Milwaukee Sheriff: Obama ‘Started This War on Police’

In response to the execution-style murder of  Harris County Deputy Sheriff Darren Goforth, who was shot multiple times at a gas station in Cypress, Texas, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. strongly criticized what he called the “black lies matter” movement and stressed that President Barack Obama himself had “started this war on police.”

On Fox’s “Justice With Judge Jeanine” on Aug. 29, the host asked Sheriff Clarke,  “Is it open season on law enforcement in this country?”

Sheriff Clarke said,  “Judge, I am too pissed off tonight to be diplomatic about what’s going on and I’m not going to stick my head in the sand about it.”

“I said last December that war had been declared on the American police officer led by some high profile people, one of them coming out of the White House, and one coming out of the United States Department of Justice,” said Clarke.

“And it’s open season right now,” he said.  “There’s no doubt about it. Anytime a law enforcement officer is killed, a little bit of every police officer in America dies along with them.”

Later in the interview, Judge Jeanine asked, “Finally, sheriff, the national rhetoric that’s going on. You say that people need to push back and we need, when we see things on Facebook and social media. You know, the truth is, people can say and do what they want. This is America. But, without leadership, there isn’t going to be any different reaction. More people seem to be emboldened by this kind of thing.”

Sheriff Clarke said,  “Right, and that’s why I said that the president of the United States started this war on police.”

“Look, and I know what you mean, judge, by that, but it’s not absolute,” said the sheriff.  “You can’t say anything you want in the United States of America: you cannot threaten people’s lives, you can’t call for the killing of people like we’re seeing from some of these things.”

“That is not First Amendment protected,” said Clarke.  “That is filth, that is slime, and there are some law enforcement implications that can be dealt with at the Department of Justice and with state attorney’s offices across the United States.”

“I love the First Amendment,” he continued.  “I love freedom of speech. You are not free to threaten my life or anybody else’s.”

Deputy Darren Goforth was killed on Friday, Aug. 28, while he was pumping gas into his car at a gas station.  The killer walked up from behind and shot Goforth multiple times in the back.

Shannon J. Miles, 30, was arrested on Aug. 29 and charged with capital murder in the death of Goforth.  Several Texas law enforcement officials have called the murder a “cold-blooded assassination.”

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Obama Tries To Use Courts To Skew Votes Towards Democrats

 The recently concluded federal trial over North Carolina’s election rules proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: The Obama administration and its partisan, big-money, racial-interest-group allies will stop at nothing to win elections. And using the courts to change election rules is a key part of their strategy.

That was clearly evident in the federal courtroom in Winston-Salem. The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department, challenged a number of election reforms implemented in 2013 that were designed to reduce the cost and complexity of running elections and make it harder to commit voter fraud.

The administration pushed a novel legal argument. In its telling, if a change in election rules might statistically affect blacks more than whites, it constitutes illegal discrimination. For example, if 98 percent of whites have a voter ID but only 97.5 percent of blacks have one, then requiring voters to present ID violates federal law. Never mind the fact that getting an ID is free, easy, and open to everyone without regard to race. And never mind if a policy change is in line with the rules of many other states, or if it’s explicitly sanctioned by federal law. The mere act of changing the law in the wrong direction is discriminatory.

In other words, the Obama administration would turn the Voting Rights Act into a one-way ratchet to help Democrats. The court refused to go along.

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The New U.S. Business Model: ObamaCorps

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) handed down a decision last week that could remake a vast swath of the economy. Where have we heard that before with this administration? The rule essentially took nine million American workers employed by just under 800,000 franchise businesses and moved their employment from the direct supervision of the franchisee to the big-brand parent company. To paraphrase Joe Biden’s comments when ObamaCare was signed, this is a big freaking deal.

The Democrat-controlled NRLB, Barack Obama’s instrument for decisions and rulings benefiting labor unions — involving issues such as collective bargaining and the minimum wage, just to name two — could potentially destroy the franchise business model. How? The NLRB blurred the lines of “direct and immediate” control over employees of franchises, meaning the corporation now has more control than the franchise.

The partisan vote, supported only by Democrats in the majority on the NRLB, undermines the current responsibility of the franchise owner as the business owner and employer that hires, fires, pays employees, determines promotions, raises and benefits offered. As always, the Obama administration aims to make everything part of a centrally controlled process dominated by the government.

In effect, the NLRB’s ruling has turned business entrepreneurs who have risked capital, hired staff and sacrificed for earnings as franchise owners into middle managers to oversee employees on the payroll of the big corporation.

In the era of economic failure caused by the too-big-to-fails, Obama’s union thugs, who are federally tasked with representing worker rights as an agency, have only turned the large corporate entities into larger corporate entities.

Franchises are contracts to what are functionally small business owners, through which corporations can leverage the scale of purchasing, advertising and brand development to local businesses that agree to maintain product and service standards regarding quality and pricing. Otherwise, the franchise owner controls the business. A prime example: 90% of McDonald’s restaurants are franchises, and those franchises employ 1.5 million of McDonald’s 1.9 million employees. Other large brands using the franchise model include food-industry giants such as Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A and Wendy’s, and service industry corporations like Hampton Inns, Hilton Hotel brands, Great Clips hair salons, Liberty Tax Service and Save-A-Lot Foods.

But as Beth Milito, senior legal counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, explains, “If … corporations are suddenly responsible for the franchise employees, they’ll be forced to exert more control over the franchisees.” In fact, she adds, they might even “eliminate the franchise model entirely and take direct control over the locations.”

