Neal Boortz on Gun Control

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Neal Boortz

Stepping in from my retirement rehearsal to get a few words in about the Democrats and the push for gun control.  So .. let’s make a few points:

1. Everyone with an IQ higher than a thermostat setting knew sooner or later that Obama was going to go after the 2^nd Amendment with a push for more gun control.  That’s why gun sales are at an all-time high right now.  Democrats absolutely hate the idea that a private individual American can own a gun for the purpose of self defense.  They really hate the idea that one of the primary reasons our founding fathers included the 2^nd Amendment in our Constitution was a recognition of the fact that a free people always should have the means to defend themselves from a despotic government.  Democrats are the embodiment of a despotic government.   It is perfectly natural or them to fear an armed citizenry.

 2. Democrats find it much easier to push a gun control agenda than they do to deal with issues of true and vital importance to our Republic.  When we are mourning and burying 20 young children the emotions of the people are raw.  It’s time to exploit those emotions for political gain.  Americans, unfortunately, will never be this emotional about the fiscal disaster they face.  And I’m not talking about this meaningless “fiscal cliff.”  I’m talking about our nearly $1 trillion … that’s TRILLION … in unfunded liabilities and our current unsustainable level of spending.  The highest in terms of our gross domestic product ever.  But you’ve read all about this in the mainstream media, haven’t you?  Oh, you haven’t?  Well, I’m sure they’re preparing their in-depth stories right now.

 3. This year 446 school age children have been shot in Chicago, and 62 have died.  There has been NO push from the left for gun control resulting from the carnage in Chicago.  Odd, don’t you think?  By the way, Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country.  I’m sure you’ve seen these statistics on your favorite network television newscast, haven’t you?  Wait!  What?

 4. The media will NEVER go to any great lengths to report on the use of privately owned firearms in self-defense.  This is not part of the leftist agenda. There was a shooting in a mall in Portland, Oregon a few weeks ago that was reportedly halted by a private citizen with a concealed carry permit and a weapon.  When the shooter saw the weapon he promptly shot himself.  You didn’t hear that on your mainstream newscast, did you?

 5. During a spate of school shootings in the late 1990s no less than three of those school shootings were halted by a civilian with a gun.  One shooting was stopped after two students had already died by an assistant principal who had to run a quarter-mile to his car and back to get his gun.  He couldn’t park his car on school property because there was a gun in it.  Would someone be alive today who is dead and buried if that assistant principal hadn’t had to make his little half-mile run?  You haven’t heard about those incidents in the mainstream newscasts, have you? 

 6. In the past week we have had two stories about a 14-year-old at home without an adult when a burglar entered the home.  In one the 14-year-old knew where his dad’s gun was, and knew how to use it.  The intruder was shot.  In the other the 14-year-old had no means to defend himself.  His father found his body when he came home from work at the end of the day.  He had been shot.   Have you read a juxtaposition of these two stories in your mainstream newscast?  Didn’t think so.

 7. Obama says he will introduce legislation to close “The Gun Show Loophole.”  There IS NO gun show loophole.  The federal laws pertaining to purchasing a firearm at a gun show are exactly the same at a gun show as they are anywhere else in this country.  When a private individual sells a firearm to another private individual there is no requirement for a background check.  When a licensed firearms dealer sells a gun to an individual a background check must be performed before the weapon is transferred.  When a private individual at a gun show sells a firearm to another private individual there is no requirement for a background check.  When a licensed firearms dealer at a gun show sells a gun to an individual a background check must be performed before the weapon is transferred.  The operation of law is EXACTLY the same at a gun show as it is anywhere else.  Therefore, as I said, there is no “gun show loophole.”  Now I’m thinking that you haven’t heard this from your mainstream media outlet, have you? 

 8. The true purpose behind this “close the gun show loophole” idea is to make the sale and transfer of firearms between individuals impossible by requiring a private individual to conduct a background check before selling a privately owned gun to another individual.  Private individuals do not have the legal authority to access the information necessary to perform the background check.  This would mean that Americans could only obtain a firearm through a federally licensed firearms dealer.  Consider the consequences.  Has this angle been covered in the mainstream media?  Uhhhhhh ….. no.

