How do you get an average global temperature when there are only eight thermometers in Antarctica?

 

This is an extremely important video.

When the American Physical Society, of which he was a long-time member, announced that the evidence for global warming was “incontrovertible,” Nobel Laureate  Ivar Giaever resigned.

“The only answer to that,” says Giaever, was that “I resigned.”

“Global warming has really become a new religion, because you can’t discuss it, ” says Giaever “It’s like the Catholic Church. There are a lot of incontrovertible truths in the Catholic Church, I’m sure.”

See it Here

How do you get an average temperature when there are only eight thermometers at the South Pole?

__________________________________________________________________________

On Firearms, Reporting Obscures the Truth (Powerlineblog.com)

Posted on August 23, 2015 by John Hinderaker in gun control

 

There is no subject on which reporting is so consistently poor as firearms. Most reporters are anti-gun; as a result, even when reporting is not overtly biased it is generally so murky as to obscure rather than reveal basic facts. A case in point is this Minneapolis Star Tribune story with the ambiguous headline: “As gun-carrying permits reach historic levels in Minnesota, related crimes remain in check.” Which I guess is another way of saying that crime rates haven’t risen.

The article notes that there are now 200,000 carry permit holders in Minnesota, or around five percent of the adult population. It also points out that 19% of permit holders are women. In Minnesota, as in a number of other states, carry laws have been liberalized by requiring local authorities to issue permits to applicants who are not disqualified by virtue of, e.g., a felony conviction. The result has been a steep increase in the number of permit holders since the law was changed in 2003.

Whether this has been a good thing or a bad thing is what readers of the article want to know, but the Strib reporter isn’t telling:

Opponents had feared that the law would lead to a surge in shootings and gun deaths. But Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data show that fatalities involving permit holders are rare. In the past five years, there have been five deadly or nonlethal instances of justifiable use of a firearm by permit holders.

“Deadly or nonlethal” would include all firearm usage, so there must have been more than five instances. In any event, all five instances described in the article are cases of self-defense, and none led to charges against the permit holder. Still, the vagueness continues:

The debate over carrying guns has varied little since permit-to-carry laws became the norm more than a decade ago. Both sides can present statistics and reports to prove their points.

Well, not really. When shall-carry legislation was enacted by the Minnesota legislature in 2003, liberals unanimously predicted that it would lead to a bloodbath. Violent crime, they told us, would skyrocket. But it didn’t happen; on the contrary, the incidence of homicide and other violent crimes dropped steadily.

In the five years ending in 2003, the homicide rate in Minnesota averaged 2.6 per 100,000. In the ten years since the law was liberalized, the rate has averaged 2.0 per 100,000, a 23% decline. Moreover, the rate has dropped further as more carry permits have been issued. In the last five years, the rate has averaged only 1.7 per 100,000, a 35% reduction compared with the 1999-2003 average.

This isn’t opinion, it is arithmetic. The liberals were wrong. Yet it is rare to see this basic fact acknowledged in news reports. The Strib says that “both sides can present statistics and reports to prove their points.” We know what the statistics are on the pro-gun side, and they appear to be conclusive. So what can the anti-gun side offer?

Meanwhile, research by the Violence Policy Center in Washington found that individuals with permits to carry handguns in public have been responsible for at least 568 fatal non-self-defense shootings since 2007. Twenty-nine of those incidents were mass shootings (with three or more victims), resulting in the deaths of 139 victims. And since May 2007, at least 17 law enforcement officers have died at the hands of killers with permits to carry.

The calculation to which the reporter refers is here. I have no idea how accurate the Violence Policy Center’s count is, but the “568 fatal non-defense shootings” include 222 suicides. Does the remainder–346 instances from 2007 to the present, if we take the report at face value–constitute a large number or a small number? It works out to 43 incidents per year in a country where, the same article tells us, there are now 13 million permit holders. This is an astonishingly low rate of .0000033, or .33 per 100,000.

The anti-gun case continues with bare assertion rather than argument, let alone data:

When proponents campaigned for the state’s permit-to-carry measure, they argued that being able to carry a loaded gun in public would deter crime, said Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, a gun safety and education group. She doesn’t buy it, saying permit standards aren’t strong enough because people who have multiple DWIs can receive one.

“People behave differently when they have a gun,” she said. “If you are trying to keep people safe, you don’t make guns easily accessible.”

What about that 35% drop in the homicide rate? No comment.

Firearms are not the only topic on which our news media would rather obfuscate facts than explicate them, but they are an obvious example of that phenomenon.

Singapore Tax Calculator

 

http://www.guidemesingapore.com/taxation/topics/singapore-tax-calculator

Data You Entered

Currency you want to use to input your data: SGD

Annual net corporate profit for your company: 0

Annual personal income from salary: 100,000

Annual personal income from Capital Gains: 10,000

Country to use for comparison: United States

Estimation of Your Taxes and Take Home Income

Based on the information you have provided, here are your estimated taxes. Please review the assumptions listed at the bottom of this page that have been made while performing this calculation.

