Monday, February 29, 2016

How much would it cost to deport every single illegal alien in the U.S.?

February 29, 2016

The American Action Forum (AAF) found it would cost the federal government $400 to $600 billion to remove all illegal aliens currently living in the United States within a two year period and to prevent all future unlawful entry.
In its research paper, AAF examined the personnel and infrastructure implications of removing all 11.3 million illegal aliens in a two-year time frame. In order to remove all illegals, each each one would have to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported to their country of origin. In order to remove all illegals in two years, the U.S. government would have to expand each of those stages of the removal process.
The current annual budget for U.S. Customs and Border Protection is $13.5 billion. This does not include the costs of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies dealing with the costs of apprehending, detaining and processing illegals.
Based upon FY 2013 levels it would require:

Federal immigration apprehension personnel to increase from 4,844 positions to 90,582 positions;
The number of immigration detention beds to increase from 34,000 to 348,831;
The number of immigration courts to increase from 58 to 1,316;
The number of federal attorneys legally processing undocumented immigrants to increase from 1,430 to 32,445; and
A minimum of 17,296 chartered flights and 30,701 chartered bus trips each year.

The Federation for America Immigration Reform (FAIR) in a 2013 study estimates the annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level to be about $113 billion; nearly $29 billion at the federal level and $84 billion at the state and local level.
The study also estimates tax collections from illegal alien workers, both those in the above-ground economy and those in the underground economy. Those receipts do not come close to the level of expenditures and, in any case, are misleading as an offset because over time unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers would replace illegal alien workers.
Key Findings of the FAIR study:

Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level. The bulk of the costs — some $84 billion — are absorbed by state and local governments.
The annual outlay that illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers is an average amount per native-headed household of $1,117. The fiscal impact per household varies considerably because the greatest share of the burden falls on state and local taxpayers whose burden depends on the size of the illegal alien population in that locality
Education for the children of illegal aliens constitutes the single largest cost to taxpayers, at an annual price tag of nearly $52 billion. Nearly all of those costs are absorbed by state and local governments.
At the federal level, about one-third of outlays are matched by tax collections from illegal aliens. At the state and local level, an average of less than 5 percent of the public costs associated with illegal immigration is recouped through taxes collected from illegal aliens.
Most illegal aliens do not pay income taxes. Among those who do, much of the revenues collected are refunded to the illegal aliens when they file tax returns. Many are also claiming tax credits resulting in payments from the U.S. Treasury.

Read the FAIR full report here.
It appears from the two reports that the costs of deporting all illegals would be recouped in 4 to 6 years.
The AFF report notes that, “[I]n just two years it would shrink the labor force by 10.3 million workers and reduce real GDP by $1 trillion.” However, this does not take into account the reduction of payments to those not working by they government, who would now be able to back fill those jobs opened by the mass deportation of illegals.
Please leave your comments on this column. There are two options, the status quo or deportation. Which would be better for America and American workers?

Study: Huge Collbran landslide was triggered by event 10 hours earlier

The West Salt Creek landslide in 2014 killed 3 men and still poses danger

By Jesse Paul
The Denver Post

Posted: 02/29/2016 02:30:19 PM MSTAdd a Comment

An Aerial view of the Mesa County Mudslide from a plane flown by John Stanley The Mesa County Mudslide, which occurred on Sunday evening and is being measured in miles as opposed to merely feet, was photographed on Monday, May 26, 2014. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

A massive 2014 landslide in western Colorado was caused by a rainstorm over melting snowpack that triggered a series of earth movements that began 10 hours before the fatal disaster, a report released Monday shows.
"Our results revealed that the rock avalanche was a cascade of landslide events, rather than a single massive failure," said the study led by Jeffrey Coe, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The 2.8-mile long West Salt Creek landslide on the Grand Mesa killed three men on May 25, 2014, and was the longest such slide in Colorado history.
The report found the sequence that eventually led to the massive slide began with an early morning rockfall event that combined with a later earth failure.
The slide near the town of Collbran lasted about 3.5 minutes and sent a wall of debris rocketing down from the Grand Mesa.
"If precursor events, such as the one at West Salt Creek that occurred (before) the main avalanche, could be seismically detected and placed in the proper context, they could possibly be used for avalanche warnings," the report said.
The men who died in the slide had gone up to find out why irrigation water below the slope that gave way had stopped running.
Coe says that irrigation ditch had likely been plugged by the rockfall 10 hours before the main slide.
"To really be able to use that precursor event for warnings, we'd need a much more detailed seismic network than we have in the U.S.," Coe told The Denver Post.
Coe explained there are proposals for such systems in some landslide prone areas, but not on the scale needed to provide universal coverage.
"I think we're a ways off from any kind of dense network," he said. "That kind of infrastructure just isn't currently available and the cost would be very substantial."
In October, the Colorado Geological Survey said conditions remain at the West Salt Creek area that could prompt another disaster of comparable magnitude.
Worries of another catastrophe have persisted in the slide's wake, particularly in June, when heavy rains prompted warnings. The main risk, officials say, is in early spring as snowmelt travels down the slide area.
Water that has collected in a depression near the top of the slide has created a "sag pond," which continues to prompt fears among geologists of another catastrophe.

Car Wash scene from Cool Hand Luke

Government Is Not Compassion, Part 1

Column by Glen Allport, posted on July 08, 2002

Indeed, a hellish artifice was invented there, a horse of death, clattering in the finery of divine honors. Indeed, a dying for many was invented there, which praises itself as life: verily, a great service to all preachers of death! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, on the state¹

The single most damaging error of the modern age is the misperception of government as an agency of compassion. As a replacement for the "divine right of kings," this misperception has, for those in power, been an astonishing success. For the rest of mankind, it has frequently been a disaster beyond imagining.

Government is nothing more than structured, widespread coercion, and the idea that it can implement compassion for us by force is simply a vile and cunning lie. It is cunning because people are primed and willing, even desperate, to believe it. It is vile because government allows, facilitates, and encourages mass murder, widespread torture, needless famine, and every form of tyranny. No other tool than coercive government does this.

Everything people truly want and need can be provided without government coercion--and the market is far better at providing it. For instance, Yugo vs. Toyota. Bread lines (or starvation) vs. any American supermarket. Not a tough choice, one would think.

