Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
It’s simple, really. Just make it impossible for anyone to do anything that creates wealth or employment.
John Stossel describes his navigation of the morass of red tape required to open a simple lemonade stand:
– Register as sole proprietor with the County Clerk’s Office (must be done in person)
– Apply to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number.
– Complete 15-hr Food Protection Course!
— After the course, register for an exam that takes 1 hour. You must score 70 percent to pass. (Sample question: “What toxins are associated with the puffer fish?”) If you pass, allow three to five weeks for delivery of Food Protection Certificate.
– Register for sales tax Certificate of Authority
– Apply for a Temporary Food Service Establishment Permit. Must bring copies of the previous documents and completed forms to the Consumer Affairs Licensing Center.
Then, at least 21 days before opening your establishment, you must arrange for an inspection with the Health Department’s Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. It takes about three weeks to get your appointment. If you pass, you can set up a business once you:
– Buy a portable fire extinguisher from a company certified by the New York Fire Department and set up a contract for waste disposal.
– We couldn’t finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.
Trying to set up a business in Australia is little different.
It baffles me that some liberals think the reason people go into business is because they are greedy. I make less money than my wife, a part-time teacher. We have mortgaged our house and put most of our savings into our business. All of that would be lost if it failed.
We work hard to make it work; to give good service, to ensure our prices are competitive with larger city stores. We have been fortunate. Three out of four new businesses fail in the first twelve months. If money was what we were after, I would be far better off working for the government. Public servants take no risks and are paid more.
If the government wants people to do the work and take the risks that are the basis of all wealth-producing activity, it needs to offer some encouragement. I don’t mean grants or advisors. Just stay out of the way.
If they can’t or won’t do that, eventually there will be no-one left to pay the public servants.
It is unimaginable that the leader of any muslim country would wish Israel and Jews everywhere a happy and peaceful Passover.
For many islamists Ramadan is not a time of peace, but a time to renew the commitment to jihad.
The site Religion of Peace keeps a Ramadan jihad attack scorecard.
Wishes for peace are one thing. But peace depends on each party actually wanting peace.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had made the release of 123 Palestinians convicted of the murder of Israeli citizens a condition of recommencing peace talks. This week he refused to agree to peace talks despite Israel’s unhappy agreement to release the prisoners.
Two reports came out recently making wildly inaccurate claims about sea level.
The first claimed that sea level was going to rise 12 inches in California over the next twenty years. Yet satellites show that sea level has been falling in California for the past twenty years.
US Sea Level Records 1992 -2012
A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that current global climate models make “very large” errors in determining solar radiation at the surface of the Earth “due to ignoring the effects of clouds.” According to the authors, these very large errors can exceed 800 Watts per meter squared, which by comparison is about 216 times more than the alleged effect of doubling CO2 concentrations (3.7 Watts per square metre).
In other words, those wild scary claims by IPCC scientists about runaway positive feedback causing catastrophic climate change were based entirely on not having a clue what they were talking about.
A pill to reduce the risk of HIV infection in members of at risk groups sounds good, but I would put money on HIV infection rates increasing, rather than decreasing, where this drug is made available. Labor and the Greens will press for its early introduction.
But a genetically modified bacterium designed to destroy malarial parasites before they can infect anyone bitten by a parasite-carrying mosquito could save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. Wait for the Greens to start protesting about the use of GM organisms.
It is sometimes hard to believe that the AEU, the Australian Education Union, has any commitment to improving educational outcomes at all.
There can be no doubt about their commitment to making life easier for teachers. The constant refrain is “more pay, smaller classes.” Australia has amongst the smallest average class sizes and best paid teachers anywhere in the world. This has not resulted in any improvement in standards of literacy or numeracy. Cultural literacy; an understanding of Western values, history, music, literature and art, has declined precipitously.
The entirely predictable recommendations of the Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski panel) were more money and smaller class sizes. But once class sizes get below about thirty-five, further decreases make little difference to student learning. Simply hurling money at education will not help, unless spending is based on real-world research into what works.
Responses from the Labor Party and the AEU to questions from the opposition about the Gonski recommendations were just as predictable as the recommendations themselves.
“I’m not sure that Christopher Pyne’s plan to sack teachers and increase class sizes is the answer to the challenge we face in education,” acting School Education Minister Chris Evans told ABC News Online.
Except that Christopher Pyne said nothing about sacking teachers and increasing class sizes. He said that research and experience in other countries shows that simply focussing on class size does not help students.
The chairman of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), Professor Barry McGaw, agrees the focus on class sizes has been misplaced.
“We have wasted a lot of money in Australian education by reducing class size,” Professor McGaw told ABC NewsRadio.
