Category Archives: FedGov

Will it pass?

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For a number of years now, ‘Pubs have filed Right-to-Work (RTW) bills in the legislature. This year is no different. If I’ve counted correctly, three bills have been filed that address RTW, one, a partial implementation, was filed by a St. Louis democrat.

RTW has failed in the past. Narrowly, each time and each year the margin narrows toward success. Will this be the year when Missouri finally passes a true, not some watered down ineffectual version, Right-to-Work bill?

Maybe.

All three bills have successfully passed out of committee. Speaker John Diehl has placed all three on the House calendar for a floor vote. The two bills sponsored by ‘Pubs are nearly identical. The democrat version limits RTW to the construction trades only.

The unions believe they have enough legislators in their pocket to block RTW again. They cite a number of ‘Pub union shills newly elected last November. I note most of them are from the eastern side of the state, primarily around St. Louis.

The unions have gone so far as to put at least one legislator, a democrat, on their payroll. I’d call that an ethics violation. Will the ethics committee? Doubtful. It cuts too close to home for many legislators on the eastern side of the state.

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Obama’s feud with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu led him to send for partisan assistance to Bibi’s opponent in the upcoming Israeli election. The fued wasn’t just about Netanyahu’s upcoming speech before Congress. It’s a knife fight in a darkened room.

Israeli Election Update: U.S. Intervention Appears to Backfire

Likud takes its largest lead yet, shortly after news broke of the Obama administration trying to sandbag Netanyahu.

February 9, 2015 – 1:00 pm

Israeli polling published Friday seems to indicate that the Obama administration’s push to remove Binyamin Netanyahu from power and to replace him with the more pliable Yitzhak (“Buji”) Herzog is backfiring. The intervention was first reported by the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz just over a week ago.

This is how the numbers look as of Friday:

zarmi_israel_poll_numbers_2-9-15-1

This is the most significant lead either of the front-runners has had since this election cycle began. Previously, Likud or HaMachane haTziyoni had led the other by only one or two seats. If the final election results look like this, the most likely governing coalition will involve Likud, HaBayit haYehudi, Yahadut haTorah, Kulanu, Shas, and Yachad (64 seats out of a total 120).

It should be noted that such a coalition, incorporating not only the right-wing Bayit Yehudi but also the nationalistic Yachad, would be on a collision course with the EU and U.S. as the party platforms now stand.

Yachad in particular would tie Netanyahu’s hands and limit his flexibility in ways he would not find congenial. The Yachad party is comprised of three elements: loyalists of former Shas head Eli Yishai, who heads the list; religious Zionist elements disappointed with the secular nationalistic constitution forced upon Bayit Yehudi by Naftali Bennett, who in consequence left that party under Yoni Chetboun; and the radically national ‘Otzma Yehudit faction, who had not joined HaBayit haYehudi when Bennett created the current party out of two smaller, earlier ones because it was insufficiently nationalistic for them.

A split between the Yishai/Chetboun faction and ‘Otzma Yehudit under the strains of coalitionary negotiations appears likely, which would yield a smaller but more wieldy coalition for Netanyahu (probably 62 seats as of this writing).

Obama’s incompetency abounds. The Israeli Parliament has no two-party system. Like most similar governments, governance is by a coalition of small parties constantly in turmoil. Such a government has great difficulty getting anything done. On the other hand, it is much easier to remove a political leader who alienates the country. All-in-all, I still like our bicameral system better.

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If the Obama and his pet chairman at the FCC have their way, the Internet, as we have know it for its free-wheeling ways, will soon be gone. Net-neutrality is coming via regulation. The dems have failed to pass Net-neutrality in Congress. Now, Obama will implement it via regulation.

Republican FCC Member Warns Net Neutrality Is Not Neutral

Chriss W. Street 9 Feb 2015
Ajit Pai, the sole Republican Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), inferred in a Tweet that President Barack Obama’s secret, 332-page “Net Neutrality” document is a scheme for federal micro-managing of the Internet to extract billions in new taxes from consumers and again enforce progressives’ idea of honest, equitable, and balanced content fairness.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently acknowledged that the two Democrats on the commission had decided to avoid Congressional input regarding the Internet by adopting President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 Communications Act to regulate the Internet with the same federal control as the old AT&T customer monopoly. To make sure that libertarian advocates would remain in the dark, Wheeler “embargoed” release of any of the specifics in the new administrative “policy” that will act as law.

The FCC legislation that was passed eighty-one years ago by the most leftist Congress in American history to ban companies from participating in “unjust or unreasonable discrimination” when providing phone services to customers.

But in 1949, the Democrat-dominated Commission implemented the “Fairness Doctrine” that required holders of media broadcast licenses to present “issues of public importance” in a manner that is “honest, equitable, and balanced” in the “Commission’s view. It would take 39 years before a conservative Congress could overturn a policy that hijacked the mainstream media to kowtow to liberals or face loss of their licenses.

If the Internet economy was a country, it would rank fifth, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India. Economic activity on the Internet totals $4.2 trillion, and almost half of the earth’s 7 billion people are already connected to the Web.

Ajit Pai’s description of “President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet” sounds Orwellian. He tweeted a picture of himself holding the 332-page plan just below a picture of a smiling Barack Obama with a comment, “I wish the public could see what’s inside.” The implication depicted Obama as George Orwell’s “Big Brother.”