But again: for mass murder, widespread torture, needless famine, and systematic tyranny--for THOSE, one absolutely needs a government. The difference between not having a government to inflict power and having one, is literally the difference between Adolph Hitler as a nearly-insane, anti-Semitic housepainter, and Adolph Hitler as a nearly-insane, anti-Semitic German Chancellor. It's the difference between Charles Manson as the murderer of a handful, and Pol Pot as the murderer of perhaps two million.

Socialists and other statists have been wildly successful at selling government as a kind, caring, and protective parent figure, which provides for the citizens/children in response to their need. Statists have done this by constantly repeating the lie that coercive government's reason for taking people's money and running people's lives is to exercise compassion in one way or another.

Despite academic details and differences--alleged and real--among various forms of large, centralized government, much of the public apparently now sees large federal programs of any type in the same light that professing socialists see socialism--as expressions of concern and compassion, which no caring or sensible person could oppose. The bottom line is that if "government = compassion," then more government must be better--it must, in fact, be more compassionate--than less government.

One needn't be an Einstein to see where that puts libertarians in the public mind. For that matter, Einstein himself was a socialist, despite having fled the National Socialist regime in Germany--which illuminates a point we shall consider in another essay.

The socialist (or Democrat, or compassionate conservative, or Green, or whatnot) believes that where there is need, government must provide. In turn, this requires that government grow ever-larger, and for an obvious reason: We care about people. We care about children and the sick and the elderly. We care about endangered species. We care about the environment. We care about the poor.

Of course, with so much to care about, perhaps socialism isn't such a bad idea. Government clearly isn't large enough to help everyone now, and--it's halfway socialist already! So perhaps we should quit worrying about labels, stop being McCarthyites, have the courage to quit being shills for big business and the rich, and finally make the stretch to a progressive, truly compassionate form of government.

Don't laugh. Many of your neighbors are in full agreement with that paragraph.

My first thought for this essay was to simply reproduce the Contents page from Dr. R. J. Rummel's Death by Government (Transaction Publishers, 1994). For example, [Chapter 9] "2,035,000 murdered: The Hell State: Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge."

Professor Rummel estimates, based on more research into the subject than most human beings could probably withstand, that over 169,000,000 murders were perpetrated by governments in the first 87 years of the 20th century. Rummel has coined the term "democide" to describe any form of government murder, including genocide, politicide, murder of dissidents, murder for entertainment, etc.² One hundred sixty-nine million is more than the total democide Rummel could find in all of previous human history, which he estimates at 133,147,000. The many millions of battlefield dead are not included in either number. Note to "World Government" supporters: Bad as war is, it pales in comparison to the number of deaths inflicted by governments against their own helpless, unarmed citizens. Not, of course, that "World Government" would actually put a stop to war.

Back to government's primary historical function of mass murder: For the entire 20th century, Rummel believes governments may have murdered as many as 180 million or more--possibly many more. It is worth mentioning that he is not the only researcher to find such astonishing levels of mass murder by government; a group of Marxist researchers came to an estimate of roughly 100 million murders just by Communist governments in the 20th century; see The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press, 1999), page 4. The book's forward, titled "The Uses of Atrocity," makes clear that an almost incomprehensible level of cruelty was the major tool by which every Communist regime brought itself to power and worked to maintain that power. This cruelty was purposeful, calculated, and savage beyond anything resembling sanity, much less compassion.

Rummel's estimate of 180 million total government murders for the 20th century is:

· About the current population of England, France, and Germany combined

· Roughly three times the total 1999 population of California, the most populous state in the Union

· More than 134 times the current population of San Francisco

· Nearly 30 million more people than the total population of the United States in 1950

I don't believe such a number can be understood in human terms. Here is another try, however: A typical Super Bowl crowd is about 75,000; governments thus murdered the equivalent of 2,400 Super Bowl crowds in the past century (180,000,000/75,000)--or almost 5,000 murders, on average, every single day.

Whatever else we say about those numbers, we must also say this: They are real. They are well-documented, if necessarily imprecise--they may be high or low by several million souls. They represent actual human beings, murdered in cold blood.

Pause here a moment, please. Think about one person being murdered--hanged, shot in the back of the head, buried alive, or otherwise killed. Now try, really, to wrap your mind around this:

* One hundred million murders by Communist governments. Or this:

* One hundred and eighty million murders, by governments of all types.

In a future essay, we will consider why such an engine of mass murder could ever be seen as the wellspring of compassion, and how we might begin changing that perception.

Government is not compassion. Pass it on.

Notes

¹ "On the New Idol" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 1, translation by Walter Kauffmann.

² Dr. Rummel's website, with over 5,000 pages of searchable documentation, is at http://www2.hawaii.edu/powerkills/

There is much reference material available on this topic, not that anyone wants to see it. A single example: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang, Penguin Books, 1997. From the Introduction: "The Rape of Nanking should be remembered not only for the number of people slaughtered but for the cruel manner in which many met their deaths. Chinese men were used for bayonet practice and in decapitation contests. An estimated 20,000 - 80,000 Chinese women were raped." (Page 6) That paragraph continues at some length, and in horrendously graphic detail.

The carnage at Nanking was compressed into the space of only a few months: "Years later experts at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) estimated that more than 260,000 noncombatants died at the hands of Japanese soldiers at Nanking in late 1937 and early 1938, though some experts have placed the figure at well over 350,000." (ibid, Page 4) Iris Chang is not the only author to have written about the Nanking slaughter. A search at Amazon.com for "Nanking" will bring you several other books to choose from on the topic.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

