Not Much Chance for Cutting Red Tape for Businesses

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• LETTERS
• August 30, 2013, 3:40 p.m. ET

Not Much Chance for Cutting Red Tape for Businesses

The central command of all business by government is a core goal of the progressives, so cutting red tape for business is unlikely to happen soon.

 

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Regarding Thomas Stemberg's "A New Law to Liberate American Business" (op-ed, Aug. 22): In describing the success of base closings, Mr. Stemberg forgets that the base closings helped to cut military spending, one of the core goals of progressives. This was a main reason for the success of the base closings. It was the polar opposite to reining in the crippling rules and regulations on business. The central command of all business by government is also one of the core goals of the progressives. Since progressives control the presidency and the Senate, this rational, obvious release of business back onto free enterprise cannot happen. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will in all likelihood never even move this proposed new law into committee. I just don't believe progressives want to hold back "job-killing regulations" or any regulations at all.

A better plan for Mr. Stemberg would be to publicize the huge benefits of business to employment and the creation of prosperity. I believe most of the electorate doesn't understand this. They are propagandized to believe "profits" are evil and that business leaders are greedy and corrupt. Until that changes, nothing will happen. Finally, the greatest effort needs to be in simply winning elections. A Republican or tea-party conservative president might stand a chance of passing some common-sense laws. Until that happens, if it ever does again, the noble effort of Sens. Angus King and Roy Blunt will be an exercise in futility.

Theodore M. Wight

Seattle

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Here is the original article about which I wrote:

• OPINION
• August 21, 2013, 7:06 p.m. ET

Thomas Stemberg: A New Law to Liberate American Businesses

If Congress could close military bases, it can reduce job-killing regulations.

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By THOMAS G. STEMBERG

Nearly 30 years ago, I started a company called Staples Inc. SPLS -1.00%that went on to do pretty well. Launching a business like Staples in 2013 would be a much harder proposition, with success by no means certain. There are so many government impediments to business today that the next Staples—and its 50,000 jobs—might never get off the ground.

Chief among those roadblocks: the blizzard of bureaucratic red tape that buries businesses and stifles job creation. These include the additional 16 million hours that vending-machine and chain-restaurant business owners must spend complying with new food regulations each year. But there is also the license that magicians require to do a rabbit disappearing act, which mandates an annual fee, surprise inspections and a rabbit disaster plan. All told, American business faces 46,758 pages of rules to live by in the Federal Register.

This confounding web of federal regulations may be curtailed if Sens. Angus King (independent, Maine) and Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) have anything to say about it. Their Regulatory Improvement Act of 2013 could be a game changer.

The legislation introduced in late July would create a bipartisan Regulatory Improvement Commission, charged with recommending cuts in the regulatory regime, and the law would require Congress to vote on the proposals. This is desperately needed. The government has few processes at its disposal through which it can re-evaluate the efficacy of outdated regulations—and many members of Congress lack the expertise, time and courage to effectively scale them back.

The King-Blunt concept is tested and has already worked remarkably well. The Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, an independent, bipartisan commission of experts, was established in the late 1980s to reduce the number of military bases. Politics made it nearly impossible for Congress to do the job, as it was too easy for politicians to cut deals and protect each other's pork. Instead, the commission selected the bases and reported its findings to Congress for mandatory, up-or-down, nonamendable votes.

It worked. Since 1988, there have been 121 major base closures, 79 major base realignments (which may close down part of a facility or transfer personnel away from it) and 1,000 minor closures and realignments under BRAC.

In short, the BRAC Commission gave politicians what they crave most: cover. Nobody back home could blame them for losing a military base. The King-Blunt proposal will give representatives the same cover with regulations.

The bipartisan Regulatory Improvement Commission—with members appointed by the president and congressional leaders—would tackle one area of regulation at a time. Its members would be charged with finding regulations that are duplicative, like the 642 million hours employees will spend complying with redundant regulations this year, according to the American Action network.

The panel also will try to identify obsolete regulations, maybe resembling the arcane rules the Federal Communications Commission leverages to achieve whatever regulatory aims the commissioners desire.

Finally, the King-Blunt commission will look for excessive regulation, perhaps scaling back the 1,659 pages of "simplified" mortgage disclosure and servicing rules the president's new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued in July.

The public—people on all sides of an issue—would advise the commission in an open comment period while it considered which regulations to put on the chopping block. The resulting list of targeted regulations would then be reported to Congress, to be eliminated or curbed.

Here's the best part: Both chambers of Congress would be required to vote on the recommendations within a month. Lawmakers could review, but not change, the report. There would be no deal making, no tricky amendments and no ducking of tough decisions. Lawmakers would be asked a simple question and could only give the simple answer: yes or no.

Job creators know that regulatory relief can't come soon enough. In 2010, the Small Business Administration pegged the annual cost of complying with regulations at $1.75 trillion. The SBA report covered 2008 and the burden has certainly grown since. A May 2013 report by the Heritage Foundation, "Red Tape Rising," found that new regulatory costs added in 2012 totaled $23.5 billion.

That's a staggering amount of money to pay for government rules. In 2008, the GDP of the entire state of California produced slightly more than $1.75 trillion. At this rate, the current regulatory regime just kills more jobs and stifles the formation of new small businesses—the lifeblood of job creation in our economy.

In 1986, we founded Staples in large part because of what used to be an enormously productive American financial system. The system that fueled entrepreneurship 25 years ago is now being regulated to death under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, which requires as many as 398 new regulations. The next Staples, and its 50,000 jobs, may not happen because of this burden.

If the president and Congress are serious about creating jobs, they must take seriously the job-killing regulations that are holding job creators back. The King-Blunt proposal can get the job done—and jump-start the lagging economy in the process.

