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« on: January 07, 2013, 03:02:36 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Brief 1-7-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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How About a Bit of Good News for a Change?
January 7, 2013
The Foundation
"A good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous." --George Washington
Editor's Note
In 2013, we want to make a concerted effort to bring you at least some good news, which is why we will aim to lead off the Brief with a section called "Inspiration" for that purpose. Enjoy.
Inspiration
"For most parents, when a child leaves the nest it's usually for good. But at age 51, Tony Tolbert has come home again. ... He announced he was moving back home, because he was giving up his own fully furnished L.A. home, rent free, for a full year -- to a family he'd never even met. 'You don't have to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Oprah,' Tolbert said. 'We can do it wherever we are, with whatever we have, and for me, I have a home that I can make available.' But to whom? Tolbert sought out a shelter for homeless women and children called Alexandria House. It was there he found Felicia Dukes. Needless to say, she couldn't believe the offer when she heard it. 'They had a young man that wanted to donate their house to you for a year,' Dukes recounted. 'And I'm looking at her, like, what? Like -- Are you serious?' ... Tolbert also became emotional when he talked about the life lessons he learned from his father, who is now suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. 'Kindness creates kindness. Generosity creates generosity. Love creates love,' he said. 'And I think if we can share some of that and have more stories about people doing nice things for other people, and fewer stories about people doing horrible things to other people, that's a better world.' Not a bad thought to begin the new year." --CBS News' Lee Cowan1
For the Record
"While the December jobs report -- 155,000 net new payrolls, 7.8% unemployment rate -- was more or less in line with official analyst expectations, plenty of Wall Street economists thought it just might surprise to the upside. Maybe 200,000 jobs or more went the 'whisper' estimates. It didn't happen. Instead it was same old, same old. The increase in total nonfarm payroll employment was only a smidgen better than the average 2012 employment growth of 153,000 jobs per month. And that was exactly the same as the average monthly gain for 2011. And at that pace, the US won't return to pre-Great Recession employment levels until after 2025, according to the Jobs Gap calculator from the Hamilton Project. Indeed, if the labor force participation rate last month, 63.6%, were the same as in December 2011, 64.0%, the 'official' or U-3 unemployment rate today would be 8.4%, only a bit better than the December 2011 rate of 8.5%. In addition, average hourly earnings rose by just 2.1% over 2012, about the same as inflation. That means real wage growth was pretty much flat. Hard to call that progress." --American Enterprise Institute's James Pethokoukis2
Opinion in Brief
"Back in the middle of the 19th century, things were getting better for the poor for the first time ever, what with the textile revolution and the railway revolution and steamships and all. But suppose you were a political activist, thirsting for power and meaning. ... That's when Karl Marx had his brilliant idea. Why not divide the masters from the workers, and win votes from the workers by demonizing the masters and plundering their wealth? Why not tell the capitalists 'you didn't build that'? Divide and conquer. What could go wrong? What could go wrong, Mr. President, is Reynolds's Law. 'Things that can't go on forever, won't. Debt that can't be repaid, won't be. Promises that can't be kept, won't be.' What could go wrong is that the educated ruling class would make a mess of everything it meddled with: health care, pensions, education, housing, green energy, the dollar. For what? Democratic politicians are never going to come up with an entitlement reform plan and warn their senior voters and their moms with disabled kids. When the Democratic voters are reduced to eating the paint off the walls, they will want to be able to say that the Republicans did it." --columnist Christopher Chantrill3
Political Futures
"Have you yet heard House Speaker John Boehner take the time to spell out why Barack Obama's argument for taxing 'millionaires and billionaires' is wrong? It is not a complicated argument. Moreover, it is an argument that has been articulated many times in plain English by conservative talk show hosts and by others in print. It has nothing to do with being worried about the fate of millionaires or billionaires, who can undoubtedly take care of themselves. What we all should be worried about are high tax rates driving American investments overseas, when there are millions of Americans who could use the jobs that those investments would create at home. Yet Obama has been allowed to get away with the emotional argument that the rich can easily afford to pay more, as if that is the issue. But it will be the issue if no one says otherwise." --economist Thomas Sowell4
Essential Liberty
"The government may not descend to the evil of preventive law. The government cannot treat men as guilty until they have proven themselves to be, for the moment, innocent. No law can require the individual to prove that he won't violate another's rights, in the absence of evidence that he is going to. But this is precisely what gun control laws do. Gun control laws use force against the individual in the absence of any specific evidence that he is about to commit a crime. They say to the rational, responsible gun owner: you may not have or carry a gun because others have used them irrationally or irresponsibly. Thus, preventive law sacrifices the rational and responsible to the irrational and irresponsible. This is unjust and intolerable. The government may coercively intervene only when there is an objective threat that someone is going to use force. ... Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population is no evidence against you. That's collectivist thinking. The choices made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you will make. ... The government may respond only to specific threats, objectively evident. It has no right to initiate force against the innocent. And a gun owner is innocent until specific evidence arises that he is threatening to initiate force. Laws prohibiting or regulating guns across the board represent the evil of preventive law and should be abolished." --columnist Harry Binswanger5 |
