I just sent a email to my Congressman, this is what I said.
I am deeply disturbed by Obama's recent gun grab. He and his cohorts claim this is for our safety. I suggest that he takes a look at the statistics involving alcohol. Such as every 39 minutes an innocent person is killed by a drunk driver. If you were to add up the number of fatalities from DUI, boating, suicide and medical deaths from alcohol related diseases it would make death by gun violence pale in comparison. Lets look at the other side of things like how many lives a year are saved by gun ownership. How many lives are saved by alcohol ownership? Alcohol in my opinion should be highly taxed, regulated and prevented from certain advertising medium like tobacco is now. Now is this going to happen, I doubt it. It could either be because of "Big Liquor Money" or the fact that many politicians are a bunch of drunks which appears to be the only explanation of their actions when it comes to running this country. We have a constitutional right to bear arms. Why don't you work on preserving our rights under the constitution?
Black Americans in South Carolina don’t want to work?
In
these horrible economic times, do our Representatives really believe
Black Americans in South Carolina don’t want to work? Is that why
they’re going to admit another one million immigrant workers next year
to take jobs in places like South Carolina? Those are the questions
this provocative TV ad from Numbers USA asks. It has Americans all over
the country and right here in South Carolina asking our leaders what
they really believe.
If you haven’t seen the ad, please click below to watch it now. And then tell your senators and congressmen about it. But don’t stop there. Forward it to your friends and reporters, post it on websites. If we all push this ad out there at the same time, we can have real impact. And start reducing mass immigration and saving jobs for Americans. All Americans.
If you haven’t seen the ad, please click below to watch it now. And then tell your senators and congressmen about it. But don’t stop there. Forward it to your friends and reporters, post it on websites. If we all push this ad out there at the same time, we can have real impact. And start reducing mass immigration and saving jobs for Americans. All Americans.
Why in the world would we bring in more people next year who need jobs when Americans right here in South Carolina can’t find work? Why would we bring in more people next year when the immigrant workers we admitted last year haven’t been able to find jobs? It just doesn’t make any sense. The good news is, you can do something about it, right now.
Please help Numbers USA and our more than one and a half million members across the country spread the word by forwarding this TV spot to everyone you know, including your Congressional representatives. Together, we can have big impact. Who knows, the job you save could be your own.
The Obama Timeline
Wow, this guy did his homework!! Never seen it laid out quite like this…
(84) Voting the worst US President ever out of office - Magic Number Countdown
(84) Voting the worst US President ever out of office - Magic Number Countdown
Abortion
It seems to me that our government has no business being in the abortion business. Granted I am an opponent of abortion, but why would our government or any government sanction the murder of innocent humans. Seems to me that there was someone else in the history of the world who had no problem with murdering innocents. I recently watched a 33 minute award winning documentary called the "180 Movie". Want to get the straight facts unvarnished and indisputable? I highly suggest you watch the "180 Movie". If you are contemplating an abortion, you really need to watch it. You owe it to yourself and your unborn baby to have all the truthful facts before making any decisions.
thenationalpatriot.com » Blog Archive » U.S. Supreme Court Has Ruled on Obama’s Eligibility!!
| | U.S. Supreme Court Has Ruled on Obama’s Eligibility!!By Craig Andresen on November 13, 2011 at 5:23 pm |
According to the United States Supreme Court, Obama is ineligible to be the President. That’s right, you read that correctly. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that Obama is ineligible to serve as President.
It’s not that you haven’t been paying attention lately and yes, you can be excused for missing the ruling as it came down, not in the last few days but back in 1875.
This is the argument currently being made by the Liberty Legal Foundation.
The Liberty Legal Foundation has filed not 1 but 2 lawsuits, one in Arizona and the other in Tennessee neither of which have one single thing to do with Obama’s birth certificate OR challenging whether or not Obama was born in the United States.
There is no need for either in regard to these lawsuits.
At the core of this action is a simple request that Federal courts uphold the Supreme Court ruling. Both lawsuits, and the Liberty Legal Foundation promises there will be more, would render it impossible for the Democratic National Committee to place Obama’s name on the 2012 ballot.
Here’s the crux of it.
Back in 1875, the United States Supreme Court, in Minor v, Happersett, ruled that:
“Natural Born Citizen” was defined as children born of two U.S. citizens – regardless of the location of the birth. It found: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.”
Obama’s problem, by his own admission and records of the State Department is this:
Obama’s father was not a United States citizen.
Therefore, via Minor v, Happersett and the United States Supreme Court in 1875, Obama is ineligible because, since his father was not a U.S. citizen, Obama is not a natural born citizen.
For a person to run, as his or her party’s nominee for President, the party must issue certification that the person named is eligible under the United States Constitution to become President.
Because the Constitution does not specify the definition of “Natural born citizen” it was left to the United States Supreme Court which, in 1875, defined it as a person born in a country of parents who were its citizens and, Obama’s father was NOT a U.S. citizen.
Bring this up to your liberal friends and they will laugh at you and call you a right wing nut job for saying Obama is ineligible but 
the quick and accurate response is clear. YOU are not saying this, and neither is the Liberty Legal Foundation. Obama is ineligible so sayeth the United States Supreme Court and if they care to attempt to label the United States Supreme Court of 1875 as right wing nut jobs…so be it and good luck with that.
If the Democratic Party should certify Obama, in the face of this ruling, they would be acting in a fraudulent manner and according to the actions being brought by the Liberty Legal Foundation, it is the political parties which are solely responsible for that certification and the Liberty Legal Foundation intends to hold BOTH parties accountable.
