Detroit Waste Not Unlike US

If you want to see what the United States will look like after a second Obama term, all you   need to do is to visit the City of Detroit, Michigan.  Blocks of burned out and abandoned homes, business buildings, and government buildings litter the former Paris of the Mid West. It is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and the horseless water and sewer department maintains a horseshoer.  It is called idiocy, incompetence and union favoritism.

Why would a horseshoer be on the payroll? Because it is a union government job and you don't get rid of these leeches without a heavy dose of leadership from the city fathers. This will not happen because they are elected by those who see  nothing wrong with a department maintaining jobs which are irrelevant.

Most of the city should be leveled, turned back into farmland and let nature retake the blight. That would be the best solution, however, the powers to be will not allow this rational solution to occur. They want to maintain their power and somehow deer don't vote! (Even in Detroit.)

The US, like Detroit, is facing bankruptcy and Obama is merrily going about promising more programs for more people.  Does he not get the facts or does he really want to destroy the country? (That's a rhetorical question.)

How many useless, make-work jobs are there in the US, like the farrier in Detroit? Probably millions!  It is time to stop the craziness! Kick out Obama!

Conservative Tom

After A Nuke Hits Detroit, The Last Things Left Will Be Cockroaches And The Union Horseshoer

Posted on August 22, 2012 by John Hawkins

Of course, given the shape that Detroit is in, would it look all that different after a nuke? All right, all right, that’s hyperbole, but this story is not just ridiculous, it helps explain what’s gone wrong with Detroit, Michigan, and the American auto industry.

Despite having no horses, the water and sewerage department for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer.

Yet even with a department so bloated that it has a horseshoer and no horses, the local union president said it is “not possible” to eliminate positions.

…The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) has a large debt, rising water prices and inefficient services — using almost twice the number of employees per gallon as other cities like Chicago.

A recent independent report about the DWSD recommends that the city trim more than 80 percent of the department’s workforce. The consultant who wrote the report found 257 job descriptions, including a horseshoer. Capitol Confidential sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the department for the salary, benefits and job description of the horseshoer position.

In response to the report, John Riehl, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 207, which represents many of the DWSD employees, told the Detroit Free Press that the department needs more workers.

“They don’t have enough people as it is right now,” Riehl said. “They are just dreaming to think they can operate that plant with less.”

That’s right, folks. We have a city government that employs a horseshoer and a union that not only refuses to get rid of him, but also says it needs more workers. Meanwhile, Detroit is falling apart as people flee the city for greener pastures.

Now, true to its past, Detroit is not just fading away gracefully, but noisily sick and dying, expiring as spectacularly as it once lived. Fifty years ago it was the fifth-largest city in the United States, with 1.85 million people. Now it is eleventh, with just over 700,000 people. It is likely to fall further behind as it shrinks, and as more Americans head for the Sun Belt and the flourishing South West, away from this blighted, dingy Rust Belt.

Each year at Halloween more of it is burned down in a mixture of wild destruction and insurance fraud. You can walk right through its majestic downtown in the middle of the morning and meet nobody at all. There is no danger of being mugged, as a mugger in this part of town might have to wait hours for a client.

Detroit is a city run top to bottom by liberals and the work force is dominated by big labor. They’ve done to that city what liberals are doing to California and what Barack Obama is trying to do to the whole country. The only difference is that the corrosive effects of liberalism have been at work much longer in Detroit. Give them enough time and liberals, along with the unions, would do the exact same thing to America that they’ve done to Detroit.

PS: If you want to actually SEE how far Detroit has fallen apart, you can watch this classic video from Steven Crowder.

Billions of Rounds of Ammo--One Possible Answer

We have been writing about the suspicious purchases of ammo by government agencies for a month or so. We are looking for answers and in this post and the one following we explore a couple ideas. 

Please send us other articles, your ideas on the issue, and your comments. We are very concerned and we citizens should know what their government is up to.