Item
Singapore
(in SGD)
United States
(in SGD)

Total estimated tax you will pay to tax authorities
7,100
22,225

Total estimated after-tax take home income for you
102,900
87,775

Exchange rates used:

• 1 SGD = 0.7228 USD

Notes and Assumptions

• Total estimated tax includes corporate tax, dividend tax, capital gains tax, and personal income tax. It's the total estimated tax that you will pay both at the corporate as well as personal tax levels.
• The Tax Estimator assumes that you and your company are tax residents of the respective country for which the tax amount is being calculated.
• While general tax rates and tax exemptions have been taken into account for each country, esoteric tax rules such as short-term tax breaks, industry specific tax incentives, state/local level taxes imposed, etc. that may be applicable in a given country have not been taken into consideration.
• This Tax Estimator should be used as a rough estimation tool for general guidance only. A tax professional should be consulted for proper tax advise, tax planning and tax preparation. While care has been taken to estimate the taxes as accurately as possible, no responsibility is taken by GuideMeSingapore for any errors or for any loss, however occasioned, to any person by reliance on this calculator.

Going Green

This is priceless!!!!

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags,because plastic bags are not good for the environment.

The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a r azor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off... Especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can't make change without the cash register telling them how much.

--

Hillary's Shortsighted Capital Gains Proposal (American Thinker)

 

By Jeffrey Folks

Unlike Hillary Clinton, I have no idea whether short-term trading is good or bad for markets.  I do know that government has no business regulating it.

Under a plan put forward last week, Clinton would double capital gains taxes on assets held less than five years.  The proposed scheme would tax gains on assets held less than two years at 39.6% (plus an additional 3.8% tax for high earners included under Obamacare).  Assets held more than two years would be taxes at between 20% and 39.6%.  Even a three-year holding period would be subject to a 36% tax. 

Although this proposal would apply only to high earners at this time, bracket creep would eventually subject many middle-class taxpayers to the higher tax.  And all Americans would lose as a result of the distortion of markets resulting from Hillary’s proposal.

The rationale for this revamp of capital gains rates is to force companies to seek long-term growth by forcing investors to take long-term stakes in companies.  Yet there is no consensus that increasing capital gains taxes would have any effect on corporate behavior.  With average tenure of less than five years, corporate CEOs are always going to strive to meet what Hillary calls “short-term” performance goals.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Allowing an underperforming management team five years or more to carry on, as Hillary appears to suggest, won’t do investors or workers any good.  Free markets exist so that investors can vote not just with their proxies, but with their feet.  The freedom to shift capital from underperforming companies to better ones is essential to the operation of capitalism.

Clinton’s capital gains proposal, if enacted, would reduce short-term trading and even trading that is not now considered short-term (selling a stock or fund after three years or even one year is hardly “short-term”).  A five-year threshold would force most investors to hold assets for long periods of time regardless of performance or to move toward indexing so as to postpone most capital gains altogether.  It appears that Hillary’s advisors have not thought through the unintended consequences of this change.

Hillary’s proposal is proof of the lengths to which progressives would go to impose control on free markets.  In her July 24 speech, Hillary attacked “short-termism” on the part of CEOs who strive to meet quarterly goals – presumably merely for the nefarious purpose of increasing their own compensation.  What Ms. Clinton fails to mention is the fact that public corporations have always set long-term goals and published them in annual and quarterly reports subject to SEC oversight.  Any CEO who failed to set long-term goals and seriously attempt to meet them would be out of a job.

Since Hillary and her husband have received tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees and foundation contributions from these selfsame corporations, she must be aware of the fact that corporations do already set long-term goals.  Why then would she employ such demagoguery in attacking corporations for “short-termism”?  Presumably, merely to advance her own campaign.

There are several major objections to Hillary’s capital gains proposal.  First, government has no business attempting to micromanage equity markets or to steer the behavior of CEOs toward particular ends.  Whenever government attempts such control, as it has many times in the past, the result is counterproductive.  In the financial crisis of 2008-2009, which resulted from government intrusion in mortgage markets, the result was a global economic collapse.

Certainly, the imposition of higher capital gains taxes would deter trading on the part of investors.  But would a reduction in trading translate into a greater emphasis on long-term thinking on the part of CEOs?

CEOs would still be under pressure to increase profits and revenues on a quarterly and annual basis, just as they have been from time immemorial.  Whether the standard of measurement is one quarter, one year, or five years, it is obvious that some standard must exist.  For progressives like Hillary Clinton, the problem is not really short-termism, but capitalism itself.  That’s why, in the same address in which she proposed doubling capital gains taxes, she promised to increase the role of labor organizing and increase minimum wages.  Decisions that should be left to the markets are to be taken over by Soviet-style central planners.

