Monday, October 13, 2014

If you read this and agree that "under God", should be left in the pledge,then just forward it to others and you have voted for it to be left in. If you don't forward it you are voting NO to "under God."Easy huh!









'The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you. '
Shock to NBC !!!!!
As many of you are aware, the Knights of Columbus submitted to congress that the words "Under God" should be added to our pledge of allegiance.  Both Houses of Congress passed the law and it was signed by President Eisenhower  in 1954.  The information below was based on a poll taken by NBC on what percentage should keep the words in our pledge verses the percent who want it removed If you read this and agree that "under God   should be left in the pledge, then just forward it to others and you have voted for it to be left in. If you delete it and don't forward it you are voting NO to "under God."  Easy huh!
Official versions
(changes in bold italics)
1892
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all." 
1892 to 1923
"I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all." 
1923 to 1924
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States  and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all." 
1924 to 1954
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all." 
1954 to Present
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America , and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." 
Shock to NBC
This is not sent for discussion. If you agree, forward it...  If you don't, delete it.  I don't want to know one way or the other.  By my forwarding it, you know how I feel.
Do you believe that the word God should stay in American culture ?
NBC had a poll on this question.  They had the highest Number of responses that they have ever had for one of their polls, and the Percentage was the same as this:
86% to keep the words , IN God We Trust and God in the Pledge of Allegiance, 14% against.
That is a pretty 'commanding' public response.
I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't.  
Now it is your turn.   It is said that 86% of Americans believe the word God should stay.  Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having 'In God We Trust' on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why is the world catering to this 14%?
AMEN!
If you agree, pass this on.  if not, simply delete.
In God We Trust




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A Very Bad Year for Obamacare…and a Worse Year for the Victims of Obamacare...

A Very Bad Year for Obamacare…and a Worse Year for the Victims of Obamacare

by Dan Mitchell

In the last few months of 2013, Obamacare suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks dealing with everything from a clunky website to plan cancellations to the White House feeling compelled to arbitrarily ignore the law.

Since that time, though, people seem to have adapted to this new burden.

But adaptation doesn't mean approval. There are still serious problems with Obamacare, as evidenced by the fact that the Obama Administration has postponed implementation of various provisions 38 times!

However, the White House wants us to believe the law is a success, even if that requires statistical contortions.

So let's look at the record.

My Cato colleague Mike Tanner argues that Obamacare has been a disaster, writing for Townhall that "...in the last year we’ve also seen plenty of bad news for consumers, providers, employers and taxpayers."

In his column, he looks at various groups and assesses whether Obamacare has succeeded or failed.

What about universal coverage?

...the best estimates suggest that roughly 8 million people gained insurance under ObamaCare, but roughly half of those were enrolled in Medicaid (outside of the exchanges), which isn’t really health-care reform so much as adding people to government welfare. And it still leaves 41 million American adults uninsured.

That doesn't sound too impressive, particularly when you consider all the damage that Obamacare has imposed.

What about keeping your health plan?

...roughly 6 million Americans were kicked off their insurance because their plans failed to offer a lengthy-enough maternity stay, didn’t provide sufficient drug and alcohol rehabilitation benefits or otherwise fell short of the insurance that federal bureaucrats thought that they should have. ...on average, ObamaCare plans were worse than the plans they replaced, in terms of both providers covered and cost-sharing. A new wave of cancellations is about to begin as well.  ...In several states, insurers have dropped plans that they offered on the exchanges or even withdrawn from the market altogether. And if that was not bad enough, Americans with employer-based insurance may find out their insurance has to be changed starting next year.

So we pay more and get less, while also dealing with lots of uncertainty.

What about consumers?

If judged against President Obama’s promise that health-care reform would save us all at least $2,500 through lower premiums, ObamaCare deserves an F. ...In states where the individual market was not already dysfunctional, there were significant premium increases.

So the President was lying? I'm shocked, shocked.

What about taxpayers?

This summer the Congressional Budget Office announced that it had given up trying to score the cost of ObamaCare, given the frequency with which the administration was making unilateral changes to the law. ...roughly 85 percent of those enrolled through exchanges are receiving subsidies, higher than predicted. Overall, the best estimates suggest the law will cost $2.63 trillion over the next 10 years. That will be paid for by $1.38 trillion in new taxes and at least $1.25 trillion in additional debt.

Imagine that. A new entitlement is going to be a fiscal boondoggle. Who could have predicted that outcome?

What about jobs?

...surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta confirmed that businesses are cutting employment and shifting workers to part-time positions because of ObamaCare. According to the New York Fed, 21 percent of manufacturers and 17 percent of service companies have reduced the size of their workforce because of the law. In addition, roughly 20 percent of both manufacturers and service companies said that they have shifted workers from full- to part-time jobs.

The overall impact on employment could be as high as two million workers.

But there is a tiny sliver of good news. Or, to be more accurate, there's a tiny sliver of not-as-bad-as-we-thought news.

...some costs are lower because so many states have chosen not to expand Medicaid.

In other words, the Obama White House thought it could bribe states to expand the welfare program that provides health care.

And some statist governors, such as John Kasich, rolled over for Obama.

But many states realized it would be a long-term fiscal disaster to expand Medicaid, notwithstanding promises that Washington would pick up the tab in the short run.

Let's close with a video on one of the more bizarre aspects of Obamacare. Apparently, people are getting screwed out of their healthcare plans because of strange rules that all plans have to fit within certain bands.

I can't imagine why the politicians wanted the law to work this way, other than the statist instinct to micro-manage other people's lives. You have to watch the video to grasp the inanity of the policy.

And if all this isn't sufficiently depressing, keep in mind that the White House wants to use your tax dollars to bail out the big health insurance companies.

P.S. I've written several times about the horrifying practice of "civil asset forfeiture," which happens when the government decides to seize the property of people without bothering to convict them of any crime.

Well, now we have a humorous - yet still outrageous - look at the practice from John Oliver.

If you want some additional (and more substantive) analysis of asset forfeiture, watch videos here, here, and here.

And if you want to increase your blood pressure, read horror stories about government theft here, here, here, here, and here.

No wonder even the people who first developed the program now want to shut it down. And it is encouraging that there finally is a backlash against this odious practice.

P.P.S. If you like Oliver's humor, here's his very funny analysis of how Obamacare is working in Oregon.

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Divided government is good for America's economy. Or, to be more specific, divided government is a net plus if the alternative is to have statists fully in charge of economic policy.

The United States Improves to #12 in New Rankings of Global Economic Freedom

by Dan Mitchell

Divided government is good for America's economy.

Or, to be more specific, divided government is a net plus if the alternative is to have statists fully in charge of economic policy.

I made this point back in 2012 when I pointed out that the unemployment rate started falling after Republicans captured the House of Representatives, and we got further good results when gridlock led to an end to extended unemployment benefits, first in North Carolina and then the entire country.

We also see positive evidence in the new rankings from the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World, which was published this week.

As you can see from this chart, the United States fell in 2010 to #18 in this global ranking of economic liberty, but now America has improved to #12.

That's still far below our #3 ranking when Bill Clinton left office, so we're still paying a high price for the statist policies of both Bush and Obama, but at least we're finally moving back in the right direction.

If you look at the underlying data, you can see why America's score has increased since 2010.

There was a slight improvement in the scores for trade and regulation, but that was offset by declines in the scores for monetary policy and property rights.

Fiscal policy is the area where there was a significant improvement for the United States, which matches with my data showing that sequestration and the Tea Party made a big difference by significantly slowing the growth of government spending.

But the improvement over the past two years, as noted above, is small compared to the decline in the previous 10 years.

Here's how Economic Freedom of the World describes America's fall.

The 7.81 chain-linked rating of the United States in 2012 is more than 8/10 of a point lower than the 2000 rating. What accounts for the US decline? While US ratings and rankings have fallen in all five areas of the EFW index, the reductions have been largest in the Legal System and Protection of Property Rights (Area 2)... The plunge in Area 2 has been huge. In 2000, the 9.23 rating of the United States was the 9th highest in the world. But by 2012, the area rating had plummeted to 6.99, placing it 36th worldwide. ...the increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States. ...To a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state.

Geesh, we're becoming another Argentina.

Looking at the big picture, a falling score is not a trivial issue.

The decline in the summary rating between 2000 and 2012 on the 10-point scale of the index may not sound like much, but scholarly work on this topic indicates that a one-point decline in the EFW rating is associated with a reduction in the long-term growth of GDP of between 1.0 and 1.5 percentage points annually (Gwartney, Holcombe, and Lawson, 2006). This implies that, unless policies undermining economic freedom are reversed, the future annual growth of the US economy will be only about half its historic average of 3%.

Amen. This is why I worry so much about the corrosive impact of big government.

Now let's look at the overall ratings for all nations. The chart is too large to show all nations, so here are the nations with the most economic freedom.

You shouldn't be surprised to see that Hong Kong and Singapore own the top two spots.

Other nations with very high scores include New Zealand, Switzerland, Mauritius, UAE, Canada, Australia, Jordon and Chile.

Getting a good score today, however, is no guarantee of getting a good score in the future.

I've already expressed concern about Australia moving in the wrong direction, but I'm even more worried about Chile. That nation's socialist President is making very bad moves on fiscal policy, and also is trying to undermine her country's very successful system of school choice.

But it would take a lot of bad policy for Chile to drop down to the level of Venezuela, which has the dubious honor of being in last place.


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Believe It or Not: A Communist Nation Is the World’s Most Pro-Capitalist Country...


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What Happens When Too Many Voters Support Redistribution?...

What Happens When Too Many Voters Support Redistribution?

by Dan Mitchell

Back in 2010, I shared some wise words from Walter Williams and Theodore Dalrympleabout how society can become unstable when people figure they can "vote themselves money."

