Liberalism: How they use Economics and Science in Politics

UNCLE SAM IS CRYING on FEBRUARY 17, 2014 • ( 0 )

Economics:  The basics

Every consumer adjusts his or her purchases to price:  whether name brand or generic is purchased; whether it is purchased today or at a later time; and so on.  Thus, the consumer affects the marketplace by his/her purchases.  This concept leads to a series of continuously repeated common exchanges that produce a distribution of resources by business to achieve the greatest satisfaction of consumers as a whole.  In other words, the “collective” (society) is the actions of individuals who work that distribute resources throughout the economy.

How Liberalism uses Science to guide its Agenda

First, a scientific opinion is just that: an opinion.  The opinion of one becomes that of many.  Then that opinion is split into thousands of pieces until thousands of individuals each endorsing the others opinion.  It relies on consensual chains linking the person of “opinion” to all the others.

MUCH MORE.  

 

#NCGA: A short session surprise?

The Daily Haymaker, by Brant Clifton • February 12, 2014 

A piece of legislation that has raised the ire of Civitas and other Tea Party-aligned groups,  and has been voted down twice in the state House, has been resurrected and sent to the House Rules Committee.  According to a rather surprising source — who has a vote in the House GOP caucus — it’s eligible to be voted on in the General Assembly’s short session.  

The legislation I am taking about is H440 — The North Carolina Benefit Corporation Act.  It’s come up in the legislature in 2011 and in 2013.  Tea Party groups have attacked this legislation as an instrument of the United Nations’ Agenda 21.  Civitas went after it as being antithetical to capitalism. 

Benefit corporations are  not currently recognized by the state of North Carolina. But this legislation is seeking to change that.

What’s the big deal about Benefit Corporations, also known as B-corps?  A really smart guy with a fancy-pants Raleigh law firm dishes the dirt for us: 

READ IT HERE.

Thom and Bru: Mutual back-scratching at its best

The Daily Haymaker, by Brant Clifton • February 11, 2014

Thom Tillis and Harold Brubaker have quite a special political bond. They are the only two Republican speakers of the North Carolina House since Reconstruction.  The two became very close upon Tillis joining the House in 2006.  On the eve of Brubaker’s 2012 departure from the House to take up lobbying, Tillis publicly described Brubaker as “my mentor, a trusted colleague, and a dear friend.”

It’s 2014 and Harold Brubaker is going gangbusters in his lobbying business.  What’s intriguing is how much influence he appears to still have in the speaker’s office TWO YEARS after leaving office.

READ THE ARTICLE.

#NCSEN #NCGA: 2012 Tillis House campaign accepted $4K from wife of figure in federal bribery case

The Daily Haymaker, by Brant Clifton, February 10, 2014

North Carolina state House speaker Thom Tillis has established quite a reputation as a prolific fundraiser. He’s been credited with providing the ammo needed for the GOP to take over the legislature.  He’s tapping that skill to fuel his current campaign for the US Senate.

One particular contribution in 2012 to Tillis’ House campaign has ties to a North Carolina political scandal that broke in 2003 and ended in federal court in 2010.  Documents on file with the North Carolina State Board of Elections indicate Jane Wright of Wake Forest donated $4,000 to the Tillis House campaign in October 2012.   She is the wife of Thomas R. “Ricky” Wright, who made news in 2003:

Read more!  

#NCSEN: Tillis “mentor” in midst of Outer Banks fishing fracas

The Daily Haymaker, by Brant Clifton • February 7, 2014

Commercial fishermen along eastern North Carolina have been knocking heads for some time with state regulators.  Local fishing interests fear that regulations pushed by environmentalists with pull in Raleigh are endangering their livelihood and threatening the local economy.

The Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) of North Carolina is blamed by locals for the current regulatory environment.  One factor that might have won the CCA its success in Raleigh  their lobbyist in Raleigh, until September 4 of last year, was none other than former state House speaker and Thom Tillis “mentor” Harold Brubaker.

For those not so familiar with this ongoing fight in the east, soak in the words of longtime Outer Banks GOP leader Browny Douglas in his plea to state senator Bill Cook: 

READ MORE. 

