Category: Government

Government: who rules us.

Aptos psychologist: Why do taxpayers fund a radio station — National Public Radio (NPR) — that fires a 10 year employee for a comment on FOX?

Time to cut off funding for NPR by the American taxpayers? Yes! Why was Juan Williams of NPR fired? Why did NPR wait 36 hours? The Muslim group CAIR instrumental in firing? Left wing billionaire Soros?

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NPR fires 10 yr employee for politically incorrect comment about Muslims

Little did I know that NPR is paid for by taxpayer dollars. Maybe now it is time to stop funding NPR? Why? I don’t need the government telling citizens what to think.

Great to see Muslim organizations speaking up about the firing of Juan Williams, who works for National Public Radio (NPR). Williams expressed that he can feel nervous about flying with persons dressed in Muslim clothes. Thirty-six hours later Williams was fired by NPR.

So who got to NPR? FOX thinks it was left wing billionaire Soros.

If Williams had really said something offensive he would have heard about it the next day. So how come 36 hours? And how come NPR thinks it so bad that Williams should discuss it with his psychiatrist?

Is Williams ‘loony’ for saying he is nervous when he sees persons in loose Muslim clothing? What say you? Below are comments from several Muslim sources.

The following report by Caroiline May appears in today’s Daily Caller at this link.
Muslims speak out against NPR’s political correctness
By Caroline May – The Daily Caller 4:09 PM 10/21/2010

“While a Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), was instrumental in getting National Public Radio (NPR) to fire Juan Williams, some Muslims are speaking out against succumbing to the censorship of political correctness.

“Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, took issue with those who wrap themselves in feel-good sensitivity, while denying the fact that the majority of terrorists are Muslim.

Indeed, the threat is real enough even for Fatah, a liberal Muslim, who looks at women in burkas with skepticism. “I am scared when I see women in burkas, how do I know what is behind that?” Fatah said, noting that many Muslims share his concerns.

“We are victims of these guys. A number of suicide bombers who have attacked have killed people [while] wearing the burka,” Fatah said. “This is the truth, we should be speaking the truth rather than what people expect us to say. “

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told The Daily Caller that though Williams could have been more tactful, his ouster is symptomatic of the problems Americans continue to face when discussing Islam.

“As much as the way he said it was poorly chosen, the era we find ourselves – of political correctness – we are not able to address what this fear is,” Jasser said. “Anybody that starts talking about this fear gets shut down.”

Fatah agreed, saying that he did not believe that anything Williams’ said was terrible enough to lose his job. “I think it is another expression of political correctness. I didn’t find anything that he said that he deserved to be fired,” he told TheDC.

According to Jasser, the fact that the vast majority of national security threats emanate from the Muslim world makes Williams’ fear reasonable. Without open discussion, however, those concerns will never be conquered.

“I think that ultimately what we find when many thought leaders try to talk about it, [they say] ‘well there are some common elements to those who threaten national security,’ and the only one so far they have been able to nail down is that they come from some form of Islamic theology,’” Jasser said. “And because we have not become skilled in discussing theo-political threats, you’re having a lot of these little skirmishes happening.”

Jasser stressed that he was not defending Williams’ comments, but that the need for discourse trumped compromising to hypersensitivity.

“I think it is very sad that Juan got fired. But I am not surprised because they have probably been looking for an opportunity to fire him because of all his exposure on Fox, while he is also working at NPR,” he said.

“So I think they probably exploited the opportunity. I personally don’t think what he said rises to the level of being fired,” Jasser concluded, noting that an apology would suffice.

Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, echoed Fatah and Jasser. Schwartz told TheDC that he and his organization opposed NPR’s reaction to Williams’ comments.

“Mr. Williams is basically an opinion journalist and he offered an opinion based on an undeniable reality: American Muslims have so far failed in our duty to prevent negative perceptions among our non-Muslim neighbors, and many, unfortunately, have taken the existing concerns among non-Muslims as a challenge to assert Muslim identity more aggressively, through forms of dress as well as speech that are often extravagant and excessive,” Schwartz wrote in an e-mail to TheDC.

“Mr. Williams spoke to this reality in an understated, candid way. He did not express hatred or incite violence against Muslims. He should not have been dismissed.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/21/muslims-speak-out-against-nprs-political-correctness/print/#ixzz1328LHWKL

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Aptos psychologist: In America we take exercise of religion for granted and yawn… see what happens in Egypt when a Christian mom has twins…

Egyptian Court Grants Custody of Sons to Coptic Mother
But twins will keep father’s Muslim identity in their records, creating future problems.
LOS ANGELES, July 1 (CDN) — A Christian mother in Egypt has won custody of her twin sons from her estranged husband, who had converted to Islam and claimed them according to Islamic legal precepts.

