Tuesday, May 31, 2016

SEC issues climate chaos “guidance”

What about risks from anti-energy policies imposed in the
name of stopping climate change?

President Obama continues to use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify a massive regulatory onslaught that will “fundamentally transform” America’s energy, economic, business, industrial, social, legal and constitutional systems before he leaves office.

The more science batters alarmist claims, the more people realize that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide makes life on Earth possible, the more China, India and other developing countries burn oil, gas and coal and increase their CO2 emissions to lift billions out of poverty, malnutrition, disease and brutally short lives – the more the administration issues draconian climate edicts.

Almost every department, agency and bureaucrat that didn’t eagerly volunteer has been dragooned to aid the campaign: from the EPA and Agriculture, Interior, Defense and State Departments, to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The Securities and Exchange Commission is the latest agency to re-up.

Pressure from climate and environmental activist groups “persuaded” the SEC to release its initial “interpretive guidance” on climate change in January 2010. It purported to help companies decide when they must disclose how their business might be affected by actual physical climate change, by direct impacts from laws, regulations or international agreements, or indirectly by effects on business trends.

In March 2016, the Commission told ExxonMobil and Chevron they had to let shareholders vote on whether the companies must explain how their profitability might be affected by climate change and laws to prevent it. Both resolutions were rejected, but proponents vowed to return as often as it takes to win.

On April 13, 2016, the SEC published a 341-page Concept Release intended to “seek public comment” on ways to modernize, improve and enhance Regulation S-K business and financial disclosure requirements for registered companies’ annual and other reports.

It asks whether new specific disclosure requirements should be added to ensure greater transparency and aid investors in determining whether companies are being socially responsible, properly handling diversity and inclusion concerns – and adequately addressing needs and risks associated with climate change, resource scarcity and sustainable development.

Many people certainly view these as legitimate concerns. They certainly are on the minds of certain investors and interest groups – especially CERES, Environmental Defense, and the California State Teachers and Public Employees Retirement Systems, all of which seek to advance their narrow parochial interests on climate change, “appropriate” energy, and particularly taxpayer subsidies for their favorite causes and cronies. The issues are certainly being used to drive Obama Administration agendas.

However, prudent investors (as well as employees, consumers and voters) might want greater disclosure, transparency and honesty regarding the full panoply of risks associated with laws and regulations imposed in the name of stabilizing Earth’s always-unstable climate and weather … mandates, preferences and subsidies enacted to support “eco-friendly” wind, solar and biofuel “alternatives” to oil, natural gas and coal … and campaign contributions that keep supportive legislators and judges in office.

This climate crisis edifice owes its existence to assertions that fossil fuel emissions have replaced natural forces in climate change, and any future changes will be disastrous. As those claims are further debunked, or enough voters and legislators become disgusted about the $1.5 trillion spent every year on climate crisis programs, the risks won’t come from climate change. They will come from a vengeful public.

No wonder Al Gore, Mike Mann and their comrades refuse to debate, jealously guard their kingdom, and chortle as state AGs prosecute “climate deniers” for racketeering. Prudent investors might want to study these issues in greater depth and raise a few questions that Obama’s SEC prefers not to entertain.
  • As scientist John Christy told Congress in February, the climate agenda is driven by data that have been massaged and manipulated, assertions and predictions that are contradicted by Real World data and observations, and “demonstrably deficient” computer models that predict global temperatures way above what have actually been measured, and cannot even reproduce past temperatures. 
Climatology remains an immature science that cannot even explain major historical climate events, much less predict the future. Those problems are compounded by phony “hockey stick” temperature graphs, ClimateGate emails, once reputable scientific journals rejecting papers that contest climate catastrophe claims, and headline-grabbing disaster “studies” that are based on rank speculation or written by environmental activists.

Are the alleged physical impacts of climate change real, or merely generated by computers and activists?

Are they due to fossil fuels, or to natural forces that have driven climate and weather throughout history?
  • Regardless of how much the United States, Europe and other developed countries slash their fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, developing nations will continue using those fuels at a feverish pace. 
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations will thus continue to climb beyond the 400 ppm (0.04%) level.

Job losses, reduced living standards and countless other sacrifices by Americans, Europeans, Canadians and Australians – especially by poor, working class and minority families – will not affect this trend.

