‘The End of Privacy’ and the Surveillance-Industrial Complex

Here is the latest video from Dan Mitchell of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. His real-world approach to data and research shows the burden of government spending is far too high—not just in the U.S., where the policies of the Bushes, father and son, and Obama have increased the federal budget more than 100 percent, but also in other nations where government budgets sometimes consume more than one-half of their economic output.

Source: Center for Freedom and Prosperity

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by Patrick J. Buchanan

Down at the Chinese outlet store in Albany known as Wal-Mart, Chinese tires have so successfully undercut U.S.-made tires that the Cooper Tire factory in that south Georgia town had to shut down.

Twenty-one hundred Georgians lost their jobs.

The tale of Cooper Tire and what it portends is told in last week’s Washington Post by Peter Whoriskey. [As Cheaper Chinese Tires Roll In, Obama Faces an Early Trade Test, September 8, 2009]

How could tires made on the other side of the world, then shipped to Albany, be sold for less than tires made in Albany?

Here’s how.

At Cooper Tire, the wages were $18 to $21 per hour. In China, they are a fraction of that. The Albany factory is subject to U.S. health-and-safety, wage-and-hour and civil rights laws from which Chinese plants are exempt. Environmental standards had to be met at Cooper Tire or the plant would have been closed. Chinese factories are notorious polluters.

China won the competition because the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” does not apply to the People’s Republic. While free trade laws grant China free and equal access to the U.S. market, China can pay workers wages and force them to work hours that would violate U.S. law, and China can operate plants whose health, safety and environmental standards would have their U.S. competitors shut down as public nuisances.

Beijing also manipulates its currency to keep export prices low and grants a rebate on its value-added tax on exports to the U.S.A., while imposing a value-added tax on goods coming from the U.S.A.

Thus did China, from 2004 to 2008, triple her share of the U.S. tire market from 5 percent to 17 percent and take down Cooper Tire of Albany.

But not to worry. Cooper Tire has seen the light and is now opening and acquiring plants in China, and sending Albany workers over to train the Chinese who took their jobs.

Welcome to 21st century America, where globalism has replaced patriotism as the civil religion of our corporate elites. As Thomas Jefferson reminded us, “Merchants have no country.”

What has this meant to the republic that was once the most self-sufficient and independent in all of history?

Since 2001, when George Bush took the oath, the United States has run $3.8 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, more than twice the $1.68 trillion in trade deficits we ran for imported oil and gas.

Our trade deficit with China in manufactured goods alone, $1.58 trillion over those eight years, roughly equals the entire U.S. trade deficit for oil and gas.

U.S. politicians never cease to wail of the need for “energy independence.” But why is our dependence on the oil of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Nigeria, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela a greater concern than our dependence on a non-democratic rival great power for computers and vital components of our weapons systems and high-tech industries?

As Executive Director Auggie Tantillo of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Committee compellingly argues:

“Running a trade deficit for natural resources that the United States lacks is something that cannot be helped, but running a massive deficit in manmade products that America easily could produce itself is a choice—a poor choice that is bankrupting the country and responsible for the loss of millions of jobs.”

How many millions of jobs?

In the George W. Bush years, we lost 5.3 million manufacturing jobs, one-fourth to one-third of all we had in 2001.

And our dependence on China is growing.

Where Beijing was responsible for 60 percent of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods in 2008, in the first six months of 2009, China accounted for 79 percent of our trade deficit in manufactured goods.

How can we end this dependency and begin building factories and creating jobs here, rather than deepening our dependency on a China that seeks to take our place in the sun? The same way Alexander Hamilton did, when we Americans produced almost nothing and were even more dependent on Great Britain than we are on China today.

Let us do unto our trading partners as they have done unto us.

As they rebate value-added taxes on exports to us, and impose a value-added tax on our exports to them, let us reciprocate. Impose a border tax equal to a VAT on all their goods entering the United States, and use the hundreds of billions to cut corporate taxes on all manufacturing done here in the United States.

