Post Scripts

by Jack

This story in the Chico ER opens with, “The first week of September will never be the same for Brett Olson’s family and friends.” That’s sure true enough, since his death the law enforcement has taken an aggressive stance against tubing down the river on Labor Day with alcohol and a fair number of tickets have been written. According to the story in the ER, Brett Olsen’s death has been too painful for the family get involved in the alcohol ban, but they expressed gratitude that both the Glenn County Sheriff’s Dept and the Butte County Sheriff’s Dept. has and that participation in the event has shrunk this year from 10,000 to only 3000.

As the ER story goes, “At this time last year, they were scouring Chico and Sacramento River with hundreds of volunteers trying to find the 20-year-old Lafayette man after he went missing during the Labor Day float. After a week of searching, his body was found Sept. 9, downstream of where he had last been seen.”

An autopsy would later reveal that Olsen had three times the legal limit of alcohol, if he been driving, plus he also had cocaine on board. How long Olsen had been a binge drinker and a drug user, we don’t know. Oddly, it’s never come up in any of the news stories. However, he was the first fatality that anyone can recall from the Labor Day revelry on the river.

Maybe I am the only one to think this, but it seems to me this should be more of a wake-up notice for parents than law enforcement or for legislators to pass more restrictive laws. Olsen’s problem was revelers on the river or the absence of a law to guide his judgment. It was the absence of good judgment and a willingness to break the law. Who doesn’t know that cocaine is against the law or that drinking until you’re no longer able to care for your own safety is also illegal?

Some of us might think his death was more the result of failed parental guidance than a lack of laws. I tend to think this may have played a part in this tragedy, but I also believe he had reached the age of accountability where he should be responsible for his own choices. He was an intelligent person and he knew right from wrong and he made a bad judgment call to break the law. (We’ve all been there to some degree at some point in our lives) That’s why I think when a person comes of age to be called an adult then they must assume adult responsibility. The libertarian side of me says, you take the risks – you must accept the consequences. It should not fall on the rest of the community to suffer the consequences of your actions.

Posted by Tina

I saw this quote in comments under an article about the economy and thought it deserved attention:

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” ~ H.L. Mencken

Posted by Tina

Traditionally, Americans prefer a sporting contest. We want competing teams to meet on the playing field, abide by a set of rules, and play the best game they can right up to the last minute of the contest. A clean game makes the ultimate win all the sweeter and everyone goes home satisfied even if their team loses.

Politics has always been more like a slugfest than a sporting contest with opposing teams “pulling out all the stops” to influence voters as electionday draws near. Slugfests are one thing. Cheating and the blatant abuse of power in order to win is quite another.

As we know a large number of conservative organizations were harassed and denied tax exempt status by IRS officials in the years prior to the last election. We know that a few of them were singled out for extra scrutiny and harassment by other government agencies in addition to the tyrannical treatment they received at the hands of the IRS. This abuse of power unfairly limited the influence those groups had in the election. And while this abuse of power was occurring assistance to opposition groups was also going on by the same IRS officials and Eric Holder of the Justice Department.

According to Investors.com preferential, instructive aid was given to black organizations and churches during the same period:

…top officials with both the IRS and Justice Department — including the IRS commissioner and attorney general — met in Washington with several dozen prominent black church ministers representing millions of voters to brief them on how to get their flocks out to vote without breaking federal tax laws.

The “summit” on energizing the black vote in houses of worship was hosted by the Democrat-controlled Congressional Black Caucus inside the U.S. Capitol on May 30, 2012. …

…It’s not clear if the White House helped organize the unusual event, but two key Cabinet members — Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman — both spoke at length to the black church leaders.

Joining them was senior IRS official Peter Lorenzetti, who runs the agency’s tax-exempt organizations division. He gave a technical briefing in which he advised against endorsing from the pulpit any candidates by name or distributing voter cheat sheets.

Then Lorenzetti hastened to add: “It is important to note, however, that an organization exempt under 501(c)3 — in this case the church or a religious organization — can conduct educational election activities,” including holding political debates or even inviting candidates to speak to congregants.

Washington Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turly wrote that this activity represented a “raw” display of political favoritism and remarked that it was even more disturbing that “the two federal law enforcement officials who would be the ultimate decision-makers in future cases involving IRS tax fraud and exemption violations were front and center in counseling tax-exempt groups…”

Americans are reluctant to hold this administration to the same standard it has held other administrations for the simple reason that the President is black. Those wishing to put racism behind us will never be able to do so as long as people of color are given a pass when they abuse their offices and corrupt the very laws that bind us together as equals.