Will we even be able to detect the effect of developed nation sacrifices on Earth’s climate, against normal, natural fluctuations? Why aren’t we measuring the harmful effects of anti-fossil fuel laws, regulations and treaties? How are these policies and actions moral, socially responsible or sustainable?
  • Many positive profit projections and other indirect benefits to business trends are based on assertions that manmade climate chaos is real and massive subsidies for renewable energy will continue. 
Negative effects on profits and corporate reputations are assumed to result from associations with fossil fuels.

But if governments begin to reject climate alarmism or eliminate mandates, subsidies, guaranteed loans, feed-in tariffs and exemptions from endangered species laws, companies built on this house of cards will collapse.

A number of EU and Chinese wind and solar companies have already gone belly-up or lost up to 90% of their market value, as demand for their products waned. Meanwhile, companies now vilified for producing or using fossil fuels that sustain our economies, jobs and living standards would benefit.

Coal, oil and natural gas still provide over 80% of all US and global energy. Largely because of abundant natural gas produced via fracking. US CO2 emissions declined in 2014, while the EU’s rose 0.7 percent.

Shouldn’t wind turbine companies have to disclose that generating just 20% of US electricity with wind power would require some 186,000 turbines, 19,000 miles of new transmission lines, 18,000,000 acres of land, and 270,000,000 tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earths, plus millions of dead birds and bats every year? Is that sustainable?

Shouldn’t insurance companies and reinsurers have to “disclose” that their higher rates and profits are based on 20-foot higher sea levels and more violent hurricanes conjured up by bogus computer models? Doesn’t that amount to deceptive advertising, fear-mongering and corporate social irresponsibility?
  • If President Obama and the SEC are going to demand full disclosure, honesty, transparency and accountability, those fundamental principles should also apply to government officials. They rarely do.
Justice Department lawyers have knowingly lied to judges in immigration cases. Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes and other officials have been caught in multiple bald-faced lies. The IRS deliberately targeted conservatives, and then destroyed records and lied about its actions.

EPA bungled a mine cleanup, polluted waterways in four states and lied about the impacts. NOAA and EPA have engaged in systematic misrepresentations and data manipulation on climate change. No one has been punished.

The impacts on company profits, investors, employees, families and communities have been extensive. Government agencies want more and more power and control over our lives – but refuse to accept any accountability for incompetence, malfeasance, deliberate lies or the serious harm they cause.

This is why Americans are fed up. Perhaps the 2016 elections will finally bring long overdue change.
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Paul Driessen at CFACT.org

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.
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Climate predictions don’t match real data


MWA_Projections for the Animas River Leading to the end of 2022

Whenever there is a new record set, whether rain, hurricane, drought, etc., those in the climate change alarmist camp seem to be quick to point to global warming as the cause and make more dire predictions regarding the future—even when there are other documented reasons and even when hard data (not models) disputes the claim.

Such is the case with Lake Mead. On May 20, the federal Bureau of Reclamation announced that the nation’s largest reservoir, located near Las Vegas, NV, reached an all-time low. The current level slipped below the previous record set in June 2015.

Despite reports of the mismanagement of the important water resource, USA Today responded to the news by proclaiming: “Due to a long drought and climate change, Lake Mead’s water levels continue to fall.”

Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, and brother to former Colorado Senator Mark Udall and cousin to New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, declared: “This problem is not going away and it is likely to get worse, perhaps far worse, as climate change unfolds.” According to the Desert Sun, he added: “Unprecedented high temperatures in the basin are causing the flow of the river to decline.”

Udall previously stated: “Climate change is water change. The two go hand in hand. Heat drives the water cycle. …You have to invoke temperatures to explain the current drought.”

Back in 2010, the Smithsonian magazine, cites Udall when it says: “Climate change will likely decrease the river’s flow by 5 to 20 percent in the next 40 years. … Less precipitation in the Rocky Mountains will yield less water to begin with. Droughts will last longer.

Higher overall air temperatures will mean more water lost to evaporation. Udall said: ‘You’re going to see earlier runoff and lower flows later in the year,’ so water will be more scarce during the growing season.”

While Udall’s statements are dramatic and coincide with the climate crisis narrative his better-known family members espouse, they do not, according New Mexico hydrologist Mike Wallace, reflect actual temperature and stream flow records in the Colorado River Basin. (I highlighted Wallace’s work on ocean acidification in December 2014.)

Both Wallace and Udall claim to be experts in the hydrology and climatology of the western U.S. Wallace has more than 30 years of experience in the field. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in nanosciences at the University of New Mexico.