Mr. Stemberg, founder and former CEO of Staples Inc., is managing general partner of the Highland Consumer Fund and a member of the Job Creators Alliance.

Progressives set the rules, Republicans Obey. And Bray.

"Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never harm you."  That was good knowledge from Mom and Dad.  And I have followed it, even being called "Birdlegs" then "Buzzard" and not fighting back.  Those bulliess (now against the law of society, but completely human) would have felt better if I would have fought back, either with a fist or words.  But I didn't.  I won they lost.

Get it?

But your falling for the Progressives' rule -- words harm -- means that they win, and you don't.  Unless you're a progressive in which case you lose, too.  (But Progressives probably won't be reading this, since they don't like to hear disagreement.  Another win for Progressives.)  Words might make you feel badly, some obviously do, but hurt you?  I doubt it.  But with the entire Progressive nation saying and repeating over and over again that words harm, you start to believe it.  NOT SO. 

There is a new industry invented by Progressives: Trayvonism.  It is reaping media rewards and helping Oprah promote her movie about some dead Negro White House butler of seventy years or something.  And Al Sharpton gets paid cash money dealing in Trayvonism.  WHY?  Because Trayvonism is not about some kid with a black nose getting killed.  Or the killer getting set free by a Constitutional jury of his peers.  It is about words harming.  Clearly a bullet harmed the man.  But not words, or one particular word, Nigger or nigger of which there's no evidence Zimmerman called him anyway, but no matter, he "could" have.  So let's move on to emotions.

Here's the problem.  How a person "feels" (as though anyone but that singular person can know anyway) has become important as a method by which Progressives define and frame arguments.  Republicans (or Tea Party conservatives, or "the Right") simply then argue on an uphill slope; they accept that bad "feelings" are, ummm dangerously harmful and should be cured (by Progressives according to Progressives, naturally) and try painfully to show that in fact they -- the Right -- don't use "bad" words.  They do, of course, since most everyone does.   

But it has gone further, much further.  According to the Progressive doctrine, and accepted unchallenged by conservatives, "feeing" like you might -- might, not did, miss a meal; or might -- might, not did, lose a job; or one of the greatest harms known to mankind -- actually feel insecure about the economy.  According to Progressives all these are ailments to be fixed.  WHY?  If you feel like you might have to give up a movie to buy food aren't you being able to make a choice?  Isn't
"choice" beneficial?  Should the government eliminate that particular emotion of "feeling" you might miss a meal?

 Why not say, as my parents did, "Sticks and stones may break your bones but words (or in this case emotions) will never harm you."  Progressives have the Right and everyone else believe that words harm you.  They might make you angry or uncomfortable or feel bad or something, but harm you?  NO!  But probably every one of you reading this agree that words harm.  Fight back, you chickenshitted loser.  (Did that harm you?)

Now do you see why Republicans lose and Progressives win?  Progressives establish the playing field and set the rules.  Republicans, like nice little sheep, obey and bray.  (Losers!)

Baaaaaaa!

Disorganized, leaderless, mis or unmanaged. That is our government today.

President Obama is not and never has been a leader/manager.  He's not so bright enough for the small stuff.  Give him a big idea and he's all over it.  But run with it?  Not so much.  He has a Sesame Street attention span.  Measured in seconds, not even minutes. 

In today's Wall Street Journal were four articles.  Headlines:

1.  "GAO Study Faults Export Program"  [It] "isn't properly managed, said Congress's watchdog arm."

2.  "Court Keeps Yucca Mountain in play" "[Obama's] Nuclear Regulatory Commission was 'simply flouting the law'"

3.  "Delays to Health-Law Provisions Start to Pile Up"  "47% of respondents [to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll] said the law [ObamaCare] was a bad idea"

4.  "Judge Sinks Lawsuit On Screening Hires" "A federal judge casts doubt on government efforts to restrict employers' use of criminal-back-ground checks in hiring"  "[It is] a theory in search of facts to support it."  "There are simply no facts here to support" "[Obama's] Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim that black applicants were improperly discriminated against."

A good day for President Obama, he's on vacation.

FEDERAL HURT FEELINGS COURT

Seattle officials call for ban on 'potentially offensive' language

[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/02/seattle-officials-call-for-ban-on-potentially-offensive-language/#ixzz2apXWGmEM]

Government workers in the city of Seattle have been advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions.
KOMO-TV reports that the city's Office of Civil Rights instructed city workers in a recent internal memo to avoid using the words because some may find them offensive.

 "Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo obtained by the station. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'"

 In an interview with Seattle's KIRO Radio, Bronstein said the term "brown bag" has been used historically as a way to judge skin color.

 "For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," Bronstein said.

 According to the memo, city employees should use the terms "lunch-and-learn" or "sack lunch" instead of "brown bag."

 Bronstein told KIRO Radio the word "citizen" should be avoided because many people who live in Seattle are residents, not citizens.

 "They are legal residents of the United States and they are residents of Seattle. They pay taxes and if we use a term like citizens in common use, then it doesn't include a lot of folks," Bronstein said.
Seattle, however, isn't the only city with an eye on potentially disruptive words.

 The New York Post reported in March 2012 that the city’s Department of Education avoids references to words like “dinosaurs,” “birthdays,” “Halloween” and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests because they could evoke “unpleasant emotions” among the students.
Dinosaurs, for example, conjures the topic of evolution, which could rile fundamentalists and birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Halloween, meanwhile, suggests an affiliation to Paganism.

 Officials said such exclusions are normal procedure, insisting it’s not censorship.
“This is standard language that has been used by test publishers for many years and allows our students to complete practice exams without distraction,” a Department of Education spokeswoman told the newspaper last year.
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The obvious next step is a federal "Hurt Feelings Court" where a person -- and his or her trial lawyer -- can bring a civil, or perhaps when the laws are passed, a criminal action against someone that used a potentially offensive word that hurt his or her feelings.  The evidence of course would be one's testimony about one's hurt feelings.  There would be a fine.  Ultimately one would have to purchase insurance -- from a federal government agency -- to protect oneself and to pay the winning trial lawyer.