Hillary’s capital gains proposal would also result in the creation of markets in which assets would become significantly mispriced.  A reluctance to trade when assets become overvalued or undervalued creates pent up mispricing that can result in greater than normal volatility.  Curbs on trading pose a serious danger to financial markets.  The use of tax policy to dissuade investors from trading would not make markets safer, as Hillary would have us believe.  It would increase the likelihood of financial instability.

Yet another unintended consequence of Hillary’s half-baked proposal would be a reduction in government revenues from capital gains.  While it appears that her plan would increase revenues (for the purpose of funding ever greater expansion of government, particularly in the areas of health care and education), the actual effect of capital gains increases has always been to reduce revenues.  A large body of research exists, some of it conducted by Dr. Arthur Laffer, demonstrating that the effect of increased capital gains taxation is to dampen trading so as to reduce government revenues.  Investors will simply hold onto their positions rather than submit to tax rates of 43.4%, plus state and local taxes.

It is investors themselves, including activist investors, who bring about desirable changes in CEO behavior.  By moving funds out of underperforming companies, investors signal the need for change in management.  By inhibiting trading, Hillary’s proposal would forestall this outcome and so make it more difficult to change behavior of CEOs whose conduct is not aligned with the interests of investors and workers.

The best medicine for the markets is not more regulation and taxes.  It is to allow markets to function as they were intended.  Hillary seems to be so eager to establish her progressive credentials that she has lost sight of how markets operate.  In other words, she’s more interested in winning the Democratic nomination for president than she is in creating economic prosperity for American investors and workers.  Now that’s what I call “short-termism.”

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books on American politics and culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Unlike Hillary Clinton, I have no idea whether short-term trading is good or bad for markets.  I do know that government has no business regulating it.

Under a plan put forward last week, Clinton would double capital gains taxes on assets held less than five years.  The proposed scheme would tax gains on assets held less than two years at 39.6% (plus an additional 3.8% tax for high earners included under Obamacare).  Assets held more than two years would be taxes at between 20% and 39.6%.  Even a three-year holding period would be subject to a 36% tax. 

Although this proposal would apply only to high earners at this time, bracket creep would eventually subject many middle-class taxpayers to the higher tax.  And all Americans would lose as a result of the distortion of markets resulting from Hillary’s proposal.

The rationale for this revamp of capital gains rates is to force companies to seek long-term growth by forcing investors to take long-term stakes in companies.  Yet there is no consensus that increasing capital gains taxes would have any effect on corporate behavior.  With average tenure of less than five years, corporate CEOs are always going to strive to meet what Hillary calls “short-term” performance goals.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Allowing an underperforming management team five years or more to carry on, as Hillary appears to suggest, won’t do investors or workers any good.  Free markets exist so that investors can vote not just with their proxies, but with their feet.  The freedom to shift capital from underperforming companies to better ones is essential to the operation of capitalism.

Clinton’s capital gains proposal, if enacted, would reduce short-term trading and even trading that is not now considered short-term (selling a stock or fund after three years or even one year is hardly “short-term”).  A five-year threshold would force most investors to hold assets for long periods of time regardless of performance or to move toward indexing so as to postpone most capital gains altogether.  It appears that Hillary’s advisors have not thought through the unintended consequences of this change.

Hillary’s proposal is proof of the lengths to which progressives would go to impose control on free markets.  In her July 24 speech, Hillary attacked “short-termism” on the part of CEOs who strive to meet quarterly goals – presumably merely for the nefarious purpose of increasing their own compensation.  What Ms. Clinton fails to mention is the fact that public corporations have always set long-term goals and published them in annual and quarterly reports subject to SEC oversight.  Any CEO who failed to set long-term goals and seriously attempt to meet them would be out of a job.

Since Hillary and her husband have received tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees and foundation contributions from these selfsame corporations, she must be aware of the fact that corporations do already set long-term goals.  Why then would she employ such demagoguery in attacking corporations for “short-termism”?  Presumably, merely to advance her own campaign.

There are several major objections to Hillary’s capital gains proposal.  First, government has no business attempting to micromanage equity markets or to steer the behavior of CEOs toward particular ends.  Whenever government attempts such control, as it has many times in the past, the result is counterproductive.  In the financial crisis of 2008-2009, which resulted from government intrusion in mortgage markets, the result was a global economic collapse.

Certainly, the imposition of higher capital gains taxes would deter trading on the part of investors.  But would a reduction in trading translate into a greater emphasis on long-term thinking on the part of CEOs?

CEOs would still be under pressure to increase profits and revenues on a quarterly and annual basis, just as they have been from time immemorial.  Whether the standard of measurement is one quarter, one year, or five years, it is obvious that some standard must exist.  For progressives like Hillary Clinton, the problem is not really short-termism, but capitalism itself.  That’s why, in the same address in which she proposed doubling capital gains taxes, she promised to increase the role of labor organizing and increase minimum wages.  Decisions that should be left to the markets are to be taken over by Soviet-style central planners.

