Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, November 4, 2015


Another beautiful Indian Summer morning here in lovely Orange County, New York!

And yet another day of recounting the hows and whys of the continuing decline and fall of MY America...

As always... newsbites can be found within the Comments Section!

 

9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2015/election/ohio-state-issues-2-and-3-marijuana.html

* WOW! SOME GOOD NEWS!

Ohioans pushed a monopoly marijuana-legalization proposal out the door Tuesday by a nearly 2-to-1 vote.

* WHILE I TEND TO GO BACK AND FORTH ON THIS ISSUE, I'M HAPPY; I SUPPOSE IT COMES DOWN TO BY SOCIAL/CULTURAL LEANINGS OUT-WEIGHTING MY LIBERTARIAN LEANINGS AT THE MOMENT. DO WE REALLY NEED TO "ADD" TO OUR NATION'S DRUG PROBLEMS?

“At a time when too many families are being torn apart by drug abuse, Ohioans said no to easy access to drugs and instead chose a path that helps strengthen our families and communities,” said Gov. John Kasich in a statement. He and the other four statewide, non-judicial officeholders opposed legalization.

Curt Steiner, campaign director for Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies, said, “Never underestimate the wisdom of Ohio voters. They saw through the smokescreen of slick ads, fancy but deceptive mailings, phony claims about tax revenues and, of course, Buddie the marijuana mascot.” Steiner’s group expected to spend about $2.5 million on the campaign.

* Er... "BUDDIE THE MARIJUANA MASCOT?"

* OH... BY THE WAY... NOTICE IN THE FIRST SENTENCE THE WORD "MONOPOLY." APPARENTLY - AS IS USUALLY THE CASE - IF ONE FOLLOWS THE MONEY...

(*SHRUG*)

A core of about two dozen wealthy investors, including former NBA star Oscar Robertson, two descendents of President William Howard Taft, and boy-band member Nick Lachey, contributed about $25 million to the Issue 3 campaign.

Companion State Issue 2, an amendment hurriedly proposed by state lawmakers to make it more difficult for special economic interests, like ResponsibleOhio, to amend the Ohio Constitution in the future, didn’t have universal support. There was considerable confusion about the issue and it lost in several counties, including Athens, Ashtabula, Hocking, Pike and Preble. The fate of Issue 2, while important for the future, is irrelevant in this election with Issue 3 losing.

When implemented, Issue 2 will require supporters of monopolies, oligopolies and cartels to secure voter approval twice at the same election — once to exempt the issue from the monopoly ban and a second time for the proposal itself.

William R. Barker said...

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/trump-accuses-fed-keeping-rates-low-help-obama-171449001--business.html

Republican White House contender Donald Trump accused the U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday of keeping interest rates low at the bidding of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump, speaking at a news conference at his company's New York City headquarters, also called Fed Chair Janet Yellen "highly political."

* ANYONE THINK HE'S WRONG?

(*SHRUG*)

* BUT IT'S NOT JUST "POLITICAL" IN THE PARTISAN SENSE; THE FED WORKS FOR THE OLIGARCHS; THE OLIGARCHS PROSPER VIA ZIRP WHILE "WE THE PEOPLE" SUFFER.

Trump's comments made him the latest Republican presidential candidate to bash the U.S. central bank. At a debate last month, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas criticized the Fed, saying he thought its monetary policy decisions should be audited and that the country should move toward a system backed by gold.

Another candidate vying to represent the Republican Party in the November 2016 election, U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, has also called for an audit of the Fed as part of greater oversight of the central bank.

Asked whether the Fed should raise rates, Trump, a billionaire real-estate developer who has spent much of the past few months as the favorite among Republican voters, said it should but would not for "political reasons."

"They are not raising them because Obama has asked them not to raise them," Trump said, echoing similar comments he made in interviews last month. "He wants to get out of office, because we're in a bubble, and when those rates are raised, a lot of bad things are going to happen."