To be specific, the case of Minor v. Happersett was not intended as to solve the question of Presidential eligibility at all. That case was in regard to a woman’s right to vote and while the case itself didn’t draw this specific issue into question, the Chief Justice, Morrison Waite, did, in fact address it in the issuing of the Supreme Court’s decision.
“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [88 U.S. 162, 168] parents.
As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words ‘all children’ are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as ‘all persons,’ and if females are included in the last they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.”
No doubt, liberals will attempt to cling to this line:
“Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [88 U.S. 162, 168] parents.”
Note that the Chief Justice Waite follows that with:
“As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”
In this, the Chief Justice, and therefore, the Supreme Court makes clear that the one definition to which there is no doubt is:
“…that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also.”
Indeed, there are 4 cases in which the United States Supreme Court has addressed “Natural Born Citizen.
1) The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”
2) Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet. 242 242 (1830)
“Ann Scott was born in South Carolina before the American revolution, and her father adhered to the American cause and remained and was at his death a citizen of South Carolina. There is no dispute that his daughter Ann, at the time of the Revolution and afterwards, remained in South Carolina until December, 1782. Whether she was of age during this time does not appear. If she was, then her birth and residence might be deemed to constitute her by election a citizen of South Carolina. If she was not of age, then she might well be deemed under the circumstances of this case to hold the citizenship of her father, for children born in a country, continuing while under age in the family of the father, partake of his national character as a citizen of that country. Her citizenship, then, being prima facie established, and indeed this is admitted in the pleadings, has it ever been lost, or was it lost before the death of her father, so that the estate in question was, upon the descent cast, incapable of vesting in her? Upon the facts stated, it appears to us that it was not lost and that she was capable of taking it at the time of the descent cast.”
3) Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875)
“The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.”
4) United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)
“At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
Clearly, by any of the 4 cases in which the United States Supreme Court has addressed the issue of “Natural Born Citizen” Obama, by the opinions rendered, is not one.
If Obama is not a natural born citizen, he is therefore ineligible to run for or to serve as, the President.
Section 1 of Article 2 of the United States Constitution states:
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
As the Constitution offers no definition of “Natural Born Citizen” it falls to the United States Supreme Court and the 4 cases in which the Supreme Court provides such a definition appear above.
Forget the birth certificate or swirling questions as to his place of birth, the United States Supreme Court has made it clear.
Obama is not eligible to serve as President and should his name appear on ballots in 2012, it will appear there fraudulently.
thenationalpatriot.com » Blog Archive » U.S. Supreme Court Has Ruled on Obama’s Eligibility!!
Homeland Security operating without a real home - Home & Garden - TheState.com
WASHINGTON — Five miles southeast of the gleaming Capitol dome, on a scenic bluff overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, the future office of the secretary of Homeland Security sits boarded up and abandoned.
Four years ago, U.S. officials announced plans to renovate the dilapidated, castle-like structure - opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane - to anchor Washington's largest construction project since the Pentagon was built 70 years ago.
The goal was to unite on a single campus the 22 agencies that were stitched together after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to form the Department of Homeland Security.
But the planned $3.4 billion headquarters project stalled as Congress tried to cut the federal deficit. Lawmakers debated this month whether the nation can afford such a massive home improvement project, and the House has voted to eliminate the funding in next year's budget.
As a result, Homeland Security staffers remain scattered in more than 35 offices around Washington. Janet Napolitano, their boss, works from a former Navy radar facility that has all the comforts of a barracks. Plus, in traffic, she's a good 40 minutes from the White House.
"They need to get out of there as soon as possible," said Tom Ridge, who took over the former Navy compound in early 2003 after he was named the first Homeland Security chief.
In the early rush to get settled, Ridge recalls, one of his assistant secretaries emptied out a broom closet and stuck a desk in it.
"It's hardly anything anyone can call palatial," he growled.
Napolitano's future office, assuming it gets built, has its own charms.
According to renovation plans, she would work by a Gothic-style bay window in the second floor office long used by the director of the nation's first major federally run psychiatric institution, which was founded by Congress in 1852.
It subsequently had a long and storied history.
During the Civil War, when the asylum was used as a Union Army hospital, wounded soldiers began using the euphemism St. Elizabeths, the Colonial-era name for the tract of land. The name stuck and was formally changed in 1916.
The American-born poet Ezra Pound was confined at the facility from 1946 to 1958 after he was deemed unfit to stand trial on charges of treason for making hundreds of pro-fascist and pro-Nazi radio broadcasts from Italy during World War II. Pound lived two doors down from the superintendent's office, and made the schedule for the tennis courts.
Other famous patients included Richard Lawrence, who tried to shoot President Andrew Jackson in 1835, Charles J. Guiteau, who shot and killed President James Garfield in 1881, and John Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
At its height, the hospital held more than 8,000 patients, though the caseload fell sharply in recent decades as care for the mentally ill shifted to community-based treatment. A new hospital, opened last year by the District of Columbia, now treats a few hundred patients on the eastern edge of the complex.
The Homeland Security complex is planned for what's called the western campus. Already, downhill from the castle-like main building, five cranes are setting support beams for a $350 million headquarters for the U.S. Coast Guard. The opening is scheduled for 2013.
But the Guardsmen may be lonely. As of Sept. 30, no funding will be available to provide new offices for Homeland Security, or any of its component parts, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the Transportation Security Administration.
Under the original plans, all were scheduled to move to the campus by 2016.
Proponents argue that the high cost of construction will be partially offset by savings. According to projections by the Government Services Administration, the department could save $500 million in rent and other costs over the next three decades if it consolidates its offices.
