ACRU Court Victory Means Dead People, Felons Will Finally be Taken Off Voter Rolls in Mississippi County

The American Civil Rights Union landed a major victory this week when a U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of Mississippi signed a consent decree to clean up Walthall County’s voter registration rolls. Census data for the county shows there are 9,536 people over the age of 18. The problem, however, is that there are 10,078 active voters listed on official records, which prompted ACRU to sue officials in the county earlier this year.

"This is historic and should have been done 20 years ago," ACRU Chairman Susan A. Carleson said in a statement. "It's the first time since Motor Voter [National Voter Registration Act] was enacted in 1993 giving private parties the right to sue over voting irregularities that any private party has won a case to require clean voter rolls. With the Justice Department on the warpath against state election integrity laws, it couldn't come at a better time."

ACRU had to act because federal authorities have been delinquent, according to former DOJ attorneys J. Christian Adams, Christopher Coates and Henry Ross, who filed the lawsuit.

"This case should have been called United States v. Walthall County instead of ACRU v. Walthall County," Adams said in a statement. "We're doing the job that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. won't do. In fact, he's too busy suing Texas for its new photo ID law and abusing power in other ways to harass states that are trying to ensure election integrity."

And the demographics of this county are important to point out (via The Blaze):

Walthall County, Miss. is [a] red county in a red state, is majority white, and was carried [by] Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, according to the Heritage Foundation. This could blunt the argument generally used by Democrats and the Holder Justice Department, that voter integrity measures harm minority voters and benefit Republican candidates.

The consent decree will force the county to clean up its voter rolls by removing dead voters, those who have moved out of the county, noncitizens, nonresidents, and convicted felons who are no longer eligible to vote.

"This is a huge victory for the American people," Carleson said. "Across the country, other counties have more registered voters than people alive. If they don't clean up their rolls, they risk litigation. Every time an illegal voter casts a ballot, it steals someone else's legal vote."

The ACRU also sued Jefferson Davis County on the same issue. A trial has been set for June 2014.

SOURCE

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Thieves Are Kindred Spirit for California Government

When someone embezzles more than $300,000 from a business, that company is not likely to hire back the embezzler and give her a promotion. But such is not the case with the state of California, which even changed the rules so the embezzler could get a new job.

As a recent report noted, Carey Renee Moore (then going by the name Carey Renee Aceves) embezzled $320,000 from the state’s Department of Child Support Services “by using her position to purchase, among other things, a television, a hot tub and gazebo and electronics, pornographic videos, handcuffs, chains and whips. Moore falsified records to cover up the purchases and sold some items to buy a $65,000 Lexus.” The California Highway Patrol said it was one of the largest cases they had uncovered.

Before the cops could close the deal, Moore transferred with the greatest of ease to the State Board of Equalization, which learned of her arrest and began termination proceedings. But the embezzler resigned from the board before those proceedings became final. Moore served two years in prison for felony grand theft but then bagged a position with the state’s High Speed Rail Authority, the so-called bullet train, a boondoggle in progress. Moore was able to get the position because the state Personnel Board removed from state job applications two questions dealing with previous convictions for misdemeanors and felonies. Moore claims she didn’t lie about that because the state didn’t ask. This is an obvious case of double standards and special treatment, but there is more going on here.

The state does not reveal how many criminals it hires, and when a Sacramento Bee reporter asked bullet-train bosses how and why they hired a convicted embezzler, they called it a “personnel matter” and would not comment. Last year it emerged that the state parks department had hidden some $54 million, which one legislator called “deceit and thievery.” It later emerged that a key figure in the scandal had an extensive criminal background. As with Moore, that proved no object to state employment, and that should come as no surprise

A state where waste, fraud and abuse are common practice is certain to have a soft spot for convicted felons and embezzlers with their hand in the till. In state government they fit right in.

SOURCE

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Under Obama: Job Growth 52% Greater for Foreign-Born Workers

Under President Barack Obama, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released today, the increase in the number of foreign-born people employed in the United States has been 52 percent greater than the increase in the number of native-born people employed.

In January 2009, when President Barack Obama first took office, says the BLS, there were 21,375,000 foreign-born people employed in the United States. In August 2013, there were 23,833,000 foreign-born workers employed in the United States. That means that since Obama took office the number of foreign-born people holding jobs inside the United States has increased by 2,458,000.

By contrast, in January 2009, there were 119,061,000 native-born Americans employed in the United States, and, in August 2013, there were 120,676,000—an increase of 1,615,000.

The 2,458,000 increase in foreign-born workers since January 2009 is 843,000 (or 52 percent) greater than 1,615,000 increase in native-born workers.

The BLS numbers are based on a survey of 60,000 households that the Census Bureau conducts each month. That survey does not distinguish between foreign-born persons who are naturalized U.S. citizens, legal permanent U.S. residents, work-visa holders or “undocumented” foreign nationals working illegally in the United States. Rather, it counts them all simply as foreign-born individuals who are in the United States and who are either working or not working. The survey focuses on persons who are 16 years old or older.

The BLS numbers also show that the labor-force participation rate for both the foreign-born and native-born population has declined under Obama, although the native-born participation rate has dropped more than the foreign-born participation rate.

In January 2009, when Obama took office, the labor-force participation rate among foreign-born persons 16 years or older was 67.2 percent. By this August, it was down 66.9 percent. In January 2009, 65.0 percent of native-born Americans 16 years or older participated in the labor force. By August, that was down to 62.8 percent.

