Shredding Kathleen Sebelius - HUMAN EVENTS

If a private health insurer had engaged in the kind of criminal obstruction that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been tied to in her home state of Kansas, it would be a federal case. Instead, it's a non-story in the Washington press. Nothing to see here. Move along.

        On Monday, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood. World Magazine, a Christian news publication, reported on new bombshell court filings showing that Kansas health officials "shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces." World Magazine reported: "The health department failed to disclose that fact for six years, until it was forced to do so in the current felony case over whether it manufactured client records."

        The records are at the heart of the fraud case against Planned Parenthood. Kansas health bureaucrats now shrug that the destruction of these key documents -- which they sheepishly admitted had "certain idiosyncrasies" -- was "routine." Who oversaw the agency accused of destroying the evidence six years ago? Sebelius.

        As governor of Kansas, Sebelius fought transparency motions in the proceedings tooth and nail for years. Prosecutors allege a long-running heinous cover-up to manufacture false records of patients who had late-term abortions -- and to whitewash Planned Parenthood's systemic failures to report child rape.

        Former GOP state Attorney General Phill Kline's investigation turned up massive discrepancies in reported child rape statistics compared to Planned Parenthood and the late late-term abortionist George Tiller​'s bogus claims. Planned Parenthood of Overland Park and Tiller together performed abortions on 166 girls aged 14 and under and only reported one each to authorities. So, 164 cases of underage rape or statutory rape went unreported and were not investigated by authorities.

        Where is Joe Biden to decry actual rape atrocities and Nancy Pelosi to decry dire hazards to women's health when we need them?

        A Kansas district judge found probable cause of criminality in the abortion providers' records; another district judge found probable cause to believe Planned Parenthood committed 107 criminal acts. Sebelius' response? A bloody ideological soul mate of Tiller's, she launched a vengeful witch-hunt against Kline. The state ethics board accused him of lying. The left-wing state Supreme Court Sebelius appointed stymied Kline's subpoenas and appeals.

        Kline was cleared of all ethics violations. In fact, for 20 full months, the state's disciplinary board for lawyers suppressed an internal investigative report concluding there was zero probable cause to justify the ethics complaints.

        Where there's obstructionist smoke, there's corruption fire. Under Sebelius' watch as governor, an inspector general also reported that her appointed health policy board had "applied pressure to alter an audit report, restricted access to legal advice and threatened to fire her for meeting independently with legislators," according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.

        Entirely fitting, of course. The war on whistleblowers and inspectors general has been a hallmark of the current White House. And the radically pro-abortion rights Sebelius has ruled ruthlessly from her Beltway perch: policing citizen critics of Obamacare through a taxpayer-funded Internet snitch brigade; threatening private companies and insurers who have increased rates to cope with ObamaCare coverage mandates; lashing out at newspapers who dare report on the costly consequences of the federal law.

        As she bullies private companies to meet discriminatory and arbitrary disclosure demands, Sebelius has yet to be held accountable for overseeing state government agencies that conspired to hide the deadly truth about the Big Government/Big Abortion alliance from taxpayers. Like her boss in Washington, Sebelius' political playbook has a single page: Destroy the messenger.

via humanevents.com

What else is new.

Cain: Cut 10% of All Federal Agencies' Budgets - HUMAN EVENTS

At a Tea Party rally in Alabama, which holds its primary on March 13, 2012, businessman Herman Cain​ retooled parts of his standard and often inspiring stump speech.

Cain said that if he were elected President, he would sign an executive order that would mandate all federal agencies cut 10 percent of their budgets across the board and would order newly appointed cabinet heads to look for another 10 percent to cut.

Cain said that when he took over Godfather’s pizza, it took 1.2 Canadian dollars to get one United States dollar. Now, Cain said, it takes $1.20 to get one Canadian dollar.

“Our money is losing value,” Cain said. “And the only way to reverse that is by bringing down the national debt, by passing balanced annual budgets.”

Can also said that under his “9-9-9” plan, which would overhaul the tax code with a nine percent tax on corporate and personal income in addition to a nine percent national sales tax, “everybody gets treated the same” except for those “at or below the poverty level.”

Americans at or below the poverty level, under Cain’s plan, would be subject to a “9-0-9” plan where they are exempt from paying any federal income tax.

Cain also said that “stupid people are running America” and ruining it and that though he may not have all the answers, he has all of the right questions, which would make him a great leader. This was most likely in response to criticisms Cain has received in recent weeks about what many have considered his lack of polish in answering questions on issues dealing with foreign policy and social issues such as abortion.

In addition, while Cain has been criticized for campaigning in places such as Alabama, Texas and Tennessee, which do not hold early nominating contests, Cain’s campaign has argued that they are planting the seeds in these later states to take advantage of the momentum they may gain coming out of the earlier ones. To do that, of course, Cain needs to have respectable showings in Iowa and New Hampshire and most likely win South Carolina.

Cain also implicitly linked the way in which experts doubt his viability and the long term prospects of America to his struggle with stage four colon cancer -- a struggle he beat.

Cain said that people “gotta believe” they can take this country back just like he believed that he could beat cancer.

“The sleeping giant called ‘we the people’ has awakened, and it’s not going back to sleep,” Cain said.

via humanevents.com

Good.

Boehner: No More Defense Cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top congressional Republicans, Democrats and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are united in a single message to the special bipartisan committee looking for ways to cut the deficit: Leave military spending alone.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Thursday that the Pentagon budget was cut more than enough in the debt accord this past summer by President Barack Obama and Republicans.

That deal calls for cuts of $350 billion in projected spending over 10 years. The Pentagon is planning on reductions of about $450 billion.

"I would argue that they've taken more than their fair share of the hits," Boehner said.

His comments echo the argument made by others lawmakers as well as Panetta, who in recent speeches and congressional testimony insisted that the Pentagon be spared further cuts.

Rising deficits and deep debt have forced the federal government to slash spending, even at the Pentagon.

The Department of Defense's budget has nearly doubled to $700 billion in the 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks. Those numbers do not include the trillion-plus spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 12-member supercommittee has a mandate to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in overall spending cuts over 10 years. If it fails to do so by Nov. 23 or if Congress rejects its plan, then automatic, across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion kick in, with half coming from defense.

Panetta has called that the "doomsday mechanism" and lawmakers have warned of the dire consequences of such reductions that would mean about $1 trillion over 10 years.

In a speech Thursday, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said simply insisting on no more cuts is insufficient. He said lawmakers not only need to offer alternatives to the supercommittee, including raising revenue, but also be open to other options.

Otherwise, "defense is going to be crucified," he said.

Speaking to the American Enterprise Institute, Smith said, "If we don't step up and confront the problem with either revenue or spending outside the defense budget, give the supercommittee somewhere to go, give people who want to control the deficit, including our bond raters, somewhere to go, inevitably defense is going to be crushed."

via newsmax.com

Yes.