7 Reasons Socialism Will Make You Poorer Than Capitalism

John Hawkins | Dec 04, 2012

Given what we know in 2012, saying that capitalism will make a society richer than socialism should be about as controversial as saying the earth is round, not flat. Yet, a recent Gallup poll shows that more liberals have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. This is only possible because there are so many perverse incentives that drive the promotion of socialism. If you're a politician, socialism puts power in your hands while capitalism takes it away. If you want to use the government to control people's lives, socialism is a wonderful vehicle to do just that while capitalism robs you of that opportunity. If you would rather live off the dole than to work or alternately, prefer to make money off "who you know" instead of "how good a service you provide," again socialism works better for you. Now take into account the fact that there are no pure socialist or capitalist economies left and it becomes very easy to muddy the water and keep people from realizing the obvious economic superiority of capitalism. 1) Socialism benefits the few at the expense of the many: Socialism is superior to capitalism in one primary way: It offers more security. It's almost like an extremely expensive insurance policy that dramatically cuts into your quality of life, but insures that if worse comes to worse, you won't drop below a very minimal lifestyle. For the vast majority of people, this would be a terrible deal. On the other hand, if you're lazy, completely incompetent or alternately, just have a streak of very bad luck, the meager benefits provided by socialism may be very appealing. So a socialist society forces the many to suffer in order to make it easier for the few. It's just as
Winston Churchill once noted, "The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." 2) Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship while socialism discourages it: A government in a capitalist economy can quite easily give everyone equality of opportunity with a few basic laws and regulations, but socialism strives to create equality of results. This should frighten people who value their freedom because ultimately, as F.A. Hayek has noted, "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." You can see this happening in America as our efforts to reduce "inequality" have led to an ever expanding government and a vast regulatory tangle that is almost unexplainable despite the fact that it is certainly enforceable. Capitalism encourages people to start a business and build a better life for themselves while socialism lays in wait with IRS agents, nooses made of red tape and meddling bureaucrats looking for businesses to control and loot.
3) Capitalism leads to innovation: Coming up with new products is often time consuming, expensive and hit or miss. Nine ideas may fail before that tenth one takes off. The less the creative people behind these ideas are allowed to benefit, the less time, money and effort they'll put into developing new concepts and inventions. Put another way, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward has to be to convince people to take it. Capitalism offers big rewards for productive people while socialism offers makers only a parade of bureaucratic leeches who want to take advantage of their "good fortune."
4) Capitalism produces more economic growth: Capitalism produces considerably more economic growth than socialism and as John Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all boats." A fast growing economy produces more jobs, more wealth and helps everyone. Many people assume that capitalism isn't working if there are still poor people, but that misses the point. In many parts of the world, poverty means living in a hut with a dirt floor while in America, most poor Americans have TVs, refrigerators and cell phones. The rich may take home a larger share of the pie in capitalism, but the poor also benefit tremendously from living in a growing, thriving economy.
5) Socialism is too slow to adapt: Capitalism is extremely good at allocating capital to where it's most valued. It has to be. Either you give people what they are willing to pay for or someone else will. On the other hand, socialism is slow and stupid for a variety of reasons. Because the government is spending someone else's money, it doesn’t get particularly concerned about losing money. Political concerns about appearances often trump the effectiveness of a program. Moreover, even if politicians and bureaucrats are intelligent and competent, which are big "ifs," they're simply not going to have the specific knowledge needed to make decisions that may impact thousands of different industries. This is why capitalism may have its share of troubles, but when there are really colossal economic screw-ups, you'll always find the government neck deep in the whole mess.
6) Socialism is inherently wasteful: Milton Friedman once said, "Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own." This is very true and it means that the more capital that is taken out of the economy and distributed, the more of it that will be wasted. The market does a considerably better job of allocating resources than the government because there are harsh penalties for failure. A company that makes products no one wants will go out of business. A poorly performing government program that wastes a hundred times more money will probably receive a bigger budget the next year.
7) Capitalism works in concert with human nature while socialism works against it: Ayn Rand said it well, "America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way," but Adam Smith said it better, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A man will work much harder to take care of himself, his family and his friends than he will to make money for the state, which will then waste most of it before redistributing it to people who aren't working as hard as the man who earned it in the first place.

The New Mind Control | Outside the Box Investment Newsletter | Mauldin Economics

The New Mind Control | Outside the Box Investment Newsletter

The New Mind Control

John Mauldin

February 26, 2016

In today’s Outside the Box, Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, warns us of a insidious and pervasive new form of mind control: search results.
That’s right, search results. And not just any search results: Google search results. Since 2013 Epstein and colleagues have conducted a number of experiments in the US and India to determine whether search results can impact people’s political opinions.
Epstein points out that about 50 percent of our clicks go to the top two items on the first page of results, and more than 90 percent of our clicks go to the 10 items listed. And of course Google, which dominates the search business, decides which of the billions of web pages to include in our search results, and it decides how to rank them.
But surely, Epstein thought, a top search result would have only a small impact on a person’s political choices. Not so! To Epstein’s surprise, in his initial experiment he found that the proportion of people favouring the (bogus, skewed) search engine’s top-ranked candidate increased by more than 48 percent! Also, 75 percent of the subjects in the study were completely unaware that they were viewing biased search rankings.
He conducted several more experiments, including one that involved more than 2,000 people from all 50 US states. In that experiment, the shift in voting preferences induced by the researchers was 37 percent, and as high as 80 percent in some demographic groups.
Epstein was still skeptical. He asked,

Could voting preferences be shifted with real voters in the middle of a real campaign? … In real elections, people are bombarded with multiple sources of information, and they also know a lot about the candidates. It seemed unlikely that a single experience on a search engine would have much impact on their voting preferences.

So off his team went to India. They arrived just before voting began in the largest democratic election in the world, to select the nation’s prime minister. They recruited 2,150 people from 27 of India’s 35 states and territories to participate in their experiment. (To take part, they had to be registered voters who had not yet voted and who were still undecided about how they would vote.)
Again, Epstein predicted that their manipulation of search results would produce only a very small effect, if any – but that’s not what happened. On average, the researchers were able to shift the proportion of people favoring any given candidate by more than 20 percent overall and by more than 60 percent in some demographic groups. In addition, 99.5 percent of participants showed no awareness that they were viewing biased search rankings.
So this was all quite surprising. Says Epstein:

We published a detailed report about our first five experiments … in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in August 2015. We had indeed found something important, especially given Google’s dominance over search. Google has a near-monopoly on internet searches in the US, with 83 per cent of Americans specifying Google as the search engine they use most often, according to the Pew Research Center. So if Google favours one candidate in an election, its impact on undecided voters could easily decide the election’s outcome.

But that’s a big “could.” I was skeptical, too. Would Google ever act so nefariously? Aren’t those Silicon Valley guys all live-and-let-die free-market Libertarians? And then I thought again. The presidency of the United States is a big deal. The president may not be all-powerful, but he (or maybe, in the near future, she) is about as close as it comes on this planet. And national elections – whether in this country or any other – have never exactly been squeaky clean. They have always been about big money, and in recent decades they have been about big media. Now, says Epstein, they are also about big data.
So let’s say Google decided that it was in the best interests of all concerned to do whatever it could to help us select our next president. How might it go about it? Says Epstein,

(I)f Google set about to fix an election, it could first dip into its massive database of personal information to identify just those voters who are undecided. Then it could, day after day, send customised rankings favouring one candidate to just those people. One advantage of this approach is that it would make Google’s manipulation extremely difficult for investigators to detect.