The now 15-year-old boys, however, will still be considered Muslims despite their desire to remain Christian.

On June 15 the Egyptian Court of Cassation ruled that Kamilia Gaballah could retain custody of her sons Andrew and Mario, even though the father converted to Islam and the boys’ religion also changed as a result.

If the court does not allow them to return to Christianity, the family will open up another court case, said their older brother George Medhat Ramses.

“Up until now the court said they would have the right to choose their faith,” said Ramses, 21. “But if they don’t, we will start another trial. This is the only way.”

The decision overturns a September 2008 ruling by the Alexandria Appeals court that had granted custody of the twins to their father, Medhat Ramses Labib, due solely to his conversion. During this time Gaballah lived in constant fear police would take away her sons.

The ruling also affirmed Article 20 of Egypt’s Personal Status Law, which states children should remain with their mother regardless of religion until age 15, over that of the Hanefi School of Islamic jurisprudence, which says that a child must be granted custody to the Muslim father in an inter-religious marriage once he or she becomes 7.

But the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) advocacy group noted that while the court ruled a woman cannot be denied custody of her children solely on her Christian faith if her husband converts, children can still be removed from her home if there are “fears for the child’s faith.” An ex-husband or his family could easily exploit this clause, the human rights group said.

According to Gaballah, the trial was not a matter of custody rights but was religious in nature from beginning to end.

“My opponent is not only my divorcee; my opponent is everyone who hears this story and wants Andrew and Mario to become Muslims,” said Gaballah, according to Copts United advocacy group.

Mario and Andrew turned 15 in June. On their 16th birthday, they must apply for Egyptian identity cards, which factor heavily into Egyptian daily life. Barring another court battle, their religion will still be registered as Muslim.

Because of this predicament, the court verdict that granted the twins’ mother full custody only solved half of their problems, said Naguib Gobraiel, a lawyer familiar with the case.

As registered Muslims, they could face harassment while attempting to practice their Christian faith. And while they could marry Christian women, their future children would be registered as Muslims, following the Islamic dictum that children take the religion of their father.

“The court didn’t give them the right of freedom to choose their religion,” Gobraiel told Compass. “We must ask ourselves how the children are permitted to stay with their mother but must follow the religion of another man.”

Until then the family is worried that the court will not allow Andrew and Mario to return to their Christian faith and are taking every precaution. Last Wednesday (June 24) they appealed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to have their birth certificates state their Christian faith. They had been recently changed to retroactively show the boys’ birth status as Islam.

A Longstanding Battle
The controversy began in 2007 when a court ordered the twins to take Islamic education within the Egyptian school system due to the conversion of their estranged father from Christianity to Islam.

The twins refused to take their Islamic religion exam required to pass the next grade. “I am Christian,” each boy wrote on a make-up test in July. They turned in the exam with all of the answers left blank.

Their father converted to Islam and remarried in 2002. He changed the religion of his sons to Islam in 2006 and applied for custody even though he had not lived with the family. According to sharia (Islamic law) custody of minor children and influence over their religious status belongs to the Muslim parent.

The case reflects the tension in Egypt between civil and religious law. While Article 47 of Egypt’s civil law gives citizens the right to choose their religion, Article II of the Egyptian constitution enshrines sharia as the source of Egyptian law. The same tension has inhibited recent attempts by other converts to change their official religious status from Islam to Christianity.

Rights groups said the court order is good news for Gaballah and the twins, but it does nothing to address discriminatory policies of Egyptian law that attach a child’s faith to a parent who chooses to convert to Islam.

“It is regrettable, however, that the highest court of the country chose to treat the symptoms and ignore the root causes of the problem – changing the religious affiliation of Christian children whose parents convert to Islam without the slightest regard for their will or that of their Christian mothers,” said Hossam Baghat, director of the EIPR, in a statement.

Gaballah has fought with her ex-husband over alimony support and custody of sons Andrew and Mario in 40 different cases since he left her and converted to Islam so that he could remarry in 1999.

END

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Aptos, CA psychologist: Now karma – for every action there is an equal reaction – explains the Tea Party movement? What say you?

As a psychologist I do not get it. A recent WSJ article says karma is responsible for the Tea Party movement

So what is karma to you? Fate? What goes around comes around? Some exotic eastern philosophy, either Hindu or Buddhist? Do those Tea Party persons look like believers in eastern philosophy? Doubtful. But maybe karma is at work even though the Tea Party persons don’t realize it?

Why not keep it simple: that the Tea Party movement is in reaction to the last 18 months of Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrat policies.

Have you heard of first impressions and last impressions? You meet someone for the first time and form some strong impressions. Same thing for last impressions. Here I have copied the last paragraph to the beginning. So you can see the last impression this author wants to make.

