Those Naked Body Scanners the TSA is using are made by a company named OSI Systems, Inc. The company spends millions on lobbying for government business. Their Chairman and CEO was invited to join Obama on his India trip. Here is the press release.
OSI Systems Press Release, November 12, 2010: OSI Systems Chief Executive Officer Joins US Presidential Visit to India
HAWTHORNE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: OSIS), a vertically-integrated provider of specialized electronic products for critical applications in the Security and Healthcare industries, today announced that Deepak Chopra, Chairman and CEO, was selected to accompany US President, Barack Obama, to Mumbai and attended the US India Business Entrepreneurship meeting, which was held by the US India Business Council (US IBC). The goal of the meeting was to promote further trade between US and India.
People react to taxes. That is why a 10% increase in a tax rate does not produce a 10% increase in revenue. Two of the fastest growing states in the Union are Florida and New Hampshire, neither of which levies an income tax. California has the greatest financial shortfall and the highest income tax rate in the nation. These are not coincidences. They are the result of personal and business reaction to relative tax rates.
Ireland is considering raising the Corporate tax rate from 10 to 12.5 percent. Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Merrill Lynch, Intel and Google have all made public announcements that they may locate processing operations elsewhere if such a proposal becomes law. Should just one of them carry through with a move, Ireland could lose more by loss of that taxpayer than it gains from the increase in rates. You can expect not only the companies that expressed their objections, but all international corporations to reconsider any expansion plans they had for within the Emerald Isle.
The loss of manufacturing in the U.S. is not just cheap labor elsewhere; it is also the corporate tax rate. At 35% it is the second highest in the developed world. Those who complain that jobs are being exported overseas should be arguing for reducing the corporate tax rate. More often than not, they are doing just the opposite.
The party is breaking up. The Democrats are splitting into two factions with Obama on the left and Pelosi and Reid on the left. The Obama crowd on the left continues to rally around the cry- “Bush did it!” The faction on the left, the other left, being more Progressive has decided to Move-On to the slogan “Obama did it! Don’t blame the rest of the party!”
The Dems know the Dude is done. Nancy Pelosi has ordered a new bus from Government Motors to be parked on the White House lawn. Harry Reid is getting the casinos to donate some red and blue pillows to put under the big vehicle. The contract to paint a presidential seal on the rear of the bus is going to an important campaign donor and the words AT LEAST I TRIED will appear in a ring around the seal. As Obama goes under the bus it will be in a style befitting his presidency.
Pelosi is going with the slogan “I did it! And it was all good!” In fact, in a private meeting with her Presidential Campaign Exploration Committee Nancy expressed confidence in her electoral chances, saying “By 2012 all the little people will have come to realize what I have done and vote for me.”
“No more negative campaigning,” she pledged with her characteristic smile. The theme will be forward looking and very progressive. With Obama gone we can pass Card Check to strengthen the labor unions, the DREAM Act to increase the population of Democratic voters and Cap and Trade as an outreach to other nations by making it easier for them to compete with U.S. industry. To reach the useful masses we will cry “Give us your votes and we will reduce your mortgage payments! We’ve done it before and we can do it again!”
They do have a point there. In fact some citizens no longer have to make any mortgage payments at all.
So it's not from Government Motors, but the colors are right
Republicans are being condemned for blocking passage of the House bill to extend unemployment benefits. But wait; how can that be when Democrats control the House, the Senate and the Presidency?
The answer is the Democrats under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi carried out a strategy of presenting the bill under rules that would assure its failure. A credible claim could then be made that Republicans blocked the bill and cut income off to the unemployed at the start of the holiday season. It was a knight’s move in the game of politics.
Here is how it was done. Under the normal standing rules of the House a bill only needs a simple majority to pass. The bill as it was just presented, garnered 63% of the votes, so under the regular rules, it would have clearly passed the House. Two special rules had to be invoked to assure the bill’s timely failure. First of all, amendment proposals were disallowed, and second, a special rule requiring a supermajority for passage was invoked. With these two moves Speaker Pelosi engineered the failure of the bill.
One more step was taken to insure solid Republican voting against the bill. The cost wasn’t funded. It was stipulated that new borrowing be undertaken to meet the cost.
Surely it must be less than 1% of the public that is familiar with the Rules of the House. The press is little more aware of the intricacies of the rules and how they can be employed strategically. The watch dog is asleep. There could be little fear the public would see the ploy. But the fact remains, only the Democrats had the power to kill the bill. This they did. It was an action against the interests of their constituency taken for political gain and the public is none the wiser.
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans had mental illness in 2009″
The last line in the article reads,
The survey also found that 23.8 percent of women had some form of mental illness, compared with 15.6 percent of men.
That’s 50% greater mental instability among women than among men. I think the CNBC writers missed a good headline. That is not to say we agree with the results of the survey. We have no idea what the percentage should be.
Banks are currently holding Excess Reserves of more than $1,000,000,000,000, that’s a trillion dollars in cash. Excess Reserves are funds over and above those required to meet mandated capital requirements. In plain English, the trillion is money to lend. It’s inventory, the same way as shoes are inventory in a shoe store.
Shoe shops are in business to sell shoes. Banks are in business to lend money. That’s how they generate a profit. The banks have the inventory; why aren’t the banks lending it? For the same reason as a shoe stores when shoe stores don’t sell shoes. No customers.
Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker put it this way. “Corporate America isn’t borrowing because business leaders are frightened by the recent legislation”. The fright list includes:
Higher cost of hiring due to new health care legislation. How much higher is still unknown.
