Month: December 2013

Duck Dynasty checklist

The outrage industry was in high dudgeon just before Christmas over remarks “Duck Dynasty” family patriarch, Phil Robertson, made to GQ magazine about homosexuality. Outrage is the primary ingredient for political fundraising and political power. One must always have an enemy.

Let’s go down the “I Take Offense” checklist and make sure all the boxes were “ticked” before considering a larger point.

— Liberal New York writer goes slumming among the hayseeds in Louisiana and deliberately creates a controversy by asking a Bible-loving Christian to define sin. Check.

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/cal-thomas/12-31-2013/duck-dynasty-checklist

One of the most powerful Christmas lessons

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared at Forbes.com.]

The entire country pauses on Dec. 25, as Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, known to Christians as God’s Christ and Savior, and known to many as The Prince of Peace.

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/dr-mark-w-hendrickson/12-31-2013/one-most-powerful-christmas-lessons

Always looking to help

They all come with some kind of a price and all with a certain amount of disappointment, but still Rodney keeps trying.

He likes to help people. It’s something as deeply born in him as his constantly smiling blue eyes or wit that is quicker than a summer storm that brews when it comes up a cloud. He helps us all, so much so that there is often little time left to help himself.

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/ronda-rich/12-31-2013/always-looking-help

New Years, 2014

My late friend and beloved editor Dave Hamrick summed up a writer’s puzzlement thus paraphrased):
“I can write my heart out with blood, sweat and tears, and dread to come in to work on Wednesday morning. But then I grab some notes and cobble something together long after deadline, just to get it in, and someone will tell me (through tears) that the column packed such a powerful message, it changed her life.”

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/sallie-satterthwaite/12-31-2013/new-years-2014

Year of change, cooperation

The year 2013 proved to be a time of governmental cooperation and change at the county.

The new Board of Commissioners began the year by settling a year-long legal dispute with the local cities over the distribution of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST). All parties agreed the new formula was a fair compromise, saying the positive outcome was the result of the local governments making a concerted effort to cooperate with one another.

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/articles/12-31-2013/year-change-cooperation

Final Three Uighur Prisoners Released From Guantanamo Bay

The final three Uighur prisoners have been
freed from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a move that has been
described by the Pentagon as a
“significant milestone.”

The men had been detained for over a decade, despite the fact
that military assessments found that they had
no ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Although a federal judge
ruled that the men had been unlawfully detained in 2008 their
release was delayed because of what
The Washington Post described as “repeated legal
wrangling and attempts to find a country willing to accept them.”
Slovakia has accepted the men, and the Slovakian
interior minister has said that they are not terror suspects.
According to the BBC, the U.S.
does not “repatriate Uighur detainees to China because of the risk
they could be mistreated.”

The BBC notes that there are still 155 prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay, a reduction from over 750.

While he was a presidential candidate then-Senator Obama

promised that he would close the prison at Guantanamo Bay when
he became president. However, as ABC’s
Matt Negrin explained back in July, Obama has faced opposition
to closing the prison in Congress, another reminder that promises
are easier to make than they are to keep:

Obama has run into plenty of opposition in Congress. Lawmakers
passed a bill preventing federal money from being used to transfer
Guantanamo prisoners to the United States. Obama signed that bill
into law, even as he issued a statement that disapproved of it. The
provision was part of a bigger military bill that Obama said was
too important not to sign.

Republicans, in particular, say that Guantanamo must stay open
to keep terrorists there.

Last week, Obama
signed the NDAA for FY 2014, which included the easing of
restrictions on transferring detainees into custody abroad. The ban
on transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the U.S. is still in
place.

In
a statement on the signing of the bill Obama said:

The continued operation of the facility weakens our national
security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key
allies and partners and emboldening violent extremists.

For the past several years, the Congress has enacted unwarranted
and burdensome restrictions that have impeded my ability to
transfer detainees from Guantanamo. Earlier this year I again
called upon the Congress to lift these restrictions and, in this
bill, the Congress has taken a positive step in that direction.

and:

The detention facility at Guantanamo continues to impose
significant costs on the American people.

