Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Mornin', kids!
Some random musings...
So... did you all read yesterday's newsbites? Hopefully you all read yesterday's newsbite concerning those sleezebags Kerry, Clinton, and ultimately Obama.
Yep... if that wasn't giving the American People "The Finger" big time than I don't know what would more blatantly qualify.
How'bout that newsbite yesterday concerning the Fed and that "closed circle" that for all intents and purposes represents monetization of deficit/debt?
Hey... folks... all newsbites aren't created equal. Some are more important than others and some will give you more facts that you might not otherwise be aware of than others. (Hey... how'bout the newsbite concerning "The Butler?" Pretty interesting, huh?)
Anyway... enough about yesterday's newsbites. Today is a new day!
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-sentence-bradley-manning-today/2013/08/20/85bee184-09d0-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html?hpid=z1
A military judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
* AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO WORRIES THAT THERE ARE "HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS" OF "CLASSIFIED" DOCUMENTS TO LEAK? (PROBABLY MILLIONS...??? PERHAPS TENS OF MILLIONS...??? MORE...?!?!)
Manning, 25, was convicted last month of multiple charges, including violations of the Espionage Act for copying and disseminating the documents while serving as an intelligence analyst at a forward operating base in Iraq. He faced up to 90 years in prison.
* AND YET RICHARD ARMITAGE WAS NEVER EVEN OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED - LET ALONE CHARGED WITH A CRIME - FOR BEING THE LEAKER (TO THE LATE RICHARD NOVACK) OF VALERIE PLAME'S IDENTIY.
* AND YET TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS PROBABLY STILL CONSIDER GENERAL COLIN POWELL - ARMITAGE'S BOSS AT THE TIME OF "LA AFFAIRE PLAME" - AS A NATIONAL TREASURE... THOUGH POWELL HAD BASICALLY "CONSPIRED" WITH ARMITAGE WHILE KEEPING THE TRUTH FROM PRESIDENT BUSH.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Manning is required to serve one-third of the sentence, minus three and half years of time served, before he is eligible for parole. That will be in eight years when he is 33.
* SO IN REALITY WE'RE NOT REALLY TALKING A 35-YEAR SENTENCE... OR ARE WE? FOLKS... THIS IS LUDACRIS! FORGET "SWIFT AND SURE" JUSTICE; OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IS TOTALLY FLY BY NIGHT... OFF THE CUFF... SUBJECTIVE RATHER THAN OBJECTIVE.
As Manning was escorted out of the packed courtroom, more than half a dozen supporters shouted out to him, “We’ll keep fighting for you, Bradley! You’re our hero!”
* I DON'T KNOW ABOUT THAT... BUT I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT SPECIFIC SECRETS HE RELEASED WHICH HURT AMERICA AND AMERICANS RATHER THAN DOING OUR COUNTRY A FAVOR!
Legal proceedings against Manning began in December 2011...
(*HEADACHE*)
* IT'S... AUGUST... 2013...
* AGAIN... EVEN OUR MILITARY JUSTICE SYSTEM IS OBVIOUSLY HOPELESSLY BROKEN.
http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2012/10/10/the-golden-states-self-inflicted-crisis/?utm_content=Why+Californians+Paid+80+Cents+More+Per+Gallon+of+Gas&utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Perspectives_-_Tier_2
When higher energy costs impact everyday lives, it can be a painful reminder that energy policies have real-world consequences.
California is facing just such a moment. Motorists in the Golden State recently paid record high prices for gasoline – prices that were more than 80 cents higher than the national average.
What’s behind this costly surge for consumers? California’s policies...
It’s important to keep in mind that California’s energy policies have effectively turned the state into a “fuel island” – disconnected from the rest of the U.S. market. California’s state-specific fuel standards and isolated logistics mean that gasoline and diesel can’t be easily brought in from other states when there is a supply shortfall. And a host of only-in-California regulations have raised costs, making it more difficult for refiners to invest in new technologies, and have even forced several refiners to shutter their facilities.
* GEEZUS...
