Cowford Commentary

Libs can't handle the truth

2012-01-28T19:29:00.000-05:00

Prepare yourself for more months of libs complaining about "drastic cuts" to public schools.
Gov. Rick Scott already has proposed an extra $1 billion for the schools but gets no thanks. Instead they rail against him for not giving more.
"More" is the only answer you will get if you ask a lib how much money it would take to get the schools to do what they are supposed to do.
As for cuts.
In Jacksonville, the School Board says on its own Web site that it has cut $150 million from its budget in the last four years.
The problem is that it has spent more money every year for the past 10 years.
But put that aside. If it had cut $150 million it would be from more than $4.5 billion it spent during that time.
That would be a drastic 3 percent.
Oh, the horror.
Any organization with capable accountants that couldn't take a 3 percent nick in its budget without breaking a sweat is not one you would want to invest your money in.
But the libs will continue with their dishonest claims. Facts do not faze them in the least.

Compromise and all that crap

2012-01-26T10:28:00.000-05:00

The only group that even approaches libs in self-adulation is the "moderates."
They are far superior to those on the left or right, they tell themselves and everyone else, because they listen and choose on the basis of what is best for everyone.
Balderdash. Moderates should be called "confused."
Are you in favor of big government one day and individual freedom the next? Tax increases one day and tax relief the next?
Congratulations, you are a moderate.
One of their conceits is that Congress should "compromise" and get things done.
Let me ask a question.
If two people are in a car and one wants to go forward and the other wants to go backward, what is the compromise?
If America is going to move forward, it needs to elect conservatives and get the country back on track. Moderates who want "compromise" should vote for conservatives. They have differences but they can resolve them.
The sooner libs are defeated, the sooner we can get going.

Why we work

2012-01-19T08:58:00.002-05:00

Straightening out the confusion libs cause in the world is a dirty job but someone has to do it.
Currently, libs are all up in arms because the Legislature is trying to save the taxpayers some money. Nothing makes libs madder.
Because so many career criminals are locked up, crime is declining and not as many prison guards are needed. So the state is planning to eliminate some, while privatizing prisons. Private prisons don't engage in featherbedding, as union-run public prisons do.
The guards believe they are entitled to jobs on the taxpayers dime whether the work is needed or not. Libs, of course, agree.
What is a job?
A job is a mutual agreement between two people, with or without a written contract.
The employee agrees to do a certain amount of work of a certain kind.
The employer agrees to provide a certain level of compensation.
This is the important element, which libs are unable, or refuse, to understand.
Neither agrees to lifetime employment.
The employer may eliminate the job if conditions change and the worker is no longer needed.
The employee also may terminate the agreement and walk off the job at anytime, whether it is because he has found a better paying job, or better working conditions, or he doesn't like his boss's looks.
Libs believe only the employer has an obligation. It doesn't matter to them that he might have accepted inefficient work while the new employee is learning the ropes, or spent money on job training, or that he is facing a production deadline and needs every hand.
Because most employers are in a competitive environment, they offer good wages and working conditions and few are forced to hire union workers in a right to work state such as Florida.
Thus, unionism, which is a basic tenet of communism, flourishes only in the public sector. It should be prohibited in the public sector because there is an inherent conflict. Employees can gang up and fire their employers.So, they are overpaid and pampered at everyone else's expense.
Libs excuse this by saying they must prevent "cronyism" in the public sector. But the system doesn't prevent it, it encourages it. Witness the Chicago mob that has taken over the federal government.
Competition is a necessary agreement in the private sector and public sector. Libs insist it is devastating to the public sector, which is patent nonsense, especially the claim that it harms education. Research has shown it helps the public schools.
One of the most sensible statements I've ever heard coming from the lips of a bureaucrat was uttered several years ago by a school superintendent in Jacksonville, on the subject of vouchers.
"If we do our job, we don't have to worry about vouchers," he said.
Exactly.

More media malfeasance

2012-01-11T12:29:00.002-05:00

This is something liberals don't want you to know.
If they wanted you to know it, the liberal media would mention it when they write the sob stories about the suffering public schools, or the thundering editorials demanding more "investment" in education.
I don't read the local papers, but I'm pretty sure that in hundreds of stories along those lines they never once have told you the fiscal reality.
Facts are to liberals as a cross is to a vampire.
They prefer to play on your emotions, and hope you don't find any facts on your own.
They could, of course, claim that the increased spending is the reason for improved education.
That would leave them in the position of having to explain why they have been decrying "cuts," but they are a nimble bunch.
More awkward would be explaining why 30 years of increased spending produced no improvement until true education reforms were put into place.

Robbery or recovery?

2011-12-31T12:10:00.000-05:00

Gallup says 82 percent of Americans think it’s extremely or very important to “grow and expand the economy.”
That's not what the Obamacracy is doing. They are indulging in class warfare.
According to the same poll, 46 percent say it’s important to “reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor.”
That's less than half but higher than one would expect -- unless you accept the Obama solution, which is to make the rich poor as a means of equalizing.
Conservatives prefer to make the poor rich. That's what growth does. During the golden era of Reagan, all income segments saw rising incomes. Class warfare didn't work. Why worry about what someone else is earning, if you own paycheck is growing?
The question was poorly phrased because it left open how equality would be achieved.
Another question gives us more insight. Seven out of 10 people say it’s important to “increase equality of opportunity for people to get ahead.”
So, a vast majority of Americans think equal opportunity and growth are important. If so, they are conservatives.
Socialists think big government that robs the rich to pay the poor is more important than growth and prosperity.
Where they think the money for their scheme is going to come from is anyone's guess.
Maybe they actually believe the government's assumption under "static analysis" of tax proposals, which is that a 100 percent tax rate would produce a payment of 100 percent. In other words, people gladly would work all year and turn over their entire income to the government.

Afterward

2011-12-22T17:02:00.002-05:00

I'm reading a library book on my Kindle called After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. I recommend reading it, but not until Jan. 1. You don't want to spoil your Christmas.
It is pretty clear that on our present course, this country is doomed.
Sample: Within a few years, the interest on the debt we owe China alone -- which must be paid -- will be equal to the cost of the Chinese military.
We will be financing the war machine of the only other superpower, and it is not a friend of America.
How we got here is simple: We elected politicians who have no regard for this country or its future.
The current president castigated George W. Bush for the irresponsible spending during his term -- and then increased the spending dramatically.
It wasn't an "investment" in anything. It was money borrowed and wasted. Yet, it must be paid back.
Nothing has been done to spur growth. It has been growth in the private sector that has paid for the wasteful government spending of the past 50 years. If growth stops, the party is over.
Author Mark Steyn says it is over. He offers little hope that any course correction we make now will return us to prosperity, and there is no course correction in sight. The current argument is over how much MORE to go into debt, not how to reduce the spending.
The two major parties don't matter. The Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 produced the Contract with America, which promised to eliminate a number of useless government programs. By 2000 spending on those programs had increased 13 percent.
That is why we have the Tea Party movement. They alone seem to recognize what we face.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Pray for your children.

Merit badges

2011-12-16T09:37:00.003-05:00

Trying to follow the logic in the arguments against higher pay for good teachers can be perplexing.
For example, from a paper further south: "Some will receive merit pay, not all. Let's just hope it will be the right teachers and that the merit pay criteria has merit."
That was her conclusion after arguing, essentially, that there was no way to discern whether any teacher was better than another.
If that is the case, how can we tell whether the "right teachers" get merit pay?
Strangely enough, if you walk into any public school and ask someone on the faculty who are the best teachers, you probably will be given the names of several teachers. How do they know?
Years ago a professor at the University of Florida devised an assessment form that statistical testing showed was accurate. Still, the powerful special interests that protect the education monopoly managed to kill the merit pay system is use at the time, which was based on that assessment.
Teacher unions maintain that all teachers are created equal and do equal work and must get equal pay. Except that if they continue to live and breathe they should be paid more.
To return to the teacher's complaint that not all will receive merit pay.
All are the best?
Teaching is a job, not magic. We can tell who is doing a good job and those who do should be paid more, as they are in every other profession. Furthermore, those who are not doing the job should be terminated, as they are in any other profession where unions do not prevent good management.

Poor us

2011-11-30T19:04:00.001-05:00

Liberals, bless their compassionate hearts, want to eliminate poverty.
Well, it is possible to increase or reduce the level of poverty, because the poverty level is defined by the government. Change the definition and you change the amount of poverty.
But it can't be eliminated. Poverty describes a relative condition. Those who have less than most others are in poverty.
Thus, if most of us made $100 million a year, those who made a mere million would be in poverty.
Heritage Foundation has written often on this subject and documented that people said to be in poverty tend to have nice homes, autos, TVs, computers and other amenities. Hardly comparable to the wretched souls lining the streets of Calcutta holding begging bowls and asking for alms.
To eliminate poverty would require everyone to earn the same income. While that might resonate in some college dorm discussion, even Karl Marx knew it would not happen, and it never did in Communist Russia. There were always the haves -- high-ranking Party members -- and the have-nots: Everyone else.
What conservatives want is for everyone to have an education, a job and equal opportunity to increase his standard to living to whatever level he desires.
That is possible, unlike the dreams of the liberal idealists and Utopians.

Inconvenient truth

2011-11-30T15:07:00.001-05:00

The Prophet Al Gore sayeth that the Great Global Warming shall bring forth storms and hurricanes in ever-increasing intensity, spreading a swath of devastation across the land.
We have now gone six years without a Cat Three hurricane -- the longest period in more than a century that the U.S. has avoided a Cat Three storm or greater.
There has been no global warming in years.
Another release of emails among alarmists gives further evidence how far they go to strike down and shout out any science that does not agree with their fanciful theories.
The public gets it. Global warming ranks among the least of concerns Americans have, polls show.
Nevertheless, alarmists are meeting again next week to try to fashion some way to extort billions from industrialized nations, to be spread around among the tyrants and despots they favor.

Eek. The sea is rising!

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

Found this chart on a global warming alarmist site.
Note a couple of things. Over 120 years, the oceans rose 200 mm. That's less than 8 inches.
Also, that has occurred, according to this chart, at a fairly even pace, with half of it occurring long before autos and power plants were in large numbers.
It also followed "the little ice age," a cooling period when presumably the sea levels declined.
Those evil devices, as we know from alarmist hysteria, are to blame for the rapid warming of the planet they keep predicting, which is not taking place.
Barack Obama promised to halt the seas from rising, if elected. He also promised to increase employment.
Now, it turns out, those events will only happen during his second term.

Selling the Brooklyn Bridge

2011-09-22T07:29:00.000-04:00

Who's the bigger fool? Someone who thinks he is smarter than 350 million people collectively, or 350 million people who are increasingly seeing through the media smog?
Barack Obama recently declared that there are a couple of hundred bridges in the nation that are on the verge of collapse, and only passing his latest pork bill will save thousands of Americans from death.
You don't have to be an affirmative action graduate from Harvard to know that the Highway Trust Fund contains billions of unspent dollars and that bridges on the verge of collapse would be the top priority for that money.
In addition, you don't have to be a TelePrompter-reading orator to know that taxpayers were just raped to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars and THAT money was supposed to go to the nation's most important "shovel ready" projects.
Bridges groaning under the weight of vehicles and cracking from the strain are not important?
How is it that this national "emergency" is so far down in the pecking order? Who sets the priorities in the White House?
The $20 billion Obama extorted from BP would have paid for a lot of bridge repairs. Not to mention the billions spent to shore up labor unions and protect the jobs of government workers.
To get on national television and make such a transparent political statement shows one thing: utter contempt for the American people.

Proud of ignorance

2011-09-06T07:56:00.000-04:00

One of (many) infuriating things about liberals is how they speak so smugly about matters of public policy when they literally have no inkling of the situation.
For example, the pipeline the paper mill in Palatka is building to improve the health of the river.
Libs continue to insist that the mill is doing just the opposite, by introducing millions of gallons of poison that is not going into the river currently. (Many of them gain their ignorance from a local newspaper columnist who has demagogued this issue for years.)
Fact: The mill's discharge has been going into the St. Johns River for more than 50 years.
Fact: It is cleaner now than it was 50 years ago.
Fact: The only reason the pipeline is needed is because the environmental standards have been increased.
The mill has spent more than $100 million improving the quality of its discharge. It also spent some $20 million on alternatives to the pipeline that environmental wackos insisted would work. They didn't.
The burden of that cost will fall on the mill workers and its customers.
But the so-called environmentalists don't care about that. They hope to close down the mill and eliminate the jobs of more than 1,000 mill workers. Mother Nature is more important than the workers and their families.
That's liberal compassion. They are always willing to sacrifice YOUR livelihood for their fantasies.
All the environmental regulators agree that by moving the point of discharge to the middle of the river instead of letting it seep into the edge will improve the health of the river, because the solution to pollution is dilution.
Libs, of course, know better. They have total faith in their intellectual and moral superiority.