But it gets scarier – and a lot more real – when we remember that in the 2012 presidential election, Google and its top execs contributed more than $800,000 to Barack Obama and just $37,000 to Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, have you heard of The Groundwork? That would be the outfit that Quartz describes as “The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that’s working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House” – Eric Schmidt being the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
(Amusing sidebar: Google “the groundwork” and then click on the No. 1 result. That’s right, you get this:

Just one page. No links. Sinister? You betcha.)
There’s more – a lot more – to Epstein’s cautionary tale, so I’ll get out of the way and let him tell it.
But first, let me mention that although the Strategic Investment Conference (May 24-27 in Dallas) is sold out, we’re trying hard to find a way to accommodate a few more people without compromising the experience for those who have already registered. We have created a waiting list, and you can click on this link and pay a small fee (which is refundable) to get on it. Seriously, we expanded the room this year and thought we were fine – then we sold out in less than a month. I have friends calling me up and begging to get in. Believe me when I say we are trying, but there is a space issue. So even if we are BFF’s, get on that list! THEN call. The only way to be fair and to save my sanity is to do this on a first-come, first-served basis. The line is growing, so even though the conference is three months away, sign up NOW!
Your searching for answers analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS | Frontpage Mag

Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS

His real enemy isn’t the Caliph of ISIS, but the ordinary American.

November 18, 2015

Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Last year at a NATO summit, Obama explicitly disavowed the idea of containing ISIS. "You can't contain an organization that is running roughshod through that much territory, causing that much havoc, displacing that many people, killing that many innocents, enslaving that many women," he said.
Instead he argued, "The goal has to be to dismantle them."
Just before the Paris massacre, Obama shifted back to containment. “From the start, our goal has been first to contain them, and we have contained them,” he said.
Pay no attention to what he said last year. There’s a new message now. Last year Obama was vowing to destroy ISIS. Now he had settled for containing them. And he couldn’t even manage that.
ISIS has expanded into Libya and Yemen. It struck deep into the heart of Europe as one of its refugee suicide bombers appeared to have targeted the President of France and the Foreign Minister of Germany. That’s the opposite of a terrorist organization that had been successfully contained.
Obama has been playing tactical word games over ISIS all along. He would “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. Or perhaps dismantle the Islamic State. Or maybe just contain it.
Containment is closest to the truth. Obama has no plan for defeating ISIS. Nor is he planning to get one any time soon. There will be talk of multilateral coalitions. Drone strikes will take out key figures. And then when this impressive war theater has died down, ISIS will suddenly pull off another attack.
And everyone will be baffled at how the “defeated” terrorist group is still on the march.
The White House version of reality says that ISIS attacked Paris because it’s losing. Obama also claimed that Putin’s growing strength in Syria is a sign of weakness. Never mind that Putin has all but succeeded in getting countries that were determined to overthrow Assad to agree to let him stay.
Weakness is strength. Strength is weakness.
Obama’s failed wars occupy a space of unreality that most Americans associate with Baghdad Bob bellowing that there are no American soldiers in Iraq. (There are, according to the White House, still no American ground forces in Iraq. Only American forces in firefights on the ground in Iraq.)
There’s nothing new about any of this. Obama doesn’t win wars. He lies about them.
The botched campaign against ISIS is a replay of the disaster in Afghanistan complete with ridiculous rules of engagement, blatant administration lies and no plan for victory. But there can’t be a plan for victory because when Obama gets past the buzzwords, he begins talking about addressing root causes.
And you don’t win wars by addressing root causes. That’s just a euphemism for appeasement.
Addressing root causes means blaming Islamic terrorism on everything from colonialism to global warming. It doesn’t mean defeating it, but finding new ways to blame it on the West.
Obama and his political allies believe that crime can’t be fought with cops and wars can’t be won with soldiers. The only answer lies in addressing the root causes which, after all the prattling about climate change and colonialism, really come down to the Marxist explanation of inequality.
When reporters ask Obama how he plans to win the war, he smirks tiredly at them and launches into another condescending explanation about how the situation is far too complicated for anything as simple as bombs to work. Underneath that explanation is the belief that wars are unwinnable.
Obama knows that Americans won’t accept “war just doesn’t work” as an answer to Islamic terrorism. So he demonstrates to them that wars don’t work by fighting wars that are meant to fail.
In Afghanistan, he bled American soldiers as hard as possible with vicious rules of engagement that favored the Taliban to destroy support for a war that most of the country had formerly backed. By blowing the war, Obama was not only sabotaging the specific implementation of a policy he opposed, but the general idea behind it. His failed wars are meant to teach Americans that war doesn’t work.
The unspoken idea that informs his strategy is that American power is the root cause of the problems in the region. Destroying ISIS would solve nothing. Containing American power is the real answer.
Obama does not have a strategy for defeating ISIS. He has a strategy for defeating America.
Whatever rhetoric he tosses out, his actual strategy is to respond to public pressure by doing the least he can possibly do. He will carry out drone strikes, not because they’re effective, but because they inflict the fewest casualties on the enemy.
He may try to contain the enemy, not because he cares about ISIS, but because he wants to prevent Americans from “overreacting” and demanding harsher measures against the Islamic State. Instead of fighting to win wars, he seeks to deescalate them. If public pressure forces him to go beyond drones, he will authorize the fewest air strikes possible. If he is forced to send in ground troops, he will see to it that they have the least protection and the greatest vulnerability to ISIS attacks.
Just like in Afghanistan.
Obama would like ISIS to go away. Not because they engage in the ethnic cleansing, mass murder and mass rape of non-Muslims, but because they wake the sleeping giant of the United States.
And so his idea of war is fighting an informational conflict against Americans. When Muslim terrorists commit an atrocity to horrifying that public pressure forces him to respond, he lies to Americans. Each time his Baghdad Bob act is shattered by another Islamic terrorist attack, he piles on even more lies.
Any strategy that Obama offers against ISIS will consist of more of the same lies and word games. His apologists will now debate the meaning of “containment” and whether he succeeded in defining it so narrowly on his own terms that he can claim to have accomplished it. But it really doesn’t matter what his meaning of “containment” or “is” is. Failure by any other name smells just as terrible.
Obama responded to ISIS by denying it’s a threat. Once that stopped being a viable strategy, he began to stall for time. And he’s still stalling for time, not to beat ISIS, but to wait until ISIS falls out of the headlines. That has been his approach to all his scandals from ObamaCare to the IRS to the VA.
Lie like crazy and wait for people to forget about it and turn their attention to something else.
This is a containment strategy, but not for ISIS. It’s a containment strategy for America. Obama isn’t trying to bottle up ISIS except as a means of bottling up America. He doesn’t see the Caliph of the Islamic State as the real threat, but the average American who watches the latest beheading on the news and wonders why his government doesn’t do something about it. To the left it isn’t the Caliph of ISIS who starts the wars we ought to worry about, but Joe in Tennessee, Bill in California or Pete in Minnesota.
That is why Obama sounds bored when talking about beating ISIS, but heats up when the conversation turns to fighting Republicans. It’s why Hillary Clinton named Republicans, not ISIS, as her enemy.
The left is not interested in making war on ISIS. It is too busy making war on America.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