“The rank-and-file tea partiers think that liberals turned America upside down in the 1960s and 1970s, and they want to reverse many of those changes. They are patriotic and religious, and they want to see those values woven into their children’s education. Above all, they want to live in a country in which hard work and personal responsibility pay off and laziness, cheating and irresponsibility bring people to ruin. Give them liberty, sure, but more than that: Give them karma….”


starting at the beginning of the article in the Wall Street Journal 10-15-2010:

“What do the tea partiers really want? The title of a recent book by two of the movement’s leaders offers an answer: “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.” The authors, Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, write that “We just want to be free. Free to lead our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe on the same freedom of others.”

“This claim should cause liberals to do a double-take. Isn’t it straight out of John Stuart Mill, the patron saint of liberalism? Last year my colleagues and I placed a nearly identical statement on our research site, YourMorals.org: “Everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don’t infringe upon the equal freedom of others.” Responses from 3,600 Americans showed that self-described libertarians agreed with the statement most strongly, but liberals were right behind them. Social conservatives, who, according to national polls, make up the bulk of the tea party, were more tepid in their endorsement.

Because a generalized love of liberty doesn’t distinguish tea partiers from other Americans, liberals have been free to speculate on the “real” motives behind the movement. Explanations so far have spanned a rather narrow range, from racism (they’re all white!) to greed (they just don’t want to pay taxes!) to gullibility (Glenn Beck has hypnotized them!). Such explanations allow liberals to disregard the moral claims of tea partiers. But the passion of the tea-party movement is, in fact, a moral passion. It can be summarized in one word: not liberty, but karma.

The notion of karma comes with lots of new-age baggage, but it is an old and very conservative idea. It is the Sanskrit word for “deed” or “action,” and the law of karma says that for every action, there is an equal and morally commensurate reaction. Kindness, honesty and hard work will (eventually) bring good fortune; cruelty, deceit and laziness will (eventually) bring suffering. No divine intervention is required; it’s just a law of the universe, like gravity.

Karma is not an exclusively Hindu idea. It combines the universal human desire that moral accounts should be balanced with a belief that, somehow or other, they will be balanced. In 1932, the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget found that by the age of 6, children begin to believe that bad things that happen to them are punishments for bad things they have done.

To understand the anger of the tea-party movement, just imagine how you would feel if you learned that government physicists were building a particle accelerator that might, as a side effect of its experiments, nullify the law of gravity. Everything around us would float away, and the Earth itself would break apart. Now, instead of that scenario, suppose you learned that politicians were devising policies that might, as a side effect of their enactment, nullify the law of karma. Bad deeds would no longer lead to bad outcomes, and the fragile moral order of our nation would break apart. For tea partiers, this scenario is not science fiction. It is the last 80 years of American history.

In the tea partiers’ scheme of things, the federal government got into the business of protecting the American people—from market fluctuations as well as from their own bad decisions—under Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the Great Depression, most Americans recognized that capitalism required safety nets here and there. But Lyndon Johnson’s effort to build the Great Society, and particularly welfare programs that reduced the incentives for work and marriage among the poor, went much further.

Liberals in the 1960s and 1970s seemed intent on protecting people from the punitive side of karma. Premarital sex was separated from its consequences (by birth control, abortion and more permissive norms); bearing children out of wedlock was made affordable (by passing costs on to taxpayers); even violent crime was partially shielded from punishment (by liberal reforms that aimed to protect defendants and limit the powers of the police).

Now jump ahead to today’s ongoing financial and economic crisis. Again, those guilty of corruption and irresponsibility have escaped the consequences of their wrongdoing, rescued first by President Bush and then by President Obama. Bailouts and bonuses sent unimaginable sums of the taxpayers’ money to the very people who brought calamity upon the rest of us. Where is punishment for the wicked?

As the tea partiers see it, the positive side of karma has been weakened, too. The Protestant work ethic (karma’s Christian cousin) holds that hard work is a duty and will bring commensurate rewards. Yet here, too, liberals have long been uncomfortable with karma, because even when you create equal opportunity, differences in talent and effort result in unequal outcomes. These inequalities must then be reduced by progressive taxation, affirmative action and other heavy-handed government intervention. Such social engineering violates our liberty, but most of us accept limitations on our liberty when we agree with the goals and motives behind the rules, such as during air travel. For the tea partiers, federal activism has become a moral insult. They believe that, over time, the government has made a concerted effort to subvert the law of karma.

Listen, for example, to Rick Santelli’s “rant heard ’round the world” on CNBC last year and its most famous lines: “The government is promoting bad behavior,” and “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbors’ mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” It’s a rant about karma, not liberty.