Conservative Tom

Mystery Surrounding 1.2 Billion Rounds of Ammo Solved

Posted by Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul on Aug 23, 2012 | 6 comments

The mystery surrounding the purpose for the U.S. government’s procurement of 1.2 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition just got a boost Tuesday.

On the heels of an article penned by Major General Jerry Curry (Ret.), titled, Who Does The Government Intend to Shoot?, a piece written by a retired U.S. general who questions the bizarre series of monstrous ammunition by unlikely agencies of the federal government, host Rick Wiles of TruNews Radio (Aug. 22) revealed to his listeners the answer to the mystery of the billion bullets.

After years warning of the out-of-the-blue presidential candidacy of Barrack Obama, Wiles appears most certain, again, that a powerful connection can be made between information he’s received from a high-level informant at Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—regarding the approximately 20,000 Russian commandos suspected of legally entering the U.S. from Canada—and conversations he had with an old acquaintance, the famous Russian spy of the old Soviet Union era, Colonel Stanislav Lunev.

“Colonel Stanislav Lunev told me, personally, years ago—he said, the Russian military strategy is, that, we [Russians] will strike so hard [at the U.S.], that there will be such shock, that the American people will surrender,” Wiles recalls, during a conversation he had with the spy over a several-day period in 1999.

“He was not talking about a nuclear, chemical [or] biological attack; he was talking about commandos in the country [U.S.].  He said . . . this is what he said, Spetznazs, which are the Russian commandos. . .

“He said, they have the names addresses of every member of Congress, and the Senate, their wives, their children, the school that they go to, all the cabinet members, all of the head officials in Washington, all the officials in state governments.  And he said, they will all be assassinated, quickly.”

From 1988 through 1992, Lunev, the highest-ranking Russian KGB spy to defect to the United States, explained to American authorities that he was deployed by Moscow to actively seek strategic locations within America for the launching of biological, chemical and suitcase-size nuclear devices in the event of a hot war between the two superpowers.

Though, initially thought to be fantastic tales told by a trained professional of deception, Lunev’s seemingly incredulous assertions of an elaborate plot to attack America from within was later confirmed by former SVR officer Alexander Kouzminov, who stated in his book, Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West, the Soviet Union  “was the only country in the world that could start and win a global biological war, something we had already established that the West was not ready for.”

According to Wiles, Lunev “said there will be a massive decapitation of the American government from top to bottom in a matter of days, and we [Russians] will put the country into a state of shock.

“That, he said, is the official strategy, and that’s what they [leaders in Moscow] plan to do, and, he said, it has never changed.” [emphasis added].

And here’s why the U.S. has procured 1.2 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, according to Wiles.  Moreover, according to him, the Russians appear to be correct in their assessment: the American people are so distracted by lives of entertainment, of consumption and of derelictions of civic duty, that the Russian plan to destroy America from within is quite achievable.

“Let’s not forget that the real person running [Department of] Homeland Security is not Janet Napolitano, it is Valarie Jarrett, the communist,” Wiles explains.  “And her father-in-law was Vernon Jarrett, who was a close confidant of Frank Marshal Davis, Barrack Obama’s communist mentor.

“And so, I’m going to continue to say on this radio program that, I believe Valarie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and these other commies are the real architects of this sinister plan to stockpile 1.2 billion rounds of ammo throughout the country.

“That it is not for law enforcement; it is to be turned over to a communist revolutionary army in this country.”

Wiles goes on to say that most Americans don’t realize that President Barrack Obama is a communist.  “They don’t know it,” and “they don’t care,” says Wiles.

But, when the communist takeover is unleashed, presumably by a false-flag event or dollar devaluation, the American people will be in shock, he adds, just as Russians were shocked by the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Joseph Stalin, the man who’s credited with the extermination of approximately 80 million Russians during his reign.

