Equal work, equal pay: Governor’s task force to attack pay gap for women

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

-------------------

It's interesting to see this story regularly reappear in the media, almost like clockwork. It's just another reason to suspect that the media engage in agenda reporting. Over and over we are subjected to the same stories, probably designed to maintain the preferred issues in the public eye.

What I find particularly interesting about this story is that it concedes that feminists have been lying about the numbers and causes of gender-based wage disparity, and it's a stark, glaring inconsistency. First, the oft-repeated claim that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men do, invariably blamed on discrimination.  But then Ms. Barbara Wagner is quoted: "Occupation, industry, experience and union status explain roughly half the pay gap, Wagner said, leaving about 41 percent 'unexplained' which 'could be discrimination.'” 

Um, yeah. "Could be." If we can accept Ms. Wagner's statement as accurate, a little math reveals that 100% - 41% = 59% of the disparity is not discrimination at all, which is hardly "roughly half." So, 59% of the 23% disparity, (that is, 100% - 77% = 23%), or 13.57% of the cited figure, should not be counted. If we add that back in, 77% + 13.57%, we get 90.57%. So a little more than 9% "could be discrimination," which is a lot different than 23%. 

In addition, earlier in the article, Mr. Barry Good "agreed it’s a cultural issue that goes back hundreds of years." This means that rather than there being malicious discrimination against women, our society has been structured in such a way that women were more valued as child-raisers, nurturers, and care-givers.  This is not discrimination.

The other thing to note is that Ms. Cruzado, MSU president, said "she doesn’t know yet whether there’s a pay gap among the university’s 3,000 employees." Ho-boy. It takes a lot of gall to stand up and speak at a meeting like this and say, "Let's fix it," but be completely unaware if there is a problem in the very organization she oversees. Astounding! Would it be rude to suggest that she ought to know what's going on in her own pond before she starts passing judgment on others?

Similarly, the State of Montana, presided over by Democratic Governor Steve Bullock, doesn't know if its wage practices are discriminatory. "Two things they plan to do are to conduct an audit of the state’s 13,000 employees to see if there’s a pay gap in state jobs." In other words, this issue has been on the front burner of leftist politics for decades, but two of the major players in this task force don't even know the status of their own organizations!

This is typical for the Left. They are always quick to pass judgment on others, but rarely apply the same standards to themselves. President Obama's staff exhibits the same wage disparity while he proclaims his solidarity with women's issues, yet none of his supporters seem to care. 

I would place this in the same category as "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Mt. 7:3 

Lastly, I wonder if the writer, Gail Schontzler, was the one who asked these uncomfortable questions. She has been less than inquisitive in the past, but perhaps that is changing. If so, she has embarked on the journey to become a real journalist. Kudos.

-----------------------------------------

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

American women workers earn only 77 cents for every $1 men earn and that is “simply unacceptable,” Montana Gov. Steve Bullock said Friday in Bozeman at the kickoff for his Equal Pay for Equal Work task force.

When President John Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, U.S. women earned 59 cents for every $1 men earn, and in 50 years that has improved only 18 cents, the governor said.

In Montana, he said, “It’s even worse.”

Montana women earn just 67 cents for every $1 Montana men earn, which means the state is one of the 11 worst for pay gaps.

Bullock created the 12-member task force to investigate and recommend actions that state government can take. He spoke at its first meeting, held at Montana State University’s stadium.

“All our workers deserve a fair wage for a hard day’s work,” Bullock said. As the father of two daughters, he added, he wants to be sure they don’t grow up to face doubts that their work is valued and respected the same as men’s.

Pam Bucy, state commissioner of Labor and Industry, will co-chair the task force with Sheila Hogan, director of the state Department of Administration.

Two things they plan to do are to conduct an audit of the state’s 13,000 employees to see if there’s a pay gap in state jobs. Hogan said they’ll also look into state contracts, which may offer ways to influence the pay gap.

For example, Hogan said, the standard language in state contracts says the contractor will follow federal law. One possibility would be to spell out the federal law on equal pay, to bring it to contractors’ attention.

MSU President Waded Cruzado, a task force member, said she believes one reason for the pay gap is ignorance, and once people become aware they’ll say, “Let’s fix it.” Cruzado said later she doesn’t know yet whether there’s a pay gap among the university’s 3,000 employees.

Billings Mayor Tom Hanel said one reason for the pay gap is that for years people looked at women as belonging in the home, cooking and raising families. That’s changed, he said, but pay hasn’t caught up. Barry Good, dean of Missoula College, agreed it’s a cultural issue that goes back hundreds of years.

Barbara Wagner, chief economist for the state Department of Labor and Industry, said the pay gap can be found in every occupation, every industry, every education level, every age group and every state. It has improved over time, but the rate of improvement has slowed, she said.

One major reason for the gap, she said, is that women choose occupations and industries, like teaching, that pay less than male occupations, like piloting aircraft. Women take time out to have children, and when they do, they earn less. When men become fathers, on the other hand, they earn more.

Occupation, industry, experience and union status explain roughly half the pay gap, Wagner said, leaving about 41 percent “unexplained” which “could be discrimination.”

State Rep. JP Pomnichowski, D-Bozeman, told the task force, “There’s a strange dichotomy in Montana between chivalry and chauvinism.”

“If I work hard and you work hard, my dollar should equal your dollar. It shouldn’t be two-thirds.”

Task force members include representatives of the Montana Chamber of Commerce, labor unions, Native Americans and small business.

Montana drivers license renewal costs $44 - ID needed to vote

Just a passing thought. I just renewed my drivers license for $44. One of the big objections the Left has to voter ID requirements is that poor, disenfranchised voters would be discriminated against. The Montana ID card costs $8.

I'd be willing to bet that a substantial percentage of the poor already possess a drivers license, and are happy to pay for it. They are like everyone else... they want to drive their cars, and will do what is necessary to be able to. So if they're motivated to vote, $8 is no obstacle at all.

Oh, one other thing. According to the document below, it only takes 6 weeks to get the plastic license. And they actually call me a "customer." Boy, that's service.

SHUTDOWN VS. DEFAULT Here’s the truth: The government doesn’t shut down - By Andrew Taylor

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

-------------------
While this long article is pretty even-handed about the budget battle, there are a couple of obvious flaws.

1) What terrifies the Left the most is that the government might shut down and no one will notice. Much like the sequester "cuts," which had absolutely no effect on peoples' daily lives, a government shutdown will simply demonstrate that this government is simply not as fire-alarm critical as the Left wants to portray it. They cannot countenance anything that would jeopardize the idea of how important and noble government is in all its glory. 

2) Social Security has a trust fund containing trillions of dollars. How is it possible that SS recipients wouldn't get paid for two weeks? The money is sitting there in an account, right? Or is this a tacit admission that there is no money in the trust fund, that it contains nothing but debt instruments, and therefore is nothing but an accounting trick?

3) If the government does indeed lose its ability to add to the National Debt (which is what the debt limit is all about), then the answer is simple: Government will have to do what every family in America has done... don't spend more than you take in. Families have been reeling for the past five years. They have had to take extraordinary measures to survive this economic downturn. Government, on the other hand, has never had to do without. It's time the government had to exercise the kind of discipline and restraint that its citizens do every day.

4) I think it is interesting that a shutdown is portrayed as the only possible outcome. Remember, the Republicans are offering to fund the entirety of government in this bill, with the exception of Obamacare. So that means the only reason government would shut down is if the Democrats deem the funding of Obamacare as the pivotal issue to continue other government services. In other words, Democrats would make the funding of Obamacare as more important than anything else the government does. 

------------------------------- WASHINGTON — Here’s the truth about a government “shutdown.” The government doesn’t shut down.

So the world won’t end if a dysfunctional Washington can’t find a way to pass a funding bill before the new budget year begins on Oct. 1.

Social Security checks will still go out. Troops will remain at their posts. Doctors and hospitals will get their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. In fact, virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, will remain open. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, eventually. Transportation Security Administration officers would continue to man airport checkpoints.

But lurking around the corner is far bigger danger: Sometime in late October or early November the government could run out of cash. The U.S. would be unable to pay all of its bills in full and on time for the first time in history if it couldn’t borrow more money.

While the Treasury Department probably would make interest payments to bondholders to prevent a catastrophic default on the debt, it wouldn’t be able to make other payments on time, which would mean delays in Social Security benefits and in paychecks for federal workers and troops in the field. Americans would feel the pain. To prevent a “shutdown,” Congress must pass a temporary spending bill before Oct. 1. 