European ship headed to Asia to help rescue Rohingya (why you should care)

Just a reminder - it was his wise understanding of the refugee situation that helped launch Mr. Trump's campaign. If you know people who don't get it, send them articles about what is really going on in the world - like this one:

European ship headed to Asia to help rescue Rohingya (why you should care)

by Ann Corcoran
If you are saying to yourself, ho hum, this doesn't affect me, think again!
Rohingya Muslims by the tens of thousands are piling up in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia (both safe Muslim countries!) and we end up bringing thousands to America.

Rohingya at sea
It isn't just Syrians we should worry about. Rescued Rohingya are being resettled in the US by the thousands. They can't possibly be screened any better than Syrians!

You don't hear much about it because the Rohingya are slipped into your towns and cities right along with the Burmese Christians and other ethnic minorities and all are labelled simply Burmese. Last fall we learned that 13,000 Burmese Muslims were already in the US.
This is the rescue ship story which is really a ho hum story, but I'm mentioning it since we haven't talked much about Rohingya lately, although we have an entire category, here (185 previous posts), devoted to the subject.
From the International Business Times:
A rescue ship credited with saving thousands of migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea is to embark on a new mission in south-east Asia. The MY Phoenix, owned by charity Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), has been used to rescue almost 13,000 people making the perilous journey from north Africa and the Middle East to Europe.
But now its crew is sailing the 40-foot vessel to the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, where it will spend four weeks helping rescue Rohingya refugees. Last year tens of thousands of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh attempted dangerous sea crossings to reach Malaysia and Indonesia.
By all means, save them at sea, but resettle them in Muslim countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia!
About the photo: It is here in a story from May 2015. The story tells us about the latest round of violence between the Rohingya and the Buddhist Burmese and leaves you with this line (below) that gives the impression that all the deaths and displacement were on the Rohingya side of the ledger. It just isn't true!
We followed the conflict as it boiled up in 2012 and it started when Rohingya men raped and murdered a Buddhist girl! But, in the retelling, the pro-Muslim propagandists never tell you that! Buddhists were among the dead and homeless!
Clashes in 2012 between the state’s Buddhist community and Rohingya Muslims, a long-oppressed linguistic and ethnic minority in this majority Buddhist country, left hundreds dead and more than 140,000 people homeless.
Visit our 'Rohingya Reports' category. In 2013 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (testimony here) asked the US State Department to bring in more Rohingya (it is only 'fair,' they imply, since we have resettled so many Christians!). Doesn't it make enormous sense to bring in the centuries-old warring factions? Not!

0.02°C Temperature Rise Averted: The Vital Number Missing from the EPA’s “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet | Cato @ Liberty

0.02°C Temperature Rise Averted: The Vital Number Missing from the EPA’s “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet

By Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels

Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”

Last week, the Obama Administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a new set of proposed regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing U. S. power plants. The motivation for the EPA’s plan comes from the President’s desire to address and mitigate anthropogenic climate change.
We hate to be the party poopers, but the new regulations will do no such thing.
The EPA’s regulations seek to limit carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production in the year 2030 to a level 30 percent below what they were in 2005. It is worth noting that power plant CO₂ emissions already dropped by about 15% from 2005 to2012, largely, because of market forces which favor less-CO₂-emitting natural gas over coal as the fuel of choice for producing electricity. Apparently the President wants to lock in those gains and manipulate the market to see that the same decline takes place in twice the time. Nothing like government intervention to facilitate market inefficiency. But we digress.
The EPA highlighted what the plan would achieve in their “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet that accompanied their big announcement.
For some reason, they left off their Fact Sheet how much climate change would be averted by the plan. Seems like a strange omission since, after all, without the threat of climate change, there would be no one thinking about the forced abridgement of our primary source of power production in the first place, and the Administration’s new emissions restriction scheme wouldn’t even be a gleam in this or any other president’s eye.
But no worries. What the EPA left out, we’ll fill in.
Using a simple, publically-available, climate model emulator called MAGICC that was in part developed through support of the EPA, we ran the numbers as to how much future temperature rise would be averted by a complete adoption and adherence to the EPA’s new carbon dioxide restrictions*.
The answer? Less than two one-hundredths of a degree Celsius by the year 2100.
0.018°C to be exact.
We’re not even sure how to put such a small number into practical terms, because, basically, the number is so small as to be undetectable.
Which, no doubt, is why it’s not included in the EPA Fact Sheet.
It is not too small, however, that it shouldn’t play a huge role in every and all discussions of the new regulations.
*********
* Details and Additional Information about our Calculation
We have used the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC)—a simple climate model emulator that was, in part, developed through support of the EPA—to examine the climate impact of proposed regulations.
MAGICC version 6 is available as an on-line tool.
We analyzed the climate impact of the new EPA regulations by modifying future emissions scenarios that have been established by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to reflect the new EPA proposed emissions targets.
Specifically, the three IPCC scenarios we examined were the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) named RCP4.5, RCP 6.0 and RCP8.5. RCP4.5 is a low-end emissions pathway, RCP6.0 is more middle of the road, and RCP8.5 is a high-end pathway.
The emissions prescriptions in the RCPs are not broken down on a country by country basis, but rather are defined for country groupings. The U.S. is included in the OECD90 group.
To establish the U.S. emissions pathway within each RPC, we made the following assumptions:
1) U.S. carbon dioxide emissions make up 50 percent of the OECD90 carbon dioxide emissions.
2) Carbon dioxide emissions from electrical power production make up 40 percent of the total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Figure 1 shows the carbon dioxide emissions pathways of the original RCPs along with our determination within each of the contribution from U.S. electricity production.