Under his advisor solar physicist Harjit Ahluwalia, Wallace researches solar connections to the earth’s climate with an emphasis on hydrology—the topic of his dissertation. Udall’s undergraduate degree is in engineering and he holds an MBA from Colorado State University.

However, Wallace told me: “I’m the only hydrologist who is publishing moisture and temperature forecasts in reaches of the Upper Colorado River, years in advance, with consistently high accuracy.”

Regarding Udall’s comments in the Smithsonian, Wallace, who looks at streamflow records going back to the early twentieth century, finds that streamflows have actually been going up in recent years—correlating to ocean and solar drivers.

Wallace, who counts the city of Santa Fe as one of his forecasting business clients, pioneered the discovery that moisture patterns in his area of study—which overlaps Udall’s—are deeply anchored to ocean indexes and sunspot numbers.

He boldly asserts: “There is no correlation of CO2 emissions history to the moisture time series that I have evaluated. Also, for the same stations that I review there is little or no correlation of temperature to streamflow. Rather, ocean drivers can account for changes in temperature and moisture in this region, and those drivers appear to be driven themselves by solar cycles.”

While Udall believes temperatures are rising and causing reduced streamflow into Lake Mead, Wallace disputes the premise. Wallace says he has three years of successful forecast exercises to back up his claim that, in his study areas, “temperatures are hardly trending in any direction and, in any case, those temperatures are not correlating to streamflow.”

Wallace’s work focuses on streams charged by high mountains—above 9000 feet. His study regions include many of the tributaries of the Colorado River such as the San Juan River and the Green River—both of which are sourced in the Rocky Mountains.

He says: “There haven’t been any unusually low streamflow rates or unusually high temperatures in my area of focus. In fact, flows are going up, not down, compared to two and three years ago and some temperatures are actually trending down over the same recent time frame.”

Using his proprietary method (patent pending) with more than 200 accurate forecasts, and applying to areas near the nexus of the Upper Rio Grande and the Upper Colorado Rivers, Wallace is projecting 3-4 years of generally increased water flows, followed by 3-4 years of generally decreasing moisture (drought).

He posits that his innovations help municipalities, flood control authorities, irrigation districts, and resource management agencies better plan for future moisture and temperature conditions.

An example of real science at work without political interference, Wallace explains: “Research suggests that as the Sun’s radiant energy increases and decreases in sync with its sunspot cycles, the planet’s hydrosphere (all of the water) responds accordingly. Others have suggested this, but I’ve taken that several steps further.

First, I’ve discovered reproducible, high correlations between sun spot numbers and a few key features of Earth's climate.

Second, I’ve developed a series of unique calculations, which additionally consider global hydroclimatological patterns, the site location and elevation, and latency effects, to produce my forecasts.

A majority of those forecast exercises have turned out to be far more accurate than any competing method, including any or all of the global circulation models (GCMs) endorsed by the UN IPCC—which I believe is what Mr. Udall must be using for his assertions.”

Wallace has written and presented several papers on his discoveries. But he continues to experience resistance from major peer-reviewed journals to publish any of his findings. The troubles likely lie in his demonstrations that emissions are uncorrelated to climate in his study regions.

In any case, scientific papers are often considered as precursors to actual applications, and Wallace already has a working, proven application. Even without peer journal-publication panache, Wallace is receiving steady and growing recognition from the hydroclimate community.

In April, he was an invited presenter to the 30th Annual Rio Grande Basin Snowmelt Runoff Forecast Meeting, sponsored by the USDA SNOTEL network and attended by top regional hydroclimate scientists from agencies including the National Weather Service (NWS), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

If Wallace is correct, and he has a successful climate forecast record to back up his projections, Udall can’t also be right. Wallace believes most of Udall’s climate assertions, such as the claim that regional temperatures explain everything about the drought, are too simplistic.

He also expresses concern regarding Udall's use of the term “drought.” “To accept those Lake Mead statements as factual,” Wallace said, “anything short of an epic flooding event, must be an epic drought event.”

After all is said and done, the natural processes that Wallace has distilled down to a working forecast system, don’t, in any way, appear to fit the crisis narrative that the Udall and many climate “authorities” perpetuate.

You should ask if we really need more funding, bigger departments, and greater public anxiety to fix something that, at least, in the western U.S., appears to wholly be explained by natural cycles.

(Wallace’s forecasts, profiled at www.abeqas.com, provide a sobering perspective—perhaps an antidote to the ongoing “drought” hysteria.)
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The author of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy

Marita hosts a weekly radio program: America’s Voice for Energy - which expands on the content of her weekly column. 