Hillary’s capital gains proposal would also result in the creation of markets in which assets would become significantly mispriced.  A reluctance to trade when assets become overvalued or undervalued creates pent up mispricing that can result in greater than normal volatility.  Curbs on trading pose a serious danger to financial markets.  The use of tax policy to dissuade investors from trading would not make markets safer, as Hillary would have us believe.  It would increase the likelihood of financial instability.

Yet another unintended consequence of Hillary’s half-baked proposal would be a reduction in government revenues from capital gains.  While it appears that her plan would increase revenues (for the purpose of funding ever greater expansion of government, particularly in the areas of health care and education), the actual effect of capital gains increases has always been to reduce revenues.  A large body of research exists, some of it conducted by Dr. Arthur Laffer, demonstrating that the effect of increased capital gains taxation is to dampen trading so as to reduce government revenues.  Investors will simply hold onto their positions rather than submit to tax rates of 43.4%, plus state and local taxes.

It is investors themselves, including activist investors, who bring about desirable changes in CEO behavior.  By moving funds out of underperforming companies, investors signal the need for change in management.  By inhibiting trading, Hillary’s proposal would forestall this outcome and so make it more difficult to change behavior of CEOs whose conduct is not aligned with the interests of investors and workers.

The best medicine for the markets is not more regulation and taxes.  It is to allow markets to function as they were intended.  Hillary seems to be so eager to establish her progressive credentials that she has lost sight of how markets operate.  In other words, she’s more interested in winning the Democratic nomination for president than she is in creating economic prosperity for American investors and workers.  Now that’s what I call “short-termism.”

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books on American politics and culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Americans now know: More guns = less crime

 

By John R. Lott Jr.

July 27, 2015

Americans are increasingly convinced that owning a gun makes them safer.

A new Rasmussen poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans (68%) "feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed." And a series of polls by Gallup, the Pew Research Center and ABC News and The Washington Post show similar results.

But it isn't just what people say. They are clearly putting more stock in self-defense. Since 2007, the number of concealed-handgun permits has soared, from 4.6 million to 12.8 million. A new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that a record 1.7 million permits have been issued in just the past year, a 15.4% increase.

Nationwide, 5.2% of adults have a permit.

But in five states, more than 10% of adults now have concealed-carry permits. In some counties around the United States, more than one in five adults are licensed to carry. In much of the country, someone among theater-goers or restaurant customers is likely to be legally carrying a permitted concealed handgun.

But even these numbers don't do full justice to the change that has taken place.

Recently, Maine became the 10th state to allow concealed carrying without a permit in all or almost all of the state. Kansas and Mississippi also made the change on July 1. In these states, we no longer know how many people are legally carrying guns, and thus the 12.8 million figure is clearly an underestimation.

Women increasingly carry guns and hold more than a quarter of concealed-handgun permits. Since 2007, the number of permits among men has grown by 156%, and among women by 270%.

There is also evidence that minorities are catching on to the benefits of concealed carry. Blacks now make up 7% to 8% of permit holders, but their rate of increase is double that of whites.

Poverty presents an obstacle, as permits can be very expensive. In Illinois, for instance, the total cost of getting a permit, including fees and mandated training costs, is about $450. In neighboring Indiana, it is just $45.

With Democrats typically pushing for higher costs to reduce the number of people with permits, the biggest impact is to disarm the people who are the most likely victims of violent crime, the ones who need the permits the most: poor minorities who live in high-crime urban areas.

Changing attitudes also explain the changing composition of permit holders. Since 2012, when the Pew Research Center started asking people if they think guns make them safer, there has been a 25% surge in the proportion of blacks who think so. The increase was 11% among women — more than the increase among men.

These new permits seem to have worked well. Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates fell from 5.6 to 4.2 deaths per 100,000 (according to preliminary estimates). This 25% drop coincided with a 156% increase in the number of adults with permits. A similar drop occurred in other violent crimes.

The data have consistently shown that states with the biggest increases in permits also experienced the biggest reductions in murder rates. Dozens of academic papers have documented that allowing concealed carrying leads to a reduction in violent crime, and the Crime Prevention Research Center report shows that this pattern has continued over the last few years.

Permit holders are extremely law-abiding — even more law-abiding than the police, who are rarely convicted of crimes. The latest data from Texas and Florida continue to show that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than one-sixth the rate that police officers are.

A couple of weeks ago, former CNN anchor Lynne Russell and her husband received national attention for using their permitted concealed handgun to save their lives. Only after the robber started shooting did Russell's wounded husband pull out his gun and return fire.

With more than 12.8 million people legally able to carry handguns, the couple's experience is hardly unique. As dramatic as their story was, it was unusual mainly in that it received national publicity because Russell is so famous. Americans with concealed handguns save lives every day.