Figure 1. Carbon dioxide emissions pathways defined in, or derived from, the original set of Representative Concentration pathways (RCPs), for the global total carbon dioxide emissions as well as for the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to U.S. electricity production.

As you can pretty quickly tell, the projected contribution of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production to the total global carbon dioxide emissions is vanishingly small.
The new EPA regulations apply to the lower three lines in Figure 1.
To examine the impact of the EPA proposal, we replace the emissions attributable to U.S. power plants in the original RCPs with targets defined in the new EPA regulations. We determined those targets to be (according to the EPA’s Regulatory Impacts Analysis accompanying the regulation), 0.4864 GtC in 2020 and 0.4653 GtC in 2030. Thereafter, the U.S. power plant emissions were held constant at the 2030 levels until they fell below those levels in the original RCP prescriptions (specifically, that occurred in 2060 in RPC4.5, 2100 in RCP6.0, and sometime after 2150 in RCP8.5).
We then used MAGICC to calculate the rise in global temperature projected to occur between now and the year 2100 when with the original RCPs as well as with the RCPs modified to reflect the EPA proposed regulations (we used the MAGICC default value for the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (3.0°C)).
The output from the six MAGICC runs is depicted as Figure 2.

Figure 2. Global average surface temperature anomalies, 2000-2100, as projected by MAGICC run with the original RCPs as well as with the set of RCPs modified to reflect the EPA 30% emissions reductions from U.S power plants.

In case you can’t tell the impact by looking at Figure 2 (since the lines are basically on top of one another), we’ve summarized the numbers in Table 1.

In Table 2, we quantify the amount of projected temperature rise that is averted by the new EPA regulations.

The rise in projected future temperature rise that is averted by the proposed EPA restrictions of carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants is less than 0.02°C between now and the end of the century assuming the IPCC’s middle-of-the-road future emissions scenario.
While the proposed EPA plan seeks only to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in practice, the goal is to reduce the burning of coal. Reducing the burning of coal will have co-impacts such as reducing other climatically active trace gases and particulate matter (or its precursors). We did not model the effects of changes in these co-species as sensitivity tests using MAGICC indicate the collective changes in these co-emissions are quite small and largely cancel each other out.

Pure Symbolism: EPA Chief: ‘We don’t have to prove that any reduction’ in CO2 makes a difference in ‘global warming’ | Climate Depot

Pure Symbolism: EPA Chief: ‘We don’t have to prove that any reduction’ in CO2 makes a difference in ‘global warming’

'We don't have to prove that any reduction will actually make a precipitous difference in and of itself'

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotFebruary 25, 2016 2:11 PM with 66 comments

Responding to the contention that if all Canadian oil sands production were stopped today it would only reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by one-tenth of one percent, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says it doesn’t matter that it wouldn’t make a difference. McCarthy: “You know what? We had that argument at the Supreme Court and we won decisively… We don’t have to prove that any reduction in and of itself will actually make a precipitous difference”.
REPORTER: “It’s one-tenth of one percent of global emissions. If production in the oil sands stopped today, it wouldn’t make a difference.”
ADMINISTRATOR GINA MCCARTHY: “You know what? You would do that with every single source of greenhouse gases, and we had that argument at the Supreme Court, and we won decisively. Which was that we don’t need to prove that every single source is going to stop greenhouse gas emissions, but if the attitude is that that’s the challenge for us, we will never stop global warming. We will never stop climate change. And, so that has just never been the case for EPA. We don’t have to prove that any reduction will actually make a precipitous difference in and of itself, but we have to admit that there is a lot of efforts need to be done to get at this issue, and it is that combined effort. But, every step, the first step– this is a marathon, and if you don’t take the first step, you ain’t getting nowhere baby.”
IHS Energy CERA Week
February 24, 2014

1804, Thomas Jefferson Defeats Charles Pinckney: The Significance Of The 12th Amendment – Guest Essayist: James Legee

1804, Thomas Jefferson Defeats Charles Pinckney: The Significance Of The 12th Amendment

1804, Thomas Jefferson Defeats Charles Pinckney: The Significance Of The 12th Amendment