How to destroy your own argument

2011-09-02T08:41:00.000-04:00

Political consultant (and not a very successful one) Bob Beckel is supposed to be one of the smarter liberals. And, of course, libs are smarter than the rest of us anyway.
Yet in a discussion on The Five, on Fox News, Beckel displayed his own ignorance vividly.
As other libs have been doing, he tried to excuse the rant by a Muslim congressman, who accused other members of Congress who are supported by the Tea Party of being racists.
It is inexcuseable and the lib talking points call for them to admit he went over the line.
Then, they follow it up by excusing him because the Tea Party and other conservatives want to balance the budget.
To balance the budget, they want to limit the increase in spending -- without increasing taxes and thereby impeding growth.
Libs equate this to racism on the grounds, as Beckel tried to explain it, that "the most vulnerable" would be harmed by not continuing to increase spending as much as libs want to.
By the most vulnerable, they mean Americans of African ancestry who are poor. Libs imagine they would "suffer" if federal spending increases of the past few years were not further increased.
But, then, out of the blue, Beckel spoke the truth!
"You know, most people on welfare are white," he said.
This is true. But Beckel is so dense he did not realize he had just shot down his own argument. Unfortunately, the other members of the panel did not pick up on it either.
How can it be racist to support limits that would harm more white people than black people?
This could only be true of black politicians. It was a black politician who made the allegation. But he is one who opposes the spending limits.
White conservatives who want to help blacks by producing jobs for them cannot be called racist for wanting sane budget limits that harm mostly white people (if, indeed, they harm anyone).

Stearns is plugging away

2011-09-01T14:22:00.004-04:00

U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns of Northeast Florida is a low-key guy. I've known him for about 20 years and he is not a headline hunter, but he is a plugger.
As head of the House Energy Committee's oversight subcommittee, he has been investigating the Solyndra deal that just went bust.
In throwing cash all over the nation, the White House tossed a half-billion dollars at Solyndra, which makes solar panels. You know: "green" jobs and all that.
Well, Solyndra just went bankrupt. And 1,100 jobs went down the drain.
The deal smelled fishy from the start, which is why venture capitalists wouldn't put money into it. But one of the investors was a big Democrat cash-bundler. The company got a $535 million loan guarantee from the government.
Stearns has learned that the Office of Management and Budget, which is supposed to recommend a stimulus project before it goes forward, never made a recommendation on Solyndra. It took a while to find this out because the administration stonewalled the congressional effort to get the information.
Yes, that's the same administration that promised to set the highest standards for "transparency." Instead, it has been one of the most secretive and least cooperative.
The Government Accounting Office also has looked at the deal and found that several required steps in the process were leapfrogged.
Now the taxpayers apparently are out the money and Stearns wants to hold hearings to find out how much more of the trillion dollars in stimulus was hurried out the door without proper vetting.
No problem, the White House says. It knew all along that some of the programs weren't going to be a success.
Really?

Early warning signs?

2011-08-29T14:42:00.000-04:00

Members of Downtown Rotary still are buzzing about a bizarre appearance by Mayor Alvin Brown a couple of weeks ago.
One said the speech -- full of platitudes and mush -- was the "worst speech I ever heard," and this person has heard many.
Yet, it was a prepared speech -- not one off-the-cuff, which might be excused.
On top of that, Brown applauded himself throughout the speech, while members of the audience stared in disbelief.
Since taking office, Brown has announced an "economic summit," which is kind of busywork with no clear reason or purpose. He also has expounded on the need for "downtown development," which has been a theme of every mayor for the past six decades.
The frosting on his cake is a plan to spend $70 million on a trolley.
This is just an old newspaperman's hunch: Before 2015 the RINOs -- I mean "prominent Republicans" -- who helped defeat a competent conservative candidate are going to be offering excuses for their foolish actions.

Changing times, and minds

2011-08-24T19:21:00.000-04:00

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama said President Bush was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic" because the national debt had increased by $4 trillion during Bush's eight years in office.
President Obama has added more debt in three years than Bush did in eight. Twice as many people are unemployed.
That's not all. The stock market is in turmoil. We have more military involvement in foreign lands than under Bush. China is closing the military gap with us, rapidly.
Yet in an Orwellian comment, the White House press office says the mounting debt is a "validation" of the sagacity of Obamanomics.
How much hypocrisy and chicanery will the American people take? Will they re-elect Obama in 2012 when he is still blaming Bush for all his failures, four years later?
There is a virtual certainty that if the election were next week and there was a 100 percent voter turnout, Obama would be chased from office.
But it is way too early to say what will happen in November 2012.
Obama already is trying to pose as a tax cutter and spending hawk. With the media's help, he might be able to sell that bill of goods to people who don't know the facts or don't care about them.

Journalistic malpractice

2011-08-11T18:50:00.004-04:00

One local paper was so devoid of news this week that its editors felt the need to run a story made up from scratch by the Associated Press. It is a typical practice in the liberal media.
You select a conservative target and then make up a story that will cast the person in a negative light.
The big story was that Gov. Rick Scott gets health insurance, and pays the same rate as 32,000 other state employees.
Shocking!
Well, OK, not shocking. So, they have to jazz it up a bit.
They revealed the fact that Scott actually opposes the federal government's attempt to take over health care through the vehicle generally known as Obamacare!
That's it.
This is a news story?
Naturally, libs fell all over themselves with outrage. They didn't know what they were outraged about but I do. It is because Scott beat Alex Sink at the polls and became governor. Libs believe only Democrats are fit to hold public office.
They have been working overtime to demonize Scott since he was elected.
In this case, anyone who examined the story would laugh -- if they were capable of critical thinking. But, of course, the public schools don't teach critical thinking. They indoctrinate children to follow the liberal line.
Someone capable of thinking would ask, why shouldn't Scott buy health insurance that the Legislature voted long ago to make available to state employees?
At one time, it was free. Now the employee has to pay a cost. It is a low cost, because it is subsidized. Again, not Scott's doing.
The fact that he agrees with the majority of Americans on Obamacare has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Many of those 32,000 who get the insurance at the same rate undoubtedly agree with Scott. Are they to be held in disrepute also?
Are only those who think Obamacare is good policy entitled to have health insurance supplied by the state?
Previous governors of both parties got the benefits established by law, regardless of what federal government policies they agreed with.
Unlike them, Scott does not accept a salary from the state. This obviously more than makes up the amount of the subsidy he gets on health insurance.
This is a completely fabricated story. It is, in fact, not a news story. It is an attack on Scott.
It is much like one of the made-up stories published by this local daily. At one time they attacked a number of local citizens solely because of the amount of water they use monthly.
Water is a free resource that the city and private companies deliver to residents for a fee. Several years ago the fee structure was revised, in fact, to penalize those who buy larger amounts.
So people were held up to public ridicule and scorn just because they buy large amounts of a product that the city sells.
The implication is that they are "wasting" something valuable that belongs to "society," using more than their "fair share." This is one of liberaldom's favorite myths and themes.
We could not run out of water on the planet Earth if we wanted to. The worst that could happen is that some day Florida residents might have to use water from the ocean, as millions of other people around the gllobe do every day.
Libs also claim that food is scarce. So where are the stories castigating people who spend too much at the local groceries? You won't see those for two reasons: grocery stores spend millions on newspaper ads, and the city doesn't keep records of people's grocery bills, which makes it effortless to cook up a phony story about water usage.
If you read a story in a newspaper, which fewer people do every day, ask yourself: Is this news or propaganda?

The plan is working

2011-08-04T16:44:00.000-04:00

Never let a crisis go to waste, Barack Obama's closest adviser told him.
But first you have to have a crisis.
If there's not one handy, create one.
Today's fall off the cliff in the stock market is a natural result of the spending and debt binge Obama has been on since he took office.
I'm convinced now that his plan is to create not just a recession, but a Depression.
He and his socialist pals, including George Soros, have to be licking their lips looking back at the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to move America further toward socialism than it had ever been. He did it by using the crisis at hand, which he didn't create but made worse.
Herbert Hoover had cut taxes and the nation was heading out of the recession of 1929 when Congress passed the worst piece of legislation ever, the Smoot-Hawley tariff. That put the nation, and the world, into a depression.
Roosevelt, after being elected by promising to cut taxes and balance the budget, did the opposite. When people needed jobs and food, he jailed employers for trying to lower wages and sell food at lower prices. His make-work job programs employed some people, but kept them out of work in the private sector.
Even his own financial adviser admitted at the end of FDR's first term that nothing they had tried had worked.
Obama's plan is to do everything FDR did, and double or triple it. With the nation in a depression, he can assume huge powers for the government, as FDR did, and the freedoms lost this time may never come back.
The only risk he is taking is that the economic hardships he is creating will backlash in November 2012 and prevent him from being elected. He is counting on Soros and the media to keep that from happening.
If he wins his gamble, there is nothing to stop him.

Let's get real

2011-07-21T08:26:00.002-04:00

Mayor Alvin Brown -- ho, hum -- is calling for an "economic summit."
What is that?
It is a gathering of people to discuss how to increase employment in Jacksonville.
Those attending are the same people who have been trying to figure out ways to increase employment for years.
How are they going to be any more effective sitting in the same room? They all know all the remedies available and, truthfully, they are few.
Local government doesn't control local employment. The policies that affect business the most are set in Tallahassee, which is 175 miles away and, even more so, in Washington, D.C., which is 800 miles away.
The further away the politician, the less the accountability. But that is another issue.
Local government can do things to make it easier for business -- especially small business. This includes imposing only as much regulation as necessary, and keeping taxes low. It also helps to make easier access for things like permits.
But local politicians tend to worry more about big business, which really needs little help that they can provide.
What should Brown be doing?
He should be putting his newly appointed department heads in a room together and ordering them to provide him with a list of the cuts they would make in their budgets in case of a 10 percent reduction in funding.
This is an excellent exercise. It exposes the least necessary functions of government and also the management savvy of the bureaucrat.
It also gives a mayor a list to turn to when property taxes fall off, or state and federal funding is reduced. Admittedly, the latter is rare.
He also should be working with the City Council to fashion a smooth transition to a new employee pension plan that will not allow politicians to promise the moon in exchange for votes, and not have to worry about the consequences.
Sound, practical ideas are not likely to come from the dying daily newspaper. They are too busy praising Brown for everything he does. Because he is "historic," you know..
Whatever the hell that means.
If Brown helps get the local government through a tight period without dumping it all on the taxpayer, he might be up for the "historic" label, although other mayors have done pretty well on that score.
At the moment, he is just a guy with little experience in a new job and holding summits that are not likely to produce anything of benefit to the taxpayers.

Featherbedding again

2011-07-21T08:09:00.001-04:00

Once again, teacher unions in Florida are proving that the government schools are operated for the purpose of providing safe, secure, highly paid jobs for adults, not for educating children.
A proposed amendment to the state constitution is under legal attack by the unions. What it would do is remove a 19th century provision with roots in anti-Catholic bigotry.
It also is a device the unions use in trying to prevent poor children from escaping dysfunctional, unsafe government schools. They succeeded in destroying one successful program and would like to eliminate all other competition.
It costs about $8,000 to $10,000 per year for a child to attend government schools. Many families can afford to send their children to a private school when they are not getting what they paid for in a government school.
Poor families cannot afford to escape failing government schools.
However, vouchers allow them to send their child to a school that is safe and actually provides an education.
If the voucher is $5,000, that saves the taxpayer $5,000 for each child getting an education.
Union leaders such as Andy Ford are unable to do basic math. They say it costs money when a child transfers from a government school to a private school with a voucher.
But they also say that it costs money for every child who attends a school. You can't have it both ways. There cannot be a cost both for educating a child and for NOT educating a child who attends another school.
All unions want is to force as many children into government schools as possible, whether they get an education or not. Each child has a price tag because the state funding formula funds government schools on a per-child basis. The more money the schools get, the more money unions get. The more money they have, the more they can spend on electing liberal politicians who will vote to give them even more money.
There is no correlation between spending money on schools and educating children.
If the unions want to convince the taxpayers that it is better to discriminate against Catholics, or that they should oppose vouchers, fine.
But what they seek to do is prevent the taxpayers from voting on an issue. They are against democracy.
Vouchers have nothing to do with religion. The parents make the choice where they use the voucher and it could be at a school run by Catholics, Jews, Protestants or any other religion or one that is non-denominational.
It is the state's job to educate children and it is failing miserably, yet at great cost. This is true not only in Florida but in every other state. One major reason is that government schools have no incentive and no accountability. Even good teachers, of which there are many, are handcuffed by red tape and bureaucracy.
The choice of a school for their children should be left to parents.

Hear not, know not

2011-07-20T18:17:00.002-04:00

The sheriff's office is going to stop people from listening to police calls (if it can.)
This is a major, and rather disturbing, story.
The media and others listen to police scanners to find out what the police are doing. But the cops supply them with the scanners and now say they can't have them anymore, Channel 12 reports.
(I don't know whether people can buy scanners to pick up the calls. Apparently not. As I understand it, the local police use an encrypted signal that is only understood by their own units.)
This is just the latest retreat from transparency by the local police. It has been getting increasingly dark for the past several decades.
Long ago, the police locked reporters and the public out of police headquarters, allowing them access only when supervised and by appointment.
Naturally, the police cite security concerns. That is a poor excuse.
When I was a police reporter in the 1960s I had free run of the building. I spent all day talking to cops and detectives, and reading the reports they file, and going into the jail to read the dockets and see who was booked and why.. Offense reports now are made available to the press only in a room near the front door of police headquarters. No one knows if every report is provided or not.
I also had a police radio. It was not two-way but I could hear police calls. The cops gave it to me because they had a spare in the radio shop. It was a big help. It enabled me to be present at the scene of one of the biggest murder cases in local history, when the pastor of the Beaver Street Baptist Church was shot by his girlfriend.
There were no "information officers" to herd the press in those days, and none of the cops objected to the access we had.
In the next sheriff's election, open access to the public (NOT just the media, who are not anybody special) should be an issue.
It will be interesting to see if the local media push this issue or just continue to be wimpy.

