President Obama Pledges to Rescue Failing College Education System with Another Failed Plan

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

After years of claiming he was making a college education more affordable, last week President Obama finally came face to face with the reality of his efforts and proclaimed college education was too expensive.

Record numbers of students are taking out record amounts of loans and are now defaulting on those loans, discovering they cannot find jobs in his moribund economy. The colleges themselves are booming with unprecedented amounts of money flowing in, but the graduates are failing…So what’s the metric here?

In response to this reality President Obama unveiled a new plan that he says will solve spiraling college education costs and help rescue students drowning in student loan debt used to pay for these educations.

But predictably, his plan is another huge dose of government intrusion that will only compound the meddling these policies already inflict on the education system.

His idea to set up a college rating system that will tie aid to the colleges that government bureaucrats feel are giving the best bang for the buck, putting yet another layer of government on an already overburdened system.

This has all of the signs of government taking over yet another industry and nanny stating it into a politically correct arm of this administration….Determining who the education winners and losers are through bureaucratic regulation.

Typically, showing where President Obamas values really are, his policy will reward students who choose a career in government or working for tax exempt organizations. Those winners in the Obama social engineering system, will have their student loans cancelled after ten years….All others pay up or else.

In the brave new world of President Obama, if you become a government employee, you are elevated to a status above the rest of the hoi polloi.

These are exactly the kind of policies you would expect from someone who has no experience in the real world private sector….The sector that actually pays for government programs and can actually create the jobs that college graduates can find a career in.

President Obamas plan doesn’t attack the root of the problem, but only props up and promotes a failed model.

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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.

‘Boredom’ Was not the Reason Behind Chris Lane’s Murder (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The mischaracterization of the alleged violence by Chancey Luna, Michael Jones and James Edwards began when one of the trio claimed they had hunted down and shot dead Australian Chris Lane because they were “bored.”

The statement is so devoid of humanity and so headline-ready that the media seized upon it as a literal and complete explanation for why these three accused killers acted so inhumanely.

But the statement is a smokescreen. Boredom—of the kind sane people experience—had nothing, whatsoever, to do with Lane’s death and explains nothing about how it happened.

When normal people are bored, they go to the movies, go shopping or skateboarding or take a drive to the beach. Only when people are severely psychologically disordered do they think up murder as an antidote to boredom. Only when extraordinarily disordered patterns of thought, feeling or perception fill one’s mind does the vacuum of boredom draw someone to the idea of using a gun to shoot a stranger in the head…

So why would these three allegedly do this if it had nothing to do with boredom? Probably because Chris Lane, a strong man running the streets on a bright day, was as good a symbol as any of what they had lost: their humanity. They had lost the capacity to feel for others. They could not perceive the suffering of Lane during his death, nor of his family members after his death. They had lost that singular, defining human quality called empathy.

Read more from this story HERE.

No, Obamacare Is Not A Good Deal For Young People In The Long Run, Not Even Close

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Photo Credit: LaDawna's pics

Photo Credit: LaDawna’s pics

Progressives are becoming increasingly concerned at the prospect of millions of uninsured young people deciding to push the easy button next year by simply paying a very small fine[1] rather than obtain health coverage. Consequently, they have turned to a new argument to get those under 30 to act against their self interest by signing up for the Exchanges. Now we are being told that Obamacare will be a good deal for young people in the long run since whatever short-term losses they incur in the form of higher premiums will be more than made up later when they are older and get to pay lower premiums than they would in today’s market.

But those making these arguments haven’t offered any analysis to back up their claims. The conceptual point evidently is supposed to be intuitively obvious. As Ezra Klein puts it:

Young people grow old. Healthy people get sick. Rich people become poor. The people overpaying to keep costs low today are the people underpaying 10 or 20 years from now.

As a health policy skeptic, I know that lots of intuitive ideas—such as that prevention saves money—turn out to be false upon closer examination. So when I did some actual analysis of this latest idea, it did not surprise me to learn that this claim is dead wrong. Once the time value of money is taken into account, the average young person will be worse off under Obamacare even if they live long enough to be a near-elderly person who pays premiums that are well below actuarially fair rates.

In the short run, millions of young will be better off without Obamacare

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare’s Hierarchy of Privilege

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

On his radio show the other day, Hugh Hewitt caught me by surprise and asked me about running for the United States Senate from New Hampshire. My various consultants, pollsters, PACs, and exploratory committees haven’t fine-tuned every detail of my platform just yet, but I can say this without a doubt: I will not vote for any “comprehensive” bill, whether on immigration, health care, or anything else.

