My Personal Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Where liberty is, there is my country. - Benjamin Franklin

"Well, there is this mantra out there ‘live within our means’, and while that sounds really nice, it sounds really simple, and it sounds really responsible, its meaningless. Our means are completely within our control. And, as has been pointed out by numerous people, we have just recently given away huge corporate subsidies in February, we have given away other tax reductions over many many years we’ve created new tax loopholes, in good times we routinely give away taxes, and then in lean times we never replace those tax deductions or close those loopholes. We continuously borrow, which is an enormous cost that we shift on into future years, and we find ourselves now with a deficit that — an ongoing structural deficit that we simply can’t close. So, ‘live within our means’ doesn’t mean anything." - CA Congresswoman Noreen Evans

The boat went over the dam shortly after 4 p.m. and the woman, who was also about 60, became caught in a boil just over the dam. She was wearing a life jacket and was partially clothed when she was pulled from the water by Jason Oglesbee, a construction worker for Cramer & Associates in Grimes.

"They just harnessed me up and dipped me down in the water and I grabbed her and the crane drug her to the boat and that's it," Oglesbee said. "What are you going to do if she's like that? It's no big deal. The whole crew did it."

After a public uproar, Texas Governor Rick Perry rejected a bill that would have given Children's Protective Services unusual power.

After the Lone Star State's legislature passed the legislation as an amendment to another bill, the alarm was sounded and the public rose to the occasion. Jonathan Saenz of the Free Market Foundation led the campaign.

"I like to call it a seize-and-ask-questions-later CPS bill, which would have expanded Child Protective Services' rights to violate the constitutional rights of parents and children, and allow CPS to come to your home and take your kids and examine them and question them regarding an anonymous tip," he explains.

Saenz adds that under the bill, that could happen without a court hearing, without notice to the parents, without consent, and even without good cause -- in spite of a federal court decision that requires constitutional protections to stay in place.

"So, it's just ludicrous that now the legislature would try to do an end-run around what the federal court decided," Saenz concludes.

Governor Perry's office was flooded with phone calls and emails before the announcement was made that he would veto the measure.

WASHINGTON – In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday that calls for the nation's first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly energy.

The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the midst of a recession while burdening consumers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs.

Filibusters are not allowed in the House. They’re a province of the Senate. But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) may have figured out a way to get around that prohibition Friday as the House inched closer to voting on a controversial energy and climate change bill.

Overnight, House Democrats tacked onto the bill a 300-page amendment. So when Boehner took his time to speak against the package at the end of the debate, the Ohio Republican then decided to peel through major portions of the bill and read them aloud before his House colleagues.

Historically, rank-and-file lawmakers are only given a few minutes to speak on the House floor. But the Speaker, Majority Leader and Minority Leader are given great latitude to speak when they approach the microphones.

After Boehner spoke for a few minutes, the leader donned a pair of reading glasses and began leafing through a gigantic, white binder. At that point, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) asked the chair if Boehner could do that.

“I know we have this magic minute that gives leaders a lot of extra time to speak. But I’m just wondering if there is some limit under the rules on the time that a leader may take, even though the time yielded was not 20 or 30 minutes?” Waxman asked.

"The Chrysler negotiations will not be the last occasion for this administration to engage in bailout favoritism and crony capitalism. There’s a May 31 deadline to come up with a settlement for General Motors. And there will be others. In the meantime, who is going to buy bonds from unionized companies if the government is going to take their money away and give it to the union? We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government. It is likely to be part of a continuing series."

No academic skepticism, no secularist authors, no blatant materialism can so undermine the spiritual life of the country like the completely secularized training of the child under the authority of the state... Bible-based education is mandatory for Christian parents. If we think we can keep our children in a secular school system and escape the dumbed-down, amoral, and immoral results of secular humanism in schools, we are sorely mistaken (emphasis added, see: http://daveblackonline.com/our.htm).