Pai also released a statement: “President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works,” he said. “The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband… These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.”

Pai had previously observed that he was concerned about the plan would hinder broadband investment, slow network speed and expansion, limit outgrowth to rural areas of the country, and reduce Internet service provider (ISP) competition.

“The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market,” Pai said. “As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is what we’ll get.”

Pai’s confrontational comments came after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler penned an op-ed in Wired Magazine detailing his spin on the core aspects of the Democrat’s desire to lump ISPs under the amended Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications Act — which was used to break-up the AT&T telephone monopoly into four regional Bell companies at the dawn of the digital age.

“Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” Wheeler wrote on Wednesday. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.”

Pai responded that the “Courts have twice thrown out the FCC’s attempts at Internet regulation” during the Obama Administration. On January 14, 2014, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down most of the FCC’s November 2011 net neutrality rules. The Appellate Court vacated the FCC’s “anti-discrimination” and “anti-blocking” as essentially discriminatory and blocking in an attempt to again give the FCC political appointees the power to dictate what they believe is honest, equitable, and balanced.

Pai said that after a year of debates responding to the courts twice striking down FCC efforts to regulate the Internet, “There’s no reason to think that the third time will be the charm. Even a cursory look at the plan reveals glaring legal flaws that are sure to mire the agency in the muck of litigation for a long, long time.”

Pai promised he would make further comments as he reviews the plan himself in the next two weeks in the run-up to the FCC’s public vote on February 26. He has blamed the two Democrat Commissioners’ for their dismissal of any negotiations with Congressional Republicans in setting the “basic rules” governing Internet access.

As Breitbart has highlighted before, turning the Internet into a “telephone service” would “empower an intrusive public sector that thrives on high taxes, heavy-handed controls and the status quo.”

The real purpose for these regulation is to enable the FedGov to regulate content on the internet, i.e., to impose censorship. Do not be mislead by democrats, there is nothing ‘neutral’ about this. It’s nothing less than an attempt to nationalize internet access and censor content.

Many people are concerned about the intrusiveness of social media like Facebook. If these new FCC regulations are enabled, Facebook will the least of your privacy concerns.

Just as an FYI, you have to pay a tax in the UK to have access to the internet. In times past, you actually had to have a license to have a webserver, a website, or a phone in the UK. I ‘think’ the latter has loosened up a bit. Maybe.

When federal bureaucrats control our internet, internet access taxes and licensing will not be far behind.

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Friday Follies for January 23, 2015

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Under the tag line of, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” comes this tidbit from Politico. Given their continuing failures in reporting news, CNN is in discussion with changing Anderson Cooper’s 360 program to a game show. We all know that CNN has not been a news channel since the first Gulf War when their lead anchor, Bernard Shaw, had hysterics in Bagdad at the start of the Gulf War I air war. I suppose it’s only reasonable that CNN comes out of the closet and admits it hasn’t been a news channel and moves on.

CNN developing political game show

By DYLAN BYERS, 1/21/15 2:42 PM EST

CNN is producing a new political game show hosted by Anderson Cooper, TVNewser reports.

The show, which is set to air on Presidents’ Day, will be a quiz-style program focused on presidential politics. If the show is a success, CNN is likely to produce future episodes.

We’ve reached out to CNN for more details and will update here if and when we hear back.

CNN, like MSNBC, has drifted so far from reality that nothing they do now surprises me.

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The Jubilee has come! Eric Holder actually changes DoJ policy in favor of the states. The FedGov will no longer usurp state and local asset forfeiture cases. In many of those cases, the state and local law was more restrictive than federal law. The DoJ would takeover cases then give local PDs a cut-of-the-action. Theft by government order. I’ve never liked asset forfeiture until the accused has actually been convicted and sentenced. Even then the laws are too broad; seizing accounts and assets unrelated to the actual crime(s).

Holder Has Made It Harder for Federal Government to Legally Seize Your Property

Jason Snead / / Andrew Kloster / /

In a stunning announcement last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department of Justice would immediately stop “adopting” state civil asset forfeiture cases. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement came exactly one week after leaders on Capitol Hill called on him to halt the controversial program as a step toward broader reform of the nation’s civil forfeiture system.

Before today’s announcement, federal agencies could take over, or “adopt,” forfeiture cases from local or state law enforcement agencies. In other words, state or local law enforcement personnel would seize property and then turn it over to the federal government to process.

Pursuant to agreements with the federal government, once the property was successfully forfeited in federal court, the originating state or local agency got a portion of the proceeds, potentially as high as 80 percent. That money had to be used for law enforcement operations, placing it beyond the control of local governments and state legislators.

The program became the subject of controversy for effectively allowing local agencies to circumvent restrictive state laws in favor of the potentially more lucrative federal route, raising serious federalism and good government concerns. Even where states had strong procedural safeguards for property owners or limitations on the use of forfeiture funds, law enforcement could partner with the federal government and use federal rules to seize property and make use of the profits.

Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., and John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote that “these seizures might circumvent state forfeiture law restrictions, create improper incentives on the part of state and local law enforcement, and unnecessarily burden our federal authorities.”

