Nimby Nation: The High Cost To America Of Saying No To Everything

Fueled by legal advocacy groups, cries of Not In My Backyard are quietly costing the United States economy trillions. The ability of America to flourish is at stake. 

By Christopher Helman and Daniel Fisher

For more than 50 years Onyx Specialty Papers of South Lee, Mass. has carved out a niche selling unusual, high-value products like the Kevlar-reinforced paper used in automobile clutch plates. The company’s twin 100-foot-long paper machines sit in a 150-year-old brick building on the Housatonic River, churning out 12,000 tons of paper a year.

Pat Begrowicz and a business partner bought Onyx from industry giant Mead Westvaco in 2009. She cashed in her kids’ college funds to do so. Now she’s wondering whether that was such a great idea. The problem isn’t labor (starting pay for manufacturing jobs at her 155-employee company is $20 an hour) or even raw materials costs or markets. It’s energy.

Via: Forbes

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The President is ‘The Other’

Obama’s actions have been designed to turn America into a one-party state, much like the People’s Republic of China or Cuba or even Iran

For those who drank the hope and change Kool-Aid, here’s some bad news: the ‘fundamental transformation of America’ is in full swing and as they used to say in show biz, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

That’s because the last 18 months of this corrupt narcissist’s rule will make the first six-and-a-half years look like a high school civics lesson in good governance. I have always found it ironic that the son of a Kenyan Muslim Marxist and disaffected white liberal woman should grow up to become President of the United States. What’s more, the way in which he arrived at the presidency is shall we say, unusual.

Here’s a guy who was elected on the basis of being a good-looking black man who could speak well. We’ve never read anything that he wrote during his law school years, don’t know what his grades were, in fact, that entire chapter of his life is securely under seal. Why would that be?

And for those of us who believed that Constitutional Government entailed a series of checks and balances between the three branches of government, the Obama years have permanently disabused us of that notion.

Considering the shenanigans that brought about some of Obama’s ‘signature’ legislative achievements, there are Third World dictatorships with more transparent government than what’s the norm in America today. Think about the misnamed Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, better known as ‘ObamaCare’ and how it was passed in the dead of night with no one having read its contents and with some of the crucial votes for passage having to be purchased through shady deals. Years later came the biting revelations by Jonathan Gruber, one of the Act’s authors that basically called voters ‘stupid’ for having accepted passage.

Then there is the use of the IRS to punish the enemies of the President. I recall a slight whiff of this from the Nixon White House when the impeachment knives began to be sharpened. Yet Obama uses this sinister and powerful agency to steal elections with impunity.

Via: Canada Free Press

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A Coming Era of Civil Disobedience?

Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking. What else was our revolution but a rebellion to overthrow the centuries-old rule and law of king and Parliament, and establish our own?

The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the Capitol. Calling the Commandments "religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths," the court said the monument must go.

Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked. Some legislators want the justices impeached.

Fallin's action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America — an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are defied and laws ignored in the name of conscience and a higher law.

Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.

Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking. What else was our revolution but a rebellion to overthrow the centuries-old rule and law of king and Parliament, and establish our own?

U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been defied, and those who defied them lionized by modernity. Thomas Jefferson freed all imprisoned under the sedition act, including those convicted in court trials presided over by Supreme Court justices. Jefferson then declared the law dead.

Some Americans want to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, who, defying the Dred Scott decision and fugitive slave acts, led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

New England abolitionists backed the anti-slavery fanatic John Brown, who conducted the raid on Harpers Ferry that got him hanged but helped to precipitate a Civil War. That war was fought over whether 11 Southern states had the same right to break free of Mr. Lincoln's Union as the 13 colonies did to break free of George III's England.

Millions of Americans, with untroubled consciences, defied the Volstead Act, imbibed alcohol and brought an end to Prohibition.

In the civil rights era, defying laws mandating segregation and ignoring court orders banning demonstrations became badges of honor.

Rosa Parks is a heroine because she refused to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus, despite the laws segregating public transit that relegated blacks to the "back of the bus."

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. King, defending civil disobedience, cited Augustine — "an unjust law is no law at all" — and Aquinas who defined an unjust law as "a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."

Said King, "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

But who decides what is an "unjust law"?

If, for example, one believes that abortion is the killing of an unborn child and same-sex marriage is an abomination that violates "eternal law and natural law," do those who believe this not have a moral right if not a "moral responsibility to disobey such laws"?

Via: CNS News

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America, the Beautiful

I have picked up the vibe that even some millennial white conservative interviewers think it a bit weird (uncle Tom-ish) that I do not harbor at least a slight resentment against whites and America. The foundation of public school education is America sucks; having screwed over everyone from Native-Americans, to women, blacks, and every other minority.