“Non-Christian education puts the child in a vacuum…. The result is that child dies. Christian education alone really nurtures personality because it alone gives the child air and food…. Modern educational philosophy gruesomely insults our God and our Christ. How, then, do you expect to build anything positively Christian or theistic upon a foundation which is the negation of Christianity and theism?…. No teaching of any sort is possible except in Christian schools.”

“I am as sure as I am of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.” - A.A. Hodge

“This whole process of education is to be religious, and not only religious, but Christian…. And as Christianity is the only true religion, and God in Christ the only true God, the only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” - Charles Hodge

The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, faith and obedience; Although the light of Nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable [sic.]; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that His will unto his Church; and afterward for the better preserving, and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment, and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the World, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of Gods revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

We reaffirm the inerrant Scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured. We deny that any creed, council or individual may bind a Christian's conscience, that the Holy Spirit speaks independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible, or that personal spiritual experience [i.e., “the Lord told me”] can ever be a vehicle of revelation.

“Let it be remembered, that I do not speak to the wild, giddy, thoughtless world, but to those that fear God. I ask, then, for what end do you send you children to school? “Why, that they may be fit to live in the world.” In which world do you mean, — this or the next? Perhaps you thought of this world only; and had forgot that there is a world to come; yea, and one that will last for ever! Pray take this into your account, and send them to such masters as will keep it always before their eyes. Otherwise, to send them to school (permit me to speak plainly) is little better than sending them to the devil. At all events, then, send your boys, if you have any concern for their souls, not to any of the large public schools, (for they are nurseries of all manner of wickedness,) but private school, kept by some pious man, who endeavours to instruct a small number of children in religion and learning together.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he's been having an affair with a woman from Argentina and will resign as head of the Republican Governors' Association.
The married father of four emotionally apologized to his wife, staff and others at a news conference after returning Wednesday from a trip to Argentina that followed a dayslong absence. His staff had said the Republican was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

Sanford says he met the woman about eight years ago and it became romantic about a year ago. He says his wife and family have known about it for the past five months.

He had been a rumored contender for the 2012 GOP ticket. He's most recently snared headlines for his unsuccessful fight to turn aside federal stimulus cash for his state's schools.

ATLANTA | S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford arrived in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport this morning, having wrapped up a seven-day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, he said. Sanford said he had not been hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff said in a Tuesday statement to the media.

Sanford's whereabouts had been unknown since Thursday, and the mystery surrounding his absence fueled speculation about where he had been and who's in charge in his absence. His emergence Wednesday ended the mystery.

Sanford, in an exclusive interview with The State, said he decided at the last minute to go to the South American country to recharge after a difficult legislative session in which he battled with lawmakers over how to spend federal stimulus money.

Sanford said he had considered hiking on the Appalachian Trail, an activity he said he has enjoyed since he was a high school student.

"But I said 'no' I wanted to do something exotic," Sanford said "... It's a great city."

Sanford, in a brief interview in the nation's busiest airport, said he has been to the city twice before, most recently about a year and half ago during a Commerce Department trip.

Sanford said he was alone on the trip. He declined to give any additional details about what he did other than to say he drove along the coastline.

Sanford, who was wearing a blue and white button down shirt and brown denim pants, said he left for Buenos Aires on Thursday night from Columbia Metropolitan Airport and had originally planned to come back tomorrow. "

"Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) knows Walsh personally and says addressing Boxer as "ma'am" was completely appropriate.

"He'd been out there toiling in 104-degree heat, serving America. And responding to people who address you with a respectful 'yes, sir' or 'yes, ma'am' is exactly what you're taught to do in military protocol," he notes. "When confronted with Senator Boxer admonishing him for addressing her as 'yes, ma'am' and directing him to address her as 'Senator,' the proper response would have been 'yes, ma'am!'"

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff said late Monday that the governor is hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ending four days during which staff and state officials said they had not heard from him.

