Tag Archives: zCarolina Politics

Honduras

This one I don’t get.  There is a country.  This country has a Constitution that says a President can only serve 2 terms.  The current President wants to serve at least 3.  The legally sanctioned Vice-President along with the Constitutionally called for “Senate” arrest said President and strip him of his power.  The Vice-President, a political ALLY of ex-President, reluctant to do so, accepts the job of President and is willing to hold elections and step down to the winner.

Obama calls foul.

So, America crafts a deal that would call for the disgraced President to regain his office IF he recognizes the elections in November, per the Constitution.

Now, the rascal is backing out.  He even sent a letter to Obama.

Obama: Love – 40

What Have We Become

Stumbled across a letter to Joe Lieberman tonight over at American Hatriotism today.  It’s awesome.  Basically you have someone over there talking about how awful, simply AWFUL, Mr. Lieberman is for coming out against the health care bill.  After a WHOLE bunch of discussion on the fact, we get to the point where a letter is penned and delivered to the Senator’s office.  I’ve captured all I could stand the beginning and then added my response to it.  If ya want, stop on over the Hatriotism and see if the comment got any action:

Dear Mr. Lieberman,

Do you sleep well while …..

so many Americans struggle to bear the pain and anguish they are experiencing today?

Far be it that people ought to struggle.

somewhere in America a hard working student finds out there is no means, no money, no way to college?

Is that hard-working student willing to work hard at a job?

a mother and father are struggling to provide the bare necessities for their disabled child?

Good bless then for being able to supply the necessities for their child; disabled or not.

an elderly man who fought for his country eats a can of beans for dinner and must dress in several layers of clothing because he can not afford a decent meal or to heat his meager home?

We thank him for his service; service to ensure that we are all free.  Free to be responsible.  Or not to be responsible.

a Mother over-medicates her baby with tylenol for his earache because she can not take him to the urgent care or doctor for treatment?

She should take the bay to urgent care or the doctor for treatment.

a family will huddle in the cold behind a dumpster to block the wind because they have nowhere else to go?

Before they go to the government, they should go to church.

a husband and wife lie in bed discussing how to break it to their children that they will soon lose their home and have to move?

The tender mercies of learning not to borrow money you can’t afford to pay back.

a couple that saved thousands for a home they will now lose when the bank takes it away?

This should be sent to Senator Frank actually.

a father tells his family he has lost his job and they can no longer count on him to take care of them?

A real father would say that he has lost his job and will do whatever it takes to take care of them.  Even if it means working 3 others.

a mother tells her children there isn’t anything left in the house to eat?

How many different ways can you say the same thing?

another father wonders how many more days, weeks, months before he will work again and worries how they’ll make it until then?

Jeez.

The whole rest of your letter is the same point on and on and on.

And the real tragedy?  Passing a law isn’t going to change any of that.

An Interesting Test

If you break into my house and threaten my wife and kids; expect to be shot.  And hopefully killed.  Self defense is one of the most dominant of American traits.  And really, it makes sense that it be so.  After all, I have the freedomw to call mine what is mine.  To sell it, keep it or give it away.  It’s the cornerstone of what makes us great.

I’m also a father.  And when going into the delivery room for each of my children, I pulled the doc aside, looked her dead in the eye, and said “If at any time there is to be a choice, a choice between my wife or the baby, be very clear that it is my expectation you will not flinch when I tell you to save my wife.”  I get the whole choice thing when it comes to weighing the tender balance of two lives.

So I get that there are certain cases where a person would make a choice to take the life of another.  I do.  If my wife’s life would have been put in danger due to the pregnancy, I would without a doubt, terminate that pregnancy.  Without a doubt.  But equally so, there would be no doubt that what I was doing was weighing one human life against another.  It wouldn’t cross my mind that what I was doing was removing a wart or mole.  It would sadden me greatly that I was ending the life of my child.

And because of that, I understand the argument being made in Raleigh.

Family members of murder victims spoke to a Chapel Hill crowd Saturday in support of proposed legislation that would recognize unborn children as victims in homicide cases.

“You can’t tell me it is not a human being,” Blaine said of Nielsen’s unborn child.

