Gold miners near Chicken cry foul over 'heavy-handed' EPA raids

When agents with the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn’t quite know what to think.

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Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.

Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?

Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door -- as they used to do -- and said they wanted to check the water.

Lots of Federal land in Alaska

Alaska’s vast Interior, which sprawls to the Canadian border, has been the site of federal-local distrust in the past. It was near this area, 130 miles northwest of Chicken, that National Park Service rangers pointed shotguns at, then tackled and arrested a septuagenarian, for not stopping his boat in midstream of the Yukon River in the fall of 2010. Jim Wilde, 70 years old at the time, had been ordered to prepare to be boarded for a safety inspection.

Wilde didn’t much like that demand. He swore at park rangers and then headed for shore and a meeting on terra firma. Wilde was arrested and taken to the jail in Fairbanks, more than 100 miles away. He was later tried and found guilty by a federal magistrate for failing to comply with a lawful order from federal agents.

The state of Alaska, as a whole, can be a place of deeply-rooted mistrust between locals and the agents who try to enforce federal rules.

Alaska has more federally owned and managed land than any other U.S. state. More than 65 percent of its land is under some sort of federal control.  A multitude of federal parks, preserves and wilderness areas are patrolled by agents from more than a dozen U.S. agencies. Many of the people in rural parts of the state, which are either under federal control or border federally-managed areas, have more contact with federal officers than they do with representatives from the state.

Via: Alaska Dispatch

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Sebelius Describes Federal Government As 'Our Federal Family'

(CNSNews.com) - September is National Preparedness Month, and in a news release urging everyone to be mindful of potential terror attacks, natural disasters, and pandemics, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the federal government is ready to help:

"While our federal family is becoming better prepared to support the nation, we know that being truly resilient requires the whole community coming together," she said.

"Simply put: bystanders can’t stand by. We’ve seen countless times that bystanders are truly the first responders. They save lives. Each of us must be ready to help others when every minute counts."

Sebelius said being ready means being aware of potential risks, knowing where to turn for help, and being willing to help one's neighbors:

"While taking a first aid class or a CPR class is always helpful, we may not need formal training to save someone’s life or provide them with basic care they desperately need at that moment. Sometimes, we just need to be willing to help carry someone who is hurt to safety, provide comfort to someone who is frightened, or help someone find the medical care they need." 

Via: CNS News

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PART-TIME POSITIONS DOMINATE JOBS PICTURE

Friday, forecasters expect the Labor Department to report the economy added 175,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate remained steady at 7.4 percent. Although in line with the pace of recent months, jobs gains have been heavily weighted toward part-time positions.

Since January, 936,000 additional Americans report working part-time, while only 27,000 more say they have obtained full-time positions. The shift to part-time workers, partially a reaction to Obamacare health insurance mandates, puts downward pressure on wages and benefits in low-paying industries, like retail and restaurants, and widens income inequality.

Expectations of permanently slower growth are hardening disturbing changes in the structure of the labor market and social conditions. These days, new college graduates often work at unpaid internships while taking part-time jobs at places like Starbucks to meet minimal living expenses. And they are putting off marriage and childbearing, which also drags on consumer spending and growth.

Adding in discouraged adults, who have quit looking for work altogether, and part-timers who want full-time employment, the unemployment rate becomes 14.0 percent.

In the second quarter, GDP growth was 2.5 percent, owing to an increase in business inventories, stronger exports, and weaker imports.

The boost from stronger U.S. sales abroad and fewer imports are not expected to continue because of China’s resurgent manufacturing and Japan’s policy of targeting the U.S. auto industry and other manufacturers with an artificially cheap yen.

Inventories cannot grow forever, and in the end consumers and business investment must pick up the slack.

Via: Breitbart

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BLACK HOMEOWNERSHIP HITS 18 YEAR LOW

In a report released Tuesday, Bloomberg reports that black homeownership has collapsed to an 18 year low. Bloomberg buries this brutal fact under a nonsensical headline that makes it look like a local Chicago story: "Black Homeownership Dying Where Obama Revitalized." But four paragraphs down we not only learn about the collapse in the black homeownership rate, but that it is now almost half that of whites:

For most Americans, the real estate crash is finally behind them and personal wealth is back where it was in the boom. For blacks in the U.S., 18 years of economic progress has vanished, with a rebound in housing slipping further out of reach and the unemployment rate almost twice that of whites. The homeownership rate for blacks fell from 50 percent during the housing bubble to 43 percent in the second quarter, the lowest since 1995. The rate for whites stopped falling two years ago, settling at about 73 percent, only 3 percentage points below the 2004 peak, according to the Census Bureau.