“It’s a very expensive thing to do and the range in which we’ve reduced it has almost no impact on student learning.”
The AEU has a website called I Give a Gonski. Presumably ‘giving a Gonski’ is meant to indicate concern about education.
Anyone who really does ‘give a gonski’ about education should vehemently oppose these ‘more of the same’ recommendations, and insist on educational policies and spending which will actually improve learning.
But hey, let’s blame him anyway!
For any company to make money out of aborted babies is monstrous. Anyone who knowingly invests in or works for a company that does so is seriously morally challenged.
So if Romney had been CEO of Bain at the time Bain invested in Stericycle, a company that incinerates the remains of aborted children as medical waste, and if he was aware that this was part of their business, that seriously undermines the credibility of his claim to have been consistently pro-life.
But, as even the person who wrote this ‘gotcha’ article agrees, he wasn’t and he didn’t.
So why pretend it reflects on him at all?
I have had some doubts about the EDL – the English Defence League. But the more I hear from Tommy Robinson, the more I like him.
Some of the things to note in this video are his absolute rejection of racism, his pointing up of the double standards in policing and reporting of islamist protests (frequently violent) and any expression of any concern (no matter how mild) by ordinary people about islamism, and his statement that if we do not act now, despite the cost, future generations will never understand why we failed them.
It really is worth watching this video in full. Just ignore the poor sound quality at the beginning. It improves quickly.
Given a recent court case, the gubmint’s plans for media regulation to shut up people who say stuff it doesn’t like, because it’s like, unfair and stuff, and the legal and personal persecution of anyone in Australia who even asks publicly what race means, Morgan Freeman’s claim that Barack Obama is not the US’s first black president because because his mother was white so he can’t be black, is, well, interesting.
Heck, it is probably against the law in Australia even to think about whether Obama is really black. Or Anita Heiss, or Ray Robinson, or Michael Mansell.
Sadly, Freeman goes on to make a clot of himself by saying that the reason Obama hasn’t been able to do anything at all really, is because Republicans are mean. They haven’t co-operated in all his cool plans. Which is dumb, considering Obama had both Congress and Senate for the larger part of his incumbency.
Jihadist operations, martyrdom operations, to drive every Jew out of the sacred land of Palestine (home to the Jews for over 3,000 years).
Apart from the fact this guy looks like Fagin, there are two other interesting things about this video.
First, there is no pretence that jihad means an inner struggle for righteousness. Jihad means killing people, especially Jews. Second, this Jew killing will happen soon, because the Arab peoples are throwing off the yoke of oppressive regimes, so that Islamic principles can rule as they should.
Ugly inside and out.
Amused by Rush Limbaugh’s description of Obama as Barack Kardashian? You shouldn’t be. It is a libel on the Kardashians.
As Marc Hopin points out on American Thinker, the Kardashians are hard working wealth creators who are also socially aware and actively involved in their community:
If I were a Kardashian, the association of my last name with one of the most unsuccessful presidents in American history would mortify me. I’d be talking to my lawyers trying to figure out a way to get Rush to stop. Kardashian is not just Kim’s last name; it’s the last name used by her three siblings and her mother. Working together, they have turned the name into a money-making franchise. Beginning in 2007 with the first season of the reality TV show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, they have successfully parlayed their various talents into multiple financial successes including modeling, movie and TV acting roles, singing, authoring, TV production, clothing design, fragrance creation, jewelry design, and the founding and running of a small chain of boutique clothing stores called D-A-S-H. In addition, Kardashian designs are sold on QVC and in Sears stores. …
Hard as I try, I can find nothing Kardashian about Obama. If anything, Barack is the anti-Kardashian. Kim Kardashian is far from perfect, but she is a hardworking, successful, job-creating capitalist who treats people as individuals, goes and gives to church, supports various meaningful charitable causes, is close with her extended family, doesn’t use drugs or drink alcohol, and has no friends who are admitted terrorists. Obama doesn’t want to work other than on the campaign trail. He is a man who leads from behind. He starts his workday late and ends his workday early, unless there’s a party at the White House or a fundraiser somewhere. Obama wants to golf, vacation, bike-ride, and read off of a teleprompter from time to time. If Obama and Kim were on Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice, I have little doubt which would be the earlier recipient of the infamous “You’re fired!”
Iran is elected to a position of global power in policing the international arms trade. This is the same Iran that wants to blow the “Zionist entity” off the map, and supplies weapons to terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah.
Great. Next step, Syria on the Human Rights Council.
No responsible body could give that kind of credibility to those vicious lunatic states.
So why are Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, India and other democratic states continuing to support this massive and destructive bureaucracy?
I wonder, would recognise these words:
WHEREAS the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland …