This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 20, 2016:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its report on student loan repayments on Tuesday, revealing that 114,000 Americans age 50 and over had their Social Security checks garnished (the GAO calls them “offsets”), including 38,000 over age 65. In total the government recovered $171 million from this group last year, putting many of them into poverty.
Under the law,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 9, 2018:
The unanimous approval by the Deerfield, Illinois, Village Board of Trustees of a nearly complete ban on all manner of loosely defined “assault weapons” last Monday night has made headline news. It has also generated at least two lawsuits complaining that the law, to become effective June 13, is unconstitutional under Illinois state law.
In addition, the ban has generated significant pushback from enraged citizens who are threatening to ignore the law if it becomes effective.
The Chicago Tribune explains the extent of the ban and its definition of an “assault weapon”:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 13, 2017:
In announcing Australia’s new federal gun amnesty program, Justice Minister Michael Keenan told the Sunday Mail last week: “This is the first Australia-wide gun amnesty program since 1996, when the Howard government took action following the devastation of the Port Arthur Massacre.” (above: fountain in Port Arthur) The massacre of 35 people and the wounding of another 23 in late April, 1996 at the popular tourist site in southeastern Australia served as the excuse to implement the country’s National Firearms Agreement (NFA). The NFA turned millions of law-abiding gun owners into criminals with its heavy restrictions, and the amnesty program was designed to remove the now-illegal weaponry from their rightful owners with a mixture of carrot and stick.
Those restrictions included
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, March 13, 2017:
Location of Port Arthur, where the majority of the shootings occurred
A series of referendums from 1898 to 1900 led to the ratification of Australia’s constitution, which became effective on January 1, 1901. Unfortunately, the idea of adding a Bill of Rights similar to those contained in the United States Constitution was voted down, with the majority holding that the traditional rights of British subjects were sufficient to keep the national government in check. Some rights are included, including the right to trial by jury, the right to just compensation for government’s “acquisition” of private property, the freedom of religion, the freedom of “political” communication, and the right to vote. Missing are explicit guarantees of the freedom of association, the freedom of assembly, and the Second Amendment.
Also missing from the country is the National Rifle Association or anything like the “gun” culture present in the United States.
That’s why, following the ghastly atrocity known as the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996, it was fairly easy for the national government to pass the
This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, February 13, 2017:
Logo of United Nations Refugee Agency.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) grew out of failure. Known alternatively as Chatham House, it was conceived during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (also called the Versailles Peace Conference). It was decided that, once the so-called “peace” terms were put in place to punish Germany and its allies after the War to end all wars, various insiders decided a one-world government was needed to keep such a catastrophe from occurring in the future. It birthed the
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, February 9, 2017:
Vancouver, B.C.
The impact of the 15-percent “foreign buyer transfer tax” — a real estate tax that is only applied on foreigners, not Canadians — levied by Vancouver, a West Coast city in the Canadian province of British Columbia, was felt almost immediately: Real estate prices began falling, realtor listings took longer to sell as buyers disappeared, and, consequently, revenues anticipated from instituting the tax aren’t likely to meet expectations.
Observers said the tax was levied to protect the local real estate market from becoming “overheated” thanks to increasing demand from foreign investors. “Remember the Great Recession” became the mantra. What goes up must come down, etc. Indeed, prices have increased by nearly 50 percent over just the last three years, driving the median cost of a home in Vancouver to $1.5 million.
Members of the city council imposed the 15-percent tariff on August 1, and by the end of September investment in the high end of the market had already dropped
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 7, 2016:
In September the National ICE Council, representing some 5,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers charged with protecting the country’s borders, did something it has never done: It endorsed a candidate for president: Donald Trump. In its statement at the time, the union said:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 28, 2016:
When the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush, it was well-intended: It would increase America’s oil independence and reduce dependence on foreign oil, it would produce cleaner air, and it would help farmers.
The Act required refiners to add ethanol to every gallon of gasoline they produced. If a refiner decided it couldn’t (too costly) or wouldn’t (internal decision) do so, it would be required to
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 4, 2016:
If more proof were needed that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment among lesser-skilled workers, the Heritage Foundation’s latest study provides it.
For one thing, the push for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour would actually cost employers $18.61 an hour, thanks to payroll taxes, unemployment insurance and ObamaCare taxes. The proposed increase, if passed into law, would, according to Heritage, impact one-third of all American workers, and hurt the most those working in lower-cost states.
The math is simple, and deadly.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 4, 2016:
Today (Monday) California Governor Jerry Brown will sign a bill raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, the first state to do so. The law will do it in stages over the next six years so that the unemployment impact won’t be so severe. In the next couple of weeks, legislation that has passed the New York legislature also raising that state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour is expected to be signed into law as well.