Apparently responding to these concerns, the attorney general’s new policy bars federal authorities from adopting local or state seizures of “vehicles, valuables, cash and other monetary instruments.” The AG was able to make this change unilaterally because the statutes underlying federal civil forfeiture made the equitable sharing payments optional. The Department of Justice has the authority to craft, and to change, the rules of the program. The Treasury Department, which operates its own forfeiture fund, announced its forfeiture operations will conform to the same guidelines as those laid out by Holder.

The article continues with an explanation of exceptions under Holder’s new directive. All-in-all, it’s a step in the right direction.

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Ya just gotta love Dave Clark. Who’s he? He’s the black, conservative, Milwaukee County Sheriff who won his last election despite the efforts of liberals who hate black conservatives. He does not hesitate to make his opinions known. This time the subject was Al Sharpton.

David Clarke, Wisconsin sheriff: ‘Al Sharpton ought to go back into the gutter he came from’

By Cheryl K. Chumley – The Washington Times – Thursday, January 22, 2015
http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2014/12/10/david-clarke_s878x473.jpg?de75613b37228017a9f5cb3e6ff07328005a3223

Milwaukee’s tough-talking black sheriff, David Clarke, argued this week that white Americans have “made great strides” in healing race relations, and that sooner or later they’re going to grow tired of having their noses “rubbed in the past sins of slavery.”

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke didn’t pull any punches in his assessment of the Rev. Al Sharpton — who vowed to keep fighting for justice for slain Ferguson teen Michael Brown, despite the feds’ decision to drop a civil rights investigation — and characterized him on national television as less than intelligent and unworthy of respect.

“The grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, got it right,” Sheriff Clarke said, during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “Officer [Darren] Wilson has been exonerated. The thing I want to know is how does he get his reputation back?”

Sheriff Clarke then directed anger at Mr. Sharpton, who spoke sharply in the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Wilson, a former police officer, on civil rights charges.

Sic’em Dave!

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Former Speaker of the House, Tom Delay.

Tom Delay may be out of Congress, but the libs failed to defeat him. The Texas Supreme Court ended the Travis County (Austin, TX) democrat prosecutor’s vendetta against Delay. He’s back now with a review of Obama’s SOTU speech earlier this week.

In Obama’s speech, a conservative call to arms

By Tom DeLay – – Thursday, January 22, 2015

I found President Obama’s State of the Union address this week infuriating — and exhilarating.

It was infuriating for all the usual reasons. For all the talk that this time things would be different, in the first State of the Union speech since the American people repudiated his entire agenda we got the same old Mr. Obama, arrogant, disdainful, defiant of the new Republican majorities and of the voters who sent them to Washington. Had there been a referee on the premises, he would have thrown a flag for taunting.

It was perhaps the most in-your-face speech of this kind that I have ever heard, and I felt for the Republican lawmakers who had to sit through it, knowing that the television cameras were ready to pick up any scowl, eye roll or failure to join a “spontaneous” standing ovation. (It must have been especially tough for House Speaker John Boehner, who had to preserve his dignity and remain polite while Joe Biden was bouncing up and down like a manic jack-in-the box behind the president.)

The president either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that his party badly lost the elections. He’s not listening to the American people, as was evident in the very first minutes of his speech when he laid out the same old tired agenda that dragged down the Democrats in the first place. When President Clinton got a similar repudiation in the 1990s, at least he had the smarts to cooperate — sometimes kicking and screaming — with our new Republican majorities to get items like welfare reform passed. Things worked out so well that now Mr. Clinton brags about the things we forced him to accept.

That’s clearly not Mr. Obama’s way. What we got instead was one of the most misguided, frankly unconstitutional speeches ever given by an American president. The president called for universal child care, gender pay equity, guaranteed paid sick leave for workers, a higher minimum wage, free community college and new rules to make labor unions stronger — not one of which is the responsibility of the federal government under the Constitution. Then he laid out all the things he’s ready to veto if he doesn’t get his way — not exactly the bipartisan outreach that his advisers said was coming.

Even more infuriating — if possible — was Mr. Obama’s boasting about how far we have allegedly come under his watch. He bragged of bringing down the federal deficit in recent years when it was his uncontrolled — and unconstitutional — spending and taxing that ran up the deficit and debt in the first place. The official unemployment rate is down, but only because 90 million Americans have grown so discouraged that they’ve dropped out of the labor market altogether.

The president says he wants to turn his attention to stagnant wages and income inequality, apparently oblivious to the fact that wages aren’t going up precisely because there is a vast army of nonworkers out there saturating the job market. And income inequality will never be “fixed” by taxing the job producers more and giving the money to people who aren’t working. That approach has failed everywhere it has been tried.

The president’s victory lap was even more incredible when you consider the full plate of crises beyond our borders, from Russia and Iran to Yemen, Nigeria and Syria — the easily foreseen consequences of an administration that brags of “leading from behind.” The president claims the “shadow of crisis” has passed, but that’s not true to anyone who has been paying attention.

So why the exhilaration, you ask?

The more I listened to the speech, the more I was convinced that the president is handing the Republicans an incredible opportunity. He’s not backing down from his disastrous progressive agenda, and that means conservatives cannot afford to back down from theirs.

New Sen. Joni Ernst struck a nice, hopeful tone in her official rebuttal speech, but building the Keystone pipeline and getting more help to vets is not a full agenda. The joint House-Senate Republican retreat last week was another missed opportunity to pre-empt the president’s liberal agenda, to put a true constitutional conservative program on the table and force this president to react.

