Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, September 7, 2010


Yes... indeed I do...
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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/06/morning-bell-labor-day-has-become-government-day/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

This Labor Day marks a milestone in the history of the U.S. union movement. It is the first Labor Day on which a majority of union members in United States work for the government.

The face of the union movement is not a worker on the assembly line but a clerk at the DMV.

This is a dramatic shift for the union movement. The early trade unionists did not believe that unions had a place in government. They believed the purpose of unions was to redistribute business profits from owners to workers … and the government makes no profits.

So what? Why should Americans care if unions are now dominated by workers who get their paychecks from governments, instead of workers who get their paychecks from private firms?

There’s one simple reason: private firms face competition; governments don’t.

Collective bargaining, the anti-trust exemption at the heart the labor movement’s power, was created to help workers seize their “fair share” of business profits. But if a union ends up extracting a contract from a private firm that eats up too much of the profits, then that firm will be unable to reinvest those resources and will lose out to competitors. But when a union extracts a generous contract from a government, there is no check on that spending. Instead of being forced out by more efficient competitors, the government just raises taxes.

The shift from private to public sector has fundamentally changed organized labor’s priorities. Unions used to support policies that would help their private sector employers grow. But now that they are largely dependent on the government, the only growth that unions are interested in is the growth of government.

September 7, 2010 at 4:39 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1769:successful-economic-policies-for-whom&catid=31:texas-straight-talk

* BY CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL (R-TX)

This administration inherited an unemployment rate of 7.7% and promised a peak of no higher than 8% if their policies were followed.

* TODAY, "STRAIGHT" UNEMPLOYMENT (U-3) IS PEGGED AT 9.6% AND "UNDEREMPLOYMENT" (U-6) STANDS AT 16.7%.

Last week...the administration continued to claim that their economic policies were working...[yet] 40 million [Americans] currently [rely] on food stamps. Nearly 1 in 6 Americans depend on those and other government anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid and unemployment benefits. As more Americans are added to the unemployment rolls, the tax base from which to hand out their benefits is shrinking. Still, businesses are being taxed and regulated out of the market, adding to the problem. What solutions are put forth? More government spending - even as each citizen’s portion of the public debt is over $43,000...

[C]urrent economic policy does [however] “work” for some people.

For example, it has worked out very well for certain bankers and large corporations, who took on too much risk and got themselves in hot water, and were declared “too big to fail” which is really a euphemism for “friends in high places.”

It works well for large, well-connected military industrial corporations, who can always count on perpetual war and conflict to keep them in business.

It also works for those on the government’s payroll, which is increasing as the tax base is decreasing.

Once [government] steals as much from you as it can get away with through taxation, it steals even more from you through what central bankers like to call quantitative easing, which is more or less the same thing as counterfeiting.

When the money is no longer based on a finite quantity of something of value, like a store of gold or silver, the amount of money in circulation is not limited by anything but the restraint of those in control of the printing presses, in our case the Fed and the US Treasury.

When increasing pressure is put upon them by irresponsible politicians, it is predictable that out of thin air, more money will be created to satisfy the insatiable appetites of those on political spending sprees.

As money becomes more plentiful, it becomes less valuable, and the average citizen suffers again as the value of their savings evaporates.

It has happened over and over in history, and what usually follows is the total debasement of the currency, hyperinflation and chaos.

* I KNOW YOU'VE BEEN READING ABOUT "DEFLATION" AS OPPOSED TO HYPERINFLATION, BUT ASK YOURSELVES... IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN SIMPLY PRINT ALL THE MONEY IT WANTS WITH WITH NO ILL EFFECTS... HOW COME EACH ONE OF US - EACH CITIZEN - ISN'T BEING SENT A CHECK FOR $1 MILLION A YEAR...???

September 7, 2010 at 4:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703946504575469542721199832.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

* AND NO... LENORE SKENAZY IS NOT MY PEN NAME!

(*CHUCKLE*) (*WINK*)

If you think the first week of September means kids skipping off to school, you might want to check your calendar - for the century. The way you got to school isn't the way they do.

