Democratic-controlled Congress Gives Itself Pay Raise

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 27, 2008

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, is a critic of the COLA process in Congress.

According to the article below, Congress is giving itself an “automatic” pay raise of $4,100; but this has a lot of people, including Rep. Jim Matheson (pictured), crying foul.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress members in 2008 will receive salaries of $169,300, a boost of $4,100 over the salary they have had since January 2006.

That 2.5% increase is mirrored by similar raises for associate justices of the Supreme Court, who will see their pay go from $203,000 to $208,100, and Chief Justice John Roberts, whose pay will rise to $217,400 from $212,100.

The salary figures were published in Tuesday’s edition of the Federal Register.

Last year was the first since 1999, when the pay was $136,700, that members of Congress did not receive a cost-of-living allowance raise along with other federal employees. Democrats, newly elected to the majority, had vowed to block an increase in their paychecks until Congress raised the minimum wage.

Beauty Queen Hitches A Ride… To Jail?

Dec. 23: Beauty queen Laura Zuniga is shown with other unidentified suspects after she was detained with weapons and cash in Zapopan, Mexico.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled guns and ammunition, police said Tuesday.

Miss Sinaloa 2008 Laura Zuniga stared at the ground, with her flowing dark hair concealing her face, as she stood squeezed between seven alleged gunmen lined up before journalists. Soldiers wearing ski masks guarded the 23-year-old model and the suspects.

Zuniga was arrested shortly before midnight on Monday at a military checkpoint in Zapopan, just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara, said Jalisco state police director, Francisco Alejandro Solorio.

Zuniga was riding in one of two trucks, where soldiers found a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in U.S. currency, Solorio said.

State police identified one of the men caught with her as the brother of an alleged drug trafficker from Ciudad Juarez, a city on the U.S. border, and said the man appeared to have been her boyfriend.

July 2: Laura Zuniga, 23, poses in swimsuit during the Miss Sinaloa beauty pageant at the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan, Mexico.

Zuniga told police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia with the men to go shopping, Solorio said.

When the former preschool teacher won Miss Sinaloa in July she gave an impassioned speech about how society should value women more, especially mothers. In October, she won the Hispanoamerican Queen beauty contest in October against competitors from across Latin America.

Idiots To The Left Of Me, Crazies To The Right

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 23, 2008

What is going on with these people?

A recent  article says:

Members of a church in Kansas City, Ks., are protesting the secularization of Christmas by dressing like Jesus at their jobs, malls and restaurants.

Pastor Kelly Lohrke advised parishioners of the Praise Chapel Christian Fellowship to wear at minimum a crown of thorns and a sash or robe during the week leading up to Christmas.

Here’s a video posted on the church’s website of this … phenomenon:

Now, I am of the opinion that stunts like this just make you look crazy. If you think that’s okay, you do not have a perspective on the culture war or the “spiritual warfare” – to borrow some religious terminology – that is going on in this country. Doing stuff like this does not convince people that what you believe is the most reasonable thing to believe or that you are right (although it may convince some people that you are not right in the head).

Furthermore, it is apparent to me, because this behavior is not convincing to people who may disagree with your beliefs, that people, who are aware that this is not an effective means of convincing others of the correctness of their beliefs yet still persist in the behavior, simply do this for one of the following reasons:

• They are crazy.

• They want attention.

• To bring attention to the persecution of followers of their faith, but not convince anyone of anything, aside from the simple fact that they are being persecuted.

• They are in denial, and think that this will somehow lead to people changing their ways, and “converting” to Christianity.

This is absurd behavior, and it is offensive to me. Seeing people dressed in a crown of thorns, sitting around a breakroom table smiling and sipping coffee does not really convey the suffering and agony their Savior underwent in order to redeem them from their sins.

I really think these people need to ask themselves some serious questions, and honestly evaluate the answers to those questions. First and foremost, they need to ask themselves, Why am I doing this, and what am I getting out of it? If the answer is any of the above bullet-point reasons, they need to cease and desist this silly charade. Also, they need to ask themselves, Is it appropriate to wear a symbol of suffering, while posing, smiling for pictures with coffee and nice cell-phones in a comfortable-looking breakroom or restaurant or whatever?

This sort of behavior is offensive because it diminishes and mocks the suffering Jesus endured on the way to the cross. It makes a mockery of our Savior. Worst of all, it does it at a time when we, as Christians, should be proclaiming peace on earth and good will to all men, when we should be proclaiming the joy that accompanies the birth of our Savior, when we should be celebrating God’s greatest gift to mankind. This would be offensive at Easter time… at Christmas, it’s offensive and ridiculous.

Christian Woman in Florida Fired for Refusing to Say ‘Happy Holidays’

Tuesday, December 23, 2008
By Catherine Donaldson-Evans

Tonia Thomas says she was fired for refusing to say 'Happy Holidays' to callers at the rental company where she worked.