Follow her @EnergyRabbit.
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Monday, May 30, 2016

Marc Alan Lee - KIA Ramadi, Iraq - 08/02/06


Click Here to RSVP this Event in Memory of the First Navy SEAL Killed in Iraq

Join us for an amazing event as we honor and remember the 10 year Anniversary of the ultimate sacrifice of Navy SEAL Marc Lee. We will be celebrating his life and the impact he continues have in the lives of millions of people around the world.

This event will sell out fast so don't wait to get your tickets. Your ticket gets you entry to everyone of the events planned. Purchase your tickets now.



I made my "Marc" and he definitely made his mark in this world. We invite you to honor and remember Marc and celebrate the mark this Heroes life is still having.

Are you living your life worthy of the sacrifices? How will you make your mark? Check out these Sponsorship opportunities for the Marc Lee Life and Legacy Event and help us honor this warrior who gave all of his tomorrows so you could have today.

Click here to contact America's Mighty Warriors
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Why Memorial Day Matters



If any day is more than just a day, then Memorial Day is it.

Sometimes remembering just one soldier reminds us why.

His name was Lawrence Gordon. He grew-up on a hard-scrabble farm in Canada. After Pearl Harbor, he decided to join the American Army. The Americans had better “kit.”

The Army sent Gordon into the center of the storm, as the allies battled from the beaches of Normandy breaking through the German defenses and then racing to encircle the enemy as it withdrew from France.

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.

Gordon was on the sharp edge of the bayonet. His cavalry unit, in thinly skinned armored vehicles, was dispatched way to the front or the flanks to find the enemy before the more heavily armored columns were called up to engage.

Sometimes “finding” the enemy started with a wild exchange of gunfire or the unexpected burst of mortar rounds. Patrols could go from tense silence to vicious firefights in seconds.

Gordon’s letters home to the family and his girl kept up their spirits with assurances he was safe and surrounded by dependable comrades and delivered a travelogue of his little unit’s march across France.

One day the letters stopped.

The family received a partially burned wallet. They knew it was his. The picture of his girl was singed but still recognizable. But other than a few personal effects, there was no explanation of what had happened to Lawrence Gordon—and no body. He was missing in action—and would remain so for almost 70 years.

A documentary, “Honoring a Commitment,” by a young filmmaker named Jeb Henry, tells the extraordinary story of how his loved ones found Private Gordon and brought him home.

The new film, recently screened at The Heritage Foundation in partnership with National Review, is part detective story and part love story, a journey of a family’s determined unrelenting effort to find and honor a brave man.

Remembering Private Gordon is important for all of us. Any remembrance of war that doesn’t include the telling of individual stories lessens the purpose of the day–and why it is important that we remember.

Sometimes the enormity of war overwhelms the truth that all great struggles are just the sum of individual stories. Each is more than just the story of one soldier’s service and sacrifice. Their service ripples across their families, friends and their communities. Memorial Day reminds us it is the noble sacrifice of many that makes us who we are.

Every soldier’s story of World War II is worth telling. Every story of every soldier in every war has value. Every generation of American soldiers is the greatest generation.

What is most extraordinary about the extraordinary story of Private Gordon and his extraordinary family is that it is singularly representative of what the fight for freedom and the eternal struggle for the preservation of liberty really means.


By James Carafano @JJCarafano - James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, E. W. Richardson fellow, and director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.
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Thanks to Our Vets


Grab That Morning Coffee and Lets Check Out What Branco Has To Say

Okay, I’m hyperventilating. Tony combines beautiful drawings with biting politically incorrect wit and laugh out loud humor.” – Larry Elder – TV and Radio personality at at Fox News and KRLM AM 870

Lighten things up! Political discussions and debates don’t always have to be deep and long-winded arguments with points and counter points. Sometimes we just need to take a step back from it all and have a good laugh. With so many discouraging things happening in our country lately, that’s the only thing we can do to keep from crying.

Conservative artist Antonio Branco is a master at encapsulating deep and complex issues in a simple comic.

He has written his first book in a series and takes on a wide array of issues, from food stamps to global warming to foreign policy, Antonio isn’t afraid to say what he thinks.

Presented in a coffee table book style, this is the perfect conversation starter with friends and family that pick it up and start glancing through it’s pages.

Who knows, that liberal aunt of yours just might come over to the right side because of this book!