Or look at the political issue that most enraged the early tea partiers. Messrs. Armey and Kibbe state categorically that it was not Mr. Obama’s stimulus bill that turned millions into activists; it was Mr. Bush’s bank bailout. “Many of us knew instinctually that the bailout was wrong,” they write. “We understood that in order for capitalism to work we need to be able to not only keep the potential gains from the risks we take but also accept the losses that may come.” This is capitalist karma in a nutshell.

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A rally organized by radio and TV commentator Glenn Beck in August.

One of the biggest disagreements between the political left and right is their conflicting notions of fairness. Across many surveys and experiments, we find that liberals think about fairness in terms of equality, whereas conservatives think of it in terms of karma. In our survey for YourMorals.org, we asked Americans how much they agreed with a variety of statements about fairness and liberty, including this one: “Ideally, everyone in society would end up with roughly the same amount of money.” Liberals were evenly divided on it, but conservatives and libertarians firmly rejected it.

On more karmic notions of fairness, however, conservatives and libertarians begin to split apart. Here’s a statement about the positive side of karma: “Employees who work the hardest should be paid the most.” Everyone agrees, but conservatives agree more enthusiastically than liberals and libertarians, whose responses were identical.

And here’s a statement about the negative side of karma: “Whenever possible, a criminal should be made to suffer in the same way that his victim suffered.” Liberals reject this harsh notion, and libertarians mildly reject it. But conservatives are slightly positive about it.

The tea party is often said to be a mixture of conservative and libertarian ideals. But in a study of 152,000 people who filled out surveys at YourMorals.org, led by my colleague Ravi Iyer of the University of Southern California, we found that libertarians are morally a bit more similar to liberals than to conservatives.

Libertarians are closer to conservatives on two of the five main psychological “foundations” of morality that we study—concerns about care and fairness (as described above). But on the other three psychological foundations—group loyalty, respect for authority and spiritual sanctity—libertarians are indistinguishable from liberals and far apart from conservatives. We call these the three “binding” foundations because they are the psychological systems used by groups—including religious groups, the military and even college fraternities—to bind people together into tight communities of trust, cooperation and shared identity. When you think about morality as a way of binding individuals together, it’s no wonder that libertarians (who prize individual liberty above all else) part company with conservatives.

To see this divergence in action, ask yourself how much somebody would have to pay you (in secret) to get you to do things that violate one of the three group-oriented moral foundations—that is, those based on loyalty, authority and sanctity. We asked people, for example, to name their price to “Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe to be true) while calling in, anonymously, to a talk-radio show in a foreign nation.”

As shown in the graph, conservatives were far more horrified than the other groups by this act of petty treason. The same goes for this minor act of disrespect toward authority: “Slap your father in the face (with his permission) as part of a comedy skit,” and for this harmless desecration of the body: “Get a blood transfusion of 1 pint of disease-free, compatible blood from a convicted child molester.” (Sanctity refers to the belief that things have invisible spiritual essences—the body is a temple, the flag is far more than a piece of cloth, etc.)

To see the full spectrum of tea party morality in a single case, consider (or better still, Google) a transcript on Glenn Beck’s website titled “Best caller ever?,” which relates one man’s moment of enlightenment. The exchange, which aired live in late September, starts with karmic outrage. A father in Indiana, proud of his daughter’s work ethic and high grades, learned that she would have to retake a social studies test because most of the students—who, he says, run around after school instead of studying—had failed it. The teacher confirmed that yes, the whole class would have to take the test several more times because “we have to wait for the other children to catch up.” The father asked if his daughter could work on new material while the other kids retook the test. The teacher said no, it would “make the other children in the class feel not as equal.” That was the last straw. At that moment, the father says, he rejected “the system” and decided to home-school his daughter.

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Photo By Tom Williams/Roll Call via Getty Images)
A tea partier at the Taxpayer March on Sept. 12.

What makes this call so revealing is the caller’s diagnosis of how America became the land that karma forgot: “It’s time for America to get right, and it all starts in the home. It comes from yes, sir, no, ma’am, thank you, get on your knees and pray to God.” He continues by telling Mr. Beck how, when his daughter’s friends sleep over at his house, he asks them to help with chores. When their parents object, he tells them: “Well, they wanted a meal. See, we’ve all got to row our boat. We’ve all got to be in the boat. We’ve all got to row as one. And if you are not going to row, get the hell out of the way or stop getting in mine.” It’s the perfect fusion of karmic thinking and conservative binding.

The tea-party movement is a blend of libertarians and conservatives, but it is far from an equal blend, and it’s not clear how long it can stay blended. The movement is partially funded and trained by libertarian and pro-business groups—such as FreedomWorks, the organization run by Messrs. Armey and Kibbe—whose main concern is increasing economic liberty. They may indeed “just want to be free,” particularly from regulation and taxes, but the social conservatives who make up the great bulk of the movement have much broader aims.