Take the bus. Sure, about 40% of kids still ride the cheery yellow chugger, but in many towns it doesn't stop only at the bus stops anymore. It stops at each child's house.

Often, the kids aren't waiting outside to get on. They are waiting in their parents' cars - cars the parents drove from the garage to the sidewalk so their children would be climate-controlled and safe from the predators so prevalent on suburban driveways.

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... I DO DOUBT AMERICA CAN BE SAVED. THERE ARE JUST TOO MANY OF "THEM" OUT THERE. (*FROWN*)

Today, only about one in 10 kids walks to school, says Lauren Marchetti, director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School.

* CAN ANYONE SAY C*H*I*L*D*H*O*O*D O*B*E*S*I*T*Y?

"When we first moved to town we found a house three blocks from the school," says Annie Anderson, a mom in Corpus Christi, Texas. "The day before school started a lady knocked on my door and asked if I'd like to join the carpool."

"Carpool to where?" Ms. Anderson asked. "She proceeded to explain that not only would I pick up her kid and others every morning of my assigned week, but I would need to pick up their 'carpool seats' before Monday and pass them to the next parent on Friday." Ms. Anderson declined and allowed her second-grader to walk instead.

He beat the car every day.

September 7, 2010 at 7:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071281687927918.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The recession preceded Mr. Obama's Inaugural by 13 months, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and so did the President's fiscal policy ideas.

George W. Bush got there first.

* YEP. BUSH DESERVES BLAME FOR LIGHTING THE MATCH. BUT... REMEMBER... HE HAD HELP!

In February 2008, he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed on a $168 billion combination of federal spending and temporary tax rebates that were supposed to maintain growth through the housing market decline that election year.

* AND I'M SURE THERE'S NO NEED TO POINT OUT WHICH THEN-SENATOR (BLACK GUY... REPRESENTED ILLINOIS...) GAVE HIS BLESSING TO THE DEAL.

(*SMIRK*)

Larry Summers, who would later become Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser, made the case for such a stimulus to boost domestic "demand" in late 2007. Any stimulus, he told the Brookings Institution, should be "timely, targeted and temporary." Peter Orszag, then at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before joining the Obama White House, made the same case.

* SUMMERS AND ORSZAG - BOTH IDIOTS!

Enter Stimulus II, the $814 billion plan that was also supposed to make up for lost private demand. It too was a combination of one-time tax rebates and spending, mostly on social programs like Medicaid rather than on "shovel-ready projects." Mr. Summers promised this would have a 1.5 "multiplier" effect on GDP growth, and White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein famously predicted the spending would keep the jobless rate below 8%.

* ROMER... BERNSTEIN... IDIOTS...!!! (OH... AND BTW... BUSH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS ONE! IT WAS ALL OBAMA/REID/PELOSI.)

During this time, too, [the Democrat-controlled] Congress passed other industry-specific stimulus bills - cash-for-clunkers, the $8,000 home-buyer's tax credit, mortgage payment relief, and jobless pay up to 99 weeks. (Yet all of this has merely stolen auto and home purchases from the future, with sales falling once the tax benefits expired.) [And as for the unemployment extensions... they've arguably retarded, not spurred, employment growth!]

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

September 7, 2010 at 7:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/09/07/iraq.us.soldiers/index.html

An Iraqi soldier opened fire Tuesday on a group of U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, killing two and wounding nine others, the Iraqi military said.

* YEAH... BUT LOOK ON THE "BRIGHT SIDE." AT LEAST ALL U.S. "COMBAT" TROOPS ARE OUT OF IRAQ. I'M SURE THAT WILL BE OF SOME COMFORT TO THE FAMILIES OF THE SLAIN AND WOUNDED AMERICAN "NON-COMBAT" TROOPS.

(*SMIRK*)

In a second attack in Salaheddin province, a U.S. soldier and a number of Iraqis were wounded when a convoy in central Tikrit was hit by grenades early Tuesday afternoon, a U.S. military spokesman said.

