healthcare premiums may prove ominous for Democrats trying to retain their seats:

“Of course, I want people to have health care I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.” Or: “I was laughing at Boehner until the mail came today.”

What will be fresh on American workers and voters minds as the November elections arrive, will be who has raised their taxes and who is responsible for the huge increases in their healthcare costs…..They will also remember who tired to keep their taxes lower and tried to warn them about Obamacare.

_____________________________________

Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Fighting Obamacare: The Difference Between Cutting Spending and Limiting Harmful Government

/2 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: fibonacci blueAs Mitch McConnell puts the finishing touches on his terms of surrender, here are some thoughts to ponder.

Republicans and conservatives have spent the past few years messaging their platform to the American people built upon budget-speak. It’s all about the debt and cutting spending.

In reality, we don’t have a spending problem per se, we have a big and harmful government problem. The two are not always the same.

All of us who follow policy issues very closely understand that debt in itself is not just a problem for the federal balance sheet, it will have to be paid back by our children and grandchildren. However, most people don’t see it that way, at least not in a meaningful way. What people care about is loss of employment, lower/stagnant wages, the rising cost of living, and personal liberty. It is our job to prioritize an agenda both in substance and messaging that directly addresses the harmful effects of government on jobs, standard of living, and personal liberty. The federal budget is secondary, and will take care of itself once we restore government to its proper role.

For example, we spend roughly $8 billion in discretionary spending funding the EPA each year. Now, is that $8 billion in wasted spending contributing to our debt? You betcha. But the more serious problem with the EPA is not the $8 billion in discretionary spending, but the hundreds of billions that are removed from the private economy in the form of lost jobs and higher cost of living (not to mention personal liberty), as a result of the regulatory regime.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Senate GOP’s Surrender

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review House Republicans had a joke in the mid-1990s that the Democrats were their opponents, but the Senate was the enemy. Today’s House Republicans are beginning to develop the same sentiment — but this time, it’s not a joke.

When Representative Paul Ryan last week used the pages of the Wall Street Journal to suggest a way out of the shutdown/debt-ceiling morass, conservatives complained that Ryan’s column did not even mention Obamacare. Yet now Ryan himself, less than a week after some conservatives accused him of sandbagging their efforts, is complaining that Senate Republicans are sandbagging his own compromise proposal just as it seemed to be gaining traction.

Conservatives were right about Ryan, and Ryan is right about the Senate. The Senate’s apostasy, though, appears substantially worse.

At least Ryan’s proposal aimed to accomplish conservative goals: long-term savings, entitlement reform, new limits on the coddling of federal employees, and a simplified tax code with lower corporate rates. Its deliberate refusal to include even the slightest nick in Obamacare’s edifice provided evidence that Ryan is far from averse to disappointing conservatives — but at least he could claim to be keeping his eye on the long-term goal of greater fiscal responsibility.

Nothing like that can be said about the Senate plan whose details began to emerge on Saturday. It would essentially forfeit all leverage associated with both the debt ceiling and the annual appropriations process by providing a largely “clean” spending resolution through March while raising the debt ceiling enough to last through January. The only “concession” it would extract from the Left would be a two-year delay — not even a repeal but merely a delay — in the medical-device tax. The full repeal of this tax already enjoys majority support in both houses of Congress, and Barack Obama has indicated it is not central to his health-insurance Leviathan.

Read more from this story HERE.

I’ll have my Way — or America will Suffer!

/5 Comments/in , /by

No, this is not a direct quote from Barack Obama, but it is an interpretation derived from every statement he has made of late, and his decision-making regarding what will be funded, and what will not, during the present partial government shutdown.

Since he was first elected in 2008, journalists and pundits have repeatedly exclaimed that Barack Obama is the first president in our history who does not love our country. Being a minister, I always initially refuse a bad report about anyone until there is ample proof; it is the benefit of the doubt. That day has come and gone and I am now among those who believe that Obama actually hates America.

He has smashed traditional marriage, exalted homosexual perversion, used the IRS like a battering ram, left border agents, ambassadors, and good soldiers to die without help, raised the debt to unimaginable heights and now is selectively battering various citizens and veterans with his shutdown. All for his pet legislation, hated by most Americans, the personal idol of his life — ObamaCare!

In fact, I waited a full two years as Mr. Obama harrassed various governors on voting laws and immigration enforcement before concurring with those who say he hates America.

In 2010 in an article entitled “Obama Courts Latino Votes at Arizona’s Expense” I was forced to say “Every time the president speaks, makes another appointment or ramrods a new bill through the democratically controlled congress, he reinforces what millions of Americans now feel; this president does not love America.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Insiders: Obamacare is a Blemish on American Technology

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Joe Skipper/ReutersWhat the president heralds as his signature accomplishment is not only creating great domestic upheaval as a political and policy failure, it is also an immense American technological failure on display for the world to see.

The American brand has been dealt some sharp blows under this administration. We are suffering from a weak economy, reeling from the recent embarrassing debacle over Syria’s chemical weapons, and we still haven’t brought anyone to justice over what happened in Benghazi. The world watched as our enemies protected junior nobody Edward Snowden when he handed over our secrets, and now the world is witnessing unbecoming squabbling in Washington as our government remains shut down. We also have to contend with this unflattering picture of American technological capabilities. We may have invented the Internet, but our position as the leader in computer and software development has suffered a setback.