As a black man in my sixties, yes, I have encountered racism. But for the most part, whites and America have been extremely good to me.

When I was a boy in the hood of Baltimore, several white politicians awarded me scholarships to pursue my dream of becoming a graphic artist. During and after college several so-called “evil white men” according to a NY Times article, employed me, treated me well, and furthered my career.

And yet, when I say I love my country and am proud to be an American, Leftists/Democrats look at me cross-eyed, accuse me of disloyalty to my race. I am supposed to be mad, feel resentful and victimized. Sorry, but I can't go there, embracing hate and a victim mindset.

Leftist/Democrat actress Janeane Garofalo said phenomenally successful proud American blacks Herman Cain and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas must be suffering with Stockholm syndrome. Process that for a moment folks.

In typical Leftist arrogance, Garofalo who claims to be an advocate for black empowerment, dislikes and even persecutes self-motivated blacks who successfully achieved their American Dream. How dare they achieve success without her beloved big government lowered standards or providing special concessions due to race. Obviously, Ms. Garafalo has a problem with such “uppity blacks” who do not want or need her foul-smelling racist superiority shrouded in faux compassion. Wouldn't a true advocate for blacks celebrate the achievements of Herman Cain and Justice Thomas?

Via: American Thinker

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Are We In for Another High-Crime Era After the Response to Ferguson and Baltimore?

Are we seeing a reversal of the 20-year decline in violent crime in America? A new nationwide crime wave?

Heather Mac Donald fears we are, and as a premier advocate and analyst of the policing strategy pioneered by Rudy Giuliani in New York City and copied and adapted throughout the country, she is to be taken seriously. And the statistics she presented in an article in last weekend's Wall Street Journal are truly alarming.

Gun violence is up 60 percent in Baltimore so far this year compared to 2014. Homicides are up 180 percent in Milwaukee, 25 percent in St. Louis, 32 percent in Atlanta and 13 percent in New York in the same period.

Why is this happening? Mac Donald writes, "The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months."

That's a reference to the reactions to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., last summer, and to the death this spring of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

The narrative propagated by mainstream media, the Eric Holder Justice Department and the Barack Obama White House was that unarmed innocent blacks were being slaughtered by racist police. "Black lives matter," read the hashtag, as if most cops believed the opposite.

The facts of these cases, as revealed through competent investigations, did not support the meme. In one case in which video evidence did, in South Carolina, the policeman was quickly charged with murder by local authorities.

But the propagation of the racist-cops narrative was followed by days of rioting in Ferguson last year and Baltimore last month. The (perhaps misspoken) response of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: "We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well."

Another response: Across the country, Mac Donald notes, "offices scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric." Proactive "broken windows" policing is being replaced by non-benign neglect. The victims of the increased numbers of homicides are almost all black.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Immigration Advocates Frightened By 99-Pound Blonde by Ann Coulter

Third World immigration advocates Frank Sharry, Ali Noorani and Marc Andreessen aren’t shy about rushing to the press with pabulum quotes about how wonderful immigration is, but they don’t want to debate me, even to lie about all those benefits.

They don’t want you to think about immigration at all.

Although you will miss the lush analytical context of the full case made in my smash new book, Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, here are some more startling facts from my book that the anti-American crowd doesn’t want you to know:

– If an illegal alien drops a baby on American soil, the entire family can access welfare programs that were supposed to be for U.S. citizens — in addition to the government assistance illegal aliens can collect right away, such as food stamps and housing subsidies, free medical care and free schooling.

– The Constitution did not make U.S. citizenship a game of “Red Rover” with the Border Patrol. Haha! Too late — I had the baby! The 14th Amendment confirmed the citizenship rights oaf former American slaves — not 21st-century freeloaders from China.

– Our ludicrous “anchor baby” policy was invented out of whole cloth by Justice William Brennan and slipped into a footnote in a Supreme Court opinion in 1982.

– On average, college graduates in the United States pay about $30,000 more in taxes each year than they get back in government services, while those without a high school degree get back about $35,000 more in government services than they pay in taxes.

– Only about 7 percent of Americans do not have a high school diploma, but more than a third of legal immigrants under the post-Kennedy immigration act and about 75 percent of illegal aliens do not have a high school diploma.

– Mexican immigrants send $20 billion back to Mexico every year — more than the U.S. sends to that country in direct foreign aid.

– The New York Times was saved from bankruptcy by one of the richest men in the world, Mexican Carlos Slim, whose fortune comes from illegal aliens’ sending money — most of it from the U.S. taxpayer — back to Mexico.

– Anything the Times says on immigration ought to be treated like a press release from a tobacco company about the low risk of disease from smoking.