She’s right.  The man that took her daughter’s life not only robbed a mother of her daughter, but a grandmother of her grandchild. In that one act, that man took two human lives.  It’s time this law is passed.  And then extrapolated.  Extrapolated into anti-abortion laws in cases where it makes sense; health of mother/child and victim of crime.

But the left won’t allow it:

When similar bills have been introduced, various women’s rights and pro-choice groups have spoken against it.

And that’s gross.

Check Your Work

Global Warming.  GLOBAL WARMING!

The globe is warming, man is causing it and we are all going to die!

And this is settled science.  ‘Cause that’s what all the science says.  And the news is telling us so!

PHILADELPHIA –- An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.

The rate of relative sea-level rise, or RSLR, during the 20th century was 3 to 3.3 millimeters per year, higher than the usual rate of one per year. Furthermore, the acceleration appears consistent with other studies from the Atlantic coast, though the magnitude of the acceleration in North Carolina is larger than at sites farther north along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast and may be indicative of a latitudinal trend related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

Holy Moly!

But wait.  What happens when a skeptic goes and checks the data?

Fortunately they provide the data with the plot. You can read all about the Topex/Poseidon data preparation here. I took that raw data and plotted it here in an expanded size and did a trend line.  The result was surprising. A slight negative trend.

See, this is the problem I have with the Global Warming crowd.  They claim they have data.  Back away from data that shows their data to be wrong.  They make predictions suing bad data and then ignore the fact that their predictions are always wrong.

Priorities and Scare Tactics

Look, it’s simple.  We all do it.  There are times in every good household when something unexpected comes up.  Or, in times of over spending, perhaps it shouldn’t be unexpected, but, you get the point.  You look in the checkbook and look at the bills and confirm that it isn’t going to add up.  You are going to have to reduce spending or get another job.  It happens to all of us.  Happens to me.  Will happen to me again.  And this is healthy; it forces us to keep what is important to us and shed what isn’t.

For example, as I monitor my “play money” fund and see that it’s going to be bankrupt in 3 months I am forced to review what I am paying for in terms of “play”.  I see that I have 3 magazine subscriptions and 5 on line subscriptions.  Further, I am spending 90 bucks a month on aikido and so on and so on.  Given that I have to shave off $50 a month, I go through what everybody goes through.  I itemize my “play money” expenditures, rank them in order of value and cut the ones that are of LEAST VALUE!  Notice I say value, not dollar expenditure.  See, I really appreciate my aikido and am willing to keep that program intact even though it has a higher dollar value than say, Forbes.  Sadly, Forbes is a redundant source and it gets wacked.

What I don’t do is this:

Democrats generally agree that tax increases are needed to avoid what they say would be devastating cuts to education and social services for children and the state’s poor.

See, to me, that’s disingenuous.  Who DOESN’T want to avoid cutting these programs?  There’s not a person in the world that wants to cut education and social services.  First.  It has to be at the top, or close to it, of every single politicians value list.  Or should be.  And that’s what makes me mad about Liberals.  They want and take the easy way out every time.

  • When forced to cut, they won’t.
  • When asked to prioritize, they won’t.
  • When required to do what all adults do-they balk.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Education won’t have to cut back some.  It doesn’t mean that schools have a green light to spend spend spend.  But what it does say is that there HAVE to be places where we can cut before we have to implement “devastating cuts to education and social services”.

Sheesh.

Corporate Good Will

This is how it should be done.

The state’s largest natural gas utility is asking its customers to pay a little extra each month, in a novel effort to help cover heating bills for low-income residents.

Piedmont Natural Gas, with 725,000 customers in the state, expects a surge of delinquent bills this winter in the midst of a grinding recession and is hoping to avert a corresponding increase in disconnected accounts.

The company this morning introduced a program to let its customers sign up to “round up” their bills, with the difference going to a fund to help residents who can’t afford to pay their utility bills. The program rounds up Piedmont customer bills to the nearest dollar and will result in an average monthly donation of 50 cents, or about $6 a year.

If 100,000 people sign up, Piedmont would raise about $600,000 a year toward the program. The company is contributing $100,000 of its own money and will contribute $50,000 more if 100,000 people sign up.