The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) claim they do not know how many Americans have successfully signed up for Obamacare. Unofficial reports say that perhaps as few as 51,000 people were able to complete applications during the first week. Is President Obama angry about this roll out? Does he not know what is happening? How long can his administration pretend it doesn’t know the extent of its problems?

While the Republicans have done a lot to create competing news that has momentarily pushed some of the focus on the failures of Obamacare to the back burner, the issue is not going to go away. It’s only a matter of time before this administration will have to face reality.

Read more from this story HERE.

Michael Needham: The Strategist Behind the Shutdown

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Zina Saunders‘I really believe we are in a great position right now,” says Michael Needham, the 31-year-old president of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the nation’s largest conservative think tank. By “we” he means the Republican Party and the conservative movement; their “great position” refers to the potential to win the political battle over the government shutdown.

Though Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the public face of the high-risk strategy to “defund” ObamaCare, the masterminds behind it are a new generation of young conservatives, chief among them Mr. Needham. From a tactical view, the strategy has been deployed with precision. In August, only Mr. Cruz and a band of renegade tea-party Republicans in the House favored this approach, and the media collectively scoffed. But by September, House Republicans couldn’t pass a budget without attaching the defunding rider that has grounded much of government.

“We rallied the conservative grass roots across the country,” Mr. Needham says, and ran ads in more than 100 districts on the health law. It worked. During the August recess, these activists demanded that their members of Congress stop ObamaCare.

To most observers, who think the GOP is losing this fight, Mr. Needham’s optimism that Republicans will carry the day may seem astonishing. But Mr. Needham says the second-guessers are wrong.

“We just spent the last three months talking about nothing else but ObamaCare. It has been on the front page of every newspaper. The polls show ObamaCare’s more unpopular than ever. People are starting to wake up that it isn’t going to work at all,” he says. “Even Jon Stewart of ‘The Daily Show’ is making fun of the law.” On Monday, Mr. Stewart had Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a guest, Mr. Needham notes, and the host “bet that he could download every movie ever made before she could log on to the ObamaCare website.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Surprise! GOP, Dems Playing for Same Team

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WNDMore of America seems to be catching on to the fact that – while we have two political parties – they aren’t in fact the ones that are labeled Republican and Democrat.

Perhaps these two unlabeled parties should be given names. Let’s call them the Potomics and the Outcasts. You know, those inside and outside the moat that surrounds the castles of government in Washington, D.C.

I confess to having been snookered by this game myself on too many occasions. When election time rolls around, the game works like the good-cop, bad-cop routine in crime novels. The two cops drag the suspect into the interrogation room, and the bad cop wants to beat the confession out of the guy.

The good cop is more sympathetic and holds the bad cop at bay. Given the suspect’s circumstances, his actions were entirely understandable, even if they were wrong. But certainly a court would consider leniency in return for a confession. To the suspect, watching the bad cop ranting and raving in the background, this seems like a plan.

And so, most of America has continued to vote Republican or Democrat, because it seemed like a plan. We simply did not recognize that they were both on the same team.

Read more from this story HERE.

Park Service Paramilitaries

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review If a government shuts down in the forest and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying. The so-called shutdown is, as noted last week, mostly baloney: Eighty-three percent of the supposedly defunded government is carrying on as usual, impervious to whatever restraints the people’s representatives might wish to impose, and the 800,000 soi-disant “non-essential” workers have been assured that, as soon as the government is once again lawfully funded, they will be paid in full for all the days they’ve had at home.

But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America’s alleged “National Park Service,” a term of art that covers everything from canyons and glaciers to war memorials and historic taverns. The NPS has spent the last two weeks behaving as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, expending more resources in trying to close down open-air, unfenced areas than it would normally do in keeping them open. It began with the war memorials on the National Mall — that’s to say, stone monuments on pieces of grass under blue sky. It’s the equivalent of my New Hampshire town government shutting down and deciding therefore to ring the Civil War statue on the village common with yellow police tape and barricades.

Still, the NPS could at least argue that these monuments were within their jurisdiction — although they shouldn’t be. Not content with that, the NPS shock troops then moved on to insisting that privately run sites such as the Claude Moore Colonial Farm and privately owned sites such as Mount Vernon were also required to shut. When the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway declined to comply with the government’s order to close (an entirely illegal order, by the way), the “shut down” Park Service sent armed agents and vehicles to blockade the hotel’s driveway.

Even then, the problem with a lot of America’s scenic wonders is that, although they sit on National Park Service land, they’re visible from some distance. So, in South Dakota, having closed Mount Rushmore the NPS storm troopers additionally attempted to close the view of Mount Rushmore — that’s to say a stretch of the highway, where the shoulder widens and you can pull over and admire the stony visages of America’s presidents. Maybe it’s time to blow up Washington, Jefferson & Co. and replace them with a giant, granite sign rising into the heavens bearing the chiseled inscription “DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING DOWN THERE.”

Read more from this story HERE.