The rank-and-file tea partiers think that liberals turned America upside down in the 1960s and 1970s, and they want to reverse many of those changes. They are patriotic and religious, and they want to see those values woven into their children’s education. Above all, they want to live in a country in which hard work and personal responsibility pay off and laziness, cheating and irresponsibility bring people to ruin. Give them liberty, sure, but more than that: Give them karma.

—Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of “The Happiness Hypothesis” and “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion,” which will be published late next year.

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Aptos, CA Psychologist. The Tea Party movement is a response to President Obama’s goal to fundamentally change America?

Cameron Jackson DrCameronJackson@gmail.com

Remember the State of the Union message?  President Obama used the ocassion to publicly rebulk the Supreme Court as they sat there with no way to respond back.   The President criticised the Court for  their recent decison that corporatons have First Amendment free speech rights.

The following article about the Tea Party movement is from the Wall Street Journal. Continue reading “Aptos, CA Psychologist. The Tea Party movement is a response to President Obama’s goal to fundamentally change America?”

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Give the needy a fishing pole & not a fish. Example of a woman with 5 children, 4 fathers who collects 39,000 English pounds & has never worked. How change the welfare “mess”?

Give the needy a fishing pole & not a fish.

fishing
Give the needy a fishing pole not a fish.

In California there are women who repeatedly have child after child while addicted to drugs. The children are messed up from the start. The money from the state keeps flowing.

What say you how to change the welfare system for the better?

Here’s a sad example of what socialism brings from merry England. Not a merry tale. This is about a young woman with 5 children, 4 different fathers and the free stuff she collects without ever working…

Adventures in welfare; the young and the shameless
Phil Boehmke

Margaret Thatcher said that ‘the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other’s people’s money.’ Runaway social welfare and entitlement programs designed by liberal politicians as means of creating a permanent voter base have brought the nations of the west to the brink of bankruptcy. Most of us have had to tighten our belts, work harder and make due with less, but even in these difficult times there are a lucky few who seem to thrive.

The UK Daily Mail brings us the amazing tale of Kelly Marshall, a 32 year old single mother of five children (by four different fathers) and my nominee for the coveted title of ‘Miss Welfare State.’ Despite the fact that Ms. Marshall has never worked for a living she collects benefits and credits which provide her with the equivalent of a £39,000 salary.

Miss Marshall has no plans to start working. She once went to a job centre, but quickly realized she would be financially much better off if she didn’t work.

‘What’s the point? My Mum worked all her life and she paid taxes so I feel I am getting what I deserve,’ she said. ‘Some people might think I am a scrounger, but I don’t think me or my children should miss out on nice things just because I have never worked.’

Marshall’s children have the best gaming systems (Xbox 360, Wi, Play Station3) and each of the four bedrooms in their detached housing unit is equipped with a flat screen TV. At present the children ‘only have three laptops between them’ and since ‘they don’t like sharing,’ Super Mum will have to buy another laptop. Of course like any good parent Ms. Marshall understands the educational benefits of foreign travel.

‘I always take the kids abroad,’ she said. ‘We have been to Tenerife and Cyprus, and this year we have been to Magaluf twice.’

‘Each holiday costs about £2,000, but it’s good to get away, and the kids and I deserve it.’

Last year the proud Ms. Marshall embarked upon a self-improvement program. She saved for months and used her credit card to come up with £4,500 for breast augmentation.

She explained: ‘I have wanted a boob job since I was a teen. But it wasn’t possible until I had the five children that I could afford it-with all the extra benefits I get. Now I hope to get liposuction, a tummy tuck and regular Botox.’

[…]

‘I know most people will think it is wrong I am spending taxpayers’ money on my looks. But I deserve it because I am a good mum. Having children has taken a toll on my body. All mums should be able to have cosmetic surgery.’

Showing absolutely no sense of shame Ms. Marshall defiantly said ‘I don’t care that it is at the taxpayers’ cost’ adding that ‘it’s my decision what the money is spent on.’ It might be comical if Kelly Marshall were unique, however she is merely one of the growing number of entitlement junkies who have been spawned in the murky waters of the modern welfare state. The children of redistribution are in for a rude awakening, because as Lady Thatcher observed ‘eventually you run out of other people’s money’ and that day is on the horizon.

paboehmke@yahoo.com

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Harry Reid, thanks to stimulus handouts to green companies, gets fundraiser (2 1/2 thousand $ a seat) by Solar Energy Industries Association. Pay back time!