 

 

Andrew Napolitano: 'Nudge Squad' Goes Too Far

[http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/napolitano-obama-nudge-squad/2013/08/01/id/518220?s=al&promo_code=14622-1]

Napolitano said the Obama administration is overreaching with its recently revealed "Nudge Squad."

"What will they think of next? The government can't deliver the mail, and they want to tell us to fix the broken screens in our house, clean our attics and change the oil in our cars? These are not functions of government," the former New Jersey Superior Court judge and Fox News contributor said Thursday.

"If the Constitution protects anything ... it protects the right to be different. We don't need the government in our faces telling us how to live," Napolitano said on "Fox & Friends."
 Napolitano was referring to a so-called "Behavioral Insights Team" put together by the Obama administration to explore ways that might encourage Americans to improve or change their lives. Paying back-taxes, making homes more energy-efficient, and eating better are just some of the things that could be addressed with an ad campaign or other promotional effort, FoxNews.com reported Tuesday.

"We have a Constitution — says what the federal government should do and limits it to only doing that. This type of nudging us and telling us how to live is not there," Napolitano said.
"When does a nudge become a push?"

Napolitano stopped short of suggesting the program amounts to an effort at mind control, but he said it still goes too far.

"This particular administration is interested in controlling people, even if the Congress is not," he said. "And this is one of the ways it will do it. Nudge, nudge, push, push, elbow, elbow."
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Again Obama disregards the Rule of Law

The U. S. Supreme Court -- the final arbiter of the law -- invalidated as unconstitutional a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  The ObamaHolderDemocratic Party Justice Department has discovered or invented an oblique, rarely used section of the law to replace the one struck down.  It arbitrarily or ideologically believes the U. S. Supreme Court is wrong, so rather than accept it and uphold the laws of the land as required by the Constitution and his oath, the Obama administration ignores it.  Ignores the laws it has pledged to uphold.  So it will sue Republican governors starting in Texas.  Republicans.  The enemy.  Isn't the president of the United States supposed to represent ALL Americans?  Apparently not, so in fact Barack Obama is only the President of the Democrats.  The voting rights should only be for Democrats, they believe.  Doesn't matter if they are citizens, felons or even alive.  But not all voters should be protected against the widespread (but ignored by Democrats) voter fraud, that's OK because most of it is by Democrats and its arms such as Acorn and Union thugs.

The Rule of Law is being quickly dismantled as this administration disregards what Obama says to disregard.  But with ferocity it goes after those it doesn't like.

1) It just sued for $10 BILLION dollars SAC Capital Advisors because SAC has been so successful.  In the Obama mind success equals illegal and it has coerced from five of a thousand employees of SAC guilty pleas of insider trading.  Of course there is no definition of what insider trading is.  The administration wants to show it's tough on hedge funds.  It wants to destroy it. 

2) ObamaHolder is attempting to coerce private companies to give up profits.  Private sector student loan providers are being strongarmed to be "flexible" and not force deadbeat students to have to repay loans as they had agreed.  It will cost much for these privately-owned firms to forego profits at the dictate of ObamaHolder which will lower the number of possible new employees and force the increase in prices.

3) The U. S. ObamaHolderDemocratic "Justice" (sic) Department will extort some "concessions" it arbitrarily wants, in exchange for AMR -- parent to American Airlines -- being permitted to purchase US Airways.

4)  Democrat lawmakers criticized banks owning warehouses to store metals, so the U. S. Justice (sic) Department has opened an investigation.  Something about price manipulation -- sort of like the Fed's Bernanke's manipulation, I guess -- or "extra costs" whatever they are.  As if "extra costs" are now against the law.  But the law is whatever Obama says, "extra costs" are now against the law.

5)  ObamaHolder forced Halliburton to pay $55 MILLION to the far-left-wing National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and a $200,000 fine (Huh?  $55 MILLION to a liberal political organization and $200 THOUSAND to the government???) for a supervisor deleting a computer simulation.  And that said, ObamaHolder is investigating "the possibility" of anticompetitive practices by Halliburton and others in Progressives HATED industry, one that is bringing energy independence to America.  ObamaHolder hates fracking for oil and natural gas because it beats the shit out of their BELOVED sunshine and wind power generation.  Wind (hot air) and sunny increase the energy prices for their expressed-beloved middle class.  But the administration has nothing but contempt for the middle class as proven by their policies, including the mad expenditures for hot air and sunshine.  F the middleclass, they say.

AND ALL THAT WAS IN ONLY TODAY'S NEWSPAPERS!

Pleasure or Responsibility? It's a choice.

PLEASURE OR RESPONSIBILITY?  IT'S A CHOICE.

Some women disregard their responsibility.  First by choosing momentary sexual pleasure, or that of her partner, without regard to her becoming pregnant.  In all likelihood it's because she knows she can have killed any fetus who might be created and become living inside her womb.  It is Choice.  That of sexual pleasure over responsibility.  Then she has another choice when she chooses her own freedom from responsibility with no regard to the future of what her fetus might become.  Steve Jobs?  Ted Bundy?  A general in the Army?  An electrician?  A school teacher?  A identity thief?  A happy individual?  Doesn’t matter, the pregnant woman will choose to kill the real or potential human being.  Him or her gets no choice.  It is her choice of her selfishness over her choice not to give any choice to her fetus.  Another individual gets no choice.  Sure argue a fetus is not a human being.  Maybe, maybe not.  But he or she will probably be one.  He or she will probably be a human being.  One choice eliminates another choice.  LiberalProgressiveDemocrats argue that Republicans have a "war on women".  Republicans simply want choice allowed for a tiny, unprotected potential human being who can't vote.  (A death for a vote: that's fairness for you!)