Obviously, it’s a situation that leaves California motorists extremely vulnerable to supply disruptions. The market simply can’t respond adequately within these constraints.
One of several causes in last week’s supply disruption [in California] involved ExxonMobil, but we didn’t have the power to do anything about it – literally. An incident at a Southern California Edison substation cut the power that the utility supplies to our refinery in Torrance. To ensure safety, we were forced to suspend refinery operations, which meant suspending production of gasoline and diesel that supplies some of the California market. It compounded a problem already created by a disruption at a Chevron refinery in the Bay area, and by other unrelated problems. The markets responded to the drop in supply by pushing prices upward.
Of course, California is entitled to adopt the energy and environmental policies it deems best.
* INCLUDING SOME OF THE HIGHEST STATE GAS TAXES IN THE NATION!
But recent events are a reminder that government policy can have unintended effects on energy markets.
Policies must be sound and market-oriented or the inevitable result will be that consumers suffer the consequences.
* GEEZUS... I'M GUESSING... FIVE-PARTER (Part 1 of 5)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356322/living-law-charles-c-w-cooke
In his dazzling revolutionary polemic, "Common Sense," Thomas Paine explained in no uncertain terms that "in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."
* PAINE IS DEAD. SO TOO IS THE RULE OF LAW.
John Adams put this a little more pithily a few years later, distilling into the new constitution of Massachusetts an ancient English value: "This state," Adams wrote, would be “a government of laws and not of men.”
* TODAY... THIS SENTIMENT ISN'T EVEN HONORED ON THE SURFACE. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT WHAT MATTERS IS "WHO YOU ARE."
Adams’s axiom has become American scripture - an impulsively recalled maxim of liberty to which all men who feel threatened by government power return at will.
* BECAME...
Yet recent trends call into question whether the two things remain mutually exclusive.
In Common Sense, Paine sets the king and the law as being diametrically opposed. But what if, instead of holding him back, the law is happy to give the king carte blanche? And what if a Congress that we instinctively believe to be jealous of its territory is in fact content to cede it to the executive branch, thereby producing not traditional laws but enabling acts?
* THIS IS INDEED LARGELY AMERICA'S POLITICAL REALITY.
It is a small jump from regarding the Constitution as “living” — as swathes of the will-to-power Left unashamedly do — to regarding legislation as “living,” too.
* THINK ABOUT THAT, FOLKS; JUST THINK ABOUT THAT...
This is a jump that many appear to have made.
(*NOD*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 5)
One of the more insidious developments of this presidential era has been the replacement of prescriptive, detailed, and fixed domestic law with bloated and open-ended legislation that is punctuated ad nauseam with instances of “the secretary shall.”
(*NOD*)
As my colleague Andrew Stiles has noticed, the Senate’s desired immigration bill fits this new model of “living law” perfectly. He writes: The 844-page bill contains 129 instances of what the DHS secretary “shall” do to implement its myriad provisions, 102 mentions of what she “may” do, and 35 cases in which implementation will be based on what the secretary “determines.” On five occasions, the bill affirms the DHS secretary’s “unreviewable discretion” to waive or alter certain provisions as she sees fit.
* OBAMA IS BUILDING A "PLUG-IN" DICTATORSHIP - WITH THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRATS... AND FAR TOO MANY REPUBLICANS... IN CONGRESS. WHAT HE'S DOING IS INDEED FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGING AMERICA AND HOW OUR GOVERNMENT WORKS... OR DOESN'T WORK.
This should come as no great surprise to anyone. ObamaCare, which makes the Senate’s immigration bill look like an exercise in legislative restraint, contains over 2,500 references to the secretary’s discretion, 700 cases in which the secretary “shall,” 200 instances in which the secretary “may,” and 139 cases in which the secretary “determines.” Its twin, Dodd-Frank, which effectively allows an unelected Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to police the personal-finance sector, is little different, aggregating the power of the three branches into one, stripping Congress of its traditional capacity to set an agency’s budget and severely limiting the courts’ opportunity to review the CFPB’s legal interpretations.