 9. In response to the Sandy Hook shootings Obama will introduce legislation calling for more extensive background checks.   A more extensive background check would have done nothing to prevent the deaths of these 26 people.  The shooter underwent NO background check at all.  That’s because he did not purchase the guns.  His mother did.  By all accounts his mother could have passed any conceivable background check.  You’ve already seen this covered in the mainstream media, haven’t you?  You haven’t?  Golly!  I’m just soooo surprised. 

10. Obama wants an assault weapons ban.  We had one of those and there is not one bit of empirical evidence that the ban saved one single life.  Some weapons are designated as “assault weapons” simply because they look like they should be carried by a soldier, even though they are less powerful than your average hunting rifle.  Can you tell me why putting a hole in the stock of a gun for your thumb, or making the stock out of grey plastic, should make it illegal?  

The problem we face in this gun control debate bears so many similarities to the problems we face in much of our national political discourse.  The media has chosen sides, and haven chosen sides, contrarian information will be blocked and the public will not have the details necessary to make informed choices.

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Congratulations or Something

By HERMAN CAIN

Obama voters, you won! Here's your prize . . .

President Obama won the popular vote by 50.6 percent. OK, those of you that voted for him, you won. But you did not win the lottery. Here's what you won.

You won a president who wants unlimited federal spending powers with no federal debt ceiling. Would you give unlimited credit to a person who has maxed out all of their credit cards? If you say yes, then respectfully, you are a fool.

You won a president who is asking Congress to spend an additional $50 billion for unidentified projects. This would of course be the same Congress that has not passed a budget since 2009. Do you run your finances without a budget, or at least some idea of how you are going to make ends met? Well, you probably don't.

You won a president who wants to raise taxes by $1.6 trillion over 10 years, while telling you that it will help reduce the deficit. Do the math folks. That's not true. It would raise minimal revenue and cause a big decrease in employment and the creation of new jobs. All you have to do is to look at the real history of tax increases. But you see, President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi know you don't know the history, and they figure you are too gullible to learn.

Obama voters, you won a president who is still campaigning, so he can keep using the lapdog mainstream media to tell you what he wants you to believe instead of telling you the truth. Strip away your preconceived notions about media channels that Obama told you not to watch, and you just might learn something.

You also won a coming fiscal cliff disaster, because Obama knows he can let it happen and you will agree with him that it's all the fault of the Republicans. You drank the Kool-Aid for four years, so he expects you to just keep on drinking to the very last drop.

Except, the very last drop this time will mean a lot of economic pain and suffering for a lot of families, namely, no jobs! It will mean that our nation's credit rating will most likely be downgraded again. It will also mean that gas prices will go back up and stay up, and that federal spending will continue to get bigger, while the size of our economy gets smaller.

The very last drop will also mean more turmoil in the rest of the world, because of the continued loss of respect for America's economic and military strength, due to this president's inability to lead decisively and forcefully.

Obama voters, you won! But do you like the prize? Read this commentary again in two years and let me know. God willing, I will still be here writing, on the radio and TV explaining what I have been saying for the last four years.

Maybe some of you will wake up.

http://www.caintv.com/obama-voters-you-won-heres-you

GUN-CONTROL LAWS FAILED CONNECTICUT CHILDREN

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For gun control laws to be effective in preventing such events as the mass shooting in Connecticut they have to be followed. If they are not, then no amount of legislation will prevent such events from occurring in the future. Drew Zahn took a hard look at the events that occurred in Connecticut and points out the number of laws that were broken by the perpetrator of this heinous act:


In the wake of the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Conn., voices across nation, and indeed across the globe, have been calling for stricter gun-control laws.

Yet what gun-control measure could have prevented this crime?

The state of Connecticut already has certain gun-control laws in place, at least three of which the shooter broke, as he could have only obtained the weapons through illegal means.

