June 11th, 2013
When: Wed June 19th @ 7PM
Where: Washington Township Hall/Senior Center 57900 Van Dyke, Washington Twp (park in the back lot and enter in the back entrance)
***This event is free and open to the public***
Posted in 
June 19th, 2013
Recall of Colorado gun controller gets enough signatures
by Greg Campbell
But his lawyers want all the signatures certified as valid tossed out on a technicality.
Morse’s opponents were required to submit 7,178 valid signatures to force a recall election. Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office announced Tuesday that of the 16,198 signatures submitted, 10,137 were deemed valid, more than enough to proceed with what would be the first recall election in state history.
Morse — or any elector in Colorado — has 15 days to protest the results, but it took his lawyers less than an hour to announce that they were challenging the petitions over how they were worded.
They argue that the petition itself did not specifically call for an election to replace Morse, according to an Associated Press reporter, and therefore, “Each and every one of the filed signatures, said to have been validated by the Secretary, is hereby challenged.”
If the challenge is unsuccessful, Gov. John Hickenlooper will set a date for the election, which could be as early as August.
Morse has said repeatedly that he will fight to save his seat, but he has the option of resigning. That would scuttle the election and allow a Democratic vacancy committee to fill his seat to the end of his term in 2014.
Morse is term-limited, so even if he retains his seat in the recall election, he can’t run again next year.
June 19th, 2013
The Most Dangerous Cities in America
After falling for five consecutive years, the number of violent crimes across the United States rose by 1.2% in 2012. Based on data published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the increase was even greater in some of America’s largest cities. In 2012, for the third year in a row, Flint, Michigan had the highest violent crime rate in the country.
According to the FBI, violent crime includes murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. In some cases, the cities with the highest violent crime rate, including Flint and Oakland, had high rates in all four categories. However, most of the most violent cities tend to do very poorly only in a few categories.
Yahoo! Homes is publishing the five most dangerous cities, based on the FBI Uniform Crime Report via 24/7 Wall St. To see the rest of the top 10 most dangerous cities in America, visit 24/7 Wall St. online:
Crime in these cities is typically not limited to just violent crime. Three cities — Birmingham, St. Louis and Oakland — were among the 10 worst cities in the nation for both violent crime and property crime. In some of the most dangerous cities, specific types of property crime were especially common. Flint and Cleveland had among the highest burglary rates, while Oakland, Detroit and St. Louis had among the highest rates of vehicle theft.
The economies of many of the most dangerous cities have been in bad shape for years, in some cases long before the Great Recession. The populations of many of the most dangerous cities declined, leaving behind highly impoverished urban centers. The loss of economic diversity, explained John Roman, senior fellow at the Urban institute, only serves to exacerbate crime in cities like Detroit, Flint, Cleveland and St. Louis.
In fact, all the 10 most dangerous cities had poverty rates above the national rate of 15.9% in 2011. In half of these cities, more than 30% of the population lived in poverty. Detroit and Flint had poverty rates of more than 40%. “It is very clear that poverty in particular is associated with higher crime rates,” explained Roman.
However, the relationship between the two is less certain. It is “very difficult to say whether crime makes places poorer, or poverty causes more crime,” Roman noted.
In many of the nation’s most dangerous cities, unemployment is also extremely high. Seven of the 10 cities with the highest levels of violent crime had unemployment rates above 10% in 2012, much higher than the national unemployment rate of 8.1% that year. In two cities, Detroit and Stockton, the unemployment rate was more than 18% last year.
Low educational attainment also goes hand-in-hand with high crime rates. In all of the 10 most dangerous cities, the percentage of adults with a high school diploma was below the 86% national average. In five of these metro areas, the percentage of adults with a diploma was below 80%.
2. Detroit, Mich.
> Violent crimes per 100,000: 2,122.6
> Population: 707,096
> 2012 murders: 386
> Poverty rate: 40.9%
> Percentage of adults with high school degree: 77.4%
Detroit’s murder rate of 54.2 per 100,000 residents was the second highest in the country last year. The homicide rate in Detroit, which included 386 criminal murders and an additional 25 justifiable homicides, reached the highest level in nearly 40 years. In addition, the city’s aggravated assault rate of 1,320.8 cases per 100,000 people was also the second highest in the United States, although this was an improvement from the 1,333.6 cases per 100,000 residents in 2011. Detroit has struggled economically in recent years. The city’s 2012 unemployment rate was a whopping 18.6%, much higher than the 8.1% across the nation last year. The median household income of $25,193 was less than half the national median for 2011.