Green companies that got stimulus money from Harry Reid line up to help his campaign …

Why They Go Green
A green breakfast to thank Harry Reid..

In a free energy market, companies succeed by producing cheaper, better products than competitors. In a “green” energy market, companies succeed by holding Beltway fundraisers. For more on the distinction, ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who will benefit today from a tony Washington money-raising breakfast hosted by top “renewable energy” industry groups.

Democrats may be losing altitude with most of struggling corporate America, but it’s all about the love with the green sector, floating above economic realities thanks to stimulus handouts and other perks funneled them by the majority. Mr. Reid has been a strong advocate of this transfer, and the industry is showing it knows how to give back.

That, and watching its back. The companies that belong to the American Wind Energy Association or the Solar Energy Industries Association You(among the fundraiser’s hosts) produce costly products that can’t compete against traditional fuels. Their business plans are written around Washington subsidies and mandates. They’re obviously worried a Republican majority might pare back the grants, loans and tax credits, in the name of cutting government waste. One can hope.

As the event invitation noted—in requesting $2,500 to attend—Mr. Reid’s Nevada Senate competition against Republican Sharron Angle is an “incredibly important race.” Indeed it is if your balance sheets depend on the Democrats’ special way with taxpayer money.

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IS Sam Farr another “elite” like Obama? Time to reject and replace ObamaCare? Time to vote “elites” out of office?

Is Sam Farr, Congressman for the 17th District, another political “elite” like Obama – who knows best what’s good for you? Is Sam Farr in or out of sync with your American values?

Actions speak louder than words at times. Let’s look at Sam Farr’s actions over his lifetime. Is Sam Farr another “elite”?

Look at Sam’s background, education, job history and experience.

Where did Sam Farr grow up and where does he live? Sam Farr grew up and lives in Carmel, California. Carmel is the most expensive, “old money” area in the 17th district. Yes, there are two Safeways in the Carmel Valley area. Who does Sam Farr rub shoulders with living in Carmel, CA? Does he hear the “pop, pop, pop” sounds of gun shots that are frequently heard in Salinas, CA? What has Sam Farr done to reduce gang violence?

How was Sam Farr educated? No public school experience for Sam Farr. No rubbing shoulders with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. No military experience where one must deal with all sorts of people. Sam Farr attended only private universities, i.e., Santa Clara University and Monterey Institute of International Studies.

3) How broad is Sam Farr’s job history? Sam Farr has only worked for the government. After 2 years in the Peace Corp, Sam Farr went to work in Sacramento, CA. Connected through his father, Sam Farr worked 10 years doing budget work for the California Assembly. For the last 17 years Sam Farr has represented the Santa Cruz – Monterey area for the 17th District.

If you only know government then the government is the best and only solution for all problems. And that appears to be Sam Far’s modus operandi.

4) What are Sam Farr’s accomplishments in 17 years as a Congressman? Per Wikipedia, thanks to Sam Farr there now is an ocean advisor in the President’s cabinet. That accomplishment happened in 2008.

Yes, taking care of our oceans and Mother Earth is important. Is it best done by more government bureaucracy? Sam Farr thinks so.

Oct. 8, 2009 Peggy Noonon writes Revolt of the Accountants, a perceptive article about elites and why Americans increasingly dislike – or hate — elites. Read below:

written by Peggy Noonon in Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 2010
“If you write a column, you get a lot of email. Sometimes, especially in a political season, it’s possible to discern from it certain emerging themes—the comeback of old convictions, for instance, or the rise of new concerns. Let me tell you something I’m hearing, in different ways and different words. The coming rebellion in the voting booth is not only about the economic impact of spending, debt and deficits on America’s future. It’s also to some degree about the feared impact of all those things on the character of the American people. There is a real fear that government, with all its layers, its growth, its size, its imperviousness, is changing, or has changed, who we are. And that if we lose who we are, as Americans, we lose everything.

This is part of what’s driving the sense of political urgency this year, especially within precincts of the tea party.

The most vivid illustration of the fear comes, actually, from another country, Greece, and is brilliantly limned by Michael Lewis in October’s Vanity Fair. In “Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds,” he outlines Greece’s economic catastrophe. It is a bankrupt nation, its debt, or rather the amount of debt that has so far been unearthed and revealed, coming to “more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek.” Over decades the Greeks turned their government “into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums” and gave “as many citizens as possible a whack at it.” The average Greek government job pays almost three times as much as the average private-sector job. The retirement age for “arduous” jobs, including hairdressers, radio announcers and musicians, is 55 for men and 50 for women. After that, a generous pension. The tax system has disintegrated. It is a welfare state with a cash economy.