* YEP...

William R. Barker said...

http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2015/11/03/florida-eighth-grader-gets-detention-for-hugging/

* ANOTHER "INMATES RUNNING THE ASYLUM" NEWSBITE:

An eighth-grader in Florida got detention for hugging friends before school, according to WKMG.

“I just like hugged them. It was literally for a second,” Ella, an eighth-grade student at Jackson Heights Middle School, told the station.

The school district bans “inappropriate touching,” but that’s left for interpretation for each principal. Jackson Heights banned hugging altogether this year, a move some parents find excessive.

“I do not feel that this ‘no hugging, holding hands, arm-linking’ would be considered inappropriate touching,” Kathy Fishbough, Ella’s mother, said.

The district says students are given detentions after repeatedly breaking the code of conduct. The student’s mother said Ella was given a warning last month when the same boy from the “hug” put his hand on her head.

“I do think about inappropriate touching and boys and girls of this age having feelings for one another, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here. And if administration can’t tell the difference between a friendly, ‘How are you doing’ hug and an inappropriate hug, then I think we have another big problem,” said Fishbough.

The incident now has families wondering if the district’s policy may be taken too far by some schools.

“I did ask the principal, if something happened in our family, and she needed to console her cousin or her cousin wanted to console her, would she get in trouble? She said, ‘Yes, ma’am. She would get a PDA,” Fishbough told WKMG.

William R. Barker said...

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/03/report-the-obama-administration-conducts-more-closed-door-meetings-than-ever-before/

A new report finds that in the past decade, federal agencies held the highest percentage of closed-door meetings in 2013 and 2014, undermining President Obama’s commitment to running the “most transparent administration in history.”

* BIG FRIGGIN' SURPRISE, RIGHT?

(*SNORT*)

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/world/middleeast/backlash-against-us-in-iran-seems-to-gather-force-after-nuclear-deal.html

Anyone who hoped that Iran’s nuclear agreement with the United States and other powers portended a new era of openness with the West has been jolted with a series of increasingly rude awakenings over the past few weeks.

On Tuesday, the eve of the 36th anniversary of the "student" takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, state television announced the arrest of a Lebanese-American missing for weeks — after he had been invited here by the government. He has been accused of spying.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said the “Death to America” slogan is eternal.

New anti-American billboards in Tehran include a mockery of the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph that symbolized Marine sacrifice in World War II.

An Iranian knockoff version of KFC, the chicken chain widely associated with the United States, was summarily closed after two days.

In recent days at least five prominent figures were arrested by the intelligence unit, among them Isa Saharkhiz, a well-known journalist and reformist, who was released from jail in 2013 after a conviction for his alleged involvement in the 2009 anti-government protests. On Sunday, Ehsan Mazandarani, the top editor of a reformist newspaper, Farhikhtegan, was arrested by the same unit, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. On Tuesday, they arrested the well-known actress and newspaper columnist, Afarin Chitsaz, the Amadnews website reported.

* GREAT JOB, OBAMA! FANFRIGGIN'TASTIC! OUTFRIGGIN'STANDING!

William R. Barker said...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/liberals-dont-want-a-discussion-about-race-1446595382

Liberals do not want to have a discussion about race. They want to conduct an inquisition that results in acknowledgment that white racism explains racial disparities and is a major impediment to black advancement. Facts to the contrary will be ignored, and disagreement will not be tolerated.

When convenient, racial disparities are presented as evidence of racial animus. When inconvenient, racial disparities are ignored.

The Justice Department report released in March on the Ferguson, Mo., police department noted that between 2012 and 2014 “African-Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops,” despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population. But that doesn’t prove racism. It merely shows that different groups — races, ethnicities, ages, genders — have different driving habits.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks are nearly a third (31%) more likely than whites to be stopped for a traffic violation, and men are 42% more likely than women to be stopped.