Is it any wonder Americans are disheartened and discouraged?

by Jack Lee

The U.S. dollar slipped against it’s major rivals today following downward revisions of the June – July employment figures. The U.S. economy created 169,000 jobs last month, missing expectations of a 173,000-job gain. The unemployment rate is now around 7.3% an meager imprlovement from 7.4% since last month. And although this percentage appears good, when contrasted against the number of job seekers who have dropped off the polling it really points to a stagnant economy that is being held together by credit. The feds are still pumping $85 billion dollars into the economy every month and we’re not improving. Further evidence says the moment the feds try to scale back this massive bailout the economy is going backwards.

The number of jobs added in June and July were revised lower by a combined 74,000, the Labor Department said.

Barrack Hussein Obama took over the presidency in the 2009 as recession hit. He chose to bet on the Keynesian theory for bailouts, borrowing and quantitative easing to speed our recovery. However, in all this time none of those measures has contributed to a stable, reliable economy. Instead, his economic policy has contributed to the largest debt in our nations history, one that may be impossible to pay off….ever. For the last 4.5 years the nation has been living on mostly credit. The national debt is accruing at the rate of 1.8 billion dollars per day, and that makes us $16,740,560,461,021 in debt or said another way, each citizens share of the debt is now $52,876.23. And you thought Syria was a crisis? Ha!

by Jack

Washington D.C. – President Obama addresses Congress and the nation: “Look, what the American people don’t seem to understand is this: I’m not looking to start a war.  Rest assured that we’re not going to have any of our soldiers fighting inside Syria and there’s not going to be any protracted bombings or missile strikes. This is just one little missile strike against a non-strategic, remote military target.  It will not affect the Assad regime or his military or the rebels one way or the other.

You need to understand this is just a pointless, meaningless strike because the media has been making such a big deal over an off-the-cuff remark I made well over a month ago about a red line being drawn.

But, in reality I didn’t even say anything about a red line, I was just repeating what the Geneva Convention said about the use of WMD’s. So, don’t blame me, okay?  Besides, I’m not the one launching the missiles.  This is being authorized by Congress.  It’s not my problem, this is something Congress wants to do.   I’ve had very little, if anything, to do with this so-called Syrian crisis.    And let me add for the record,  I”ve never met President Assad, I don’t like or dislike him or his country, okay?  Heck, I’ve never even been to Syria and to be honest I don’t even know where it is or who’s fighting who over there.    Alright, that’s about it,   I just wanted to make my position perfectly clear.”

Posted by Tina

A popular Egyptian paper has posted a picture of President Obama portrayed as Satan citing, according to PJ Media, his “staunch and unwavering support for Islamists and jihadiis — whether in Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, or Syria — even as they terrorize, murder, rape, and burn down Christian churches”.

The President isn’t fairing elsewhere of late as the EU sides with Putin:

Europe’s top officials warned against a military response in Syria on Thursday, aligning themselves more closely with Russian President Vladimir Putin than President Barack Obama in how best to respond to the chemical attack in the Syrian civil war.

And his liberal base has accused the President and Kerry of Lying:

President Obama’s liberal activist base is adamantly opposed to military strikes in Syria, according to a new survey the Progressive Change Campaign Committee released Wednesday.

PCCC says more than 57,000 of its activists weighed in, and 73 percent of them opposed the U.S. taking action in Syria. Just 18 percent supported strikes, and just 14 percent said the U.S. should go ahead unilaterally if it can’t find any allies.

Indeed, a majority of the activists don’t believe Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry are being honest when they lay out their justifications for taking military action.

So far this president has managed to step in “it” and come out smelling like a rose. His base may be expressing a bit of anger now but I doubt they will abandon him for long. If they can defend the lousy economy with a straight face for five years they can find a way to bail the President out on the Red Line lie. It will be amusing to watch how they eventually spin it but the ugly truth is this administration lies about everything!

Posted by Tina

Our President is unique among presidents. Incumbent presidents have always been killed at the polls under a bad economy but President Obama broke that record in the 2012 election. Sluggish growth, high unemployment numbers, and rising food and energy prices didn’t stop his voters from entering the voting booth to give him an undeserved second term. Those of us who voted for the other guy were stunned; some of us still are. This amounts to citizens voting to make sure their lives remain miserable and their opportunities few. Why would they do that?