John R. Lott Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of "More Guns, Less Crime." He wrote this for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Illegal Alien Crime Wave in Texas: 611,234 Crimes, 2,993 Murders (maybe Trump is right!)

 

A PJ Media exclusive.

by J. Christian Adams

July 22, 2015 - 6:40 pm

 

The murder of Kathryn Steinle on the Embarcadero in San Francisco by an illegal alien is the most familiar example of a crime committed by an alien.  But an unreleased internal report by the Texas Department of Public Safety reveals that aliens have been involved in thousands of crimes in Texas alone, including nearly 3,000 homicides.

PJ Media obtained a never-before-released copy of a Texas DPS report on human smuggling containing the numbers of crimes committed by aliens in Texas.   According to the analysis conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, foreign aliens committed 611,234 unique crimes in Texas from 2008 to 2014, including thousands of homicides and sexual assaults.

The report describes an alien crime wave of staggering proportions exacerbated by federal officials unwilling to enforce immigration laws.

The Texas DPS report says well over 100,000 individual criminal aliens have been booked into Texas jails:

From October 2008 to April 2014, Texas identified a total 177,588 unique criminal alien defendants booked into Texas county jails. These individuals have been identified through the Secure Communities initiative, in which Texas has participated since October 2008.

There are almost certainly more criminal aliens who haven’t been identified as aliens.  The 177,588 criminal aliens identified by Texas through the Secure Communities initiative only can tag criminal aliens who had already been fingerprinted.  Arrests of illegal aliens who have not been fingerprinted prior to arrest are not included in these arrests numbers derived from the Secure Communities initiative.

That means that the already stratospheric aggregate crime totals would be even higher if crimes by many illegal aliens who are not in the fingerprint database were included.

Confessed Texas killer Juan Vasquez

The Secure Communities initiative is an information-sharing program between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Presumably, both departments would have data on the number of fingerprint searches conducted that revealed a criminal act involved an alien.

Texas has been ground zero in illegal alien crossings into the United States.  The Texas DPS report shows that in the Rio Grande Valley, 154,453 illegal aliens were apprehended in 2013.

Total illegal alien apprehensions by sector. (Source: Texas DPS report).

Other Texas sectors saw approximately 86,000 illegal aliens apprehended.  All other sectors combined on the southern border only saw approximately 170,000 illegal alien apprehensions in the same time period.  The Obama administration releases a sizable portion of the illegal aliens captured.

The criminal aliens identified by the Texas Department of Public Safety have been responsible for the most heinous types of crimes — and in astonishing numbers. From the Texas DPS report:

A review of these 177,588 defendants shows that they are responsible for at least 611,234 individual criminal charges over their criminal careers, including 2,993 homicides and 7,695 sexual assaults.

One such murder was committed by Juan Francisco De Luna Vasquez. Vasquez confessed to killing his wife with a hammer in Laredo.

The increasing flood across the border combined with the existence of sanctuary cities bolstered by Obama administration policies allowing the release of the most violent criminal aliens has fueled these crimes.

“Other Than Mexican” apprehensions. Most are released. (Source: Texas DPS report)

The House Judiciary Committee has passed the Davis-Oliver Act, introduced (S.1640) in the Senate by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and in the House (H.R.1148) by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), which would address many of these issues.

Yesterday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña about the 104,000 criminals that ICE released in 2013, and the 68,000 criminals against whom ICE refused to start deportation proceedings.  Saldaña calls it “good news” that only 30,558 criminal aliens were released by ICE in 2014.

The dreadful truth of Moynihan’s prophecy Broken families breed broken cities like Baltimore

On the 50th anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous report on the breakdown of the black family in urban ghettos, Baltimore has descended into the tragic violence and chaos he predicted. In a report titled, “The Negro Family: The Case for Action,” Assistant Secretary of Labor Moynihan, warned that the deterioration of the black family, would result in soaring crime rates if it continued unchecked.

In the most famous passage of the 1965 report, Moynihan, who would later become a Democratic U.S. senator, wrote, “From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable.”

When he wrote these words, the illegitimacy rate among African-Americans was 25 percent while illegitimacy nationwide, stood at 7.7 percent. In the mid-1960s thanks largely to Great Society welfare policies, the out-of-wedlock birth rate began to climb rapidly. Today the out-of-wedlock rate for blacks is over 72 percent with even higher rates in inner cities. Illegitimacy among Hispanics is now over 50 percent, and for whites it has risen from the 3 percent in 1960 to 36 percent today.

Moynihan’s words were prophetic. As family structure virtually disintegrated, Baltimore’s core has become a center of poverty and violence. Recent unchecked rioting in Baltimore has been followed by a crime spree with 32 people shot and nine killed just over the Memorial Day weekend.