If blacks in Ferguson were pulled over at the same rate as blacks nationally, they’d account for 87.5% of traffic stops, not 85%, wrote statistician John Lott in response to the Ferguson report: “In other words, the numbers actually suggest that Ferguson police may be slightly less likely to pull over black drivers than are their national counterparts.”

Of course, that sort of context didn’t make it into the Obama administration’s report because the whole point of the exercise was to highlight racial disparities and equate them with racial discrimination. The objective was to focus on white behavior, not black behavior. Liberals play a similar game when trying to show that bank lenders discriminate against black loan applicants. Yet the same data that show blacks being turned down for loans at higher rates than whites also show whites being turned down at higher rates than Asian applicants, suggesting that an applicant’s wealth, credit history and other non-racial factors could explain the discrepancy.

Asians complicate the left’s school-discipline analysis as well, since Asian students are suspended at lower rates than their white peers, who in turn are suspended at lower rates than blacks. Liberals insist that schools are singling out black students. They refuse even to consider that suspension rates could reflect patterns of behavior, which are not now — and have never been — evenly distributed among groups.

Why anyone would expect to see racial parity in misbehavior inside of schools when we don’t see it outside of schools is a mystery that Justice Department investigators can be counted on to play down or ignore.

Nor should you expect the administration to explain why the disproportionately high number of black public-school employees would have any reason to single out black students for unfair treatment. Minority teachers are more likely than their white counterparts to work in high-minority school districts. In Chicago’s public schools, for example, 39% of the students are black, along with 44% of principals and 22% of teachers. Blacks have run public-school systems in numerous big cities, including New York, Washington, Atlanta, Baltimore and Cleveland.

William R. Barker said...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/third-world-america-1446594670

One difference between the developed and developing worlds is honest, transparent government that treats investors fairly. By that standard, the Obama Administration’s handling of the Keystone XL pipeline shows the U.S. is sliding closer to Third World politics than Americans would like to admit.

On Monday TransCanada Corp. asked the State Department to stop its review of the proposed pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast that has been held hostage to liberal politics for seven years. The company said it wants a pause to give Nebraska time to finish its review of the pipeline route.

That may be true, but everyone knows that TransCanada’s bigger problem is the State review that President Obama has dragged out to the end of his term. The company’s reasonable fear is that Mr. Obama will reject the permit in the weeks before the global climate-change fiesta in Paris in December. He would then use this as a chit to prod other countries to sign onto bigger CO2 reductions.

This triumph of politics is part of a pattern for a White House that has stretched its bureaucratic power to delay, undermine or scuttle investments in mining and energy production, especially fossil fuels. Other examples include Alaska’s Pebble Mine project, Shell’s drilling in the Arctic and liquid natural gas terminals, among others.

This is the capricious rule enforcement that companies expect in Argentina or Cameroon. But then the U.S. is no longer capitalism’s leading light.

In the World Bank’s latest Doing Business survey, the U.S. ranks seventh overall. But it is 33rd in the ease of obtaining construction permits, just behind St. Kitts and Nevis but ahead of Belarus.

The U.S. is 49th in ease of starting a business and 53rd in paying taxes.

TransCanada is no doubt hoping that a suspension will carry the project past the presidential election, after which it can present its case to a new Administration. That would require a Republican presidential victory, however, because Hillary Clinton has already announced her opposition to Keystone and its thousands of jobs, putting her green donors ahead of blue-collar workers.

TransCanada deserves to have its request granted given its abysmal treatment, but the green lobbies are already demanding that Mr. Obama deny it and reject the permit anyway. In that case TransCanada would have to refile its application and start the review process all over again. America is now a country in which investors have to account for political risk as much as business risk.

William R. Barker said...

TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/3/charles-hurt-ben-sasses-maiden-senate-speech-an-ho/

When was the last time you heard a sitting politician give a speech that made you stop and think? A speech where you actually learned something?