CAIN SOUNDS ANTI-WALL STREET By DICK MORRIS

Liberals often fail to understand the fault lines that run through the Republican Party. But when those fault lines mirror their own, you would think they'd get it. Even as President Obama rakes in $35,000 per couple at lavish fundraisers after relying on Goldman Sachs to be his largest single donor in 2008, the left sits in a park in Manhattan decrying Wall Street excesses. The Dodd-Frank bill, sold as a measure to crack down on Wall Street, is killing community and small banks throughout the nation, hastening the day when Wall Street will be the only source of corporate or personal lending. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, voters have clearly opted for a candidate who came from the private sector rather than one who lived his life in politics, as the continuing collapse of Rick Perry and the ongoing ascendancy of Mitt Romney and Herman Cain attest. But which private sector? Wall street and big business, or small business? Between Romney and Cain, a new chasm is emerging. As Cain put it: "Mitt generated jobs on Wall Street. I did it on Main Street." The same discontent that is brewing over in Lower Manhattan among the extreme left is also raging on the right as small businessmen rally to Cain, emphatically making it clear that the needs of big business are not only not their needs, but often are a direct contradiction. In a sense, the fault lines the Romney/Cain contest is exposing are very similar to those that first made their appearance when Arizona's Barry Goldwater defeated New York's Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination for president in 1964. The split in the GOP has only grown wider. The evangelical, small-business, economic-freedom, anti-tax and anti-regulation Tea Party vote is lining up behind Cain. The economic-growth conservatives, corporate executives, free-market economists and GOP establishment are backing Romney. The emerging contest will not be so much the right versus the center as it will be big versus small, the establishment versus insurgents, libertarian Republicans against social conservatives and, yes, Wall Street versus Main Street. We are going to be treated to a presidential campaign in which both parties' candidates will have to cope with increasing animosity toward the greed and self-serving refusal to be accountable that have characterized Wall Street and the financial industry. But it is particularly intriguing to compare the impetus for the Cain candidacy with that of the Occupy Wall Street group. Both decry the tendency toward bigness and each disapproves of massive corporate bailouts that choose winners and losers. Both are opposed to crony capitalism and do not want the federal government to be a servant of the financial industry. And both find themselves in opposition to the mainstream of their political parties. The world is indeed round, with apologies to Thomas Friedman. The far left and the far right unite in their opposition to big business and to the centrist establishments of both parties that maintain cozy and symbiotic relationships with Wall Street. Can Obama continue to run on Wall Street money while backed by Occupy Wall Street foot soldiers? It seems unlikely. Can Cain tap into the resentment against Wall Street that rises from the demonstrators in Lower Manhattan? Perhaps he can. The real criticism of Obama is not that he is a socialist -- advocating government ownership and control of business. It is that he is a corporatist -- advocating government control while keeping ownership in private hands. He wants a few big companies and a handful of major banks, the big labor unions and the federal government to work together to divide the pie and deal the cards. He wants to establish here a corporatism reminiscent of de Gaulle's France and modern-day Germany. Soon the left will realize what the right is already coming to know -- that the mainstream of each party is hopelessly in bed with Wall Street.

via vote.com

Very interesting.

School Competition Rescues Kids - HUMAN EVENTS

by  John Stossel

10/26/2011

23
Comments

For years, American education from kindergarten through high school has been a virtual government monopoly.
       
Conventional wisdom is that government must run the schools. But government monopolies don't do anything well. They fail because they have no real competition. Yet competition is what gives us better phones, movies, cars -- everything that's good.
       
If governments produced cars, we'd have terrible cars. Actually, governments once did produce cars. The Soviet bloc puts its best engineers to work and came up with the Yugo, the Volga and the Trabant. The Trabant was the best -- the pride of the Eastern Bloc. It was produced by actual German engineers -- known for their brilliance. Yet even the Trabant was a terrible car. Drivers had to put the oil and gas in separately and then shake the car to mix them. Trabants broke down and spewed pollution. When government runs things, consumers suffer.
       
Our school system is like the Trabant. Economist Milton Friedman understood this before the rest of us did. In 1955, he proposed school vouchers. His plan didn't call for separating school and state -- unfortunately -- but instead sought a second-best fix: Give a voucher to the family, and let it choose which school -- government-run or private -- their child will attend. Schools would compete for that voucher money. Today, it would be worth $13,000 per child. (That's what America spends per student today.) Competition would then improve all schools.
       
Friedman's idea was ignored for decades, but now there are voucher experiments in many states.
       
Do vouchers work? You bet they do. Just ask the low-income kids in Washington, D.C., who have participated in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The U.S. Department of Education found that the voucher kids read better than their government-school counterparts.
       
So what did the politicians do? Expand the program? No. Two years ago, President Obama killed it. Why?
       
"The president has concerns about ... talking large amounts of funding out of the system," then-press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
       
Voucher families protested. One voucher student, Ronald Holassie, said, "President Barack Obama, you say that getting an education is a key to success, but why do you sit there and let my education and others be taken away?"
       
The program was reauthorized only after John Boehner became speaker of the House and insisted on it.
       
Holassie says the difference between a government school and his private school was dramatic.
       
"In the public school system when I was in there, (there were) lots of fights. There were shootings, stabbings, and it was really unsafe -- drugs."
       
The Opportunity Scholarship didn't offer the full $20,000 that the district squanders on its public schools. It was worth just $7,000, but that was enough to get Ronald into a Catholic school.
       
"I was actually challenged academically," he said. "I remember when I was in the public school system, my teacher left in the middle of the year. I remember doing crossword puzzles and stuff like that. We weren't actually learning."
       
He says most of his government-school teachers acted like they didn't care. His mother, who's from Trinidad, was going to send him there because the schools are better than American schools.
       
"She wasn't going to continue to just let this system fail me."
       
But he got the voucher and a good education, and now he's in college.
       
Despite the data showing that voucher kids are ahead in reading, the biggest teachers union, the NEA claims: "The D.C. voucher program has been a failure. It's yielded no evidence of positive impact on student achievement."
       
Holassie asks: "How is it a failure when the public school system is failing students? I don't understand that."
       
I don't understand it either. Vouchers aren't a perfect solution, but they are better than leaving every student a prisoner of a government monopoly. District government schools have only a 49 percent graduation rate. Ninety-one percent of the voucher students graduate.
       
Why would the union call that a failure? Because vouchers allow parents to make choices, and many parents would chose non-union, non-government-run schools. The school establishment can't abide this. Too much money and power are at stake.

via humanevents.com

Interesting.

Quinnipiac: Cain Jumps to Lead in Ohio Race

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has taken the lead in Ohio in what a Quinnipiac University polling official describes as a “meteoric” rise. The former head of Godfather’s Pizza now leads former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 28 percent to 23 percent among GOP voters, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

Support for Texas Gov. Rick Perry has plunged from 20 percent to 4 percent, the poll found. In third place is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, at 8 percent; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 7; Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota at 4 each; former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 2; and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at 1.

“Herman Cain’s rise has been meteoric. He has increased his share of the vote among Ohio Republicans four times since Quinnipiac University’s Sept. 28 survey, in which he registered 7 percent,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “Gov. Mitt Romney hasn’t moved, and Rick Perry has fallen off a cliff, down to 4 percent from 20 percent.”

In a three-candidate matchup, Cain leads with 40 percent, followed by Romney at 33 percent, and Perry, at 10 percent.

via newsmax.com

Interesting.

O'Reilly: Obama's 'Stubborn Ideology' Keeps Nation Divided

President Barack Obama’s re-election hinges on the economy, and if the unemployment rate does not improve next year, Obama will lose, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive video interview.