More from Reason.com on Guantanamo Bay here.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/31/final-three-uighur-prisoners-released-fr
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Take a Grain of Salt With Those “Long” Connecticut Gun Registration Lines

AR-15Connecticut news outlets report long lines as the
deadline looms for state residents to undergo the registration
process that will magically render their firearms and
standard-capacity magazines legal, in contrast to those evil,
forbidden, yet identical, guns and mags that remain unregistered
after the turn of the year. Thousands of registrations have been
recorded, yet whether that counts as substantial compliance with
the law depends on something that’s unknowable: how many objects
subject to the law are in the state. As I’ve written before,
however, defiance of such laws is the historical norm.

According to
NBC Connecticut:

Long lines extended again from Connecticut State Police
headquarters in Middletown Tuesday morning as gun owners raced to
comply with new gun laws that go into effect on Jan. 1.

New gun laws were enacted after the tragic shooting at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012 that took the
lives of 20 first graders and six staff members. Tuesday is the
year-end deadline for gun owners to register certain assault
weapons as well as high-capacity magazines. …

As of Christmas, 25,000 people had registered assault weapons
and 17,000 registered high-capacity magazines, Malloy said Monday.
That number is sure to rise after hundreds of people waited in line
on the final two days of 2013, rushing to meet the deadline.

25,000 registered “assault weapons” with hundreds more to go?
But Governor Andrew Cuomo in (much larger) neighboring New York
estimates the number of similar weapons in his state at
one million, while a widely ignored 1991 ban in New Jersey on
the arbitrarily defined category of weapons was estimated to apply
to
100,000-300,000 such guns, before the
politics-fueled buying frenzies of the last two
decades.

I’m willing to bet that 25,000 registered assault weapons
represents a minority of the firearms that are legally required to
be registered under the law. Considering that the vast majority of
“assault weapons” use magazines restricted under the new law, and
that most people purchase multiple magazines for their rifles,
17,000 registrations in that category should be seen as wildly
underwhelming.

That shouldn’t be surprising at all, since
defiance of registration laws, let alone confiscations, is the
historical norm in the United States, Australia, Canada,
France, Germany … Politicians made that particular bed by being
repeatedly untrustworthy,
abusing registration records to seize recorded weapons, or
otherwise letting even tolerable governments degenerate into the
sort of regimes that make you wish you had a gun.

In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around
the world,
Gun Control and the Reduction of the Number of Arms,
Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of
Vienna, Austria, wrote, “non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a
common event.” He estimated that Germans registered 3.2 million of
17-20 million affected weapons when registration was implemented in
that country in 1972. Austrians, he says, registered perhaps a
quarter to a third of weapons subject to a similar law in 1996.

When California imposed “assault weapon” registration in 1990,
The New York Times
reported “only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in
private hands in the state have been registered” at the time the
grace period came to a close.

So take those “long lines” in Connecticut with a grain of salt.
Government officials are capable of turning a dinner party into an
extended, bureaucratic ordeal. But they can’t make compliance with
intrusive and repressive laws seem like a goood idea.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/31/take-a-grain-of-salt-with-those-long-con
via IFTTT

Take a Grain of Salt With Those "Long" Connecticut Gun Registration Lines

AR-15Connecticut news outlets report long lines as the
deadline looms for state residents to undergo the registration
process that will magically render their firearms and
standard-capacity magazines legal, in contrast to those evil,
forbidden, yet identical, guns and mags that remain unregistered
after the turn of the year. Thousands of registrations have been
recorded, yet whether that counts as substantial compliance with
the law depends on something that’s unknowable: how many objects
subject to the law are in the state. As I’ve written before,
however, defiance of such laws is the historical norm.

According to
NBC Connecticut:

Long lines extended again from Connecticut State Police
headquarters in Middletown Tuesday morning as gun owners raced to
comply with new gun laws that go into effect on Jan. 1.

New gun laws were enacted after the tragic shooting at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012 that took the
lives of 20 first graders and six staff members. Tuesday is the
year-end deadline for gun owners to register certain assault
weapons as well as high-capacity magazines. …

As of Christmas, 25,000 people had registered assault weapons
and 17,000 registered high-capacity magazines, Malloy said Monday.
That number is sure to rise after hundreds of people waited in line
on the final two days of 2013, rushing to meet the deadline.

25,000 registered “assault weapons” with hundreds more to go?
But Governor Andrew Cuomo in (much larger) neighboring New York
estimates the number of similar weapons in his state at
one million, while a widely ignored 1991 ban in New Jersey on
the arbitrarily defined category of weapons was estimated to apply
to
100,000-300,000 such guns, before the
politics-fueled buying frenzies of the last two
decades.

I’m willing to bet that 25,000 registered assault weapons
represents a minority of the firearms that are legally required to
be registered under the law. Considering that the vast majority of
“assault weapons” use magazines restricted under the new law, and
that most people purchase multiple magazines for their rifles,
17,000 registrations in that category should be seen as wildly
underwhelming.

That shouldn’t be surprising at all, since
defiance of registration laws, let alone confiscations, is the
historical norm in the United States, Australia, Canada,
France, Germany … Politicians made that particular bed by being
repeatedly untrustworthy,
abusing registration records to seize recorded weapons, or
otherwise letting even tolerable governments degenerate into the
sort of regimes that make you wish you had a gun.

In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around
the world,
Gun Control and the Reduction of the Number of Arms,
Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of
Vienna, Austria, wrote, “non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a
common event.” He estimated that Germans registered 3.2 million of
17-20 million affected weapons when registration was implemented in
that country in 1972. Austrians, he says, registered perhaps a
quarter to a third of weapons subject to a similar law in 1996.

When California imposed “assault weapon” registration in 1990,
The New York Times
reported “only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in
private hands in the state have been registered” at the time the
grace period came to a close.

So take those “long lines” in Connecticut with a grain of salt.
Government officials are capable of turning a dinner party into an
extended, bureaucratic ordeal. But they can’t make compliance with
intrusive and repressive laws seem like a goood idea.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/31/take-a-grain-of-salt-with-those-long-con
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The Trends To Watch For In 2014

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via Peak Prosperity,

At the beginning of this year (2013), I identified eight key dynamics that will play out over the next two to three years (2013-2015):

Trend #1: Central Planning intervention in stock and bond markets will continue, despite diminishing returns on Central State/Bank intervention

 

Trend #2:  The omnipotence of the Federal Reserve will suffer a fatal erosion of confidence as recession voids Fed policy and pronouncements of “recovery"

 

Trend #3: The Mainstream Media (MSM) will continue to lose credibility as it parrots Central Planners’ perception management

 

Trend #4:  The failure of what is effectively the “State religion,” Keynesianism, will leave policy makers in the Central State and Bank bereft of policy alternatives

 

Trend #5: Economic Stagnation will fuel the rise of Permanent Adolescence

 

Trend #6: Income, the foundation of real economic growth and wealth-distribution stability, will continue to stagnate

 

Trend #7: Small business—the engine of growth—will continue to decline for structural reasons

 

Trend #8: Territorial disputes will continue to be invoked to distract domestic audiences from domestic instability and inequality

I know it may strike some as “cheating” that my forecast is for these trends to be consequential within a three-year window rather than by a specific date, but note these are trends, not events, and trends tend not to matter until suddenly they do. This is the nature of Pareto Distributions, in which trends are inconsequential until they reach a critical-mass of 4% of the populace, at which point the “vital few” exert outsized influence on 64% of the populace.

Let’s see how the trends developed in 2013:

Trend #1:  Intervention yielded outstanding returns on corporate profits and stocks, but diminishing returns on employment, household incomes for the bottom 80% and growth, all of which are historically subpar.

Trend #2: The Fed’s members are still regarded as heroic demigods who benignly manage the Earth’s economy. When (not if) the stock market rolls over in 2014-15, Fed omnipotence will suffer.

Trend #3: This one is difficult to track but anecdotal evidence (declining circulation of many mainstream print media, declining viewership in some cable news channels, etc.) may reflect rising disenchantment with the media’s coverage of key issues.