According to news reports, Adam Lanza, 20, shot his mother Nancy Lanza dead at their family home before driving to the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where he gunned down more than two dozen people, 20 of them children, and then killed himself.

The Associated Press reports Lanza brought three guns into the school: a Glock pistol, a Sig Sauer pistol and Bushmaster rifle, which the New York Post further reports was a semi-automatic “assault rifle” chambered for a .223 caliber round, matching casings found at the crime scene.

Lanza, therefore, if you count theft, murder and breaking and entering – since CBS New York now reports it likely Lanza broke into the school through a window to circumvent a locked-door and intercom security system – would have violated a half-dozen laws in his crime, including the following gun-control statutes:

First, Connecticut law requires a person be over 21 to possess a handgun. Lanza was 20.

Second, Connecticut requires a permit to carry a pistol on one’s person, a permit Lanza did not have.

Third, it is unlawful in Connecticut to possess a firearm on public or private elementary or secondary school property, a statute Lanza clearly ignored.

Fourth, with details on the Bushmaster rifle still sketchy, it’s possible Lanza may have violated a Connecticut law banning possession of “assault weapons.”

Of course, these laws were violated because Lanza did not own any of the firearms in question, but rather stole them, and he clearly had no regard for the law in committing his crime.

The Associated Press reports the weapons were registered to Lanza’s first victim, his own mother, according to a law enforcement official not authorized to discuss information with reporters and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The facts of the case mark one of the largest quandaries with cries for additional gun control: The guns already exist, and the criminals who have broken laws to use them have also demonstrated they’re willing to break laws to obtain them.

Unless the government somehow mandates and is able to effectively destroy the millions of guns already in circulation, gun-control laws primarily affect the already law-abiding, rather than the criminal element.

Yet legislators have been swift to suggest the answers lie in even more laws.

In Congress, Fox News reports, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a leading gun-control advocate on Capitol Hill, has called for members to address the issue when a new session starts in January.

“I hope and trust that in the next session of Congress there will be sustained and thoughtful debate about America’s gun culture and our responsibility to prevent more loss of life,” said Feinstein, who co-sponsored a 1994 bill that resulted in a 10-year ban on many semi-automatic guns classified as “assault weapons.”

“We have been through this too many times,” President Obama agreed. “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading voice for more gun-control legislation pushed the president to do more.

“Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough,” said Bloomberg, who leads the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today.”

The New York Times reports at least one Capitol Hill Republican, however, argued tighter control is not the answer.

“That’s one thing I hope doesn’t happen,” New York Rep. Mike Rogers told the Times. “What is the more realistic discussion is how do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?”

The New York Daily News reports Lanza was “dark and disturbed, a deeply troubled boy” who suffered from a troubled mental state, perhaps related to Asperger’s syndrome or a form of personality disorder.

The author of the above article is Drew Zahn. He is a former pastor who cut his editing teeth as a member of the award-winning staff of "Leadership," Christianity Today's professional journal for church leaders. He is the editor of seven books, including "Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching," which sparked his ongoing love affair with film and his weekly WND column, "Popcorn and a (world)view."

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Government Gone Bad

John Stossel at the 2007 New Hampshire Liberty Forum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is an excellent take on our current government and how it is affecting our current economic situation. It was written by John Stossel and originally published at Real Clear Politics.

Politicians claim they make our lives better by passing laws. But laws rarely improve life. They go wrong. Unintended consequences are inevitable.

Most voters don't pay enough attention to notice. They read headlines. They watch the Rose Garden signing ceremonies and hear the pundits declare that progress was made. Bipartisanship! Something got done. We assume a problem was solved.

Intuition tells us that government is in the problem-solving business, and so the more laws passed, the better off we are. The possibility that fewer laws could leave us better off is hard to grasp. Kids visiting Washington don't ask their congressmen, "What laws did you repeal?" It's always, "What did you pass?"

And so they pass and pass -- a thousand pages of proposed new rules each week -- and for every rule, there's an unintended consequence, or several.