#NCSEN: Apparently, what was BAD for Liddy Dole is O-KAY for Kay

The Daily Haymaker, by Brant Clifton • February 7, 2014 

Democrats in DC and in Raleigh are working overtime to pull Senator Sock Puppet’s chestnuts out of the fire. They’ve put out this spin about Kay Hagan being one of the most moderate voices in DC — because she only votes with Barry Obama 96 percent of the time.  Over at The N&O, John Drescher’s shih-tzu ran with that spin like it was a little rubber ball.

My, how times change.  In 2008, when state senator and Democrat US Senate nominee Kay Hagan was running against incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole,  ol’ Kay had this to say: 

READ MORE. 

#NCSEN: If you pay him, he will come.

The Daily Haymaker, by Brant Clifton • February 7, 2014

State House speaker and US Senate candidate Thom Tillis has been catching some flak from GOP activists — and finally from the mainstream media — for skipping out on candidate debates in the GOP primary race.  His people are promising that he will show up in the same room with his opponents some time before May.

In the meantime, he found a few minutes in his “busy” schedule —while the House is out of session — to appear at a press conferencefeaturing home health care interests seeking changes in ObamaCare.It’s interesting he is showing so much more passion for tinkering with the existing law than he did for the NCGA refusing health exchanges,or for Ted Cruz’s defund ObamaCare effort.  

(O-Care doesn’t need to be tinkered with.  It needs to be completely trashed.  Before it finally trashes our economy and our country.)

READ IT HERE!

Take this quick civics test!

Are You Smarter Than an Educator? This Civic Literacy Test Will Show What You Know About U.S. Politics

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/01/107324-smarter-educator-civic-literacy-test-will-show-know-u-s-politics/

Politics, Constitutional Decline and Government Overreach

By Roger Pilon

This article appeared in the Fall 2013 Issue of the Jewish Policy Center’s inFocus Quarterly.

“What’s the Constitution among friends?” asked Ohio’s John F. Follett in the House in 1884. Still in the offing, constitutional decline was only stirring. In fact, three years later, 100 years after the Constitution was written, President Grover Cleveland would veto a bill appropriating the paltry sum of $10,000 for seeds for Texas farmers suffering from a drought. “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,” his veto message said.

Cleveland was simply echoing a long settled understanding that ours is a Constitution that authorizes only limited government. Not that calls for more government had not been heard from the start. In 1791, for example, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton unveiled his Report on Manufactures—an early industrial policy scheme. Congress promptly shelved it. And in 1794, the Constitution’s principal author, James Madison, finding before him a bill for the relief of French refugees fleeing to Baltimore and Philadelphia from an insurrection in San Domingo, rose on the floor of the House to declare, unremarkably, that he could not “undertake to lay his finger on that article of the Federal Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending on objects of benevolence the money of their constituents.”

“How did a nation conceived in and dedicated to individual liberty take on the trappings of the collective mind such that so much of life today is lived through the state?”

How quaint. Is there anything today that is not fit for government’s attention? Large sodas and restaurant menus have lately garnered notice. Retirement, health care, day care, wages, rents, prices, charity, even public radio and television—all that and so much more is the regular business of modern American government because, as President Obama has so often put it, “We’re all in this together.” Indeed, “we sometimes forget,” he told Ohio State graduates last spring, “the larger bonds we share, as one American family.” The family vacation of old springs to mind: Do we go to the mountains or the beach? If we’re all in this together, we can’t go our separate ways.

So how did a nation conceived in and dedicated to individual liberty take on the trappings of the collective mind such that so much of life today is lived through the state, as in the Obama campaign’s much parodied “Life of Julia” cartoon? How did we go from limited government to Leviathan, from the dominance of the private to that of the public sphere? Elements of both have been with us from the beginning, of course, but the presumption at the outset and long thereafter was for private, not public, initiative. That’s no longer true. Got a problem? Washington has a solution. Politics today is ubiquitous.