In the month of May, there were nearly 120 shootings and 43 murders. Sadly, Baltimore is just the latest face of urban violence in America. Other urban areas like Detroit, New Orleans, Newark and Chicago suffer from the same pathology.

That pathology is clearly linked to children growing up without fathers. The data is clear that children born to teenage single women are more likely to live in poverty, to fail in school, to become involved in drugs and crime, and to end up in prison. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60 percent of rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes. Yet this “politically incorrect” evidence is virtually ignored by policymakers.

 

Most of the hand-wringing articles addressing the problems of Baltimore have focused on the need for better schools, more jobs and even more gun control. Black leaders blame racism and call for more tax money and business investment in the city. But what does this matter if the family is not there to impart healthy values, personal responsibility, a hunger for education, a work ethic and a strong sense of right and wrong?

Until the 1960s, there were strong social sanctions against unwed motherhood. But when Lyndon Johnson launched the Great Society, welfare payments, food stamps, government housing and Medicaid enabled unwed teens to have their babies without fear of consequences.

Since a father in the house virtually disqualifies a woman from collecting her government check, the welfare system encourages men to abandon their children. Welfare checks to young women destroy the sense of responsibility for young men, who are transformed from essential breadwinners to useless financial burdens. Fatherless communities are deprived of the traditional authority figures that discourage threatening gangs and control delinquent kids.

The human cost of these policies is found in the hopeless, uneducated, unmotivated young men aimlessly roaming the streets of Baltimore, devoid of a moral compass. Historically, individuals are restrained from anti-social behavior either by fear of punishment or by a strong moral upbringing. When both of these break down, so does society. Moynihan wrote that as long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.

If future generations are to be saved, community leaders and character-forming institutions — churches, synagogues and charities — must take a strong public stand in support of marriage and restoring the two-parent family.

• Ellen Sauerbrey, a two-time Republican nominee for governor of Maryland, was born and raised in Baltimore.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/3/ellen-sauerbrey-baltimore-broken-families-breed-br/#ixzz3cDsRPW6t
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Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity (American Thinker)

 

June 3, 2015

 By Gene Schwimmer

Take the left’s penchant for form over substance, combine with a fundamental ignorance of what money is and what it does, stir with hammer and sickle, and what do you get?

You get a crusade to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

One would have thought, after decades of minimum wage increases, that America’s class warriors would have noticed the futility of printing money (which, as a practical matter, as we will see momentarily, is what artificially raising the minimum wage does) as a way to improve the target wage earners’ standard of living.  But no.

And actually, merely failing to improve the standard of living is a best-case scenario, one that, in the real world, has never occurred, as evidenced by the very fact that every past minimum wage increase has been followed by calls for yet another increase – including, predictably, the one being demanded now.

For in fact, raising the minimum wage not only fails to make things better; it actually makes them worse, as can be seen in the following table:

Buying power of $1.00, compared to 2013, in
Year	Purchasing power of $1.00 in 2010	Minimum Wage (Nominal)	Minimum Wage (2013 dollars)
1940	$15.58	0.30	$4.99
1950	9.05	0.75	7.25
1960	7.37	1.00	7.87
1970	5.62	1.60	9.61
1980	2.65	3.10	8.76
1990	1.67	3.80	6.77
2000	1.27	5.15	7.20
2010	1.00	7.25	7.75

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CNN Money.com, “Minimum wage since 1938.”

A simple comparison of 2010 to 1940 amply illustrates the futility of minimum wage increases – and, not incidentally, the liberal penchant for form over substance.  Comparing the second and third columns, 2010 against 1940, we see that the minimum wage would need to be 15.58 times the 1940 minimum wage for a person earning the minimum wage today to have the buying power his grandparents enjoyed in 1940.  And examining the third column, we see a minimum wage increase, from 1940 to 2015, from 30 cents/hr to $7.25/hr., a multiple of 24.17, significantly greater than the 15.58-fold increase needed to live as well as the 1940 minimum wage earner.

By rights, if minimum wage increases actually did what its proponents believe, Starbucks baristas would be living, if not extravagantly, at least able comfortably to afford the basic necessities, and we would not be assaulted with so much “income inequality” hoop-de-doo.  Obviously, neither one is the case.  Why?

The answer can be found in the last column, which translates the minimum wage for each listed year into 2010 dollars – i.e., adjusted for inflation.  Comparing 2013 to 1940, we see an increase in the hourly minimum wage, in 2010 dollars, from $4.99 to $7.75, a multiple of 1.50.

That’s right: during a period when the buying power of the dollar declined by 1,558 percent, the buying power of the 1940 minimum wage, intended to offset the decline in buying power, actually increased by a mere 55.31 percent.

