Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Amnesty for employers: A sure-fire way to get everyone back to work
If that REALLY is Obama's top priority these days
By VIN SUPRYNOWICZ
Back in January, in his State of the Union speech -- my, how time flies when you're having fun -- Mr. Obama said his No. 1 priority was going to be jobs. "Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010," Mr. Obama said, adding, "People are out of work. They are hurting. They need our help."
He didn't mean it, though. It's within the power of the federal government to facilitate the creation of millions of new private-sector jobs in only a matter of months, but Mr. Obama won't do it.
If the head of a lending library determines a huge chunk of the collection is out on loan and overdue, and that patrons are afraid to bring the books back because the accrued fines are so large, what does he or she do?
The traditional solution is to slice away the perverse disincentives by offering an amnesty: Anyone who brings back a book in the next month will be forgiven their fines.
Any president who wants to see a massive re-birth of private-sector jobs in this country (not government jobs, which suck money out of the private sector even after the bureaucrat retires) -- especially if his party controls both houses of Congress -- need only declare a three-year "employer amnesty."
Why are employers reluctant to hire? First, it would be stupid to add capacity if the economy is still headed down the tubes because of the looming threats of the health care taxes and mandates in ObamaCare; the threatened "global warming carbon tax"; the threatened "value added tax," and the threat that workplaces will now be unionized without a secret ballot majority vote ("card check").
The president could stimulate a giant sigh of relief out there among private-sector employers by declaring that ObamaCare is suspended for three years, along with all those other big-government initiatives. Tell Congress they've done a wonderful job, and send them home.
But the second big reason business owners are wary of creating jobs is all the costs, mandates, taxes and punishments the federal government has attached to job creation.
To fix this, we need an "employer amnesty." Simply tell employers that for the next three years, the federal government doesn't care how many employees you have, or who they are. Uncle Sam doesn't want to hear about it.
We're going to get busy rounding up and deporting some 12 million illegal aliens, so we won't have to worry about all these new jobs going to illegals. Otherwise, hire whoever you want, and don't tell us.
Minimum-wage laws? Three-year hiatus. Withholding, matching and submitting income taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes? All gone for three years. Tear up the forms. The IRS is on a three-year leave of absence. We won't need to keep transferring those moneys from young workers to old retirees; we'll just draw down the "trust funds" into which those retirees' wages were placed all through their working years in order to pay them their current, promised benefits.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Laid off for three years. OSHA? You won't be hearing from them. The ADA? In abeyance. Environmental impact statements for that new hospital, highway or factory you want to build? No one will ever ask to see them if you can get it done in the next three years.
Leftists, statists and fascists will be outraged over any and all of these proposals, of course. "You want workers to die!" they'll shriek, jumping up on their chairs and clutching their petticoats about their knees. "You want racists to be allowed to hire anyone they want, without quotas! You're against the disabled! Allow people to work for any wage they'll agree to? Oh, oh, I feel suddenly light-headed -- someone catch me! Who will protect the weak-minded and the oppressed from greedy capitalists offering them jobs?"
Which means "creating jobs" isn't really their top priority, or their second, or their third, or their 25th, is it?
By the time Rome fell, most of the farmland within a few days' march of the capital stood fallow. You couldn't make enough by farming the land to pay the taxes.
Yet keeping each and every one of these current job-killing federal taxes, regulations and mandates in place and operating at full strength is more important, isn't it?
So what Mr. Obama really meant, back on Jan. 27, was that "Protecting and creating more tax-funded government jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010, and you small people who work out there in Privatesectorland are just going to have to hunker down, shut up, and pay a whole hell of a lot more taxes to get it done, because we're not going to reduce the tax and regulatory burden on private employers who might want to create a job. In fact, you beasts of burden ain't seen nothin' yet!"