It's one reason America has been unusually slow to recover from the Great Recession. After previous recessions, employers quickly resumed hiring. Not this time. The unemployment rate is still near 8 percent. It only fell last month because people stopped looking for jobs.

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute understands what's happening.

"Add up all the regulations and red tape, all the government spending, all the tax increases we're about to get -- you can understand why entrepreneurs think: "Maybe I don't want to hire people. ... I want to keep my company small. I don't want to give health insurance, because then I'm stuck with all the Obamacare mandates." We can see our future in Europe -- unless we change. Ann Jolis, who covers European labor issues for The Wall Street Journal, watches how government-imposed work rules sabotage economies.

"The minimum guaranteed annual vacation in Europe is 20 days paid vacation a year. ... In France, it starts at 25 guaranteed days off.  This summer, the European Court of Justice gave workers the right to a vacation do-over.  You spend the last eight days of your vacation laid up with a sprained ankle, eight days automatically go into your sick leave. You get a vacation do-over."

Such benefits appeal to workers, who don't realize that the goodies come out of their wages. The unemployed don't realize that such rules deter employers from hiring them in the first place.

In Italy, some work rules kick in once a company has more than 10 employees, so companies have an incentive not to hire an 11th employee. Businesses stay small. People stay unemployed.

"European workers have the right ... to gainful unemployment," says Jolis.

Both European central planners and liberal politicians in America are clueless about what really helps workers: a free economy.

The record is clear. Central planners failed, in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, at the U.S. Postal Service and in America's public schools, and now they stifle growth in Europe and America. Central planning stops innovation.

Yet for all that failure, whenever another crisis (real or imagined) hits, the natural instinct is to say, "Politicians must do something."

In my town, unions and civil rights groups demand a higher minimum wage. That sounds good to people. Everyone will get a raise!

The problem is in what is not seen. I can interview the guy who got a raise. I can't interview workers who are never offered jobs because the minimum wage or high union pay scales "protected" those jobs out of existence.

The benefit of government leaving us alone is rarely intuitive.

Because companies just want to make a buck, it's logical to assume that only government rules assure workers' safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets safety standards for factories, and OSHA officials proudly point out that workplace deaths have dropped since it opened its doors.

Thank goodness for government, right? Well, not so fast. Go back a few years before OSHA, and we find that workplace deaths were dropping just as fast.

Workers are safer today because we are richer, and richer societies care more about safety. Even greedy employers take safety precautions if only because it's expensive to replace workers who are hurt!

Government is like the person who gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it.

In a free society, things get better on their own -- if government will only allow it. 

Barack Obama's 'Gangnam Style'

Photo credit: KOREA.NET - Official page of the Republic of Korea)

It's become a habit for Americans to embrace charismatic individuals without knowing anything about them. The reason could be that our nation's culture has devolved to the point where we're shallow, uninformed and more apt to esteem celebrity above patriotism. As a result, there are America-haters among us who have become rich and famous thanks to the accepting nature of the American people. 

Take Park Jae-sang, also known as PSY from the PSYcho World.  PSY is South Korea's very own Pee Wee Herman/pop star whose "Gangnam Style" hit is all the rage right here in the country he apparently abhors.

What's disturbing about PSY's popularity is that it says more about the star-struck American public than it does about the K-pop star. In Park's case, happily clueless, young and old alike are donning sunglasses, black and white loafers, and bow ties and dancing around "Gangnam Style" like undignified fools.

Think about it -- the "King of You Tube" phenomenon PSY is enjoying is not a new one. The pop star's meteoric rise to fame is similar to the one Barack Obama has been riding for the last five years.  That's exactly how a non-vetted individual like Obama was propelled to political superstardom and ascended to the most powerful position in the world.  Most Americans didn't know one blessed thing about the man when he was elected in 2008, still don't know much about him, and worst of all, when disturbing facts are revealed they couldn't care less. 