Likely increase of corporate taxes
A Congress and an administration that wants to add a carbon tax on business, cost unknown.
A Congress and an administration that wants to strengthen the power of labor unions
A Congress and an administration that wants to reduce the spending power of consumers by increasing their taxes
Disincentives introduced by government dictates on executive pay and use of corporate aircraft
Rule of Law being replaced by regulatory discretion
In a recent interview Mr. Becker explained how recent legislation has been structured in a way that substitutes regulatory discretion for the Rule of Law. The result is a lack of a clear set of rules upon which a business can calculate the cost before adding employees and developing expansion plans.
Mr. Becker compiled his list well before November 4th. The election has taken the steam out of many of these fears. Give it a year and if the radical Democrats still look like they have lost control, business and the economy will begin to pick up. Oh yes, and if Europe doesn’t blow up, and if Bernanke’s plan doesn’t backfire.
There is no justifiable reason for the 111 companies to be exempt from Obamacare law while thousands of others are not. The waivers are favors and nothing less.
The message conveyed is that you can avoid the law by making application to the government. Visions of an open door for corruption fly at you with the speed of a lightening bolt. It is also obvious that size matters. Big business has the knowledge and clout for obtaining favors from Washington that smaller companies do not.
The waivers are just another in a series of acts of subrogating the rule of law to executive and congressional dictate. We saw it when Chrysler bondholders were deprived of their rights under established bankruptcy law. We see it when cities and states publicly state their refusal to obey Federal immigration law and no consequences ensue, not even verbal condemnation from the Department of Justice. On the contrary, when a state steps in to carry out the law, federal law, the federal government sues the state!
Breakdown of rule of law is seen at the local level as well. Voter intimidation at the poling place and various police departments refusal to respond to reports of certain crimes are examples. When respect for the law breaks down the criminal element gains and everyone else loses. In order for respect for the law to be maintained, laws must be enforced, corrected or repealed.
The video is very disturbing. Obama praises India lavishly, asserting it is a land of great innovation but says America is flawed. You know he is referring to the United States when he says we are living in an era of greed with economic injustice that has endured down through the years. Indonesia does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. People from Israel are not allowed to enter the Muslim country today. Yet Obama praises Indonesia for its tolerance while reminding the world of slavery that has been extinguished for a century and a half.
America has made a horrible mistake. We have elected a man who despises us to lead us, a man whose dreams are of his father and whose heart is in his Indonesian and Muslim roots. We have elected as our President a man who sees our dominant status in the world to be a modern form of colonization, a power for bad, not a power for good.
We have chosen a man to lead today’s America who seeks retribution for slavery as though unaware that scourge was ended over 140 years ago, and that we did it from within with great sacrifice of blood, white blood we might add, shed in order that blacks might be free.
We have elected a man to lead us who is dedicated to change, but what he wants to change is not our faults but that which made us great. We have elected as our President a man who has publicly declared the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, along with the Declaration of Independence, are but a meaningless set of words. We have chosen to lead us a man who would subvert us, a man who seeks to take from those among us that which has been earned and distribute it to those who earned it not.
America has made a horrible mistake. And in so doing, we have proven the vulnerability of Democracy.
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To leave you on an upbeat note we close with a musical tribute to the people in our Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. It was filmed in Iraq. If we capture the enthusiasm of these men and women who serve us abroad, and I think we have, we will be triumphant in the ideological battle here at home.
Please tell your friends about the messages in this post.
Douglas Schoen and Pat Caddell, writing for the Washington Post say President Obama should announce “One and done” with respect to his terms in office. These are the words of two Democratic operatives writing in a liberal newspaper.
“[Obama would be] putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones. To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.”
No, the WaPo has not turned conservative; the paper continues to support the liberal agenda. However, it concludes those goals can best be served if Obama announces he will not run in 2012 because he Obama has “lost the consent of the governed.” The authors reason that, with the President out of the race, Republicans would be more “cooperative’ and less opposed to Obama.
They have it wrong. They still don’t get it. It is not Obama that Republicans and Conservative oppose; it’s his policies. And as for a promise not to run for a second term, who would trust that? The number of politicians who have made that statement prior to running for office must be in the thousands.
Schoen and Caddell acknowledge a measure of hostility and division coming from Obama without noting any similar animosity coming from his opposition.
“In recent days, he has offered differing visions of how he might approach the country’s problems. At one point, he spoke of the need for “mid-course corrections.” At another, he expressed a desire to take ideas from both sides of the aisle. And before this month’s midterm elections, he said he believed that the next two years would involve “hand-to-hand combat” with Republicans, whom he also referred to as “enemies.”
Milton Friedman was not only a brilliant economist; he was a great debater as well. He had a knack of going straight to the core of an issue. He spoke in words anyone could understand, a rare talent among those in his profession.
Economics is an in-exact science, comprised less of facts and more of schools of thought. The belief in free markets, the sanctity of private property and the Rule of Law is known in the field of economics as “the Friedman school”. Friedman is a Nobel Prize winner but the highest honor an economist can earn is to have the world add the word “school” to your name.
Here is Friedman’s response to Phil Donohue’s version of the age old question, isn’t capitalism a travesty on the poor?
Guy de Maupassant ends his great novel “Une Vie” with the statement “Life is never as good or as bad as one thinks.” Conservatives should understand that in politics, things are rarely as good or as bad as one thinks in the aftermath of an election.
Hat tip Paul Mirengoff
DEMOCRACY’S FATE
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
ca. 1840
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