Chooding The Right Lane To Travel

In pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Mich. House Approves Right-to-Work Limiting Unions By JOHN FLESHER and JEFF KAROUB Associated Press

The Republican-led Michigan House has approved a contentious right-to-work bill limiting unions' strength. The measure approved Tuesday morning deals with public-sector workers. Another bill focusing on the private sector was approved last week, when the Senate OK'd both bills. When final versions have cleared the House, they'll go to GOP Gov. Rick Snyder for his expected signature as early as Wednesday.

Passage followed numerous challenges and changes sought by Democrats as well as raucous protests inside and outside the Capitol from pro-union demonstrators. Thousands descended upon downtown Lansing to rally against the legislation that prohibits requiring nonunion employees to financially support unions at their workplace. Backers say a right-to-work law would bring more jobs to Michigan and give workers freedom. Critics say it would drive down wages and benefits.

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Head of Obama’s Jobs Council: ‘State-Run Communism’ Actually ‘Works’

If you were ever in doubt what type of thinking this administration fosters, this clip should put any debate to rest. Appearing Monday morning on CBS, Obama’s jobs council head and the CEO of GE Jeffrey Immelt said that one thing that “actually works” is “state-run Communism” in China. After host Charlie Rose brought up the “growth rate” of China falling from double digits to about eight percent, Immelt chimed in. “Look, I think it’s good for China,” he said. “To a certain extent, Charlie, 11 to 12 percent is unsustainable. You end up getting too much stimulus or a misallocation of resources. They are much better off working on a more consumer-based economy, less dependent on exports, driving technology and innovation harder. Really, the one thing that actually works, state run communism may not be your cup of tea, but their government works.” “They get things done,” Rose responded.  Watch

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Ron Paul: Attacking Tea Party Is Not A Good Plan For GOP by Mark Horne

Boehner has moved to attack at least four “Tea Party” Congressmen and marginalize them by kicking them off committees. An unnamed source claimed that the Congressmen deserved it: “a GOP leadership aide told NBC News that the four members — Michigan’s Justin Amash, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, Walter Jones  of North Carolina and Arizona’s David Schweikert — were ‘clearly not team players.’” Right. Because Team GOP has been such a wonderful gift to loyal Republicans, obviously anyone who won’t “play ball” with them must be given bench time. Unless, of course, the entire starting group are a bunch of losers and we need a replacement team. Perhaps Amash, Huelskamp, Jones, and Schweikert are hoping that voters will select others like them and kick Boehner and his ilk off the team. Ron Paul has recently stated the obvious. He said, “They’re going to punish freshmen legislators? If you’re looking for dissension, then you’re going to get it… These congressmen will never cave. They’re going to get the support of the people … They will become heroes.” How can anyone argue with this? But I think the most telling remark Paul made was his characterization of why some people get persecuted by their fellow Republican Congressmen: “You get punched for having sincere beliefs.”

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‘Study’ Claims Fox News Viewers Have Average IQ of 80

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence. Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group. The press release has a name — “P. Nichols” — and a phone number attached, so I called. I got a call back from a 202 area code. Okay, Washington, D.C. Not clear why the press release is datelined “Birmingham Alabama” but okay. Oddly, the phone number turns out to be a free Google Voice number.  So there you have it. A four-year study sparked by the outcome of the recent election, from an institution that’s admittedly a fake, from a company that won’t identify itself, supposedly funded by a Republican PAC trying to “cut off” the Tea Party like a cancer, using a sample that was chosen with a particular result in mind, with a contact number that’s an anonymous free Google Voice number. Read More.....

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Californians are packing up and moving out — to Texas!

About 100,000 more people moved away from California in 2011 than relocated to the Golden State, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The trend can be explained, in part, in monetary terms. Even in an economic boom, the cost of living in California has increased, prompting people to move out, and, in recent years, unemployment in the state has skyrocketed. So, where are these former Californians going? The Census Bureau calculates that the most popular destination is Texas (58,992), a state that is luring California companies. That’s followed by Arizona (49,635), Nevada (40,114), Washington (38,421) and Oregon (34,214).  California, taxing its way to prosperity!