This 80 pages, hardcover comic measures 8″ x 10".


Read more from A.F. (Tony) Branco at this link.

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Congressman Palazzo on Memorial Day


Click Here to Contact Congressman Palazzo

On this Memorial Day we honor our fallen soldiers. It’s a day dedicated to those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for our country and defending our freedoms. These are the men and women who didn’t return home safely to their loved ones, the soldiers we never were able to shake hands with or properly express our gratitude for their service, commitment, and sacrifice.

It weighs heavily on me that some of my colleagues in Congress don’t understand the danger of not supporting our military. As recently as last week, Members of Congress were voting against our defense bill only to promote a certain social agenda. It’s both disappointing and saddening to me that any American would use our men and women in uniform for political purposes.

It’s a matter of life or death. The decision to send our men and women in uniform into combat is never easy or taken lightly. They proudly and nobly answer the call when we need them and it’s our job to make sure they are adequately prepared to do their job and hopefully return home safely. Sadly, some will make the ultimate sacrifice.

As you gather with friends and family this Memorial Day take a moment to remember and honor the lives of those fallen soldiers and especially the loved ones they left behind. Also, never forget to thank those who have served and those who continue to put their lives on the line each day so we may live in the greatest country on earth.

Your comments are always welcome and you can contact Congressman Palazzo on facebook, twitter or by visiting his website.

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Sunday, May 29, 2016

Tainted love affairs or just plain tainted


Grab That Morning Coffee and Check Out Branco Online

Okay, I’m hyperventilating. Tony combines beautiful drawings with biting politically incorrect wit and laugh out loud humor.” – Larry Elder – TV and Radio personality at at Fox News and KRLM AM 870

Lighten things up! Political discussions and debates don’t always have to be deep and long-winded arguments with points and counter points. Sometimes we just need to take a step back from it all and have a good laugh. With so many discouraging things happening in our country lately, that’s the only thing we can do to keep from crying.

Conservative artist Antonio Branco is a master at encapsulating deep and complex issues in a simple comic.

He has written his first book in a series and takes on a wide array of issues, from food stamps to global warming to foreign policy, Antonio isn’t afraid to say what he thinks.

Presented in a coffee table book style, this is the perfect conversation starter with friends and family that pick it up and start glancing through it’s pages.

Who knows, that liberal aunt of yours just might come over to the right side because of this book!

This 80 pages, hardcover comic measures 8″ x 10".


Read more from A.F. (Tony) Branco at this link.

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We are compelled  to pay for this Free Speech Zone - - We would be pleased if you became one of our Free Speech Partners - - Just click the DONATE link below or contact the editor-in-chief [at] truthserumeditor@gmail.com




Up and down - mostly up the income ladder


Tax records from 1427 indicate that the wealthiest residents of 21st-century Florence
belong to families that were near the top of the socioeconomic ladder
in 15th-century Florence as well.

Two researchers at the Bank of Italy have documented something remarkable about Florence, the gorgeous Tuscan capital where the Medicis ruled and the Renaissance was born: The city's wealthiest residents today are descended from its wealthiest families six centuries ago.

As The Wall Street Journal reported this month, economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti looked at tax records compiled in Florence in 1427 alongside municipal tax data from 2011. "Because Italian surnames are highly regional and distinctive," the Journal explained, "they could compare the income of families with a certain surname today, to those with the same surname in 1427."

What they found was that the wealthiest names in 21st-century Florence belong to families that were near the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy in 15th-century Florence — those who were lawyers, or who belonged to the wool, silk, and shoemaker guilds.

Barone and Mocetti did not identify the actual families listed in the Florentine tax rolls, but they note that about 900 of the surnames are still used in Florence by some 52,000 taxpayers. Not all of them are descended from those who bore those names in 1427, of course.

And the new study appears to focus primarily on correlations among the very highest and lowest income-earners, not on the majority in between. Over the course of six centuries, the authors note, Florence has undergone "huge political, demographic, and economic upheavals," and they acknowledge that intergenerational mobility is higher in Italy today than was the case before the 20th century.

Yet even with all those caveats, the persistence of economic and social status across 600 years of Florentine history is eye-opening. And it helps explain what impelled myriads of Italians to uproot their lives and relocate to new homes — especially the 5 million people who immigrated to the United States from Italy between 1876 and 1930.