Is it any wonder, then, that today’s young whelps are struggling?  Didn’t used to be that way, as the writer, born in 1952, can attest from his own whelphood.  To wit:

In 1977, the year I, at the age of 25, moved to New York, the minimum wage was $2.30/hr., though I, personally, was earning $5.00/hr, or $10,400/yr.  A 25-year-old Starbucks barista, struggling to survive today on $10.00/hr, might well wonder how I lived on half as much.  How well can a person live on just $10,000/yr.?  Let’s see: on the day I left Detroit for New York, I lived in a townhouse (no roommates), rent $175/mo.  I had a car, a Ford Maverick, bought new, cost $1,740, monthly payments $75.  Insurance was so cheap that I don’t even remember the cost – $200/yr?  Gas was 65 cents a gallon.  My typical dinner was two rib-eye steaks.  The townhouse, by the way, was an upgrade from my previous dwelling, an apartment, rent $65/mo.

Point being, I was not rich – far from it – but neither was I, nor anyone else, complaining about “income inequality,” even though the “wealth gap” was much, greater in times past.  For example, the richest American living today, according to Forbes, is Bill Gates, net worth $79.6 billion.  An amount not to be sneezed at, to be sure.  But compare Bill Gates’s wealth to that of John D. Rockefeller, whose wealth, in 2014 dollars, was $340 billion.  And the minimum wage at the time of Rockefeller’s death?  Unfortunately, the table to which I linked doesn’t go back to 1937.  But in 1938, the minimum wage was 25 cents – $4.20 in 2015 dollars.  Three hundred forty billion dollars at the top, $4.20/hr at the bottom – that’s not “income inequality”; that’s income inequality on steroids.

And again, in this writer’s youth, nobody obsessed over “income inequality.”  Why should one?  If a man can live comfortably on what he makes, of what concern is it to him what another man makes?  On the other hand, if a man cannot live on what he makes…

Sadly, that is the unfortunate position in which all too many of us find ourselves, hence the susceptibility of all too many of us to the raise-the-minimum-wage chimera.  And it is an illusion.  For as the historical numbers in the above table clearly show, the liberal nostrum of raising the minimum wage not only will not solve the problem, but will in fact make it worse.

What liberals so sorely lack is a fundamental understanding of what money is and what it does.  Money – currency – contrary to minimum-wage increase advocates, really is nothing but pretty pieces of papers with dead statesmen’s pictures on them.  It has no intrinsic value beyond the values of the paper and ink it is printed on and with, and assuming that the amount needed to print a $1 bill and a $500 bill is the same, there is no intrinsic reason why a $500 bill should buy any more than a $1 bill will.  Money/currency, as Kevin Williamson explains, is no more than a conduit to facilitate the exchange of one good or service for another (emphases mine):

Dollars have value because of the things for which we can trade them: Picasso paintings …, coffee, cotton, cheeseburgers, sofa beds ... checks, chickens, or pesos … goods are paid for in goods … we manufacture widgets or grow tomatoes or write novels because we wish to consume shoes and poached salmon and Buicks.  The dollar or the euro is just a way to avoid the difficulties of trading a truckload of chickens for Les Femmes d’Alger.

So, at the risk of sounding simplistic, a person earning $10/hr who uses a $10 bill to buy a wicket priced at $10.00 is really trading one hour of his labor for the wicket.  The currency he pays with serves merely as the means of transferring his hour of labor to the merchant rather than having to perform an hour of labor for the wicket-seller.

A person earning $15/hr, on the other hand, can buy 1.5 wickets with his hour of labor because his hour of labor is that much more valuable than that of the $10 worker, presumably because the $15/hr guy’s skills are more in demand than the $10/hr guy’s, or demand is the same, but the $15/hr guy works harder and/or better and produces more in his hour of labor.  Logically, then, if the $10/hr worker wants to be able to afford to buy 1.5 wickets with his hour of labor, he must – and this is the key point – raise the value of his labor to that of the $15/hr worker through some combination of learning a more in-demand skill or producing more with the skills he has.

Now suppose the government simply orders the $10/hr guy’s employer to pay him $15/hr while the $10/hr guy continues to produce at the same rate and in the same amount as before.  Since the worker has not increased the amount of goods or services produced in an hour – nothing additional of value that the employer can exchange for $5.00 – where will the $5.00 come from?

If you guessed, “The government will print it,” go to the head of the class.  Absent a 50% increase in the real value of the product of the $10/hr worker’s labor, the employer may absorb some of the loss, but ultimately, he will have no choice but artificially to raise his nominal sales price.

The conceit of minimum-wage increase advocates is that the government can arbitrarily “raise” the $10/hr worker’s wage to $15/hr – in effect, print five additional dollars – and the value of one hour of the $10/hr worker’s labor, without his doing anything to increase the real value of his work, magically becomes equivalent to the real value of the $15/hr worker’s work.  But what actually happens is that each dollar that formerly represented one tenth of the $10/hr guy’s one hour of work now represents one fifteenth.  The hour of work that had been divided into ten $1.00 increments has not been divided into 15.