Hysterical history

2011-05-20T18:34:00.001-04:00

We are hearing that Jacksonville is making history by having "the first African-American mayor."
For the last eight years, we also made history by having the "first Gate Petroleum executive mayor."
Before that, we had "the first mayor from the Beaches."
Before that, we had "the first former state attorney and also former public defender mayor."
And, of course, if Audrey Moran had been elected we would have had "the first woman mayor."
Seems like we have made a lot of history in the past 20 years and will do so every time we elect a mayor.
On some civilized planet, they probably are saying, "What is the MATTER with those people? What possible difference could a person's skin pigmentation make in his job performance?"

Balancing act

2011-05-20T18:24:00.000-04:00

There are still people arguing for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Many of them are conservatives.
I don't get it. No one has proposed an actual amendment, including the all-important wording.
The only amendment I can conceive of that would make any sense would be "Congress may not pass a budget in which expenditures exceed revenues."
That would be a disaster.
It would be an open invitation for politicians to spend whatever they want and raise taxes to meet it, justifying their actions by saying, "The Constitution requires us to raise taxes."
Let's think this out before we press on.
Meanwhile, if anyone wants to amend the Constitution, how about one that says, "Public employees may not belong to unions."
That one has my vote, and it might make the need for a balanced budget amendment unnecessary.

Utopia isn't here yet

2011-05-19T08:15:00.000-04:00

Liberals are all aglow about Alvin Brown being elected mayor. Predictably, they are playing the race card, as if electing someone with slightly darker skin than his opponent is a big deal in the 21st century.
What it actually means for poor black people is higher taxes, which means less money to spend on their families. That's one reason liberals try to keep them poor and uneducated on the liberal plantation.
Many who voted for Brown probably think that the higher taxes Brown will seek will be paid by rich white people.
Wrong.
Many of those voters probably are renters. Renters pay property taxes.
They pay them in their rent, and they pay them when they buy goods from local businesses.
Naturally, they are not taught such basic economic facts in school. They are lucky if they can even read or write when they leave the government schools.
Now, the City Council may not approve higher taxes. There is no reason to and there are conservatives on the council.
That is why it was ridiculous for pundits to get into a snit about Mike Hogan pledging not to ask for higher taxes. The council sets the taxes and it can do so, or not do so, no matter what the mayor wants.
The happiest people are the liberal fat cats who hope to get handouts in one form or another from City Hall. Their chances are greatly increased with a liberal Democrat as mayor.
By shifting costs from themselves to the poor, they come out ahead, again.
The idea that it means a great new boost for downtown also is bogus. City officials have lavished money on downtown Jacksonville since the 1950s and downtown in no way resembles the downtown of the past, but still the plea for more money goes on.
After the grandiose new courthouse is completed, there is really little the city government needs to do. The private sector will continue to lead in downtown redevelopment, when it is warranted.
I see no reason to expect any noticeable improvement, and some reason to expect a worse situation for those who can least afford it, as a result of the election.
But like those who voted for the incumbent president, and are unemployed as a result, they may never make the connection.

Birther pains

2011-05-13T13:10:00.000-04:00

I wish birthers would get off it, and focus on electing a new president next year.
Not only is it a waste of time -- Barack Obama was born in Hawaii -- but they take away attention that should be on the loony left "truthers" who think George Bush and the CIA blew up the twin towers.
The latest kerfuffle is about the birth certificate. But it is not evidence of anything.
If you are not going to believe a birth certificate, newspaper accounts and the word of people who knew the parents and claim they saw baby Obama, then what?
Diehards say they have to make sure he meets the qualifications in the Constitution.
Sure, but what if he does not?
Do they seriously think that the Senate is going to remove him from office, even if he were impeached by the House?
Do they think the Supreme Court is going to declare a four-year-old election invalid?
Do they think the megalomaniac is going to resign?
The best course is to vote him out of office and try to undo the damage he has done.

Worst case scenario

2011-05-11T10:53:00.000-04:00

Inevitably, the market will make adjustments and overcome the obstacles and hurdles put into place by the federal government.
It always does. Recessions, on average, last about nine months. Government intervention usually is too late, or makes it worse, which has been the case since the current recession began.
If recovery happens before November 2012, liberals nevertheless will claim that their harmful policies of wasteful spending, bailouts and inflation are responsible for the recovery, rather than the reasons it took so long.
Thousands of Americans who have not been educated about how our economic system works, and either are unable or unwilling to learn for themselves, will accept that claim and vote for more of the same.
If the current president is re-elected as a result, he will be freed from any concerns about the electorate and is certain to embark on a course of all-out socialism not seen since the 1930s.
With a conservative majority in Congress, the damage might be limited. If somehow Congress slips back into liberal hands, America is in deep trouble.
Therefore, all the current chattering about who can win against the incumbent is meaningless. If the economy remains in tatters, anyone can beat him. If it recovers, he wins.

What they don't teach

2011-05-08T10:20:00.002-04:00

The government schools need help.
Here's how parents can help them.
Find out what your child is being taught. Check the textbooks. Ask the child what the teacher is saying.
If the child is being indoctrinated instead of educated, enroll the child in a private school or teach him at home.
Schools used to teach children to read and write. They used to teach the history of this country and how its economic system works.
Children also were taught that they should not kill. Or steal. That they should honor their parents. Today, that kind of teaching may be the one thing that would get a teacher fired.
One of the ways that schools indoctrinate students is to teach them liberalism.
It is standard practice to teach children of high school age that the political spectrum runs from "communism" on the left to "fascism" on the right. Thus, students believe, "right wing" or conservative means fascist.
This of course is liberal doctrine. It is also total nonsense.
For a thorough treatment of the subject, read Jonah Goldberg's well documented book Liberal Fascism, but even a basic knowledge of history or politics reveals that the political spectrum must be based on the amount of government because politics is all about government.
Therefore, the actual spectrum runs from totalitarian government to anarchy, or no government.
This is a more accurate version, although not necessarily drawn to scale:

Another fact: America is a capitalist nation and a republic, not a democracy.
But children in the government schools are taught that they live in a democracy. (So vote Democrat, get it?) They also are taught that being conservative -- that is, in favor of the government envisioned by the Founding Fathers, who also are disappearing from the textbooks -- is a far-out mode of thinking, tainted by the greed of capitalism. No mention of the overwhelming greed of the elites who rule in a collectivist society.
You need to know what your children are learning, unless you want them to grow up in a country far different than the one you were born into.

Change again?

2011-05-04T18:30:00.000-04:00

In 2008, millions of college age students went to the polls having been indoctrinated in government schools and by the liberal media to think that if a black person wanted to be president, they must vote for him to show they were not racists.
Now that age bracket enjoys record unemployment, and they see the nation in debt and disarray.
They may very well have a different mindset when they vote for a president next year.
Democrats were smart. They ran someone who was not qualified, but had the requisite skin color.
Had Republicans realized the value of that asset, they might very well have found a well qualified person of African ancestry and might very well have won.
Next year, there are a number of well qualified conservative candidates who would serve the nation well in the White House. They have many different ethnic and racial backgrounds.
It would behoove GOP voters to choose well. Many more votes may be attuned to qualifications and leadership abilities this time, and if the best happens to have ethnic appeal -- for those voters who find that appealing -- they might have a winning combination.
It won't be easy because of our silly election system. It is way too long and gives way too much clout to people in states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
But occasionally we muddle through and get a true leader. It happened in 1980 and it can happen again.

Why not the best?

2011-05-04T05:34:00.001-04:00

Curious about the opposition to the candidate for mayor who clearly is the most experienced and knowledgeable, I asked a prominent Alvin Brown supporter what is wrong with Mike Hogan.
Hogan will set the city back, he said.
He surmises that Hogan would not do anything about the public employee pension fund obligations.
That's just nonsense. Hogan has plans to reduce pension costs in the long run and has made them public. It is Brown who has no plan.
Also, he fears that Hogan will eliminate the Human Relations Commission, as well as pare down the Children's Commission and Economic Development Commission.
The non-paid Human Relations Commission is a do-nothing body, as is the Commission on the Status of Women. Both of these liberal sandboxes are anachronisms and need to be eliminated, in my view. However, Hogan has never said he would eliminate them.
One problem with liberals is that no government bureaucracy is ever seen as temporary, no matter how temporary the problem they are created to address.
In 1803, the British created a civil service position for a lookout on the cliffs at Dover, watching daily for Napoleon's fleet. Napoleon died in 1821. The position was eliminated in 1945.
That's also how the so-called "business community" in Jacksonville thinks. They have been calling downtown redevelopment a problem for more than 50 years and for that entire time the city government has been spending oodles of time and money on the alleged problem. Today, downtown Jacksonville is in far better condition than most central cities throughout the nation but they remain fixated on the idea that it is in collapse and they persist in spending on fluff and stuff like roundabouts, which accomplish nothing.
Apparently they haven't noticed that the marketplace, in the meantime, has created newer, better "downtowns" such as the St. Johns Town Center, because that is what people want. The central city is merely where government offices are located and increasingly people are able to use the Internet and satellite offices to avoid going downtown.
The real business community is out in the suburbs, doing its job without government largesse.
What Hogan needs to do for downtown is mothball the people mover, which is moving more money than people.
Liberals allege that Hogan would sell off precious park lands. Hogwash. Jacksonville has been on a land-buying binge that has increased taxes on property remaining on the tax roll. Hogan has said he might sell some land as a last resort, but not any that has environmental value.
Hogan also should ignore liberal complaints that he is ducking debates. Of 20 forums before the primary, Hogan attended 11 (six were skipped because of schedule conflicts). Brown attended only 7. Who's ducking?
Brown supporters complain that Hogan supported a revenue cap as a member of the Tax and Budget Reform Commission.
True. So did Gov. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, then the House speaker. It was a way of protecting taxpayers by limiting local governments to how much they could soak the taxpayer -- if voters approved. It would not have affected Jacksonville, which has never approached the proposed limit.
Brown supporters and other liberals, including the morning newspaper -- which has supported the liberal candidate for governor and mayor now -- simply want to have the ability to raise taxes ad infinitum.
Hogan prefers another approach. Help the local economy grow, which will produce jobs, wealth and higher tax revenues, without penalizing those who have lived here all their lives.
For example, Hogan wants to help develop the port, which is a major engine of the local economy. He wants to help people get jobs, in spite of the federal policies that hamper growth.
Hogan speaks in specifics, and has the experience. Brown is a novice who talks in platitudes.
Liberals are grasping at straws and spreading untruths in their desperation.
As he tries to help modernize Jacksonville, Hogan probably will shake up a lot of people who are used to business as usual.
Good. We haven't had any new ideas since consolidation, more than 40 years ago. It is time for a fresh approach, just like we are getting in Tallahassee.
Is it a fatal error for Hogan not to grovel before the kingmakers?
When Jake Godbold ran for mayor he didn't kiss up to the fat cats, he lambasted them. He also won.

Political posturing

2011-04-29T11:28:00.000-04:00

Alvin Brown is trying hard to look conservative but it isn't a good impersonation.
Brown is a Democrat. You cannot use the words "Democrat" and "fiscal responsibility" in the sane sentence.
If you like Obama, you'll love Brown.
But his handlers have found a few poll-tested phrases, such as "holistic" and "partnerships" that they think resonate with voters, and he is deploying them randomly when he speaks, but they mean nothing.
Republican Mike Hogan is the conservative candidate for mayor. He is the candidate with experience. He is the candidate who will look out for the taxpayers.
Here are two bits of evidence to support that contention.
One is that the liberal morning newspaper is slamming Hogan in the news columns. And, since the news columns and opinion pages are joined at the hip, he will not get the paper's endorsement. That doesn't matter much, because the paper's influence in the community has become almost non-existent.
The second clue, which is related to the first because it is trumpeted in the paper, is the fact that a handful of registered RINOs are supporting Brown.
There are folks who talk about free markets and such, but want a mayor who will keep on spending money like there is no tomorrow, and one who will continue to toss slop in the trough.
Also, there is more than a little snobbery. Hogan doesn't have a Harvard degree and doesn't hang out in the country clubs, extending his pinky when he sips his latte.
That's OK with those who don't belong to the country clubs. Hogan intends to spend your money sanely. For example, public employees will be treated fairly, not lavishly. Jacksonville is not in California.
No matter what they say in Washington, the recession is not over. The next mayor probably will see 8 to 9 percent less in property tax revenues, yet higher expenses because of the federal government's policy of inflation and built-in costs the current administration has failed to address. He must act responsibly because Jacksonville is not the federal government and cannot spend more than it collects.
For taxpayers who want to be treated fairly, the solution is simple. Turnout will decide the outcome. If you don't vote, they will -- and if they win, you will pay.

Thanks, Ben

2011-04-28T12:04:00.000-04:00

The geniuses at the Federal Reserve are quantitatively easing me right out of retirement.
I've never been close to being "rich" even by liberal standards. But I did save some money while I was working because I never believed that Social Security would be around -- and, even if it was, I believed Franklin Roosevelt when he said it wasn't intended to be anyone's sole source of retirement income.
So, I retired.
Now, my pitiful little savings is being whittled away so that the federal government can inflate away its awesome debt.
The theory is that if they take the money out of the private sector, or borrow it, and put it back into the private sector, the economy will improve.
How does that work?
Obviously, no wealth is created with this shuffling of money.
How is wealth created when the government borrows money, hands it out, then must raise taxes to pay back the money with interest?
Jobs and wealth are created when some entrepreneur risks his own money to start a business in hope of making a profit. (Otherwise, he can just put his money in a bank and collect the interest.)
Meanwhile, the federal government is taxing most of my savings directly and stealing the rest indirectly with inflation, and I'm rehearsing: "Hi. Welcome to Wal-mart."
I'm not rehearsing, "Woe is me," however. Work is no big deal. I did it for 50 years and I can do it another 50. Plenty of people are worse off than me.
But no one can convince me that a government of the politicians, by the politicians and for the politicians is either "compassionate" or what the Founding Fathers intended.