But Mr. Obama’s speech made it crystal clear that Republicans have no alternative to confrontation, a clash that should last through the 2016 election. Facing a delusional and defiant president, this is no time for conservatives to play small-ball. We need a bold agenda that presents an alternative to the left. We need real, pro-growth tax reform. We need to repeal Obamacare — now. We need to slash spending. We need to defund the president’s illegal executive actions, starting with his amnesty for illegal immigrants. We have to show we respect life and traditional values.

There can be no debate about it any more. Barack Obama has made it unmistakably clear he wants a fight.

We should give him one.

Well said, Tom. Well said.

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Did you know…?

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…that the 2nd Amendment does not protect hunting nor hunters? According to one Federal Judge, it does not.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140509023613/vsbattles/images/8/8f/Elmer_fudd-2.jpgHave you heard the term, “Zumbo” or “Fudd?” It refers to the cartoon character, Elmer Fudd. Second Amendment rights activists use it in another form.

Fudd: Slang term for a “casual” gun owner; eg; a person who typically only owns guns for hunting or shotgun sports and does not truly believe in the true premise of the second amendment. These people also generally treat owners/users of so called “non sporting” firearms like handguns or semiautomatic rifles with unwarranted scorn or contempt.

I’ve not heard of any Second Amendment supporter use the term. I can understand how it could be used when we have hunters and hunter advocates support gun control. If it doesn’t affect hunting and hunters, they aren’t concerned. After all, an AR isn’t a hunting rifle (tell that to numerous varmint hunters!)

A legal case about hunting came before a Judge. The hunters attempted to use the 2nd Amendment in their case. The Judge ruled the 2nd Amendment didn’t apply to hunting.

Judge Rules That The Second Amendment Doesn’t Protect Hunting

Posted by on June 19, 2014 at 5:29 pm

“Fudd” isn’t exactly a term of endearment.

Fudds are generally uninterested in the Second Amendment, and are therefore the favorite of anti-gun politicians and the news media, like this collection of Fudds in a recent Jamie Tarabay article used to attack the National Rifle Association. They could generally care less about fighting for gun rights, because they assume that their guns are safe.

How is that working out for you now, Elmer?

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by a hunters’ group that had challenged Pennsylvania’s long-standing ban on Sunday hunting, saying she saw no proof the hunters’ constitutionally protected rights were being harmed.

U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane made the ruling in a suit brought by the Lancaster County-based Hunters United for Sunday Hunting against the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the agency that enforces the state’s game code.

Kane said she could find no proof that courts have extended Second Amendment protections to include recreational hunting. She also found that the hunters could not prove that the law unfairly discriminated between classes of hunters or that the ban on Sunday hunting violates their religious freedoms.

As stunning as this is for the Fudds, the ruling must be even more perplexing for gun control cultists. They’ve spent the last 30 or more years arguing that if the Second Amendment applied at all outside of their collectivist interpretation, then surely, the Second Amendment only applied for the purposes of hunting.

Now a federal judge has knocked over that strawman, and stomped that sucker flat.

It’s going to be interesting to see if this ruling registers with the gun controllers—my guess is that they’ll ignore it entirely, since it is inconvenient—but even more interesting to see if this has any effect on the Fudds, who are probably going to find out that they aren’t the “protected species” that they always assumed that they were.

When you hear hunters support gun control, tell them about this. They have as much invested in a strong 2nd Amendment as do the rest of us.

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Friday Follies for August 30, 2013

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Labor Day creeped up on me this year. I’d completely forgotten about it until earlier this week. When I was growing up in the Illinois coal country, Labor Day was as big a yearly event as was Independence Day. It was a day of parades, Flags and picnics.

Most of the families in my southern Illinois county had union ties. In fact, thinking back, I don’t remember anyone who didn’t have some kind of union connection.

No more…and, I believe, that’s a good thing. Industry has evolved since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Industry depended on muscle power, as a source of power in the mines, or directing machinery as mechanization grew. Health, wages and working conditions were the motivations for unions during the early industrial age. The unions won.

But that changed. As early as WW1 and the coming decades, unions were infiltrated by socialists operatives whose goals were not the benefit of the union membership, but a goal of politics. In many cases those union leaders were directed by foreign governments, which socialists admit.

Once again, we will celebrate Labor Day this coming weekend. There will be fewer parades and flag-waving. Families will still have picnics and that last fling at the lake. Union involvement, like the numbers of union membership, is declining, and that, too, is a good thing.

The country has evolved. We no longer need an archaic hold-over of 19th century economic and political thought. Communism and socialism has been proven false. It’s time to move on.

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Followup on yesterday’s post.

Obama’s new executive order will kill the 110-year-old Civilian Marksmanship Program

4:12 PM 08/29/2013

The White House announced on Thursday that it intends to “ban almost all re-imports of military surplus firearms to private entities” through executive order, which would effectively shut down the 110-year-old Civilian Marksmanship Program.

In a Fact Sheet published on Whitehouse.gov today referencing the upcoming executive order the ban on importing military weapons is designed to “keep military-grade firearms off our streets.” Exceptions for import may be allowed for museums.

The CMP tightly controls the distribution of obsolete military weapons. The program was created by the U.S. Congress as part of the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act with the purpose of allowing civilians to hone their marksmanship skills, should they later be called into military service.