READ MORE:  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/politics-constitutional-decline-government-overreach?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=9021b700b7-Cato_Today&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-9021b700b7-141723190&mc_cid=9021b700b7&mc_eid=2653a08a51

Sun Journal Letter to the Editor by CCTA Vice Chairman, Nancy Murdoch: Coveting Stuff

December 08, 2011 4:08 PM



There is something fundamentally wrong with this country, and it’s deeper than politics, but there may be a correlation. We have a culture run amok, with a percentage of folks that seem closer to barbarians than members of a civilized society.


The day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday, some individuals acted like hooligans and starving animals. With a mob mentality, people fought over “stuff” with no concern for their fellow man. The “stuff” was not the necessities of life, but waffle irons, video games and other “stuff”. In West Virginia folks stepped over and around a collapsed man as if he was only a piece of trash.

During the Occupy Wall Street protests, we have witnessed open sex, rapes, public defecation and all sorts of antisocial behavior. And many of their demands involved “stuff”, generally wanting someone else’s “stuff,” not wanting to pay for their own “stuff”, or just more “stuff”.


Then we have a president campaigning on promises to take “stuff” from some Americans and give that “stuff” to other Americans that vote for him. He likes to chastise those who he perceives having too much “stuff”, but doesn’t mind giving the taxpayers’ ”stuff” to those who give him lots of “stuff” for his campaign coffers.


Another new phenomenon of the 21st century is the so called “flash mob”; young, social media connected types rushing into stores stealing “stuff”. Has stealing become socially acceptable in some circles?


It does appear there are people trying to feel better about themselves and their lives by illegally or immorally acquiring more “stuff”. A number of people do nothing to earn their “stuff”.


A review of history will see this scenario has played out before. A culture reaches a position of wealth and prosperity, followed by an erosion of the values that helped the country reach that pinnacle of success. People become lazy and dependent on society for their “stuff” and the society begins to crumble.


Add a government and a citizenry completely consumed by debt, a crumbling dollar, and it’s easy to visualize an uncertain future. The rubber will meet the road when there is a lot less “stuff” to go around. If there should be a shortage of essential “stuff”, is it a stretch to think that these semi-barbarians will become full fledged in their desire for enough “stuff” to exist?


Nancy Murdoch, Havelock, NC

Editorial by Howard Galganov: After The Cash Runs Out

Take time to read this, Mr. Galganov has really target the problem in this country (as usual)!
~ Lynn

There are many very good people who enter the rock and roll world of politics, who do so to make a positive difference. I know several of them. But, there are far too many who enter the realm of government for the wrong reasons, or become corrupted after tasting the sweet wine of influence. Having a group of politicians debate budgets, and how to pay down deficits while they grow entitlements, is akin to Mafia God-Fathers deciding how much money to take from their marks, as if the marks have a choice. AND WE’RE THE MARKS.


READ THE FULL EDITORIAL:
http://www.galganov.com/editorials.asp?id=1406

NC RENEGADE: Frank Roche Explains the Dollar Index

Frank Roche Explains the Dollar Index

May 6, 2011 at 1:51 am

The government released data on May 5th showing an unexpected increase in people filing for unemployment benefits. This caused the stock market to drop 100 points but due to the “bizarre correlation between equities and the dollar”, the US dollar strengthened. Frank Roche is running for the US House of Representatives in 2012 and explains why this happened:
watch?v=Z8nanjnXPgs&feature=player_embedded

This correlation is more verification for me personally not to buy equities. The good news is that gold is still in positive territory over the last 30 days and that oil dropped below $100 per barrel.

David DeGerolamo
NC Renegade
http://ncrenegade.com/

The Ten Greatest Dangers to America’s Tea Party Movement

by Ray McBerry


The Tea Party Movement has had a marked impact upon the political scene here in these united States over the last two years, and the potential for even greater success yet exists. However, the forces arrayed against those traditional Americans who believe that we should return to the founding principles that made America great are many; and dangers to the new burgeoning movement also exist. Some of the successes of the Tea Party Movement include the election of a handful of key officials at the national level and many others at the state and local level. Also of importance is the recognition by many politicians that the tea partiers have the ability to perform the watchdog role of “swing vote” in numerous closely-contested races around the country; and the jury is still out on whether the Tea Party will be able to actually hold the candidates that they have supported to the line on their campaign commitments to restore the Republic.