Missing word alert

2011-04-27T07:54:00.002-04:00

Where did it go?
When George W. Bush sent troops to Afghanistan to kill Taliban, the most prevalent word in the media was "quagmire."
Comparisons were made with centuries old military adventures in that region as the libs proclaimed Americans were either going to be there for decades or would be defeated swiftly. (They didn't care which, they just didn't want a victory.)
Now, Afghanistan is a liberal president's war, and it has been escalated.
No one seems to know why we are in Afghanistan anymore, or what the strategy is for winning and leaving.
Sounds like a quagmire to me.
If there is such a word anymore.

The Boss calls POTUS

2011-04-27T07:28:00.000-04:00

"Mr. President, Mr. Soros is on the red phone!"
"Yes sir?"
"Barry, here's the word for the day. 'There's no silver bullet.' Got it?"
"Yes sir. What does it mean?"
"Never mind that. Just put it on the TelePrompter and use it every chance you get when you are talking about gasoline prices."
"Yes sir. Ummm. I forget. Are we for higher prices or lower prices?"
"Higher! These fools still have too much money. If we don't part them from it, they will be all starting businesses, creating jobs and wealth. Who the hell will need the government then?"
"Right, chief. I'll get right on it. I'll get our union goons and the media to spread it around, too."
"Good. And quir worrying about next year. I've got it covered. They are all focused on Donald Trump and where you were born. Nobody is paying attention to how you are screwing up the world."
"Thanks, boss. And don't you worry. No matter what Beck says, I don't think you are a spooky dude."

T. Edward Austin, RIP

2011-04-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

Two things I remember about Ed Austin, who died this week:
One was the fact that as state attorney he looked at the evidence and brought an indictment against a good friend, Mayor Hans Tanzler.
I don't think Tanzler did anything wrong other than run afoul of highly complex campaign finance rules. He and Austin and the late Dale Carson were three of the most honest public officials I ever ran into, but that's beside the point. Austin thought there was enough evidence to let it go to trial and he didn't let friendship affect his decision.
Another example concerned a murder case that I covered as a reporter. At one point, Austin's investigators uncovered evidence that supported the defense. Austin immediately told his people to make the defense attorneys aware of the information. (The guy was convicted anyway.)
Just a short time before he died, Austin and I had breakfast at the Fox in Avondale and talked over old times. I had known him since we were neighbors back in the 1960s.
I wrote many stories, columns and editorials about him while he served as state attorney, general counsel and mayor. He never complained about any, although he thought I was wrong about sentencing guidelines. (He may have been right.)
I didn't think he looked well when I saw him. He told me he had been down a bit, but planned on resuming his workouts at the gym, and insisted that we visit again soon.
I wish we could. But I'm glad we had those last few moments.

A sign of spring

2011-04-24T09:42:00.002-04:00

Just as flowers always bloom in the spring in Florida, a newspaper headline written by and for blooming idiots will appear:
"Florida ranks (fill in the blank) in school spending."
Eek!
Let a simple soul ask a question. If you go to a tailor and he makes a suit for you that is baggy, has gaps at the seams, is made of polyester and is a sickening chartreuse color, are you totally pleased as long as he charges you $1,200?
After all, only the price matters, right?
A few years ago Florida TaxWatch wrote a paper pointing out the fact that Florida spends less than Texas and California on its schools, yet Florida students learn more.
Conversely, some states spend more and students learn more.
One Florida governor spent his entire term urging the Legislature to move Florida schools into "the upper quartile." In learning? No, in spending.
Gov. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, spent two terms pushing for more accountability in the schools and other reforms that actually helped increase student achievement.
Needless to say, that infuriated the teacher union leaders. They have spent decades trying to foster the notion that only spending more money on public schools will increase student learning. They have absolutely no evidence, so they rely on taxpayer gullibility -- and the liberal media, which would never question such an vacuous argument.
Yet, why the unions would make such an argument is vividly clear. When more money is spent on the schools, unions collect more money from teachers, and build large war chests to help elect more liberal legislators who vote to spend more money. It is a tidy little racket.
Not so good for struggling taxpayers, especially those who don't have children in schools. But someone has to make a sacrifice.

Journalism 101: Slanting the story

2011-04-24T09:22:00.000-04:00

The Miami Herald is looking critically at the idea of private state prisons.
The Herald, which has never seen a government proposal to waste money that it didn't like, worries that it might cost more.
This is part of its analysis: "Critics also say the plan to expand prison privatization is aimed at rewarding an industry that donates generously to the state Republican Party."
Well, there you go. If the industry helps the Republican Party, obviously it might be ... what? Devious? Underhanded? Criminal? Deranged?
Oddly, enough the Herald doesn't even see any need to explain just why that is a talking point. Its readers are supposed to understand.
The fact that the "critics" are unions who donate to the Democrat Party is, of course, beside the point.
When it is a case of special interests vs. the taxpayers, you can always count on Florida's liberal media to do what they do best.

Information matters

2011-04-22T08:02:00.000-04:00

Don't you get tired of being treated like an idiot?
If you are one of the few remaining readers of the local daily newspaper published in the mornings (always referred to by one leading politician years ago as "The Morning Mistake"), that is how you are treated.
Just one example: local schools.
Not only in the news columns but also in the opinion columns, readers constantly are harangued about the supposed problem of "school funding."
It is too little, they say.
But are you ever told (a) how much it is, (b) how much it has changed or (c) why it matters?

Herewith, information that is relevant.


School spending

What this shows, obviously, is that spending is higher than it was five years ago, although down from 2008.
Rational human beings, however, would be more interested in knowing whether children are learning more or less.
That information is more difficult to find. The Web pages of the government school system contain data, but most of it is not current and there does not seem to be any that shows year to year progress.
Competent journalists, however, easily could unearth the information -- if their intent was to inform rather than proselytize.
One thing you can count on is that the politicians who run the government schools will assure you that the schools are improving under their watchful eyes.
They expect that you will not ask how that is possible if the amount of money thrown at the system is the only factor involved.
If it should turn out that children are learning less, and they attempt to attribute that to lack of funding, the relevant question would be: How would greater funding improved learning?
Ask them to cite the research showing any correlation between school spending and student achievement.
Good luck getting an answer. Don't bother to look for it in the newspaper.
Mark Twain said, "If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." Until newspapers begin fulfilling their responsibility to inform the public, that will continue to be true, and they will continue to lose readers.

Let's look at the record

2011-04-21T18:24:00.000-04:00

Candidate Barack Obama promised hope and change.
He criticized George Bush for spending too much. Obama has added $4 trillion to the debt.
He criticized Bush for the tax relief Bush had championed. Obama allowed the tax relief to be extended.
He criticized Bush as a "warmonger." Obama has continued one Bush military operation, escalated another and started another of his own.
He criticized the imprisonment of terrorists at Guantanamo. Obama has allowed the terrorists to continue being house at Guantanamo.
He criticized Bush for being too close to Wall Street. Obama has bailed out big banks, General Motors, General Electric and other Wall Street moguls.
He criticized Bush for America's standing among other nations but world leaders now regard Obama as weak and indecisive and America appears to have lost respect since Obama took office.
He criticized Bush for his Medicare prescription plan, then Obama rammed through Congress a health care plan overwhelmingly opposed by the American people, via trickery.
He promised transparency and honesty in government but passed his health care plan in secrecy, making dozens of deals with various players, deals he has begun to renege on.
Obama has no plan to meet the looming economic crisis, other than inflating the currency and imposing punitive taxes on all Americans.
Where is the change? Where is the hope?

Timing

2011-04-04T18:14:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, socialists around the nation are being urged to attend a great "teach in" at which they will try to "take back" America. Commies and pot-bellied, grey-haired '60s hippies also are expected to attend.
Maybe they will be shouting "Ho ho, BHO has got to go." Or, maybe not.
Coincidentally, I'm sure, George Soros is hosting a series of events April 8, aimed at destroying capitalism.
Other events coming up include a special "aid for Gaza" event to highlight the plight of the terrorists in Gaza, who daily fire rockets into civilian neighborhoods in Israel, and send forays to murder entire families. Old Obama pal Bill Ayers is in on that one.
These events come right on the heels of Obama's announcement that he will run for re-election, and the simultaneous announcement that he will not try terrorists in civilian courts, as he previously had promised to do. American voters are overwhelmingly against the idea of giving terrorists special rights and a public show.
There certainly are a lot of things going on. None of them seem to be very good for America. Next year we will find out whether Americans care or not.

Delusional

2011-03-03T06:36:00.000-05:00

The president of the United States is either totally delusional or, more likely, totally convinced that he is more intelligent than anyone else in America.
That's the only conclusion you can reach when Obama says his budget would not add to the national debt when, in fact, it doubles the national debt in the next decade.
Budgets are not a matter of opinion. They are basic math.
Sure, you can make up assumptions such as fabulous growth and fictional interest rates. He does that, too.
But even without that, his budget does not do what he said it would do, and the falsity is easily shown, as in this piece on NRO.
Everything he has done since taking office has shown that Obama fully believes he is the Chosen One, more witty, brilliant, handsome, eloquent and clever than anyone else in the room.
But, he has no accomplishments to support his belief. Instead, he has a long list of failures that will be with the American people for a long time.
America cannot afford another four years with someone in the White House who is willing to blatantly lie to the American people.

Invest in this, sucker

2011-02-23T08:28:00.000-05:00

While you are hearing all the wailing and despair over "cuts" to education, ponder this:
K-12 public education costs four times as much as it did in 1970, after adjusting for inflation.
But that is just measuing inputs. How has the "investment" paid off? Zero increase in education, measured by test scores.
Meanwhile, test scores are improving in most other countries, which spend far less.
Liberals ignore the facts, and continue to throw money at the problem, as long as taxpayers allow them to do so.
Barack Obama, after saying we must stop spending money on wasteful programs because of the budget deficits he has increased, proposes a huge increase in the budget of the Department of Education, which has no successful programs.
Meanwhile, schools are shutting down in Wisconsin because teachers are protesting in the state capitol and getting fake doctors excuses to shield them from accountability. A number of people who say they are either socialists or communists are supporting the union effort. Why wouldn't they?
The huge increase in spending roughly tracks the rise of the teacher unions, which now virtually run the school systems in many urban districts. They also fight off any attempts at reform, while using the forced union dues to get more big-spending liberal politicians elected.
The governor of Wisconsin is rocking the boat. He promised to do that when he ran and the voters of Wisconsin supported his stand. So it is unions, socialists and communists vs. the people of Wisconsin currently. Other states, including Florida, also are targets of the education elites who are fighting to prevent their empire from toppling.

Everything is OK

2011-02-16T18:33:00.000-05:00

Gasoline is $3.13 a gallon.
The national debt is equal to our Gross Domestic Product.
The dollar is a joke throughout the world.
China's military might is increasing rapidly.
Unemployment is (officially) at 9 percent, nearly two years after a recession (officially) ended.
Several cities and states are (unofficially) bankrupt.
Strife and chaos are erupting throughout the Mideast. It could be an eruption of democracy or it could be the start of an Islamic revolution against Western civilization, capitalism, and Christians and Jews.
But, don't worry. President Obama is in charge. He has everything under control, as he promised in 2008.
All of the above is the fault of George W. Bush. Obama may not have it corrected completely by 2012, so he may need four more years to finish the job.
By the end of that time, peace and prosperity will have returned and all will be well.
I have it on good authority from George Soros. He has a slightly different view of the United States than the Founding Fathers, but what did a bunch of dead white guys know?

Changing times

2011-02-16T08:01:00.001-05:00

Let's imagine for a moment that sharia law prevails in the United States.
Don't quibble about which "denomination" of Islam. Let's suppose it is the one used by the barbarians in Bangladesh, who whipped a 14-year-old girl to death because she had been raped by a 40-year-old relative.
So the multicultural, tolerant and wonderfully worldly progressives get their way and Islamists are in charge in America.
Now, what would they do about:
The Hollywood hedonists.
Cable television.
San Fransisco's homosexual community.
Playboy magazine and all its imitators.
And, finally, the National Organization for Women.
The "progressives" want a "fundamental transformation" of America? They would get it, and more.

This is ridiculous

2011-02-15T13:15:00.001-05:00

Both sides in Washington are avoiding tackling entitlements because neither wants to go first.
Are you kidding me?
Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable. Even before adding on Obamacare.
It will only get worse as the baby boomers pass 65.
Here's the crazy part. No one is proposing to do harm to anyone collecting the benefits now. But those who don't have them are going to lose them one way or the other. The sooner they start getting trimmed the better it will be for everyone.
Thus, the spineless politicians have a perfect position. They can say, truthfully, we didn't promise you these benefits so don't blame us for reducing them to what we can afford.
You can't have your pie in the sky and eat it, too.
Update: Soon after this was written, Republicans said they would tackle entitlements. News reports credited the freshmen in the GOP, who told the leadership they wanted to go for it, after Obama passed up his chance.
This is the Tea Party talking, and it may be a new day in Washington.