For those in the working and middle class, if you have any wealth, it is most likely found in whatever equity you have in your home -- either based on what you have paid into it, its increase in value, or both. This is why the housing crisis was and is so devastating to so many everyday Americans… of all colors.

Had Obama enacted proven economic policies after becoming president, the economy and housing market would have already rebounded and beyond. But Obama chose big government policies, and now we find ourselves in the middle of a so-called recovery that only our pathetic and subservient media could spin as  "good enough."

Via: Breitbart

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Was Mitt Romney Right About Everything?

Ten months after Mitt Romney shuffled off the national stage in defeat — consigned, many predicted, to a fate of instant irrelevance and permanent obscurity — Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet.

From his widely-mocked warnings about a hostile Russia, to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate’s canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication — and remorse — to Romney’s friends, supporters, and former advisers.

“I think about the campaign every single day, and what a shame it is who we have in the White House,” said Spencer Zwick, who worked as Romney’s finance director and is a close friend to his family. “I look at things happening and I say, you know what? Mitt was actually right when he talked about Russia, and he was actually right when he talked about how hard it was going to be to implement Obamacare, and he was actually right when he talked about the economy. I think there are a lot of everyday Americans who are now feeling the effects of what [Romney] said was going to happen, unfortunately.”

Of course, there is a long tradition in American politics of dwelling on counterfactuals and and re-litigating past campaigns after your candidate loses. Democrats have argued through the years that America would have avoided two costly Middle East wars, solved climate change, and steered clear of the housing crisis if only the Supreme Court hadn’t robbed Al Gore of his rightful victory in 2000. But a series of White House controversies and international crises this year — including a Syrian civil war that is threatening to pull the American military into the mix — has caused Romney’s fans to erupt into a chorus of told-you-so’s at record pace.

Via: Fox News

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Global Government Gone Wild

Cap and Trade, Solar Power, Wind Turbines, Smart Meters, and Biofuels

“Unfortunately, human nature cannot be changed by an act of the legislature.” – Calvin Coolidge

The weatherman at KUSI-TV, John Coleman, the Weather Channel founder, had told Red Eye host on Fox News a long time ago that he wanted to sue Al Gore for global warming fraud. He said that “30,000 scientists among whom 9,000 have Ph.D.’s have signed on to debunk global warming.”

In spite of their efforts, global warming advocates have marched on, transforming how we obtain and use energy in this country and around the globe.

Interestingly, scientists from the University of Geneva will present this month “Laser, Weather, and Climate” at the conference of the World Meteorological Organization and report on “experiments using lasers to cause water to condense or ice to form, crucial in accelerating rainfall.” Cloud “seeding” had been known since 1940s, shooting silver iodide or dry ice into a cloud, “simulating the natural salt, dust, and other tiny particles in the atmosphere that help form water drops.”

Coleman had hoped that this large group of scientists would have the opportunity to debate Al Gore and the scientists behind him who have decided that global warming is real. But Al Gore and his alarmist followers refused to debate because their “consensus” opinions mixed with carefully manipulated data had become “settled science” and were thus not open for debate. 

Via: Canada Free Press

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NRA supports ACLU lawsuit against NSA’s phone records program

The National Rifle Association filed an amicus brief on Wednesday supporting the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s phone records collection program.

The NRA filed a brief of amicus curiae in U.S. District Court in support of the plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit against key Obama administration officials, including director of national intelligence James Clapper, NSA director Keith Alexander, defense secretary Chuck Hagel, Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller.

The gun-rights group — often associated in the public consciousness with conservative politics — and the progressive-leaning civil rights advocacy organization might appear to be strange bedfellows, but the NRA claims that the two groups have common interests.

“The mass surveillance program threatens the First Amendment rights of the NRA and its members,” according to the NRA counsel’s argument in the amicus brief. “The mass surveillance program could allow identification of NRA members, supporters, potential members, and other persons with whom the NRA communicates, potentially chilling their willingness to communicate with the NRA.”

“If programs like those currently justified by the government’s interpretation are allowed to continue and grow unchecked, they could also contrary to clear congressional intent undo decades of legal protection for the privacy of Americans in general, and of gun owners in particular,” according to the NRA counsel’s conclusion.

The ACLU filed its lawsuit in June, following public revelations regarding what it called “the NSA’s unprecedented mass surve

Via: Daily Caller

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