Unions and others pushing the “Fight for $15” policy are now gearing up to push the $15 minimum wage on other states, such as
This article was published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, August 14, 2015:
By changing the meaning of the word “flowers” to “businesses,” the lyrics from Peter, Paul & Mary’s anti-war song applies perfectly to the new Seattle under its new minimum wage mandates: Where have all the businesses gone?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?”
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
And when will Mayor Ed Murray and his gaggle of progressives who unanimously passed the anti-business, anti-employment minimum wage law last summer ever learn: you cannot fool Mother Nature, and you cannot repeal economic laws.
In Murray’s case the economic law still to be learned is:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 13, 2015:
Jodi Hall, owner of Cupcake Royale
The Seattle city council mandate that business owners must raise the minimum wage they pay to their workers to $11 an hour (on the way to $15 an hour over the next few years) is already having its predicted effect: In the first six months of this year, 1,300 restaurant workers in the city have lost their jobs, according to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
In the single month of May, one month after the $11 mandate kicked in on April 1, 1,000 workers lost their jobs which, according to AEI economist Mark Perry, “was the largest one month job decline since … the [start of] the Great Recession.”
In simple terms, thanks to the progressives running the city council, Seattle restaurant workers are suffering their own recession.
To add salt to the wound, statewide (not including Seattle), restaurant employment has increased by 3.2 percent, adding 2,800 jobs over that same period.
This wasn’t supposed to happen,
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 23, 2014:
It didn’t take long for the unintended consequences of the passage of Proposition 2 in California in 2008 to show up in the marketplace as well as the courtroom.
Although the elimination of “basket cages” to house hens on egg farms in California was not to be fully implemented until January 1, 2015, the consequences were already evident in 2010. The California legislature passed an ordinance requiring that all eggs sold in California come from farms where “egg-laying hens … be confined only in ways that allow [them] to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.”
This was part of the “animal rights” agenda already in place in the European Union that established the “Five Freedoms for Farm Animals” originally proposed by animal rights groups in the United Kingdom in 1965 and implemented by the EU in 1999.
As William Jasper noted in a recent article for The New American on this issue, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) now reflects the animal rights agenda and was a major force behind the push to pass California’s Proposition 2.
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 21, 2014:
Despite opposition from individual gun owners, Washington State sheriffs, the state’s Republican Party, and the National Rifle Association, Initiative 594 passed easily on Tuesday, November 4, by 59 percent to 41 percent, with Bloomberg’s money promoting myths about it.
This makes Washington the seventh state (along with the District of Columbia) to require universal background checks not only on all sales of firearms but on “transfers” as well, even between friends. Washington is the first state to pass such restrictions through a citizen-driven initiative.
Largely unknown to voters, the complex 18-page initiative also greatly expands the state’s handgun registration program, with every sale or transfer of a handgun resulting in
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, October 20, 2014:
Some contend that the Keystone pipeline delay is having consequences that were intended from the beginning. Others contend that those urging the president to delay approval of Keystone weren’t smart enough to anticipate the negative consequences that delay is having.
But there they are, nevertheless. In an ironic coincidence, the Manhattan Institute published its report claiming that pipelines are far safer for the transportation of oil and gas than railroads in June 2013, the same month of the tragic
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 8, 2014:
The city of SeaTac, which holds the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour starting January 1 for some businesses. Within weeks of the beginning of the SeaTac “experiment,” the impact of the passage of Proposition One had become evident. Despite the fact that the new law impacts only about 1,600 employees in this town of 27,000, major changes and shifts were already taking place in reaction to it.
For example, a customer using the Master Park Airport valet parking service at SeaTac will note an extra line on his bill for $.50 entitled
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 8, 2014:
Craig Beemer, the owner of Oasis Café in Stillwater, Minnesota, employs just six servers, but Minnesota’s minimum wage increase that kicked in on August 1 forced him to make some tough decisions. The wage increase to $8.00 an hour for his workers will cost more than $10,000 a year, and something had to give. Beemer decided that rather than increase his prices he decided to
This article was first published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, June 16, 2014:
Last month, the Financial Times saw what’s coming: Housing prices rose last year at the fastest rate since 1995, setting the stage for the next global bust. Eleven countries they were watching had year-over-year rises in double digits, adding:
Even Germany, known for its stable housing market, is prompting concern, with the Bundesbank warning that valuations are as much as 25 percent too high in [some] big cities.
It admitted great concern that regulators won’t be able to do anything about it, either, just like last time:
Dual-fuel gas station at Sao Paulo, Brazil. Alcohol (ethanol) and G gasoline (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Last week the British newspaper Telegraph leaked a portion of the report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due to be released today, in which Robert Mendick, the paper’s chief reporter, said the UN now officially warns that growing food for fuel rather than for people hurts the environment and starves people. Said Mendick:
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 23rd, 2013:
When Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (Joe the Plumber) asked presidential candidate Barack Obama about his tax plan on October 12th, 2008, Obama created a sound byte that reverberated around the world, and reverberates still: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” What no one could possibly have known at the time, however, was that Obama would be taking from the poor and
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