Trend #4:  I think it is quite clear that the Fed and its posse of experts have no alternatives to ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and QE (quantitative easing).

Trend #5:  This one is difficult to monitor. If we use the percentage of young people still living at home and the rise of “selfies” (photos taken of oneself), then perhaps a case can be made that this trend is already visible.

Trend #6:  Median household income has edged up, but I suspect this is the result of higher incomes for the top 10% rather than widely distributed gains. Since the top 10% collect 51% of all income, it stands to reason that increases flowing to the top will boost median income even if the bottom 90% saw declines in income.

Trend #7: The unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act have yet to fully play out.

Trend #8: China’s recent invocation of a “defense zone” that includes the Senkaku Islands suggests this trend is definitely in play.

I also listed eight outcomes:

Outcome #1:  The counterfeiting of risk-free assets will continue to be a primary policy of the Status Quo

 

Outcome #2:  Risk will continue to be transferred en masse to the public

 

Outcome #3: Democracy in America is officially dysfunctional

 

Outcome #4:  Incentives will continue to be structurally perverse, and the rule of law will continue to be bent by individuals, enterprises, and the government

 

Outcome #5:  Healthcare (a.k.a. sickcare) will continue to be an enormous drag on the economy as diminishing returns, fraud, complexity, and defensive medicine add costs without equivalent improvements in health

 

Outcome #6:  The costs of complying with Obamacare will act as an inflection point in the decline of small business

 

Outcome #7:  The trend of the Status Quo “solving” perceived problems by adding layers of immense complexity to systems already suffering from marginal returns will continue

 

Outcome #8:  The informal cash economy will continue expanding, as those who choose to opt out of the Status Quo and those who must opt out as a survival mechanism do so

Without going into detail, I think a self-evident case can be made that each of these outcomes is already visible at the end of 2013.

Additional Trends to Watch in 2014

Since the trends listed above are still operant, these eight are additional rather than replacement trends:

Trend #1: The Number One growth industry in the private sector will increasingly be lobbying the government for favors.  When the State selects the winners and losers throughout the economy, then companies are essentially forced to make their case for special dispensations via campaign contributions and unrelenting lobbying. Elected officials benefit from their centralized powers, as the line of corporations anxiously pressing campaign cash on them lengthens in direct proportion to the expansion of State power.

This is the essence of what some call the Corporatocracy that effectively governs the U.S.A., and what I call the Neofeudal Cartel/State system, as the State and its chosen cartels dominate the economy and society in a fashion that can only be described as neofeudal.

Since organic growth from increases in wages and purchasing power are limited to the top 10%, the only sectors that can possibly gain growth from rising sales are Porsche dealerships and other luxury outlets that cater to the to
p 10%.  But since the number of households adding income is a thin 10 million out of 121 million households, moving more luxury goods offers little growth opportunities for the rest of the economy, which is stagnant at best.

As a result, lobbying the central State for favors is the default “growth industry.”

Trend #2:  The difference between anemic growth and recession will increasingly be semantic. This is another “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” debates in which Ivory Tower/State economists parse juiced or manipulated data to conclude the economy is “growing slowly” or slipping into negative growth, i.e. recession.

Experientially, if purchasing power and discretionary income (what’s left after paying taxes, rent, mortgages, food, utilities, etc.) are both declining for 90% of households, the “growth” in inventories, exports and other factors that feed into gross domestic product (GDP) are not reflecting the economy we actually inhabit.

Trumpeting what amounts to signal noise as “steady growth” is adept perception management (i.e. propaganda), but if it doesn’t include increases in purchasing power and discretionary income for the bottom 90%, it’s a propaganda embarrassment, like the Fed official hyping the declining cost of tablet computers while someone in the audience shouts, “I can’t eat an iPad.”

Trend #3: The decline in local government services will accelerate as rising pension/healthcare costs squeeze budgets.  Local governments (city, county, state) have avoided the politically combustible collision of rising pension/ healthcare costs and angry taxpayers tired of service cuts by accounting trickery and jacking up fees and taxes. Crunch-time has also been put off by rising home values that pushed property tax revenues higher.