Where they have tilted the playing field against us, let us tilt it back again. Transnational companies are as amoral as sharks. What is needed is simply to cut their profits from moving factories and jobs abroad and increase their profits for bringing them back to the U.S.A.

It’s not rocket science. Hamilton, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all did it. Obama’s tariffs on Chinese tires are a good start.

Source: Patrick J. Buchanan Blog

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As published in the North County Times – August 9, 2009

By Congressman Darrell Issa

Between the rising cost of heath care and the expanding role of government, Americans are frustrated. Economists predict that we will be spending 20 percent of our gross domestic product on health care by 2017. Now the president wants Congress to approve a scheme that effectively repeals Medicare and puts the treatment of seniors in the hands of a “federal health board” with absolute authority to approve procedures and cut payments for essential quality-of-life care.

But we can find a bipartisan, workable solution that guarantees access for all Americans to dependable and affordable health care, maximizes the freedom to choose their own doctors, and protects their family coverage during seasons of unemployment.

Every American should have access to the private health insurance benefits that members of Congress have. By opening the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program, Congress could make available just 14 competitively priced nationwide plans and more than 310 state plans. Rather than creating a form of nationalized, publicly managed health care, access to the selection of private plans that members of Congress receive would safeguard patient choice and keep Washington bureaucrats out of the examination room.

Similarly, plans for affordable prescription drugs for all Americans can be accomplished without committing federal dollars to subsidize the costs.

Currently, cash-paying customers are charged a higher price for prescription drugs than insured customers. Different prices for the same drug sold to different people ends up unfairly punishing the poor. Prescription drug reform would provide an incentive for cash transactions and reduce costs associated with credit card fees, check fees and billing that drive up the cost of health insurance.

And that’s not the only place where cost cuts are possible. The price tag of medical malpractice insurance, for instance, is skyrocketing, and doctors pass the charges along to patients in hidden fees. Runaway litigation costs and inflated malpractice awards are feeding a trend of defensive medicine where doctors and hospitals are often forced to perform unnecessary, expensive tests and procedures to avoid frivolous lawsuits. Addressing our health care crisis will therefore require sweeping tort reform that stops trial lawyers from poaching their profits in hospitals and doctor’s offices.

If every patient clearly understood the costs associated with defensive medicine and malpractice insurance, health care reform would be a much simpler task. That’s why Congress must protect the right for people to make educated choices and, if desired, to consult with health care providers to reduce costs in exchange for liability limitations and targeted treatment. The widespread savings that such reform promises for every American would be dramatic and immediate.

Finally, the current economic crisis has awakened America to the harsh truth about unemployment and health insurance. For workers facing record layoffs, the difficult decision between paying for their family’s health coverage or other basic needs is a present reality. As a key component of reform, unemployment insurance should cover the health care of displaced workers while they search for new jobs.

The Democrats’ plan, a 1,018-page bill titled “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” won’t hold back the growth of government or protect our basic health care rights. In his administration’s first six months alone, President Obama has proposed 33 new entitlement programs, 53 new federal bureaucracies and $1.28 trillion in deficit spending to address our health crisis.

Americans deserve better, and Congress needs to work on a bipartisan basis to address the health care crisis with dependable, affordable reforms.

Rep. DARRELL ISSA, R-Vista, represents the 49th District, which includes the cities of Oceanside, Vista and Temecula. He serves as the ranking member on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Source: http://www.issaforcongress.com/

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The Glamour of Grammar?

What does Glamour have to do with Grammar?

Interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says that glamour, a word customarily associated with beauty or charm or a high level of attractiveness, comes from the same root as grammar; a word we customarily associate with ugliness or repugnance or a high level of repulsiveness.

These two words are like two very different looking sisters. While the one is alluring and pleasant, and we want to gaze upon her; the other is dull and unpleasant, and we don’t want to gaze upon her. As with the two sisters, you wonder how two words that arouse such naturally different emotions as glamour and grammar could stem from the same mother.