“Comprehensive” today is a euphemism for interminably long, poorly drafted, and entirely unread — not just by the people’s representatives but by our robed rulers, too (how many of those Supreme Court justices actually plowed through every page of Obamacare when its “constitutionality” came before them?). The 1862 Homestead Act, which is genuinely comprehensive, is two handwritten pages in clear English. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is 500 times as long, is not about patients or care, and neither protects the former nor makes the latter affordable.

So what is it about? On Wednesday, the Nevada AFL-CIO passed a resolution declaring that “the unintended consequences of the ACA will lead to the destruction of the 40-hour work week.” That’s quite an accomplishment for a “health” “care” “reform” law. But the poor old union heavies who so supported Obamacare are now reduced to bleating that they should be entitled to the same opt-outs secured by big business and congressional staffers. It’s a very strange law whose only defining characteristic is that no one who favors it wants to be bound by it.

Meanwhile, on the very same day as the AFL-CIO was predicting the death of the 40-hour week, the University of Virginia announced plans to boot working spouses off its health plan beginning January 1 because the Affordable Care Act has made it unaffordable: It’s projected to add $7.3 million dollars to the university’s bill in 2014 alone.

As Nancy Pelosi famously said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” But the problem with “comprehensive” legislation is that, when everything’s in it, nothing’s in it. The Affordable Care Act means whatever President Obama says it means on any particular day of the week. Whether it applies to you this year, next year, or not at all depends on the whim of the sovereign, and whether your CEO golfs with him on Martha’s Vineyard. A few weeks back, the president unilaterally suspended the law’s employer mandate. Under the U.S. Constitution, he doesn’t have the power to do this, but judging from the American people’s massive shrug of indifference he might as well unilaterally suspend the Constitution, too. Obamacare is not a law, in the sense that all persons are equal before it, but a hierarchy of privilege; for example, senators value their emir-sized entourages and don’t want them to quit, so it is necessary to provide the flunkies who negotiated and drafted the Affordable Care Act an exemption from the legislation they imposed on the citizenry. Once again, the opt-out is not legal. As the Wall Street Journal trenchantly observed, “OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in Congressional pay in return for less overall compensation.”

Read more fromt this story HERE.

Assad Calls Obama’s Bluff

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Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

The timing was probably not a coincidence, falling as it did on two anniversaries. August 18, 2011, was when President Obama first demanded Syrian president Bashar al-Assad step aside, and August 20 last year was when Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus.” It was a year to the day after Obama’s warning that Assad launched what is to date the regime’s largest chemical weapons attack. At least a thousand people are dead, likely more, in several Damascus suburbs and outlying towns. The video reports from Syria are chilling—children foaming at the mouth, their unblinking eyes full of terror, their contorted limbs frozen like broken dolls.

Yes, yes, it’s terrible, say many, but why would Assad be so foolish as to use his unconventional arsenal when a U.N. investigating team is already in the country collecting evidence on past use of chemical weapons? Well, Assad is not a fool: The purpose of waging an attack under the watchful eyes of the U.N. is to show his adversaries that the international community, the Europeans, and even the Americans are not going to help them, no matter what. Assad’s message to the rebels is: In spite of their moral posturing, their stern admonitions, even their revulsion and horror at watching children paralyzed by nerve agents, your Western friends won’t help you. Indeed, they are so craven, so eager for a reason to do nothing, they will suggest that the chemical attack was perhaps a ploy—that to get them to enter the war on your side, you killed your own children.

There’s also a military logic at work in Assad’s chemical attack last week. For months, the regime has been shelling these neighborhoods northeast of Damascus, explains Tony Badran, research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “But every time the regime tries to enter—armored units or infantry—they’re repelled by rebel fighters. Last week’s attacks, and these areas were [also] subjected to chemical weapons attacks in the spring, are intended to disrupt rebel defenses.”

There’s a strategic purpose, too. “These neighborhoods are not far from Mt. Qassioun,” says Badran, “which is the military’s center of gravity. It’s not just a military base, but also high ground from which the regime can easily fire on the rebels.” Moreover, Badran explains, “the neighborhoods attacked last week overlook the Damascus-Homs highway, which is one of the regime’s main communications lines. A little further northeast is an airport in Dumayr where the regime is supplied by direct flights from Iran. Therefore, it’s essential Assad establish control over this strategic territory.”