At a hearing Friday before the House subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation, Donald Bathurst, chief administrative officer for the Homeland Security Department, offered cautious optimism that the complex will be built - someday.
"We will find a way to keep this project moving forward," he said. "However, we will not be able to keep to the schedule."
Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., appealed to his colleagues to back the consolidation. "Homeland Security is simply too important for the Congress to allow this project to drift off course to an uncertain future," he said.
Homeland Security spending hasn't always inspired confidence, however.
A five-year effort to build a "virtual wall" of cameras, radar and sensors along the southwest border proved a disaster. After spending $1 billion on just 53 miles in Arizona, officials abandoned the project in January and said the border would be guarded with less expensive measures.
"We asked for a Cadillac, and we only needed a Chevy," said a senior Homeland Security official who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly.
In July, despite spending $1.2 billion, the department also scrapped an effort to build devices capable of detecting radiological or nuclear material at border crossings and seaports. The devices didn't work.
Partly in response, the House voted to slash the department's management budget next year from $811 million to $636 million.
There is little political liability in cutting bureaucratic paper pushers, but trimming the management budget only makes the department less efficient, complained Michael Chertoff, who served as Homeland Security chief from 2005 to 2009.
"The problem is, if you punish the department by cutting procurement officers, you are going to get more procurement problems," he said.
Napolitano, the current secretary, seems to be taking the cuts in stride. Meeting reporters earlier this month at the former radar facility that's now her office, she said her priority is to ensure budget cuts don't affect frontline operations such as border patrol, airline security and port inspections.
"There are things we'd like to do that are gonna have to be postponed," she said. "St. Elizabeths is a good example. That's supposed to be our headquarters. We will have to postpone that. ... Oh darn."
Homeland Security operating without a real home - Home & Garden - TheState.com
Attention AFL-CIO, IBEW, Teamsters and UMW Members: Your Christmas Gift From the White House is: 116,000 Layoffs
The EPA will shut down an estimated 20% of the nation’s coal plants through the ground-level ozone rule (the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) ) through cap and trade that is about to be implemented in January 2012. Opponents of the Obama administration’s “over-reaching” EPA say these are costly regulations. Financial analysts estimate that the cost of this rule will be $130 billion by 2015. But if that figure is correct, that’s good news for the US economy....Because there is another way of looking at that $130 billion “expense”. One industry’s expense is another industry’s sales bonanza. For the coal industry’s balance sheet, it is an expense, but think about who is going to perform this $130 billion cleanup – fairies? Hardly. This is a job for real American industries...
Consider the raw idiocy behind this line of "reasoning":
• America's coal industry employs 126,000 workers directly and another 455,000 workers whose jobs are indirectly dependent upon the coal industry.
• Closing 20% of America's coal factories will result in the immediate layoffs of about 116,000 workers, many of them union members in the mining, electrical, transportation and service industries.
• Blackouts and brownouts will become commonplace: there is no way to shutter roughly 10% of America's electric generation capacity without causing shortages and rationing.
• And simple supply-and-demand will cause skyrocketing prices for electricity, which will be paid for directly by retail customers (you and I) as well as businesses, which will also pass those costs on to consumers like -- yes -- you and I.
The executive summary for you hard-working, dues-paying members of the AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Teamsters and the United Mine Workers: the Democrat Party is now aligned with the hard-left Eco-Marxist movement and it is using your money to destroy your jobs.
Remember in 2012.
Attention AFL-CIO, IBEW, Teamsters and UMW Members: Your Christmas Gift From the White House is: 116,000 Layoffs
Walking Off the Democrat Plantation – The Providence of Change (part 1 of 3) | Contagious Transformation
My dear conservative friend introduced me to some historical facts about the Democratic Party that helped push me to research for myself whether or not the claims he made were true. What I learned crushed my beliefs that the Republican Party was full of racists who were trying to hold the black man down. What I learned left me with no affinity for my inherited party; I was left, finally, with NO good reason to vote Democrat.
Walking Off the Democrat Plantation – The Providence of Change (part 1 of 3) | Contagious Transformation
Walking Off the Democrat Plantation – The Providence of Change (part 1 of 3) | Contagious Transformation
It's Time to Remove Barriers to Job Creation - Wauwatosa, WI Patch
President Obama has encouraged Congress to move forward on legislation to help put Americans back to work. However, he is blind to the fact that some of the very real impediments to creating jobs are coming directly from his own administration.
This fall, House Republicans are committed to finding and repealing some of the most harmful regulations and administrative decrees, which pose barriers to growth and perpetuate an economic environment of uncertainty.
In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Boeing, when it chose to create new jobs in South Carolina rather than at a unionized facility in Washington. Although no jobs were lost from the Washington plant, the NLRB has brought a case against Boeing for deciding to build a new facility, creating 1,000 new jobs in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.
The NLRB is an agency of the United States government, with appointees by the president, and it is responsible for investigating and remedying unfair labor practices.
This decision is an alarming departure from the core principles of U.S. economic growth — that private companies are free to move capital and business operations — and it is having a chilling effect on hiring from employers around the nation.
In his recent joint address to Congress, the President declared: “I want to see more products sold around the world stamped with three proud words: ‘Made in America.'"
I agree we need to make America more competitive on the global stage, capitalizing on our areas of advantage and encouraging companies to create good-paying jobs here, in the United States.
But decisions like this one from NLRB are having the opposite effect. As reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal, the National Association of Manufacturers asked its members last month how the NRLB decision against affects their decision-making and 49 percent responded that capital expenditure plans "have been or may be impacted by the NLRB's complaint."