BLS counts someone as participating in the labor force if they are 16 or older and either have a job or have actively sought one in the last four weeks.

SOURCE

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Norway has just elected a new conservative government

Some background

    "Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg — nicknamed “Iron Erna” — will become Norway’s new prime minister as the leader of a center-right coalition government likely including an anti-immigration party.

    Preliminary results from the oil-rich Nordic country’s parliamentary elections shows the Conservative Party got 26.8 percent of votes, the best result for the party in 28 years. Solberg, who will be Norway’s second female prime minister after Gro Harlem Brundtland, thanked the voters Monday for a historic victory.

    “The voters had the choice between 12 years of red-green government or a new government with new ideas and new solutions,” Solberg said. …

    The discovery of oil and gas in Norway’s waters in the 1960s turned the Scandinavian nation into one of the richest in the world, with a strong welfare system and a high living standard. The oil wealth helped it withstand Europe’s financial crisis and retain low unemployment throughout Stoltenberg’s years in power. Still, the Conservative Party has managed to attract votes amid pledges to increase the availability of private health care and cut taxes on assets over $140,000."

Although much of Europe continues to stagger beneath the tremendous weight of their own imploding welfare states and the accompanying fiscal and economic burdens, borne of their very progressive- and labor-influenced state-spending policies, Norway is still a relative island of plenty amidst that sea of European debt. Norway, too, has an extravagant welfare state, but the constant stream of wealth that comes from their nationalized system of tapping their vast reserves of oil and gas mean that they have a robust revenue stream that enables them to keep the welfare state going.

Norwegians take a lot of pride in their economic inclusiveness, and they boast some of the highest living standards in Europe with an unemployment rate of only 3.5 percent and a relatively (and I do mean relatively) good GDP growth rate of 3 percent in 2012. That 3 percent, however, is still a slowdown, and the conservative-minded politicians in the running want to avoid injecting too much public spending into the economic in the misbegotten attempt to spur growth as well as keep taxes low and business-friendly. What’s more, as the United States’ shale oil-and-gas boom continues to grow and as countries like Germany and the United Kingdom think about fracking for themselves, using oil riches to cover a full third of your country’s revenue stream isn’t necessarily a dependable plan for the future, and it sounds like they’re at least taking small steps toward a more definitely sustainable public-spending plan for the long term.

On a semi-related note concerning energy riches and Scandinavia, President Obama stopped in Sweden on his way to Russia last week and hailed the tiny country as an example to us all in bringing about the cleaner, greener future to which we should all be aspiring: “Sweden is obviously an extraordinary leader when it comes to tackling climate change and increasing energy efficiency, and developing new technologies. And the goal of achieving a carbon-neutral economy is remarkable, and Sweden is well on its way. We deeply respect and admire that and think we can learn from it.” That prompted RealClearEnergy‘s editors to wonder: …Er, Obama does know that Sweden is 40 percent nuclear, right?

SOURCE

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How Conservatives Get Revenge on the IRS

In one of the biggest political scandals of the last decade, the IRS has been exposed for politically targeting conservative organizations and preventing them from gaining tax exempt status, all while quickly approving liberal organizations.  This abuse of Federal power by the IRS threatens democracy at its core, because it uses the Federal government’s biggest weapon – taxation – to promote one political ideology over another.  It’s no wonder why conservatives have long been skeptical of the IRS and why conservatives throughout history have sought to protect their money from IRS control.  So how have conservatives gotten revenge on the IRS?  By shielding their money and wealth in the one asset class that the IRS has no legal authority to know about.

So, how are conservatives beating the IRS, not to mention the Fed?  By buying private non-reportable physical gold & silver and sitting on it.   In other words, they're getting some wealth out of the crooked casino and away from the grimy paws of the IRS.  But in order to beat the IRS at their own game, they're buying “the right gold."

First, let’s look at investing in "the wrong gold" -- gold on paper through an ETF -- and how that plays right into the hands of the IRS and Fed.  You buy $100,000 in paper gold through your broker in the form of an ETF.  Gold doubles, you sell and realize a 100k profit and now you get to send a check for $28,000 to the IRS.  That’s right, you buy gold to protect yourself from inflation, inflation happens, your paper money buys less so your gold went up but, for some crazy reason, you have to give the IRS 28% of your “growth."

This is partly why the IRS is a joke.  The central planners make inflation to get growth, and then things rise because of that inflation, but then they want some of your growth back into their own pockets?   One would argue that if the central planners are going make inflation all day by printing money that YOU should be allowed to benefit from the asset appreciation that ultimately helps YOU to counter their inflation and the rising price of the goods and services YOU need to survive.  But instead they want to ding you twice – once through an unfair tax called inflation and then again by taxing you on the asset appreciation that inflation created.

So, when we talk about the "right gold," we're talking about physical gold, which has none of the counter-party risk of ETF gold and is more shielded from the IRS.  What many conservatives are doing is removing some wealth from the fractional system controlled by criminals and into an asset that not only lives outside the insolvent banking system and outside the paper fiat currency system, but is also invisible to the IRS.  That's right, the IRS does NOT require the reporting of many types of gold and silver coin purchases and sales.  So not only are conservatives protecting their money and wealth from systematic collapse when they buy gold and silver, they are shielding themselves from IRS scrutiny.

More HERE

This is reasonable advice as long as you realize that gold prices have big ups and downs.  I prefer real estate and blue chip company shares for asset protection myself -- JR

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