Participants receiving firearms through the CMP must comply with all state and federal firearm laws and undergo a background check conducted by a dealer holding a Federal Firearms License in order to receive the gun.

Additionally, they must also be a member of a CMP affiliated shooting club, making participating in the program more difficult than anyone trying to purchase a firearm through usual retail channels.

The Civilian Marksmanship Program was administered by the United States Army from 1916 through 1996 when it was changed to the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice & Firearms Safety, a 501(c) (3) organization federally chartered by the U.S. Congress.

There are no data indicating any of the weapons involved in homicide were imported surplus military rifles. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s homicide crime statistics, rifles accounted for only 323 deaths out of 12,664 homicides in 2011, the most recent data set provided by the FBI.

“Apart from a donation of surplus .22 and .30 caliber rifles in the Army’s inventory to the CMP, the CMP receives no federal funding,” the CMP website states, adding that they have been overwhelmed by requests and orders are taking 30-60 days to ship product.

The rifles that the Executive Order would affect are typically from U.S. allies and are pre-Vietnam era. Without the importation of these rifles, the CMP is likely to become defunct and thus destroying a 110 year tradition of saving military arms and their civilian ownership.

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Quote of the day. A bit tongue-in-cheek.

Obama talks tough, carries matchstick

AUGUST 30, 2013 AT 6:25 AM

President Obama is serious this time. No, really. Critics of the president’s approach to the Syrian crisis don’t understand the many nuances undergirding the president’s philosophy of using “smart power” to lead from behind. Forget all those previous signals of how serious he is about taking decisive action to stop the killing. He means it. This time. No, really, he does.

Obama’s history of dithering captures the most basic problem confronting the chief executive on Syria: He’s promised action over and over again, but in the end has actually offered little more than words. That is why nobody should be surprised that Americans, as well as leaders in Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, Tehran and Damascus, find it difficult to put much stock in what Obama says now about the Syrian crisis and what he might do in response to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s blatant use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people.

You can read the rest of the column here.

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Several times a year I have a conference with the folks who manage my 401K. I had one such conference this week. The meeting held to its usual agenda, their outlook for the economy, the steps they are taking to reduce the impacts of any unexpected events and the distribution of funds across stocks, bonds, commodities and cash—much of the funds going into the latter category this year.

The 401K manager asked a new question this time. “How is your local economy?” The topic quickly changed to one of the conversion of full time jobs to part-time jobs, the loss of healthcare and other benefits to spouses and family, in general, the impact of the coming Obamacare fiasco throughout the nation.

The MSM has alluded to some of these impacts. FOX has had a few stories, but few people in the media seem to care about the revolutionary changes coming to the workplace. I contributed a story of local warehousemen losing their full-time jobs and benefits and being replaced by part-time employees…employees who won’t have benefits.

My story wasn’t the only one. The open letter below posted via Freedom Works is such an example of our changing economy.

An Open Letter on Obamacare

By Jon Gabriel on August 29, 2013

Craig Daliessio isn’t by nature an angry man. But recent events have brought him to the end of his rope.

“The past five years have just worn me down,” he told me over the phone. He couldn’t help but write about his experience.

After years of economic struggle, the loss of his home, and failure to find steady employment, Daliessio shared “An Open Letter to Barack Obama,” which is spreading quickly on blogs and social media.

Mr. President, three days ago I was informed that a job I had been offered only a week before, has been withdrawn. The company decided to freeze hiring for the foreseeable future. Part of their reasoning was the rising cost of healthcare, making it unaffordable for them to provide. This unaffordable-ness came as a result of your “Affordable Care Act.”

Five years ago I might have smiled at the irony of those words. But I’m not smiling.

In the letter, Daliessio describes his life since December 2008 when he lost his career as a mortgage broker. The real estate collapse hit the industry hard. Workers without political connections bore most of the pain.

Soon he lost his Nashville-area dream house, but as a single dad he wanted to stay close to his daughter. Instead of fleeing to Texas, North Dakota or another conservative holdout where jobs were slightly more plentiful, he stayed in Tennessee.

Without a home, he lived in his car.

Sleeping in your car is actually against the law. It’s vagrancy and so it required me to hide my car in some tall brush behind a church in Nashville. I took showers at the County Rec Center. I ate every other day sometimes. I worked every odd job I could find and put out hundreds of resumes. To date I have put out almost 250 resumes to no avail… I kept on trying. I kept on being my daughter’s dad. I refused to let her see me broken so I hid my tears.

Instead of limiting himself to a career in his profession, Daliessio worked odd jobs and even resumed his college education through an online program. A year ago he graduated from Liberty University. He still didn’t have a home, but now he had an education. And hope.

“But no doors opened,” he said. He continued with the odd jobs, sending resumes, and sleeping in his car or a friend’s couch or a borrowed office space. “Writing became a haven,” he told me. Over the past five years, he has written and self-published four books, the most recent titled Remembering America.

Earlier this month, it appeared as if the long job search was about to bear fruit. A job offer was extended. But last week the company withdrew their offer to Daliessio due in part to Obamacare. That law requires him to sign up for a health insurance exchange, but he finally decided that enough is enough.

I will NOT be registering for that exchange. I am a man. I am a dad. I am an American. I want to pay my own way. I refuse to let others pay for something I would gladly pay for myself…

I want a job. I want to work, and pay my own way. Your job is to create an environment whereby employers can hire men and women like me. Then we can take responsibility for ourselves, and pay our own way.