– Contrary to repeated assertions that fences don’t work (by the Times, as well as a slew of Republicans, such as former Texas governor Rick Perry), after Israel completed a fence along its border in 2013, the number of illegal aliens entering the country dropped to zero.

– The country that put men on the moon can’t seem to build a wall like the one the Chinese built 700 years before Christ.

Via: Human Events

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Memorial Day 2015

We need to remind ourselves that Memorial Day is not just another three-day weekend or a day when all manner of sales are offered to those who want to go shopping. It is a day set aside to honor the ultimate sacrifice of those who have fought to defend our nation and take military action in foreign nations. We honor, too, those who suffered wounds and returned home.

We like to think of America as a nation that has gone to war only when we had to, but a new book, “America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or Been Invaded with Almost Every Country on Earth” tells a different story based on history.

As documented by its authors, Christopher Kelly and Stuard Laycock, America, “has invaded or fought in eighty-four out of 194 countries (countries recognized by the United Nations and excluding the United States) in the world. That’s 43 percent of the total. And it hasn’t been militarily involved with just ninety or a hundred countries. It has had some form of military involvement with a spectacular 191 out of 194. That’s more than 98 percent.”

“Most people,” the authors note “would probably agree that much of what America has done around the world has clearly been wise and noble (as in helping liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.) Some, however, have been wrong and/or unwise. And some of what America has done has been in-between. In some sense, it’s like looking at the history of one’s own family. And, indeed, all of it—the liberations, the fiascos, and follies—is, in some sense, part of the history of every American citizen.”

That’s why it is a good idea to pause on Memorial Day because as an American it is part of your history. “Americans are always hoping for peace but usually preparing for war” says the authors who remind us that “the American eagle is an ambivalent bird holding arrows in the talons of one foot and an olive branch in the other.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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HURT: Postal Service misses address by a whole continent

NEW YORK CITY — Did you hear the one about the U.S. Post Office and the Statue of Liberty?

So the Postal Service decides to issue a stamp commemorating perhaps the single most iconic image around the world representing the United States of America, the country that the post office serves so faithfully — rain, snow or shine.

They get a nice picture of Lady Liberty, her greenish copper gaze across New York Harbor welcoming the masses to a new land of hope and promise and opportunity. They print it up First Class at the rate of “forever,” as in a timeless promise that will never expire. Much like the Lady’s beckoning call to freedom.

But there was just one slight little problem. The majestic image turned out not to be a stamp commemorating our nation’s beloved Statue of Liberty. Rather, the postage stamp commemorates a cheap schlocky knock-off statue that graces, naturally, the strip in Las Vegas.

Now don’t get me wrong. Vegas is a monumental American achievement. Only in America could you find such an oasis of glittering debauchery in a massive barren desert that summons every social, economic and gender class that you can think of.

By private jet, first class, steerage, Amtrak or Greyhound Bus, boozy risk-takers and silicone bimbos roll in to gamble all they have worked for — or perhaps stolen — on the outside chance that they alone hold the magic luck to beat the house.

Via: Washington TImes

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We’re Losing The Two Things Tocqueville Said Mattered Most About American Democracy

This is the first installment of a new series: a Frenchman reads Democracy in America and investigates how it applies to the contemporary United States.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville doesn’t waste any time letting  you know what impresses him most about America.  To Tocqueville, equality and, to a slightly lesser — but very important — extent, religiosity, are the two foundations of the American experiment. His understanding of them certainly challenges both liberal and conservative sensibilities. But what does it say about America today that these two aspects of the American experience seem to be at all-time lows? And does Tocqueville point to a way forward?

The importance of economic and social equality

Tocqueville praises equality in his very first sentence: “Among the many things which drew my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more than the equality of conditions.” Two paragraphs later: “As I went on studying American society, I saw more and more in the equality of conditions the main fact which seemed to cause every other particular fact, and I kept seeing it before me as a central point to which all my observations led.”

Conservatives might not enjoy Tocqueville’s praise of economic and social equality as key to the success of the American experiment, but with some thought, you realize that Tocqueville is giving us a welcome way out of our incredibly dreary debates on the topic. A lot of conservatives claim that while the Left believes equality means equality of outcome, the Right is for equality of opportunity — but that’s a load of hooey. Everyone agrees with equality of opportunity, and all non-communists agree equality of outcomes is not desirable. The question is whether too much inequality of outcome leads to a greater inequality of opportunity. It’s a stubborn fact that, as a matter of dollars and cents, American society has gotten more unequal over the past 30 years. Does it mean that it has also become unequal in other ways? And if so, should we do anything about it? And what? Does Tocqueville show us a way?

Via: The Federalist

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