These solutions are running out of rope: property values have topped out and accounting trickery hasn’t solved the fiscal impossibility of maintaining services and meeting pension obligations in a stagnant economy. When push comes to shove, services must be cut, either by bankruptcy or negotiation. Since the likelihood that taxes will drop is zero, taxpayers will get fewer services for their taxes.

Trend #4:  Middle class income, purchasing power and discretionary income will all continue to stagnate.  Unless you define “middle class” as those households earning $150,000 and up (9.1% of households)—and if you define the top 9% as middle class, your definition has lost all meaning—what’s left of the middle class will see real and discretionary income continue to stagnate. The causes of this decline in labor’s share of the economy are structural and cannot be remedied by lowering interest rates to zero or jacking up the stock market: zero-interest rates have deprived households of income and few in the bottom 90% own enough stock to affect their wealth. (Source: The Distribution of Household Income and the Middle Class)

Trend #5: Junk fees will continue to replace legitimate taxes.  Fearful of blowback from ever-rising taxes, local governments have turned to junk fees as the preferred method of “revenue enhancement.”  These include sharply higher fees for recreation, parking tickets, permits, etc., and a multitude of add-ons to property taxes and other existing tax structures. Local authorities are counting on the taxpayers to sigh but do nothing as long as the fee increases are small enough to avoid triggering political resistance.

In our small California town, the city has raised the fees for trash pickup by more than 100% in recent years—ironically, their reason is that recycling (which they encourage) has reduced the amount of trash being collected.  This sort of nonsensical rationalization for radically higher fees will join the usual justifications, i.e. “we can no longer fill potholes and pave streets unless we raise your taxes.”

How did they manage to perform these basic services 10 or 20 years ago with much smaller budgets? The answer: see Trend #3: skyrocketing pension and healthcare costs.

Trend #6:  The African oil exporting nations will move from the back-burner to the front ranks of geopolitical flash-points, joining the South China Sea, the Mideast and North Korea. I recently discussed The Scramble for Africa's Oil and the “resource curse” that is fueling the potential for conflict over Africa’s untapped oil wealth. 

Trend #7:  Americans will continue to passively accept the rise of the Police/National Security State. This may eventually change, but for the next few years the existing motivations for passive acceptance of increasing centralization of power will continue to hold sway.

The first is complicity: the 49% of all Americans—156 million out of 317 million—who receive direct transfers/benefits from the Federal government see little reason to rock the boat or put their cash from the government at risk.  (Source)

The second reason is a rational fear of State power: fear of getting tear-gassed and arrested should you join a protest, for example, and a generalized fear of putting whatever you still have at risk by confronting a government given to secrecy and retribution against whistleblowers, protesters, etc.

Trend #8:  The Federal government will quietly absorb the rising losses from defaulting student loans rather than reveal the bankruptcy of the entire Higher Education/Student Loan Cartel.  There are myriad ways to quash the recognition that the Higher Education/Student Loan Cartel is failing to provide useful education while it burdens younger generations with $1+ trillion in high-interest debt: quietly forgive some defaulted loans, stop enforcing collection of defaulted loans, etc.  The Federal government doesn’t want to call attention to its management of this powder keg, as widespread recognition that the system is broken will unleash calls for a general debt amnesty that will blow the big-debt-for-worthless-degrees system wide apart.

In Part II: Outcomes to Bet On in 2014, we’ll forecast the most likely consequences of these trends. With such understanding comes the opportunity to position ourselves in front of them for protection and/or profit.

Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/pz54lZSpRUY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Scott Shackford on Five Ways 2013 Was America’s Gayest Year

Thousands of gay Americans will be
ringing in the new year as legally recognized married couples, part
of an irreversible, dynamic shift in growing cultural acceptance of
same-sex relationships. 2013 was a bellwether year for gays in the
United States, but it also brought to the forefront debate over the
difference between government-enforced discrimination and private
freedoms of association. Reason’s Scott Shackford looks at the
developments, victories, challenges, and what’s ahead in gay,
lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/31/scott-shackford-on-five-ways-2013-was-am
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