Critics have been lamenting the death of the American Dream for decades, but the United States remains what it has always been: a land of opportunity. In this country, neither poverty nor wealth is immutable, and no one's station in life is fixed at birth. Politicians whip up economic envy; activists stoke resentment at a system "rigged" against the working class. And yet economic mobility is alive and well in America, which is why so many foreigners still stream to our shores.

Ample evidence bears this out, much of it gathered in long-term studies that track the earnings of large blocs of Americans over many years.

In 2012, the Pew Charitable Trusts published one such study, appropriately titled "Pursuing the American Dream." Drawing on longitudinal data spanning four decades, Pew was able to show that the vast majority of Americans have higher family incomes than their parents did.

Among US citizens who were born into families at the lowest rung of the economic ladder — the bottom one-fifth of income-earners — a hefty 57 percent had moved into a higher quintile by adulthood. In fact, 4 percent had risen all the way to the highest quintile. Over the same period, 8 percent of those born into the highest income category had dropped all the way to the bottom.

For a different examination of economic mobility, analysts at the Treasury Department studied 84 million federal returns of taxpayers who had taxable income in both 1996 and 2005. They, too, found that "roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile moved up to a higher income group."

For two-thirds of all taxpayers, real incomes had increased. And — repudiating the frequent lament that upward mobility is vanishing from American life — the Treasury study concluded that the "degree of mobility among income groups [was] unchanged from the prior decade."

The 25th great-grandsons of medieval Florentine shoemakers and wool merchants may still be riding high, but things don't work that way in America. Here, riches-to-rags stories are not uncommon. When Bhashkar Mazumder, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, examined the earnings of thousands of men born between 1963 and 1968, he discovered that 17 percent of those whose fathers were in the top tenth of the income scale had dropped to the bottom third by the time they were in their late 20s or early 30s.

Movement between income groups over the course of a lifetime is the norm for most Americans. The rich often get richer, but plenty of them get poorer, too. Though the top 1 percent makes a popular target, it's actually a group no one stays in for very long. On the other hand, it's a group that 11 percent of Americans will reach at some point during their working lives.

Affluence in America is dynamic, and our economic system is biased toward success. But bias isn't a guarantee. Mobility — up and down — depends to a great degree on the choices that people make for themselves. Individuals who finish high school, marry before having children, don't engage in criminal activity, and work diligently have a very high likelihood of achieving success. Those who don't, don't.

Of course there are no guarantees, but the American economic system is biased 
toward success. Even those born at the lowest rung on the income ladder 
have a decent chance of moving up.

Of course, there are impediments to mobility that are beyond the control of any individual, and that are most likely to hurt those who start out in America's poorest precincts. Broken public schools, for example.

The normalization of single-parent households. Too-easy access to welfare benefits. Counterproductive mandates, like minimum-wage laws and stifling licensing rules. Would that our political demagogues and professional populists put as much effort into dismantling those barriers as they do into demonizing the rich and yapping about inequality.

Yappers notwithstanding, the American Dream is far from dead. This isn't Florence. No one is locked out of economic success today because of their ancestors' status long ago.

America remains the land of opportunity. Make the most of it.
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Up and down — but mostly up — the income ladder by Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe




Bill Clinton at his best


Get Your Daily Dose of Humor from Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Dan Youra is one of the outstanding conservative cartoonists in the trade today who follows in the footsteps of the great political cartoon masters, whose quotes inspire a new generation of followers.
"Outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." ~ Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.
"Too many of today's artists regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession. They try not to be too offensive. The hell with that. We need more stirrer-uppers." ~ Bill Mauldin.
Youra was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in Latin America. He served as an editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations in New York.

"As long as there are politicians who continue to try and fool the voters, there is no chance of ever running out of material to work with because they create it themselves and about themselves," says Dan Youra.
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Dan is the small business owner and operator of the Youra Studios located in the State of Washington. Visit the Youra Studios at Utoons.com

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Wayne Root: Bill Clinton is the Cosby of DC



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Saturday, May 28, 2016

Typical Liberal Anti-Trump Recruiting Tool


Grab That Morning Coffee and Check Out Branco Online

Okay, I’m hyperventilating. Tony combines beautiful drawings with biting politically incorrect wit and laugh out loud humor.” – Larry Elder – TV and Radio personality at at Fox News and KRLM AM 870

Lighten things up! Political discussions and debates don’t always have to be deep and long-winded arguments with points and counter points. Sometimes we just need to take a step back from it all and have a good laugh. With so many discouraging things happening in our country lately, that’s the only thing we can do to keep from crying.