The election of 1804 is markedly less significant than the “Revolution of 1800.” While the triumph of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans over Adams and Hamilton’s Federalist party is noted by Jefferson as an event that “will ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe,” 1804 failed to merit such hope for the future of humanity. It would, however, measure the ability of the new Constitution to remedy itself through the amendment process and lead us to questions on the nature of the executive branch and what representation in a republic means.
The election of 1800 proved that a peaceful transition of power from one political party to another was possible, but it brought to the fore a flaw in the new Constitution. Chiefly, it was unprepared to handle a political system in which parties existed. Prior to 1803 the electoral college cast ballots for candidates individually, that is to say, whoever got the most ballots became president, whoever received the next greatest amount was to be vice president. In the case of a tie, the House of Representatives was to decide. This had, in practice and theory, served the nation over the first two administrations.
In the midst of the ratification debate, Hamilton as Publius in Federalist 68 lauded the mode of electing the President, “[if] it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.” Hamilton goes on to discuss the way in which the republican nature of the Electoral College safeguards the Executive from intrigue domestic and insulates it from foreign influence. The presidency, dependent upon the people, would attract “characters preeminent for ability and virtue.” The rise of parties was so unexpected by the framers that the executive branch would be the first major reform.
In regards to electoral politics, the election of 1800 proved more sordid, with Jefferson and Aaron Burr tying for President. The Democratic-Republicans had intended Jefferson to be President and Burr as Vice President, but Federalists saw an opportunity to confound their rivals and perhaps install a president more easily swayed than Jefferson. As a consequence, the vote moved to the House of Representatives. There were 35 unsuccessful votes, when finally on February 17 of 1801 the 36th Ballot led to Jefferson’s election over Burr – with help from Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, given his valid doubts over Burr’s character. This bitter fight led to the same tensions that plagued the Adams/Jefferson administration, and would contribute to Hamilton and Burr’s fateful duel. Most significantly, it led directly to the passage of the 12^th Amendment.
In response to this gridlock in appointing the chief executive, as well as the resentment that grew out of the Adams/Jefferson and Jefferson/Burr tickets, the 12^th Amendment was proposed in the House in December of 1803 and ratified by the summer of 1804. Effectively, rather than vote for two candidates, with the highest recipient becoming president and second highest becoming vice president, the tickets were separated. Electors voted for a presidential candidate, then cast a second vote specifically for a vice presidential candidate. Additionally, it narrowed the pool of candidates electors could vote for in the event no candidate received a majority from 5 to 3. The same qualifications already in Article II for executive and for electors still applied. Today, this is all fairly straightforward and unchanged from 1804, when the new system successfully brought President Jefferson and Vice President George Clinton to a second term of office.
The 12^th Amendment does not seem to bring very much to bear on the course of American governance; it appears at first blush a procedural change to accommodate the rise of parties. However, at closer examination, two fundamental questions arise. The first is the role of the vice president and republicanism in presidential elections. Federalist 68, one of the only to mention the vice president, Hamilton contends that the office should attract an “extraordinary person,” given the role as President of the Senate and potential successor to the President. Outside of these two tasks though, what role does the vice president play? This is not clearly defined by the Constitution, but let’s consider Hamilton’s exhortation that the mode of election be republican and dependent upon the people. Before the 12^th Amendment, the vice president could have served as a representative of the minority view in the executive. In fact, Jefferson wrote of the Vice Presidency in a 1797 letter to Eldridge Gerry, “those who may endeavor to separate us, are probably excited by the fear that I might have influence on the executive councils; but when they shall know that I consider my office as constitutionally confined to legislative functions…” Jefferson opposes the idea of the Vice President as a partisan foil to the President, but it is illustrative that the idea existed prior to 1800.
We see, in part here, the defect of the Convention in not better anticipating partisanship both among the political class and among the citizenry. The vice president, as the office was originally appointed, could have served as a voice for the minority in the executive branch. As a consequence of the 12^th Amendment, to some extent, this is lost. Given the life appointments of the Supreme Court, and the reflective nature of the legislature being appointed by state governments and directly chosen by the people, all principles of the people are manifest. The executive branch, while tempered in government by checks and balances, is in effect, a reflection of only majority will of the people. Every other branch of government is more reflective of the people themselves. Is the presidency republican if the minority is not represented? Certainly the hope for an impartial executive that represents the whole of the people has only remained a hope, and to some, would in fact be a dereliction to the majority. Conversely, should something happen to the President, is it republican that the representative of the minority take control of the executive branch?
A second major consequence of the 12^th Amendment is the rise of parties and unintentional support of a two-party system. The vice president became an electoral tool for parties to build coalition support for a ticket, rather than find Hamilton’s “extraordinary person.” The second name on the ticket is useful in building regional coalitions, and as America’s demographics shift, could be useful in mobilizing demographic blocks. However, the need to build a broader base of support can act as a moderating influence, much in the way a split administration suggested above could. Indeed, it is likely a better solution, as an executive that fails to function could harm public faith in government, as much as an overzealous executive.
In limiting the option of electors from 5 to 3 in the event of no candidates receiving a majority of votes, the 12^th Amendment helps to constrain America’s political system to two parties. The two-party system is confounding to Americans who possess beliefs somewhat outside of the mainstream; Greens, Libertarians, etc. It lends itself to an executive branch reflective of the majority, but in republican government, is this necessarily a flaw? In order to protect the rights of both the majority and minority from passions inflamed by circumstance, does there not need to be a distillation of extremes – Libertarians siding with Conservatives, Progressives with Democrats – to keep the system running, sensitive to the desires of the minority of Americans, but reflective of the majority?
The election of 1804, and the success of the 12^th Amendment, has aided in the survival of the American Republic for nearly 240 years. Questions of how active, and how reflective, we want the executive may remain, but we are perhaps well served by the efforts of the Founders to alleviate the impact passion has on the execution of the law.
- See more at: http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/1804-thomas-jefferson-defeats-charles-pinckney-the-significance-of-the-12th-amendment-guest-essayist-james-legee/#sthash.sQx27wum.dpuf

The election of 1804 is markedly less significant than the “Revolution of 1800.” While the triumph of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans over Adams and Hamilton’s Federalist party is noted by Jefferson as an event that “will ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe,” 1804 failed to merit such hope for the future of humanity. It would, however, measure the ability of the new Constitution to remedy itself through the amendment process and lead us to questions on the nature of the executive branch and what representation in a republic means.