“The economy is everything,” said O’Reilly, author of the new novel, “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed American Forever.” “But if we’re looking at 9-percent unemployment this time next year, he’s done.”

Story continues below.

O'Reilly, whose “O'Reilly Factor” news show has had the highest ratings of any cable news show for 10 consecutive years, said he disagrees with Obama’s decision Friday to repatriate all U.S. troops in Iraq by December and would have kept 10,000 soldiers there to secure the region. But the author of nine consecutive political books said the uncooperative attitude of the Iraqi government left the president little room for negotiation.

“You have to protect your people,” O’Reilly told Newsmax. “I don’t think President Obama had any choice but to take them out of there.”

Obama has promised hope and change, but has fallen short, he said.

“I think he’s just going to go and hope the American people buy in to his hope strategy for the second time, and I don’t think they will,” he said.

Editor's Note: Get Bill O'Reilly's New Novel, "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever" — Go Here Now!

O’Reilly, who has gone on record saying he'd be surprised if Mitt Romney didn't win the GOP presidential nomination, told Newsmax he thinks the former Massachusetts governor is tops in the GOP presidential field even though he does not appeal to the “Republican establishment."

“A lot of conservatives don’t like Mitt Romney,” he said.

In order to change that — and improve his chances in 2012 — Romney should pick Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate.

“I think he’s got to go to the Hispanic community, so Marco Rubio would probably be the guy that I would be talking to,” he said. “You get an Hispanic American, and you get a conservative.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also is a GOP contender even though businessman Herman Cain is winning the hearts of American everywhere, O’Reilly told Newsmax.

“Who doesn’t like Herman Cain as a guy?” he said. “He looks like a good guy. You’d like to go out and have a beer with him.”

Obama has allowed his liberalism to get in the way of his efficiency, O’Reilly said.

“He tried to revive the economy by the big-government apparatus and spending trillions of dollars,” he said. “It didn’t work. What’s his solution? Well, let’s spend more money.”

He said Obama refuses to change course and try to target the private sector and instead wants to go for stimulus package No. 2 — the American Jobs Act.

“I think that stubborn ideology, something Abraham Lincoln did not have, has stood in his way not only of uniting a nation, but of making the nation better and stronger economically,” said O’Reilly.

He told Newsmax he wrote “Killing Lincoln” because he wanted to illustrate how a great leader can effect change when the country is on the wrong track.

“America’s power is on the descent, and in order to turn things around, we need a great leader,” he said. “It’s not a knock against Obama or Bush or Clinton or any of that, but I felt, as an American first and an historian second…I want to get back to the essence of American leadership, and who’s the best leader? In my opinion, it was Abraham Lincoln.”

Al lot of parallels can be drawn between the status of the United States today and during Lincoln’s presidency, O’Reilly told Newsmax.

“This is a really, really divided country now, and it was divided back then, obviously, during the Civil War,” he said.

Lincoln sacrificed himself — both figuratively and literally — to make the country a better place.

“He put his country above himself,” O’Reilly said. “He knew he was going to be killed. Lincoln was the most hated man in the country when he was president. He put all of his personal concerns aside.

“Lincoln wanted to heal the south,” he continued. “When he was murdered, that whole thing went awry. It set relations between the north and the south, and blacks and whites, back decades, decades. Whereas if Lincoln had survived, the country would have been unified much quicker, and everything would have been different.”

When asked about Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano’s remarks in a Newsmax.TV interview last year that Lincoln bore the least fidelity toward the Constitution out of all the U.S. presidents, O’Reilly defended Lincoln.

If Napolitano were president, he said, “we’d have two countries.”

via newsmax.com

Interesting.

Napolitano: Obama 'Shredding the Constitution'

President Barack Obama is shredding the U.S. Constitution faster than any of the 42 men who preceded him in office, according to Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, author of the brand new "It is Dangerous to be Right when the Government is Wrong."

It is so bad he should be impeached over the murder of American terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaki – and if Congress won’t take that action, he should be indicted once he is out of office.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Napolitano said it doesn’t matter that Awlaki was probably guilty – the fact is he was a U.S. citizen and the Constitution outlaws his killing without due process.

Story continues below video.

“We live in a time in which the government recognizes no limits on its own power,” he said. “It doesn’t recognize the natural law. It doesn’t recognize the federal law. It doesn’t recognize the Constitution.

“The president in the past couple of weeks became judge, jury and executioner for a very hated and probably guilty individual. But the Constitution says no person shall be denied life, liberty or property –much less an American which this guy was – without due process of law.”

“The killing of an American is unforgiveable under the Constitution and it is an impeachable offence and the president, if not being impeached, should be indicted for it after he leaves office.”

Napolitano hosts the libertarian show Freedom Watch on the Fox Business Channel. His sixth book on human freedom, “It is Dangerous to be Right when the Government is Wrong,” was released on Tuesday. Its title comes from a quotation attributed to 18th Century French civil libertarian Voltaire.

In the interview, the judge admitted that Obama is not the first president to undermine the Constitution. “I have never hesitated to attack the administration of George W. Bush,” he said. “In fact I have argued in this book and elsewhere that the Patriot Act is the most abominable Congressional assault on personal freedom since the Alien and Sedition Acts which were enacted in the late 1700s.

“The Obama administration, notwithstanding the president’s lofty words as a candidate and even as president, has actually ratcheted up the police state; has ratcheted up the assault on personal liberties.”

Napolitano said that shortly after 9/11, he and colleagues at Fox debated whether a president could kill an American who was a danger to national security. “When I posed that question, we all laughed, saying this could never happen, this is the United States of America, we have the Constitution. Now it happens and nobody does anything about it.

“I remember arguing, could the president start a war on his own? And the answer was no, of course not, the Constitution says only the Congress can declare war. Well, we’re in Libya and the Congress never declared it.

“The president is shredding the Constitution more so than George W. Bush did. It’s not only this president who does it, but he is doing it in a more in-your-face, more obvious and, if I may, more boastful way.”

Napolitano, a former superior court judge in New Jersey, claimed the assault on Americans’ freedoms – “real serious heavy-duty nanny-state regulation,” – started in earnest under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th Century.

“That’s when the administrative state begins. That’s when the federal government creates administrative agencies that are neither fish nor fowl – they are not in the executive branch and they are not in the legislative branch. They don’t run for office but they acquire power through appointment, they survive from one president to the next.

“The administrative agencies began regulating private behavior and it started about 100 years ago. Coincidentally that’s also when the Federal Reserve and when the Income Tax started.”

He said one of the most important tests of the Constitution will be decided by the Supreme Court this year in the Antoine Jones case, where police attached a GPS device to a suspected drug dealer’s car to track his movements.

“The government claims it can come on to your property and open your garage door and go into your garage and open up your car and put a GPS tracking device in there if you don’t carry a cellphone. Can the government do that? Answer: The Supreme Court will tell us in a couple of months. In the interim, the government does this.”

Napolitano, like many libertarians, said he has sympathy for many of the causes of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“They have a legitimate complaint that their future in the economic world is grim. It is grim because the government has spent the future’s money today and has mortgaged the future by printing cash and borrowing against the future. It is grim because the government fights wars of opportunity.