Barack 'Obama Style' started just like "Gangnam Style." In 2004, a relatively unknown Illinois senator showed up at the DNC convention singing his snappy collectivist tune, and within months became a national obsession.  Americans got so caught up in Obama's style that they started boogying right along with a man whose low opinion of America was obscured by an adoring media.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/barack_obamas_gangnam_style.html#ixzz2Ejcwj78j

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I'll See Your Economic Collapse and Raise You National Demise

By Selwyn Duke at American Thinker

Being just weeks away from reaching our debt ceiling and with frightening talk about a fiscal cliff, there's much sympathy in Washington for tax increases.  Even conservatives are wavering.  A few Republicans have dumped their anti-tax pledges, and former Nixon official-turned-actor Ben Stein favors taxing the wealthy.  He says that we can't cut our way to a balanced budget and insists that the revenue end must be addressed.  But I have news for him: he'll have a better chance finding Ferris Bueller on his day off than he will locating fiscal sanity through tax increases.

Let's get real. Federal revenue this year will be approximately $2.5 trillion.

That's $2,500,000,000,000.

How much, again?  Well, updating some examples Rob Bluey provided at The Foundry lends the following perspective:

• It is 2,500 billion.

• At $45.8 million per year, LeBron James would need to work 54,607.5 years to earn it.

• Average life in the U.S. lasts 2.4 billion seconds.

• 2.5 billion seconds ago = 1933.

• 2.5 trillion seconds ago = 74,250 BC.

Furthermore, a stack of 2.5 trillion dollar bills would reach a height of 169,665 miles -- more than two thirds the way to the moon. This brings us to the second part of the problem.

We're set to spend this year $3,500,000,000,000.

Stacked up, that many bills reach to the moon.  And that's where we're headed fiscally.

To the moon, Alice.

Now, let's get back to calls for more revenue.  Imagine you had a teenager to whom you gave $1,000 a month, and he not only squandered it every time, but also continually maxed out his credit cards.  Would your solution be to give him even more money and/or secure him a credit-line increase?  Or might you, outraged, cut up the credit cards and tell him he must live within his means?  (In reality, you should cut him off completely.)

This may seem a ridiculous example, giving a teenager one grand a month.  But is it any more ridiculous than giving the feds $208,000,000,000 a month and then entertaining the notion that they should perhaps get even more?  Bueller?  Bueller?

Stein?

Listen, if the government cannot get by on $2.5 trillion a year, guess what!

Pull it up root and branch and start anew.

Root and branch.

Also note that the government did get by on $2.5 trillion as recently as 2005; thus, a balanced budget could be achieved simply by resurrecting the spending levels of seven years ago.  And if we returned to the 2004 budget, we'd run a surplus exceeding $200 billion with current revenue.

But it'll never happen.

Part of the reason why brings us back to Stein's belief that we can't cut our way to a balanced budget.  He's actually correct -- given the feds' definition of a "cut."  I'm referring to Washington's accounting trick known as "baseline budgeting," a process by which the government labels any proposal to reduce the rate of spending growth of an already inflated budget projection a cut.  Citizens Against Government Waste explains the warped thinking:

[I]f an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut. That is analogous to a person who expects to gain 100 pounds only gaining 75 pounds, and taking credit for losing 25 pounds.

If liberal politicians were truly serious about fiscal restraint, they'd eliminate this sleight-of-hand.  But they won't, because they're not.  Ronald Reagan learned this the hard way in the 1980s when he agreed to a budget deal that included three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases.  The taxes came first.

The cuts never came at all.

As Reagan later wrote, "[t]he Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts."

So here's a message for Republicans who think that liberals can be negotiated with on the budget.  I'll be blunt.

Hey, idiots, they're not going to stop spending.  Capisce?

Yes, I screamed that.  How do I know they won't stop?  Ooh, maybe because they haven't stopped for 50 years?  Maybe because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior?  It's also because a liberal is a liberal is a liberal.  A scorpion stings, a cuttlefish expels ink, a skunk sprays mercaptan fluid, and a liberal spends.  It's what the species does.