This is law, Jim — but not as we know it.
To ask for a concise explanation of what these new sorts of laws do would be futile, because the only meaningful answer is that they give the president the scope to run certain parts of the economy the way he wants. And what he wants is what Woodrow Wilson wanted in The Study of Administration: a means by which to “open for the public a bureau of skilled, economical administration” that is filled with the “hundreds who are wise” and that thwarts the “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish.” Government of the expert, by the powerful, and for the unworthy, in other words.
* NOW... CONTINUE READING... PAY CLOSE ATTENTION...
This, it should not need saying, stands in diametric opposition to the underlying principle — the “all-important English trait,” Orwell called it — that made the Anglosphere exceptional in the first place: that the law is regarded as “something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.”
* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THERE'S A WAR AGAINST WESTERN CULTURE... DEAD WHITE MEN... PARTICULARLY ANGLO-CULTURE.
* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... AMERICA BECAME AMERICA BECAUSE OF OUR ANGLO-HERITAGE - NOT OUR "EUROPEAN" HERITAGE. OH, SURE, WE HAD GERMANS. NOT EVERYONE WAS OF ENGLISH/WELSH/SCOTTISH/IRISH DESCENT... BUT UNDERSTAND, OUR FOUNDER'S AMERICA WAS FOUNDED UPON ENGLISH STOCK - NOT ITALIAN... NOT SPANISH... CERTAINLY NOT "HISPANIC"... NOT EVEN FRENCH...
* FOLKS... WHEN AMERICA CEASED BEING AN "ANGLO" DOMINATED COUNTRY... THAT'S WHEN OUR DECLINE BEGAN IN EARNEST. (AND I'M HALF ITALIAN!)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 3)
“The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root,” Orwell claimed of his native England.
* IT'S NOT JUST NATIONALITY - IT'S RELIGIOUS TRADITION - PROTESTANT vs. CATHOLIC.
* FOLKS... I WISH I COULD SIMPLY "GIFT" YOU ALL WITH MY EDUCATION... BUT I CAN'T. BUT I'LL CONTINUE TO DO THE BEST I CAN VIA THESE NEWSBITES AND MY STAND-ALONE POSTS. I UNDERSTAND MUCH OF WHAT I "TEACH" HERE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN "TAUGHT" BEFORE. (INDEED... JUST THE OPPOSITE!)
It has not quite taken root in America, either. But even here, the law, which should be firmly and beautifully dead, is in danger of taking on a life of its own. If it is allowed to do so, Americans will invite in caprice, the half-brother of whim, which, as Christopher Hitchens astutely observed, is the “essence of tyranny.”
* YES, FOLKS... TYRANNY. IT DOESN'T ALWAYS COME WITH A BLACK HAT... A SKULL AND CROSSED-BONES... A SWASTIKA... A HAMMER AND SICKLE... OR OTHER OUTRIGHT "IDENTIFIERS."
Students of history will know that Americans have flirted with such expansive measures before, with consequences that were catastrophic for good and limited government. In the modern era, the worst such example is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964), which, by virtue of its wildly ambiguous language and a remarkable and fail-safe provision that allowed the president to “take all necessary measures” in Southeast Asia, effectively gave President Lyndon Johnson license to launch and escalate the Vietnam War without the need for Congress’s warrant.
(*NOD*)
The eventual outcry, joined with general disillusionment with the imperial presidency, led not only to repeal of the resolution itself but also to the War Powers Act (1973), which, for some time at least, went some way toward restoring congressional constraints on the executive branch.
* NOT REALLY. BUT FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT LET'S SAY THIS WAS SO... FOR AWHILE. IT HASN'T BEEN SO SINCE 9/11. EVEN BEFORE BUSH... THINK OF CLINTON'S BALKANS ADVENTURE. AND SINCE OBAMA BECAME PRESIDENT...?!?!