Much of this is well known, though it is beautifully stated. But all of it, Mr. Lewis asserts, has badly damaged the Greek character. “It is simply assumed . . . that anyone who is working for the government is meant to be bribed. . . . Government officials are assumed to steal.” Tax fraud is rampant. Everyone cheats. “It’s become a cultural trait,” a tax collector tells him.

Mr. Lewis: “The Greek state was not just corrupt but also corrupting. Once you saw how it worked you could understand a phenomenon which otherwise made no sense at all: the difficulty Greek people have saying a kind word about one another. . . . Everyone is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible.”

Thus can great nations, great cultures, disintegrate, break into little pieces that no longer cohere into a whole.

And what I get from my mail is a kind of soft echo of this. America is not Greece and knows it’s not Greece, but there is a growing sense—I should say fear—that the weighty, mighty, imposing American government itself, whether it meant to or not, has for years been contributing to American behaviors that are neither culturally helpful nor, as we now all say, sustainable: a growing sense of entitlement, of dependency, of resentment and distrust, and an increasing suspicion that everyone else is gaming the system. “I got mine, you get yours.”

People, as we know, are imperfect. Governments, composed top to bottom of imperfect people wielding power, are very imperfect. There are of course a million examples, big and small, of how governments can damage the actual nature and character of the citizenry, and only because there was just a commercial on TV telling me to gamble will I mention the famous case of the state lotteries. Give government the right to reap revenues from the public desire to gamble, and you’ll soon have government doing something your humble local bookie never had the temerity to try: convince the people that gambling is a moral good. They promote it insistently on local television, undermining any remaining reserve among our citizens not to play the numbers, not to develop what can become an addiction. Our state government daily promotes what for 2,000 years was understood to be a vice. No bookie ever committed a crime that big.

Government not only can change the national character, it can bizarrely channel national energy. And this is another theme in my mailbox, the rebellion against what government increasingly forces us to become: a nation of accountants.

No matter what level of life in which you operate, you are likely overwhelmed by forms, by a blizzard of regulations, rules, new laws. This is not new, it’s just always getting worse. Priests are forced to be accountants now, and army officers, and dentists. The single most onerous part of ObamaCare is the tax change whereby spending $600 on goods or services will require a 1099 form. Economists will tell you of the financial cost of this, but I would argue that Paperwork Nation is utterly at odds with the American character.

Because Americans weren’t born to be accountants. It’s not in our DNA! We’re supposed to be building the Empire State Building. We were meant, to be romantic about it, and why not, to be a pioneer people, to push on, invent electricity, shoot the bear, bootleg the beer, write the novel, create, reform and modernize great industries. We weren’t meant to be neat and tidy record keepers. We weren’t meant to wear green eyeshades. We looked better in a coonskin cap!

There is I think a powerful rebellion against all this. It isn’t a new rebellion—it was part of Goldwaterism, and Reaganism—but it’s rising again.

For those who wonder why so many people have come to hate, or let me change it to profoundly dislike, “the elites,” especially the political elite, here is one reason: It is because they have armies of accountants to do this work for them. Those in power institute the regulations and rules, and then hire people to protect them from the burdens and demands of their legislation. There is no congressman passing tax law who doesn’t have staffers in his office taking care of his own financial life and who will not, when he moves down the street into the lobbying firm, have an army of accountants to protect him there.

Washington is now to some degree the focus of the same sort of profound resentment that Hollywood liberals inspired when they really mattered, or seemed really powerful. For decades they made films that were not helpful to our culture or society, that were full of violence and sick imagery. But they often brought their own children up more or less protected from the effects of the culture they created. Private schools, nannies, therapists, tutors. They bought their way out of the cultural mayhem to which they’d contributed. Their children were fine. Yours were on their own.

This is part of why people dislike “the elites” and why “the elites,” especially in Washington, must in turn be responsive, come awake, start to notice. People don’t like it when they fear you are subtly, day by day, year by year, changing the personality and character of their nation. They think, “You are ruining our country and insulating yourselves from the ruin. We hate you.” And this is understandable, yes?

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Aptos psychologist: Time to say NO to Sam Farr, Obama-Care and the Recovery Act.

DrCameronJackson@gmail.com

People like Sam Farr, Rep for the 17th District — per how they vote — believe that government can do a better job making decisions for you than you can. Given the last 18 months of government by Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Sam Farr –now is the time to say, “Stop!”

That view — that people should accept what Representatives tell them — is what I took away from listening to Sam Farr during the Health Care debates.

Now Sam Farr says that the Recovery Act has helped. The following is from a recent meeting in San Juan Bautista. Many people said No! to Sam Farr. For more, read the following:

“Calling San Benito County and the tri-county area one of the country’s best areas for agricultural business, Congressman Sam Farr told a capacity crowd of more than 200 people inside the San Juan Bautista Community Center Hall on Tuesday night the county needs to focus on what it does best – produce agriculture.