To prevent a default, it must raise the $16.7 trillion cap on government borrowing. Averting a shutdown is supposed to be easy. There hasn’t been one since the 1995-96 battle in which President Bill Clinton bested Newt Gingrich and his band of budget-slashing conservatives. This time, the conservatives want to hold government funding hostage in order to derail the implementation of President Barack Obama’s law to make people buy health insurance. GOP leaders want to avoid a shutdown and are trying to finesse a solution.

Raising the debt limit is typically more difficult, but it has always been done because the possible consequences of default are so dire: upheaval in financial markets, a spike in U.S. borrowing costs and a host of delayed payments to both individual Americans and businesses. Under current estimates, the “X date” by which the government can’t meet all of its payments would come in the latter half of October or early November. So Congress needs to act by mid-October to be safe.

In the separate case of a shutdown, fewer than half of the 2.1 million federal workers subject to it would be forced off the job if the Obama administration follows the rules followed by previous Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton. That’s not counting about 500,000 Postal Service employees or 1.4 million uniformed military personnel who would be exempt.

The rules for who works and who doesn’t date back to the early 1980s and haven’t been significantly modified since. The Obama administration reissued the guidance on Wednesday.

The air traffic control system, food inspection, Medicare, veterans’ health care and many other essential government programs would run as usual. The Social Security Administration would not only send out benefits but would continue to take applications. The Postal Service, which is self-funded, would keep delivering the mail. The Federal Emergency Management Agency could continue to respond to disasters at the height of hurricane season.

The Washington Monument would be closed. But it’s been closed anyway since an earthquake in 2011.

Museums along the National Mall would close, too. National parks would be closed to visitors, a loss often emphasized in shutdown discussions.

The Capitol would remain open, however. Congress is deemed essential, despite its abysmal poll ratings.

From a practical perspective, shutdowns usually aren’t that big a deal. They happened every year when Jimmy Carter was president, averaging 11 days each. During President Reagan’s two terms, there were six shutdowns, typically just one or two days apiece. Deals got cut. Everybody moved on.

In 1995-96, however, shutdowns morphed into political warfare, to the dismay of Republicans who thought they could use them to drag Clinton to the negotiating table on a balanced budget plan.

Republicans took a big political hit, but most Americans suffered relatively minor inconveniences like closed parks and delays in processing passport applications. Some 2,400 workers cleaning up toxic waste sites were sent home, and there were short delays in processing veterans’ claims. Under a precedent-setting memorandum by Reagan budget chief David Stockman, federal workers are exempted from furloughs if their jobs are national security-related or if they perform essential activities that “protect life and property.”

In 1995, that meant 571,000 Defense Department civilian employees, some 69 percent, remained at post, while 258,000 other Pentagon workers were furloughed. Eighty-five percent of Veterans Administration employees went to work as did 70 percent of Transportation Department workers. The Transportation Security Administration didn’t exist back then, but agency officials have given assurances that TSA officers will screen airline passengers, though administrative workers will stay home.

Then there’s Social Security. Current beneficiaries need not worry; their payments wouldn’t be affected. And given the most recent precedent from the Clinton administration, those eligible to apply for benefits would be able to do so. During the first shutdown in 1995, the Social Security Administration initially furloughed 93 percent of its workers and stopped enrolling new beneficiaries. But it reversed course in the second shutdown and kept 50,000 additional workers on the job.

A funding lapse, or shutdown, involves the authority to spend new money. A default involves the ability to pay obligations already incurred.

A default would occur if the government is no longer able to borrow and has run out of cash to pay all the bills coming due. Then, the government has to rely on cash coming in to pay whatever bills it can.

Since the government has never defaulted, it’s impossible to know for sure how it would behave. But it’s commonly assumed that Treasury would make sure that it would meet interest payment so as to not alarm financial markets and prompt U.S. creditors to stop “rolling over” debt by reinvesting bonds when they mature.

“If the federal government actually were to default on its debt obligations, the full faith and credit of the U.S. government is in question and it can have devastating effects on Treasury’s ability to borrow and on the stability of financial markets in general,” said Keith Hennessey, former Director of the National Economic Council in the George W. Bush White House.

Earlier this year the GOP-controlled House passed legislation requiring Treasury to “prioritize” its obligations to pay interest payments and Social Security benefits first if there’s not enough cash to pay all the bills.

But while it’s relatively easy to prioritize interest payments, Treasury’s computer systems aren’t programmed in such a way that it’d be easy to pick and choose what payments to make.

In an internal review after the 2011 debt crisis, Treasury officials told an agency inspector general that best option in a cash crunch would be to delay payments. In other words, Treasury would figure out how much a particular day’s bills cost and then pay those bills when enough cash came in. That would mean the government would quickly fall behind on its payments.

Let’s say the government runs out of cash on Oct. 18, the earliest date at which default might occur, according to estimates by the Bipartisan Policy center, a Washington think tank. Were the impasse to continue into November, a host of major payments due on Nov. 1 — including $25 billion in Social Security benefits — would be delayed almost two weeks.

Oh, and the people who receive their Social Security at the beginning of the month are those who’ve been in the system since before May of 1997, which means most of them are more than 80 years old.

Ironically, in a default scenario, more federal employees could report to work than if there’s a funding lapse. They just couldn’t get paid on time.

Stocks fall on concern about economy, budget

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

-------------------------

It was only a few days ago I published my commentary regarding an upward move of the stock market. The article in question claimed, "The stock market hit a record high Wednesday as investors cheered the Federal Reserve’s surprise decision to keep its economic stimulus program in place." The article also said that "While the Fed’s decision is positive for the market in the short term..." 

Now the very same "NEW YORK (AP)" claims it knows why the stock market has been down since then: Concerns about the strength of the economy and the upcoming budget fight. Who'da thunk that the "short term" positive effect of the Fed's decision would be only a couple of days?

So as you read the below article, keep in mind that the suppositions are totally without merit, that assertions about the improving economy are pipe dreams, and the prognostications of "experts" are about as valuable as your daily astrological forecast. In other words, there is nothing in this article that is worth reading, because next week the AP will publish new suppositions as to why the stock market is down or up, and they will call it news.

-----------------------------

NEW YORK (AP) — Concerns about the strength of the economy and the potential for a budget fight in Washington pushed down the stock market Monday.

The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell for a third straight day.

Investors initially cheered the Federal Reserve’s decision last Wednesday to keep its huge stimulus program in place. But they’ve since focused on the central bank’s gloomier outlook for growth.

William Dudley, the President of the Fed’s New York Branch said Monday that while the economy was improving, “the headwinds” created by the financial crisis were only easing slowly.

“At first blush (the stimulus) looks positive,” said Kate Warne, an investment strategist at Edward Jones, a financial advisor. “But at second blush, it says conditions weren’t as strong as we were previously thinking. Markets are now responding to that.”

The Dow jumped 147 points last Wednesday to close at an all-time high. But the gain from that rally has been erased. On Monday, the S&P 500 index dropped 8.07 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 1,701.84. The index was fractionally lower than its level before the Fed’s decision last Wednesday. The Dow fell 49.71 points, or 0.3 percent, to 15,401.38 The Nasdaq composite fell 9.44 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,765.29.

Financial stocks fell the most among the 10 industrial groups in the S&P 500 index. Investors sold financial stocks on concerns that their earnings would be hurt by lower trading volumes of bonds and foreign currencies.

Citigroup fell $1.64, or 3 percent, to $49.57 after the Financial Times reported that the bank had suffered a “significant decline” in trading revenues that would crimp its earnings.

Goldman Sachs, which began trading on the Dow Monday, also fell. The stock slipped $4.50, or 3 percent, to $165.20.

Utilities were the best performing industry group in the S&P 500 index, as investors sought less risky places to put their money.

*Updated* Will to help poor woefully lacking - letter by Jay Moor

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

--------------------------------

*Update* Regarding Mr. Moor's claim that "...they would take food stamps away from families with hungry children...," now comes a report that those eeevil Republicans are not cutting food stamps at all. From the article: "The Republicans want to increase food stamp spending 57%. The Democrats had previously planned to increase it by 65% (to $764 billion over 10 years instead of the $725 billion in the Republican bill), so they depict the Republicans as “meanspirited class warriors” seeking “deep cuts.” "Nuff said.
--------------------
Mr. Moor is a never-ending source of amusement. You can find previous letters here, and particularly, here. He's a doctrinaire leftist, a true believer, whose entire perspective is filtered through two ideas: 1) people with whom he disagrees (in particular, Republicans) are the source of all evil in the world today, and 2) Government is invariably good, so cutting it is tantamount to hating the poor. 