And the real $15/hr worker, the “forgotten man,” the value of whose hour of work was a true $15?  Thanks to the $10/hr worker’s artificial 50-percent wage hike, the “true” $15/hr worker has been hit with a 33.3-percent wage cut.  So expect him to demand a raise, too, which raise, to reflect the value of his one hour of work, would have to be, in percentage terms, the same as the $10/hr. worker’s: 50 percent, to $22.50/hr.

Anyone who expects such a raise to happen, and within the same time as the proposed minimum-wage increase to $10/hr...well, let’s just say that the odds are not good.  What will happen is that merchants will see their suppliers’ costs rise and be forced to raise their sale prices.  What also will happen is so-called rounding, where, when supplier price increases would dictate a sale price increase of, say, two cents, the merchant will “round” the increase to five cents.

It’s called inflation, and anyone who expects wages, including, if not especially, the minimum wage, to keep pace with inflation needs to take another look at the above table for a quick – and painful – reminder of what has happened in the past.

The right strategy is to stop destroying the currency to support the liberals’ welfare state, not to legislate an artificial increase in the minimum wage.  And to appoint a non-Keynesian Fed chairman.  Expect neither one to happen any time soon.

Minimum wage, maximum stupidity.

Gene Schwimmer is a New York licensed real estate broker and the author of The Christian State.  Follow Gene Schwimmer on Twitter.

Take the left’s penchant for form over substance, combine with a fundamental ignorance of what money is and what it does, stir with hammer and sickle, and what do you get?

You get a crusade to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

One would have thought, after decades of minimum wage increases, that America’s class warriors would have noticed the futility of printing money (which, as a practical matter, as we will see momentarily, is what artificially raising the minimum wage does) as a way to improve the target wage earners’ standard of living.  But no.

And actually, merely failing to improve the standard of living is a best-case scenario, one that, in the real world, has never occurred, as evidenced by the very fact that every past minimum wage increase has been followed by calls for yet another increase – including, predictably, the one being demanded now.

The True Black Tragedy: Illegitimacy Rate of Nearly 75%

 

By Walter E. Williams | May 19, 2015 | 6:50 AM EDT

(AP Photo)

Hustlers and people with little understanding want us to believe that today's black problems are the continuing result of a legacy of slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. The fact is that most of the social pathology seen in poor black neighborhoods is entirely new in black history. Let's look at some of it.
Today the overwhelming majority of black children are raised in single female-headed families. As early as the 1880s, three-quarters of black families were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black families were two-parent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to three-fourths of the families, all the children had the same mother and father.
Today's black illegitimacy rate of nearly 75 percent is also entirely new. In 1940, black illegitimacy stood at 14 percent. It had risen to 25 percent by 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" and was widely condemned as a racist. By 1980, the black illegitimacy rate had more than doubled, to 56 percent, and it has been growing since. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.
Much of today's pathology seen among many blacks is an outgrowth of the welfare state that has made self-destructive behavior less costly for the individual. Having children without the benefit of marriage is less burdensome if the mother receives housing subsidies, welfare payments and food stamps. Plus, the social stigma associated with unwed motherhood has vanished. Female-headed households, whether black or white, are a ticket for dependency and all of its associated problems. Ignored in all discussions is the fact that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994.
Black youth unemployment in some cities is over 50 percent. But high black youth unemployment is also new. In 1948, the unemployment rate for black teens was slightly less than that of their white counterparts — 9.4 percent compared with 10.2.
During that same period, black youths were either just as active in the labor force or more so than white youths. Since the 1960s, both the labor force participation rate and the employment rate of black youths have fallen to what they are today. Why? Are employers more racially discriminatory today than yesteryear? Were black youths of yesteryear more skilled than whites of yesteryear? The answer to both questions is a big fat no.
The minimum wage law and other labor regulations have cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Put yourself in the place of an employer, and ask: If I must pay $7.25 an hour — plus mandated fringes, such as Social Security and workers' compensation — would it pay me to hire a worker who is so unfortunate as to possess skills that enable him to produce only $5 worth of value per hour? Most employers view that as a losing economic proposition. Thus, the minimum wage law discriminates against the employment of low-skilled workers, who are most often youths — particularly black youths.
The little bit of money a teenager can earn through after-school, weekend and summer employment is not nearly so important as the other things he gains from early work experiences. He acquires skills and develops good work habits, such as being prompt, following orders and respecting supervisors. In addition, there are the self-respect and pride that a youngster gains from being financially semi-independent. All of these gains from early work experiences are important for any teen but are even more important for black teens. If black teens are going to learn anything that will make them a more valuable employee in the future, they aren't going to learn it from their rotten schools, their dysfunctional families or their crime-ridden neighborhoods. They must learn it on the job.
The bulk of today's problems for many blacks are a result of politicians and civil rights organizations using government in the name of helping blacks when in fact they are serving the purposes of powerful interest groups.

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