Why there will never be peace in the Mideast

2011-02-14T12:56:00.002-05:00

Arabs don't want peace.
Israel is a tiny speck of land surrounded by 22 Arab and Persian nations consisting of more than 15 million square miles. They could easily create a "Palestinian state" in that area if they gave a damn about the Arabs they call Palestinians. But they don't.
The major obstacle to peace is that Arabs demand the "right to return" for Palestinians and will NOT compromise.
Israel rightly refuses and it will not compromise.
What it means is this: Some 800,000 Arabs (at most) fled Israel when it became a state. Arabs attacked it on the date it became a state. The Arabs left of their own volition, many at the urging of the attacking Arabs. Many Arabs stayed and are citizens of Israel today.
But the Arabs demand the right to return for (pick a number) millions of "Palestinians." The certain result would be to turn Israel into an Arab state and Jews then would be as unwelcome as they are in any other Arab state.
It would be like the United States inviting 200 million Islamic fundamentalists to move in, and start voting.
Another issue is the "occupied lands." Israel defeated another attack by Arabs and kept some of the land it conquered, for strategic reasons. They turned part of it, the Gaza strip, back over to the Arabs and now are constantly attacked from that area. Wisely, it refuses to give the remaining land back, because it would not only constrict Israel's growing population but also would put most cities in Israel within artillery or missile range.
As long as the Arabs make demands they know are impossible to meet, there will be no peace.

Confusion reigns in Washington

2011-02-10T18:22:00.000-05:00

After a day of predictions Mubarak would step down in Egypt, he didn't.
Meanwhile, a CIA official says our spies warned the White House last year that trouble was coming in Egypt. They just didn't know when it would blow.
So why was the Obama administration so obviously unprepared?
Even now, Obama's defiense intelligence head says, not to worry. The Muslim Brotherhood is a secular benevolent organization. So, presumably, if they wind up in power after Mubarak leaves, there is nothing to worry about?
Not unless you believe the Muslim Brotherhood itself. It was formed and exists today to make shariah law the law of the world, to destroy capitalism and exterminate the Jews.
Is that unclear?
It may say something less threatening on its English Web site, but go to www.memri.org and read the translation of what it is saying in a language Muslims understand.
Muslim Brotherhood leaders already are calling for war against Israel.
Some naive Americans think Egypt will not abrogate its peace treaty and attack Israel because the last time it did so, it was soundly defeated.
This narrow view overlooks important facts. Since that time Egypt's military has been trained by U.S. forces and equipped with U.S. weapons. Furthermore, if it teams with other jihadists, including Iran, Israel could be faced with the fight of its life.
So what?
Well, if extermination of the Jews in Israel does not excite you, consider what would happen next. There would be an united Islamist front dedicated to ending Western civilization.
That means America, and dear liberals, you will not be spared.
Yes, Egypt could have a transition to a democracy that will keep the peace. But the prospects do not look good and the United States does not appear to be doing anything that will enhance those prospects.

Making it here

2011-02-10T15:58:00.000-05:00

It makes headlines when The Prez talks about shipping jobs overseas and the U.S. not making anything anymore. Especially when he leaves out the fact that government policies hamper domestic manufacturing efforts significantly.
So, a few more facts.
Measured in constant dollars, America's manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s, according to Rush Limbaugh. So much for decline.
More, from the National Association of Manufacturers.

The United States is the world’s largest manufacturing economy, producing 21 percent of global manufactured products. Japan is second at 13 percent and China is third at 12 percent.

U.S. manufacturing produces $1.6 trillion of value each year, or 11 percent of U.S. GDP.

Manufacturing supports an estimated 18.6 million jobs in the U.S.—about one in six private sector jobs. Nearly 12 million Americans (or 9 percent of the workforce) are employed directly in manufacturing.

In 2009, the average U.S. manufacturing worker earned $74,447 annually, including pay and benefits. The average non-manufacturing worker earned $63,507 annually.

U.S. manufacturers are the most productive workers in the world—twice as productive as workers in the next 10 leading manufacturing economies.

U.S. manufacturers perform half of all R&D in the nation, driving more innovation than any other sector.
Taken alone, U.S. manufacturing would be the eighth largest economy in the world.

Darn, pesky facts. They sure louse up a good story.

Comeback for Britain?

2011-02-09T07:53:00.000-05:00

I love the Brits. Both sides of my family came to America from England nearly 500 years ago. Since the unpleasantness of 1776 and another slight misunderstanding in 1812, they have been good friends and allies of Americans. Arguably, they saved the world 70 years ago by repelling Hitler's crazed ambitions.
Inexplicably, the Brits lost their way in the late 1940s and embraced socialism. Predictably, they have been in decline since then.
Among other things socialism weakens the national spirit (Germany was an exception, for several reasons). So Brits have lost pride and patriotism and were convinced they needed "multiculteralism" just as liberal/fascist/socialist/communists/progressives are trying to sell in the United States at the behest of George Soros.
But, first Germany and now England's leaders are calling for a reversal of this trend.
This may not signal a reversal of socialism as well but it certainly will help restore national sanity in a nation that helped give birth to the cause of individual freedom.

Saints preserve us

2011-02-07T12:52:00.002-05:00

Preservationists want to prevent any building in Jacksonville from being torn down.
Apparently it does not occur to these progressive thinkers that if we had been doing that since the 1940s, Jacksonville would look like it did in the 1940s.
None of them remember what it looked like. I do. It wasn't pretty.
Here's a suggestion. If they want to preserve a building, let them buy it from the owner. Let them use their own money to pay the property taxes and maintenance on the 50-year-old building while they try to figure out how to make it earn some income.
Waxing nostalgic and criticizing the institution of private property is fine, and very progressive. Putting your money where your mouth is, as folks in this part of the world say, would be more impressive.

Are you kidding?

2011-02-05T18:19:00.001-05:00

Shortly after saying in no uncertain terms that Mubarak must step down as head of Egypt "yesterday" the White House now supports an "orderly" transition that could last months.
What?
This is nothing more than a replay of Jimmy Carter, whose helpless thrashing around during the Iranian revolution led to American hostages being held more than a year, and Carter's defeat for re-election.
Furthermore, it has an ironic twist. It was the left, during the 1970s, that led the effort to cripple our intelligence agencies. Today, as a direct result, a liberal president has no clue what is going on in Egypt and was caught completely by surprise when an uprising began.
Talk about being bitten by your own dog.
(Update: Soon after this, the White House said the diplomat who made the statement that Mubarak needs to stay was "speaking on his own." Translation: His career is over, and that trial balloon didn't fly.)

What it takes

2011-02-05T13:01:00.001-05:00

If I understand the president correctly, when a few thousand people go into the streets protesting, looting and burning, the leader of that country should step down.
But, isn't it strange? That's what happened in the 1960s and Lyndon Johnson stayed in office -- at least until the next election.
The current president says the head of Egypt should not wait that long.
Tea Party protests were peaceful. But apparently if they had been a bit more vocal, we would have a new president now.
The downside is that it would be Joe Biden, who may be one of the stupidest people ever to hold public office.

The Great Uniter

2011-02-05T07:52:00.002-05:00

We are now in the third year of what was to be the Era of Good Feeling, and Gallup reports that Barack Obama is the most polarizing president of the past 50 years.
So much for hope.
Polls are helpful, but some of the questions people are asked really are pointless.
Case in point: Gallup reports most people want politicians to "work together."
To do what?
The two major political parties want to go in different directions. Can you imagine a team of horses "working together" to do that?
The solution is for the conservative party to soundly defeat the obstructionist Democrats and then they can work together to help restore America to where it was from 1789 to 1932, the years that it went from backwoods colony to leader of the free world.

Oh, the horror

2011-02-04T09:37:00.002-05:00

"Shutting down the government" is back.
Liberals are saying conservatives should not "shut down the government." Conservatives have no such plan, nor has it been discussed.
What's that all about.
Libs have not had many good days. One they think was good was when the government "shut down" in the 1990s during a dispute between the Republican Congress and Bill Clinton over spending.
Let me ask this: Do you remember where you were the moment the government shut down? Is it firmly etched in your memory, like the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?
What actually happened. Thousands of government employees got a few days off with pay.
No one died. Hardly anyone noticed.
But the polls showed people didn't like it, and so libs think they had a great victory.
May all their victories be so triumphant.
Now, can we talk about 9 percent unemployment 17 months after the recession supposedly ended, and the trillion dollars that was spent to "create jobs"?

Enigma

2011-02-04T08:35:00.002-05:00

What is going on in Egypt and elsewhere in the Mideast is a true mystery, for all the wall-to-wall coverage.
I've read a number of opinions as to what will happen, both positive and negative. Some of the sources I consider reliable think there is a shot Egypt will wind up with a viable democracy.
I'm not so sure. The odds seem otherwise.
Mubarak is not a wise and benevolent leader, but throwing him under the bus as the Obama administration is doing does not seem the best course.
Egypt has been getting the second largest check Uncle Sam writes to other nations each year. We own him. While we can't control him entirely, at least we had him by the pursestrings.
We won't own the Muslim Brotherhood, if it winds up in charge. Already it has threatened war with Israel. That is not in the best interest of the United States.
The reason we don't know what is going on and have to operate in the dark is liberalism. For the past 35 years, liberals have fought to cripple our intelligence agencies and they have done a good job. We knew next to nothing about the Iranian revolution, or the situation in Iraq before it was liberated.
We may have better intelligence about Egypt but it is just not for public consumption. The evidence against that, however, is the actions of the White House. It must know what the intelligence agencies know, but it is acting as if it knows no more than the man in the street.
We'll know when it is over.

Scratch one

2011-02-03T11:03:00.002-05:00

Newt Gingrich is off my A-list of presidential candidates.
He is a bright guy. Did a good job bringing Republicans to power in 1994, with a little help from Bill Clinton.
But he bungled the moment of opportunity. After balancing the budget, Republicans went on a spending spree that George W. Bush joined in, and then came 2006.
Now, the final straw for me. Gingrich is embracing the ethanol subsidy, a handout to corn farmers that is a disaster.
I went to see Gingrich when he visited Jacksonville. His speech was uninspired. He has lost his way. Conservatives need to find other options.
The best hope would be Jeb Bush vs. Obama but apparently that just isn't going to happen. There are plenty of contenders left. Sarah Palin -- imagine a Palin-Cain ticket with businessman Herman Cain -- Pawlenty, Huckabee, etc. Mitt Romney is not my first choice but it always "Who is the alternative," so if it was Romney vs. Obama, there would be no contest.
In 2008 I voted for Palin, and had to take the other candidate on the ticket. I didn't expect him to live this long.
Gingrich, however, is just another conservative who lost his way inside the Beltway. It happens.

You gotta love them libs

2011-02-03T09:22:00.004-05:00

Not long ago, a liberal answered my query about what liberalism ever had accomplished with "Social Security" and "the public schools."
Oh boy.
So, liberalism's accomplishments are to create a Ponzi scheme that is near bankruptcy and dragging down the economy with it, and a dreadful system that produces children who can't read and write, even if they are lucky enough to survive the rapes and muggings.
Thank a deity they haven't produced any failures.
To protect these accomplishments they steadfastly oppose any attempt to improve either.
Suggest raising the retirement age and they scream "Republicans want to take away your Social Security"!
When it was enacted, the retirement age was 65. That was about the median age of death, so FDR only intended to "protect" half the population anyway. (Social Security also was NEVER intended to be the sole source of retirement income, but that's another story.)
As in most Ponzi schemes, it did well at first. The first retiree put in $22 and got back more than $20,000. As politicians piled on promises and the average lifespan increased, return on the mythical "investment" declined. Fewer workers were supporting more retirees in this instant payout program.
Pegging the retirement age for future retirees at the average lifespan only would put the program back where it was under the sainted FDR.
Choice and accountability are proven ways to improve the government schools. Teacher unions spend millions to elect liberals who will protect them from this "threat." Since unions took over the schools some four decades ago, educational achievement has nosedived, despite the injection of ever increasing amounts of cash.
If you want to see a deer-in-the-headlights look, ask a liberal, "Exactly how much money will it take to get the schools to do what they did years ago for much less money?"
As for giving poor kids the same option rich liberal kids have -- to attend a private school that would protect and educate them -- fuggedaboudit.
One can see why liberals would consider these to be major accomplishments -- if you were to assume that they wanted to bring this country to its knees.

The rule of law

2011-02-01T08:57:00.002-05:00

A Florida judge has declared that the Constitution places limits on the power of the federal government. Imagine!
He struck down Obamacare because its individual mandate requires all Americas to buy a product, which has never been done before and is illegal.
"If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,” someone opined in 2008.
Who? A guy named Barack Obama. That was two years before he signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with its individual mandate that would inevitably and inexorably eliminate private health insurance and push the nation into socialized medicine.
So, should we look for the Homelessness Protection and Affordable Housing Act next?
Maybe, but meanwhile we can look for an appeal that will take the case to the 11ith Circuit and then the U.S. Supreme Court.
With its new liberal justices the court may well overrule Judge Roger Vinson's opinion but it cannot invalidate his reasoning or the words in the Constitution -- except by finding that "international law" takes precedence over the primary law of this nation.
If the day comes when sharia law is international law, the court may find itself in a pickle, trying to separate church and state when the church IS the state.