There seems to be no nuance to his thinking, no due consideration of other points of view. He appears rigid in his viewpoint with no toleration of variation from his perspective. It seems he thinks that anyone who does have a different opinion is alternately a hater, a racist, a misogynist, or greedy. As such, one might think there is no room for diversity of thought for Mr. Moor.

Read on:

-------------------------------

Taking the wrong side at every opportunity, too many of our politicians insist on making life unbearable for the poor. Turning loose every pit-bull demon straining at the leash of decency, they work unashamedly to deny help to the impoverished. (Since he refers to politicians, clearly he thinks that the government programs they control are the remedy for poverty. Cutting them, therefore, is making life unbearable for the poor.)

They have schemed for three years to take away affordable health care, now within reach of the uninsured. (Once again, a government program, being confused with compassion, being defended.)

They staunchly resist any public program and tax that might ask the wealthy to join in solidarity with their less fortunate fellow-citizens. (Again, he defends government "solutions." 

But note the clever use of language. We need to inquire, has someone really "asked" the wealthy to do something? Are these "public programs" and taxes voluntary? The rich are apparently being "asked" to "join in solidarity" [Solidarity: "Unity or agreement of feeling or action, esp. among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group."] with the poor. "Solidarity," of course, actually means government acting to pick the pockets of the rich, in a quite mandatory manner.)

They use the non-problem of election fraud (This is a prevalent [and completely false] meme from the Left, an issue I discuss here.) 

to remove from voter rolls those poor citizens who may take a more empathetic stand on social issues. ("Moral issues," which I guarantee has nothing to do with the kind of morals that might typically spring to mind. It's just a buzz-phrase designed to divert and obfuscate. Mr. Moor is not interested in the poor voting pro-life or for less government meddling. 

More to the point, Mr. Moor wants people who haven't proved who they are to be able to vote, because those people are likely poor minorities [By the way, a racist idea, Mr. Moor], and they will "take a more empathetic stand" by voting themselves more benefits, which Mr. Moor is happy to have government pay for.)

They are busy destroying public school systems (Undocumented claim.) 

and making higher education unattainably expensive.(Another undocumented claim. It is worth mentioning, however, that the reason that higher education is expensive is because government subsidizes it for so many people, which in turn means the ones who pay to go to school get charged more. And student loans facilitate the increase by making installment payments available. This means the felt cost of education is lowered, so the price of it can be increased. Of course a commodity will increase in price when the source of funding is increased in availability! This, of course, is the fault of government and its leftist agitators.)

They insist on life-wrecking jail time for delinquent or merely disobedient youth. (?  Criminals shouldn't go to jail? Whaa? We must pause to note that this is a typical rhetorical style of Mr. Moor. He tosses out undocumented random accusations in a stream-of-consciousness style that leaves the reader scratching their heads. What is this guy talking about?)

They thwart living-wage legislation in the name of trickle down, a thoroughly debunked economic theory that would have the poor looking for scraps that never fall from the tables of the rich. (These 33 words have several unsubstantiated assertions. It would take 300 words to answer each one. But doing so imputes a rationality of thought not warranted by Mr. Moor's presentation. It would be a mistake to rationally analyze irrationality. 

But real quick: First, who has invoked trickle down regarding living wage legislation? Name names, please. Second, trickle down has not been debunked, let alone thoroughly. And by the way, Mr. Moor himself believes in trickle down, if the trickling comes from government. Third, he describes trickle down in a completely spurious way, while simultaneously managing to impugn the rich as scrooges.)

Now, they would take food stamps away from families with hungry children. (So might we ask why Mr. Moor is not similarly outraged that government policies and interventions into the private economy have increased the number of people on food stamps at an unprecedented pace? And would it be rude to point out that Obama has presided over a record number of people forced to unemployment? And we can justifiably assert that the poverty rate, especially amongst blacks, has increased more than any other time in the last 100 years? And what about the gap between the rich and the poor, which has not been larger since FDR's administration? This president has been in office 5 years, and has solved nothing. In fact, things are much worse. 

So with exploding welfare rolls, and food stamp enrollees increasing geometrically under the Obama administration, all of Mr. Moor's outrage is directed at those who want to reel in waste, abuse, and fraud? Mr. Moor, could we beg for a scrap of outrage for the perpetrators of the continuing financial woes of the country, courtesy President Obama?)

Despite all the stories of honest struggle by America’s poor to simply subsist, even when employed at two or three jobs, the response is the offending and often impossible, “get a job.” (He swerves into the truth. There are few jobs, but by george there is a recovery out there, thanks to our savior Obama! Like this:

The poor are unemployed largely because of government policies and spending practices that have wasted trillions of dollars, much of which has been scooped up by Obama's corporate cronies. Companies are reeling under the burden of obamacare. And private citizens are hunkering down even more, protecting their assets, not wasting money on unnecessary expenses, and keeping their heads down. This will continue for as long as Obama insists that printing money and then spending it on harebrained projects somehow will function as a "stimulus.")

Whether motivated by latent bigotry (poverty is nearly three times greater among blacks and Hispanics than whites), (Thanks to Leftist policies that have relegated blacks to the back of the economic bus by keeping them on government plantations [the "hood"], stealing their opportunities by writing them a monthly check while they languish in the projects, and destroying their families by making it more profitable to have children outside of traditional families.) 

naked racism (Obama shall not be allowed to succeed at anything) (Yes, even principled political opposition is racism these days.) 

or voodoo economics (feed only the wealthy and smart), (?  Another wild-eyed crazy statement. Someone is feeding only the wealthy and the smart, and no one else is eating? What?) 

these misguided compatriots of ours are abusing the democratic process to kill our democracy. (WE. DON'T. HAVE. A. DEMOCRACY. Period. End of story. Historically speaking, the killers of the American system are people like Mr. Moor, whom the Founders would have been repelled by. They understood the problems with all-powerful government used as a tool to punish some and reward others. That's why they severely limited the power of government. 

The Left has been systematically dismantling these checks and balances ever since, so that now groups of people can vote themselves money if they have the majority. The Left is not only bankrupting us, but are curtailing our freedoms. And too many "moderate" Republicans are happily helping. 

Where government increases, it is axiomatic that liberty shrinks. So, any sort of destruction of the American system must be laid at the feet of the left because of their advocacy for interventionist, top-down control-type government.)

Please, enough of the effusive but vague letters of endorsement. I would like to hear from candidates for city, state and national office what they would do — and not do — to improve directly the life chances of our less fortunate citizens. (And I would like to hear from Mr. Moor exactly how he going to personally address the problems he has enumerated. Will he be getting out his checkbook and contribute to the food kitchen? Will he be taking in homeless people and giving the shelter? Will he be hiring unemployed people?

Mr. Moor has a lot to say about what other people should do. But let's have him lay it on the table what he plans to do with his own money. Lead by example, Mr. Moor. You have plenty of money, I'm sure. Show your solidarity to the poor. Pay for someone's college. Support an orphan. Then maybe you have the moral authority to cast the first stone, eh?)

Jay Moor Bozeman

Moses did not understand the things we know today - FB conversation

FB friend BH posted this:

I am enjoying one of the most amazing lightning storms as it passes right over my house. I'm getting just a glimpse of how Moses must have felt on Mt. Sinai!!! — feeling awesome.

A.M.: Yes but unlike Moses, you understand lightning. Though possibly a similar experience, your feelings of awe and amazement are probably not the feelings of absolute terror that Moses must have felt.

Me: Moses didn't understand lightning?

A.M.: Prior to the mid-1700s(AD), most of the world did not understand lightning. So i cant imagine that Moses of 1400BC understood any possible scientific explanation for lightning.

Me: You imputed "absolute terror" to Moses, which suggests that he was some sort of cave man. Moses was treated as the son of Pharaoh, and was probably one of the most educated men alive. Suggesting he was in ignorant terror is more than presumptuous.

A.M.: Still, educated or not, assuming that standing in the presence of God is in fact anything like a lightning storm, anyone would be terrified. I never implied ignorance was a word befitting the messenger of God.

Me: Not meaning to dispute with you, but your last comment does not bear any resemblance to your first.