 

Unfortunately Republicans don’t frame the argument this way.  And they lose elections, and they lose, and they lose, and they lose, and they lose, and they lose, and they lose.  And an inexperienced man with a modest intellect but good voice and a rabid ideology gets elected president.

And that is the end of the United States of America into which you I was born.

ARAB SPRING RESET: THE MESSAGE FOR AMERICA FROM EGYPT

ARAB SPRING RESET: THE MESSAGE FOR AMERICA FROM EGYPT

 

 

The Egyptian people had had enough of the long corrupt and oppressive Hosni Mubarak dictatorship and the people -- with the necessary assistance of American technology including the Internet, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter -- rebelled.  Mubarak read the writing on the wall and resigned.

 

For the first time in Egypt's history democratic mostly-free elections organized by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces -- its military -- were held and the best- and earliest-organized political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, won a majority.  Mr. Mohammed Morsi became the president of Egypt espousing democracy, peace and economic growth.  To the contrary, during his first year in office the man's dictatorial tendencies and Muslim ideology roared out.  He rammed through a new constitution aiming at Sharia Law.  His concentration was on consolidating and expanding his own Islamist power instead of working on the rapidly-declining economy.  Tourism crashed, the currency dropped, unemployment rose and GDP growth neared nothing from seven percent a couple years ago.  Crime skyrocketed and persecution of minorities, especially Coptic Christians expanded.  National unrest rebirthed and Morsi appointed General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi an Islamist sympathizer to run the SCAF -- the military -- to calm the people.   

Six months later, a petition for him to step down was circulated and over a million Egyptians signed.  The people hit the streets once again in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions.  Some of Morsi's cabinet ministers, military and other advisors resigned.  While violence was sparse, Egypt was a ticking time bomb.  Gen. Al Sisi told Morsi that he needed to remedy the protests of the people or the military could step in.  On July 3, 2013, the military in essence took over, announcing it would begin setting the stage for another national election.  Morsi vanished to an "undisclosed location".

Will the civilians supporting Morsi clash or worse in the streets with the opposition?  Who knows as of 8:30 a. m. Pacific Daylight Time, July 4, 2013 in Seattle?

The United States of America in 2008 and 2012 elected a president promising to stabilize an exploded economy, create six million jobs and get the country back on the path of economic growth.  He also said he'd bring the country and its disparate factions together.  Hope and Change.

Instead, similar to President Morsi, President Obama turned his back on most non-Democrats (rewarding only his campaign contributors or those corporate leaders who could thrive on the reflected popularity of his empty personna).  American Idol: The President is alive and well!

He further divided the country with virulent denunciations of all who opposed him, including the United States Supreme Court.  Rather than expand jobs, which it turns out he has no clue how to do having never touched the private sector, he brought ideological Progressives into his administration.  They being wildly anti-capitalism and anti-free markets, not to mention anti-anyone who opposed or disagreed with their utopian fantasies.   Anti-business, pro-labor activists were added to the Department of Labor; anti-carbon-energy advocates were stuffed into the Energy Department, who immediately showered billions of dollars on Obama's campaign contributors who had "alternative" energy companies to fund.  The Environmental Protection Agency began a campaign to eliminate coal -- the source of half of America's electricity.

Financial regulators began fixing the products, services, prices and capital structures of most American financial institutions.  Threatening, investigating and suing along with rule making to bring them in line to the Progressive Central Control.  And this anti-business list of oppression goes on and on and on.  The result" barely any Gross Domestic Product growth, extraordinarily high and unmoving unemployment and nearly twenty million Americans un- or under-employed.

What Obama promised, as Morsi promised, was nothing like he set out to do.

Obama, like Morsi, could be forced to resign by Facebook, Twitter and American ingenuity and innovation, but he took control of the technology and many of its entrepreneurs.  Reflected glory impresses geeks immensely.

So it will not happen.  The anti-Republican, anti-conservative, anti-Tea Party propaganda machine that started with Franklin Delano Roosevelt is honed to a fine

From pre-kindergarten through high-school to university administrators, instructors and professors education lean and teach far-left.  The entertainment industry, from movie, sports and rock stars to the corporate owners mostly by far voted for and vocally support Obama.  Union bosses back Democrats with workers dues to keep the laws supporting union monopolies and killing any thought of corporate power. Most government workers vote for the Progressives who force bigger and bigger and more expensive government.  Most newspaper, television and other media is obvious in its support of the Progressive ideology, selecting "news" and opinions that make the president look glamorous and completely disregarding his many, many mistakes, wrongheaded decisions, and inexperience.  His stonewalling coverups of Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Outrage, where his FBI won't even investigate either, are disregarded by most of the pandering media.  They have staked their reputations on the first Black president and they are not about to be proved wrong.

And so Egypt will possibly re-rebel against oppression while the birthplace of freedom, individual responsibility and inventive federal government heads the opposite way to oppression, centrally controlled over regulation of every social and economic activity of Americans. 

Our founding fathers -- portrayed only as selfish, rich, white oppressors by LiberalProgressiveDemocrats -- inventors of the brilliant U. S. Constitution -- portrayed by LiberalProgressiveDemocrats as old fashioned and out of touch -- are rolling around in their graves shouting tearfully: "No, no, no don't let them take your freedom away."








 

IS THIS THE POWER OF LEFT-WING PROPAGANDA?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323300004578559881835515320.html

The Wall Street Journal (June 24, 2013, page A6) had a news article:  "Public Shifts Fast on Same-Sex Union Support".