When 14 million Americans are still out work, Congress must balance the need to protect workers with the urgency to enact policies that will encourage job growth. Employers are deliberately choosing to sit on their capital, rather than invest and hire new employers, for fear of the impact of government regulations.
The House last week passed the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, which amends the National Labor Relations Act, to prevent the government agency from mandating where a company can do business within the United States. The NLRB will still have multiple tools available to continue doing its important work of protecting American workers and holding employers accountable for unfair labor practices.
This bill is one example of how Congress can help remove barriers to growth and provide employers the certainty they need to plan for the future, invest capital, and expand. House Republicans will continue to pass legislation in the coming months aimed at providing employers with the opportunity to create jobs.
It's Time to Remove Barriers to Job Creation - Wauwatosa, WI Patch
Boeing Plant Is Expected to Get Lift From House - NYTimes.com
The Republican-controlled House is expected to approve an unusual bill that would bar the labor board from pursuing the board’s pending action against Boeing, which Republicans have been denouncing day after day.
Republican leaders and business groups are vigorously backing the bill, saying it would safeguard the freedom of corporations to locate operations where they want.
But many Democrats and labor unions have denounced the bill, asserting that it would badly weaken an independent federal agency and be an improper favor to Boeing, a prominent political contributor.
The Republican bill, called “The Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act,” would prohibit the labor board from “ordering any employer to close, relocate or transfer employment under any circumstances.”
Republicans are angry that the labor board’s acting general counsel filed a complaint against Boeing in April, asserting that the company had built an assembly line in South Carolina to retaliate against unionized workers in Washington State for engaging in numerous strikes.
The National Labor Relations Act bars employers from taking any actions, including transferring an operation, in retaliation against workers for exercising their federally protected rights, including forming a union or going on strike.
Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia and the House majority leader, has condemned the board’s move, calling it an “overbearing action” that discriminates against right-to-work states in the South and makes it “nearly impossible” for Boeing to add additional workers. Several Republican presidential candidates have also criticized the complaint. For example, Mitt Romney visited South Carolina last Monday and called the move “an egregious example of political payback, where the president is able to pay back unions for the hundreds of millions of dollars they put in his campaign.”
The labor board is an independent agency that enforces federal laws regarding unionization and labor-management relations in the private sector. The president appoints its board members and general counsel, who is independent from the board and prosecutes cases claiming unfair labor practices.
The acting general counsel, Lafe E. Solomon, has asked an administrative law judge in Seattle to order Boeing to move the production line, which will build seven planes a month, from South Carolina to Washington State. The House bill to halt action against Boring has a retroactive provision that would nullify labor board complaints, like the Boeing one, for which “final adjudication” has “not been made.”
If the administrative law judge rules against Boeing, the company could appeal to the full board itself.
Mr. Solomon issued a statement Wednesday, saying his decision to issue a complaint against Boeing “was based on a careful investigation and a review of the facts under longstanding federal labor law.”
“The decision had absolutely nothing to do with political considerations, and there were no consultations with the White House,” he said. “Regrettably, some have chosen to insert politics into what should be a straightforward legal procedure. These continuing political attacks are baseless and unprecedented and take the focus away from where it belongs — the ongoing trial in Seattle.”
To prove that Boeing’s decision to assemble the 787 Dreamliners in South Carolina was retaliation, Mr. Solomon pointed to statements by top Boeing executives saying their dismay about past strikes was motivating them to open the production line in North Charleston. But Boeing officials say low costs were the reason they located the plant in South Carolina. Some assembly began there this summer.
Richard L. Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, said the Republican bill was “sleazy legislation,” and added, “This is sweeping legislation that would gut the National Labor Relations Act and result in serious harmful changes to workers’ rights throughout the country.”
He said that if the bill passed, the labor board would be powerless to stop an employer from moving an operation to punish workers who staged a protest against unsafe conditions or sexual or racial discrimination.
Republicans have voiced confidence that the bill will pass the House, which they dominate. But Bill Samuel, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s legislative director, said defeat of the bill was possible, although he said the bill’s chances were not good in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.
Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, has strongly backed the bill. “No government board should have the authority to dictate where a private employer can run a business,” he said.
But Representative George Miller of California, the committee’s senior Democrat, said the bill was “the Outsourcers’ Bill of Rights.” He said that Republicans were pushing the bill “to change the rules midtrial on behalf of one Fortune 500 company.”
Aric Newhouse, senior vice president for policy and government relations with the National Association of Manufacturers, said the action against Boeing was hurting job creation and discouraging investment in right-to-work states.
Boeing Plant Is Expected to Get Lift From House - NYTimes.com
New Import Fees from FDA May Drive Food Prices | WholeFoods Magazine
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now has broader authority to levy fees for the re-inspection of imported food. The new fee structure comes as a result of certain sections of the recently passed Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), and some parties fear it may result in burdensome fees for small companies and in higher food prices.
The three new fee categories, each tied a section of FSMA, were detailed in a recent FDA notice in the Federal Register, as follows: “(1) Certain domestic and foreign facility re-inspections (section 743(a)(1)(A)), (2) failure to comply with a recall order under section 423 or 412(f) of the FD&C Act (section 743(a)(1)(B)), and (3) certain importer re-inspections (section 743(a)(1)(D)).” It is this last category that may provide particular difficulty for industry, according to Benjamin L. England, a former regulatory counsel at FDA, and founder and CEO of FDAImports.com. “My gut reaction is that at least 40% of the current detentions that are food detentions are going to be suddenly subject to fees,” he says.