Conservative artist Antonio Branco is a master at encapsulating deep and complex issues in a simple comic.

He has written his first book in a series and takes on a wide array of issues, from food stamps to global warming to foreign policy, Antonio isn’t afraid to say what he thinks.

Presented in a coffee table book style, this is the perfect conversation starter with friends and family that pick it up and start glancing through it’s pages.

Who knows, that liberal aunt of yours just might come over to the right side because of this book!

This 80 pages, hardcover comic measures 8″ x 10".


Read more from A.F. (Tony) Branco at this link.

_________________________________________

We are compelled  to pay for this Free Speech Zone - - We would be pleased if you became one of our Free Speech Partners - - Just click the DONATE link below or contact the editor-in-chief [at] truthserumeditor@gmail.com




The Day Free Speech Died

It happened again this week at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Another conservative speaker was harassed by liberal activists. In this case, Breitbart contributor Milo Yiannopoulos was not allowed to finish his presentation to a group of students.

He was bullied and threatened and his speech was literally shut down by a group of Black Lives Matter activists. In fact, one of the free speech haters ripped a microphone from the hands of the student interviewing Yiannopoulos.

Ironically, the protest leader was Edward Ward, a local church minister who claimed that the presentation was “hate speech” that needed to be halted. During the raucous protest, one of the activists threatened to punch the speaker if he did not stop talking.

While the event was ruined by these protesters, DePaul University campus security looked on and refused to intervene. Amazingly, Breitbart paid for the event security and is rightfully asking for their money back.

In response to the fiasco, the sponsoring organization, the DePaul University College Republicans, issued a statement. “Regrettably, militant protestors decided to hijack the event. Loud whistles, threats of violence and straight up suppression of speech. There was no discourse, no Q and A, just fascism.

Additionally, DePaul security’s response to the thuggery was utterly shameful. We spent thousands of dollars and countless hours to get the proper security and put this event on, but when security was actually needed, they did nothing. At a minimum, DePaul University administrators should apologize and hold those responsible for the fiasco responsible for their behavior.”

The scared security staff at DePaul are no different from the scared campus administrators across the country who refuse to criticize hateful liberal activists. For example, last November at the University of Missouri, liberal activists forced the President and Chancellor to resign over supposed inaction about questionable “racist” events on campus.

In February, at the University of California, Los Angeles, demonstrators disrupted a speech by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. They tried to storm the stage, pulled the fire alarm and did everything possible to prevent a conservative message from being presented to the students.

It is not just conservative speakers who are motivating these liberal protests. In recent weeks, students at Emory University in Atlanta and Scripps College in Claremont, California went ballistic when the name “Trump” was displayed on their campus.

In one case “Trump” was written on a sidewalk and steps and in the other case it was written on a student’s white board. In both incidents, campus police were called, but unlike the event this week at DePaul University, they responded and investigated.

To clarify, it is not a crime to write the name “Trump” on a white board, but it is a crime to disrupt an event, threaten violence and forcibly rip a microphone away from an interviewer.

Today, the liberal activists own the conversation on college campuses. They have the vast majority of professors and administrators on their side. Liberal celebrities and politicians are invited to give commencement speeches and are welcome on campus throughout the school year, while conservatives are treated like an enemy and completely shunned.

If they do happen to receive a rare invitation, they are besieged by hateful activists who are not interested in civil discourse and debate.

Colleges are supposed to be laboratories for ideas where debates are encouraged and a diverse set of viewpoints are welcome. Today, only liberalism is allowed and our students are not being educated, but indoctrinated.

The real losers are the parents who pay exorbitant tuition, and especially the students who are not allowed to investigate issues and explore different ideas. They are expected to follow the liberal orthodoxy without question.

With this type of background, it is no wonder that so many young people are ill equipped to succeed in the “real” world where contrary opinions are allowed and critical thinking is actually valued.

Universities are doing a very poor job preparing their students for post-college life. Too many of them are not only saddled with thousands of dollars in student debt, but also a bevy of unworkable liberal ideas that have never been challenged.
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From the files of Jeff Crouere on Ringside Politics at WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station in New Orleans

Jeff Crouere is a native of New Orleans, LA and he is the host of a Louisiana based program, “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 10:00 p.m. Sunday on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 till 11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore. 

For more information, visit Jeff's web site at www.ringsidepolitics.com or email him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.
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Are the Clintons’ Real Housing Crash Villains?