There is little doubt this is true.  My question is which comes first, the polling or the propaganda?  I don't believe there is any way to validate which is which, the chicken or the egg.  But it is a topic worth considering and deciding for oneself.

Another article, also from the WSJ describes some of the "science" of it:

April 3, 2013, 2:52 PM

The Science on Same-Sex Marriage

By Ronald Bailey
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging legal restrictions on same-sex marriage. Proponents and opponents sought to cudgel one another with sociological and psychological studies aiming to prove that science is on their side. Well, what does the science say?
Impact on Traditional Marriage
Some opponents told the court that same-sex marriage will undermine conventional marriage among heterosexuals. So what do the data say about how legalizing gay marriages affects conventional marriages?
A 2009 study by University of Sherbrooke economist Mircea Trandafir investigated the effect of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands, the first country to recognize same-sex marriage. In 1998, the Dutch created registered partnerships, which are open to all couples, and in 2001 a law allowing full same-sex marriages. His analysis found that same-sex marriage leads to a decline in the different-sex marriage rate, but not in the different-sex union (marriage plus registered partnership) rate. In other words, Dutch heterosexual couples are taking advantage of the “marriage lite” registered partnership alternative.
At the time of Prof. Trandafir’s study, the chief difference between registered partnerships and marriage was that the former could be dissolved at the civil registry by mutual agreement. In a 2012 West Virginia Law Review article, Mercer School of Law professor Scott Titshaw shows that the political compromises provoked by the initial refusals to extend full marriage rights to same-sex couples result in a proliferation of civil union alternatives. Prof. Titshaw agrees with Prof. Trandafir that different-sex couples increasingly find the new marriage alternatives attractive; in effect, refusing to give full legal recognition to same-sex couples ends up diminishing the status and benefits associated with conventional marriage for everyone. Ironically, conservatives, by opposing the extension of full marriage rights to gay people, have ended up weakening the institution they sought to defend.
The Divorce Rate
Sweden legalized same-sex civil unions in 1995 and gay marriage in 2009. A 2011 demographic study from researchers at the University of Stockholm reports that since 1999, after decades of falling, both the marriage rate and the fertility rate have trended upward and the divorce rate is down.
Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. In 2003, the divorce rate in Massachusetts was 2.5 per 1,000 residents, and it fell to 1.9 by 2009. The Massachusetts marriage rate jumped 15% in 2004, as many same-sex couples chose to get married, but since has remained stable. Interestingly, the states that permit same-sex marriage tend to have lower divorce rates than those that ban same-sex marriage.
A 2004 study of registered partnerships in Sweden reported that gay male couples were 50% more likely to divorce than were heterosexual couples. Lesbian couples were nearly three times more likely to divorce than were heterosexual couples.
But how salient are higher divorce rates among gays and lesbians for making public policy? Consider that a 2008 study in the journal Family Relations by Rice University sociologist Jenifer Bratter found that in the U.S. black-husband/white-wife marriages were twice as likely to end in divorce as white/white couples, and Asian-husband/white-wife couples were 59% more likely. Yet few would argue that interracial marriages should be prohibited because their children are at substantially greater risk of experiencing the social, psychological, and economic disadvantages stemming from a higher interracial divorce rate.
Having Kids
Nearly 20% of same-sex households—i.e., 115,000—reported having children, and 84% contained children biologically related to one of the householders. In comparison, 94% of different-sex married couple households with children reported living with their own children. A study issued in February by the Williams Institute, a gay public-policy think tank at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles, reports that 37% of “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” (LGBT) adults have had a child at some time in their lives. In addition, the report notes that as many as six million American children and adults have an LGBT parent.
Opponents and proponents of same-sex marriage spar fiercely over the data about how children fare in same-sex households. On March 21, when the American Academy of Pediatricians issued a statement in favor of same-sex civil marriage, the group also published a technical report that comprehensively looked at the available research on the well-being of children living in same-sex households. The report noted that a big problem with current research is the small sample sizes of many of the studies. An additional problem is that most of the children in these studies have been through divorce before living in a same-sex household. Divorce is well known to have deleterious effects on the well-being of children.
However, data are reassuring from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, which includes 78 lesbian families who used donor sperm to have children and have been followed since the 1980s. A 2012 study compared quality-of-life measurements of adolescents from lesbian families with those from a matched set of adolescents raised in different-sex homes. The researchers reported that “adolescents reared by lesbian mothers from birth do not manifest more adjustment difficulties (e.g., depression, anxiety, and disruptive behaviors) than those reared by heterosexual parents.”
By the time that their children were age 17, some 55% of the lesbian couples had separated compared to 36% of heterosexual couples in the National Survey of Family Growth. However, children from separated lesbian couples don’t appear to manifest the social and psychological problems often found among children whose heterosexual parents are divorced. The better scores achieved by the children of lesbians, the researchers point out might result from the fact that 75% of the separated lesbian couples shared custody, whereas 65% of divorced heterosexual mothers had sole custody of their children.
A 2010 study in the periodical Demography by Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld parsed Census data to compare the school progress of children reared in same-sex, heterosexual, and single parent families. He reported that “children raised by same-sex couples have no fundamental deficits in making normal progress through school.”
Adoption Outcomes
A 2012 study by UCLA researchers involving 82 families (60 heterosexual, 15 gay, and 7 lesbian) who adopted high-risk children from foster care found that on average, children in both same-sex and different-sex households “showed significant gains of approximately 10 IQ points in their cognitive development and maintained stable levels of behavior problems that were not clinically significant.”
The researchers noted that these findings were especially remarkable because the children adopted by same-sex couples were generally higher risk and often of a different ethnicity than those adopted by heterosexual couples. The bottom line is that research on the effects of being reared by same-sex parents on children is certainly not perfect, but the pediatricians academy seems right when it concluded that despite research “imperfections, it is likely that the extensive research efforts that have been carried out would have documented serious and significant damages if they existed.”
Monogamy
Research suggests one salient difference between same-sex, especially gay male couples, and different-sex couples relates to the acceptability of sex with people outside of the relationship. A 2010 study by University of Toronto sociologist Adam Isaiah Green in the Canadian Journal of Sociology involving 30 same-sex married couples around Toronto found that two-thirds of same-sex spouses (40% female, 60% male) did not believe marriage needed always to be monogamous. In fact, nearly half of male same-sex spouses (47%) had an explicit agreement that allowed for non-monogamy.
*      *     *
My reading of the scientific literature as it currently stands is that the legalization of same sex marriage does not have major effects on marriage trends in the wider society. As ever greater numbers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans have exited the closet, more straight Americans have come to know and accept their homosexual family members, friends, and colleagues. It is this personal data, not the dueling studies published in obscure social science journals, that have now persuaded a majority of Americans in recent polls to support same sex marriage.
–
Mr. Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason Magazine.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2013/04/03/the-science-on-same-sex-marriage/]