A number of left-wing/media claims might explain this crazy outcome. They pushed the story that the middle class has been losing ground over several decades and the President’s class envy rhetoric poured gasoline on that fire. See here and here The left-wing also orchestrated the Occupy Wall Street movement to carry the theme that the rich were getting rich while the middle and lower classes were getting poorer. Placing blame on greedy corporations worked. Associating George Bush and Ronald Reagan as the commanders of those decades worked…and people voted against their own interests.

Naturally, President Obama was happy to spout lie that would ultimately save his butt at the polls but according to an October 2011 CNS News article the middle class actually improved during the trickle down policies of previous decades:

“From 1979 to 2007,” the report said, “average household income, measured after government transfers and federal taxes, grew by 65 percent.”

When government transfer payments are removed from the equation income, the money that people are able to earn for themselves, GROWS! Less government means more opportunity to make money. Bigger government blunts opportunity as it has over the last five years.

I lived through the decades of the eighties and nineties so I don’t buy the story that the middle class lost ground during the Reagan and Clinton years. I also witnessed the Bush years which, despite the war, still delivered a decent economy over his eight years in office. So naturally, I was enthused to discover a new study about median incomes that once again exposes the lie told by an administration bent on transforming America. The results are published in a Wall Street Journal article by Stephen Moore. The article also shows that the lie worked best among the most vulnerable. The people who voted for Obama have unfortunately been hurt badly since June of 2009, the date that marked the start of the Obama recovery. Check it out:

…those who were most likely to vote for Barack Obama in 2012 were members of demographic groups most likely to have suffered the steepest income declines. Mr. Obama was re-elected with 51% of the vote. Five demographic groups were crucial to his victory: young voters, single women, those with only a high-school diploma or less, blacks and Hispanics. He cleaned up with 60% of the youth vote, 67% of single women, 93% of blacks, 71% of Hispanics, and 64% of those without a high-school diploma, according to exit polls.

According to the Sentier research, households headed by single women, with and without children present, saw their incomes fall by roughly 7%. Those under age 25 experienced an income decline of 9.6%. Black heads of households saw their income tumble by 10.9%, while Hispanic heads-of-households’ income fell 4.5%, slightly more than the national average. The incomes of workers with a high-school diploma or less fell by about 8% (-6.9% for those with less than a high-school diploma and -9.3% for those with only a high-school diploma).

In terms of actual cash money, “median black household income fell by just over $4,000, Hispanic households lost $2,000 and female-headed households lost $2,300,” according to the study. That is incredible!

But wait. How have these groups done in previous years? According to the study they were doing quite well:

This is a stunning reversal of the progress for these groups during the expansions of the 1980s and 1990s, and even through the start of the 2008 recession. Census data reveal that from 1981-2008 the biggest income gains were for black women, 81%; followed by white women, 67%; followed by black men, 31%; and white males at 8%.

In other words, the gender and racial income gaps shrank by more than in any period in American history during the Reagan boom of the 1980s and the Clinton boom of the 1990s. Women and blacks continued to make economic progress during the mini-Bush expansion from 2002-07. “Income inequality” has been exacerbated during the Obama era.

Sadly there’s a good chance that many of these people will never be convinced that the man they believe has brought them hope and change has really done them great harm.

There is more to be learned from this study:

The Census Bureau data on incomes include cash government benefits, such as unemployment insurance, disability payments and the earned-income tax credit (but excludes Medicaid and food stamps). Most of the cash programs have surged in cost during the Obama presidency, yet incomes have still declined for the lowest-income eligible groups. This suggests that wages and salaries from employment have shrunk at an even faster pace than the Census data show. The shrinking paychecks of the past four years are consistent with two unwelcome anomalies of the recovery: a swift decline in labor-force participation to 63.4% from 65.5% during that period and a rise in part-time employment.

What all of this means is that the stimulus-led economic revival that began officially in June 2009—Vice President Joe Biden’s famous “summer of recovery”—has only resulted in lower incomes for at least half of Americans, the very ones who were instrumental in electing Mr. Obama twice.

How sad.

The question is how do we give these groups of people the gift of what has been called Reaganomics? How do we show them the folly of believing in redistribution and economic policy based on class envy? How do we get America the beautiful back?

View the Sentier Research site here.