CONTINUED:  http://tenthamendmentsolutions.wordpress.com/

Thomas Sowell: Forgetting the Constitution

The assurance that “separation of church and state” is in the Constitution shows our elites’ ignorance.

Politics is not the only place where some pretty brassy statements have been made and repeated so often that some people have accepted these brassy statements as being as good as gold.


One of the brassiest of the brass oldies is the notion that the Constitution creates a “wall of separation” between church and state. This false notion has been so widely accepted that people who tell the truth get laughed at and mocked.

A recent New York Times piece said that it was “a flub of the first order” when Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for senator in Delaware, asked a law school audience, “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” According to the New York Times, “The question draw gasps and laughter” from this audience of professors and law students who are elites-in-waiting.

The New York Times writer joined in the mocking response to Ms. O’Donnell’s question, though admitting in passing that “in the strictest sense” the “actual words ‘separation of church and state’ do not appear in the text of the Constitution.” Either the separation of church and state is there or it is not there. It is not a question of some “strictest” technicality.


The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution about a “wall of separation” between church and state, either directly or indirectly.

That phrase was used in a letter by Thomas Jefferson, who was not even in the country when the Constitution was written. It was a phrase seized upon many years later, by people who wanted to restrict religious symbols, and it has been cited by judges who share that wish.

There was no mystery about what “an establishment of religion” meant when that phrase was put into the Constitution. It was not an open-ended invitation to judges to decide what role religion should play in American society or in American government.

The Church of England was an “established church.” That is, it was not only financed by the government, its members had privileges denied to members of other religions.

The people who wrote the Constitution of the United States had been British subjects most of their lives, and knew exactly what an “established church” meant. They wanted no such thing in the United States of America. End of story — or so it should have been.

For more than a century, no one thought that the First Amendment meant that religious symbols were forbidden on government property. Prayers were offered in Congress and in the Supreme Court. Chaplains served in the military and presidents took their oath of office on the Bible.

But, in our own times, judges have latched onto Jefferson’s phrase and run with it. It has been repeated so often in their decisions that it has become one of the brassiest of the brass oldies that get confused with golden oldies.

As fundamentally important as the First Amendment is, what is even more important is the question whether judges are to take it upon themselves to “interpret” the law to mean whatever they want it to mean, rather than what it plainly says.

This is part of a larger question, as to whether this country is to be a self-governing nation, controlled by “we the people,” as the Constitution put it, or whether arrogant elites shall take it upon themselves to find ways to impose what they want on the rest of us, by circumventing the Constitution.

Congress is already doing that by passing laws before anyone has time to read them and the White House is likewise circumventing the Constitution by appointing “czars” who have as much power as cabinet members, without having to go through the confirmation process prescribed for cabinet members by the Constitution.

Judges circumvent the Constitution by reading their own meaning into its words, regardless of how plain and unequivocal its words are.

The Constitution cannot protect us and our freedoms as a self-governing people unless we protect the Constitution. That means zero tolerance at election time for people who circumvent the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Freedom is too precious to give it up in exchange for brassy words from arrogant elites.


— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/251250/forgetting-constitution-thomas-sowell

Renew America

It's a long way back to the Constitution


By Monte Kuligowski


Back when Candidate Obama announced that he was only five days away from "fundamentally transforming the United States," most people didn't know what that meant anymore than they knew who Obama was.

Well, in just under two years the attacks on our values and institutions have changed the country in fundamental ways. On the bright side, if not for the arrogant and reckless blitzkrieg that Obama, Pelosi and Reid unleashed on the country it is doubtful that comprehensive grassroots resistance would have materialized. Consequently, it appears as though Mr. Obama has reawakened a sleeping giant.

READ MORE:  http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kuligowski/100922

Randy's Right

The Massachusetts Model For Dismantling Obamacare

http://randysright.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/the-massachusetts-model-for-dismantling-obamacare/

Randy's Right

Real World Facts…Who Is The Man Behind The Ground Zero Mosque?