When was the last time you heard a vicious excoriation of Washington and Congress and the whole federal government, yet saw the first glimmer of hope that perhaps all is not already completely lost?

Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, delivered his first speech on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, one year to the day since being elected in his first bid for public office.

All of his fellow freshmen have long since delivered their “maiden” speeches. But Ben Sasse waited. Not because he wanted to reject the whole silly tradition that some stupid first speech by a newly minted Senate blowhard is somehow so precious it is to be called “maiden” and politely applauded and toasted afterward for posterity or something. I am certain that not a single one of the other “maiden” speeches — blech!!!! — delivered on the Senate floor this year has been worth watching, much less applauding or remembering.

No, Mr. Sasse waited simply because he did not want to speak until he actually had something worth saying. (I know what you’re thinking. “And he’s a politician? And he got elected to the United States Senate? Something is wrong here.”)

Not only did Mr. Sasse want to wait until he had something worth saying, but he also had something particular he wanted to talk about. He wanted to talk about how entirely broken the United States Senate has become.

He wanted to talk about how dangerously out of whack the whole separation of powers has become, sending the bloated federal government on a glide-path to monstrous and unstoppable debt and eventual doom.

* SAME QUESTION TO SASSE THAT I KEEP ON DIRECTING TO CRUZ... PAUL... LEE: WHY NOT FILIBUSTER THE BILL?

He wanted to talk about all the ways presidents from both parties and members of both chambers of Congress have inexplicably conspired to cede greater and greater control from the legislative branch to the executive branch. Today, we see, there is virtually no check whatsoever left on the executive branch.

* TRUE. ALL TRUE.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

And he wanted to talk about the insidiously corrosive effect that the increasingly ungovernable “administrative state” has on a free society.

Mr. Sasse wanted to sound the alarm on America’s coming ruin.

The message he brings from home: “A pox on both parties and all your houses! We don’t believe politicians are even trying to fix this mess.”

* THEY'RE NOT.

And a sidewinder for a couple of fellow Senate Republicans running for higher office: “To the grandstanders who use this institution as a platform for outside pursuits: Few believe the country’s needs are as important to you as your ambitions.”

Yowza!

* IN THEORY... AND I'D SUPPORT SUCH A "REFORM"... ELECTED OFFICIALS SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO RUN FOR A NEW OFFICE WITHOUT FIRST RESIGNING THEIR PRESENT OFFICE.

And to whorish Senate Democrats who would trade away their grandmother if they could get a good deal on her: “Few believe bare-knuckled politics are a substitute for principled governing.”

The primary reason for this catastrophic legislative decay, Mr. Sasse warned, is the death of debate in the United States Senate, once envisioned as the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

* NONSENSE. (I COULD EXPLAIN THE VARIOUS REASONS... BUT FOR NOW I'LL JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT.)

Not the fake barking back and forth and manufacturing of fake “facts” and statistics we always see. But actual debates where honest men and women argue about real and serious problems.

“We in recent decades have allowed the short-termism of sound-bite culture to invade this chamber and radically reduce so many debates to fact-free zones.”

And — thank goodness — Mr. Sasse moved quickly to squash the perennial canard from the screaming weenies about the need for more “civility” on the Senate floor.

No, he said. “This is not a call for less fighting, but for more meaningful fighting.”

* HEAR! HEAR!

Sure, the speech was sharp, concise and brutally honest. But the greatest thing about it was the surprising sense of hopefulness.

Delivered with the senator’s trademark goofy grin and genuine humility when speechifying, it wasn’t an angry harangue. It was a call to arms, the reading of a serious mission.

* FRANKLY... I FEAR REAL "ARMS" WILL BE NECESSARY TO FIX WHAT'S BROKEN IN WASHINGTON AND MOST STATE CAPITALS.

Delivered by a guy who looks like your average college football coach, talking to his losing team, inspiring them to dig down, focus and reach once again for greatness.