* HMM... ONE MORE TIME... PLEASE, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL US ABOUT HOW THERE ARE NO MORE U.S. "COMBAT" TROOPS IN IRAQ.

U.S. troops are expected to advise and assist Iraq's security forces, back Iraqi troops in counterterrorism missions and protect American civilians there during a transitional period.

* AND DIE...

(*SIGH*)

September 7, 2010 at 7:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local-beat/Council-Meetings-to-Begin-with-Muslim-Prayers-102387499.html

The [Hartford, Connecticutt City] Council announced Tuesday that it has invited local imams to perform Islamic invocations at the beginning of the Council meetings in September.

* WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...

Though meetings don't regularly begin with any form of prayer...

(*MASSIVE FRIGG'N HEADACHE*)

* HEY... I WONDER IF THE LOCAL BRANCH OF THE ACLU DOWN THERE IS GONNA GO TO COURT AND TRY AND BLOCK THIS.

(*SNICKER*)

September 7, 2010 at 7:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/07/long-island-man-arrested-for-defending-home-with-ak-47/

He was arrested for protecting his property and family.

But it’s how the Long Island man did it that police say crossed the line.

He got an AK-47 assault rifle, pulled the trigger and he ended up in jail, reports CBS 2’s Pablo Guzman.

* IT WASN'T AN AK-47. AK-47's ARE FULLY AUTOMATIC AND ILLEGAL TO OWN UNLESS ONE HAS A VERY SPECIFIC FEDERAL PERMIT. IT WAS PROBABLY AN AR-15 - A SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLE MADE TO "LOOK" LIKE AN AK-47. (STUPID LAZY REPORTING...)

George Grier said he had to use his rifle on Sunday night to stop what he thought was going to be an invasion of his Uniondale home by a gang he thought might have been the vicious “MS-13.” He said the whole deal happened as he was about to drive his cousin home. “I went around and went into the house, ran upstairs and told my wife to call the police. I get the gun and I go outside and I come into the doorway and now, by this time, they are in the driveway, back here near the house. I tell them, you know, ‘Can you please leave?’ Grier said.

* QUESTION: WHY WOULD GANG MEMBERS BE TARGETING THIS GUY...??? (WERE THEY AFTER THE COUSIN?)

Grier said the five men dared him to use the gun; and that their shouts brought another larger group of gang members in front of his house.

“He starts threatening my family, my life. ‘Oh you’re dead. I’m gonna kill your family and your babies. You’re dead.’ So when he says that, 20 others guys come rushing around the corner. And so I fired four warning shots into the grass,” Grier said.

Grier was later arrested. John Lewis is Grier’s attorney.

“What he’s initially charged with - A D felony reckless endangerment - requires a depraved indifference to human life, creating a risk that someone’s going to die. Shooting into a lawn doesn’t create a risk of anybody dying,” Lewis said.

Grier said he knew Nassau County Police employ the hi-tech “ShotSpotter” technology in his area and that the shooting would bring police in minutes. Cops told Guzman he was very cooperative.

Grier also said he was afraid the gang outside his house was the dreaded MS-13.

Nassau County Police Lt. Andrew Mulraine, head of the gang unit, said MS-13 has 2,000 members in the county.

“They’re probably the most organized. They almost have a military hierarchy within the gang, so they are the most organized gang we encounter on a daily basis,” Mulraine said.

Police determined Grier had the gun legally. He has no criminal record. And so he was not charged for the weapon.

That ShotSpotter technology pinpoints where a gun has been fired within 35 feet. Police said it also detected two other shootings in nearby Roosevelt that night.

* YOU REALLY THINK WE'RE SAFE, FOLKS? WRONG PLACE... WRONG TIME... BANG - YOU'RE DEAD. WE'RE IN DEEP DOO-DOO FOLKS.

September 7, 2010 at 7:46 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100908/tts-climate-warming-science-ice-c1b2fc3.html

Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.

(*SMIRK*)

* OOPS!

September 7, 2010 at 7:50 PM

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