Science is for sale

So many people believe in science. The problem is that science is being corrupted by those who stand to profit from certain advances. Rather than wait for the truth to be discovered, these profiteers pay scientists, who are willing to whore themselves out, to study problems and recommend solutions that- miraculously- always seem to financially favor the people who paid for the study.

This is how Al Gore made millions from the global warming and carbon credit fad. This is happening in medicine, where it turns out that the American Heart Association, which claims to be a non-profit, is overestimating the risk of cholesterol in heart disease by 75-150%.

The American Heart Association reported $521 million in donations from non-government and non-membership sources and many well-known large drug companies contribute amounts in the $1 million range. The AHA also rakes in millions from food companies which are also million dollar donors and which pay from $5,490 to $7,500 per product to gain the “heart-check mark” imprimatur from the AHA, renewable, at a price, every year. The foods so anointed are supposed to be low in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol, yet Boar’s Head All Natural Ham (340 mg of sodium per serving) somehow made the cut as did Boar’s Head EverRoast Oven Roasted Chicken Breast (440 mg of sodium per serving).

That is why many of us in the gun community do not trust the government to study gun violence. My rights are not up for debate, especially not a debate that will be based upon studies performed by “scientists” that are for sale to the highest bidder.

Future News

Internet News Service
Wednesday, January 20, 2021

President Walt Disney Company to be sworn in today

Washington- In only two hours, we as Americans will see history made. The new President, Walt Disney Company, will be sworn in today. This is truly a history making moment, as we herald in a new era of American history when we inaugurate the first non-human President in the history of the US and the world.

The groundwork for this was first laid in a series of Supreme Court decisions: First, there was the 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, in which the Supreme Court held that a private corporation is a person and is entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitution
affords to any other person. Later, the 2010 case of Citizens United v. Federal election Commission, in which the Supreme Court held that, for Constitutional rights purposes, a corporation was a person and that a person could not be prohibited from exercising free speech as exercised through spending money for political purposes.

After that came the decision of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebillius in 2014. In that landmark case, the court reaffirmed that a corporation is a person, even though it rejected the company’s assertion that compelling them to provide insurance that against their religious beliefs violated their First Amendment rights.

The big decision came in the case of SEIU v. Federal Election Commission, when the Service Employees Union asserted that a corporate person, being able to donate freely to political causes, should also be able to cast a ballot. The Supreme Court agreed. Overnight, tens of thousands of Corporations registered to vote in Delaware and North Dakota.

The idea of running the Disney company for president began as a joke, said Walt Disney Company CEO Mark Taylor: “We were joking around at a meeting of the Board of Directors about the company running for President. Then, our corporate attorney said, ‘Why not?’ The rest is history.”

Taylor went on to explain that the more they looked into it, the more it looked like it could be done, “The company was started in the USA, it was over 35 years old, and thanks to the lawsuits challenging [President] Obama’s eligibility to be elected failing for lack of standing, we knew we were on to something.”

Indeed they were. Democrats, happy that a company that supported so many progressive ideas like benefits for domestic partners and gay rights, were excited to vote for such a progressive candidate. Many Republicans felt sure that a large company like the Disney company would stand up for business. Many voters feel like it is time for change, and that is what we are about to get.

This post is satire. It came to me, and I thought it was funny. The court cases mentioned are real, the election of a company to the office of President is not.

ObamaCare to eliminate 72% of firefighters in the US

In the US, there are over 750,000 volunteer firefighters. This number represents 72% of all firefighters in the US. The IRS is trying to define the provisions of Obamacare, and the way that the law is written now would require volunteer fire departments to provide health insurance to their volunteers. This would be prohibitively expensive, and bring volunteer firefighting to a halt.

One of Obamacare’s reforms is known as the “Shared Responsibility
Provision,” which requires that large employers offer health insurance
to their employees. The act defines large employers as those with 50
or more full-time employees (FTEs) or FTE equivalents. The act further
defines an FTE to be an employee working 30 or more hours per week.

So any time a volunteer works more than 30 hours per week, the volunteer department with more than 50 volunteers would be required to provide that volunteer with insurance.Even though the volunteer system was disbanded years ago, Osceola county, Florida once had a dozen individual volunteer fire companies providing protection to the rural areas of the county, while career stations provided service to the more urbanized areas of the county. This meant that each individual volunteer department had fewer than 50 volunteers, collectively there were several hundred “employees” that would have needed insurance under Obamacare.