When FDA inspects food for admission to the country, the scenarios that qualify as an official “examination” include analysis of physical samples of the product, a review of the product’s label, a review of sample results from a reliable third party, relevant epidemiological evidence, the results from an FDA or third party inspection of a facility where the food was processed, information contained in an import alert and other cases, according to the Federal Register notice. These “examinations” can be used to fulfill the initial requirement that FDA “identify noncompliance materially related to a food safety requirement of the FD&C Act.” After this first examination, any subsequent action to verify the safety of or readmit the product is now subject to a fee.
For Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the agency has assessed these fees at a rate of $224/hour of re-inspection if no foreign travel is required, and $335/hour if it is. All agency work time devoted to each re-inspection will be subject to this rate, payable by the company importing the food. England expects these fees to become a factor right away. “The government already has a mechanism for collecting fees like that. The FDA already collects fees for any operations that they perform on a product that has to be reconditioned,” he says, noting that this has included cases like relabeling or reformulating a product, and that this statute has been in place since 1906.
What is new is the now foreseeable scenario where a company will be responsible for multiple redundant fees, at costs that England sees mounting into the thousands of dollars. He explains that the time it takes FDA to review a re-submitted label or private lab analysis, as well as every subsequent import after an import alert is issued could be subject to a fee. Typically five clean shipments are required before the removal of an import alert. Requesting removal from an import alert is also subject to the fee, per the Federal Register notice. “Any of these scenarios are going to be troublesome, because there’s no cushion in the market,” England says. While some consumer categories like organic may be better equipped to absorb the fees, food prices overall may reflect the change, England feels.
The FY 2012 rates become effective October 1, 2011. Public comments on the fee structures, meanwhile, are open until October 31, 2011, according to FDA. The agency notes in the Federal Register that it may make special considerations in the future for small businesses that would suffer unduly from the fees, but that the rules for FY 2012 will not change. FDA may, however, consider waiving some fees in FY 2012 based on “severe economic hardship, the nature and extent of the underlying violation, and other relevant factors.”
Published in WholeFoods Magazine, October 2011
New Import Fees from FDA May Drive Food Prices | WholeFoods Magazine
Survey: US falls to 5th in global competitiveness - Business - Stocks & economy - msnbc.com
GENEVA — The U.S. has tumbled further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies, landing at fifth place because of its huge deficits and declining public faith in government, a global economic group said Wednesday.
The announcement by the World Economic Forum was the latest bad news for the Obama administration, which has been struggling to boost the sinking U.S. economy and lower an unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.
Switzerland held onto the top spot for the third consecutive year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based forum, which is best known for its exclusive meeting of luminaries in Davos, Switzerland, each January.
Singapore moved up to second place, bumping Sweden down to third. Finland moved up to fourth place, from seventh last year. The U.S. was in fourth place last year, after falling from No. 1 in 2008.
The rankings, which the forum has issued for more than three decades, are based on economic data and a survey of 15,000 business executives.
The forum praised the U.S. for its productivity, highly sophisticated and innovative companies, excellent universities and flexible labor market. But it also cited "a number of escalating weaknesses" such as rising government debt and declining public faith in political leaders and corporate ethics.
The results of a survey of 142 nations comes a day before Obama is preparing to tackle jobs issues in a speech to the U.S. Congress, and just as U.S. polls show a clear majority of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy.
Switzerland held onto its top ranking, the forum said, because of "continuing strong performance across the board" with innovation, technological readiness, even-handed regulation and having one of the world's most stable economic environments.
Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, was sixth, followed by the Netherlands and Denmark. Japan came in ninth, and Britain was 10th. France was 18th, and Greece, saddled with debt, fell to 90th.
The report looked at broader trends: While the U.S. slipped, emerging markets gained traction. China took 26th place, highest among major emerging economies; Brazil was 53rd; India was 56th; and Russia was 66th.
"Fiscal imbalances that have been building up around the world are really a danger to future competitiveness, in terms of the ability of countries to invest in those things that will be very important for competitiveness going forward, things like education, infrastructure and so on," said Jennifer Blanke, an economist with the forum.