The money would be given to the state Department of Health and Human Services to distribute to social-service agencies. The donations would be distributed to all customers who can’t pay their utility bills, not just natural gas customers.

Here is a corporation that is using it’s position in society to help society.  Further, it is doing it by asking, not forcing by fiat.  Further, Progress is putting it’s money where it’s mouth is; they are donating $100,000 of their own money to the program.  Lastly, they are giving the money to social-service agencies to distribute as needed; not force those agencies to simply return that money to Progress.

Kudos to Progress Energy!

How to Get More of a Thing

I have posted a in the last week about getting less of a thing here and here.  I posit that when something becomes more expensive you get less of it.  As that same thing becomes less expensive, you get more of it.  For example, when you tax jobs, you get less jobs.  When you reduce the price of beer, you sell more beer.

Real life example is here.

MAIDE — Dirt could start moving as soon as August on a new $1 billion facility Apple is planning to build in Maiden, officials said Monday.

Catawba County commissioners and the Maiden Town Council approved incentives at a Monday evening meeting for the project, which is expected to create roughly 50 jobs 60 miles northwest of Charlotte.

The local incentives approved Monday are on top of changes to North Carolina law intended to attract the technology company. In June, Gov. Bev Perdue announced the expansion just hours after signing legislation that will cut the California-based computer company’s tax bill in this state by about $46 million over a decade. Apple must agree to invest $1 billion over nine years in land, property and equipment to qualify for the benefit.

See how easy this is?  When you reduce thhe cost of doing business, you do more business.  Funny that.  Truth and Facts!

Strange Numbers

This past Thursday, workers at a Smithfield Foods went to work covered by a Union contract.  And from all accounts, they are very very happy to finally be so covered.   For example, the article mentions as benefits:

  • Guaranteed sick leave
  • Time-and-a-half holiday pay
  • $1.50 an hour raise over the next four years

“We really did accomplish something with this union,” said Mattie Fulcher.  “We might not have gotten the raise that we wanted, but that will come in time. This is our first contract, and it is a start.”

Now, it’s hard to gauge “success” of this contract for the members.  Among the most glaring omissions of the article are the pre-contract benefits.  For example, what have the pay increases for the average worker been for the past 4 years?  Or, what was the pay multiplier for holidays and overtime before the Union came in to “save the day”?  We do get an idea of what pre-contract life might have been in respect to sick leave:

Fulcher said that on Thursday she got a 40-cent-per-hour raise…and she began earning sick time for the first time since going to work for Smithfield. The sick time is unpaid, but in the past workers earned disciplinary points that could lead to firing if they stayed home sick.

Okay, so lemme get this straight.  The new Union contract says that Ms Fulcher is able to begin to accumulate sick time.  Sick time that is unpaid.  And this is different than in the past when the worker was afforded unpaid sick time but could, if abused, be fired for taking too much sick time?  Now, the article doesn’t mention this specifically, it does point out that employees were given “discipline points”; whatever that means.  Look, I work in corporate America and my sick leave policy is pretty straight forward and generous.  If you are sick, stay home.  As often as you are sick.  And guess what?  few of us ever really call in sick.  But when we do, our bosses mark it down and track us.  Cause, ya know, far be it from an employee to take every other Friday off and claim to be sick.  Sheesh.

Next on the hit list, guaranteed hours:

The contract will also guarantee workers at least 30 hours of work each week…

Awesome.  Really awesome for peope who wanna work more than 29 hours a week.  Really REALLY bad for folks who don’t.  Cause guess what?  Those people get fired.  No company in their right mind is going to pay someone 30 hours of pay for 15 hours of work.  Nice.

And the last piece of good news:

Union members will begin paying dues of about $7 a week…

So, Ms Fulcher gets a $0.40 per hour raise AND gets to pay $7 bucks a week.  Let’s say, just for fun, that she works 40 hours a week.  40 hours at $0.40 is $16.  Assume a 15% tax burden and that 16 bucks goes to $13.60.  Of which $7 goes to the Union.  In the end, she gets $6.60 a week, or about $26.40 a month.  The Union’s take?  7 bucks.  7 bucks or $28 a month.  Guess who makes out better here?  The worker or the Union?  In this specific case, even considering that Ms. Fulcher kept her job, the Union made more money than she did.  But let’s not forget the folks that lost their job as a result of this.  In the end, they have lost the most.