“When they say end the Fed and end the wars, I am with them,” he said. “But when they say take from the rich and give to those who don’t have it, the Constitution is supposed to prevent that from happening.

“The political side of this is just as dangerous,” he added. “The political side of this is that labor unions and hard left organizations and entities of the Democratic National Committee are going to co-opt those young people and take over the message.”

via newsmax.com

Interesting.

Steve Jobs Told Obama in 2010 ‘You’re Headed for a One-term Presidency’ | TheBlaze.com

A highly anticipated biography about secretive Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson, is slated for release October 24. The Huffington Post, however, managed to obtain a copy early and revealed some very interesting tidbits about the life of the Apple visionary — namely that, upon meeting President Barack Obama in 2010, Jobs told him, “you’re headed for a one-term presidency.”

According to HuffPo, the book states that Jobs was critical of the Obama administration for not being business-friendly and blasted the nation’s education system as it is “crippled by union work rules.”

Jobs, who insisted the president personally extend an invitation to meet with him, told Obama that “regulations and unnecessary costs” make doing business in the United States, as opposed to China, prohibitive.

HuffPo adds:

Jobs suggested that Obama meet six or seven other CEOs who could express the needs of innovative businesses — but when White House aides added more names to the list, Jobs insisted that it was growing too big and that “he had no intention of coming.” In preparation for the dinner, Jobs exhibited his notorious attention to detail, telling venture capitalist John Doerr that the menu of shrimp, cod and lentil salad was “far too fancy” and objecting to a chocolate truffle dessert. But he was overruled by the White House, which cited the president’s fondness for cream pie.

Though Jobs was not that impressed by Obama, later telling Isaacson that his focus on the reasons that things can’t get done “infuriates” him, they kept in touch and talked by phone a few more times. Jobs even offered to help create Obama’s political ads for the 2012 campaign. “He had made the same offer in 2008, but he‘d become annoyed when Obama’s strategist David Axelrod wasn’t totally deferential,” writes Isaacson. Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary “morning in America” ads did for Ronald Reagan.

Do these revelations about Steve Jobs’ opinion of the president surprise you at all?

via theblaze.com

Interesting.

Herman Cain Appeals to 'Main Street' and Christian Credentials - HUMAN EVENTS

by  Tony Lee

10/20/2011

33
Comments

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA--Businessman Herman Cain told attendees at the Western Republican Leadership Conference on Wednesday that they needed to “kick it up a notch” in rallying to defeat President Obama next fall.  Cain, however, is about to enter a critical month in which he will have to ramp up his organization, message and campaign to maintain his front-runner status that exemplifies the primary electorate’s disgust with Washington and distrust of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney​’s conservative credentials.

In a rousing speech that had elderly attendees in the audience repeatedly saying “Amen!” and pumping their fists in the air in approval of Cain’s message, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO modified his “9-9-9” plan, teased his “opportunity zones” plan that he will unveil Friday in Detroit, explicitly encouraged Christians to go to the polls and continued his assault on Washington’s politics-as-usual culture that both parties have been guilty of, much to the dismay of the voting public.

Cain said that under his “9-9-9” plan, charitable contributions would qualify for a deduction because it is consistent with his belief that organizations that are “closest to the community” do the most good.

After Texas Gov. Rick Perry unveils his economic and tax plan next week, it will be interesting to see if Cain modifies his “9-9-9” plan even more.

Cain has sold himself to voters as the anti-politician, but he may be tempted to be one by replacing the nine percent national consumption tax with perhaps a nine percent payroll tax that does not have a cap, as conservative economist Steve Moore has suggested in various interviews recently.

Cain also said that critics who have said the “9-9-9” plan is regressive are wrong and that his “opportunity zones” will prove his critics wrong. Cain said he knew all along that his “9-9-9” plan was not regressive but has “not told them yet” about the full details of the plan, which he will discuss on Friday.

When berating Washington insiders and lobbyists for having a “vested interest in the current tax code” Cain said that it must be “driving them crazy that the public is catching on” to Washington’s shenanigans and the simplicity of his own tax plan.

Cain went further, saying that lobbyists and “a lot of the people in the Beltway” do not want his tax reforms to pass and said he looked forward to the day when lobbyists get real jobs.

Cain also touched upon his Baptist faith and urged Christians to go to the polls.  “Come on Christians, help us save the nation,” he said. “And I am one.”

Cain added: “We got 65 million Christians in this country, only half are registered, and only half of them vote.”

Conventional wisdom is that election 2012 will be a polarizing “base” election in which the candidate that best motivates his base will win the election.

By encouraging Christians to vote, Cain is not only appealing to religious voters in Iowa and the South, but also making the argument that, like George W. Bush in 2004, he will be the candidate best positioned to ensure that the Christian base of the GOP does not stay home on election night.

It is easy to read between the lines.

To date, Cain has contrasted himself from Romney by painting the former Massachusetts Gov. as “Wall Street” and himself as “Main Street.”

Cain’s highlighting of his Christian faith may be another way for Cain to further contrast himself with Romney.

Or, it could also solidify his status as a potential running mate who delivers Evangelicals should Romney become the nominee.

On a taped appearance on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” which aired Wednesday, Cain told host Piers Morgan that the two candidates he respects the most are Mitt Romney and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

via humanevents.com

Good.

Ali Brown | Blog

“Why the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Mentality is Threatening to Small Business Owners Everywhere” by Ali Brown

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Ali Brown

Listen, it’s good when people shake things up. It gets us all to stop, think, and question what we’ve always accepted. And that’s what Occupy Wall Street has surely done for all of us.

It seems the biggest issue the protestors have relates to corporate favoritism that was so visible during the bail-outs. I would wholeheartedly AGREE in disgust. That IS worth protesting for.

There are archaic business models that just don’t work anymore. They have erupted to the surface to be dealt with, and it’s going to be messy. And it will take quite a while for healthy, new models to emerge into center stage.

With unemployment now projected to be over 8% for the next several years by the Congressional Budget Office, it’s a scary time for many who were simply going along with the status quo of having a job as their security system. They feel duped.

I applaud the OWS people’s dedication to their cause, and it’s getting some attention at how messed up things are in the economy.

What’s scary to me as a business owner is the rampant anti-capitalism and “eat the rich” mentality that is pervading the movement.

I agree there is a lot of waste and excess out there. And it needs to be addressed.

But you can’t demonize all business, capitalism, and money… and then also say, “Give us jobs.”

People want jobs to make money.

Businesses create jobs.

And the businesses that are successful (the ones that create jobs) are run by… “rich people”.

At least that’s the definition that’s been assigned the top 1%, who, by the way, aren’t all the “ultra-wealthy” as many imagine.

The latest report from the National Taxpayers Union states that the top 1% earners in the U.S. includes everyone making over $380,354 a year.

Interestingly, this cutoff is typically what I see as the breakthrough level of for most small businesses owners. When they enter this net income bracket, it also typically signifies they are starting to make real strides in growing their companies, creating more jobs to be filled, and hiring more employees.

OWS has revealed in a huge way the gross misconceptions about how business works and even where jobs and money come from.

The majority of millionaires in this country are people who have created their own incomes. They aren’t what most people imagine— the “fat cat” bankers riding around in limos collecting their bonus checks and passing the Grey Poupon.