Many conservatives don't grasp this, however.  They make a common mistake: they assume that others think as they do.  They're largely rational, so they expect rational behavior from their fellow man.  But as I explained recently, emotion prevails in people's decision-making far more than you may think.  What feels right often trumps what is right, even when the former is downright stupid.

It's as with an old friend of my father's whom I'll call Sal.  Sal had a gambling problem and spent and spent and borrowed and borrowed until he could borrow and spend no more.  Bankruptcy finally "cured" him.  And such is the fate of the soon-to-be late, great United States.  The dependency class will go over the cliff grasping at their freebies, and the politicians will take us over the cliff dispensing them.  Hey, a civilization's gotta die a' somethin', right?

This is one reason I'm adamantly opposed to tax increases.  Like the reckless teenager or Sal, the federal beast will simply consume whatever ventures near its insatiable maw and then some.  So my message would be: get by on what you have -- or to Hades with you.  Go over that cliff.  Because like any addict, you can't help yourself.  And better it happens sooner, while Americans still have a bit more change in their pockets (for whatever it's worth), than after they're further impoverished in the name of balancing the budget.

So what's the endgame?  First, our more than $16 trillion national debt increases by an average of $3.87 billion per day and amounts to $52,000 for every man, woman, and child.  This will never be paid off.

Never.

Yet I do see one way out of our debt hole.  When the profligates in government (and their sheeple voters) finally collapse the system, there won't even be a common federal feeding trough to hold our culturally, ethnically, and ideologically balkanized land together.  We then may dissolve as the Soviet Union did, with various states, or blocks of them, going their separate ways.  And guess who'd be left holding the bag?  Note: the $16 trillion we owe is federal debt, not state.  And I'd just say, hey, Washington, D.C., you know that debt thing?  Good luck with all that.

Of course, the Chinese would end up getting stiffed.  But they pony up the dough only because they have a symbiotic relationship with us: they keep us afloat so we can buy their goods.  Besides, anyone foolish enough to lend money to our government gets no sympathy from me.  The only question is whether we'll be foolish enough to believe that throwing good taxes after bad will change bad spenders into good shepherds.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

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5 Reasons Unions Are Bad For America

(Photo credit: Toban Black)

by John Hawkins and published at Town Hall.


At one time in this country, there were few workplace safety laws, few restraints on employers, and incredibly exploitative working conditions that ranged from slavery, to share cropping, to putting children in dangerous working conditions. Unions, to their everlasting credit, helped play an important role in leveling the playing field for workers.

However, as the laws changed, there was less and less need for unions. Because of that, union membership shrank. In response, the unions became more explicitly involved in politics. Over time, they managed to co-opt the Democratic Party, pull their strings, and rewrite our labor laws in their favor.

As Lord Acton noted, "Power tends to corrupt," and that has certainly been true for the unions. Unions have become selfish, extremely greedy, and even thuggish in their never-ending quest to take in as much as they can for themselves, at the expense of everyone else who crosses their path.

That's why today, unions have changed from organizations that "look out for the little guy" into the largest, most rapacious special interest group in the entire country. Where unions go, disaster usually follows. Just to name a few examples:

1) Unions are severely damaging whole industries: How is it that GM and Chrysler got into such lousy shape that they had to be bailed out? There's a simple answer: The unions. The massive pensions the car companies paid out raised their costs so much that they were limited to building more expensive cars to try to get their money back. They couldn't even do a great job of building those cars because utterly ridiculous union rules prevented them from using their labor efficiently. America created the automobile industry, but American unions are strangling it to death. Unions also wrecked the steel and textile industries and have helped drive manufacturing jobs overseas. They're crippling the airline industry and, of course, we can't forget that.

2) Unions are ruining public education: Every few years, it's the same old story. The teachers’ unions claim that public education in this country is dramatically underfunded and if they just had more money, they could turn it around. Taxpayer money then pours into our schools like a waterfall and....there's no improvement. A few years later, when people have forgotten the last spending spree on education, the process is repeated.