Survey: US falls to 5th in global competitiveness - Business - Stocks & economy - msnbc.com
10 years after 9/11: Americans feel less safe than ten years ago
Rural residents are most fearful, but public safety agencies at every level can take a lesson from this study |
| Federal Signal has released the 2011 edition of its annual survey of public safety concerns among Americans. Despite the increased security measures implemented in the ten years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the elimination of much of the leadership of al-Qaeda, most Americans feel less safe than they did ten years ago. Young adults ages 18-24 are the most fearful for their personal safety. When asked “Ten years after the 9/11 tragedy, do you feel that public safety and emergency preparedness has improved to the point where you feel safer in your day-to-day life?” Responding in the negative were 64 percent of the group. Americans in other age groups were more evenly divided on the question, with slightly more people in the 25-34, 35-54 and 70+ groups feeling safer, and 54 percent of the 55-69 age group feeling less safe. Almost 60 percent of the people answering “no” to this question lived in suburbs or in rural communities. Slightly more than half of those in small (fewer than 100,000 people) and large cities said they did feel safer. Almost 90 percent of Americans believe there is a need for improvement in public emergency awareness or communication. People living in small cities were the most satisfied with public emergency awareness, while those in rural areas saw the most need for improvement. Given the expansion of public safety presence in nontraditional communications media such as the internet, Facebook, Twitter and text messages, it’s interesting that people still don’t believe they are getting enough information. Moreover, 34 percent said they felt that public safety was not a priority in their community. The perception that recent natural disasters have not increased attention to preparedness for these incidents is very high for young adults 18-24, with 90 percent saying that their communities were not heeding the warnings of such events. The other age groups surveyed were more at ease with emergency preparedness, with between 46 percent and 60 percent approving of their community’s efforts. As before, people living in cities felt better about preparedness than people living in rural areas. A full 77 percent of Americans believe that additional community resources or communications will have a positive impact on public safety awareness. More than four in ten Americans believe their employers are not making safety response and planning a priority. Rural respondents were least satisfied with their employers’ preparations, while those in small cities were most satisfied. Only 4.2 percent of Americans feel safest at their workplace. Young people 18-24 feel safest at work, while people 55 and older feel the least safe. Communications infrastructure is more important than ever before, as 57 percent of Americans would fall back on multiple communications methods if they were denied cell phone or landline voice calls. It’s unclear from the survey whether the respondents realized that, without cell or landline networks, most other communications channels would be cut off as well. People cited text messaging, social media and email as alternate ways of staying in touch during an emergency. What, if anything, does this survey mean for public safety agencies? First, it’s clear that emergency service organizations need to blow their own horns about their preparedness for emergencies. It may be that communities are better prepared than their citizens know, and that knowledge will not only make them feel safer, it will also make it easier for them to protect themselves and work with public safety when a disaster strikes. Police, fire, and EMS departments should improve their social media profiles. It costs nothing to post a crime alert to Facebook or tweet word of a street closure on Twitter. Use of these communications conduits improves public perception and reminds citizens that you’re protecting them, even when they don’t see it. Finally, this underscores the importance of having a contingency plan for the loss of cell and landline communications, and making that plan known to your community. If people are expecting to be able to send and receive email and text messages in an emergency, they are more likely to panic when those channels are denied to them. People need to understand the realities of weathering a disaster, so they can better prepare for it. |
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» The Pink Slip President - Big Government
In the abysmal economic climate America presently finds itself in, almost no one is immune from unemployment, because joblessness threatens everyone. While Barack Obama duffs around on the golf course, one can’t help but wonder if he fully grasps the fact that, thanks to his own incompetency, the potential to be dismissed from his highly sought-after job is more than a distinct possibility. 
Except for “saving and creating” jobs for the slew of workers needed to staff the Department of Labor’s unemployment division, Obama continues to singlehandedly undermine both the economy and job creation. Wherever he goes, crowds are waving layoff notices in lieu of the typical “Yes we can” banners Barack Obama is more used to seeing.
If America is the employer, and if polls are the equivalent of a job evaluation, Obama is definitely on probation. In fact, Obama’s discharge papers are already filled out and tacked to the White House door. Rather than respond to the threat by working toward winning the title of “Employee of the Month,” the President is doing everything one should never do when unemployment is a looming likelihood.
Knocking around on the beach when he should have forgone the down time and chosen to stay on the job, the president doesn’t seem to be concerned that within the next year he might find himself in line with unemployed Americans who are stimulating the economy by collecting jobless benefits.
The truth is, the President interviewed and was hired to a position he had no business applying for in the first place. By electing Barack Obama as President of the United States, America might as well have asked a plumber’s apprentice to do surgery on the nation’s inner ear canal with an auger.
Nobody noticed or cared about Obama’s lack of qualifications because out of nowhere a seemingly elegant oratory genius touting “Hope and Change” showed up at the interview. Candidate Obama had all the buzzwords down pat and said all the right things the right way. The nation was so captivated, no one bothered to call his old employer, do a background check, or question his shady friends or palpable inexperience.
It’s only now that America is slowly coming to realize that Barack Obama might not have been the best choice for the job. After filling the position, one of the President’s responsibilities was to institute policies that stimulate the creation of new jobs, and he claimed to have a laser-like focus on doing just that. Yet, over the past three years, the only thing Barack Obama has successfully done is break the all time record for the number of golf games played by a sitting president.
As the economy and job market continue to deteriorate and a lock is about to be put on the door of the greatest nation in the world, Obama, while still immersed in intensive on-the-job training, has been commissioned to present and implement a plan to address unemployment and the country’s economic future.
Instead of meeting the target and throwing himself on the mercy of a nation running out of patience, the President placed America on hold and decided it was a perfect time to take a much-deserved summer break. The ultimate non-vetted employee skipped out for ten days, leaving a stunned America staring open-mouthed at an empty podium.
In a shaky job market, the last thing a person fortunate enough to have a job should do mid-discussion is push away from the conference table, point to their watch, and announce to the group, “Sorry guys, I really have to run, it’s time for my vacation.” Yet that is exactly what Barack Obama did.
With no job plan to speak of, the President chose instead to fly around on a company-funded plane, play lots of golf, munch on buttered corn and Cape Cod lobster rolls, and relax for a couple of weeks while the winds blow and the earth shakes below the nation’s feet, both literally and figuratively.
Obviously, the President is unaware or could not care less that when a person’s career is on the line, they should make an extra effort to arrive to work early, perform their job with renewed vigor and diligence, and be both accommodating and cooperative. What is perplexing is how Obama’s response to the possibility of being unemployed is the opposite of what people do when they’re worried they may be fired.
Barack Obama’s chichi vacation may have sealed the deal and his temporary employment contract is not likely to be renewed. Obama may be enjoying family time on Martha’s Vineyard right now, but when the President returns to Washington he may be astounded to find out that the mail bin that was just sitting outside the Oval Office door last week has been placed inside and awaits him filling it with the contents of his desk.