SOURCE
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Another Liberal Blind Spot
In another sign that liberals are becoming increasingly concerned with the growing popularity of libertarianism, a liberal named Daniela Perdomo has gone on the attack against libertarian John Stossel at Alternet.org, one of the major liberal (or “progressive,” as many liberals now label themselves) websites. In an article entitled “Is John Stossel More Dangerous Than Glenn Beck?” Perdomo has revealed a major blind spot within the liberal mind.
As I have pointed out time and time again in my articles on the minimum wage, liberals have a blind spot when it comes to economic understanding. Or to put it bluntly, when it comes to the field of economics, they have a woeful ignorance, and it is that ignorance that prevents them from recognizing the terrible harm they do to the poor, especially racial minorities, with such statist programs as the minimum wage.
In her attack on Stossel and libertarianism, Perdomo reveals another blind spot: the propensity to view a defense of freedom of choice as an endorsement of the bad, immoral, dangerous, or irresponsible choices that people end up making when they’re free to make choices.
What set Perdomo off was Stossel’s recent criticism of anti-discrimination laws. Like most other libertarians, Stossel argued that freedom entails the right of a bigot to be a bigot, including in the operation of his retail establishment.
What Perdomo’s blind spot prevents her from seeing is that one can defend freedom of choice as a principle without endorsing the wrongful choices that people make. To paraphrase Voltaire, we libertarians don’t agree with racist or bigoted choices but we will defend the right of people to make them, just as our defense of Nazi sympathizers to express their views in a public march in Skokie, Illinois, didn’t mean that we were endorsing their views.
Here is what Perdomo says about Stossel: “While he can make racist statements as well as the rest of them, he couches his particular brand of hate in his passion for libertarianism.”
Does Perdomo point to any racist statement or any expression of hate by Stossel? She does not, and the reason she doesn’t is because she can’t. Stossel didn’t make any racist statement or statement of hate. What Perdomo is essentially saying is that when a person calls for freedom of association on the basis of race, he is automatically, by virtue of taking such a position, guilty of making a racist or hate-filled statement.
Now, is that not ridiculous or what? That’s what passes for serious analysis within the liberal mind. That’s what comes from the 12-year-sentence in public (i.e., government) schools, where the mind is molded into conformity, memorization, and superficial analysis, stamping out any semblance of independent, critical thinking.
Of course, this isn’t the only area where Perdomo and liberals have this particular blind spot. We libertarians see it all the time with respect to the welfare state. Whenever we call for the repeal, not reform, of such liberal socialist programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public housing, corporation bailouts, income taxation, and the like, and argue that people should be free to do whatever they want with their own money, what is it that liberals automatically say to us? They immediately exclaim: “You libertarians hate the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, and you would let them die in the streets!”
Again, they automatically jump to the conclusion that because libertarians favor freedom of choice in peaceful endeavors, they automatically endorse all the choices that people make.
An irony of all this in order to achieve a more moral, responsible, compassionate society, the worst thing people can do is use force to achieve it. It is through the widest ambit of freedom of choice that people are best able to achieve a higher level of conscience, consciousness, morality, and responsibility. Perhaps that’s what frightens statists, both conservatives and liberals, so much about libertarianism.
SOURCE
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‘Muslims-Only’ Enclave Thrives In Philadelphia
Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, an Islamic enclave is being carved out of the heart of the City of Brotherly Love. And how generous have you been with your tax dollars? You just gave $1.6 billion for the privilege of turning over all this cash to the Islamic community.
The person doing the carving is Kenny Gamble, the author of such hit songs as “Love Train” and “Me and Mrs. Jones.”
A convert to Islam, Gamble, now known as Luqman Abdul Haqq, is affiliated with the National Ummah Movement which seeks to establish sovereign Islamic enclaves ruled by shariah (Islamic) law within major cities throughout the U.S.A. The movement was started by Jamil al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown), who is now serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison for killing two police officers in Atlanta.