Read more from this story HERE.

America the Trivial

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trivialityTwo quite different 21st-century Americas are emerging. The nation is not so much divided by “wars” between the rich and poor, men and women, or white and non-white. Instead, there is the world of reality versus that of triviality.

In the vast plains of the Dakotas and the American West, thousands of men and women of all classes and colors are fracking oil and gas to create new energy for millions of homeowners and commuters — while giving America a second chance at strategic energy independence.

Yet the beneficiaries mostly ignore these elemental efforts. They instead prefer to fixate on the alleged sexual creepiness of big-city political mediocrities like Bob Filner and Anthony Weiner.

As we sleep, 7,000 miles away there are still thousands of American soldiers of all races, ages, classes, and genders in godforsaken conditions fighting the Taliban to allow millions in Afghanistan the chance for an alternative to medieval theocracy and to deter terrorists.

Meanwhile, back home, the nation is focused not on such existential struggles but is transfixed by racial melodramas.

Read more from this story HERE.

Europe and America are Suffering from Green Energy Tyranny

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

President Obama and the hard left ideologues, who guide his energy policies, don’t seem to be paying attention to European economies staggering under the weight of years of “green.”

In a new article called The Law of Unintended Consequences, Peter C. Glover details Europe’s difficulty in coming to grips with providing energy for a modern society:…. with the economic realities of actual paying for a green energy society:

“If there is a message to be gotten across to Joe Public it’s this: there’s no such thing as ‘free’ solar, wind or any other ‘clean energy’ source. Someone, somewhere always has to pay for them. And they will always cost far more than hydrocarbons – don’t believe the green hype believe the physics. The bulk of that subsidized social levy is set to continue to be sustained by Joe Public, especially those forced into fuel poverty by costly renewable levies in their domestic bills.”

Europe is buckling under the weight of subsidizing green and the United States wouldn’t be far behind, except for the fact we have astronomical amounts of fossil energy on private and state lands, where it can’t be sealed off, or regulated away by federal edicts….yet.

But the Obama administration policies are punishing, non green energy producers and the resultant consequences mean unnecessarily higher costs to American consumers.

I asked Richard Storm, an energy expert and power engineer affiliated with Citizens for Common Sense Energy & Environment, for a snap shot into where clean coal technology is today and his thoughts on America’s energy landscape: Coal power is the source of almost 40% of Americas electrical energy:

New coal plants are clean and efficient. In most cases, the new plants replace older plants with much more efficient and much cleaner generation

These new, clean coal plants are likely to continue to produce reliable electricity for decades to come at the most reasonable rates, using America’s Treasure of Coal Energy.

Natural gas prices are likely to increase in the future as more demand for clean natural gas materializes.

Let’s look at just one example: The Duke Energy Cliffside Unit #6, is one of the cleanest power generation plants in the world furnishing enough power for about 660,000 average sized homes

The new Clean Coal Plants are not only cleaner than any others in the world, but they are also more efficient and use about 10% less fuel per megawatt of electricity generated.

America’s oil and gas production has increased during the Obama Presidency because of American innovation, risk taking and hard work by the oil and gas industry. With no help or encouragement from the Obama Administration. In fact, the Keystone Pipeline is just one clear example of Obama’s administration fighting progress. He is against literally all forms of energy except “Green, renewables”

How about shale gas? Nope. Neither Obama or the allies in the Environmental extremists support shale gas either. After the Sierra Club received millions of dollars to fight coal plants from Chesapeake Energy, now they are against shale gas. So are the Dept. of Interior and the EPA. One of the planned new coal plants for Oklahoma was stopped by the Sierra Club and Cheapeake Energy. As in other states, natural gas fueled plants were built as a substitute. This may be economical for a couple more years, but then gas prices are expected to rise. So will power costs because fuel is about 80% of the production cost of electricity.

A reminder, America runs on energy. 90% of America’s Energy comes from the traditional fuels of Coal, Oil, Natural Gas and Nuclear. Yes, 90%. When organizations are against these, millions of jobs are at risk as well as America’s energy security. Not to mention the fact that America has a high standard of living which is enjoyed by all.

Who can be against America’s sustained strength? Here are a few answers. The Sierra Club, The Natural Resources Defense Council, PEW Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation,most of The Democrat Party and for certain, the Democrat leadership.

Come on America; let’s get back to making America strong again. I support the four E’s: Energy, Economic Prosperity, Education and Environmental protection. Yes, speaking for myself and every other power engineer in the business, I support clean air, clean water and a strong America. Who wouldn’t?