A.M.: Brett, i apologize for the lengthy argument on your status. I'm sure your experience was awesome. I did not intend to offend anyone. You know your faith well enough to understand what the Scriptures say about Moses' experience. i was just pointing out a mild difference, which i'm sure you were already aware of.

B.H. No apologies necessary. I am actually kind of enjoying the discourse.

Me: The goalposts were moved, since we aren't talking about what Ashtyn originally posted. I would therefore call it a parallel conversation.

Why are American healthcare costs so high? - John Green

A FB friend who is a liberal posted this on my timeline:

B.R.: Please watch this. I'm really interested to hear what you think, positive or negative.




Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?

Me: He sorta gets it. But it is strange to hear him talk about negotiating power, but then dumps it on government to accomplish it. So he wants free market-type price competition, but he wants anti-free market force applied to achieve it.

Also, he tells only part of the story regarding 28% of people who receive government paid healthcare, because they represent 47% of total healthcare expenditures. This means that this small share of people are hugely expensive, yet government is the big player in negotiating power.

In other words, government already dictates half of healthcare dollars, yet despite this we have the huge problems. Why does anyone think that government controlling 100% will improve the situation?

At least he admits it's a hugely complex problem. It isn't just malpractice, big bad insurance companies, drug companies, or over utilization. But he seems to think, without presenting evidence, that government is the solution. You know I don't accept that.

He went really fast, so I am not able to fully offer a response.

B.R.: Haha yeah he's a speed talker. Good response though, I appreciate it. Seeing the major financial problems as he lays them out, do you see another solution besides the way these other countries have done it?

Me: Healthcare at its root is a commodity. It responds to market forces, if  allowed to. The main, spectacular, glaring problem with healthcare is that it has been increasingly isolated from market forces. Your fellow is correct that pressure needs to be brought to bear on healthcare as a commodity, but the only way to achieve that is by people having the power to decide for themselves where, when, and how much healthcare they need.

That means things need to proceed exactly the opposite of where they are going. Unfortunately, there are entrenched special interests who know there is big money at stake. This is always the case with government meddling. I support healthcare purchasing co-ops that people could join which would negotiate with providers for services. These co-ops with their purchasing power would be able to influence pricing of healthcare by where they take their business.

But prices will only respond so much because of the complex set of factors in the current system. I will guarandamntee you that healthcare will continue its upward spiral with further government interventions.

B.R.: There's a lot in there I agree with, Rich. Thanks again for your thoughts - let's pray for a better system one way or another!

Court: Facebook ‘like’ is free speech

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

------------------
I am pleased that the court recognized that someone engaging in free speech is free speech. My concern is that the courts have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of free speech. They do not have the authority to decide what free speech is. Government is instructed by the First Amendment to remain silent on the issue.

Notice what the district court said, that clicking "like" on a facebook page is "insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection." There is no way on God's green earth that any judge or other government official should be allowed the power to decide how much or what kind of speech is deemed sufficient, proper, or acceptable. 

This kind of stuff is happening more and more by government officials of all types. Government needs to stay out of peoples' exercising of their rights.

--------------------------------------
Clicking “Like” on Facebook is constitutionally protected free speech and can be considered the 21st century-equivalent of a campaign yard sign, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond reversed a lower court ruling that said merely “liking” a Facebook page was insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection.

Exactly what a “like” means — if anything — played a part in a Virginia case involving six people who say Hampton Sheriff B.J. Roberts fired them for supporting an opponent in his 2009 re-election bid, which he won. The workers sued, saying their First Amendment rights were violated.

Roberts said some of the workers were let go because he wanted to replace them with sworn deputies while others were fired because of poor performance or his belief that their actions “hindered the harmony and efficiency of the office.” One of those workers, Daniel Ray Carter, had “liked” the Facebook page of Roberts’ opponent, Jim Adams.

U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson in Norfolk had ruled in April 2012 that while public employees are allowed to speak as citizens on matters of public concern, clicking the “like” button does not amount to expressive speech. In other words, it’s not the same as actually writing out a message and posting it on the site.

Intruder shot by homeowner faces charges

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

--------------------------

This article caught my eye because of the swirling controversies regarding intruder defense, as well as the general misinformation regarding gun ownership promulgated by the Left. 

The writer was pretty matter-of-fact and unbiased until the last line: "Under Montana law, people have the right to protect their homes using any means necessary." This astonishing statement is flat-out wrong. "Any means necessary" suggests that there are no restrictions, conditions, or criteria regarding home defense. This is either ignorance or a deliberate misrepresentation. 

Here are the applicable Montana laws:

45-3-103. Use of force in defense of occupied structure. (1) A person is justified in the use of force or threat to use force against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the use of force is necessary to prevent or terminate the other person's unlawful entry into or attack upon an occupied structure.

(2) A person justified in the use of force pursuant to subsection (1) is justified in the use of force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm only if:
(a) the entry is made or attempted and the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent an assault upon the person or another then in the occupied structure; or
(b) the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent the commission of a forcible felony in the occupied structure.

You will note that there are conditions regarding home defense. The homeowner has to have a reasonable belief that the use of force is necessary to prevent the owner from 1) being assaulted, or 2) to prevent a forcible felony. That is far from "any means necessary."

45-3-110. No duty to summon help or flee. Except as provided in 45-3-105, a person who is lawfully in a place or location and who is threatened with bodily injury or loss of life has no duty to retreat from a threat or summon law enforcement assistance prior to using force.

So the person does not have to run away or call the police if threatened with bodily injury or loss of life.

45-3-102. Use of force in defense of person. A person is justified in the use of force or threat to use force against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the conduct is necessary for self-defense or the defense of another against the other person's imminent use of unlawful force. However, the person is justified in the use of force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm only if the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm to the person or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

This does not have to do with home protection. This is a public place, where people are being threatened. Once again, the use of force is allowed under the reasonable belief in order to prevent imminent death or serious injury. Note again that there are conditions.

49-1-103. Right to use force. Any necessary force may be used to protect from wrongful injury the person or property of one's self, of a wife, husband, child, parent, or other relative or member of one's family, or of a ward, servant, master, or guest.

This also does not have to do with home protection. Here the standards are lower. However, "any necessary force" is not synonymous with "any means necessary," obviously. But there are still conditions even so. The person about to use force to stop someone is acting to avoid wrongful injury or property damage. 

We can conclude the writer, in attempting to suggest moral disapproval, is instead shown to be bending the truth to suit an agenda.

----------------------

MISSOULA (AP) — The Missoula County attorney says charges have been filed against a 22-year-old man who was shot in the stomach during a home invasion.

County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg tells KECITV that Dillon Torey Franklin faces charges of felony burglary, criminal mischief, criminal trespass to vehicles and disorderly  conduct.

Police say a 77-year-old man was awakened by the sound of breaking glass at about 2 a.m. Sunday and found someone entering his house. The man told police he warned the intruder that he had a gun and to leave. When the man didn’t leave, the homeowner shot him.

Van Valkenburg said the homeowner will not be charged. Under Montana law, people have the right to protect their homes using any means necessary.

Stock market sees record high after Fed keeps stimulus programs active

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

------------------------

The AP thinks it is good news that the Fed is continuing adding 85 billion per month in debt to the nation's deficit. And that is what the Fed is doing. It is purchasing government bonds (debt instruments) using money delivered to it by the US Treasury. This is money created out of thin air.

With typical naivete, the AP takes at face value the agitprop proclamations of the Administration, the "experts" who have a skin in the game, and the Keynesian economists who continue to cheer lead for their failed economic theory. 

Read on:

------------------------

NEW YORK (AP) — The stock market hit a record high Wednesday as investors cheered the Federal Reserve’s surprise decision to keep its economic stimulus program in place. (Did investors really celebrate the Fed's decision, or was it a reaction based on other factors? There is no evidence that investors validated the correctness of the policy by their actions. It is foolish to assume that the Fed did the right thing because the stock market is up.)

Stocks traded slightly lower throughout the morning, but took off immediately after the Fed’s decision in the early afternoon. Bond yields fell sharply — their biggest move in nearly two years. (Ahhh, now we see that that "market" is not comprised simply of stocks. Bonds went down! It was a bad day for bonds, and bonds are the chief investment vehicle for retired people. In other words, the Fed's decision could just as well have been portrayed as a disaster for senior citizens.) The price of gold had its biggest one-day jump in four years as traders anticipated that the Fed’s decision might cause inflation. (Gold has been trending up for years as government spends recklessly. Gold prices flattened about the time of the sequester, but now are heading up again. This is a bad sign for the economy, because people turn to gold when they have no confidence in the economy.)