These millionaires did not have any money handed to them by their relatives, and they didn’t win the lottery. Many started with nothing. They took risks, launched businesses, invested in real estate, made many sacrifices, won some and lost some, and put their asses on the line to create a better life for themselves and their families.

I’m one of them.

And in the process we grew companies… that then hired people… and created jobs… and stimulated the economy. And many of us give back in other ways to causes, charities, and so forth.

Recessions happen when people stop growing, stop expanding, stop hiring, stop spending, and stop circulating money.

If we keep demonizing all those who make money, then no one will make money.

So here’s the rub, no matter WHAT your point of view is…

I know many things suck right now for a lot of people. But you can’t wait for things to change, or even ask for things to change. Protesting is a start, but you’ve got to MAKE the change.

Think about it: Why would you ask the same administration that helped create these problems to be the one to solve them? It’s up to us.

Because I’m on a mission to help more people become entrepreneurs, I’d suggest protesters make better use of their time by joining the reported 9 percent of the laid-off who’ve decided to start a business of their own.

(Yes you, in the park, marching with the signs. I see you in those crowds… with laptops and cellphones. With all the time you’ve been spending down there, you could have started a business by now!)

Starting a business would not only support YOU, but it would support your cause. Small businesses give more power to more people, instead of concentrating all the power in the hands of a few.

And if you don’t want to start a small business, then at least make an effort to buy from more small businesses.

My story: Twelve years ago, I wasn’t happy with my choices in the traditional corporate world. I saw the lack of opportunity, and I was unemployed not once but twice in a 5-year span. So I said “enough is enough”, but I didn’t whine, complain, or blame the system or the government. I took action for myself.

Eventually, after one last unfulfilling job, I decided to stop risking being un-employed and step into being self-employed.

I was broke. And I had no business training. But I figured it out, day by day. I took a skill I’d learned at my last job and then turned that into a service-based business. I had no business training and no money, but I hit the pavement and knocked on doors and went to the library and learned all I could.

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. No question you’ve got to want it. But the good news is there are so many opportunities available now with the Internet, being able to work at home, and with free marketing tools like social media. The barriers to entry are incredibly lower than they used to be, and there are many different solutions to generating a full-time income.

I took risks, and I was uncomfortable for a while in order to create a comfortable future for myself. It was all worth it. Today I’m also more able to help out my family and many charities and causes I want to contribute to. And that feels great!

And now I’m such a fan of entrepreneurship that I’ve devoted my entire business to help more women start and grow businesses of their own.

It’s encouraging to see that women-owned startups are at a 15-year high, and I’m seeing a greater response than ever before to my women’s entrepreneur conference, SHINE, happening this November.

Disclaimer: I’m not registered with any particular political party. I’m not a conservative or a liberal. I’m kind of a tree-hugging, free-loving capitalist.

I think for myself. I take responsibility for myself. I love running a wildly profitable business. And I love helping others and giving back too. I think the time has come to realize it can all go together.

================

So, that’s my bit. What’s YOUR take on all of the Occupy Wall Street happenings and how it relates to small business? Please join in the discussion below…

via alibrown.com

Yes!

Newsmax Poll Stunner: Cain Soars to 8-Point Lead in Iowa

Herman Cain has surged into an eight-point lead over his nearest Republican rival in first-in-the-nation Iowa, an exclusive Newsmax/InsiderAdvantage poll released on Monday shows.

The former pizza magnate is supported by 26 percent of voters who say they will vote for him in the Hawkeye State GOP caucus, compared to 18 percent who opt for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The surprising numbers come just two months after the popular Ames Iowa Straw Poll where Cain ranked fifth among the top-tier candidates, taking 1,456 votes to winner Michele Bachmann's 4,823 votes.

Cain alos is running second behind Romney in New Hampshire, according to a separate Newsmax poll in that state.

Combined, the two polls confirm that with the clock ticking on the primary season, Cain is now the clear favorite among conservatives who are determined to defeat Romney for the nomination.

“But anything can still happen,” cautioned InsiderAdvantage president Matt Towery. “Herman Cain has never run a campaign before and it is not too late for him to make a terrible mistake, but he is in a very powerful position.”

Towery credited the simplicity of Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan – reducing income and corporate tax rates to 9 percent and introducing a national sales tax at the same rate – with his rise in the polls.

“He realizes that you don’t put out a 150-page economic plan, instead you have something simple that you can put on the top of a pizza box. It’s like going to the supermarket; you pick the frozen pizza that looks best, not the one that necessarily tastes the best."

The polls in Iowa and New Hampshire and two other InsiderAdvantage polls in the other early voting states of South Carolina and Florida were all taken on Sunday evening.

All four show that Cain is the only candidate currently challenging the more moderate Romney. That trend began with a nationwide Newsmax/InsiderAdvantage poll on Oct. 5 and has since been confirmed by other polling companies.

The primary season is scheduled to begin in either late December or early January, but final dates have not been set as states still jockey for position to be at the beginning of the nominating process.

Cain’s eight-point lead in Iowa mirrors a similar figure revealed in a survey by the Democratic group Public Policy Polling taken last week. The Newsmax poll puts former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in third with 12 percent, followed by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann with 11, Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 10 and Texas Gov. Rick Perry with 6.

In New Hampshire, Romney – the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts – leads with 39 percent, with Cain at 24. Paul has 11, Bachmann and Gingrich both have 5, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has 4 and Perry lags on 2.

The poll in South Carolina, conducted for The Augusta Chronicle had Cain ahead with 32 percent, followed by Romney on 16, Perry on 12, Gingrich on 8, Paul on 7 and Bachmann on 6.

In the Sunshine State, the poll for the Florida Times-Union had Romney on 33 percent; Cain on 30; Gingrich on 12; Perry and Paul both on 3 and Bachmann on 2.

Huntsman scored less than 1 percent in all the polls except New Hampshire and other long-shot candidates such as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roehmer were not included.

Towery said that the winner in Iowa often does not end up getting the Republican nomination but with the rise of the conservative grass roots tea party this year that trend may be bucked.

“If Cain can win in Iowa and in South Carolina he would come into Florida with a very strong chance of upsetting Romney,” he said. “You need money to win Florida because there are so many media markets in the state and Romney has a huge financial advantage.

“But as Cain rises in the polls he will raise more money, and I can tell you something else, right now people working for the other candidates are sending off their resumes to Herman Cain. I call them the buzzards, but they are very professional buzzards and he is really going to need them.”

The polls show just how far Perry has fallen in a matter of weeks from being Romney’s main contender to a distant also-ran. His poor debate performances and his stance in favor of giving in-state tuition breaks to the children of illegal immigrants have harmed him, said Towery.

And the pollster said Perry’s campaign was harmed further at the weekend when his wife Anita complained that the candidate had been “brutalized” because of his faith.

“Voters don’t want a whiner. They don’t like crybabies and at a time that Perry has been launching missiles at Mitt Romney, they don’t have much sympathy for this type of thing.”

via newsmax.com

Look out.

Herman Cain Singlehandedly Revives an Old Stereotype | RedState

The other day, Herman Cain said if he was in charge of defending our borders, he’d build a twenty foot high wall, put barbed wire on the top, electrify it, and put a big sign on it that read “if you touch this, you will die!”