What Are Core American Values?

What Are Core American Values?

 

 

President Barack Obama is described in the current White House Website as: “[T]he 44th President of the United States.  His story is the American story — values from the heartland.  The White House Website on May 21, 2009 stated: “…we enlist the power of our most fundamental values.” 

 

In his July 27, 2004, keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, stepped onto on the national stage with: “[T]his year, in this election, we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments…His [candidate John Kerry’s] values and his record affirm what is best in us…”

And from his 2012 State of the Union address: “What’s at stake aren’t Democratic values or Republican values, but American values.  And we have to reclaim them.”  Again a year later (in his 2013 State of the Union address) he said, “…we must enlist our values in the fight.

“That’s the promise of America--the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation. That’s the promise we need to keep,” from the President’s Speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, August 27, 2008.

Our country has (mostly) rallied under an individual, Barack Obama, who in speeches and writings has emphasized concepts such as “values”, “core values”, “shared values”, the “American Dream”, and “the promise of America” with nary a definition of what they mean.

However, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal September 30, 2012, during the presidential campaign, candidate Mitt Romney wrote, "our values have been misapplied – and misunderstood" by opponent President Obama.  But Mr. Romney never defined what the values were which President Obama misunderstood.

Most organizations, corporations and many people have mission statements built upon values or explicit value statements.  Shouldn’t a country, our country have them?  Clearly politicians do not want to be pinned down to specifics.  But don’t they owe it to us, those who pay their salaries and those for whom they (are supposed to) work?

But what would those values be?

It wouldn’t be any stretch of the imagination to admit that today the United States has none; no universal, agreed-upon values.  The operative thought is “agreed-upon”.   Our country may be separated into factions as rarely before, but even so, shouldn’t we consider trying to establish just what our values will be for the 21^st century? 

There seemed to be an implicit set of values for our first 237 years, but modern times may dictate a reconsideration.  What about a national referendum on explicit American values to guide us for the next 237?  As renowned philosopher and American baseball icon Yogi Berra quipped, "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there." Or: “you'll wind up somewhere else“. 

This seems to be the state of America today: a bitter divide.  The original construct of the political system of the United States was brilliantly architected to encourage such division.  The divided government was supposed to lead to a chaotic legislative process wherein the issues of the day would be thoroughly debated and then thoughtfully compromised and decided.  Shared values then, of a belief in a Creator, a limited government of the people and a “respect to the opinions of mankind” were the thoroughfare which launched the most prosperous, free and moral society in the history of the world.

But is now a time when that experiment in government, 237 years of age, has become “destructive of these...certain unalienable Rights…[of] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?”  (As was written in the Declaration of Independence.)  While that July 4, 1776, paper was about the oppressive reign of King George III of England, many people think it could pertain to American society today.

Our Declaration of Independence continues, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...[that will] seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  Is that what the so-called Progressives desire?  Is it surreptitiously taking place today?

The values of the Progressives are quite different from those original values on which the United States was founded, those in which many conservatives still believe.  But is it time for an open and explicit review, debate and vote on the values of our country?

SUCCESS BRINGS THE FULL WEIGHT OF THE U. S. GOVERNMENT DOWN ON YOU

Beginning modestly in 1992, Steven A. Cohen has presided over one of the most successful hedge funds in history.  Returning around 28% a year since then in his SAC Capital Advisors LP and its brethren and enriching not only its managers (Cohen is a billionaire many times over) but public-employee and private retirement funds and individual rich people and families.  THAT IS UNFAIR, and they must be cheating, some government bureaucrats and political appointees figured.  So naturally not understanding or trusting success in the private sector, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation went after it and its employees with a vengeance.  Nothing has been filed by the Justice Department and a five-year statute of limitations is nearing (July 2013), so the government is pushing intensely to force admissions of guilt and settlements.  While Cohen agreed to one -- $616 million to settle two insider trading cases without admitting any guilt -- it apparently that didn't sit well with Attorney General Eric Holder and perhaps his brother-in-arms and boss President Barack Obama by whom such a settlement likely would be passed.  SAC which has been cooperating recently, made the decision to stop cooperating for some uncertain reason.

It is at a standstill.  EXCEPT outside investors might withdraw as they have the right, $3 to $4 BILLION, leaving about $2 BILLION in outside capital of SAC's approximate $14 BILLION, of which most belongs to Mr. Cohen.

Apparently Obama's think is either 1) if you are way more successful than your peers, you must be cheating.  Achievement isn't in his vocabulary or 2) he just wants to go after Cohen.