Neither Sanford’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford since he left the mansion Thursday in a black Suburban SUV assigned to his security detail, said state Sen. Jake Knotts , R-Lexington, and three others familiar with the situation, but who declined to be identified.

Joel Sawyer, the governor’s spokesman would not disclose where on the trail the governor was hiking, nor would he reveal whether Sanford was hiking alone.

Sanford’s last known location was near Atlanta late last week. A mobile telephone tower there picked up a signal from his phone, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Since then, the governor’s state and personal phones had been turned off, and Sanford had not responded to phone or text messages, a source said. Most mobile phones cannot be tracked if they are turned off.

First lady Jenny Sanford said Monday her husband has been gone for several days over Father’s Day weekend and she did not know where.

She said she was not concerned.

“He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids,” Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press while vacationing with the couple’s four sons at their Sullivan’s Island beach house.

"The Dow Jones industrials ($INDU) suffered their fifth loss in the last six sessions, and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) fell back into the red for all of 2009.

The Dow fell 201 points, or 2.4%, to 8,339. The S&P 500 was off 28 points, or 3.1%, to 893, and the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) dropped 61 points, or 3.4% to 1,766.

The losses were the largest for the major indexes in point and percentage terms since April 20.

Trading volume, however, was light for much of the day but seemed to accelerate in the last half-hour of trading.

The sell-off was prompted by a forecast from the World Bank that said the global economy will contract by 2.9% this year, a deeper contraction than the 1.7% decline the bank had forecast in March.

The bank also said developing countries will only grow by 1.9% this year, a big drop from the 5.9% growth seen in 2008 and the 8.1% growth in 2007.

In the last hour of trading, the Obama administration conceded that the national unemployment rate will top 10% "within the next few months" and sooner than expected, and losses appeared to accelerate."

David Scheiner, an internist based in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, has a diverse practice of lower-income adults from the nearby housing projects mixed with famous patients like U.S. Sen. Carol Mosely Braun, the late writer Studs Terkel and, most notably, President Barack Obama.

Scheiner, 71, was Obama's doctor from 1987 until he entered the White House; he vouched for the then-candidate's "excellent health" in a letter last year. He's still an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but he worries about whether the health care legislation currently making its way through Congress will actually do any good, particularly for doctors like himself who practice general medicine. "I'm not sure he really understands what we face in primary care," Scheiner says.

What should the president be focused on? Scheiner thinks that a good health reform would be "Medicare for all," a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. "A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won't starve," Scheiner says.

"I know for my family the only question that we will be answering is how many people is in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that." - Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."

Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.

"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.

"My grandfather paid for Carlisle Chevrolet from his labors. My father paid my grandmother for Carlisle Chevrolet through his efforts. It took me nearly 20 years to pay my parents for Carlisle Chevrolet. It took GM and Chrysler a mere 24 hours to take Carlisle Chevrolet from me."

"I think he sees himself as a president of change and that involves bigger government. He’s made no secret of that and I think it’s dangerous.”

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. “Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Ireland Subsidiary

Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn’t have to claim the income in the United States.

“What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate,” Bosworth said. “Relative to where they are now, the administration’s proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part.”

Ballmer is one of 10 U.S. software company executives pushing back against the tax proposals in meetings today with White House officials including Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and the heads of congressional committees such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat.

Expense Deductions

Among other things, Obama proposed limiting expense deductions such as those for employee compensation when companies defer U.S. tax on foreign profits.

In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers.

Ballmer said that, while the Obama proposals would preserve expense deductions related to research and experimentation costs, the overall deduction limits for companies that defer tax on foreign profits would raise the cost of employing U.S. workers. Fiduciary responsibility to shareholders would require Microsoft to cut costs, he said, meaning many jobs would be moved out of the country.