Developer Of Community Center Has Lengthy Record, With Numerous Arrests Dating Back To 1990
 
NEW YORK (CBS 2) — As the Ground Zero mosque controversy continues to simmer, questions continue about the background of the man who wants to build the $100 million Islamic cultural and religious center.


Mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal has often been reluctant to answer questions.

After he won the right to tear down the 152-year-old building blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, El-Gamal got defensive when asked about the mosque by CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer.

Watch News Interview at link below

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/08/30/who-is-the-man-behind-the-ground-zero-mosque/

“It’s a community center, if you call it a community center, we would talk,” El-Gamal said.

Kramer reports the developer’s reluctance to talk may have been related to his prior run-ins with the law.

His most recent arrest was in 2005 for assault on a man he met while working as a waiter at Serafina Restaurant, who sublet an apartment from his brother. He reportedly punched the man, breaking his nose and cheekbone and spit on him.

El-Gamal first said he didn’t hit the man, but arrest documents obtained by CBS 2 showed he later conceded “his face could have run into my hand.”

Records showed El-Gamal also had trouble coming up with the $15,000 settlement reached in 2008, and had to pay interest . El-Gamal also has a number of other arrests on his record:

-In 1990, he was arrested in Nassau County and pled guilty to disorderly conduct.
-In 1992, he pled guilty in Nassau to DWI and paid a $350 fine.
-In 1993, he pled guilty in Nassau to attempted petit larceny and paid a $100 fine.
-In 1994, arrested for disorderly conduct in Manhattan.
-In 1998, there was another Manhattan disorderly conduct arrest.
-In 1999, yet another Manhattan disorderly conduct arrest.

A potential problem for the mosque developer is a deposition he gave in the assault case in October 2007. When asked if he was ever convicted or pled guilty to a crime, El-Gamal replied “no.”

Lately, he has been trying to resurrect his image, sitting down for a lengthy 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley.

When Pelley asked if it occurred to him that putting a project so close to Ground Zero would heighten tensions, El-Gamal replied “not at all.”

“I did not hold myself or my faith accountable for the tragedy,” El-Gamal said.

El-Gamal also owes over $227,000 in unpaid real estate taxes and a spokesman for the Department of Finance said interest will be added for each and every day its unpaid.

Another question surrounding the debate is whether the Muslim cleric of the mosque — Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf — knew about El-Gamal’s criminal background and unpaid taxes before partnering with him.

El-Gamal refused repeated requests from CBS 2 Monday to comment on the story.

http://randysright.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/rea-world-facts-who-is-the-man-behind-the-ground-zero-mosque/

Michelle Malkin

Terrific: Bankrupt Freddie Mac hires “diversity officer”



By  Michelle Malkin • August 31, 2010
 
Taxpayer-supported mortgage behemoth Freddie Mac — yes, the same government-sponsored entity that is sucking $64 billion of your money to stay afloat — is proud to announce that it is squandering more of your bucks on a “diversity officer:”
 
Freddie Mac, the government-controlled mortgage buyer, on Monday named Subha V. Barry to head its newly formed office of diversity and inclusion.


As chief diversity officer, Barry will work with the company’s business units to ensure they’re maximizing opportunities in diverse markets. She will also ensure the company is utilizing diverse talent among its employee and suppliers, and developing strategies focused on the needs of a diverse work force.

Barry will also design the new executive diversity council.

You can thank diversity-mongering Maxine Waters for stuffing the race preference mandates into the financial “reform” law.


Expect more cronyism of color on the public dime.

So much for MLK’s dream, eh?

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/08/31/terrific-bankrupt-freddie-mac-hires-diversity-officer/

Hands-on politics for teens (OneNewsNow.com)

Hands-on politics for teens (OneNewsNow.com)

OBAMA IGNORES BECK RALLY! Randy's Right

Obama Says He Ignored Beck Rally "Restoring Honor"
“It’s not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That’s been true throughout our history,” he said. But “what I’m focused on is making sure that the decisions we’re making now are going to be be not good for the nightly news, not good even necessarily for the next election, but are good for the next generation.”



http://randysright.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/obama-says-he-ignored-beck-rally-restoring-honor/