On a related note, I shared the famous "riding in the wagon" cartoons in 2011 and the "Danish party boat" image in 2014. Both of these posts highlighted the danger that exists when societies reach a tipping point, which occurs when too many people vote themselves into dependency and expect (and vote) for never-ending handouts.

Indeed, this is why I'm very pessimistic about the future of welfare states such as Greece.

And, depending what happens in an upcoming run-off election, I probably won't be very optimistic about Brazil.

Investor's Business Daily has shared some fascinating - and disturbing - data from that country's recent election.

A Brazilian economist has shown a near-exact correlation between last Sunday's presidential election voting choices and each state's welfare ratios. Sure enough, handouts are the lifeblood of the left. ...Neves won 34% of the vote, Rousseff took 42% and green party candidate Marina Silva took about 20% — and on Thursday, Silva endorsed Neves, making it a contest of free-market ideas vs. big-government statism. But what's even more telling is an old story — shown in an infographic by popular Brazilian economist Ricardo Amorim. ...Amorim showed a near-exact correlation among Brazil's states' welfare dependency and their votes for leftist Workers Party incumbent Rousseff. Virtually every state that went for Rousseff has at least 25% of the population dependent on Brazil's Bolsa Familia welfare program of cash for single mothers... States with less than 25% of the population on Bolsa Familia overwhelmingly went for Neves and his policies of growth. ...Fact is, the left cannot survive without a vast class of dependents. And once in, dependents have difficulty getting out.So Brazil's election may come down to a question of whether it wants to be a an economic powerhouse — or a handout republic.

Here's the map from IBD showing the close link between votes for the left-wing candidate and the extent of welfare dependency.

It's not a 100 percent overlap, but the relationship is very strong.

Sort of like the maps I shared on language and voting in Ukraine.

That being said, I'm a policy wonk who wants economic liberty, not a political hack with partisan motives. So let's look at the implications of growing dependency.

As IBD explains, the greatest risk is that people get trapped in dependency. We see that in advanced nations like the United States and United Kingdom (and the Nordic nations) so is it any surprise that it's also a problem in a developing country like Brazil (or South Africa)?

Problem is, "some experts warn that a wide majority cannot get out of this dependence relationship with the government," as the U.K. Guardian put it. And whether it's best for a country that aspires to become a global economic powerhouse to have a quarter of the population — 50 million people — dependent on welfare and producing nothing is questionable.

I especially appreciate the last part of this excerpt. Economic output is a function of how capital and labor are productively utilized.

In other words, a welfare state imposes a human cost and an economic cost.

Now let's consider possible implications for the United States. A few years ago, I put together a "Moocher Index" to show which states had the highest percentage of non-poor households receiving some form of redistribution.

Do the moocher states vote for leftists? Well, it we use the 2012 presidential election as a guidepost, 7 of the top 10 moocher states voted for Obama.  That suggests that there is a relationship.

But if you look at the states with the lowest levels of dependency, they were evenly split, with 5 for Obama and 5 for Romney. So perhaps there aren't any big lessons for America, though Obama's margins in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada were relatively small.

For what it's worth, I'm far more worried about these economic numbers, not the aforementioned political numbers.

P.S. I probably shouldn't assume that a leftist victory automatically means more statism in Brazil. After all, keep in mind that we got more economic freedom during the Clinton years and bigger government during the Bush years. Moreover, it was a left-leaning Brazilian president who had the wisdom to acknowledge that you can't redistribute unless someone first produces.

P.P.S. At least one honest leftist admits there is a heavy cost to government dependency.

P.P.P.S. If you live in a nation that already has passed the tipping point of too much dependency and you want to live more freely, you can always escape. As reported by the U.K.-based Independent.

Up to 2.5 million French people now live abroad, and more are bidding “au revoir” each year. ...the “lifeblood” of France are leaving because of “the impression that it’s impossible to succeed”... There is “an anti-work mentality, absurd fiscal pressure, a lack of promotion prospects, and the burden of debt hanging over future generations,” he told Le Figaro. ...while the figure of 2.5 million expatriates is “not enormous”, what is more troubling is the increase of about 2 per cent each year. “Young people feel stuck, and they want interesting jobs. Businessmen say the labour code is complex and they’re taxed even before they start working. Pensioners can also pay less tax abroad,” she says. France’s unemployment rate is hovering around 10 per cent. As for high-earners, almost 600 people subject to a wealth tax on assets of more than €800,000 (£630,000) left France in 2012, 20 per cent more than the previous year.

The good news is that some people escape. The bad news is that the political environment becomes even worse for those remaining.

P.P.P.P.S. And don't forget that the Obama campaign celebrated dependency during the 2012 campaign

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Saturday, October 11, 2014

11 Odd Facts About Marijuana

11 Odd Facts About Marijuana
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Cameras Were Placed In A Remote Area In Greenland. What They Captured Is Stunning And Terrifying

Cameras Were Placed In A Remote Area In Greenland. What They Captured Is Stunning And Terrifying
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