So it stands to reason that how these two words are connected is a matter of unending discussion and disagreement among linguist. Here is how the OED, which most agree is the supreme arbiter of the English language, explains how this came about:

Before you read this next paragraph, know that your life will not suffer much should you choose to live in ignorance of its content. A more glamorous version will follow this scholarly, grammatical entry.

“In classical Greek (also see) and Latin the word denoted the methodical study of literature (= ‘philology’ in the widest modern sense, including textual and æsthetic criticism, investigation of literary history and antiquities, explanation of allusions, etc., besides the study of the Greek and Latin languages. Post-classically, grammatica came to be restricted to the linguistic portion of this discipline, and eventually to ‘grammar’ in the mod[ern] sense. In the Middle Ages, grammatica and its Rom[an] forms chiefly meant the knowledge or study of Latin, and were hence often used as synonymous with learning in general, the knowledge peculiar to the learned class. As this was popularly supposed to include magic and astrology, the OF. gramaire was sometimes used as a name for these occult sciences. In these applications it still survives in certain corrupt forms, F. grimoire, Eng. GLAMOUR.”

It is probably enough to know that the word glamour came into English by way of Scotland, where it originally meant, the OED says, “Magic, enchantment, spell; esp. in the phrase to cast the glamour over one.” It made its way to beauty by way of magic, since the allure secured by magic was illusory and dangerous.

Now, as Fortune’s wheel creaks along, we appear to be circling back to a Medieval culture in which knowledge of grammar is peculiar to a learned (though neither wealthy nor prestigious) class, and in which mastery of grammar might as well be magic to those unlearned in it.

Careful of that word wizard, my dear, lest he seduce you

One of the surprising and delightful connection in the history of the English language is the relationship between glamour and grammar. The second, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is an altered version of the first. They cite an ancient association between learning and enchantment as proof. In other words, back in the day when only priests and a few educated gentry could read and write it was thought that if you were smart enough to know grammar, the basic elements of language, you might be clever enough to convert that power to allure, amaze, even seduce. Can you imagine the fear the peasantry could have of a grammar?

Grammar has taken a bit of a nosedive since then. Today grammar connotes everything that is unglamorous: absent-minded professors; fussy schoolmarms; grammazons, nagging perfectionists; pedantic correctionists; high school students asleep at their desks with stalactites of drool hanging from their lips. Long lost from grammar are the associations with power, magic and enchantment.

Bone up on your English so you, too, can be a glamorous, successful word-wizard-cum-grammarian

Is that statement entirely valid? Think successful politicians, lawyers, salesmen, or even holier-than-thou evangelists; you get the picture. So in truth, word wizards still have the power of seduction, which means the glamour of grammar is real.

This is another reason for this series. A little grammar, you’ll learn, can go a long way, and may well lead one to a lot of grammar. Good grammar, well used,  can be a very sexy attribute. Is there a single one of you who would not like to be seen as sexy? Before you give a negative response to that question, remember that some synonyms for sex are charismatic and magnetic, as in charismatic or magnetic personality.

Alrightie, tell me this. How come we ain’t teachin’ good English no more? [sic]

Many old timers, dreaming of a Golden Age of learning that never existed. They wonder, why we don’t teach grammar any more. Well, we do, in school after school, classroom after classroom. A better question might be, if we teach grammar, why don’t people learn grammar? The answer is simple; we do teach grammar, syntax, punctuation, and spelling. But all these elements of language are out of context, outside of making meaning as a reader, a writer or a speaker. By doing so, we make grammar highly forgettable.

Stop Confusion; Speak Clear English will offer another way. Every little lesson in this series will point you toward a practical application. I’ll carry that one step farther: There is no need to learn grammar if you’re not going to use it. Good spelling is useless except to represent proper words and avoid distraction of the reader. Punctuation has no value except to point the reader toward the pace, emphasis and meaning of the words. Subjects and verbs are dusty academic terms unless you can join them together with a purpose. Punctuation is the glue that binds together the structure of vocabulary and grammar that we call sentence or a paragraph or a book.

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