(*SNORT*)
In that they carry Congress’s blessing, our living laws are distinct from rule without Congress, a rule for which Obama is becoming increasingly famous. Nevertheless, both living legislation and executive rule rely for sustenance on the same appeals to urgency and necessity that our 44th president has perfected. Michael Oakeshott shrewdly observed in On History that the nomocrats will always be at a disadvantage because, while the rule of law “remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised,” it nevertheless “bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault.” Suffice to say: That the rule of law can distribute no loaves or fishes, in an age in which distributing loaves and fishes is regarded as the highest of all government functions, is a desperate problem for it.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* GOOD NEWS! MADE IT IN FOUR PARTS! (Part 4 of 4)
Moved as we now are by our fetishization of democracy, claims of tyranny in America tend to be curtailed by the sight of elections. It is the German Enabling Act of 1933 that we mostly fear — a dramatic measure that would allow a man to rule in perpetuity as a king. But we overlook the real danger posed by other, duly passed, acts of Congress.
America has never worked on the basis that the executive branch may do as it wishes during its four-year term with the understanding that, if the people don’t like it, they may remove the president when his time is up. Even presidents who win virtually every state in the union are required to follow the law, and they are required to remain in their designated sphere, too. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place for our despotism?
In Federalist 47, Madison forthrightly characterized as “tyranny” the investment of great power in one branch of government. In Federalist 48, he built on this idea, warning that “powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments.”
America’s constitution operates on the presumption that the branches of government will inevitably compete with one another for influence.
* BUT THEY DON'T.
Thus do “parchment barriers” prevent the encroachment of one branch over another, and the deleterious “accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands.”
* BUT FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES OBAMA HAS BEEN MOVING IN THAT DIRECTION.
But for the essential balance of power to be upset, one needs neither a tyrant nor a coup; one needs only a compliant or underconfident branch of government.
* CONGRESS.
* AND AS TO THE SUPREME COURT... FOUR OF ITS MEMBERS DON'T RECOGNIZE THE CONSTITUTION AS WRITTEN AS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND AND AT LEAST THREE OTHERS ALLOW THAT THERE ARE "EXCEPTIONS" THAT THEY THEMSELVES AS INDIVIDUALS CAN OFTEN SEE EVEN AS THESE "EXCEPTIONS" ARE NOWHERE IN THE TEXT OF THE CONSTITUTION OR A FAIR AND SINCERE READING IN LINE WITH HISTORICAL CONTEXT.
In the past four years, Congress has happily handed over to the executive branch regulation of the environment, of the financial sector, and of the health-care market. It is currently considering doing the same thing with immigration.
George Washington’s parting warning about the “necessity of reciprocal checks of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian . . . against invasions by the others” has never looked more prescient.
The legislature, which has for so long now deferred to the president, must insist that, if Americans are to be governed by law, that law must be precise, and it must be dead. Down the “living law” road lies caprice — and caprice, remember, leads to tyranny.
* THE END.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356317/welfare-better-deal-work-michael-tanner
Suppose someone offered you the same amount of money that you currently make at your job on one condition — you don’t work.
Might you be tempted?
That is exactly the deal that our welfare system offers too many people today.
The federal government currently funds 126 separate anti-poverty programs at an annual cost of $688 billion. Of these, 72 provide cash or other benefits directly to poor families. State, county, and municipal governments often operate additional benefit programs. The combined benefits from those multiple overlapping programs can easily add up to the point where welfare simply pays better than work.
This week, the Cato Institute released a new study calculating the state-by-state value of this typical welfare package for a mother with two children participating in seven common welfare programs — Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, housing assistance, WIC, energy assistance (LIHEAP), and free commodities. We found that, in 2013, the value of those benefits varied widely across states, from a low of $16,984 in Mississippi to an astonishing high of $49,175 in Hawaii.
* GEEZUS FRIGGIN' CHRIST...!
In nine states — Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maryland — as well as Washington, D.C. - annual benefits were worth more than $35,000 a year.
The median value of the welfare package across the 50 states is $28,500.
* FOR...??? (FOR A FAMILY OF FOUR? FOR A FAMILY OF WHAT SIZE?)