Worldwide Employees

Microsoft employed 95,029 people worldwide as of April 21, of whom 56,552 were based in the United States, according to the company’s Web site. The company announced it was firing up to 5,000 people in January while hiring some new workers; the company has shed about 1,000 jobs since then, spokesman Lou Gellos said.

Ballmer estimated that higher taxes under the proposal would reduce profits for companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average by between 10 and 15 percentage points.

“It’s just a question of how much will the Dow come down,” Ballmer said. “It’s not about companies anyway; we’re talking about shareholders.”

In addition to limiting current deductions for companies that defer U.S. tax on their foreign profits, Obama proposed altering a set of rules known as “check the box” that allow companies to shelter foreign profits in offshore subsidiaries that can be disregarded for U.S. tax purposes.

Could the flat tax come to California?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that he would like to see such “radical” proposals come out of a commission now studying an overhaul of the state’s tax system. The governor told the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee that he hoped the commission would not be afraid to propose something like “a 15% straight tax.”

“That’s the kind of radical, daring kind of a proposal that I want to see on the table so we can look at it and say, ‘Oh, let’s study this, maybe that is the way to go,’ ” Schwarzenegger said during the discussion, which was webcast.

The current system, based on highly unstable income tax revenue that fluctuates with the economy, “doesn’t work,” Schwarzenegger said.

Advocates of a flat tax, which applies a single tax rate to all income, say it increases compliance with the tax codes because it is so simple and easy to understand. But opponents dislike that it taxes the wealthy at the same rates as the poor.

Steve Forbes and Jerry Brown both pushed for it during their presidential campaigns.

Schwarzenegger said he was concerned that the commission might be too timid in what it suggests and rule things out in advance thinking that either Democrats or Republicans would object.

“I hope and I pray that they don’t think they have to make a political decision,” he said.

-- Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento

6th-grader takes loaded gun to school in Penn Hills, High school student who wouldn't stop using cell phone Tasered
Thursday, June 04, 2009
By Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A loaded 9mm weapon was confiscated from a sixth-grader at Linton Middle School in Penn Hills today.

And in a second incident, a Penn Hills police officer used a stun gun on a high school student who refused to stop talking on a cell phone and pushed the officer.

At the middle school, a 9mm semi-automatic handgun was found in the swim bag of an 11-year-old girl at the metal detectors this morning.

Penn Hills police Chief Howard Burton said the gun was fully loaded but there was not a bullet in the chamber.

He said the girl had brought her swim bag still containing wet swim clothes from the previous day and said she did not know how the gun got into the bag. The gun turned out to have been reported to state police as stolen from Uniontown.

"At this point in the investigation, we don't believe she knew the gun was in there. She had the bag yesterday swimming, locked it in her locker after swim class, went home last night, threw it in her bedroom, grabbed the bag and went to school," Chief Burton said.

He said she has been removed from school.

At Penn Hills High School this morning, Chief Burton said, a student was walking up and down a hallway, using a cell phone. School policy permits students to have cell phones but not to use them during school except in emergencies, Chief Burton said.

A Penn Hills police officer told him to put the phone away and go to class.

"The kid refused to listen," Chief Burton said. "The officer took him by the arm and said, 'You have to go to the office.' The student resisted, pushed the officer. The officer, defending himself, took out his stun gun and did a drive stun."

Chief Burton said a drive stun involves pushing the Taser against a portion of the body and squeezing the trigger, thus immobilizing a portion of the body, such as the leg. He said this affects about a 2- or 3-inch area.

While on the floor, the student was still resisting and was placed in handcuffs, Chief Burton said. The student complained of a headache and dizziness and was taken to Forbes Regional Hospital.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp.
During one of Chavez's customary lectures on the "curse" of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM's bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the U.S. government a 60 percent stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might.

"Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right," Chavez joked on a live television broadcast.

During a decade in government, Chavez has nationalized most of Venezuela's key economic sectors, including multibillion dollar oil projects, often via joint ventures with the private sector that give the state a 60 percent controlling stake.