Please read yesterday's post of an increasing risk-adverse culture infecting entrepreneurs and workers in the United States.  The U. S. government trying to kill companies because they are successful as with SAC must only greatly contribute to this dangerous trend.

I am sure it is a coincidence that May 2013 was the worst month for factory output and employment since the recession end four years ago.  The fragile "recovery" is one of the worst ever.

Risk-Adverse Culture Infects U. S. Workers, Entrepreneurs

Today's Wall Street Journal has a front page article that should frighten any American:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324031404578481162903760052.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection]

The article offers substantial evidence that the driver of American innovation and prosperity -- the desire of Americans to eschew safe, comfortable employment to take a risk and start a business -- is failing.  Historically much of this occurred when a person lost his or her job and had little other choice but to start a company.  And doing so was straight-forward and possible.

But now it seems as if that risk-taking is going, going, gone.  Companies and people have become adverse to taking a risk.  The Journal illustrates many reasons.  The rise of outsourcing to other countries and automation have increased productivity, which gives companies greater revenues without more employees.  And fewer companies are being started.  In 1982 new companies were half the number of U. S. businesses; now it's under a third.  Then 20% of employees worked for those new firms, now it's 11%.  Venture capital -- the raw material of startups -- has fallen 10% last year alone, and it has concentrated geographically with nearly 40% of it going to Silicon Valley, the greater San Jose area near San Francisco, against 30% twenty-five years ago. 

My guess is that there are several reasons, all centered in an anti-business government.  Both in the Democratic Senate and the powerful business-ignorant Progressive Progressive Barack Obama.  Businesses face vastly increased rules and regulations, the micromanagement of their every activity.  And random hugely expensive fishing expeditions of regulators who "think" someone might be breaking their mental laws, thus bringing investigations, subpoenas and sometimes civil lawsuits by government entities leading to balance-sheet breaking class action private lawsuits by tort lawyers looking for a settlement from frightened executives.  (And a tithe to the Democratic Party from the winner.)  Millions and billions of settlements seem standard.  Nothing ever has to be proven.

Let me repeat: nothing ever has to be proven.  The media piles on along with "plaintiffs" rounded up by bundlers in the thousands or tens of thousands facing one company.  So wary, but smart companies keep piles of cash on hand: nearly 6% of their assets today almost double that of thirty years ago.  And the Federal Reserve System's manipulation to virtually nothing of the interest rate means companies receive little for that cash, versus 5% or 8% thirty years ago.

Then there's the unknown of Obama's armtwisted, rules-bypassed ObamaCare with tens of thousands of rules, regulations, taxes, fines, punishments, most not written.  Costs completely unknown.  It is a crazy power-mad ignorant grab of healthcare, the largest industry in the country, by Far-left, anti-free enterprise, Progressive zealots.  Plus now nearly 30% of U. S. employees need some government license to work, up from under 5% in the 1950s.

The success of free enterprise is the chaos of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people starting businesses, most of which fail.  It is freedom to fail (or succeed) that drives the entrepreneurs.  It is completely opposite to the pathetic need of Progressive government bureaucrats, politicians and administration appointees to try to understand something foreign to them (business) and minutely control  that which they cannot understood.

The tried and true formula over centuries: central control does not work; free enterprise works.

People who are not challenged or frightened from being out of work, will settle, not start companies.  With vast recipients of two year unemployment insurance, food stamps galore (by "credit" card, no less) and hundreds of other "programs" to give the impression of ease (at huge and coerced cost to many fellow Americans, but nevermind that) fewer companies are started, many fewer jobs are created and long-term unemployment is rampant.  The government does no one (except their own reelections) any good by making life too easy. 

One czar no matter (or especially) how educated cannot know or guess ("plan") correctly about what will happen in the future.  But one of a thousand entrepreneurs -- a Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Thomas Edison, or Henry Ford --  might survive; out of ten thousand one might strike it big.  It might come in part from luck or being in the right time at the right time, but that's always a big success for every participant in the American economy.

Toss in an inadequate (becoming more inadequate) union-monopoly educational system and Obama gets his desire: a weak America.

PRIVATE SECTOR WILL DO JOB OF A STRONG MILITARY

In a Wall Street Journal article -- Obama Resets War on Terror -- (Friday, May 24, 2012, Front Page)

President Obama continued his effective dismantling of the strongest military in the world.  The U. S. military won World War II, engaged in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan attempting to show the world that democracy, freedom (of speech, religion and assemble)  and free enterprise created the most free, prosperous, moral country in the world history.  It has protected its friends and engaged its foes, not always with success, but "failures" came from political decision not military. 

While slowly withdrawing from the world scene militarily, the private, corporate sector is being pushed out front by the United States federal government with mandates, laws and regulations to step forward with its brand of morality: higher wages, more worker protections, product safety, environmental conservation, and similar endeavors.  At the same time the U. S. is selectively joining international bodies to promulgate additional rules and regulations and giving up national legislation for international.

Obama said: "This war [the so-called 'War on Terror'], like all wars, must end.  That's what history advises.  That's what our democracy demands."

WHAT CAN BE NEXT? II

If popular democracy doesn't work, for the reasons of which the Founding Fathers, authors of the U. S. Constitution and pundits of The Federalist Papers -- James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay -- deeply feared, then what can be next?

2013 is clearly not 1776.  Clearly.  Virtually everything is different.  Transportation. Communication.  Material Goods.  Manufacturing, distribution and retailing, not to mention the entire concept of free enterprise.  Freedom.  Religion.  Morals.  But given the differences, the failure of all forms of government to date, what can be next?