On Sunday, asked about it by the dimwit who replaced Tim Russert, Cain said he was joking.

The media headline: “Cain Retreats From Hardline Immigration Position.”

Herman Cain has done something we all owe him a debt of gratitude for doing. He has singlehandedly revived a stereotype many people thought had been forgotten — the humorless liberal.

I was on CNN last night with a guy from New York who was just downright angry about Herman Cain’s statement. “There’s nothing funny” about the issue he said. Well, actually, there is a lot funny about it — a massive federal government capable of launching a stealth bomber from the heartland to drop bombs on Afghanistan is incapable of securing its own border.

If we can’t laugh about it, we’d be crying about it. But Herman Cain is an optimist with a sense of humor. He’s not retreating from his positions. He’s laughing about the incompetence of both political parties letting a situation get so out of hand.

Liberals don’t have one and many of us have forgotten it. They are starting to come back out of their caves and from under their bridges to be angry on TV about Herman Cain smiling.

We should rejoice. Humorless liberals are our greatest PR advantage in 2012 with independents who just want something to smile about.

By the way, at the RedState Gathering 2010 in Austin, Herman gave the more expanded immigration position:

I’m going to build a wall twenty feet high, cover it in barbed wire, and electrify it. I’m going to put a big sign on it that says if you touch this, it will kill you. Then I’m going to dig a big moat as long as a football field and I’m going to fill it with alligators.

If anyone can climb that wall, swim that moat, fight off the alligators and live to tell about it, I’m going to find them a job.

via redstate.com

Good for him.

Zuckerman: Real Unemployment 20 Percent

Real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman, a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, says President Obama doesn’t seem to care for people – and the result is an economy that is on the brink of a “potentially catastrophic" collapse.

In fact, the nation may well be down that road with an unemployment rate Zuckerman estimates could be 20 percent.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerman details his near total alienation from Obama, adding that it is also sweeping his political party.

Among business executives who support Obama in 2008, Zuckerman says, "there is enormously widespread anxiety over the political leadership of the country." Zuckerman reports that among Democrats, "The sense is that the policies of this government have failed. . . . What they say about [Obama] when he's not in the room, so to speak, is astonishing."

Zuckerman says his alienation with the administration began shortly after inauguration day in 2009.

He supported Obama's call for heavy spending on infrastructure “but if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program," says Zuckerman, "roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party."

He adds that "the Republicans understood this" and it diminished the chances for bipartisan legislating.

His take on health-care reform is equally bleak: "Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage. I always had the feeling the country looked at that bill and said, 'Well, he may be doing it because he wants to be a transformational president, but I want to get my costs down!'"

He also argues that the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are people with a legitimate grievance, as the country suffers high unemployment and stagnant middle-class incomes. In essence, they are core Democrats that Obama should have won over by now.

The reason for their anger and alienation with Obama is simple: they don’t have jobs, or are so underemployed their income in meaningless. The real unemployment rate is actually well above the official level of 9.1 percent, which only measures people who have applied for a job within the previous four weeks, Zuckerman says.

He believes unemployment has even surged beyond the Department of Labor's "U-6" number of 16.5 percent that has received increasing attention lately because it includes people who have given up looking for work within the past year, plus people who have been cut back from full-time employees to part-timers.

via newsmax.com

Interesting.

The President Is Not Going to Africa To Kill Christians | RedState

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)

Sunday, October 16th at 9:48PM EDT

94 Comments

It is ridiculous that I’m even having to write about this, but I am.

In the past 72 hours, I have gotten lots of emails from lots of people who should know better asking me if I’ve heard about Barack Obama sending American troops to Africa to go after the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The people hearing the name assume it is a Christian group fighting radical Islamists in the Sudan or some such.

It is no such thing.

We can debate whether sending military advisers — the numbers range from a few dozen to a hundred — to Uganda to help track down and capture LRA members, but let us not claim the LRA is something it is not.

A new movie will be out soon called Machine Gun Preacher documenting an American missionary’s struggles against the LRA.

The group claims to be an emissary from God capable of channeling the Holy Spirit. The group has notoriously gone through Uganda capturing children and turning them into soldiers and, when not successful, murdering them. The group engages in sex trafficking, slavery, murder, mutilation, and the list goes on and on.

LRA members have been hunted by George W. Bush and now by Barack Obama. They are an evil group and while we can debate the policy implications of the President sending troops off to Africa, we should not make victims or political points off the group the President will hopefully eradicate

via redstate.com

Hmmm.

Treasury Officials: Never Saw a Loan Like Solyndra

WASHINGTON — Two senior Treasury officials said Friday that they had never seen a loan restructuring similar to the Energy Department loan to a failed solar panel maker.

The half-billion dollar loan to Solyndra Inc. was restructured so that private investors moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment on part of the loan in case of a default.

Asked by Republican members of Congress if they had seen that occur in a federal loan, Treasury officials Gary Grippo and Gary Burner said no.

Grippo is a deputy assistant treasury secretary and Burner is chief financial officer at the Federal Financing Bank, which made a $528 million loan to Solyndra in 2009.

The two men stopped short of declaring the loan restructuring illegal, as Republican allege.

"'I'm unaware of — I can't give you a legal interpretation on that, sir," Burner told Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.

Grippo, who oversees the financing bank, said it was not Treasury's job to make legal interpretations. Instead, he said Treasury officials were correct to raise questions about the deal, which they did in a series of emails and memos earlier this year.

"Our role is to be as helpful as we can," Grippo said.

The testimony by the Treasury officials came after a hearing on the Solyndra loan erupted in a partisan skirmish. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called the hearing "a rigged proceeding" and a "kangaroo court."

He and other Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee criticized Republicans for not allowing the Energy Department to testify and for blocking the release of an Energy Department memo that outlined the legal basis for its decision to restructure the $528 million loan to Solyndra.

"We are going to get only one side of the story. That's no way to run an investigation," said Waxman, a former chairman of the energy committee.

Republicans said Democrats were aware of the hearing terms before it started, but agreed to enter the Energy Department memo into the record. They said Energy officials would testify at a later hearing.

Democrats say they want "to get the facts on the table," Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said. "That's what we're trying to do."

The hearing Friday was focused on newly released emails that show that the Treasury Department was concerned that the loan restructuring, approved earlier this year, could violate federal law.

Administration officials have defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, Solyndra would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work.

Even with the federal help, Solyndra closed its doors Aug. 31 and let all its workers go.

Democrats sought the release of a 6-page memo, dated Feb. 15, 2011, outlining the legal basis for the Energy Department's decision to ensure that investors who provided additional funding to Solyndra would be repaid before the federal government if the company defaulted on the loan.

Republicans said Democrats were aware before the hearing started that Energy Department officials would not testify.

"Today we're here to talk to the Treasury Department because they're the department that actually financed the loan," Barton said. "It's not really a loan guarantee.  And apparently they're the department that raised a lot of red flags about it that nobody at DOE or the White House paid any attention to."

The lawmakers cite emails showing that Mary Miller, an assistant treasury secretary, said the deal could violate the law because it put investors' interests ahead of taxpayers. Miller told a top White House budget official that she had advised that any proposed restructuring be reviewed by the Justice Department before it was approved.

"To our knowledge that has never happened," Miller wrote in an Aug. 17 memo to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., called Miller's memo "startling" and said it appears that DOE violated "the plain letter of the law" in approving the restructuring.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy and was frequently touted by the Obama administration as a model. Obama visited the company's Silicon Valley headquarters last year, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke by satellite at its groundbreaking.

Since then, the company's implosion and revelations that the administration hurried budget officials to finish their review of the loan in time for the September 2009 groundbreaking has become an embarrassment for Obama

via newsmax.com

Interesting... our government at work.

Government the Job Killer - HUMAN EVENTS

by  John Stossel

10/12/2011

4
Comments

President Obama says government will have to build the nation out of the economic trough.
       
"We're the country that built the intercontinental railroad," Obama says. "So how can we now sit back and let China build the best railroads?"
       
Ironic that he mentions the Chinese. Progressives used to complain that to build the railroad, bosses abused Chinese workers -- called them "coolies" and treated them badly. Now this is big success?
       
I guess Obama doesn't know that the transcontinental railroad was a Solyndra-like Big Government scandal. The railroad didn't make economic sense at the time, so the government subsidized construction and gave the companies huge quantities of the best land on the continent. As we should expect, without market discipline -- profit and loss -- contractors ripped off the taxpayers. After all, if you get paid by the amount of track you lay, you'll lay more track than necessary.
       
Credit Mobilier, the first rail construction company, made enormous profits by overcharging for its work. To keep the subsidies flowing, it made big contributions to congressmen.
       
Where have we heard that recently?
       
The transcontinental railroad lost tons of money. The government never covered its costs, and most rail lines that used the tracks went bankrupt or continued to be subsidized by taxpayers. The Union Pacific​ and Northern Pacific -- all those rail lines we learned about in history class -- milked the taxpayer and then went broke.
       
One line worked. The Great Northern never went bankrupt. It was the railroad that got no subsidies.
       
We need infrastructure, but the beauty of leaving most of these things to the private sector -- without subsidies, bailouts and other privileges -- is that they would have to be justified by the profit-and-loss test. In a truly free market, when private companies make bad choices, investors lose their own money. This tends to make them careful.
       
By contrast, when government loses money, it just spends more and raises your taxes, or borrows more, or inflates. Building giant government projects is no way to create jobs. When government spends on infrastructure, it takes money away from projects that consumers might think are more important.
       
When government isn't killing jobs by sucking money out of the private sector, it kills jobs by smothering the private sector with regulation. I talked to Peter Schiff about all this. Schiff is a good authority because he was one of the few people to warn of the housing bust. Now he's had a run-in with the federal government over job creation.
       
Schiff, who operates a brokerage firm with 150 employees, recently complained to Congress that "regulations are running up the cost of doing business, and a lot of companies never even get started because they can't overcome that regulatory hurdle."
       
Schiff claims he would have hired a thousand more people but for regulations.
       
"I had a huge plan to expand. I wanted to open up a lot of offices. I had some capital to do it. I had investors lined up. My business was doing really well. But unfortunately, because of the regulations in the security industry, I was not able to hire."
       
So if he wants to hire an analyst, he can't just hire him?
       
"I had to get permission to publish their research, which I didn't get for years. And so I can't pay analysts if I can't sell their research.
       
People don't appreciate the number of regulations entrepreneurs face. Schiff pays 10 people just to try to figure out if his company is obeying the rules.
       
"You can't just act very quickly, because everything has to be done through this maze of compliance. Even my brokers ... find out that maybe 20 percent, 30 percent of their day is involved in compliance-related activity, activity that is inhibiting their productivity. ... All around the country, people are complying with regulations instead of producing, instead of investing and growing the economy. They're trying to survive the regulations."
       
This is no way to create jobs or wealth. Keynesian pundits and politicians can't understand why businesses sit on cash rather than invest and hire unemployed workers. It's really no mystery. Government is in the way.

via humanevents.com

Interesting.

Brad Thor offers Boston police pizzas for protest crackdown | TheBlaze.com

It’s 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday and police are reportedly getting ready to move in to enforce a city curfew, despite the objections of the Occupy Boston crowd. I think best-selling author Brad Thor has the right kind of attitude — that is, we need to stand behind our police as they try to uphold the law. And you know the old saying… the best way to a man’s cop’s heart is through his stomach:

Need batteries for your TASERs or refills for your pepper spray?  Brad’s got your back:

I say AMEN to that.  Nothing irks me more than hearing the “occupying” protesters plead for police officers to a) disregard their legal duties, and b) feel sympathy for their demonstration because they’re really doing all of this for our benefit.

Most importantly — thank you, Brad, for setting an example and reminding us of what’s really important to remember in all of this “occupying” nonsense:

via theblaze.com

Good for him.

Joe the Plumber: Running for Congress

Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, plans to run for Congress in 2012.

Wurzelbcher became a household name as well as a controversial figure during the 2008 presidential campaign after he was videotaped challenging a plan by candidate Barack Obama to raise taxes on small businesses.

Wurzelbacher has filed papers to run as a Republican in Ohio’s newly drawn 9th District, where Obama scored nearly two-thirds of the vote and where Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur will run in a primary, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Wurzelbacher, then an employee of a plumbing contractor, verbally chastised Obama during a campaign stop the future president met with residents in Wurzelbacher’s Holland, Ohio, neighborhood. Wurzelbacher said Obama’s tax plan would result in higher taxes for him.

Later, when Republican nominee Sen. John McCain repeatedly referred to Wurzelbacher, whom he called "Joe the Plumber," in his third and final debate against Obama, Wurzelbacher became a symbol for Republicans of what would happen to the middle class under an Obama Administration. It made Wurzelbacher an instant, if unwitting, celebrity.

After the debate, Wurzelbacher was barraged with media inquiries. He did not declare his vote for either candidate after the debate, but told Fox News that he questioned Obama’s loyalty to the United States and that he was “really scared” of an Obama presidency.

But the fame also led to Harsh scrutiny of Wurzelbacher. He did not have a plumber's license and had a judgment lien against him for non-payment of $1,182 in Ohio state income taxes.

via newsmax.com

Interesting.

The Power of Certainty in an Uncertain Age « BMW Change Accelerators

Posted on October 10th, 2011 | 7:00 am | Categories: Daniel Burrus

Change is accelerating: this we know for predictable fact.

“There is nothing certain but death and taxes,” so they say. They’re wrong. There is plenty more that is certain.

Change is accelerating today. It will be accelerating more tomorrow. Because of the dizzying rate of technological, commercial, and social change, it can easily feel like we are living in times of greater uncertainty than ever before.

Uncertainty keeps us from moving forward, launching new products, hiring more people, starting new businesses. Certainty, on the other hand, allows us to move forward with confidence. And we actually know a great deal more about the future than we think we know. We just need to understand where and how to look.

In speeches I often say, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could predict the future—and be right?” and the audience always laughs. It never fails. Maybe that’s because they know on a gut level that whenever someone says he’s going to predict the future, there’s a good chance he’ll be wrong. (How often do you read the headline “Psychic Wins Lottery”?)

But I think they also laugh out of a sense of delight because they know that if it were possible, it would be amazing.

Imagine, if you could predict the future—and be right?

You can. All you have to do is leave out the parts you could be wrong about. And the amazing thing is that when you do this, there’s more than enough that you can be right about.

People don’t trust forecasts based on trends because they don’t trust trends. We think trends are like fads: here today, but who knows for how long? “Trends,” we say with a shrug. “Hey, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. It’s a crapshoot.”

But it’s not a crapshoot. The reason we typically don’t trust trends is that we haven’t learned how to make the distinction between what I call hard trends and soft trends.

A hard trend is a projection based on measurable, tangible, and fully predictable facts, events, or objects. A soft trend is a projection based on statistics that have the appearance of being tangible, fully predictable facts. A hard trend is something that will happen: a future fact. A soft trend is something that might happen: a future maybe.

Will your smartphone four years from now have a faster processor, better built-in video camera, and more storage (both in the device and in the cloud) than the one you have today? You know the answer. Of course it will. That’s a hard trend. Will the model you buy four years from now be sold by Apple? Don’t know. Soft trend.

This distinction completely changes how you view the future. Once you know the difference between hard trends and soft trends, you know where to find certainty—and the future suddenly becomes visible. This gives you the capacity to have what I call a flash foresight: a blinding flash of the future obvious.

Back to death and taxes.

Death and taxes are both examples of cyclical change: Birth, growth, decline, death. Effort, productivity, profitability, taxation. Seasons. Political tides. Stock market fluctuations. There are more than 300 cycles scientists use to predict the future. But that’s only one kind of change. Economists use cyclical change to look into the future.  Have you noticed they have been increasingly wrong lately? That’s because they don’t consider progressive, linear change—change that keeps going in one direction, and only one direction.

Once you get a smartphone, you’re not going back to a dumbphone: linear change. Once someone in China parks her bicycle and starts driving a car, she’s not going back to a bike: linear change. Once someone in India gets refrigeration, he’s not going to give it up again.

These are one-way, linear changes, with predictable consequences. By the way, linear changes are the ones that are creating a world of mind-boggling accelerating change.

And here’s the point: what happened to Kodak, Motorola, and Blockbuster? Accelerating linear change happened: digital cameras, digital cell phones, streaming online video. They treated them as soft trends and paid the price of the mistake. Who saw those changes as the hard trends they were? Canon, Apple, and Netflix.

Is accelerating change disruptive? Yes, utterly, cataclysmically—but only if you don’t see it coming.

And what if you do see it coming? Then the world is your oyster.

Because when you understand linear, as well as cyclical change, and hard trends versus soft trends, this gives you a base of certainty. It gives you a roadmap to the future.

In tomorrow’s post we’ll look at three specific hard trends of linear change that are transforming everything.

Meanwhile, here’s a question that lets you predict the future: In relation to your world four years from today, what are you certain about?

via wired.com

How true...

Trump, Kiyosaki: Real Unemployment Near Depression Era Levels

The nation’s unemployment rate is significantly higher than stated in the government’s monthly tallies and the number of jobless citizens is now approaching levels not seen since the Great Depression, Donald Trump and author Robert Kiyosaki tell Newsmax.TV.

The two discussed the dire state of the economy during a lengthy sit-down interview in Trump’s New York office to promote their new book, “Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich – And Why Most Don’t”.

Story continues below video.

The official unemployment rate released by the Department of Labor for September was 9.1 percent. At the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s the number stood at about 25 percent.

“The sad thing is unemployment is really probably at 21 percent if you go by the real numbers,” Trump said. “When you say 9.1 … that number is not a real number, the real number is 21 percent and it could even be higher than that.”

“So it’s a bad time and we wrote the Midas Touch," Trump continued. "We had great success in our first book -- it went to the number one book on just about every list, and it was really a terrific book, but we think this is better. And we wrote this for these times. We feel there are better opportunities today than there were five years ago.”

Trump was referring to the first book he co-authored with Kiyosaki entitled, “Why We Want You to Be Rich: Two Men, One Message.” Kiyosaki, best known for his "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" series of books, said the unemployment rate in the country was one reason for writing the new book.

“Unemployment is a major, major, major problem and governments don’t really create jobs entrepreneurs do,” Kiyosaki confirmed. “And so we got together and said let’s make this as simple as possible for anybody to understand if they have what it takes to be an entrepreneur because many people have good ideas, but they’re not entrepreneurs.”

Trump, the star of "Celebrity Apprentice," attributed his success to one thing. “Well I think I had a lot of good ideas, but also I don’t quit,” he said. “I see so many people and we discuss this in the Midas Touch, in the book. I see so many people that have ideas, and they’re good ideas in many cases, and they give up -- they don’t push forward. And one of the things we discuss very strongly is the fact you have to come up with the right ideas, the right product, whatever it might be, but never, ever quit.”

Kiyosaki boiled down the key to success as an entrepreneur to five things: strength of character, focus, knowing what you stand for, relationships, and knowing what you do best.

“We’ve both had our ups and downs,” Kiyosaki said of himself and Trump. “I say he’s lost lots of money, I’ve lost lots of money, and it’s easy to quit at that time. But can we make the money back is when the strength of character kicks in. I would say that’s the most important thing.”

Some people are born to be a Babe Ruth or musical prodigy, Trump noted, and others can be taught. However, entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

“One of the things I always discuss -- whenever I’m speaking or whenever I’m talking about success, and I think it’s very important to understand -- some people are better off having a job, they’re better off not being entrepreneurs,” he said.

“They can’t handle pressure, they can’t handle certain things in life, and they’re better off. And there’s nothing wrong with being a great employee and taking home a check and having a wonderful family, nothing wrong with it.”

The two experts at making money and creating jobs also offered their thoughts on when and how the economy might recover.

“What we’re saying is the economy has moved on and I think people have to move on also,” Kiyosaki said. “Just today we did an electronic book signing that was not possible three years ago. This world is changing so fast, and the rules are changing so fast, so the people that are sitting back waiting for it to come back. I think it’s moved on personally.”

Trump asserted that what is needed is new leadership and that President Barack Obama is not getting the job done.

“He’s got the Midas touch for himself and getting elected but he certainly doesn’t have the Midas touch for the country,” he added.

via newsmax.com

Interesting.

Herman Cain Slams Wall Street Protesters | Video | TheBlaze.com

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has a tough-to-swallow message for the protesters who continue to rail against America’s capitalistic system.

According to the successful businessman, the individuals who continue to “occupy Wall Street” (not to mention countless other localities) have some misplaced anger to contend with. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said:

“I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration.

Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! [...]

These demonstrations…I honestly don‘t understand what they’re looking for…It is not someone’s fault because they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.”

Watch these statements, below:

Responding to Cain’s opinions on the matter, ThinkProgress’ Alex Seitz-Wald wrote:

Cain’s claim about the unemployed is especially heartless and uninformed. There are simply not enough jobs to go around, with 4.32 unemployed people for every job opening in the country. So even someone looking hard for a job will have a difficult time finding one. Moreover, Cain fails to understand the astronomical income inequality in the U.S. and the negative effect it has on economic growth.

Below, watch the entire WSJ interview. In it, the presidential contender speaks about his flat-tax plan, political experience as an asset and plenty more:

via theblaze.com

Yes.