Land of the pharaohs

2011-01-31T14:08:00.004-05:00

I don't know what is going on in Egypt, and apparently the White House doesn't either.
Following Obama's 2009 apology speech in Cairo, I didn't expect any further problems in Egypt. Or from the Muslims Obama apologized to for America's bad behavior.
But one of two things seems to be happening.
Islamic extremists are trying to topple the Egyptian government, which is an ally of the United States and at peace with Israel. It could be the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah ... who knows? But none of them are friends of America.
So why would the White House support them?
Another possibility is that they are freedom-loving people trying to topple a despot and establish a democracy, which would not seem to be a threat to the United States.
If that is the case, it would be exactly what supporters of regime change in Iraq predicted; an outbreak of democracy in the Muslim world.
Obama called Iraq a "war of choice" in Cairo and, in effect, apologized for it, too. But since taking office, he has ratcheted up the war in Afghanistan, which he called "the right war."
Obama also was noticeably silent about a similar uprising in Iran. The freedom-loving people he cold-shouldered then were shot and hanged for opposing the terrorist government.
So does he support those who oppose a government friendly to the United States, but not support those who opposed a government that hates the United States?
I'm confused by the guy who constantly says "let me be perfectly clear." Whose side are we on again?

Probing into the Megyn Kelly Syndrome

2011-01-27T14:50:00.004-05:00

There is a new study. Oddly enough, the federal government did not pay for this one, although it certainly sounds like the kind of research it would pay for when not investigating cattle flatulence.
At Indiana University, researchers have discovered -- wait for it -- that men pay more attention to "sexy women" news anchors but remember less what they say.
Who knew?
I had to ask one of the authors what the solution to this problem was, since it was left out of the news reports and I didn't want to spring for the cost of the study.
She responded, "Perhaps it is helpful to the audience?"
"Knowing that one is not in optimal information intake mode when a sexually attractive woman presents information" might be beneficial to the viewer, she said. It also might cause the viewer to want to make sure of getting the details of the story by reading more about it.
For news anchors of the female persuasion she suggested it might be good for them to know this so that, "when news organizations push them to sexualize themselves, they can make a more informed decision to either go with it or to re-consider if they want to be working for that news organization."
OK. Hit the power button and get into optimal information intake mode, fellas.

SOTU by POTUS

2011-01-27T10:32:00.002-05:00

Wonderful. Inspirational. Uplifting.
That was the liberal reaction to the State of the Union address. I'll bet Chris Matthews needed a change of diapers.
But what did he say?
Let me boil it down.
"I've spent $3 trillion for nothing in the past two years and I want to spend more."
Oh, yes, and some non sequitur about Sputnik.
What I liked best was using the title of Newt Gingrich's book Winning the Future as the theme for his speech.
Onward, to a brave new world.
"And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins..." (Rudyard Kipling, 1919)

In defense of liberals

2011-01-21T10:01:00.002-05:00

There are some conservatives who maintain that liberals don't believe in anything.
I beg to disagree.
They are fervent believers in one thing:
Entitlementalism.
They believe that a force even higher than the New York Times has put them on Earth and entitled them to rule in the temples of government, ordering the lives of everyone else on Earth, daily from cradle to grave.
Furthermore, they believe everyone else is entitled to the benefit of their wisdom.
So let it be written; so let it be done. Amen.

Epic fail

2011-01-18T10:07:00.003-05:00

The attempt by leftists to exploit the tragedy in Tucson has been a gigantic flop.
Paul Krugman, the Daily Kos, Jonathan Alter and all the others who ignored the victims because they hoped to gain cheap political points by playing the blame game, failed.
It shows that the Lamestream Media no longer sets the national agenda by lying without having to worry about being challenged.
Rhetoric and graphics the liberals have been using for years were exposed within hours by bloggers showing the hypocrisy of the left to millions of viewers. Honest publications such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal also helped in the effort.
Public opinion polls show that the people did not buy it. They are no more willing to ban guns or turn over their freedom to the government than before. In fact, the liberals lost ground.
They continue trying to censor political speech.
After 10 years of slandering George W. Bush, calling him a Nazi and wishing aloud that he would be shot, they want to make it a crime to criticize the policies of President Obama.
As always, the liberal message is, do as we say, not as we do.

Priorities

2011-01-17T08:24:00.002-05:00

Let's see:
China is overtaking us as the leading superpower.
Millions of people need jobs.
Entitlements are dragging us into bankruptcy.
Nuclear war could erupt in the Mideast or Korea any day.
Terrorists continue to plan and attempt attacks on the United States.
What is the media focused on like a laser beam?
Astrological signs have been changed....

Going down

2011-01-14T18:06:00.003-05:00

Glenn Beck's program today was a downer.
He reviewed about a dozen recent news stories, the total import of which is that China is well on its way to replacing the United States as the No. 1 superpower in the world.
This has huge implications.
China now has the fastest supercomputer in the world. Its children are learning more than ours. It has labor advantages and is now the greatest creditor nation in history while America is the most indebted nation in history.
He had two experts on who went into the reasons.
What I took away is that we can credit teacher unions and trial lawyers in part for our demise.
Let's face it. George Soros and his Pinocchio in the White House are winning. The Nov. 2 election threw a damper on their plans but it isn't over.
There are people who want to take down America. Ronald Reagan's vision of America as the last best hope for freedom in the world is fading.
Does it matter? Is there anything wrong with being No. 2? Or No. 3, or a second-rate power?
Ask yourself.

They are hopeless

2011-01-13T08:08:00.002-05:00

Today, the New York Times editorial page extols President Obama for his speech on the Tuscon shootings.
No problem with that. The speech was overlong but said many of the right things. And one expects the Times to laud Obama at every opportunity.
Here's the problem.
The Times failed to acknowledge its own complicity. Its in-house hatemonger Paul Krugman started the whole fracas by jumping in within two hours of the shooting and essentially blaming Republicans, without a shred of evidence.
That was bad enough. But on top of that -- in the midst of an editorial on the liberal theme of "can't we all get along" -- the Times had to launch a personal attack on Sarah Palin!
Having spent some 50 years in the newspaper business, I'd have to say the media response to this tragedy has included some of the worst examples of journalism I've ever seen. The Times editorial shows why it has become a laughingstock and why subscribers are fleeing in droves.

Why liberals are insane

2011-01-11T09:07:00.003-05:00

When leading Democrats, including John Kerry, were making jokes, books and movies about assassinating the president of the United States, no one on the left was concerned about inciting violence.
When Sarah Palin published a map using survey symbols to designate Democrats she thought should be defeated, and later a deranged man shot a member of Congress, unhinged Democrats like Paul Krugman were blaming her for the tragedy before the crime scene had been cleared.
They didn't acknowledge that the Democrat National Committee had published an almost identical map.
Nor did they show any concern when Democrats circulated a photo of someone pointing a rifle at Palin's head.
The goofy liberal sheriff in Tuscon -- who chooses which laws he enforces -- rather than conducting a calm impartial investigation, was seeking air time to promulgate his own supposition that conservative were to blame -- while admitting that he had no factual basis for his opinion whatsoever.
Rush Limbaugh was accurate, again. It was disgusting. And some of them are still at it.

Being No. 2

2011-01-11T08:11:00.003-05:00

If these economists are right, it means American socialists are getting what they want.
Bringing down this nation is their goal. They know that by eroding individual freedom and eliminating incentives, they can lower growth and productivity.
It worked for the socialists in Britain after World War II, and that is the model.
Britain is being swallowed up in the European union and the ultimate goal of the socialists, communists, fascists and progressives is for British -- and American -- sovereignty to be subsumed by the tyrants and despots at the United Nations.
It is ironic that communist China could replace America as No. 1. That is a result of two things: a larger population and, more importantly, the fact that China has allowed capitalism to take root.
Ronald Reagan called America the last, best hope of mankind. If socialists succeed here, the only hope remaining will be that capitalism will transform China.
A slim hope indeed.

Being used

2011-01-07T12:31:00.002-05:00

Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" are for the most part wretched, Jew-hating deadbeats but they do deserve some pity.
Their fellow Arabs are among the richest nations in the world and have some 15 million square miles of land, most of it vacant, but can't seem to find a way to offer them a home.
This is because they use them as pawns, murdering Israeli men, women and children while other Arabs pursue "peace," by which they mean the elimination of the state of Israel.
About 800,000 Arabs left Israel when it became a state. The same day it became a state other Arab nations attacked it, and lost.
Other Arabs stayed and they and their descendants are citizens of Israel today because the Jews are tolerant and peaceful people.
But Arabs want millions of Arabs who never lived in Israel to "return" to Israel and dominate it demographically.
Only a fool like Jimmy Carter could see this struggle as a dispute between equals.

Good is bad in 2010, not just 1984

2010-12-16T08:57:00.002-05:00

Supposed someone proposed a plan that would:
Save taxpayers money.
Help improve the public schools.
Give poor students trapped in the worst schools a chance to get a good education.
You might be in favor, right?
Well, the St. Petersburg Times, voice of the left in Florida, hates it.
Rick Scott, Florida's next governor (against the wishes of the Times) proposes vouchers that would accomplish all of the above.
The Times, in a rant that read like the Facebook page of the demented gunman who tried to kill School Board members in Panama City, says the plan is awful.
You see, liberals want the government schools to be run for the benefit of adults, not kids.
Liberal politicians throw money at the schools, and most of it goes into the paychecks of adult administrators and teachers. Not a single kid gets a dime.
Teacher union bosses get a cut of those paychecks and this helps them build huge warchests to fund the campaigns of liberal politicians.
It is a cozy arrangement all around.
If children were allowed to get an education so that they would understand schemes like this, they would vote against liberals when they grow up, and this would disrupt the system.
Can't have that.

Halfway there

2010-12-14T09:50:00.002-05:00

Adlai Stevenson said, "In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks we take."
Thankfully, the voters twice declined to take a risk on Stevenson. But, he had a point.
In two short years, Barack Obama has taken the good will a majority of the voters entrusted into him and turned it into distrust and dislike.
This happened in part because he seemed to think he had been elected God, instead of merely the president. The position is important, but it is still a political position and, as Stevenson noted, the least qualified person in the nation can become president.
Obama was elected by criticizing his predecessor, but he has continued most of the domestic and foreign policies of his predecessor. Thus, he has angered his supporters while not placating those who did not support him.
Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, he has waged war on capitalism and business, while relying on them to produce the money for his vast spending programs. This is not a road to success.
His central weakness, other than his obvious dislike for this nation, is that to him it is all about him. He fell in love with his reflection in the pool of public opinion.
Businesses, like voters, take risks. When one doesn't pan out, you cut your losses.
Voters took a risk and it didn't pay off. In 2012, they will have a chance to reconsider.

On the left coast

2010-12-14T08:15:00.002-05:00

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is, like many of the Hollywood set, including Whoopi Goldberg, Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, etc., a disciple of the Chosen One and therefore as far left as you can be.
In a hate-filled, expletive-filled diatribe in the Puffington Host, he calls Sarah Palin an "idiot."
His ire was raised because Palin shot a caribou, which Sorkin called "murder."
So, it is murder to kill an animal. What about humans?
“I get happy every time one of you faux-macho s***heads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face,” the deranged leftist said.
The accidental killing of a human being is cause for joy but killing an animal so he can have a fancy meal in a Hollywood restaurant is OK. (I don't care if he professes to be a vegan like so many of the other phonies in la-la land. They sell a lot of steaks in Hollywood.)
But one thing is clear. Sorkin is a certified idiot.

Say what?

2010-12-13T17:54:00.003-05:00

CNN says the Tax Policy Center estimates that a married couple with two kids under 13 and a household income of roughly $75,000 could end up paying about $2,600 more in federal income taxes next year -- if the largest tax increase in history is allowed to take place.
Raising taxes in a depressed economy is insane, so everyone is hot to sign on to the "tax compromise."
Hold on.
The "cost" of the compromise is estimated at about $850 billion. But $550 billion of that is based on the revenue that the higher taxes would bring.
In other words, not raising taxes and taking more money from American families is a "cost."This is the crazy way politicians think.
The real cost is the $300 billion in pork and other spending Democrats want to tack on as the cost to Republicans of preventing the tax increase.
Obama says this is a good deal. So, obviously, it is not.
Bill Clinton tells Democrats they should vote for it because the new Congress can enact legislation that will be even better for conservatives.
Is there any doubt that the wise course is to wait, let the Democrat tax increase take place, and then for Republicans to rescind it and put in place a tight clamp on spending?

Bubba speaks

2010-12-13T06:12:00.003-05:00

Everyone says Bill Clinton is the smartest, slickest politician ever, so why aren't Republicans heeding his advice?
At the amazing press conference recently, where President Obama was upstaged by Clinton so badly that Obama fled from the room, Clinton said he thinks the tax compromise should be approved by Democrats.
Why? Because, he said, the Republicans could get a better deal in January, when they will have the majority in the House.
None of the Lamestream Media asked, so I will: So, why should Republicans vote for the compromise?

If O had been in the Oval Office then

2010-12-12T08:39:00.007-05:00

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy, whatever the hell that means — the United States of America allegedly was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The imperialist United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. The Japanese have been offended by our policies in the Far East and I have bowed to the emperor and offered my apologies on several occasions.
It is surmised that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the U.S government has deliberately sought to deceive the Japanese by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace, so I say we should not jump to hasty conclusions about who started this fracas.
And don't sweat it. Adolf told me he is going to sit this one out.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands -- one of my favorite golfing spots -- has caused some damage to American naval and military forces. Also, a few American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday there was also an attack against Malaya.
Last night someone attacked Hong Kong.
Last night some forces attacked Guam.
Last night other forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night someone attacked Wake Island.
And this morning someone attacked Midway Island.
But let's not make a big deal out of it. Stuff happens. We should be tolerant and not engage in racial profiling.
Someone may have undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today, as interpreted by the New York Times, speak for themselves.
The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation and how it could influence votes in the next election.
Would someone please move the TelePrompter a little closer?
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy and winner of the Nobel Peace prize, therefore, I have directed that measures be taken for our defense. I have authorized Marines to carry live ammunition when they land on the beaches, and may return fire if fired upon. And, of course, they will be fully covered by my health insurance.
For a while our nation might remember the character of the onslaught against us, but, hey, we'll get over it.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory -- or a negotiated peace. If we happen to win, we'll pay big reparations.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves if anyone actually does something to piss me off but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never make us feel ill will toward the oppressed people of other nations.
Hostilities exist. But even if our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger, we should not fly off the handle.
With confidence in our armed forces, under the greatly reduced defense budget I recently introduced, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us (insert your own deity here).
Never mind Kate Smith. As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said, God damn America.
However, I can read the polls and I ask that the Congress declare that since the so-called unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
But I will bring the troops home next July. We have an election coming up, you know.