Fed policymakers decided to maintain the central bank’s $85 billion in monthly bond purchases, a program that has been in place since December 2012. The bond purchases encouraged borrowing by keeping interest rates low and encouraging investors to buy stocks by making bonds more expensive in comparison. (This is stated as unassailable fact. One might wonder, how does government borrowing increase consumer borrowing? And why is consumer borrowing automatically good? And why is buying stocks [equity] better than buying bonds [debt] better, especially if it it better for the Fed to buy bonds so that you don't? This statement makes no sense. If government borrows, doesn't that make it harder for consumers to borrow? Are consumers borrowing to purchase things, or to squeak by financially to pay their bills? How does government borrowing impact the job market? Corporate borrowing? As you can see, this is a complex equation.)

While the U.S. economy appeared to be improving, (As we just discussed, the media clings to this idea in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary.) the bank’s policymakers “decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained” before deciding to slow the bond purchases. (We've been hearing about the "recovery" for five years now. We can read between the lines here: Continue the constant barrage of pretend good news while tacitly admitting the economy isn't improving. Therefore, the economic "fixes" need to continue. What they don't seem to understand is that the "fixes" are the problem. They are preventing the recovery.) The bank also cut its full-year economic outlook for this year and next. (Another ray of truth. The rosy predictions of the experts have not come true despite all their clever remedies, stimuli, bailouts, and profligate spending. So finally they have to admit things are not going well, and those projections are going to have to be a bit less optimistic.)

Stock traders shrugged off the Fed’s dimmer outlook and focused on the prospect of continued stimulus. (Is this really what happened? Is this news, or opinion? Is it possible that what happened in the stock market is unrelated to the Fed's news, or is it possible that the stock market reacted counter to the way it should have, or is it even possible that traders are either ignorant or devious in their response?)

The S&P 500 surged 20.76 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,725.52, slicing through its previous alltime high of 1,709.67 set on Aug. 2.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 147.21 points, or 1 percent, to 15,676.94, also above its previous record high of 15,658.36 from Aug. 2.

The Nasdaq composite rose 37.94 points, 1 percent, to 3,783.64.

The fate of the Fed’s economic stimulus program has been the biggest question on Wall Street for months. It was widely expected that the Fed would cut back on its bond buying at the September meeting.

Tom di Galoma, a bond trader at ED&F Man Capital, said he was “completely shocked” that the Fed decided to wait.

Some investors advised caution, even as the stock market hit all-time highs. (Another ray of truth slips through. Why should there be caution if there is good news everywhere? Someone out there knows that bad things are coming.)

While the Fed’s decision is positive for the market in the short term, “investors need to take a step back and consider the idea that maybe the U.S economy is on weaker footing than we originally thought,” said Marc Doss, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank. (The farther we read, the less obfuscation we find. The average person would probably not read the entire article. Perhaps they would only read the headline and conclude that there's good economic news. But by the end of the article we discover that not only is this not the case, the presentation is actually deceptive and even manipulative. The AP is trying their best to cover for the Obama Administration, but more and more bad news is happening. It's getting harder to cover up.)

Poverty in America Poverty stuck at 15 percent — record 46.5 million By Hope Yen

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

-----------------------
My main comment here is the stark state of denial in which Ms. Yen finds herself. The entire article is statistic after statistic regarding the dismal state of the economy. Read for yourself. Nothing but bad news as far as the eye can see. In many ways, the economy is the worst it's been in decades. 

But what does Ms. Yen say? Incredibly, she writes this: "...despite America’s slowly reviving economy..." Whaaa? How is it possible that NEARLY EVERY INDICATOR she cites is worse, yet the economy is slowly reviving? What kind of intellectual disconnect is required to write something like this?

This is the second prominent negative article in a week from the AP. My commentary on that is here. I noted there that Obama's name did not appear in the article, and no mention was made of any possible connection between present government economic policies and the bad news being reported. However, in Ms. Yen's article he is mentioned once, but it's in the context of how he will be affected politically. Again, no connection made to the policies and the bad news.

It seems that there is a grudging, painfully slow movement in the media to begin to report the truth about the economy. Still unwilling to attribute the lack of recovery to Obama and his policies, however. But at least there is some admission in the press regarding what almost every working family has known for years: The economy is bad, and isn't getting better, despite trillions of dollars of government intervention, failed programs, and ineffective manipulations of the money supply. 

-------------------------

Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The nation’s poverty rate remained stuck at 15 percent last year despite America’s slowly reviving economy, a discouraging lack of improvement for the record 46.5 million poor and an unwelcome benchmark for President Barack Obama’s recovery plans.

More than 1 in 7 Americans were living in poverty, not statistically different from the 46.2 million of 2011 and the sixth straight year the rate had failed to improve, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. Median income for the nation’s households was $51,017, also unchanged from the previous year after two consecutive annual declines, while the share of people without health insurance did improve but only a bit, from 15.7 percent to 15.4 percent.

“We’re in the doldrums, with high poverty and inequality as the new normal for the foreseeable future,” said Timothy Smeeding, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in income inequality. “The fact we’ve seen no real recovery in employment and wages means we’ve just flatlined.”

Mississippi had the highest share of its residents in poverty, at 22 percent, according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau. It was followed by Louisiana, New Mexico and Arkansas. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 8.1 percent.

The last significant decline in the national poverty rate came in 2006, during the Bush administration and before the housing bubble burst and the recession hit. In 2011, the rate dipped to 15 percent from 15.1 percent, but census officials said that change was statistically insignificant.

For the past year, the official poverty line was an annual income of $23,492 for a family of four.

The Census Bureau’s annual report offers a snapshot of the economic well-being of U.S. households for 2012, when the unemployment rate averaged 8.1 percent after reaching an average high of 9.6 percent in 2010. Typically, the poverty rate tends to move in a similar direction as the unemployment rate, so many analysts had been expecting a modest decline in poverty.

The latest census data show that the gap between rich and poor was largely unchanged over the past year, having widened since 2007 to historic highs.

The official poverty level is based on a government calculation that includes only income before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership.

As a result, the rate takes into account the effects of some government benefits, such as unemployment compensation. It does not factor in noncash government aid such as tax credits and food stamps.

David Johnson, the chief of the Census Bureau’s household economics division, estimated that unemployment benefits helped keep 1.7 million people out of poverty.

If non-cash government aid were counted in the official formula, the earned income tax credit would have lifted another 5.5 million people above the poverty threshold. Counting food stamps would have boosted 4 million people, lowering the poverty rate to 13.7 percent.

The slight dip in Americans without health coverage meant 48 million people were without insurance. The drop was due mostly to increases in government coverage, such as Medicaid and Medicare. The number of people covered by employer-provided health insurance remained flat.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by next year, the health law will reduce the number of uninsured in the U.S. by about 25 percent. By 2017, it is projected that 92 percent of eligible Americans will have health insurance, a 10 percentage point increase from today’s level.

Other census findings:

Poverty remained largely unchanged across race and ethnic groups. Blacks had the highest rate at 27.2 percent, compared to 25.6 percent for Hispanics and 11.7 percent for Asian-Americans. Whites had a rate of 9.7 percent.

Child poverty stood at 21.8 percent.

Poverty among people 65 and older was basically unchanged at 9.1 percent, after hitting a record low of 8.9 percent in 2009.

No guarantees of privacy - letter by Mary Geis

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

----------------

This curious letter appeared in our local paper, and as you read it you may find yourself wondering if Ms. Geis actually thought about what she was writing. Read on...

---------------------

Why all the fuss about exposure of government secrets? (There has been a fuss from some quarters about the government's program being revealed, but most of the outrage is regarding government collecting private data on American citizens without a warrant.) 

There are no secrets and no guarantees of privacy in our modern world. About 1,000 satellites orbit Earth, revealing secrets about our world and its inhabitants. (Note the shift from government secrets to generalized flow of information. Ms. Geis seems to be suggesting that because there is surveillance that she has no problem with surveillance. Is she conveying here resigned acceptance of the situation, or is it that she doesn't mind being surveilled?)