Socialism has been proven to be unobtainable since someone must manage the state -- anarchy also does not work -- and turns out that "someone" over history always seems to chose his individual power to keep and nourish, not that of the "people".  Communism is Socialism's analog in impossibility.  American representative democracy's inventive structural worked until communication became so open that the formerly-separated groups who couldn't easily communicate could.  And they did.  Initially as "Progressives" forming in power against the inaptly-named "Robber Baron" capitalists who had one way or another industrially built the industrial and financial power base of the country.  When the description "Progressive" came under fire the faction  morphed into the also inaptly named "Liberal".  A major component of their base came from union bosses who corralled workers into labor unions which promised better and richer working conditions.  Using government as a enabler, they delivered and the Democratic Party.......

But fast forward to 2013 and that party of the people has become the party of itself enduring only to endure.  It has scooped up myriad additional factions; the poor; minorities of all shades; abortion advocates; the secular religious; government-financed "activists" in the environmental, climate-change and inequality games.  The greatest faction is the federal government and its own perpetuation.  It and the Democratic Party are one and the same.  And that is where the breakdown in democracy started and is finishing.

When the party in power becomes the government then representative government is an illusion.  The Obama administration exists only to gain and retain power over the remaining minority of Americans.  While at this point May 18, 2013, this paragraph might be debatable, the recent scandals which were hidden by the Obama administration before the 2012 election are blooming in the light.  The seminal question is: will the Democratic Party roll through 2013 and retain power after the 2014 elections.  Time (only) will tell.

WHAT CAN BE NEXT?

Modern times have proven the folly of democracy, especially the populist kind which bestows on all -- deserving or not -- the right to vote without responsibility.  Since Teddy Roosevelt and cousin Franklin the now-proud Progressives (earlier tossed overboard for the misleading title "liberal") have successfully segregated factions, dealt individually with each in exchange for their votes and have won.  Factions include "labor" through its bosses, black-nosed peoples through their power- and publicity-mad overseers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton,  rich anti-Capitalism "environmentalists" and "activists" in general, vehement anti-male, pro-abortion "feminists", lawyers made rich through expanded tort laws, and the hugely powerful, but numerically tiny,  initialized community of LGBT -- the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender affinity group.

Everyone -- even the dead and immigrant -- gets to vote for the most attractive personality.  No longer is there any hint of Darwinian sorting, for example by experience or intelligence or knowledge or effectiveness.  Now it is popularity -- a rousing voice, a wide, friendly smile, a tall athletic body -- just feeling good about someone.  Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Obama come to mind.  Nose color in Obama's case to me was of utmost importance: "It is time".  Massive media and entertainment-industry propaganda is a significant part to be sure. 

But the vetting behind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms has been replaced by American Idol -- The President or Congressperson.

This very activity to me -- a libertarian Conservative who believes I can better manage my life and affairs as I want than can the arbitrary rules mandated by American Idol the President or the unelected, mostly-Progressive, government-protected bureaucracy.  We were supposed to have been granted by God certain individual rights, but with the elimination of God by the secular Progressives, from where can those rights come?  "We the People" are not capable of governing our own lives, we make "bad" decisions (as defined by Progressives), do "unsafe" things
 (as defined by Progressives), buy "poor" goods and services  (as defined by Progressives), believe the unscrupulous  (as defined by Progressives), and just lead lives unapproved by Progressives.

So after nearly 250 years of the noble experiment in government and society where each person is expected to lead a life he or she wants, it is failing or has failed.  The United States Government has become the centerpoint of all decision-making in our country.  Our individual freedom of choice has been replaced by the collective obeying of mandates, dictates and rules by the federal government. 

The fears of the Founding Fathers and authors or the seminal example of the Rule of Law: the United States Constitution have come true. 

What can be next?

One of two things.  Revolution a la 1776  or the First Civil War which will become the Second Civil War or an oppressive oligarchy or dictatorship. 

Tracing the movement of virtually EVERY law from inception to today and they follow a well-worn path of well-meaning answers to problems through more and more stringent regulations.  One law can not sunset after accomplishing its mission since a bureaucracy of support will have gathered behind it.  Jobs are at stake.  Money is at stake.  Power is at stake.  None are EVER given up -- or at lease rarely -- peacefully.  So where our federal government is today it will be larger and more oppressive to individual freedom tomorrow.  It is as inevitable as day and night, life and death.

What can be next? 

Power and the Second Civil War

Power. That is the goal. The Progressives know how to gain and retain it.  To them, nothing else counts. That goes for the Progressive media as well. Republicans are still caught up in right and wrong, individualism and capitalism-- political campaign-losing attributes. And they do lose.   A constant secular decline since the Presidents Roosevelt.  There you have the answer to most everything political in America today. 

The Progressives know how to use their power to gain even more power. The electorate for the most part is kept ignorant (after being made ignorant by a Progressive-leaning educational system) by a Progressive media and entertainment industry.   Voters are kept focused on abortion, gay stuff, the White Advantage and a hatred of the unfairness of  "profits" -- their measure of good (no profits) and bad (more profits) -- while the Progressive bureaucrats are strangling the so-called, now former, free markets with minute regulations over every breath we take. The electorate spouts "war on women", "rights", "fairness", "consumer protection" and so on, while their (our) very freedoms are constantly being stolen from us.  Our individual freedoms to make unwise decisions, buy what we want, get hurt and be imperfect are taken from us and given to the vast Progressive-government monstrosity to collectively administer over us. The Rule of Law -- where rights and wrongs are written down as laws to be followed by all of us (relatively) equally -- has been bypassed by spur-of-the-moment and wildly arbitrary "trust me it's for your own good" dictates mandated mostly by unelected, government-protected deeply-partisan human beings.   

It is over. The Second Civil War, bloodless at least, has been lost. Progressives have successfully segmented Americans into separate factions to gather a majority (something understood by our Founders who now-unsuccessfully attempted to diminish by a carefully-constructed political system).  Progressives now own the country.

Sadly.

http://www.periodictablet.com