I respectfully refuse your handout, sir.

Though politically conservative, Daliessio has never been a bomb-thrower. “I don’t wish [Obama] ill, but I wish people would wake up,” he told me. “The country is stuck in neutral. My letter came from a place of frustration and brokenness.”

Words for us all.

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Pre-Revoluntionary America

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Today’s post title is taken from an article that appeared in PJ Media. It mirrors concerns that I have and have spoken about for several years. The author of the column, Roger L. Simon, is polite and uses the term, “Revolution.” I’m not so polite. I have used another term, “Civil War.”

I’ve always been a student of history. There are many books written about the Civil War, and, now that we’ve reached its 150th anniversary, the Battle of Gettysburg. There are few books written, except for scholarly pieces not written for public consumption, the delve into the conditions and forces that lead to that civil war. Yes, slavery was an issue. For some, a major issue, but it wasn’t the only one. State’s Rights and Sovereignty played significant part as well. At least from the Southern side. However, the trends and acts of government that lead to the first civil war, mirror trends today, namely the further erosion of state’s rights, power and sovereignty. Instead of slavery, we now have governmental dependence…another form of slavery, but to the FedGov, the new substitute for slaveowners.

Please believe, I’m no advocate of revolution, or rebellion, or armed resistance to the federal government. But when the federal government itself violates the constitution, acts lawlessly, fails to enforce existing law while extorting compliance with federal regulations that have no basis in law, when the federal government ignores federal court orders that limits the power of government, our options and peaceful alternatives become more and more limited.

The article, “Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th?” written by Roger L. Simon, was mentioned on Mark Levin’s radio show yesterday. Levin spoke for some time on the subject and about the article. In fact, he read it over the air.

Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th?

Roger L. Simon, July 2nd, 2013 – 12:23 am

As we approach July 4, 2013, is America in a pre-revolutionary state? Are we headed for a Tahrir Square of our own with the attendant mammoth social turmoil, possibly even violence.

Could it happen here?

We are two-thirds of the way into the most incompetent presidency in our history. People everywhere are fed up. Even many of the so-called liberals who propelled Barack Obama into office have stopped defending him in the face of an unprecedented number of scandals coming at us one after the other like hideous monsters in some non-stop computer game.

And now looming is the monster of monsters, ObamaCare, the healthcare reform almost no one wanted and fewer understood.

It will be administered by the Internal Revenue Service, an organization that has been revealed to be a kind of post-modern American Gestapo, asking not just to examine our accounting books but the books we read. What could be more totalitarian than that?

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal warns the costs of ObamaCare are close to tripling what were promised, and the number of doctors in our country is rapidly diminishing. No more “My son, the doctor!” It doesn’t pay.

And young people most of all will not be able to afford escalating health insurance costs and will end up paying the fine to the IRS, simultaneously bankrupting the health system and enhancing the brutal power of the IRS — all this while unemployment numbers remain near historical highs.

No one knows how many have given up looking for work while crony capitalist friends of the administration enrich themselves on mythological clean-energy projects.

In fact, everywhere we look on this July Fourth sees a great civilization in decline. And much of that decline can be laid at the foot of the incumbent. Especially his own people, African Americans, have suffered.  Their unemployment numbers are catastrophic, their real needs ignored while hustlers like Sharpton, Jackson, and, sadly, even the president fan the flames of non-existent racism.

Tahrir Square anyone?

Ironically, if our society enters a revolutionary phase, liberals will find themselves in the role of the Islamists, defending a shopworn and reactionary ideology on religious grounds, because it is only their faith that holds their ideas together at this point.

The facts of the American decline tell us otherwise. We don’t need the contempt of Vladimir Putin to remind us how bad things are and that the seeming result of the end of the Cold War is that American presidents are now mocked by the second coming of the KGB (not that it was ever gone).

We all know the famous Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times!

We certainly are, and I am of two minds about it. Like so many Americans, I have lived a comfortable, privileged life, vastly so compared to most of human history.

But I am filled with foreboding about what’s to come, indeed about what is already here. When I look at the masses swarming in Tahrir Square, I am at once repelled and attracted, repelled because, to be honest, I find their culture more than a bit crazy, but attracted because I know something is seriously wrong, not just in Egypt but in the USA.

Perhaps the most interesting quote from this article is, “Ironically, if our society enters a revolutionary phase, liberals will find themselves in the role of the Islamists, defending a shopworn and reactionary ideology on religious grounds, because it is only their faith that holds their ideas together at this point.”

We conservatives have our point of faith, our political doctrine, the U. S. Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers. For those of us who are believers, we also have our Bibles. The liberals who oppose us have their own religious views, environmentalism, humanism, and, contrary to their claims, Marxs’ Das Kapital.

Karl Marx thought that capitalism inevitably lead to economic collapse. History has proved him wrong. It is his theories, when applied to government, that has failed. Note the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the communist governments in Eastern Europe. Liberals here and in Europe believe their versions will work…as long as they don’t run out of other people’s money.

We’re fast approaching a point where we will either run out of money, or, the people will rebel in some form and refuse to allow more spending. The failure of the so-called Farm Bill in June, was an example of the latter. Unfortunately, the feds will continue to spend at the previous rate—fed by the last “continuing resolution.”