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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.

Fight Like a Democrat

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

I get a lot of press releases in my inbox. My method for opening them is akin to playing roulette—in other words, no method.

But I opened one the other day about Alieta Eck, then a Republican Senate candidate in New Jersey. I read the article embedded in the press release with growing interest, as Eck presented a compelling figure. Then I came to this paragraph:

“Meeting on Wednesday with the Inquirer Editorial Board, she [Eck] expressed views on a range of other issues, hewing to the far right of her party on most, including questioning climate change. On abortion, however, Eck said while she is ‘pro-life,’ a federal overhaul of Roe v. Wade would be ‘impossible to implement.’”

Oh.

I am an issues voter, and where a candidate not only stands on life, but votes on life, is important to me. This made it slightly unclear whether Eck ascribed to the Joe Biden method of pay-lip-service- to-pro-life-views-but-never-vote-that-way (which is totally contrary to Democrats’ normal view of using legislation to impose their personal beliefs on how they think you should live your life). Or Eck could be a staunch vote for pro-life causes in the Senate, and the paper simply didn’t bother to print more of the discussion.

But what bothered me regardless—and should bother all Republicans no matter where they fall on the abortion issue—was the passiveness in “impossible to implement.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Millions Of Millenials Live At Home and Support the Policies That Keep Them There

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Photo Credit: marklarson

Photo Credit: marklarson

In Man’s Search For Meaning, Austrian psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and founder of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl discusses the “existential vacuum.” It is an internal emptiness and lack of purpose. In a life with logos or meaning, anything can be endured. Without it, a person is lost. Frankl watched men in the German camps succumb who might otherwise have survived simply because they had nothing to hold onto.

When the greatest excitement today for twenty-somethings are hybrid baked goods, a list of 37 random tokens of nostalgia, or going on an endless string of meaningless Internet-facilitated dates, I have found myself surrounded by nihilists.

Those who are married or finished medical school already may exempt themselves. Anyone with a legal partner or a life in service of others may wait until middle-age to experience the solitary struggle of a crisis of meaning. The lost ones instead are those approaching thirty with no savings, no interest in anything but the near-term future, and no profitable outlet for creativity besides solipsistic online forums.

The lost ones are smart. They pay attention to what goes on in the world. They read the news along with the lists of 37 GIFs. Yet what can they do? They have minimal discretionary income and their free time is spent unwinding from occupations that force them to look at backlit words for eight hours or deal with whining strangers. They are fully adults and can’t boast of anything their parents had at this age besides better means of communication, which many are horrible at maintaining.

I hear my peers say, “I’m lost.” I say, “Yes, of course.” Almost 22 million twenty-somethings live with their parents, myself for the second time currently included, though economists tell us that this is technically a “recovery” from a “recession” and not just one long, dragging depression of next-to-no growth for our country and for the development of individuals who thought for sure they could have had an apartment by now. I went to a party recently where someone was bashful to admit that he bought his own place. A room full of renters were ready to give him grief for having the means to pay a mortgage or the certitude and resolve to put down roots in one place.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Iran-Contra: The Real Benghazi Scandal

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

One would be hard pressed to find a more significant impeachable offense than aiding and abetting the sworn enemies of the United States, especially when any such support includes sending weapons to our murderous adversaries. A crime on that scale would certainly be made all the more serious if those same enemies turned around and utilized the U.S.-provided arms to kill Americans.

We are not here referring to the so-called “Fast and Furious” scandal in which President Obama’s Justice Department purposely allowed, with deadly consequence, licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers with the intent of tracking the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders. Instead, we document a much less reported gun-walking scandal, one you will soon regard as the “Fast and Furious” of the Middle East, the Iran-Contra of the Obama administration. It could be the White House got away not once but twice with the same misdeed of arming our foes.

In the case presented here, the enemy consists not of drug lords but of al-Qaeda, along with a witches’ brew of anti-American jihadists. The results are not dead U.S. border agents but a murdered U.S. ambassador, along with three other diplomatic staff, in one of the most brazen assaults on an American overseas target in history. To make matters worse, we will show how our president and top administration officials deliberately and repeatedly lied to the American public while taking actions that fomented anti-American sentiment, aided an Islamist revolution currently sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly helped create, whether wittingly or not, a well-armed al-Qaeda army that is already attacking our interests and fueling conflicts worldwide.

Read more from this story HERE.