“We are the Silicon Valley of agriculture,” Farr said.

In the third of four town hall meetings throughout the Central Coast area – the only one in San Benito County – Farr spoke and answered questions for nearly two-and-a-half hours as attendees applauded and booed.

Farr, a Democrat from Carmel, is up for reelection in November and has been the District 17 representative for 17 years. District 17 includes Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties. He is being challenged by Republican Jeff Taylor.

In Farr’s opening 30-minute speech he mentioned growing up in the area and traveling to San Benito County to eat dinner and look at the scenery.

“I say this all the time – there is no place in the world, no place in the United States where you have as much diversity in the land,” Farr said. “We sell scenery.”

A part of that scenery is the Pinnacles National Monument, which Farr hopes to change to a national park soon.

“This missing book on geology is Pinnacles National Monument,” he said. “The name change won’t change anything but give it more recognition.”

A large portion of his speech focused on the success of the county and area – mostly the agriculture and schooling. He said there should be a focus on bringing higher-end agricultural jobs to the county.

“The ag that is here is the brain trust for the rest of the agriculture throughout the country,” Farr said. “You always have to sell it and I’m going to be your national campaign. This is an area that we all know and cherish.”

Farr also mentioned that the area has more affordable school institutions than areas such as New York and Boston.

“It doesn’t matter what type of grades you get if you can’t afford the school,” Farr said.

Contention came from the crowd when Farr mentioned the recovery act and the belief that officials needed to “infuse massive amounts of capital” back into the country. Many crowd members shook their heads. Some simply said no.

Questions focused on the health care bill, employment, the economy and Clear Creek Management Area. The group was just about divided in half from those who supported Farr and those who opposed him. Waiting outside were members of the Santa Cruz Tea Party and the Republican Party.

The groups were passing out the literature of Meg Whitman and held signs that said “vote out socialist Sam Farr” and “more freedom and less government.”

See the full story in the Pinnacle on Friday.

Connor Ramey
Connor Ramey is a staff writer for the Free Lance. You can reach him by email or at (831) 637-5566.

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Aptos psychologist: Sign the Obama-Care Pledge chaired by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint? Yes!


Why sign a Pledge to repeal Obama-Care?
1) Two thirds of Americans oppose Obama-Care.
2) All small businesses (under 500 employees) including 1 1/2 million non-profits must give a 1099 to every person/entity they do $600 business with. Another onerous expense. More centralized power.
3) Fast food corporations such as McDonald’s — whose employees have mini health plans — will not be able to afford health care for their workers. This year they got a government reprieve. When not an election year, likely no reprieve. Soon this will force part time workers on to the government plan or else pay a fine for no health care.
4) Specialty health care plans will go out of business as Obama-Care is a “one size fits all”.
5) Health care controlled by the federal government means rationing for all according to the rules set by the health care “czar”.
6) There are excellent ways to improve health care and do so in the private sector: allow everyone to cross state lines and shop for what fits their individual needs; allow businesses to group together and shop; set up competitive exchanges that operate akin to travel exchanges. For more info Google Repeal Obama care or see below:

After months of backroom deals, political payoffs, and strong-arm tactics, President Obama and the Democrats forced an unpopular health care takeover through the United States Congress. Americans lost this battle with their elected leaders in Washington but the war is not over! If we’re willing to the fight to save freedom, we can settle the score in November by electing true conservatives who will repeal this unconstitutional and dangerous bill. The simple truth is the bill cannot be fixed. It must be repealed.

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The Senate Conservatives Fund, chaired by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, has launched this national “Repeal ObamaCare Pledge” to rally support for conservative candidates who vow to repeal President Obama’s health care takeover. America is teetering toward tyranny and we must work together to reverse the radical agenda in Washington.

Electing just any Republican is not the answer. We’ve seen what happens when we send Republicans to Washington who don’t truly believe in the principles of freedom. They abandon their principles, lose the trust of the American people, and leave us with Democrats controlling Congress and the White House.

Instead, we must support true conservatives who love the Constitution and who will fight for limited government, a strong national defense, and traditional family values. And we must only help those candidates who vow to repeal ObamaCare.

Tell your family and friends about the Repeal ObamaCare Pledge so they can join our national campaign. The more people who sign the pledge at RepealItPledge.com, the bigger the impact.
Share the Repeal ObamaCare Pledge with your friends using our Facebook page. Facebook is a powerful way to quickly spread the word so we can repeal Presiden Obama’s health care takeover.
Share the Repeal ObamaCare Pledge with your Twitter followers and ask them to retweet the message. Use the #repealit hash tag to join the discussion.

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