Watch your language

2010-12-10T08:29:00.003-05:00

In politics, it is often necessary to mangle the English language in order to conceal the absurdity.
For example, building a bridge to nowhere is called an "investment."
But my favorite is "tax expenditures."
When lobbyists succeed in carving out a provision in the tax code that favors their interests, the government -- having approved it as good public policy -- then labels it a tax expenditure.
What does that mean? It means that it is a cost to the government.
That's right: not taking money from you that you have earned (because you are doing something with it that they approve of) is a cost.
By that same token, shouldn't the remainder of your paycheck be a cost to the government?
Aren't they entitled to all of it?
The tragic fact is that some politicians think so.

Karl Marx couldn't have said it better

2010-12-09T11:59:00.002-05:00

This rant by socialist Bernie Sanders is amazing, but not for the reason libs think.
In his anti-capitalist tirade, Sanders claims the middle class is disappearing and that billionaires are waging war against ... somebody.
To take just one misleading statistic, consider his claim that 1 percent of the people earn 23 percent of the money in the United States. (I'll accept the figure for the sake of argument; it sounds about right.)
What the socialists never tell you when they do this routine is this:
The people who create wealth and earn such income also pay a larger share of taxes -- a share larger than their share of the income. Larger.
In addition, whatever they earn is not subtracted what everybody else earns. This is probably the largest hole in the argument socialists make.
In other words, you can earn whatever you are able to earn and want to earn -- regardless of what anybody else earns.
It is also true that the famous five income brackets most people use are very elastic. People are in the top bracket one year and another a year later. The contrary also is true. People rarely stay in the lowest income bracket. They are there when they are young, before their peak earning years. If they work and save, they move up to higher brackets.
And of course the poorest Americans are better off than 90 percent of the people in the world.
Liberals feed off of the wealth capitalism creates -- the whole time they are bashing it. Their worse fear is that Atlas will Shrug some day and leave them empty handed.
So, watch Sanders and pity the poor, addled old socialist. But avoid his brave new world like the plague.

How libs think

2010-12-09T08:21:00.003-05:00

Americans should not be allowed to keep $3.7 trillion of their own money because part of it ($700 billion) belongs to the evil "rich."
That is how liberals think.
The fact that $3 trillion of it was earned by people who are not rich and who need it to care for their own families matters not a whit.
Liberals are so caught up in the class warfare they have practiced for the past 75 years that they are willing to burn the village, if necessary. (As long as it isn't the mythical village that it takes to raise a child.)
Their perceived mission in life is to forcibly take wealth created by productive people and give it to others (in exchange for their votes).
This, they believes, makes them modern-day Robin Hoods. In fact, if they bothered to read Robin Hood, they would realize they are more akin to Prince John.
This tax-the-rich-at-any-cost logic is precisely the same kind of warped thinking used by liberals in their efforts to keep the United States from defending itself against a nuclear missile strike.
They say antimissile defenses are not 100 percent effective.
In other words, why should the people of Jacksonville be saved if a missile could get through and demolish Des Moines?
Put aside the fact that the missile defense systems are good and getting better, and think about the premise.
Naval anti-aircraft didn't bring down every kamikaze plane during World War II, either. Would today's liberals have refused to place anti-aircraft guns on ships in the Pacific fleet?
Yet, some people actually vote to put liberal politicians in positions where they can make decisions that affect the lives of Americans. Scary.

Jacksonville: 40 years ahead of its time

2010-12-04T08:19:00.003-05:00

This is a hoot.
Russia plans to build a fleet of floating nuclear power plants and use them in its Arctic regions.
Even better: the venture is called OPK.
The local media, with its 15 minute attention span, wouldn't know it but in the early 1970s, Jacksonville was going to be the home of a company called OPS. It planned to build floating nuclear power plants.
The ambitious venture failed because it over-reached in its proposed contract with the Jacksonville Electric Authority to buy plants. Had it succeeded, it would have meant 12,000 new jobs here -- dwarfing the 1,000 hailed by the lame duck mayor recently.
It also was a victim of the anti-nuclear crazies, who helped ensure the continued massive use of oil and coal by heaping on regulations that made the cost of nuclear power too high.
One interesting side effect of this clean power is that a plant could be towed to an area such as Israel, which is experiencing water shortages, and used to power a huge desalinization plant.

Facts and fancies

2010-11-24T11:46:00.006-05:00

Let's look at the record.
The Soviet Union collapsed, after 75 years of socialism -- and praise by American liberals for the enlightened views of its leaders.
Cuba and North Korea are basket cases.
Sweden is scaling back, Ireland is cutting spending by 20 percent, Britain is slashing spending.
China is alive only because of capitalism.
In short, everywhere and anywhere socialism/communism/facism,/liberalism/progressivism or whatever other ism that doesn't begin with "capital" has been tried it has failed.
What works? Freedom. Allowing people to take risks and either succeed or fail.
The American people know that, which is why we got real hope and real change Nov. 2.
Young Americans aren't going to learn how the world works by attending public schools or reading the liberal media. They have to learn it from us, or the hard way.
Nearly 400 years ago the first Americans tried collectivism and it failed them, resulting in the deaths of nearly half the settlers in New England.
In spite of their misery, the pilgrims joined with the Indians and gave thanks for their freedom.
Sadly, some misguided Americans still want to return to the system wisely rejected by the nation's first settlers. No matter how many times it fails, they can't let it go.

Get the facts

2010-11-22T07:41:00.002-05:00

If he does nothing else, let's hope the next mayor of Jacksonville asks questions.
Apparently, the current one does not.
Mayor John Peyton, while raising taxes and fees he says are needed to pay employees, has championed spending millions of dollars on the Jacksonville Journey.
This is, like all liberal ventures, well-intentioned. It is supposed to reduce crime, which all would agree is a worthy goal.
But two years into the program, and while spending more than $12 million this year alone, there is little evidence that anything is being accomplished.
One need look no further than the oversight committee's own report.
It hails the hiring of more policemen, without citing any proof that more police results in less crime.
It hails efforts to find jobs for convicted criminals after they are released from prison. It does not cite any statistics on how many were place in jobs or how many returned to crime.
At the same time, it calls for greater efforts to reduce waste, inefficiency and abuse in the costly program. Apparently, the committee knows those deficiencies exist but does not cite any examples.
The most glaring flaw is that it hails a slight drop in crime since the program began without providing vital relevant facts.
They are: is this different from the experience in other cities that are not spending vast sums of money on similar programs? Is it related to demographics, which many studies have found are directly related to the incidence of crime?
The new mayor, as he is struggling to help the city get its finances in order, will need to ask some tough questions and demand answers.
He might start by ordering an independent study. The oversight committee consists of those who invented the Jacksonville Journey and they have an obvious incentive to show that it is working.

Directions

2010-11-18T10:49:00.002-05:00

Republican leaders postponed their meeting with President Obama.
Good. They need to regroup and get on message.
First, they are not the people's choice. They were the lesser of two evils -- but they were still evil, as far as voters were concerned, as a result of botching the opportunity they had in 1994.
Tea Party candidates would have clobbered Republicans and Democrats.
Second, moving halfway from where we are to where the liberals want to go is not "bipartisan compromise."
It is caving in halfway.
The American people want to go in another direction. Let the liberals do the bipartisan compromising by moving toward less government, less spending and less taxing.
Ignore the New York Times and the various George Soros outlets and do what the people want, for a change.

Stop marking ears

2010-11-15T07:15:00.002-05:00

GOP doesn't stand for Good Old Pork. Or, at least, it shouldn't.
Having won back the House largely by riding on the Tea Party movement, which favors banning earmarks in the federal budget, some Republicans now are trying to wiggle out, saying earmarks don't amount to a lot of money.
Maybe by their standards.
No matter the cost, earmarks -- also called pork barrel projects -- are highly symbolic of wasteful government. Getting rid of them would help erase the public's perception of the Republicans as just diluted Democrats. The Congress of 1994-2006 create that perception by going in as reformers and winding up as big spenders.
That resulted in Congress going to the liberals in 2006 and the White House in 2008.
Fortunately for the country, the Democrats squandered their chance as well.
Banning earmarks does not mean that worthy projects won't get done.
Florida TaxWatch has campaigned against pork-barrel projects -- called "turkeys" in the Sunshine State -- for years.
It points out that turkeys are items inserted in the budget by one or more legislators without being on the state's priority list. In some cases they are not even a state responsibility.
The federal government has legitimate responsibilities, such as building highways and bridges. But they don't all need to be built in West Virginia just because it has a powerful senator.
Ban earmarks and run government like a business. Do what needs to be done not what you need to do to get re-elected.

Good read

2010-11-12T07:34:00.005-05:00

Mad as Hell, by pollster Scott Rasmussen is a must-read if you want to understand the political wind that is sweeping over the country.
Although the Lamestream Media tried to ignore it, and then denigrate it, the Tea Party movement is stronger than ever. Thank the Internet and the fair and balanced coverage from Fox News for that.
Rasmussen says the Tea Party is the most important populist movement in this nation's history. It is large, growing, and here to stay, he says.
Moreover, it demographically mirrors the nation and gets higher marks from the public than either of the two major parties. It also has a sizable component of disaffected Democrats.
Rasmussen bases his analysis on polls and extensive interviews. He makes a compelling case. While I didn't agree with some of his opinions, his facts speak for themselves.

Too big to cut?

2010-10-21T16:54:00.004-04:00

The party line is that government is so big it can't be cut.
Nonsense.
Even some Republicans, mostly those with beltway fever, are echoing this line.
Billions can be cut, easily. Examples:
The Department of Education. Totally unnecessary. Schools are a state and local function.
The Davis-Bacon Act. Enacted during the Depression to keep blacks from getting jobs, it adds billions to construction costs.
Highway trust funds. About a quarter of it is diverted into non-highway uses like bike lanes and choo-choo trains.Use it for what it was intended and/or cut it back.
The Department of Energy. Totally unnecessary.
Environmental Protection Agency. FDA, and dozens of others could be cut substantially.
Big savings would accrue by privatizing public parks and the twin monstrosities Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Moving to the Fair Tax would be another money saving move. Failing that, fewer tax brackets, with lower maximum rates and capital gains rates.
Finally, the bloated bureaucracy, overpaid and under-worked. Freeze pay and convert pension plans to defined contribution.
All these have been discussed forever but if Congress wants to do something about the $13.7 trillion debt, which is propelling us to financial ruin, it needs to quit talking and act.

Spin masters in action

2010-10-20T08:28:00.003-04:00

Liberals were quick to misquote Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, after her recent debate.
Her manager says she was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as established by the courts. She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution.
Actually, it was her opponent, liberal Chris Coons, who demonstrated his ignorance by being unable to name the five freedoms contained in the First Amendment.
All the Constitution does is ensure that the government will be neutral to religion. It does not make it hostile to religion nor preclude any religious references in public, as liberals would prefer.
The "wall of separation between church and state" is a phrase from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptist Church in Danbury, Conn., in 1802. It is not in the Constitution.
Liberals have been so effective in turning schools into indoctrination academies that two-thirds of Americans, according to a Columbia Law School study in 2002, believe that the Constitution says "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs." Karl Marx, author of that phrase, would be proud.
When a slick professional politician like Coons takes on a novice like O'Donnell, he can make cheap debating points but it doesn't change the equation. This year's election is between more freedom and less freedom. Choose wisely.

To the rear, march!

2010-10-18T10:33:00.003-04:00

Under Obama, the liberal lemmings are marching bravely right to the cliff.
Socialist Sweden for decades has been the liberal idea of heaven, if any of them thought such a place existed.
Sweden now is moving to the right as fast as it can, realizing that it can only print wealth, not create it.
Germany's leader, meanwhile, has declared that nation's attempt at "multiculturalism" is a dismal failure and must be abandoned. It remains in full swing in the U.S.
The Brits are slashing government jobs, and spending.
Even the Dutch now are dropping pot cafes and other vestiges of the Sixties. Not to worry. All the potheads can move to California.
The rest of the world has been there and wants to go back (except for Cuba, North Korea, San Francisco and a few other foreign places, of course).
But the American left, led by Pelosi, Reid and Obama, still are searching for Shangri-la.

Barry Blowhard takes a bow

2010-10-18T07:50:00.004-04:00

President Obama, with characteristic modesty, is giving himself credit for saving America from another Depression.
Sorry, but I think George Bush is the hero.
Obama has made a career out of blaming Bush for the world's woes but in this case the facts show that Bush has a better claim.
The government says the 18-month recession ended in June 2009.
That was six months after Obama took office, and long before any of his misguided policies took place.
You can't take credit for ending a recession when all you've done is make speeches blaming your predecessor for creating it.
In truth, government action usually is too little, too late, in affecting recessions as the accompanying chart shows. They are a natural phenomena and self-correcting. Generally, the government just prolongs them, or turns them into a depression.