However, the real problem with our education system in this country is the teachers’ unions. They do everything possible to prevent schools not only from firing lousy teachers, but also from rewarding talented teachers. Merit pay? The unions hate it. Private schools? Even though everyone knows they deliver a better education than our public schools, unions fight to keep as many kids as possible locked in failing private schools. In Wisconsin, we've had whole schools shutting down so that lazy teachers can waste their time protesting on the taxpayers’ dime. Want to improve education in this country? Then you've got to take on the teachers’ unions.

3) Unions are costing you billions of tax dollars: Let's put it plain and simple: Government workers shouldn't be allowed to unionize. Period.

Why?

Because you elect representatives to look out for your interests.

It's obviously in your interest to pay as little as possible to government workers, to keep their benefits as low as possible, and to hire as few of them as possible to do the job. However, because the Democratic Party and the unions are in bed with each other, this entire process has been turned on its ear. Instead of looking out for your interests, Democrats try to hire as many government workers as possible, pay them as much as possible, and give them benefits that are as generous as possible, all so that union workers will do more to get them re-elected.

In other words, the Democratic Party and the unions are engaged in an open conspiracy to defraud the American taxpayer. There's no way that the American people should allow that to continue.

4) Unions are fundamentally anti-democratic : How in the world did we get to the point where people can be forced to join a union just to get a job at certain places? Then, after they're dragooned into the union, they have no choice other than to pay dues that are used for political activities which the unwilling dues-paying member may oppose.

Add to that the fact that the Democrats and the government unions collaborate to subvert democracy at the expense of the taxpayer and it's not a pretty picture. Worse yet, unions have gotten so voracious that they even want to do away with the secret ballot, via card check, so they can openly bully people into joining unions. The way unions behave in this country is undemocratic, un-American, and it should trouble anyone who cares about freedom and individual rights.

5) Government unions are bankrupting cities and states: Government unions have bled billions from taxpayers nationally, but the damage they're doing on the local level is even worse. We have cities and states all across the country that are so behind on their bills that there have been genuine discussions about bankruptcy. There are a lot of irresponsible financial policies that have helped contribute to that sorry state-of-affairs, but unquestionably, the biggest backbreakers can be directly traced back to the unions.

As the Washington Times has noted, union pensions are crushing budgets all across the country.

Yet it comes as little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the corridors of federal power infects this country’s 87,000 state, county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars.

So, what happens when these pensions can't be paid? They will come to the taxpayers with their hands out. When they stroll forward with their beggar's bowl in hand, the American people should keep their wallets in their pockets. That may not seem fair, but the public sector union members have gotten a great deal at everyone else's expense for a long time and if somebody has to take a haircut, and they do, it should be the union members instead of the taxpayers they've been bilking for so long.

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A Quick Lesson in Voter Fraud

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This article was originally published at American Thinker.

On the Harvesting of Votes

Forrest Gump

David Horowitz brings us a very disturbing report on the extent to which the traditional harvesting of votes by parties has degenerated into massive, uncontrollable ballot manipulation by Democrats.

Traditional "vote harvesters" have as their mission the gathering of  "... unthinking collectives of potential voters -- nursing home residents, college students, skid-row dwellers, recent immigrants -- and get them to vote[.]"

Mr. Horowitz is a red-diaper baby and a former "Marxist intellectual"-turned-militant conservative who here recounts a conversation he had with his "... brother-in-law, Henry, who has lived most of his life in a home for the mentally disabled and although now in his 40s, has the intelligence level of a 6-year-old."

"Obama saved me," he said to me out of the blue.  "What do you mean?"  "I voted for him for president and now he's saving me."

I was taken aback by these words, since Henry had no idea who Obama was, or what a president might be, and would be unable to fill out a registration form let alone get to the polling place by himself.

So I asked him how he knew that and how he had registered and cast his vote. In halting, impeded speech he told me that the people who take care of him at the home filled out "the papers" to register him to vote, told him how Obama cared for him, even taught him the Obama chants, and then took him to the polling place to vote. They did the same for all of the mentally disabled patients in their care, approximately 60 in all.