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Welfare benefits are not taxed, while wages are, so we calculated how much money a welfare recipient receiving these six benefits would have to earn in pretax income if she took a job and left the welfare rolls. We computed the federal income tax, the state income tax, and the FICA payroll taxes one would have to pay on wage income; we also took into account both federal and state versions of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as well as child tax credits where available (these helped increase the relative value of work but did not fully offset the taxes due).
(*HEADACHE*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
We found that, just to break even, a person on welfare would often have to take a job that paid considerably more than the value of the forgone welfare benefits. In Hawaii, for example, a person leaving welfare for work would have to earn more than $60,590 a year to be better off.
* A PERSON...??? A SINGLE PERSON...???
In fact, welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 34 states and the District of Columbia.
In Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job...
...and in five additional states it yields more than a $15-per-hour job.
Consider this: In ten states and the District of Columbia, welfare pays more than the entry-level salary for a teacher in that state.
In 38 states and the District of Columbia, welfare is more generous than the average starting salary for a secretary.
And in the three most generous states... welfare pays more than the wages for an entry-level computer programmer.
In eight states, welfare recipients receive benefits worth more than the median salary there. (This is not even to consider the other costs of going to work.)
* TRANSPORTATION... BUSINESS/WORK ATTIRE...
As Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago recently testified before Congress, "Earning income requires sacrifices, and people evaluate whether the net income earned is enough to justify the sacrifices. When welfare programs pay more the sacrifices that jobs require do not disappear. The commuting hassle is still there, the possibility for injury on the job is still there, and jobs still take time away from family, schooling, hobbies, and sleep. But the reward to working declines, because some of the money earned on the job is now available even when not working."
Likewise, as the Congressional Research Service has pointed out, "Leisure is believed to be a 'normal good.' That is, with a rise in income, people will 'purchase' more leisure by reducing their work effort. . . . Thus, the increase in the value of welfare benefits is expected to cause people to reduce work hours."
* MAKES SENSE...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Many welfare recipients, particularly long-term ones, lack the skills and attachment to the job market necessary to obtain the types of jobs that pay average or above-average wages. Individuals who do leave welfare for work most often start employment in the service or retail industries, in positions such as clerks, secretaries, cleaning persons, salesmen, and waitresses. And, although it would be nice to raise the wages of entry-level service workers, the government has no ability to do so. (Attempts to mandate wage increases, such as increases in the minimum wage, primarily result in fewer such jobs.)
It should be no surprise, then, that, despite the work requirements put in place by the 1990's era welfare reform, fewer than 42% of recipients are participating in broadly defined “work activities.”
In some states, such as Missouri and Massachusetts, less than one out of five welfare recipients are “working.”
Moreover, work activity frequently means not a job but only looking for work or participating in a job-training program.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* YEP! ABSOLUTELY TRUE!
In fact, fewer than one-fifth of welfare recipients are working in unsubsidized private-sector jobs.
Of course, not every welfare recipient meets our profile, and many who meet our profile do not receive all the benefits listed. (On the other hand, some receive even more.) Still, what is undeniable is that for many recipients — particularly the “long-term” dependents — welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job does.
Nor does our study suggest that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, survey after survey suggests that they would prefer to be working. By not working, welfare recipients are simply responding rationally to the incentive systems our public-policy makers have established for them.
But in the long term, policies that discourage work are bad for the recipients.
One of the most important long-term steps toward avoiding or getting out of poverty is employment. Only 2.6% of full-time workers are poor, compared with 23.9% of adults who do not work.
* AGAIN... BENEFITS AREN'T COUNTED AS "INCOME" SO THEREFORE HAWAII'S $60,590 IN "EQIVILANT" DOESN'T GET COUNTED AS $60,590 IN "INCOME."
Even part-time work makes a significant difference — only 15% of part-time workers are poor.
And, while many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, even starting at a minimum-wage job can be a springboard out of poverty in the long run.
Recently, the Cameron government in Britain has introduced a cap on welfare benefits at £500 a week, or about $40,000 a year. When the British are outpacing you on welfare reform . . .
(*HEADACHE*)
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