The President acts as if he’s immune to being sent packing a la Jimmy Carter and that without ramifications he can fritter away time doing the equivalent of spending the work day with his feet up on the desk, laughing hysterically while having non-work-related discussions on the company phone.
It’s either that, or Barack isn’t worried, because after he returns from vacation he may have plans to rip up the pink slip and refuse to leave the position even after his four-year contract is up.
» The Pink Slip President - Big Government
Blacks' dilemma with Obama (OneNewsNow.com)
Star Parker - Syndicated Columnist - 8/22/2011 8:55:00 AM
Election of our nation's first black president is delivering an unexpected message to our black population.
Blacks are discovering that what a man or woman does -- their actions -- is what matters, not the color of their skin.
It seems ridiculous to point out that this was supposedly the point of the civil rights movement. Purge racism from America.
But blacks themselves have been the ones having the hardest time letting it go.
It is not hard to understand why black Americans were happy that a black man was elected president of the United States. It was kind of a final and most grand announcement that racism has finally been purged from America.
But for the highly politicized parts of black America this was certainly not the only message. Because for the highly politicized parts of black America, the point has always been to keep race in American politics.
For black political culture that dominated after the civil rights movements, the point was not just equal treatment under the law, but special treatment under the law. Plus the assumption that more black political power -- defined by more blacks holding office -- would mean that blacks would be better off.
In other words, post-civil rights movement black political culture embraced an agenda exactly the opposite of what the civil rights movement was about. Its agenda was to get laws and policies that were not neutral but racially slanted and to put individuals in power based on their race and not on their character and capability.
So, according to the script of this political culture, election of a black man as president meant more than an end to racism. The conclusion had to be that if the man holding the highest political office in the nation was black, it must follow that blacks would be better off.
Now blacks have a dilemma. We have a black president and blacks are worse off. Not just a little, but a lot worse off.
In the words of longtime Congressional Black Caucus member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., "Our people are hurtin'."
Blacks now grapple with two possible conclusions.
One, our black president is a traitor to his race. Our struggles put him in power and now he's not taking care of his folks. He's become, in the words of left-wing professor and activist Cornel West, a "mascot" of Wall Street.
Or, two, that the man's performance reflects his views and his capability, not his race. He's not delivering for anyone. Blacks are hurting more because they were already in worse shape when Obama got elected. Bad policies hurt the weakest the most.
And it happens that the bad policies that have always failed are the big government liberalism that has defined modern black politics.
With further thought, blacks might realize it's this same flawed idea -- that growing government and electing black politicians would make blacks better off -- that explains why blacks have remained disproportionately "hurtin".
Take the Congressional Black Caucus itself. The average poverty rate in Black Caucus districts is almost 50 percent higher than the national average. Yet, these black politicians have 100 percent re-election rates.
Maybe a real bonus that will have come from electing a black president is that blacks will take seriously Martin Luther King's dream that we judge men by their character and not their color.
The Civil Rights Movement took blacks to the edge of the Promised Land. But political activism can only remove barriers to freedom.
It's up to the individual to embrace freedom and take on the personal responsibilities that go with it.
Maybe blacks will realize that they should blame Barack Obama. Not because he is black, but because he is a liberal -- and because he has grown government to the point where the oxygen necessary for freedom and prosperity is being squeezed out of our nation.
Blacks' dilemma with Obama (OneNewsNow.com)
After long struggle, MLK has home on National Mall - Nation - TheState.com
WASHINGTON — On the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, a towering memorial will honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a man of peace among the many monuments to wars and presidents in the nation's capital. The road to this weekend's dedication, however, has run through hurdles of all kinds - not unlike the long struggle over King's legacy itself.
Since King's death, there have been financial worries at the King Center in Atlanta, and legal fights over the use of his image and words and over control of the civil rights organization he co-founded.
Many people wanted to help shape King's bricks-and-mortar legacy as well, the first memorial for a black leader on the National Mall. There were skirmishes over who would sculpt King's likeness, where the granite would come from and who would profit from the mammoth $120 million fundraising effort as the family demanded a licensing fee to support its Atlanta priorities.
Sculptor Lei Yixin, of China, center, is interviewed by a Chinese television crew in front of his sculpture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the soft opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, Monday, Aug. 22, 2011. The memorial will be officially dedicated on Sunday.
- Jacquelyn Martin /AP Photo
Overall costs for the memorial rose over time, and the government demanded tougher security amid threats of domestic terrorism, dragging the project 15 years from the time Congress authorized it in 1996 and 27 years from when King's fraternity first proposed it.
Lesser hurdles have halted others who aspired to build monuments on the mall.
"We have persevered," said Harry Johnson, a 56-year-old Houston attorney and Alpha Phi Alpha member who for the past 11 years led an effort that culminates Sunday with a massive ceremony featuring President Barack Obama. "Even though we've had dark days and dark clouds, we were able to always see a silver lining in the sky, knowing, understanding and believing it was always going to happen."
One of the darkest days was 9/11, Johnson said, because the memorial foundation was set to go public with its fundraising campaign but had to put plans on hold as the country recovered. Then came the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, plus an economic downturn, all of which made raising donations even more daunting.
Race, too, was a factor in the struggle over how the memorial would be conceived.
The surprise selection of a Chinese sculptor for King's statue in 2007 eventually drew protests. A black painter launched a petition to try to force a change, saying black artists should have first rights to interpret the memory of the man who did so much for his fellow African-Americans. A bronze sculptor from Denver complained he was pushed aside. Human rights advocates chimed in, saying King would have detested China's record on civil liberties.