Crunch time

2010-10-17T19:27:00.002-04:00

Nov. 2 offers a golden opportunity, but if you want to put the nation back on track you have to vote.
Dims will be out in force, protecting the socialist agenda. Look for 100 percent turnout from the cemeteries and millions of votes by citizens of other countries, even as they try to prevent members of the U.S. armed forces from voting. The latter is a tactic they employed in 2000 while trying to steal the election in Florida.
Pundits and pollsters say conservatives will win back Congress, or at least the House. But it can't and won't happen unless every conservative casts a vote.
Anyone who was part of the Mistake in '08 also can help, and without anyone knowing. We still have a secret ballot, at least for now. To ensure it stays that way, Congress must be changed.
Once that's done, we can look ahead to 2012 and hope for change.

Sociable security

2010-10-09T08:15:00.002-04:00

Once again, desperate Democrats are bringing out the Social Security bogeyman.
Many people don't understand how Social Security works. The government forcibly takes money from a worker's paycheck and gives it to someone who has retired. If there is any left, the politicians spend it on whatever nutty fad is dominant at the moment. They promise to put the money back in the system, someday. The only way they can get that money is to take it from someone else when the time comes.
It is the greatest Ponzi scheme in history. It worked fine when 13 people were paying for every one taking out, but today with two workers sharing their paychecks with one retiree, it isn't such a good deal.
Conservatives propose making it a rational, workable system by allowing people a choice. Stick with this, and get low returns, or invest the money and get tangible returns.
When the British were offered this choice during one of Britain's occasional bouts with reality, many Brits chose the private investment route. When liberals took over again, they shut down the option.
For liberals, the problem is that investing the money in the private sector does not give them a chance to get their hands on it, and the taxpayer is not beholden to politicians for his retirement.
So, liberals refer to honest reform and offering a choice as "taking away Social Security."
Well, did you expect them to tell the truth?

1960

2010-08-27T15:43:00.002-04:00

Reporters on one local paper are writing about events than happened 50 years ago, before most of them were born. They say reporters for the paper were told not to cover an event that happened downtown.
I was a reporter. No one told me not to cover the event. I was there.
It was a day when a number of black citizens decided to demonstrate downtown against segregation. Some chose to "sit in" at the lunch counter at Woolworth's, next to Penney's department store west of Hemming Park, in the block where the federal courthouse is now.
This was a tactic being used all around the nation by civil rights activists.
I was a general assignment reporter for the Jacksonville Journal.
I was told to go to the scene and report what I saw. Other reporters were told to do the same.
What I saw was:
A crowd of white men, most carrying wooden ax handles, cornered a black man in the north doorway of Penney's and hit him several times. I was carrying a camera and shot several pictures but was not able to get close enough for a good shot. One of the men edged up to me and suggested that I should take my camera and leave. It was in a friendly tone but he was not kidding.
I went to the south side of the block and saw two white men stop a young (about 14) black boy who was riding his bike. One of them punched him. They told him to leave. I didn't take a picture. I could have but probably would have had my camera destroyed.
I went over to the park, where there were two or three brief clashes between white and black men. At Laura and Monroe one man was hit on the head with an ax handle and blood was streaming down his shirt. I took pictures, as unobtrusively as possible.
I telephoned the information about what I had seen to the office and a rewrite man fashioned a store that included my information and what he got from other reporters. I don't honestly remember what the published story said.
What I was told was that the paper did not plan to give the story big play because the executive editor was worried about inciting more violence.
Life magazine asked to see my pictures and I sent them my roll of film but they used photos someone else had taken.
Compared to cities in places like Alabama and Mississippi, the violence in Jacksonville was mild.
There was another occasion later, however, when a house in Lackawanna was bombed. It resulted in my first scoop.
I had become police reporter and an FBI agent called to tell me, right on deadline, that the bomber had been arrested after a nationwide hunt. I got the story in time.
There were a few people who opposed integration strenuously but as I remember it, most people in Jacksonville were like me and thought it was time for black citizens to be on an equal footing. One legitimate viewpoint was that it could be handled in each state individually better than being imposed by force at the federal level. It might have taken longer but it surely would have resulted in less violence.
On the other hand, black citizens justifiably were not inclined to wait and were willing to risk the violence.

Stealth jihad

2010-08-24T10:05:00.004-04:00

Those defending the Ground Zero mosque on First Amendment grounds might want to contemplate this, from Andrew McCarthy:
"Islam is a comprehensive political, social, and economic system with its own authoritarian legal framework, sharia, which aspires to govern all aspects of life."
In other words, it is not just a religion, entitled to religious freedom.
The imam promoting the mosque also has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in 1928 and now worldwide.
Its aims?
Wikipedia says the Muslim Brotherhood's "General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America" makes the objectives clear: "The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
If those promoting the mosque were "moderate" and sincere, they would accept offers of another site. But the real purpose is to have a symbol for all radical Islamofascists that they have conquered the site where the symbols of capitalism were destroyed.
It was to be called the Cordoba mosque, in fact, a clear reference to the area of Spain where a Christian church was turned into a grand mosque after it was conquered by Muslims in the eighth century.
When people tell you in advance they plan to destroy you from within and you aid them, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

The numbers game

2010-08-15T08:18:00.003-04:00

Within a few years, it will take all taxpayers can give just to pay for Medicare and interest on the national debt.
Yet, the liberals claim Medicare is in great shape.
Last week, they produced a report purporting to support that notion.
However, Robert Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, cautioned that "financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range ... or the long range."
In other words, the report is baloney.
Obamacare claims to save Medicare by making cuts but as any number of experts have shown, they are spending the same dollars twice, and no one believes such cuts will be made anyway.
This is the government liberals promised would be the most honest ever.

Our Muslim president

2010-08-14T09:45:00.002-04:00

Just when you thought he couldn't get any more outrageous, President Obama declares it a First Amendment right for Muslims to build a mosque at Ground Zero.
Absolute nonsense. Nothing in the constitution gives the First Baptist Church or anyone else a right to build a church anywhere it wants to.
The only reason to build the mosque there is to provoke the America people, and to send a signal to Islamofascists worldwide: We tore down the symbols of capitalism and replaced them with a symbol of Islam.
In addition, the government-owned company AIG is now investing in enterprises that funnel money to terrorists. In effect, American taxpayers are financing the assaults upon them that have been under way nearly 20 years now.
Meanwhile, practitioners of the religion of peace plan to brutally stone another young woman to death after torturing a confession out of her and a Texas Muslim father has shot his two daughters to death for dating non-Muslims. You can listen to one of them calling 9-1-1 and screaming, "My father shot me and I'm dying!"
Gradually, efforts to subvert the U.S. judicial system and replace it with sharia law continue. France already has lost this battle and England is losing as well. Democracy is dying.
Obama clearly supports this trend and is working to advance it on every front.

Early warning

2010-07-27T09:07:00.003-04:00

August is approaching. This affords America-hating liberals a chance annually to publicly wring their hands and whine about the dropping of atom bombs on Japan, which they view as evidence that America is a despicable country.
They would be more than happy if the Nazis or Japs had won World War II and now ran this country. Or the communists. Or Mexicans. Or Muslims. Anyone but Americans.
Here's the undeniable truth, for anyone who attended the public school indoctrination academies and doesn't know American history: Dropping the bombs saved millions of lives, American and Japanese.
The battle for Okinawa and voluminous other evidence convinced military planners than an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in horrendous casualties on both sides. Harry Truman got it. Liberals don't.

Death squads authorized

2010-07-19T18:05:00.003-04:00

Remember when the left went nuts because George Bush allowed our spies to monitor telephone calls made to suspected terrorists outside this country?
Can you image what would happen if Bush had said U.S. citizens could be assassinated just because they were suspected of being terrorists?
The New York Times would be spinning its presses putting out special editions. CNN would be broadcasting 24/7 on this story alone (sort of like the camera image of the oil spill).
President Obama is doing it, and no one really cares. The ACLU has issued a mild protest.
Yep. Actual terrorists who kill Americans? Put them on trial. Suspected terrorists who may or may not kill Americans, but are Americans? Shoot them.
One reason the telephone surveillance (which is constitutional, unlike assassination) was needed was that the media had made it easier for terrorists by publishing the information that we were monitoring their cell phone calls. It almost allowed us to catch Osama bin Laden. But the media chose to exercise its constitutional rights, rather than protect Americans.
Why is the assassination of U.S. citizens needed? Who is next? Tea Party members that the leftists deem to be "racists"?

More disasters ahead

2010-06-26T10:33:00.002-04:00

You couldn't pick two people least qualified to write a bill to regulate the financial institutions than Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. Yet, they are the authors.
No one has been able to read it, of course. Liberals don't produce their sausage in the sunshine.
But from news accounts we can learn that it does nothing to prevent another housing crisis.
Anyone who wants to understand the last crisis should read "The Housing Crisis" by Thomas Sowell, an economist who deals in facts instead of fancy.
It was Frank who assured everyone than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in great shape as those two government agencies were failing. Even the New York Times editorial page saw it coming!
Dodd is on record as saying they don't know what the bill will do or whether it will "work."
The chances are that the banks and others who fall under this regulation will be able to find ways to operate, but apparently there is nothing in the bill to help the situation, so why bother?
Because it's what liberals do. Tinker and meddle, and hope everything will come out right.

Obama's Last Stand

2010-06-26T08:31:00.004-04:00

So, General Obama is taking over the war in Afghanistan.
This is a Democrat war. It is "the right war," they said (not that thing in Iraq).
They voted for it and they own it.
But will they win it?
Obama announced a while back that he would send additional troops, in a "surge" just like the one he opposed in Iraq. At the same time, he announced that, win or lose, the troops would pull out in July 2011.
Even the barbarians in the Afghan mountains understood that one. Lay low, inflict maximum casualties, husband and expand resources, exploit the American media and wait. Victory comes next year.
Obama has fired the general running the war and put in charge a general the liberals have lambasted as a traitor. That means that for all practical purposes, Obama is in charge.
Meanwhile, suffering Afghans don't trust their corrupt and ineffective government (showing that they have something in common with Americans) and know the Taliban will ruthlessly murder anyone who has opposed them after the Americans leave.
Pity our poor troops who are going to die in vain.

Cause and effect

2010-06-22T10:00:00.003-04:00

Headline on First Coast News: "Home Prices Dip But Sales Up."
This reminds me of the headlines many papers were writing a while back: "Prisons are full even though crime is down."
In liberal newsrooms, they are astounded to find that when you lock up criminals, the crime rate goes down. They can't see the connection.
The folks at Channel 12 also don't know much about economics if they think it is an anomaly that homes sell well when the prices are lower, as the headline indicates.
Homes are selling here because sellers are lowering their prices to match the market.
When the housing bubble burst many people thought they could still get the inflated price when they sold. Doesn't work that way.

Watch out for 2011

2010-06-07T16:33:00.005-04:00

Art Laffer's piece in today's Wall Street Journal is a must-read, especially for those who expect the usual rebound from a recession.
As Laffer explains, the tax-and-spend crowd this time has done it's work well. It has set out to destroy the economy -- and, many think, this country -- and is having some success.
The private sector always recovers from the occasional business cycle downturn. It would have in the 1930s as it did in the 1920s had it not been for the New Deal, which turned it into a depression.
That could happen again.
Debt soon will equal GDP and this year the largest tax increase in history will take place when the liberal Congress fails to extend the Bush tax relief. That, Laffer says, will kill all hope of recovery.
Ronald Reagan stuck to his guns and started a 25 year period of unparalleled growth. If Obama sticks to his, a policy the direct opposite of Reagan's, it could have exactly the opposite effect.

Let's all hate BP

2010-06-06T06:49:00.003-04:00

Remember the novel 1984? Regularly, the brainwashed masses were required to face the TV and actively hate the political enemies of Big Brother.
And here we are. Each night the masses mass to glare at the TV screens and hate the corporation British Petroleum. An "enraged" president leads the throng.
This carefully orchestrated hate-in is in keeping with this president's all-out assault on free enterprise and individual freedom. He is out to reshape America in his own vision, as a socialist state.
He is aided by the media, which blamed President George Bush for the Hurricane Katrina disaster immediately but has yet to fault Barack Obama.
Now they have fixed on a comment by a BP press flack, who allegedly said there are other places to get shrimp besides Louisiana.
This is being portrayed as a Marie Antoinette-style remark when it could as easily be regarded as a simple statement of fact, in answer to concerns about shrimp not being available.
Rational people understand that the Gulf oil spill was an accident, not a deliberate act by BP. It isn't even clear that it was the result of gross negligence or incompetence. BP, which has been a politically correct corporation seeking government blessing and a donor to liberal causes, deserves no sympathy, just the benefit of doubt.
Oil companies would not be drilling for oil in 5,000 feet of water where an accident is difficult to fix if it were not for liberal politicians who refuse to let them drill in shallow water or on land, where there would be less risk.
They would not be drilling at all if it were not for the billions of people who drive cars and use electricity.
Those blessed with perfect hindsight now insist we should be using windmills and the sun instead of oil, forgetting perhaps the billions that have been spent unsuccessfully trying to develop those sources into a reliable and efficient means of delivering electricity.
The fact is that oil is necessary to modern life and until the private sector finds something better, it must be used.
Don't hold your breath waiting for politicians to invent a replacement. All they know how to do is order other people around: "Mr. Edison, invent that electric light right now!"
As long as they are doing everything they can to quench the entrepreneurial spirit, progressives will delay progress.
Meanwhile, they seek to deflect blame, as they did in the housing crisis, from themselves to the people who are our only hope for better solutions and a higher standard of living.