The uncertainty surrounding the Shared Responsibility Provision is
compounded for fire departments due to conflicting federal guidance on
whether a volunteer firefighter or emergency medical provider is an
employee of their fire department. While the Department of Labor
classified most volunteers as non-employees, the IRS is responsible for
enforcing the Shared Responsibility Provision and considers all
volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel to be employees
of their fire department.

Simply changing this IRS rule for the purposes of Obamacare won’t work, either. See, the rule was passed in response to a policy that many career fire departments once had, where they required their full time paid personnel to work a certain number of hours each year without pay as a volunteers.

All of this is causing volunteer departments to curtail or even shut down operations. Burlington, Washington has 9 full time and 30 volunteer firefighters. The city’s fire department announced early in November that they will have to curtail volunteer’s activities.

 “If we were to extend full medical benefits to those firefighters, it
would be $750,000 that the city hadn’t anticipated. And given the entire
fire budget is $1.6 million, that’s a substantial portion of the
budget,” said City Administrator Harrison. “I’m not sure where we’d get that money.”

We need to pass it to find out what is in it, indeed. The unintended consequences of this law are just now beginning to come to light.

93 years of corrupting the Constitution

Eighty years ago today, the 21st Amendment to the US constitution was ratified, ending alcohol prohibition in the United States.

The 18th Amendment, ratified on January 17, 1920, outlawed alcohol in the United States. The Amendment was enforced through the Volstead Act. One thing that I find interesting is the fact that Heroin and Cocaine were still perfectly legal during prohibition.

The Amendment was passed because  legal theories at the time said that the states were responsible for the law within their borders, while the Federal government only had jurisdiction over international affairs and interstate commerce. Thus, making liquor that stayed purely within a state’s borders illegal at a Federal level was unconstitutional

At first, it seemed as though prohibition was working: liquor consumption dropped, arrests for drunkenness dropped, and the price of alcohol soon rose to a level that was more than the average worker could afford. Many people that had supported the Amendment initially were angered by the Amendment and had felt misled. They felt that the phrase “intoxicating liquors” would not include beer and wine, but the Volstead act defined the term to mean anything with more than 0.5% alcohol.

Just like today’s war on drugs, the enforcement of alcohol prohibition granted many new powers to the Federal Government. Over the prohibition years, the Supreme Court modified its
interpretations of the 4th, 5th, and 10th amendments in order to uphold
the Volstead Act and interpret the enforcement power in the 18th
amendment expansively.  The court allowed wiretaps without a warrant,
allowed a person to be charged twice for the same crime under state and
federal statutes, and allowed warrantless searches of motor vehicles –
establishing the “reasonable suspicion” standard.

The law of supply and demand soon caught up with prohibition, and people that were willing to break the law to get beer were soon willing to break the law to get other liquors. Demand for alcohol soared, criminal enterprises began supplying it, and prices came down as supply increased. Criminal enterprises began competing for territory. It was not long before the problems of public drunkenness were replaced with organized crime, the corruption of police and courts, and widespread violence.

Many states eventually grew tired of the hassle. In
fact, by 1925 six states had developed laws that prohibited police from enforcing the Volstead Act. Cities in the Midwest and Northeast were
particularly uninterested in enforcing Prohibition. By 1928, 28 states had stopped enforcing the law. Juries began nullifying the law by refusing to convict people.

When confronted with what the people and the states believed to be
federal overreach, the people responded with outright disobedience and
jury nullification.  The cities and states nullified through sporadic or
complete absence of enforcement.  As with the Whiskey Rebellion and resistance to the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, the federal government was unable to overcome the resistance and was eventually forced to repeal the detested intrusion.

 So you can see that the Prohibition era and the Temperance movement changed our Constitution and damaged our freedoms. It set the stage for the drug war, Obamacare, the NSA scandal, sobriety checkpoints, the TSA, and tons of other overreaches of Government power.

it
seemed as though prohibition was not only a great idea, but that it was
working. “The amendment worked at first, liquor consumption dropped,
arrests for drunkenness fell, and the price for illegal alcohol rose
higher than the average worker could afford. Alcohol consumption dropped
by 30 percent and the United States Brewers’ Association admitted that
the consumption of hard liquor was off 50 percent during Prohibition.”
However, as time progressed, the statistics would change.

it
seemed
it
seemed as though prohibition was not only a great idea, but that it was
working. “The amendment worked at first, liquor consumption dropped,
arrests for drunkenness fell, and the price for illegal alcohol rose
higher than the average worker could afford. Alcohol consumption dropped
by 30 percent and the United States Brewers’ Association admitted that
the consumption of hard liquor was off 50 percent during Prohibition.”
However, as time progressed, the statistics would change.
as though prohibition was not only a great idea, but that it was
working. “The amendment worked at first, liquor consumption dropped,
arrests for drunkenness fell, and the price for illegal alcohol rose
higher than the average worker could afford. Alcohol consumption dropped
by 30 percent and the United States Brewers’ Association admitted that
the consumption of hard liquor was off 50 percent during Prohibition.”
However, as time progressed, the statistics would change.