Executive architect Ed Jackson Jr., 62, who oversaw the design process for 15 years, concedes he may have been naive to think others would easily see the power of sculptor Lei Yixin's concept and the mastery of his work.
"Politics can actually change the color of your lens ... and some of the comments were out of ignorance," Jackson said.
Still, the memorial foundation maintained King was inclusive of all people and never wavered from the selection of a Chinese sculptor. Jackson said he tried to insulate Lei, even as a federal arts panel criticized the design as too "confrontational."
Early tours of the memorial by church leaders and civil rights veterans gave Jackson a sense of affirmation he made the right choice.
King's likeness rises a full 30 feet to watch over the memorial landscape. The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner stands with his arms crossed, carved from a "stone of hope," looking toward the horizon. The central theme is King as a symbol of hope emerging from a boulder - a "mountain of despair," as King said in his 1963 "Dream" speech.
Visitors pass through a narrow opening in the "mountain" to symbolize the struggle for civil rights before entering an open plaza. They won't discover King's statue right away. Designers intend for waterfalls to draw visitors to either side of the plaza to first see curving granite walls carved with 14 quotations from King, none of which is from the "Dream" speech - organizers said they wanted to focus on some of King's powerful but lesser-known words, such as his Nobel acceptance remarks and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Originally, Jackson planned to fill the plaza with magnolia, pine and crepe myrtle trees to tie the landscape to the son of Georgia. Later, he learned Washington's famed cherry blossoms reach full bloom each April at the time when King was assassinated, so the design was changed to include 185 cherry trees.
The granite for King's statue was chosen because when lit at night, it lends a brownish tone to King's likeness. The stone, however, only exists in China, Jackson said; some wanted it to come from the United States.
King's statue stands taller than other human figures on the mall, though it does not seem overwhelming, said Thomas Luebke, an architect who serves as secretary to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an agency that approved the design. The memorial to King puts him squarely between those of Thomas Jefferson, who espoused ideals of equality but was a slave owner, and Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves in the Civil War.
"It's nicely situated between the Jefferson and the Lincoln Memorial, so it's part of that conversation," he said. "That corner of the mall has started to have a little bit of a theme about the ideas of our democracy between Jefferson, (Franklin D.) Roosevelt and now King."
Eventually, Jackson hopes to add King's voice to the visitor's experience by introducing iPads or other devices with educational features and recordings of speeches while people walk through the plaza.
"Dr. King came along right at the height of the television era," he said. "So we can take advantage of that."
Soon after King's assassination in 1968, his widow, Coretta Scott King, established the King Center in the basement of the couple's Atlanta home to preserve his legacy. Now located near King's birthplace, a national historic site, it has become one of Atlanta's most popular tourist attractions. Though Coretta Scott King did not live to see the King Memorial become a reality, her relentless efforts were the catalyst for such a project, said their daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, especially given the country's feelings about her father during his life.
"He was one of the most hated men in America. He was considered an enemy of the government," she said. "And here we are 40-something years later, and he's being honored in this way by our nation. ... So it certainly speaks to the magnitude of some of the progress that we've made in the area of race relations."
The family has guarded King's memory closely. While Coretta Scott King was an early champion of the memorial, the family's efforts to seek fees from its fundraising briefly stalled the effort in 2001.
Later, the family secured an $800,000 licensing deal for use of King's words and images in fundraising for the memorial. After The Associated Press revealed the unusual arrangement in 2009, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III said they weren't aware of the details. They said the deal was mishandled by their brother, Dexter King, but was meant to benefit the King Center, which has struggled with funding for repairs at the site where King is entombed.
At the time, Intellectual Properties Management, an entity run by King's family, told the AP that proceeds it receives would go to the King Center out of concern that fundraising for the monument in Washington would undercut the center's donations. Some donors and scholars still bristled at the deal.
King's family has sued media companies for using the "I Have a Dream" speech without permission. Lawsuits also have been filed among the siblings over control of the estate.
Infighting and leadership troubles also have hobbled the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King helped found following the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s and played a major role in fighting segregation. Martin Luther King III was president from 1997 to 2004.
In 2009, Bernice King was elected president but eventually declined to take office over differences with the board. Some called for the group to disband. This month, the group named King's nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., as its president.
For all the troubles from concept to construction, King's contemporaries said the memorial captures his message for a new generation, and it has drawn tears for many when they saw it for the first time.
Congressman John Lewis, who met King as a teenager and is the lone surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, said the statue is the best likeness he's ever seen.
"He's not looking down, he's looking straight ahead," Lewis said. "Dr. King was an emancipator, he was a liberator. He liberated not just a people. He liberated a nation. His ideas, his message of peace and love are still liberating people. I think people will come from all over the world to be inspired to go out to act, to do something."
When the Rev. Harold Carter, pastor of Baltimore's New Shiloh Baptist Church, saw King's statue for the first time, he was awestruck.
"Oh, God. You got him," Carter said, looking up to King's face, along with more than a dozen other pastors from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia who helped raise more than $1.5 million for the project from their congregations.
"This is a king among presidents," said Joe Ratliff, pastor of Houston's Brentwood Baptist Church, who was with Carter's group. "That's what I think every time I see it."
Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who was an aide to King, has taken multiple trips to track the monument's progress.
"The first time I saw it, I broke down and cried," Young said. "It's so beautiful. It's such a fitting statement.
"You know, he was always self-conscious about being short. ... Now he's a giant of a man. Isn't that something?"
Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/08/23/1943629/after-long-struggle-mlk-has-home.html#ixzz1VrsZvPyg
After long struggle, MLK has home on National Mall - Nation - TheState.com
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