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Understanding $16,000,000,000,000 in Debt

I don’t understand how much $16 trillion ($16T) of debt is. So, to help myself, I break it down to terms I can understand. There are about 254,000,000 registered vehicles in this country (2009 data). Big number this is. But dividing the number into $16T would give a valuation of about $69,000 for each of them. This is somewhat higher than the average cost of automobiles on the road. Another way to put it is to say the U.S. national debt could replace the entire U.S. fleet of automobiles with, for example, brand-new, fully equipped Lexus ES460s. Nice cars. The total of state budgets in 2010 was about $666B. Dividing into $16T gives about 24. This means the $16T national debt could completely cover all state budgets for about 24 years. The total annual foreign aid budget of the U.S. is reckoned to be about $54B. Dividing this into $16T gives about 296, meaning that the national debt of the U.S. could cover all foreign aid for almost three centuries. The population of the United States is currently estimated at 312,780,968. Dividing this into $16T gives the current encumbrance to each citizen of about $51,000.

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Google Funnels Profits to Bermuda to Avoid Paying Steep Corporate Taxes

Google Inc. (GOOG) avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show. By legally funneling profits from overseas subsidiaries into Bermuda, which doesn’t have a corporate income tax, Google cut its overall tax rate almost in half. The amount moved to Bermuda is equivalent to about 80 percent of Google’s total pretax profit in 2011. The increase in Google’s revenues routed to Bermuda, disclosed in a Nov. 21 filing by a subsidiary in the Netherlands, could fuel the outrage spreading across Europe and in the U.S. over corporate tax dodging. Governments in France, the U.K., Italy and Australia are probing Google’s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue during economic doldrums.  Al Gore is a senior adviser to Google.

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Obamacare Fee of $63 Per Person Will Begin in 2014  By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar  Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It’s a new, $63per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers. Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a “sleeper issue” with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.  “Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multimillion dollar assessment without getting anything back for it,” said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.  Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee. The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines. Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-topredict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014. The program “is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance,” reduce the use of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured “and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all,” the Obama administration said in the regulation. Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer- sponsored coverage for early retirees. The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama’s expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income. 

Business world misses fee
But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don’t provide coverage.  “This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount,” said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues. Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.

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"In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons." --Benjamin Rush, letter to John Adams, 1811

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Tax the Rich, The Critique

Lee Doren presents a scene by scene critique of the controversial cartoon ‘Tax the Rich’ which was paid for by a California Teachers Union. Watch

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No Shots Fired: State Dept Benghazi Security Force Unarmed

A source with personal knowledge of the security situation in Benghazi told Breitbart News that Senators who listened to closed door testimony about the Benghazi attack were shocked to learn State Department security personnel agents were not immediately armed. Additionally, agents separated from Ambassador Chris Stevens left to retrieve their M4 weapons in a separate building. Only one returned to protect the Ambassador, while the other two hunkered down in the barracks, the source relayed. “From the accounts I read, those guys were not ready. When the attack came that night, they had to go back to the other room and grab their weapons. Then the worse part about it was they never even returned to be with the Ambassador. One returned to be with the Ambassador with his rifle. The other two went back to where there were [sic] barracks. And two stayed in that same building where there were radios and other weapons and the safe and other stuff was there. There were no shots fired in return. On the embassy property, just the embassy property, none of those security agents blasted a single bullet from a single pistol or rifle at all in defense of the Ambassador—nothing.” The source described, “Part of the problem was they never really wanted to fully staff it [consulate], and so the numbers were really low.” He then added, “At one point in time they only had one State Department (security) personnel there in Benghazi. That was in April.” State Department Security personnel at the Benghazi embassy were each armed with M4 long guns and side pistols. In October, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb testified on Capitol Hill to the House Oversight Committee that during the attack, security agents raced to a separate building to get their weapons and tactical gear but only one of the agents could return to the Ambassador, thereafter.

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Freedoms of Speech, Religion Top Freedoms of Press, Right to Bear Arms

Ask voters about some of their basic freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, and they rate freedom of speech as most important and the right to bear arms as the least. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that:

·      85% of Likely U.S. Voters consider freedom of speech Very Important.

·      66% Believe U.S. Has Too Much Government Power, Too Little Freedom

·      51% See Federal Government As Threat to Their Rights

·      69% Say Federal Government Lacks Authority To Force Purchase of Health Insurance

·      70% Favor Individual Choice Over Government Standards for Health Insurance

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Caught On Camera: Conservative Reporter Punched Repeatedly by Union Activist!

While at a “right to work” protest in Michigan, conservative writer Steven Crowder was attacked by union activists who had also tore down a tent owned by the pro-right-to-work group Americans for Prosperity. The violent assault was caught on video.