Please accept my thanks to you, my readers. Without you, I am one hand clapping.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas, A happy Hanukkah, and the warmest of holiday wishes. May you all enjoy a blessed, peaceful, and productive 2012.
This article in a major law firm’s notifications to its clients highlights some proposed federal rule changes. These rule changes dramatically raise the priority of politics over competence in everything a federal contractor does, mandating detailed reporting, training standards, external notification, federal oversight and penalties for non-compliance.
This is the federal idea of “affirmative action” on steroids. It is the federal government seizing control of the details of a contractor’s personnel decisions to achieve a political goal. It is tyranny.
The worst part is that it will likely accomplish nothing, as the rules are too onerous to actually follow. It is likely that contractors will find a way around them, get waivers, or become “exempt vendors”. They may even move off-shore so they can operate without the onerous supervision of the bureaucrats. For those who cannot escape, their costs will go up, and taxpayers will foot the bill.
The federal OFCCP site is:
http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/sec503/Sec503_Media_Release_2011-12-07.htm
Check out the FAQ.
Leave a comment.
Make your voice heard!
This article says it all. I could not pass it up.
President Obama is a real artist when on the stump. Unfortunately, it’s all snake oil. The distance between what he says, and what he does is vast. He also does much better when speaking in generalities, and falls apart when the real work starts – setting priorities and making choices.
You can read my blog post in the Mendota Heights Patch here.
President Obama gave a speech on Dec 6th, where he provided, with amazing clarity, his philosophy and aims. If anyone had doubts, they should now be resolved. Let me quote President Obama:
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
Really?
If capitalism and freedom were not the engine of our spectacular prosperity from 1900 to today, what was? The rise of the USA was despite a depression, 2 world wars, and numerous other setbacks. Technological advances in everything from farming to construction to computers to communications to fast food were all driven by a single, simple proposition – in the USA, if you have a great idea and are willing to work hard and take some risks, you can do very, very well.
For contrast, we need only examine those places where the policies that Mr Obama favors were tried. The Soviet Union from the 1920s labored mightily to follow the very policy prescriptions advocated by Mr. Obama, and used much of the same rhetoric. Class envy was woven into the social fabric, and enshrined in law. The best of technocrats were in charge. Kruschev famously said “we will bury you”, but it was not to be.
For over 75 years the Russian empire operated on socialist principles. After WWII, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Africa, China, Cambodia and North Vietnam were added to the experiment. These nations had varying degrees of success and failure. Some of the failures resulted in brutality that is hard to imagine, but all of these attempts failed miserably by any reasonable measure. By 1990, the entire world had figured out that socialism, in all its forms, is a brutal destroyer of both incentive and the human spirit. By 1990 it was clear to (almost) all. Socialism could not be salvaged.
By the end of the 20th centory, the formerly socialist nations of Eastern Europe, Soviet Russia, and all their accolytes had fled the failed ideology en masse. Even China adopted a capitalist model because it figured out that it was the only way to provide for its people.
There are a few places in the world that continue the socialist experiment and they continue to suffer. For instance, North Korea remains rigidly socialist. North Korea is also one of the poorest places on earth, and reportedly is severely malnourished.
The contrast between North and South Korea could not be more stark. These are two nations with similar populations, geography, and resources, but one major difference. According to Mr. Obama, South Korea has the ideology that “doesn’t work”.
I’m not certain exactly what Mr. Obama has in mind to “fix” America, but whatever it is, I don’t want it. The United States cannot afford to embark on another 75 year experiment repeating what the world learned so painfully during the 20th century. President Obama’s has had 3 years in power, and we can argue about how successful it has been, but I think we can agree that it is not a roaring success. We cannot afford another 75 year experiment to learn what the world learned in the 20th century.
It is time to restore our nation to its real principles – private property, Rule of Law, personal responsibility and freedom.
Mr Obama is wrong. We need to restore “America’s DNA”, not re-invent it. The socialist experiment is the one that has failed. Somebody please tell our president.
Cute, entertaining, and to the point.
Visit: National Debt
Jeff Jacoby hits the nail on the head again. Read his column here.
(this the last in a series of posts The previous post can be found )
The ISD 197 levy has passed, and the district will have a little financial breathing room before more cuts are required in a year or two. Congratulations to those citizens who got involved and moved public opinion and got the levy passed.
I want to challenge those citizens – both those voting yes, and those voting no – to continue their citizenship by attending the school board meetings, following the district financial issues, and staying involved. Let’s make passing the levy the start of a process, not the end.