Communications satellites collect information we give up every time we search the Internet, access social networks, or use a credit card. Information out in the “cloud” cannot be called back, but other computers can retrieve it and use it to influence our choices. GPS satellites find the way but can follow us by tracking our receivers. Scientific satellites help predict current and future weather, take pictures showing how humans are affecting the environment, follow people in very small areas and keep track of “space junk” that could endanger the planet. (So Ms. Geis makes a lengthy presentation of the ways information is collected. Can we ask what the purpose might be?)

Close to Earth and on its surface there are aircraft, smaller drones, weather balloons, TV, radio and cellphone towers; police and emergency response vehicles, all receiving, sending and storing information. Phone lines can be tapped. Personal conversations can be bugged. (Yes, yes, we understand. There is a lot of information flowing around! I wonder if Ms. Geis is going to get to a point.) 

Our privacy depends on what we put out where hackers and identity thieves can find it and if we respect each other’s privacy. (Is this her point, that we respect each other? There is a national debate going on regarding matters of legality and constitutionality. Serious breeches of secuirity. Serious violations of the Constitution. We are not talking about interpersonal relationships!)

So how do we foil the “enemies” who want to steal our military and industrial secrets? Why not make everything available to everyone, since it’s available anyway? (How can we make available things that are available?)

Enemies would know our secrets and could assume we know theirs. Terrorists would know who we are looking for and where, making it harder to communicate and plot. Entrenched interests and convictions make it impossible for these ideas to be implemented anytime soon, but why not dream of a world where no one needs to keep secrets? (Utopian dream = reality.) 

“Big data” could then be used to make the world a better place for all life, (Has she read 1984? Does she really think that people in power will not use information for their own purposes? There is no reason to expect that people will do the right thing simply because Ms. Geis believes they will.) 

and increase chances for survival of the human race. (Wow. I paused a long time after typing that word. Wow. It seems that Ms. Geis wants everything on the table; military, industrial, and personal. She thinks, without evidence, that secrets of any kind are automatically destructive, and that everyone knowing everything would make the world a better place. 

So let's see what kinds of secrets Ms. Geis is ok with revealing.

1) Government: The nuclear launch codes,  military attack strategy, the vault codes for Fort Knox, the location of warships, the identity and location of SEAL teams, access to the Social Security Trust Fund, intelligence on terrorist cell locations, and President Obama's private phone number.

2) Industrial: Corporation bank account numbers, software code, product formulas, product development and R&D, business strategy, and insurance coverage.

3) Personal: credit information, bank account numbers, bra size, cholesterol level, religious affiliation and beliefs,  exercise habits, where you spend your money, who you have sex with complete with video, and how often you use the toilet.

After all, we can't have any secrets, can we? It's automatically good for everyone to know everything. In fact, we should tell everyone else every secret we have, and the expect that they will do the same, because that's what they want too. Evil people will just change overnight. Dictators will see the light. All they need is for us to take the lead, and they will do the same, right?

Chaos is where these utopians will lead us. They believe that people are basically good, that people want peace, consensus, cooperation, and love. But they don't. Human history is not ambiguous in this regard. Instead of people following their better natures, they will embrace their base instincts and the world will descend into mayhem.) 

Mary Geis

Bozeman

America needs to reassess noble goals - letter by Jerrold Johnson

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

----------------------

Mr. Johnson has appeared in my sights before. I believe he was a doctor, although his content and logical skills do not always seem to be consistent with that. However, in this letter he and I actually agree on some things. Read on.

-----------------

Since Vietnam 50 years ago we have found ourselves in one quagmire after another with our pre-emptive war strategy. I support Obama and feel he is trying to do the right thing, but I don’t support engaging Syria militarily. (At first a lot of leftists were silent on the issue. The customary hysterical invective from the leftwing activists was nearly non-existent. Then after a while, some leftist pundits began a timid opposition. More have joined their ranks, so that there is enough of Obama's traditional allies opposing him that he abruptly decided to belatedly seek congressional approval. Mr. Johnson also gives tepid condemnation of a potential invasion of Syria.) 

I do give him credit for being cautious. After 9-11, George W. Bush made a hasty decision (America invaded Iraq on the 19 of March 2003, 2 1/2 years after the World Trade Center attack. Hasty?) 

to invade Iraq when it was not involved with the terrorist attack, (That's a pretty broad statement. Al Qaeda was responsible for the WTC attacks, and Al Qaeda was and is in operation in Iraq, as well as many other middle eastern countries. Why we attacked Iraq is a matter of conjecture, since there were a lot of factors at work. This is not to say I supported the invasion, because I didn't. I am simply objecting to the generalization made as if it is a stark fact.) 

said “Mission accomplished” six weeks later and we left Iraq almost nine years later in a mess. For our tragic 9-11 loss of 2,996, we caused 89,000 direct deaths, lost 4,488 of our young men and women, (here is a chart of deaths per month up until the US began its pull out in December 2011. You'll note that deaths continued to pile up during the Obama administration, and persist even to this day. This only means that Mr. Johnson is apparently unable to separate the deaths that occurred under Bush's watch from those of Obama. Obama was terribly slow in taking action to get out of Iraq, so any protestations about Obama inheriting the situation are mitigated by the lack of immediacy on Obama's part.)

(The other thing about the death tally is the fact that every sort of death that could be remotely connected to the war is included, things like lack of healthcare, food, and medicine because commerce had been interrupted, deaths caused by terrorists themselves, friendly fire, etc. Again, I did not support the war, so I have no intention in justifying the deaths.)  

had 32,230 injured (not including PTSD), killed 132,000 civilians, spent $1.7 trillion (More like $758 billion) putting us into serious debt and have a Congress that wants to pay for it off the backs of the poor and middle class. (We were already in serious debt. A commensurate sum has been spent on bailouts and shovel-ready jobs, none of which has helped the economy at at all. As far as who is going to pay for it, well, the poor have no money. We all are going to pay for it. The weight of the debt inflicted upon us has far reaching economic effects. From my perspective, it doesn't matter what the source of the debt is. It is free spending politicians who are to blame, and they are also to blame for the continuing bad economy, saddled by enormous debt and invasive government regulation.)

The sanctimonious oratory about deaths from poison gas has a hollow ring when comparing 1,000 deaths to 100,000. (Oops. Did he intend to talk about Obama in this disparaging way? He does not name Obama, but Obama has talked in this very manner.) 

There is no way to make one death in war “nicer” than another. Is it better to get shot, blown up, napalmed, nuked, bombed, or stabbed than poisoned? When we used the atom bomb we killed roughly 200,000 civilians and many died from radiation — not illegal so far as I know. We used poison gas Agent Orange despite 5,000 scientists saying no. We sprayed 1/7th of Vietnam affecting 5 million peasants and 200,000 U.S. military, causing 400,000 deaths and 500,000 children with birth defects.

We preach noble values, yet we sell the most arms in the world, have seldom met a dictator we couldn’t support (until they turn our weapons against us), and strike first at the hint of a threat. (Hmm. Note the multiple uses of "we," as if "we" are somehow to blame and not Obama. In his outrage at the Syrian situation he managed to prominently mention Bush, Agent Orange, the atomic bomb, and napalm. But he cannot bring himself to mention Obama more than once, and that to offer a weak objection to the President's planned Syrian response. The bulk of his letter is about Bush and the Iraq war, previous atrocities, and the economic cost of war. This is classic leftist thought process; deflect, obfuscate, and divert outrage to other events and people so as to minimize damage to their heroes.)

Jerrold E. Johnson Bozeman

Piers Morgan: "I'd like to suggest a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution"

I'm going to say this again and again until everyone in the country understands. The Constitution is the document that creates, defines, and limits government. It is not about the People and what they can and cannot do. It does not grant rights or privileges or powers to the People; the People grant powers to the government.

I can forgive Piers Morgan for being ignorant, since he's not American. But his error is repeated by Americans at a disturbingly high rate. Americans are being maleducated, I think deliberately, so that they accede to government's at-will intervention into their lives. They are being conditioned to look to and depend upon government for their every need.

The fact that the government has always failed at its extra-constitutional activities doesn't seem to dissuade the True Believers. When government fails, as it inevitably does, they simply advocate more! Can't solve poverty? We need more of the same failed ideas! Social Security insolvent? Let's increase benefits! Time after time, government's excursions into social engineering have made the problems worse.

At some point the social engineers are going to push the country over the financial and moral precipice. Someone will have to pick up the pieces and reconstruct the system. It will be those who believe the Bible, the founders, and the Constitution.