“An old fashion communist revolution is on the way,” says Wiles, suggesting, too, that that fact will become apparent soon enough, executed very quickly, and will shock, yet, another nation along history’s many roads to Communism

Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/mystery-surrounding-1-2-billion-rounds-of-ammo-solved-2012-08-23/#ixzz24T1pxllu

Government Ammo Purchases

Why would the Department of Homeland Security need ten years of ammo? That is, ten years of what the military has been expending in Iraq!  That is one of the issues that General Curry addresses in the following post.

These purchases of ammo are outrageous and are so out of the ordinary that it scares the beegeesus out of us. This makes no sense. The Forest Service, NOAA and DHS purchases are ridiculous. This cannot be good.

We need an investigation and we need it now!

Conservative Tom

Who Does The Government Intend To Shoot?

Published: 9:40 AM 08/17/2012

inShare102

• 
  

Photo by Oleg Volk, http://www.olegvolk.net/

By Major General Jerry Curry, USA (Ret.) 

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S.  No one has yet said what the purpose of these purchases is, though we are led to believe that they will be used only in an emergency to counteract and control civil unrest. Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.

What would be the target of these 174, 000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can’t simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows.

Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest? Or is the purpose to kill 174,000 of the nation’s military and replace them with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special security forces, forces loyal to the Administration, not to the Constitution?

All my life I’ve handled firearms. When a young boy growing up on my father’s farm in Pennsylvania Dad’s first rule of firearms training was, “Never point a gun at someone, in fun or otherwise, unless you intend to shoot them. If you shoot someone, shoot to kill.” I’ve never forgotten his admonition. It stayed with me through my Boy Scout training, when I enlisted in the army as a Private to fight in the Korea
War, during my days as a Ranger and Paratrooper and throughout my thirty-four year military career.

If this were only a one time order of ammunition, it could easily be dismissed. But there is a pattern here. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has ordered 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition. Notice that all of these purchases are for the lethal hollow nose bullets.  These bullets are not being purchased and stored for squirrel or coyote hunting. This is serious ammunition manufactured to be used for serious purposes.

In the war in Iraq, our military forces expended approximately 70 million rounds per year. In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen. Is this something we and the Congress should be concerned about? What’s the plan that requires so many dead Americans, even during times of civil unrest? Has Congress and the Administration vetted the plan in public.

Ads by Google

I fear that Congress won’t take these ammunition purchases seriously until they are all led from Capitol Hill in handcuffs. Why buy all this ammunition unless you plan to use it. Unknown to Congress, Does DHS plan to declare war on some country? Shouldn’t Congress hold hearings on why the Administration is stockpiling this ammunition all across the nation? How will it be used; what are the Administration’s plans?

Obama is a deadly serious, persistent man. Once he focuses on an object, he pursues it to the end. What is his focus here? All of these rounds of ammunition can only be used to kill American citizens, though there is enough ammunition being ordered to kill, in addition to every American citizen, also every Iranian, Syrian or Mexican. There is simply too much of it. And this much ammunition can’t be just for training, there aren’t that many weapons and “shooters” in the U.S. to fire it. Perhaps it is to be used to arm illegal immigrants?

We have enough military forces to maintain law and order in the U.S. even during times of civil unrest.

We have local police, backed up by each state’s National Guard, backed up by the Department of Defense. So in addition to all these forces why does DHS need its own private army? Why do the SSA, NOAA and other government agencies need to create their own civilian security forces armed with hollow nose bullets?

Were I the JCS, and if I wasn’t already fully briefed on this matter, I’d stop the purchase of hollow point bullets, ask the secretary of Defense why all this ammunition is being purchased and spread around the country? If I got answers like the ones Congress got during the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious – I’d start tracking all ammunition deliveries nationwide to find out what organizations and units are using them, for what purpose and, if it is not constitutional, prepare to counteract whatever it is that they are doing.

This is a deadly serious business. I hope I’m wrong, but something smells rotten. And If the Congress isn’t going to do its duty and investigate this matter fully, the military will have to protect the Constitution, the nation, and our citizens.