A Florida woman says she was fired from her job for refusing to comply with a policy requiring employees to say “Happy Holidays” to callers — but the company’s president claims her story is “absolutely false.”

Tonia Thomas says she was terminated two weeks ago from her job at Counts Oakes Resort Properties in Panama City after balking at the rule because it went against her religion. She is suing for lost wages, she said.

Thomas offered to use a generic greeting or say “Merry Christmas” to callers instead, but that offer was denied by company President Andy Phillips, according to the Liberty Counsel — the Christian-based legal group representing her.

“She said, ‘That goes against my religious beliefs; I’m participating in secularizing Christmas,’” Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mathew Staver told FOXNews.com. “She asked him for an accommodation … and he refused.”

School Persecutes Conservative Student, Student Sues

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

A former student at the Rhode Island College School of Social Work is suing the school and several of his professors for discrimination, saying he was persecuted by the school’s “liberal political machine” for being a conservative.

William Felkner, 45, says the New England college and six professors wouldn’t approve his final project on welfare reform because he was on the “wrong” side of political issues and countered the school’s “progressive” liberal agenda.

Felkner said his problems with his professors began in his first semester, in the fall of 2004, when he objected in an e-mail to one of his professors that the school was showing and promoting Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11″ on campus. He said he objected because no opposing point of view was presented.

He said Professor James Ryczek wrote to him on Oct. 15, 2004, saying he was proud of his bias and questioning Felkner’s ability to “fit with the profession.”

“I think the biases and predilections I hold toward how I see the world and how it should be are why I am a social worker. In the words of a colleague, I revel in my biases,” he wrote.

The Iraqi “Random Task” Attacks President Bush With Shoe

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 15, 2009

Is it strange that the first thing I thought of was “Random Task” from Austin Powers? I thought of him, because the first words out of my mouth, when I saw this, were, “Who throws a shoe, honestly?”

I am laughing my ass off, here!

Of course, Austin Powers is a parody of James Bond. And “Random Task” corresponds to the James Bond villain “Odd Job,” who threw a bowler hat with a bladed brim. Try saying that 5 times fast.

Plastic Logic eBook Reading Device

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 12, 2008

Plastic Logic Reader - Incredibly Thin and Light

Keep an eye on Plastic Logic. They’re set to unveil their new reader (codenamed “Dossier”?) next Spring. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help with Beta Testing, if they do that, and blog about the device here!

So far, their ebook reader looks classier and more sophisticated than anything I’ve seen – including Amazon’s Kindle.

Plastic Logic Reader - Before and After

A New Tax To Bring Gas Prices Back Up to $4? Are You Insane?!

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 12, 2008

Michael Kinsley, writing for TIME magazine in his article “Black Gold” wrote:

Yes, this is yet another plea for that hoary notion: a big energy tax. Just five months ago, we were essentially paying a tax of $95 per bbl. That’s the difference between what oil cost then and what it costs now. This was a “tax” whereby the revenue went into the pockets of oil producers–about two-thirds of them foreign countries and one-third fellow Americans. Isn’t there something better to do with the money?

This idea always comes up and never goes anywhere. That’s partly because of our general loathing of taxes and suspicion of Washington and partly because the idea tends to come up when energy prices are rising and people find it hard to believe that it would be good if they rose even more. But a couple of things are different now. First, we have experienced the high energy prices that people in most of the rest of the world already live with, and we know we can live with them too. Four-dollar gasoline is no longer unthinkable.

Second, this is the perfect moment for the other part of many proposals for an energy tax, which is to give the money back to people by lowering the payroll tax. The payroll tax, or FICA, collects about 15% of your wages or salary–half from you and half from your employer. It is expected to bring in close to a trillion dollars in 2009. Using our windfall from plummeting crude-oil prices alone, we could cut the FICA tax by more than half. Including other forms of energy would bring in even more.

Seriously?! There is a reason this idea “never goes anywhere”:

IT’S A BAD IDEA!

This idiot, Michael Kinsley, is saying, “Hey, great, gas is down to ($1.49/gallon in Raleigh, NC, today), so let’s slap voters with a great big tax to bring it back up to $4/gallon, because we’re all ‘used to’ paying $4/gallon like ‘most of the rest of the world’.”

How stupid is that? Because we’re used to it? We’re not used to it! I’m not used to $4/gallon gasoline, and I never will be as long as the camel jockeys in Iran and Dubai are paying $0.30 per gallon! I have news for you, Mr. Kinsley: Four-dollar gasoline is still unthinkable!