The election of 1800 proved that a peaceful transition of power from one political party to another was possible, but it brought to the fore a flaw in the new Constitution. Chiefly, it was unprepared to handle a political system in which parties existed. Prior to 1803 the electoral college cast ballots for candidates individually, that is to say, whoever got the most ballots became president, whoever received the next greatest amount was to be vice president. In the case of a tie, the House of Representatives was to decide. This had, in practice and theory, served the nation over the first two administrations.
In the midst of the ratification debate, Hamilton as Publius in Federalist 68 lauded the mode of electing the President, “[if] it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.” Hamilton goes on to discuss the way in which the republican nature of the Electoral College safeguards the Executive from intrigue domestic and insulates it from foreign influence. The presidency, dependent upon the people, would attract “characters preeminent for ability and virtue.” The rise of parties was so unexpected by the framers that the executive branch would be the first major reform.
In regards to electoral politics, the election of 1800 proved more sordid, with Jefferson and Aaron Burr tying for President. The Democratic-Republicans had intended Jefferson to be President and Burr as Vice President, but Federalists saw an opportunity to confound their rivals and perhaps install a president more easily swayed than Jefferson. As a consequence, the vote moved to the House of Representatives. There were 35 unsuccessful votes, when finally on February 17 of 1801 the 36th Ballot led to Jefferson’s election over Burr – with help from Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, given his valid doubts over Burr’s character. This bitter fight led to the same tensions that plagued the Adams/Jefferson administration, and would contribute to Hamilton and Burr’s fateful duel. Most significantly, it led directly to the passage of the 12^th Amendment.
In response to this gridlock in appointing the chief executive, as well as the resentment that grew out of the Adams/Jefferson and Jefferson/Burr tickets, the 12^th Amendment was proposed in the House in December of 1803 and ratified by the summer of 1804. Effectively, rather than vote for two candidates, with the highest recipient becoming president and second highest becoming vice president, the tickets were separated. Electors voted for a presidential candidate, then cast a second vote specifically for a vice presidential candidate. Additionally, it narrowed the pool of candidates electors could vote for in the event no candidate received a majority from 5 to 3. The same qualifications already in Article II for executive and for electors still applied. Today, this is all fairly straightforward and unchanged from 1804, when the new system successfully brought President Jefferson and Vice President George Clinton to a second term of office.
The 12^th Amendment does not seem to bring very much to bear on the course of American governance; it appears at first blush a procedural change to accommodate the rise of parties. However, at closer examination, two fundamental questions arise. The first is the role of the vice president and republicanism in presidential elections. Federalist 68, one of the only to mention the vice president, Hamilton contends that the office should attract an “extraordinary person,” given the role as President of the Senate and potential successor to the President. Outside of these two tasks though, what role does the vice president play? This is not clearly defined by the Constitution, but let’s consider Hamilton’s exhortation that the mode of election be republican and dependent upon the people. Before the 12^th Amendment, the vice president could have served as a representative of the minority view in the executive. In fact, Jefferson wrote of the Vice Presidency in a 1797 letter to Eldridge Gerry, “those who may endeavor to separate us, are probably excited by the fear that I might have influence on the executive councils; but when they shall know that I consider my office as constitutionally confined to legislative functions…” Jefferson opposes the idea of the Vice President as a partisan foil to the President, but it is illustrative that the idea existed prior to 1800.
We see, in part here, the defect of the Convention in not better anticipating partisanship both among the political class and among the citizenry. The vice president, as the office was originally appointed, could have served as a voice for the minority in the executive branch. As a consequence of the 12^th Amendment, to some extent, this is lost. Given the life appointments of the Supreme Court, and the reflective nature of the legislature being appointed by state governments and directly chosen by the people, all principles of the people are manifest. The executive branch, while tempered in government by checks and balances, is in effect, a reflection of only majority will of the people. Every other branch of government is more reflective of the people themselves. Is the presidency republican if the minority is not represented? Certainly the hope for an impartial executive that represents the whole of the people has only remained a hope, and to some, would in fact be a dereliction to the majority. Conversely, should something happen to the President, is it republican that the representative of the minority take control of the executive branch?
A second major consequence of the 12^th Amendment is the rise of parties and unintentional support of a two-party system. The vice president became an electoral tool for parties to build coalition support for a ticket, rather than find Hamilton’s “extraordinary person.” The second name on the ticket is useful in building regional coalitions, and as America’s demographics shift, could be useful in mobilizing demographic blocks. However, the need to build a broader base of support can act as a moderating influence, much in the way a split administration suggested above could. Indeed, it is likely a better solution, as an executive that fails to function could harm public faith in government, as much as an overzealous executive.
In limiting the option of electors from 5 to 3 in the event of no candidates receiving a majority of votes, the 12^th Amendment helps to constrain America’s political system to two parties. The two-party system is confounding to Americans who possess beliefs somewhat outside of the mainstream; Greens, Libertarians, etc. It lends itself to an executive branch reflective of the majority, but in republican government, is this necessarily a flaw? In order to protect the rights of both the majority and minority from passions inflamed by circumstance, does there not need to be a distillation of extremes – Libertarians siding with Conservatives, Progressives with Democrats – to keep the system running, sensitive to the desires of the minority of Americans, but reflective of the majority?
The election of 1804, and the success of the 12^th Amendment, has aided in the survival of the American Republic for nearly 240 years. Questions of how active, and how reflective, we want the executive may remain, but we are perhaps well served by the efforts of the Founders to alleviate the impact passion has on the execution of the law.
- See more at: http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/1804-thomas-jefferson-defeats-charles-pinckney-the-significance-of-the-12th-amendment-guest-essayist-james-legee/#sthash.sQx27wum.dpuf

1804, Thomas Jefferson Defeats Charles Pinckney: The Significance Of The 12th Amendment – Guest Essayist: James Legee

- See more at: http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/1804-thomas-jefferson-defeats-charles-pinckney-the-significance-of-the-12th-amendment-guest-essayist-james-legee/#sthash.sQx27wum.dpuf

Confessions of a Colorado Conservative

Monday, February 29, 2016

How much would it cost to deport every single illegal alien in the U.S.?

How much would it cost to deport every single illegal alien in the U.S.?

Study: Huge Collbran landslide was triggered by event 10 hours earlier

Study: Huge Collbran landslide was triggered by event 10 hours earlier

The West Salt Creek landslide in 2014 killed 3 men and still poses danger

Car Wash scene from Cool Hand Luke

Government Is Not Compassion, Part 1

Government Is Not Compassion, Part 1

Sunday, February 28, 2016

7 Reasons Socialism Will Make You Poorer Than Capitalism

7 Reasons Socialism Will Make You Poorer Than Capitalism

The New Mind Control | Outside the Box Investment Newsletter | Mauldin Economics

The New Mind Control

Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS | Frontpage Mag

Obama Wants to Defeat America, Not ISIS

His real enemy isn’t the Caliph of ISIS, but the ordinary American.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

European ship headed to Asia to help rescue Rohingya (why you should care)

0.02°C Temperature Rise Averted: The Vital Number Missing from the EPA’s “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet | Cato @ Liberty

0.02°C Temperature Rise Averted: The Vital Number Missing from the EPA’s “By the Numbers” Fact Sheet

Pure Symbolism: EPA Chief: ‘We don’t have to prove that any reduction’ in CO2 makes a difference in ‘global warming’ | Climate Depot

Pure Symbolism: EPA Chief: ‘We don’t have to prove that any reduction’ in CO2 makes a difference in ‘global warming’

1804, Thomas Jefferson Defeats Charles Pinckney: The Significance Of The 12th Amendment – Guest Essayist: James Legee

1804, Thomas Jefferson Defeats Charles Pinckney: The Significance Of The 12th Amendment – Guest Essayist: James Legee

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