Mr. Horowitz prefaced the recounting of that conversation with a little history:

Everybody by now knows - or should know - how readily Democrats conduct election fraud, and how determined they are to defend it[.] ... [They] have promoted Motor Voter laws and same day registration, and month-long election days to help them mobilize the votes of people who are so unconnected to the political process and so uninterested in the country's future, and perhaps so incompetent to understand what voting entails,  that they require keepers to see that they get to the polls and then vote the "right" way.

Mr. Horowitz, and most readers, may be "taken aback" by his brother-in-law's words, but sailors and anyone familiar with the operation of such facilities certainly are not.

The shockingly low level of supervision by "people who take care of" the residents of those facilities should be a concern for everyone, but now, given what the Democrats and their operatives are able to do, it should be of particular concern of conservatives.

Operators, case managers, social workers, counselors, and the like have relatively unfettered, private, and almost unlimited access to the residents of hundreds if not thousands these facilities across the county.

They may do or say what they wish about anything, and no one is the wiser unless a resident or someone else complains.  And you are billed for it at every step of the process (but that's a tale for another post).

But Mr. Horowitz is not alone in his concerns:

The House Elections Committee on Monday heard bills addressing absentee ballot fraud, measures aimed at reforming the mail-in ballot process in the state and making it tougher for individuals to alter election results.   "Assisted voter fraud is the largest growing fraud that we have," state Rep. Aaron Peña, R-Edinburg, told the committee. "It's an outgrowth of the old boss system, and it has never really stopped."

A similar story cuts to the nub (emphasis added):

Jimmy Green's stepdaughter had never voted before. The 57-year-old is mentally disabled, and Green said she doesn't understand the concept of casting a ballot.  But this week, she called her parents to say she had voted for President Obama. The care home in Fayetteville where she lives registered its residents to vote and drove them to the polls[.] ... "My concern is that somebody told her who to vote for," he said. "She didn't even know there's two different parties."

Complaints of uncomprehending voters being ferried to cast ballots surface every election. And in a presidential race as close as this year's, with huge levels of early voting, any perceived irregularity is falling under intense scrutiny.  But federal and state laws are very clear - there is no competency test for voting.

And there is more here:

... because prosecutors complain the cases are hard to prove. When they are prosecuted, the penalties are so small they don't deter the crime. So, with payment as "get out the vote" workers for candidates, the vote harvesters continue to hijack absentee ballots by sending applications on behalf of voters, arriving on their doorstep as the ballots arrive and coaching their votes.  It's almost like it's OK because it's always been done[.]"

For those readers who may wish to learn more, a very good legal discussion of the issue and the problems involved in correcting it can be found here:

Although many aspects of vote harvesting are clear violations of state law, lack of enforcement and minor penalties offer little deterrence.

Another piece gives a "representative sampling of techniques," including:

Registering patients without their knowledge or against their will.

Registrations resulting in the person being registered multiple times with the state, or possibly two different states.

Registering patients who have been judged incompetent.

Applying for an absentee ballot either without the person's knowledge or against the person's will and inserting their organization as a "voting assistant."

Submitting a prepared ballot to a patient for signature, forging the person's signature or signing for recently deceased patients.

Mr. Horowitz reminds us:

In the election that put Al Franken in the Senate by a few hundred votes, more than a thousand felons voted illegally because of the loose laws that govern the polling booth - laws the Democrats want to make more loose.

So, if you might think the issue minor, please do recall: no Al Franken, no ObamaCare!

And Mr. Horowitz voices his hopes that:

... poll-watching groups like "True the Vote" will comb the rolls of residents at other homes for the mentally disabled, and attempt to stop this particular abuse[.] ... [And] that people who care about our country will make electoral fraud a focus of their political efforts, and work to protect the integrity of the voting process.

We surely must agree with those hopes, and we, too, must act.

Forrest Gump is the pen name of the author, who has firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of residential and care institutions and knows how manipulable their residents can be.

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