Grown-ups should have ID cards to own guns - letter by Sophia Olson

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

----------------

This 10 year old put together a pretty good letter to the editor, which I laud. But lest I be accused of beating up on a kid, let me point out first that Ms. Olson entered the public sphere, and as such does not get a pass on what she writes. Second, my real purpose in discussing this letter is not specifically that it is a 10 year old's opinion. I noticed that what she wrote bears a striking resemblance to what a typical leftist would write, so I would suggest that either she was thoroughly coached, or that the Left tends to reason like children.

I do not expect that a 10 year old would have developed critical thinking skills. That is apparent from her letter. But since the general thrust of her letter parallels the Leftist mindset, her ideas are worth evaluating.

Read on for my comments.

------------------------

My name is Sophia Olson and I am 10 years old and I have been hearing a lot about gun shooting lately from grown-ups, from kids like me, from the Internet, etc. and frankly, I’m disappointed. I thought grown-ups were supposed to be responsible. (Grownups are supposed to be a lot of things. There's a lot of things wrong with the world, however. Gun violence is only a symptom, and getting rid of guns will not cause adults or anyone else to be responsible.) With all that’s going on, I’ve realized that there’s a lot of bad people that are doing so many bad things like the guy who did the shooting in Connecticut. 

I don’t think that selling guns to every person is a good idea. (This is a straw man. No one has argued that every person should be able to buy a gun.) 

They might look normal, but they can always be bad or they could be sick and we sell guns to them anyway. (It is true that bad people sometimes purchase guns. Again, no one thinks we should sell them guns. But notice the use of the word "we," which suggests that private parties engaging in legal, private transactions has something to do with what "we" should or should not do. The Left frequently employs the universal "we" as a rhetorical device to suggest inclusiveness, togetherness, or a consensus that has yet to be demonstrated. So she identifies that bad people buy guns, but implies that "we" should not do this, as if "we" happily allow bad people to buy guns.) 

I think that we should have ID cards for guns and you should be certified, and people should lock guns up when they’re not using them. (Her solution is that people should have to have ID cards, but the possession of an ID card does not mean a person is good. But beyond that, how is it an improvement to have a gun ID, as opposed to background checks, etc?) 

Sometimes good guys turn into bad guys really quick, just like a snap when they get mad. (So a good person who buys a gun and has an ID card turns bad. How does Ms. Olson think that the ID card helps in this scenario?) 

People shooting each other for past experiences, for racial issues, for revenge and for no reason at all, makes me sad. (It makes us all sad. But people shooting people is illegal, isn't it? Will an ID card change that? Will criminals stop being criminals? And should we make laws based on emotions like sadness?) 

I don’t want to live in a world like that. I don’t feel safe in that kind of environment. (Bozeman, Montana is not that kind of environment, and if someone is making Ms. Olson feel unsafe, they are manipulating her with false specters of peril.)

If people think that having a gun is most important, I don’t understand. (Do people really think that having a gun is "most" important? This is another false meme of the Left, which falsely suggests that gun owners don't care about anything but guns.) 

What do they think it’s more important than? My education, their children and our feelings? (*Sigh* Another technique of the Left, presenting a false choice. Someone owning a gun has nothing to do with her education. Her feelings are not the basis of appropriate legislation. She has been led to certain conclusions about those dangerous, eeevil guns by the adults in her life, and she is responding on an emotional level. She seems to think that "we" ought to do things because it will make her feel better. Some day she hopefully will find out that very few people care about her feelings.) 

When the people like that say that I want my gun and I don’t care what you think, that doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. (Once again a false premise. Who, exactly, is saying that they want a gun and don't care what people think? And she repeats her hurt feelings, which is a solipsistic way of thinking. By that I mean that she considers herself the center of the universe, so external events are only important to the degree which they might impact her. However, people do things all the time without those things having anything to do with her. And somehow her self worth is attached to what people do about their guns. Strange.) 

When people say that, it makes me feel like I’m not important at all and having a gun is better than anything. (Her importance is irrelevant. There are 320,000,000 people in this country. Frankly, she is just not important to almost everyone. If someone's decision about a gun makes her feel unimportant, it's likely due to some sort of misdirected sense of self worth she has that preempts everything else that happens in the world. Hopefully she will grow out of this self-involvement. And once again, a straw man. Who says that having a gun is better than anything?)

Grown-ups tell us kids that you treat others the way you want to be treated. Why can’t they follow that rule too? (By placing herself at the center of the universe, she now proclaims that she isn't being treated properly, simply because someone, somewhere, owns a gun. If they really cared, they would get rid of their gun so that Ms. Olson can feel better. If they want to be good people, they would not hurt her feelings. If they don't want her to be afraid, they will not keep their gun. It really is all about her.

And note that at first she wanted people carry gun ID cards. Now she wants to get rid of guns. Why? Because feelings.)

Sophia Olson

Bozeman

City eyes eminent domain takeover - Richmond, CA.

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

----------------------

Once the camel's nose is under the tent, there's no stopping him. In 2005, the US supreme Court decided in the Kelo decision that the the town of New London, CT. was justified in taking an entire neighborhood because a Pfizer plant would be built, generating more tax revenue than the homes that occupied the site.

The city based its authority to take the property on the 5th amendment: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The supreme Court ruled against the property owners and the city took their property. 

Now we have another city pushing the boundaries further. Underwater mortgages are now deemed "property." Stretching even farther, taking the contracts is "public use," and it remains to be seen what the "just compensation" will be. 

Because of the real estate crash, itself caused by government intervention into the housing market, the city of Richmond wants to intervene yet again and go into the mortgage business. They think, without evidence, that people will stay in their worthless homes if they have better mortgage terms. They think, without evidence, that they can make this program work. they think, without evidence, that it is a legitimate duty of a city government to take over peoples' mortgages.

-----------------------------

A San Francisco Bay Area city voted Wednesday to try to expand a first-in-the-nation plan to use its power of eminent domain to seize hundreds of mortgages that exceed the value of homes.

The Richmond City Council voted 4-3 to set up a joint powers authority to bring more cities into the plan, according to reports in local media.

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin says the city of El Monte in Southern California has expressed interest, and she believes other cities will follow.

Under the plan, Richmond would use eminent domain to seize so-called underwater mortgages. It would then offer the bank fair market value for it and give the homeowner a new loan that would lower monthly payments and improve their chances of staying.

Banks have filed lawsuits to stop Richmond from going ahead with the strategy, and investors have shied away from purchasing city bonds since the eminent domain plan began garnering national attention.

The rich getting richer... Gap between wealthiest 1 percent, rest of America reaches widest margin since the Roaring ’20s - By Paul Wiseman

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

---------------------

This is classic agenda reporting. The ones who so worry about how much other people make are almost exclusively on the Left. So we have this article come out today, pretty much out of the blue since there is no event that drives it, in order to reinforce tired leftist tropes about the eeevil rich.

Mr. Wiseman pretty much regurgitates what must have been a press release from a Berkeley professor and his like minded friends. One might wonder why there are no dissenting voices quoted, no contrary information presented, and frankly, no clear presentation of the issue. 

You will note that President Obama's name does not appear in the article, but he is the president who has presided over this increased income inequality. This president is supposedly an advocate for the middle class and poor, but Mr. Wiseman tacitly admits that they have suffered more under his administration than any president since the "roaring 20s." 

If Bush was president today, is there any doubt that the tone of the article would be substantially different, like this article from 2006? Bush is mentioned prominently, as is a quote from a detractor. Not so in Mr. Wiseman's article.

Mr. Wiseman does not tell us, but I suspect the income figures are raw gross, not adjusted gross or net income after taxes. In fact, there is no discussion at all about the distribution of income taxes paid, which are borne disproportionately by the top 1%. He informs us that they earn (note the word "earn;" they earn their money) 19% of the total income, BUT he does not mention that they also pay more than a third of all income tax collected. Mr. Wiseman also tells us the top 10% earned "a record 48.2% of the income," BUT is silent regarding the fact that they also pay 66% of the income tax. 

In addition, the top half of income earners pay 97% of all income taxes, which means the people who are not paying income taxes are the same people who supposedly are not getting their fair share of income. So the bottom 50% of workers bear none of the burden of government and receive a huge amount in the form of wealth transfer.

Mr. Wiseman does tell us that that government benefits like food stamps, subsidies, and other transfer payments are excluded from the calculation, but no mention of how much money that might be. Since the source of that money is the incomes of the very same rich, it seems to me that we need them making money so that the government can help themselves to a part of it and redistribute it to those less fortunate. 