Ironically, the first black president has made it tougher for minorities, who, according to The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk, are “almost 50% more likely” to own franchised businesses versus non-franchised businesses. So much for empowering minority-owned businesses in the Obama economy.

So why is the NRLB forcing employers to abdicate their business processes to the Giant Corporation model?

You already know. Large employers make easier targets for labor unions to win unionization. Soon, there could be the Ronald McDonald Teamsters, the Great Clips Scissorworkers, and the United Brotherhood of Hilton Garden Inn Employees. The “protections” offered by labor unions are documented and proven: The mediocre and worst employees are protected and any who work hard carry the load of the former. Many union members are good workers, but there are some very rotten apples in the bunch, too (like this New Jersey teacher who gets to keep his $90,000 job despite being tardy more than a hundred times). And above all, Big Labor is a critical Democrat constituency.

Union membership is at historical lows, especially outside the confines of government, with only 7.4 million workers in private-sector unions in 2014 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But those who fear competition and personal accountability in the workplace are using their favorite vehicle — tyrannical government — to create a situation inviting thuggery organized labor.

Obama has successfully socialized America’s health care — ObamaCare; provided cell phones as part of welfare — ObamaPhones; created new controls for the Internet — ObamaNet; is working to force neighborhoods to build low-income housing run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — ObamaHoods. Why would this tyrant not move to destroy the free market system and effective business models through organized labor’s oppression and government-controlled prices and wages with ObamaCorps? He’s got a country to fundamentally transform, after all.

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Water water everywhere but not enough to drink -- in corrupt California

California borders the Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water in the world, so desalination is a no-brainer for the Golden State. But as Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee shows, government is not exactly eager to slake the parched state’s thirst.

The San Diego County Water Authority is building a desalination plant near Carlsbad. The company in charge of the project, Poseidon Resources, is planning another at Huntington Beach in Orange County. As Walters notes, “Last week, a scientific panel gave a positive nod to the state Coastal Commission for Poseidon’s plan to draw in seawater, which has been a sticking point in its permit application. There was no particular reason why it should have been, other than that some folks in the environmental community reflexively oppose any project to increase California’s water supply, even in the midst of a historic drought.”

San Diego County has an elected government and so does the city of Carlsbad. But the desalination plant must bend the knee to the California Coastal Commission (CCC) an unelected body that overrides the elected governments of coastal counties and cities on land use and property rights issues. The CCC started as a temporary body during the first reign of Jerry Brown, and in typical style the state made it permanent. Headed and staffed by regulatory zealots, the CCC combines Stalinist-style regulation with Mafia-style corruption. In the 1990s, Commissioner Mark Nathanson served prison time for shaking down celebrities for bribes.

A scientific panel may have given the CCC the nod for seawater induction, but that is no guarantee the CCC will approve further plans. It does not need to face the voters, and it now has power to levy fines directly. Worse, the CCC serves the interest of those who, as Walters says, oppose “any” project to increase the state’s water supply.

Governor Jerry Brown wants to drill two massive tunnels under the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta at an estimated cost of $25 billion. If the governor supports the southern California desalination plants, Walters explains, “he would be undercutting the tunnel project, which he clearly sees as completing the State Water Project his father began and adding to his own political legacy.” San Diego County’s desalinated water, meanwhile, will cost $2,000 an acre-foot, but as Walters observes, that is scarcely a half-cent per gallon. Therefore, “It makes a lot of sense – perhaps more sense than spending billions of dollars on a couple of pipes that won’t increase supply.”

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Study delivers bleak verdict on validity of psychology experiment results

Psychs are around 95% Leftist so a lack of care about the truth was to be expected

Of 100 studies published in top-ranking journals in 2008, 75% of social psychology experiments and half of cognitive studies failed the replication test

A major investigation into scores of claims made in psychology research journals has delivered a bleak verdict on the state of the science.

An international team of experts repeated 100 experiments published in top psychology journals and found that they could reproduce only 36% of original findings.

The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research.

“There is no doubt that I would have loved for the effects to be more reproducible,” said Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology who led the study at the University of Virgina. “I am disappointed, in the sense that I think we can do better.”

“The key caution that an average reader should take away is any one study is not going to be the last word,” he added. “Science is a process of uncertainty reduction, and no one study is almost ever a definitive result on its own.”

All of the experiments the scientists repeated appeared in top ranking journals in 2008 and fell into two broad categories, namely cognitive and social psychology. Cognitive psychology is concerned with basic operations of the mind, and studies tend to look at areas such as perception, attention and memory. Social psychology looks at more social issues, such as self esteem, identity, prejudice and how people interact.

In the investigation, a whopping 75% of the social psychology experiments were not replicated, meaning that the originally reported findings vanished when other scientists repeated the experiments. Half of the cognitive psychology studies failed the same test. Details are published in the journal Science.

Even when scientists could replicate original findings, the sizes of the effects they found were on average half as big as reported first time around. That could be due to scientists leaving out data that undermined their hypotheses, and by journals accepting only the strongest claims for publication.

John Ioannidis, professor of health research and policy at Stanford University, said the study was impressive and that its results had been eagerly awaited by the scientific community. “Sadly, the picture it paints - a 64% failure rate even among papers published in the best journals in the field - is not very nice about the current status of psychological science in general, and for fields like social psychology it is just devastating,” he said.

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