How to Get Less of Something: Only More

Last week I posted about how to get less of something; raise the price.  You see, as price goes up, demand goes down, that’s how it works.  If you sold 3 cases of beer at a buck a bottle, you could expect to sell less than 72 bottles at 2 bucks a bottle.  Now, this isn’t all bad news.  Sometimes, the supply is limited.  Take, for example, a concert.  You can only fit so many people into the RBC Center.  So, what sense would it make to price the tickets where the demand exceeds the supply?  Rather, a shrewd business manager would continue to raise the prices until the demand met the supply exactly.  Anyway, I digress.

In our story, the Great State of North By God Carolina has only begun, Be-GUN, to talk about assessing state sales tax for on-line purchases made as a result of pass though retailers.  Wow.  That’s a lot to think through.  But it works like this.

Say, as readers are flocking to this site by the ones and twos, I decide to cash in on the traffic.  I make a deal with randomsite.com and put their advertisement on the side of my web page.  Then, as my gentle readers clock though to randomsite.com and make purchases, I get a percentage.  The beauty of Capitalism.

Now, however, North Carolina is wanting to apply sales tax to those purchases made as a result of click through programs.

Much like our local pub above, these retailers are seeing sales go down as a result of prices going up.  After considering their situation, costs, benefits and other tricky business school kinda stuff, they decide to end their commission relationships with their on line partners.

Net/net – North Carolina sees the same amount of sales tax dollars as they would have without the law.  Namely $000,000.00.  And, this is the best part, North Carolina residents who run websites see a reduction in their incomes.  Further, we have to assume that these North Carolina residents are reporting the income that they make as a result of these relationships.  That is, they have to submit as income and then pay State and Federal income taxes on any money that they make.  Now the state, AND Obama, is losing the State Income tax revenues too.

Awesome.  Simply by talking, just talking, about such a tax, we have seen two on-line retailers leave the market.  The latest?  The NewsandObersever is reporting that Overstock.com is ending their arrangements with North Carolina partners.

The real slap in the face for Carolina?  This concept is SO insane that even the Govna’ of California, The Terminator, vetoed a similar bill in California.

Not the End, but The Beginning of Worse

I was reading the News and Observer this morning and saw that Smithfield Packing finally succumbed to the kudzu that is Unions.

Smithfield Packing, union agree on NC contract

TAR HEEL, N.C. — Smithfield Packing Co. and a union that worked for years to organize a huge North Carolina slaughterhouse say they have agreed on their first contract for the plant.

I have not yet taken the time to check and see if Smithfield Packing is a publicly traded company or not, but I am sure that the value of this company just took a 10% hit.  Not only that, but employment in the company went down today as well.

I repeat, there is nothing, not ONE thing that is good about unionization within a company.  Unless, of course, you are a Union official.

Unions effectively tax …  [company] investments by negotiating higher wages for their members, thus lowering profits. Unionized companies respond to this union tax by reducing investment. Less investment makes unionized companies less competitive.

And a less competetive company is a company that is not as valuable as a more competitive compant.  If you need further proof that Unionization is a bad thing, take a look at the States with the highest unemployment rates and see how many of them are Union states and how many are right to work.

Heck, I’ll save ya the time:

1 Nebraska Right to Work
2 North Dakota Right to Work
3 South Dakota Right to Work
4 Wyoming Right to Work
5 Utah Right to Work
6 Iowa Right to Work
7 Montana Forced Union
8 Oklahoma Right to Work
9 New Hampshire Forced Union
10 New Mexico Forced Union
41 Kentucky Forced Union
42 DC Forced Union
43 Tennessee Right to Work
44 Ohio Forced Union
45 North Carolina Right to Work
46 Nevada Right to Work
47 California Forced Union
48 South Carolina Right to Work
49 Oregon Forced Union
50 Michigan Forced Union

Interesting list, huh?