Gamble managed to collect the $1.6 billion through Universal Company, a so-called “charitable organization,” which he formed in 1993. Gamble and his spokesmen say that the non-profit company provides a public service by cleaning up a blighted section of the south Philly, but local residents say that Universal has really used the $1.6 billion to create a Muslim ghetto. This allegation is supported by Gamble himself. Speaking to his fellow Islamists, the former songwriter quipped: “We are not here for Universal, we are here for Islam.”
The proof is in the pudding. The 800 block of South 15th Street now contains the United Muslim Masjid, an Islamic center, and a madrassah (charter school). All of these organizations have been created and sustained by Gamble’s enterprise. Rotan Lee of the Philly YMCA says: “You look up and down the street and see men, women and children in traditional Muslim dress everywhere; you see the masjid right across from Kenny's house and security guards on the corners in kufis.”
On the website of the Muslim Alliance of National American, the directors of Gamble’s company made the mistake of betraying their true intent by saying: “By the Blessing and Mercy of Allah (SWT), the efforts of Universal Companies serve as a national model for what can be done with commitment, compassion, focus and careful planning and execution. Just another proof positive of the words of the Qu’ran where Allah (SWT) states: ‘Let there arise from among you a small group of people, inviting to all that is good. They enjoin the good, and forbid the evil, and it is they who attain success.’ (3: 104).”
Proof of Gamble’s ties to National Ummah Movement was provided by a conference call from Jamil al Amin to the United Muslim Masjid., a mosque G founded on 15th Street. A transcript from the mosque reads as follows: "...A highlight of one meeting was when we had Imam Jamil Al-Amin on speaker phone talking to us from his Georgia prison. MANA (Muslim Alliance in North America ) and its members have raised and donated several thousands of dollars to his family and legal defense team. Imam Jamil has recently been transferred to a "supermax" prison in Colorado, and we ask that you make du'a for him."
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Judges: Obama can’t close Yucca Mountain nuke dump: "Democratic Rep. John Spratt and Republican Rep. Joe Wilson don’t agree on much, yet the South Carolina congressmen are cheering a new ruling that denied the bid by the U.S. Energy Department to withdraw its application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Three administrative judges within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled last week that Congress had designated Yucca Mountain in 1987 to receive highly toxic waste from the Savannah River Site on the S.C./Georgia border and other complexes that built atom bombs during the Cold War. The panel found that President Barack Obama and Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a nuclear physicist, lacked the power to close the Yucca repository unilaterally; doing so, it ruled, would require another act of Congress.”
Petraeus takes over Afghan fight, vows “to win” it: "‘We are in this to win,’ Gen. David Petraeus said as he took the reins of an Afghan war effort troubled by waning support, an emboldened enemy, government corruption and a looming commitment to withdraw troops — even with no sign of violence easing. Petraeus, who pioneered the counterinsurgency strategy he now oversees in Afghanistan, has just months to show progress in turning back insurgents and convince both the Afghan people and neighboring countries that the U.S. is committed to preventing the country from again becoming a haven for al-Qaida and its terrorist allies.”
Supreme Court opens door to more liberty: "The real surprise lay elsewhere: in signals that the Court may be inching toward a legal doctrine that offers stronger blanket protections of individual rights than this country has seen in almost 140 years. Many people don’t realize that the McDonald case is much more about the Fourteenth Amendment than the Second. Originally, the Bill of Rights — including the Second Amendment right to bear arms at issue in McDonald — only applied to the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in the wake of the Civil War to expand the reach of the Bill of Rights, mainly so that individual states could not pass laws depriving blacks of their civil rights.”
Founders didn’t create America; America created Founders: "When the Swedish botanist Pehr Kalm visited the American colonies in 1748 to find seeds useful for agriculture, he called it a place where ‘a newly married man can, without difficulty, get a spot of ground where he may comfortably subsist with his wife and children,’ and ‘the liberties he enjoys are so great that he considers himself a prince of his possessions.’ Kalm’s observations of the colonists’ liberties and culture came 28 years before the Continental Congress wrote and approved the Declaration of Independence, and his thoughts were neither wrong nor unique for the time.”
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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