Jerry Curry is a decorated combat veteran, Army Aviator, Paratrooper, and Ranger, who for nearly forty years has served his country both in the military and as a Presidential political appointee.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/17/who-does-the-government-intend-to-shoot/#ixzz24UjbXMwG

Ryan Medicare Plan Explained

Sometimes the hyperbole of the Democrats needs a rational and clear explanation.  Here is one on the Ryan Medicare Plan, which is right on target.  Enjoy!

Conservative Tom

The Myths and Realities of the Ryan Medicare Plan

By Yahoo! Finance | The Exchange – 14 hours ago

• Email
• 3
• Print

By Andrew G. Biggs, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

Gov. Mitt Romney's selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate has turned the 2012 presidential election into a referendum on Medicare reform. Ryan has sponsored multiple Medicare reform bills in Congress, with the Left charging that the Romney-Ryan ticket would "gut Medicare" by turning it into a "voucher system," and even "ending Medicare as we know it." Moreover, President Obama's supporters say, the Romney-Ryan approach would force seniors to pay an extra $6,400 per year toward their Medicare costs.  But would Ryan and Romney's reform ideas, known as "premium support," really do all of these terrifying things?

The Truth About Vouchers

To begin, is premium support for Medicare a "voucher system" as opponents claim? The label "vouchers" brings up frightful images of helpless seniors being handed a little cash and charged with entering the cut-throat private insurance marketplace to secure whatever coverage they can. The reality is much closer to the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program for government workers than to this imagined horror story. Under the FEHB, the government pays a set amount toward employee health premiums, which can be applied to a range of approved health plans offered by a number of insurers.

The key to the FEHB is that numerous private insurers offer competing plans and federal workers choose which plan they prefer. All plans must be open to all participants, meaning that no one can be denied for pre-existing conditions. Competition among insurers spurs efficiency, and the fact that federal employees wanting a more expensive plan must pay the higher premium on their own makes individuals more cost-conscious.

Paul Ryan's premium support plan, co-developed with Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, is similar to the FEHB, but with several key differences. Unlike the FEHB, in which insurers set their own standards for care, under the Ryan-Wyden plan all insurers must provide standard benefits at least matching those from traditional Medicare. Moreover, the traditional Medicare program will continue to offer benefits alongside offerings from private insurers. If traditional Medicare is truly more efficient than private insurance, as its defenders claim, many seniors will simply stay where they are.

A Burden on Seniors?

Democratic critics maintain that Ryan's plan merely shifts costs to retirees, requiring them to pay an extra $6,400 per year to match Medicare's benefits. This figure, which derives from a Congressional Budget Office analysis, is misleading for three reasons.

First, as my colleague Jim Capretta has pointed out, this figure assumes that the current Medicare benefit package will remain unchanged. But, as Medicare's chief actuary has warned, the $700 billion Medicare cuts passed as part of the Obamacare legislation could drive one-sixth of hospitals out of business and risk "jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries."

Second, the $6,400 per year claim also assumes that premium support won't lower costs through provider competition and consumer choice, which, of course, is the entire rationale behind them. In reality, costs could be lower. While Obamacare controls costs through across-the-board cuts to good and bad providers alike, under a premium support plan providers could develop and fine-tune a variety of different models to reduce costs while maintaining quality.

Lastly, this $6,400 figure is actually based on an older version of Ryan's plan that tightly controlled the growth of Medicare spending. But in Ryan's more recent, compromise plan with Wyden—something obviously much closer to a plan Congress might actually pass—Medicare spending rises at the same rate as under President Obama's budget. The claim that the Romney-Ryan approach "guts Medicare" as is simply false. In fact, because Romney would repeal the Medicare cuts made as part of Obamacare, Medicare would actually be more generous under the Romney-Ryan approach.

Medicare's Cloudy Future

Does Paul Ryan's premium support plan "end Medicare as we know it," as President Obama claims? Perhaps, but Medicare as we know it is both inefficient and insolvent. But claims that it "guts Medicare" or turns it into a voucher system don't hold up to scrutiny.

