A Democrat reveals his dislike for democracy: New York Senator Charles Schumer proposes disenfranchising tea party voters in order to weaken their impact at the polls.
He also suggested that the IRS harassment of conservatives, and conservatives only, is a good thing.
The totalitarians of New York.
It is why I left back in 1998. Amazingly, it is getting far worse with the passing years. See for example this story.
The most pessimistic view: Six likely events that will follow an economic crash.
I have doubts about some of the predicted events, but I have no doubt about the precarious state of the United States’ financial situation, as described here. Nothing good can come from this. Nothing.
Theft by government: A village government in New York is trying to take a private grocery using eminent domain in order to replace it with a municipality-owned market.
In a statement, the village said it has “been trying, without success, to engage the Whitneys in substantive discussions” about renovating for the past year. “[A]t various times they have clearly stated their inability or unwillingness to undertake the renovation requirement and despite statements to the contrary, no building plans or architectural drawings of any kind have ever been presented to the village for review,” it said.
But here’s where the story becomes particularly frustrating for Whitney: Four engineers, including two commissioned by the village, reviewed the storm damage on the market and ruled that it was not “substantial,” the store owner’s son, Scott, said. “The repairs that are required due to the flooding . . . do not appear to me to be substantial improvements as defined in the building code,” one of the village-commissioned reports reads.
Nevertheless, despite the findings in the reports, village officials continue to argue that the damage is too much for Whitney to handle. Officials also said the veteran’s submitted plans for repairs are insufficient or incomplete.
Surprise, surprise! Virgin Galactic space tourists could be grounded by federal regulations.
Virgin Galactic submitted an application to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in late August 2013, says Attenborough. The office, which goes by the acronym AST, has six months to review the application, meaning an approval may come as early as February. Industry experts, however, say that may be an overly optimistic projection. “An application will inevitably be approved, but it definitely remains uncertain exactly when it will happen,” says Dirk Gibson, an associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico and author of multiple books on space tourism. “This is extremely dangerous and unchartered territory. It’s space travel. AST has to be very prudent,” he says. “They don’t want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can’t let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public.” [emphasis mine]
As I predicted ten years ago, the 2004 revision to the Commercial Space Act puts bureaucrats in charge of the exploration of space by private citizens, a fact that can have no good consequences.
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Does this make you feel safer? The Obama administration exempted the members of a Muslim Brotherhood delegation from any TSA inspection when the visited the U.S in 2012.
The coming battle: A Kentucky state legislator has introduced a bill to have the state pull out of the Common Core federal education standards program.
The European Space Agency has now released its first cost estimates for upgrading and replacing its Ariane 5 rocket.
Europe needs to find about 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion) to complete development of an upgrade to its current Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket, which would fly in 2018 and be capable of lifting satellites weighing 11,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, European Space Agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain said Jan. 17. The Ariane 5 upgrade, called Ariane 5 ME, will be on the table for ESA governments to decide, alongside the new Ariane 6 rocket, at a meeting scheduled for December in Luxembourg.
In a press briefing in Paris, Dordain said it is too early to say how much Ariane 6 will cost to develop. Government and industry estimates have ranged between 3 billion and 4 billion euros, with an inaugural flight in 2021.
As Doug Messier notes in his worthwhile analysis of these numbers, “Europe is in deep trouble.” From a customer’s perspective, these new rockets won’t fly (pun intended). The cost is too high and the development time too long. By the time they get both Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 ready for launch they will be obsolete and overpriced, when compared to the rocket’s that will already be available from their competitors.
“If guns cause more violence, where’s the exploding crime rate?”
The gun control lobby has been claiming for years that the more guns in private hands, the more gun violence we’ll see; the perennial hyperventilation is given to fears of a kind of Wild West America of lawless anarchy, wherein every gun owner is prepared to shoot from the hip at the first sign of danger.
Well. Last year the Department of Justice released a report revealing that firearm homicides declined nearly 40% between 1993 and 2011, and nonfatal firearm injuries declined nearly 70% within the same time period. Every year since 2002 has seen a rise in the number of NICS background checks performed, yet in 2011 the firearm homicide rate was lower than it was in 2002; in fact, all firearm violence, both fatal and nonfatal, was lower the former year than the latter.
You cannot negotiate the facts. They are what they are.
“I think it was a sham from the beginning.”
And what might that sham be? If your first thought is of the Obama administration’s investigation into the IRS scandal, you’d be right on the money!
The Obama administration closed the investigation without interviewing any of the victims of the harassment by the IRS.
Meanwhile, the administration as well as the Democrats in Congress are working hard to codify that harassment, so that the IRS can continue to work for the Democratic Party through the 2014 election.
One reason why I moved from Maryland: A legal gunowner gets abused by the police because he’s a legal gun owner.
Heads roll in New Jersey over traffic scandal.
The speed in which Christie is firing people strongly suggests to me that he did have nothing to do with the scandal, was out of the loop as he claims. Otherwise, these fired individuals would have some leverage that they could use against Christie to protect their jobs.
Also, compare the speed of Christie’s actions with the stonewalling we have seen by Obama in connection with the IRS scandal. I think the difference is illustrative.