If you read the article at PJ Media, the comments are worth reading as well. George B, said:

The revolution won’t be people heading to the streets with guns. The revolution happens when the people who have been following the rules simply quit obeying the federal government. The revolution will be millions of independent contractors working for cash or barter and not reporting income. Just like the 55 mph speed limit was the object of ridicule before it was repealed, the whole system of big stupid government comes crashing down if enough people ignore it and simply quit paying.

I could easily see ObamaCare causing the return of cash payment for medical services. What happens if doctors find cash business is profitable while government managed 3rd party payer medicine is not? What if many thousands of small businesses simply “Go Mexican” and drop out of the regulated economy?

If everyone in the federal government was suddenly cut off from the rest of the country, would life end? No. Most of the day-to-day useful things done by government happen at the local level. It has to be one of the biggest fears of the ruling class that a majority of the people discover that they can live just fine without intervention from the national government.

It is the fear of social collapse, of anarchy, that restrains the people…so far. If the tyranny of and opposition to the federal government reaches a level where that fear of social collapse is less that allowing the FedGov to continue as-is, then we will reach the state where non-compliance is more palatable than compliance. At that point, the union ceases to exists.

As we go out to celebrate the Fourth of July (Note: the Declaration of Independence was approved on the 2nd of July), let us celebrate that we are still able to do so.

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SCOTUS Speaks

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And they’ve upset everyone on one thing or another.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton need to watch their blood pressure after SCOTUS annouced their decision on the VRA suit as do all the DOMA supporters. Frankly, I’m not surprised DOMA went down, it was flawed from the beginning and a violation of the 10th Amendment. Many conservatives have overlooked that. What really bothers me is how inconsistent SCOTUS is in determining 10th Amendment violations.

Let’s take a look at three of the cases this week: VRA, DOMA and California’s Ban on same-sex marriage.

A Mississippi county brought suit on the last renewal of VRA. Note, they didn’t sue the original act, just this last renewal. A renewal that was, in effect, a rubber-stamp of the original act. It lost, the DoJ oversight of voting laws for segments of the country, because today’s issues are not the same as was the issues in 1965—nor have they been for 40 years. The criteria used to justify the oversight no longer exist because Congress, in their laziness, used outdated information.

The 5-4 ruling on Tuesday addressed a 1960s-era provision that largely singled out states and districts in the South — those with a history of discrimination — and required them to seek federal permission to change their voting laws.

The court ruled that the formula determining which states are affected was unconstitutional.

In doing so, the court potentially opened the door for certain states to proceed with voter ID laws and other efforts that to date had been held up because of the Voting Rights Act. Prominent among those are voter identification laws in Alabama and Mississippi.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott also put out a lengthy statement vowing to proceed with both a voter ID law and potentially a new set of redistricting maps without federal oversight.

“Today’s ruling ensures that Texas is no longer one of just a few states that must seek approval from the federal government before its election laws can take effect,” he said. “With today’s decision, the state’s voter ID law will take effect immediately. Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.” — The Hayride.

That does not mean VRA went down, only the oversight by the DoJ. Jesse and Al, obviously, disregard that. It also ends a revenue stream for them. They can no longer sue and extort money from states and municipalities using that part of VRA as an excuse.

The Texas Voter ID law was being held in limbo by the DoJ. It was nearly identical to the Indiana law that passed SCOTUS review. With the DoJ blockage removed, the Texas AG, rightly in my opinion, moved to enforce the Texas law.

He’s making hay, so to speak, while the sun shines. Why? Because the dems in Congress with immediately attempt to address the 2006 VRA flaw—outmoded data in the 2006 renewal, that was thrown out. There will be massive pressure on ‘Pubs to rollover on it and renew VRA using valid data…just to reinstate federal control over those specific states and counties to correct a situation the democrats created in the years before 1965. The Hayride notes this bit of irony.

Which gives rise to the following thought.

Namely, that the federal government found the management of the electoral system and the protection of voting rights to be so noxious and incompetent in the South in the 1960′s that Congress had to pass, and the courts to enforce, a remedial and corrective regime largely putting that system and protection under the supervision of the federal government.

That was when the South was exclusively run by Democrats.

The South is now more or less exclusively run by Republicans, and the Supreme Court has found there is no discernible reason to continue that supervision because the electoral system and the protection of voting rights in the South are no longer noxious or incompetent.

This is somehow proof that Republicans are racists as accused by the Democrat Party. You’re welcome to explain that one however you like. — The Hayride.

Looking at the SCOTUS decision on DOMA and the California ban on homosexual Marriage, both were decided on 10th Amendment basis. If you read between the lines, SCOTUS said DOMA was inappropriate use of federal power because it treated one segment of the population, those in heterosexual marriages, differently that those who weren’t married and wanted to be, i.e., homosexual marriage. It was an area the FedGov should not be in but since they were, they couldn’t discriminate. Hence, the court said homosexuals had to be treated the same as non-homosexuals.

As much as I don’t like the decision, I can understand it. If you combine that decision to the one concerning the California ban on homosexual marriage, you’ll notice the Court is saying that the definition of marriage is a state issue, not that of the FedGov.