Mr. Kinsley further tries to sell the absurd idea of a massive energy tax on gasoline and “other forms of energy” as well by saying that the “half-trillion-dollar windfall” could be used to cut the FICA tax, but that’s disingenuous, because he says, “For most Americans holding jobs, FICA now takes a bigger chunk of their income than the income tax itself.” This is not the case, because many of those “Americans holding jobs” don’t pay any tax at all – they get the money they pay in back in the form of an income tax refund check.

Mr. Kinsley says that cutting the FICA tax will create jobs, but that, too, is wrong, because it’s not FICA that keeps employers from hiring workers. It’s usually the real costs of those employees (benefits, like healthcare, pensions, etc.) that deter hiring. If you want to create jobs, start regulating price caps for the healthcare industry, and pass legislation to stop frivolous law suits that drive up the cost of malpractice insurance and doctors’ fees to pay the outrageous malpractice insurance. Do things like that. Cutting FICA is like pissing in the ocean, and paying for the cost of cutting FICA by raising the price of gasoline on purpose with a 236.69% tax is like pissing upwind in a hurricane.

Gasoline, right now, is right around $1.69 per gallon. adding a 236.69% increase to the price of gasoline to bring it back up to $4 per gallon just to raise a half-trillion dollars for the government to waste is absurd, and it’s something nobody wants… nobody in their right mind, that is.

Obama Does Not Understand Pakistan

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 12, 2008

Juan Cole, writing for the usually very liberal Salon.com, wrote a recent piece in which he said,

In his “Meet the Press” interview with Tom Brokaw on Sunday, Obama said, “We need a strategic partnership with all the parties in the region — Pakistan and India and the Afghan government — to stamp out the kind of militant, violent, terrorist extremists that have set up base camps and that are operating in ways that threaten the security of everybody in the international community.” Obama’s scenario assumes that the Pakistani government is a single, undifferentiated thing, and that all parts of the government would be willing to “stamp out” terrorists. Both of those assumptions are incorrect.

Pakistan’s government has a profound internal division between the military and the civilian, which have alternated in power since the country was born from the partition of British India in 1947. It is this military insubordination that creates most of the country’s serious political problems. Washington worries too much about other things in Pakistan and too little about the sheer power of the military. United States analysts often express fears about an internal fundamentalist challenge to the chiefs of staff. The main issue, however, is not that Pakistan’s military is too weak, but that it is too strong. And that is complicated by the fact that elements within the military are at odds, not just with the civilian government, but also with each other.

Obama’s failure to understand the situation in Pakistan is demonstrative of his inexperience and ineptitude in matters of foreign policy. I have discussed this, before, at great length. It is still relevant and important, however, as our foreign policy decisions, now more than ever, have far reaching ramifications on our economy and our national security.

Many Americans are gravely concerned that Obama’s lack of insight and naive, irresponsible foreign policy decisions will cost America even more international prestige, blood and treasure. They might do well, however, to take a look at history. Marshall couldn’t get the job done in China, and Obama, following Marhsall’s example, very likely won’t ge the job done with our “allies” in Asia and around the world to put the hurt on terrorists.

You can say a lot of negative things about George W. Bush, but we haven’t been attacked on our own soil since 9/11. I will be surprised if that trend continues for the next 4 – 8 years.

Daniel Howes’ Brilliant Commentary

By Noel Bagwell
Dec 12, 2008

Daniel Howes has written a brilliant commentary for The Detroit News, describing perfectly the situation with the Big 3 auto makers, Congress, and the unpopular “bail out” package that just failed in the Senate.

Mr. Howes’ brilliant piece is entitled Senators to UAW: It’s payback time. Here’s a snippet:

“Immediately match the pay and benefits of foreign-owned automakers operating in the South, his terms say. Reduce your expectations for Big Three contributions to the barely funded retiree health care fund and take some in stock. Eliminate the Jobs Bank and supplemental unemployment benefits.

And if UAW and company bargainers can’t get there by a March deadline — along with concessions from bondholders, management, shareholders and suppliers — GM and Chrysler must seek federal bankruptcy protection like almost every other private-sector player would under similar circumstances.

That’s tough-minded business, to be sure. Understandable, too, given Detroit’s glacial pace of change. It’s also a naked attempt to use the credit-induced crisis swallowing the Detroit Three to radically restructure their bloated labor costs, rework their debt-laden balance sheets in 60 days or less and, perhaps, put one or more of them into bankruptcy, if not liquidation.”

Click here to read the whole article. You really should.

Mr. Howes also mentions, at the end of his article, some legislation that would abolish secret ballots in the union organizing process, which would make it much easier for unions to organize everywhere.

This issue needs to receive a lot more attention, as it has the potential to help unions do to whole new sectors of the economy what they did to the automotive industry. This could lead to more “bloated labor costs” and inflated prices for consumers for other products and services. Not good in a struggling economy (or any economy).