Mr. Wiseman then descends into a convoluted explanation of why these things are the way they are. Some contributing factors are mentioned, all of which are leftist markers: Unions, jobs outsourcing, the minimum wage. Absent is any mention of tax policy, regulation, corporate innovation, the effects of war, Social Security, government deficits, or any of a thousand other important factors that influence the economy.

The average reader is then left with the impression that the rich are keeping the rest of us down, and that the historical parallel is the roaring 20s. Truly spectacular journalistic malpractice.

--------------------------

WASHINGTON — The gulf between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America is the widest it’s been since the Roaring ‘20s.

The very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country’s household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. And the top 10 percent captured a record 48.2 percent of total earnings last year.

U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. And it grew again last year, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.

One of them, Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez, said the incomes of the richest Americans surged last year in part because they cashed in stock holdings to avoid higher capital gains taxes that took effect in January.

In 2012, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose nearly 20 percent compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.

The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. Their incomes fell more than 36 percent in the Great Recession of 2007-09 as stock prices plummeted. Incomes for the bottom 99 percent fell just 11.6 percent, according to the analysis.

But since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 percent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.

That compares with a 45 percent share for the top 1 percent in the economic expansion of the 1990s and a 65 percent share from the expansion that followed the 2001 recession. The top 1 percent of American households had pretax income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.

The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.

The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.

The top 1 percent’s share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis.

Economists point to several reasons for widening income inequality. In some industries, U.S. workers now compete with low-wage labor in China and other developing countries. Clerical and call-center jobs have been outsourced to countries such as India and the Philippines.

Pa. parents charged in girl’s starvation death

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

------------------

This horrifying story illustrates how completely evil people can be. A helpless, innocent child experiences a gruesome, painful death.

Now you will forgive me for noting the unpleasant truth. Three years and one month ago, this child could have been legally killed for the very same reasons or no reason at all. Three years and one month ago this child would yet to have been born, and the parents could have ended her life without repercussions. Three years and one month ago this little girl would could have been deemed to be too much of a burden. Three years and one month ago her life could have been judged to be not worth living.

In fact, had the child been aborted, the parents would have been heroes. They would have prevented needless suffering for this child. They would have reduced the burden on society and helped save the healthcare system. They would have been lionized for making a courageous choice.

Now this unwanted child will become the poster girl of the pro-choice movement. "See?" They will say. "This child should have been aborted, but because she was allowed to live, she endured needless suffering that could have been avoided." They will claim abortion is justified, desirable, and noble, while simultaneously claiming to want abortion to be safe, legal, and RARE. 

But we will never know what kind of life this little girl would have had if she wasn't labeled undesirable. She might have saved someone's life at a crosswalk, or become a wife and mother. She might have talked someone out of suicide or become someone's best friend. We will never know, all because we have decided that certain kinds of life are less valuable and not worth living.

There is absolutely no difference between the actions of these parents and the events at an abortion chop shop. None. In either case, the little girl is deemed to be less than human.

------------------------------------

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia couple faces murder charges in the starvation death of their disabled 3-year-old girl, a case with harrowing echoes in a city where a series of children have suffered the same slow, agonizing death.

Twin Nathalyz Rivera weighed just 11 pounds when she died Monday. Although she had severe disabilities, she had not seen a doctor in more than a year, and was apparently not on the radar of social services.

Carlos Rivera, 30, and his wife Carmen Ramirez, 27, were charged Tuesday with third-degree murder. They have four other children, who were placed in protective custody. Neither parent immediately had a lawyer listed in court records, and attempts to reach relatives proved unsuccessful.

“The fact you can have a child that literally starved to death in the city of Philadelphia is abysmal,” said Dr. Rachel P. Berger, chief of the division of child advocacy at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, who is not involved in the case.

“The real question is, as a society, how did we fail this child? Who saw this child, outside of the family or even within the family?”

Police did not disclose Nathalyz’s specific health issues, although Ramirez told police that her daughter was born blind and had Down’s Syndrome, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The family last had contact with the Department of Human Services in 2008, before she was born.

"True Love is Not Contingent on Reciprocity." FB discussion

I posted this on FB:

"True Love is Not Contingent on Reciprocity."

B.R.: well I'd say true love as it lives in an individual is not contingent on reciprocity. True love as it lives between two or more people IS, however. No?

Me: In my opinion, love cannot have contingencies or provisos, otherwise it isn't love.

D.G.: Agape, Philia, Storge, or Eros?

B.R.: I totally agree, when it comes to love as it resides within the individual. You can have pure love without rules inside your heart, regardless of any conditions or changes internally or externally. The thing you love can change, ignore, hurt, disappear, and it doesn't matter, the pure love can still exist unharmed within the person who loves. However, love that exists as a connection or relationship between two or more entities can be changed based on each individual's free will. For that multi-entity love to be considered "true love", in my opinion, there must be reciprocity.

Me: Storge is a good example in that the object of love frequently is unable or unwilling to return the love. Like an infant, an infirm/dying spouse, a prodigal child, etc.. Agape and Eros are beyond the scope of my post. Did you mean Phileo?

Me: Love is independent of relationship. Relationship is not required to love. Relationship is a vehicle for the expression of love, not love itself.

B.R.: I agree with each of your statements. And additionally, there are many forms of love. One is the love that exists inside an individual. Another is the love that exists between multiple individuals. Relationship is the vehicle for this latter kind of love.

Me: By extension, things like compassion, mercy, and empathy are expressions of love, though they are not love themselves. Love is the internal status while the expressions are the external.

B.R.: By your definitions, I agree with your original post. However, in my view, an expression of love is synonymous with love, undifferentiated, and it's largely unnecessary to distinguish a difference.

Me: Being vs. doing...

B.R.: Both valid forms of love...

P.H.: When we acknowledge the source of pure undefiled love, and let His spirit rule our lives, we can love without reason or reciprocity, and we won't stop loving for any reason. All forms of love will flow with healthy abandon if it's rooted in the Father!

Me: Which is kinda why I was avoiding Agape, which is the love you're talking about, Paul. I don't think Agape love is even possible or available without having the Holy Spirit.

B.R.: I have Agape love without having the Holy Spirit - unless the Holy Spirit is acting anonymously in my life.

Me: Agape is a Greek word found in the New Testament. It uniquely applies to a particular kind of love that proceeds from God. The Holy Spirit may indeed be acting in your life, who am I to say?

Here's link that will provide context:

http://www.biblestudytools.com/kjv/romans/passage.aspx?q=romans+5%3A5%3Bromans+5%3A8%3Bromans+8%3A35www.biblestudytools.com

B.R.: It doesn't just apply to God, but it's definitely used in that way. Agape is perhaps the primary form of love in my life. It's a good descriptor for my love of humanity, the earth, the cosmos, and the supreme mystery of existence. And your original post definitely applies to me here: my love of any or all of these things does not depend on them loving me back. And I agree that it's hard to find in many Churches. I find it instead in my close community; many of my friends certainly display a fine breadth of Agape love in their lives, and in their cases it's not tied to a God or religion.

Me: Meaning no disrespect, but definitionally it must be tied to God. So if Agape manifests in your life, it is God's work in you. He is no respecter of persons, so it doesn't matter who you are. You don't have to be part of the club for God to be affecting your life. But it certainly means that you should carefully consider what God is planning for you and saying to you.

B.R.: I take no disrespect. However, the word "agape", and the kind of love that it refers to, does not originate in The New Testament, and does not belong to a monotheistic system, or any one system for that matter. The term has been used since Plato's day, and has retained virtually the same meaning to this day. Agape is no more tied to the concept of God than "salvation", "grace", and "spirit" are.

That said, I agree that my life's manifestation of Agape is God's work in me, at least by my own definition of God. My love of my fellow human being is quite inseparable from my love of God, and vice versa. And I agree that God's love (by my terms) affects all lives regardless of their belief or reciprocation. And believe me, I do carefully consider what God is planning and saying - we're on frequent speaking terms.

Me: Every word in the N.T. originated from somewhere else. It uses a real language, Greek, to communicate concepts. Those concepts, in their context and environment, mean something specific. There are no made up words in the N.T.

Of course Plato used the word, he was Greek. What relevance is that?

B.R.: TL;DR: Agape love is not definitionally tied to God, but I agree with most of what you're saying.