The California ban was a Prop 8 issue. The state government refused to support their citizens in supporting the popular vote. In fact, the California state government actively opposed the Prop 8 vote. Gay advocates sued and the State courts agreed, that the Prop 8 vote was illegal. The Prop 8 supporters sued in Federal Court to overthrow the state court decision. When the state failed to support the ban, other outside agents stepped in to fill the gap—out-of-state agents. SCOTUS said those agents had no standing since they were not California agent. Therefore the Appellate decision overturning the ban was upheld.

The state government did not support the Prop 8 decision and it was the state’s position the ban was illegal so said the California Supreme Court. The proponents of the Prop 8 ban sued in Federal Court. The Appellate court affirmed the state decision. That was appealed to SCOTUS.

SCOTUS said that the FedGov and Federal courts had no business deciding purely state issues. In this case, it was homosexual marriage. Since the state failed to support the suit of the Prop 8 backers, the federal courts had no jurisdiction. Again supporting California’s 10th Amendment rights.

I strongly suspect if the opponents of the ban were California based, and if the state had supported the Prop 8 vote, the ban via the Prop 8 vote. So SCOTUS left the ban in place. That didn’t happen.

One limitation of the SCOTUS decision is that California homosexual marriages are ONLY valid inside California. Other states have no obligation to accept those marriages.

The Court rules that the petitioners did not have standing – the Circuit Court  should not have been able to hear the appeal, because the state of California had declined to pursue it.  This clears the way for gay marriages to resume in California, but it does not affect the other 49 states. From the opinion: “We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here.” — WNYC.

Now, each state can make their own definition of marriage, but that definition is valid only within the boundaries of the state. In a sense, the suits against DOMA and California was a win for State’s Rights, State Sovereignty, and the 10th Amendment. However, I suspect many of my conservative and libertarian readers will not see the SCOTUS decision in that same light.

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Hypocrisy at its fullest

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Hypocrisy: the essences of the Obama Administration.

Of all the irredeemable acts of Obama’s administration, one of the worse is its selective enforcement of the law, or, in some cases, attempting to enforce federal regulations as law. We have an excellent example of the former in the latest kerfuffle. The State of Kansas has passed and Governor Brownback has signed a series of laws that upholds Kansas’ 10th Amendment rights, 2nd Amendment rights, and reaffirms the state’s sovereignty.

Eric Holder says the Kansas law is unconstitutional.

Eric Holder Tells Sam Brownback That Kansas’ New Gun Law Is Unconstitutional

Posted: 05/02/2013 7:31 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/02/2013 8:09 pm EDT

Eric Holder Sam Brownback

Kansas officials are vowing to fight United States Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that the state’s new ban on federal gun laws is unconstitutional.

Holder wrote Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in late April that the new law which would prohibit the enforcement of federal gun laws on all guns that are made and stay in Kansas violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause and that the federal government would be willing to take Kansas to court over the law, the Associated Press reported Thursday. In April, Brownback signed the law, which is being described as the most pro-Second Amendment measure in the country. It says that any federal agent who enforces a federal gun law on a “made-in-Kansas” gun would face felony charges.

“Kansas may not prevent federal employees and officials from carrying out their official responsibilities,” Holder wrote to Brownback. “And a state certainly may not criminalize the exercise of federal responsibilities.”

On the other hand, Holder has no problem with federal employees not enforcing immigration law, nor failing to support DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. Eric Holder is not the Supreme Court. He can’t decided what is or isn’t constitutional. There is a process in place to follow for that determination, not a simple fiat from the federal bureaucracy.

Governor Brownback disagrees with Holder’s statement.

Sam Brownback Brushes off Eric Holder’s Opinions on 2nd Amendment Protection Act

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Today, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback sent a letter in response to Eric Holder’s direct threat against the state for its new law, the 2nd Amendment Protection Act.  It reads, in part:

The State of Kansas is in receipt of your letter in which you place Kansas on notice regarding the view of the Obama Administration concerning the state’s Second Amendment Protection Act.

This first sentence of Brownback’s letter is the most important. Holder’s letter took the position that the new Kansas law is unconstitutional – without question. And because of Holder’s view that he is the decider of all that is constitutional or not in this country, he threatened the state – and thus the People – of Kansas.

Brownback showed quite a bit of savvy with that sentence. He absolutely brushed off Holder by pointing out that his letter only represented “the view of the Obama Administration…”

Just because Eric Holder claims that the Kansas law is unconstitutional, doesn’t make it so. And Holder’s claim that he had no idea about “fast and furious” probably doesn’t make that so either.

Sam Brownback did a great service to the People of Kansas by reminding them that Holder is just sharing his opinion.

He also noted that the Kansas nullification law comes from the source of political power to which no American government is above – the People themselves.

“The people of Kansas have clearly expressed their sovereign will.”

Eric Holder doesn’t get to tell the People what THEIR constitution means. It’s the other way around.

The entire interchange brings forth a series of questions: If the federal government chooses to enforce one set of law while choosing to not enforce another set of law, should the states recognize the authority of the federal government to enforce any set of law? Does the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the law” equate to equal enforcement of the law? Is the failure to enforce existing law a failure to support that protection?

The final question derives from the above. Is the failure of the federal government, through selective and capricious enforcement of law and federal regulation violate the contract between the central government and the states?

More and more, states are examining that last question. None, yet, have responded. A prudent choice…but at some point, if the federal government continues on its current path, the answer the states may collectively choose, is, “Yes.”

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