Work is for suckers

Hosts on a KLBJ radio station in Austin, Tx, had been talking about how
accustomed people have become when it comes to welfare.  Expressing the
fact that some people would rather sit around and wait for their free
check in the mail than go to work, got at least one listener upset. The listener called in to say that she would always be on welfare, and that everyone else is an idiot for doing otherwise.

One of the hosts then asks the woman if she viewed the working class as
idiots because we go to work instead of staying home and reaping the
benefits that have been paid by those working.  She sadly replied that
she did think working was foolish declaring that even though she doesn’t
work, she’s still going to get paid. According to her, her parents were on Welfare, her kids are on Welfare, and she will be on Welfare for the rest of her life.

and she votes. This nation is doomed.

Servers are a whiny bunch

Via Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man, we find a blog post about how we all should tip more.

I am so tired of hearing about how servers don’t get enough in tips.


 Here is a description of your job: You write down what I want, and
then someone else prepares it. You pick up what I asked for (that
someone else prepared) and bring it to my table. If I ask you for
something like more sugar or ketchup, you bring it to me. You keep
refilling my glass. That’s it. It isn’t skilled labor. That is why they
call it the ‘service industry’.

You complain about how hard your job is? Try working a summer in
building construction, laying roofing tile. Think your pay as a server
is low? Get a job running a cash register at Wal Mart.

Look, let’s say that you work at a restaurant that assigns you four
tables, and each table spends about an hour eating. Let’s also say that
the average check for each table is $60, and let’s also say that your
employer only pays you $3 an hour, and the rest of your pay comes from
the ‘cheapskates’ that you are serving. Even if half the tables stiff
you and the other half only tip 10%, you are still making $15 an hour.
Where I live, that is double the minimum wage, and there are many, many
people who make less than that. In this scenario, if one in four tables
stiff you, and the others tip the 20% you constantly whine for, you are
now making $39 an hour.

Sorry, what you are doing isn’t worth $78,000 a year. So my new
tipping policy: I tip 15% for GOOD service, and less for crappy service.
My tips are capped at $10 for each hour I am there. That is more than
enough, and if you work a second table during that hour, means you are
making more than I am. For carrying stuff. Be happy you have a job.

My sister is a high school dropout. She went back and got her GED, but the highest paid job she can get is waiting tables at TGI Friday’s. She comes home from an 8 hour shift with $80-100. That is in addition to the $4.77 an hour she gets from her employer. Of course she complains that her check is frequently $0, after taxes are taken out, and that she must rely on tips for her entire income. Welcome to the real world. We all pay taxes, and your pretax income is $15-17 an hour- pretty good money for unskilled labor.

Marker

A 76 year old woman is robbed by three young people in her own driveway, as she was arriving home from work. She has a concealed weapons permit and managed to shoot one of her attackers before they killed her.
The comments on the article are appalling. Just click on the “worst rated” to see the mentality of the people there who are blaming her as they assume that the robber would have not attacked her if she was unarmed. If we are to take this advice, we are relying on the good will and conscience of the criminals.

If I have a weapon, I have a choice: I can submit, or I can resist.

If I do not have a weapon, I must submit. That is what a weapon does for me: it gives me a choice. It is freedom. I know that a firearm is not a guarantee of safety. It is not a magic wand or talisman. I would hope that if I find myself in such a situation that I would come out alive, and if this is not possible, at least I will be found in a pile of my spent brass, not on my knees with my hands tied behind my back.

At least in this case, the victim marked her killer for future identification.

Robot Watchman

After the school massacre at Newtown, a company named Knighthawk was founded. They claim that they want to sell and market a robot watchman that will prevent shootings like this from happening.

The robot is unarmed. So tell me how a burglar alarm system on wheels is going to prevent a shooting when, according to the article, it can’t even prevent unruly teenagers from tipping it over. When asked about teens tipping it over, they said that the video recording ability of the robots would deter this. Explain to me how a person engaged in a suicide mission of killing kids would be deterred by the fact that he was being video recorded.