Click Here to Visit Larry Kudlow at Kudlow and Company

We are going to reveal the grand secret to getting rich by investing. It's a simple formula that has worked for Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn and all the greatest investment gurus over the years. Ready?

Buy low, sell high.

It turns out that Donald Trump has been very, very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success.

But now Hillary Clinton seems to think it's a crime. Campaigning in California last week she wailed that Trump “actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard working families in California and across America to lose their homes, all because he thought he could take advantage of it to make some money for himself.” She’s assailing Trump for being a good businessman - something she would know almost nothing about because she's never actually run a business, though she did miraculously turn $1,000 into $1 million in the cattle futures market many years ago.

Hillary’s new TV ads say that Trump predicted the real estate crash in 2006 (good call) and then bought real estate at low prices when the housing crash came in 2008 that few others foresaw. Many builders went out of business during the crash, but Trump read the market perfectly.

What is so hypocritical about the Clinton attacks is that it wasn’t Trump, but Hillary, her husband, and many of her biggest supporters who were the real culprits here.

Before Hillary is able to rewrite this history, let's look at the many ways the Clintons and cronies contributed to the Great Recession.

The seeds of the mortgage meltdown were planted during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Under Clinton’s HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.

These new HUD rules lowered down payments from the traditional 20% to 3% by 1995 and zero down payments by 2000. What’s more, in the Clinton push to issue home loans to lower income borrowers, Fannie and Freddie made a common practice to virtually end credit documentation, low credit scores were disregarded, and income and job history was also thrown aside. The phrase “subprime” became commonplace. What an understatement.

Next the Clinton administration's rules ordered the taxpayer-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand their quotas of risky loans from 30% of portfolio to 50% as part of a big push to expand home ownership. Fannie and Freddie were securitizing these home loans and offering 100 percent taxpayer guarantees of repayment. So now taxpayers were on the hook for these risky, low down payment loans.

Tragically, when prices fell, lower income folks who really could not afford these mortgages under normal credit standards, suffered massive foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. So many will never get credit again. It’s a perfect example of liberals using government allegedly to help the poor, but the ultimate consequences were disastrous for them.

Additionally, ultra-easy money from the Fed also played a key role. Rates were held too low for too long in 2002-2005, which created asset price bubbles in housing, commodities, gold, oil, and elsewhere. When the Fed finally tightened, prices collapsed. So did mortgage collateral (homes) and mortgage bonds that depended on the collateral. Many bond packages were written to please Fannie and Freddie, based on the fantastical idea that home prices would never fall. Fannie and Freddie, by the way, cost the taxpayers $187 billion.

Just to make this story worse, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama voted to filibuster a Republican effort to roll back Fannie and Freddie. But on top of all this, while Hillary was propping up Fannie and Freddie, she was taking contributions from their foundations. Here is how a Washington Times investigative report concluded:

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's political action committee and individuals linked to the companies donated $75,500 to Mrs. Clinton's senatorial campaign. And on top of that, the embattled Clinton Foundation received a $50,000 contribution from Freddie Mac, according to the Times.

To be clear, there was plenty of blame to go around among both political parties and the horde of housing lobbyists who helped set up this real estate house of cards. It’s a sordid story with plenty of blame all around. And the Fannie/Freddie story is still not solved. It now includes profit sweeping from shareholders to the government, thereby ending any chance to sell the mortgage agencies back to the private sector.

Meanwhile, Hillary’s attempt to blame Donald trump is utterly absurd. Buying low and selling high is not against the law. In fact, Mr. Trump’s investment acumen may serve America well in the not too distant future.
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When firms don’t invest in job-creation and higher wages, everyone suffers by Lawrence (Larry) Kudlow and Stephen Moore - an economist at the Heritage Foundation.
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Visit the Deport Liberals Saloon Today


Get Your Daily Dose of Humor from Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Dan Youra is one of the outstanding conservative cartoonists in the trade today who follows in the footsteps of the great political cartoon masters, whose quotes inspire a new generation of followers.
"Outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." ~ Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.
"Too many of today's artists regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession. They try not to be too offensive. The hell with that. We need more stirrer-uppers." ~ Bill Mauldin.
Youra was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in Latin America. He served as an editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations in New York.

"As long as there are politicians who continue to try and fool the voters, there is no chance of ever running out of material to work with because they create it themselves and about themselves," says Dan Youra.
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Dan is the small business owner and operator of the Youra Studios located in the State of Washington. Visit the Youra Studios at Utoons.com

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