If there is anyone who gutted Medicare and put seniors at risk it is President Obama, who reduced Medicare funding by over $700 billion to fund the Obamacare plan. As a result of these cuts, Medicare actuaries warn, seniors may lose access to doctors and hospitals. The Romney-Ryan premium support model is not perfect — no plan can fix Medicare's multi-trillion dollar deficits without difficult tradeoffs. But Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have at least proposed a solution, one which could reduce costs and improve quality to put Medicare on a more sustainable track. President Obama has offered no counterproposal. In contest for the country's No.1 leadership position, that alone should be important to voters.

Andrew G. Biggs is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Prior to joining AEI he was the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), where he oversaw SSA's policy research efforts and led the agency's participation in the Social Security Trustees working group. In 2005 he worked on Social Security reform at the National Economic Council and in 2001 was on the staff of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security.

Is Media's Love Affair With Obama Over?

Nothing could be better if the news  media finally drops its love of Obama and finally starts doing what the press should do in a free society.  Hopefully, it will occur very soon!

Conservative Tom

Newsweek's Obama Slam Could Be Turning Point

Monday, 20 Aug 2012 09:52 AM

By Ronald Kessler

·          

·         Ronald Kessler reporting from Washington, D.C. — The financial crisis a few weeks before the last presidential election was enough to push Barack Obama over the top. This week’s Newsweek cover slamming President Obama could have almost as much impact.

“Hit the Road, Barack — Why We Need a New President” the cover says. “Obama’s Gotta Go” the article inside says.

Journalists are not idiots. They recognize that Obama, as the Newsweek cover story documents, has been a failure. But they are also lemmings who will not depart from their traditional support of Democrats unless given permission by their peers. The cover story in Newsweek, one of the most liberal-leaning publications in the country, does just that.

Because of support by the press, Obama became president in the first place and has held his own against Mitt Romney in polls.

Three months before the story of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.’s connection to Obama finally broke in the mainstream media, I began writing stories as chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com about Obama’s close association with his America-bashing minister.

The media, which had known generally about Wright since Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007, ignored the stories. If the media had picked them up then, Obama likely would not be president today.

According to pollsters, largely as a result of the stories the press finally ran about Wright, Obama’s double-digit lead over Hillary Clinton vanished. At the same time, John McCain shot up in the polls, and Hillary began winning the primaries. But by then, Obama was ahead, and it was too late for her to overcome his previous lead.

Indeed, David Remnick’s “The Ridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” quotes an unidentified Clinton aide as saying, “If Jeremiah Wright had dropped in January [2008], it [Obama’s candidacy] would have been over.”

Today, the media largely ignore Obama’s daily distortions and record of failure, all documented in the Newsweek article. In contrast, after President Bush gave his 2003 State of the Union address, the press attacked him mercilessly for weeks over his 16-word statement that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

In fact, the statement was true. After the British House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee reviewed the MI6 intelligence about the claim involving Niger, it concluded in September 2003 that the British intelligence service was justified in continuing to say that Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from that country. The press then ignored the report showing that Bush’s statement was indeed accurate.

But when Obama says the private sector of the economy is doing fine, belittles success, claims the Supreme Court cannot overrule a law passed by Congress, says he is not divisive even as he attacks Republicans, gratuitously injects race into his comments, or claims Romney and Paul Ryan would end Medicare as we know it, the press gives the president a pass.

None of this is lost on the public.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 59 percent of likely U.S. voters believe Obama has received the best treatment from the media so far. Just 18 percent think Mitt Romney has been treated better.

Having been a reporter for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, I know how susceptible journalists are to the herd instinct. The Newsweek cover story in effect tells journalists it’s OK to begin telling the truth about Obama and expose his presidency as the failure Newsweek says it is. For that reason, it could be a turning point in the election.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is the New York Times bestselling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.