1. Flint, Mich.
> Violent crimes per 100,000: 2,729.5
> Population: 101,632
> 2012 murders: 63
> Poverty rate: 40.6%
> Percentage of adults with high school degree: 82.9%
With a staggering 2,729.5 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, no city had a higher violent crime rate than Flint. The city of just 101,632 people had 63 total murders and 1,930 aggravated assaults, both the highest relative to the city’s population. Flint also had nationwide highs in burglary rates and arson per 100,000 people. The sheriff of Genesee County, where Flint is located, proposed a plan to create a violent crime mobile response unit that would cost $3 million. However, Governor Rick Snyder rejected the plan because he believed resources would be better “integrated into the ongoing efforts to make Flint safer.” Like Detroit, Flint has suffered economically in recent years. The median household income was just $23,380 in 2011, the second-lowest of all 555 cities measured by the U.S. Census Bureau.
READ MORE…
June 18th, 2013
“How to Cure a Poisoned Economy”
by Paul Volcker (Fomer Federal Reserve Chairman)
When I became chairman of the Federal Reserve, there was a general feeling in this country that economic affairs, and inflation in particular, had reached a kind of crisis point. Things were not going very well. There was a feeling of uncertainty. There was a lot of speculation in commodities and the gold price, which was then free to fluctuate up to $800 an ounce. In an odd kind of way, that’s a good time to step into a job because people thought that something needed to be done.
The mood of the country was willing to accept action, which 10 years earlier they wouldn’t have been willing to accept. And once we got caught up in an anti-inflationary effort, there was a certain willingness to take very high interest rates and eventually a rather severe recession, with the hope and expectations that things would get better. And if we could restore any sense of stability in the currency, the country would be better off as long as we sustained that phase.
There was a lot of opposition and concern, understandably. It was a bad recession, but there was this underlying core that the country had not been on the right path economically and that it needed to be shaken up in order to restore stability. And that faith sustained the country.
It was a situation where a stronger approach was acceptable. And although it was controversial, there was a basic core of support and willingness to do it.
I repeat it all the time: Don’t let inflation get out of control and build a kind of momentum. If that happens, we will all find ourselves back in the days of stagflation and unacceptable economic performance.
Right now we are in a very difficult circumstance. We are in a financial world with lots of excess spending and lending. These many excesses put a lot of pressure on economic institutions. The question becomes how much pressure will they put on the economy as a whole?
In the past 20 years, we have had a very good run of economic activity and a lot of success in the financial world. But now we have reached a point of excess, maladjustments and tensions. Correcting them is going to be a little bit painful.
The period beginning in the mid- to early 1990s has been one of remarkable success and leadership in the world economy by the United States. But a lot of things have contributed to it. Price stability, which has been characterized with higher stock prices or lower interest rates, is one factor that has contributed to that success. Following a period of low productivity growth in the United States, the explosion of high-tech industries and high productivity in the 1990s also led to broader economic policies.
One crucial occurrence was during the Clinton administration. The movement toward a balanced budget was something that this country had not seen for a long time, and there was this worry that we would be so successful in running budget surpluses that the national debt would disappear in a few years. It was an indication of a sense of financial discipline that hadn’t existed earlier.
Now that has been eroded. In recent years, we had a small recession, which grew out of the excesses of the high-tech era and the extremely high stock prices for Silicon Valley-type firms. I’m afraid budget deficits, which to some degree are certainly tolerable and manageable in the light of the economic situation, will get us back in the habit of running deficits as a matter of course.
And of course, the big problem for this country fiscally is a need for more spending — an inherent need for more spending in Social Security, Medicare and other areas. That spending presents a very large fiscal challenge in coming years. It’s not here right now, but we’ll see whether a democracy can deal with an obvious problem that’s going to be present in not too many years; and the earlier we take action to deal with it, the better. But are we going to take action or not? That’s the crucial issue.
There will be all kinds of consequences and uncertainty if we don’t deal with these problems. Letting inflation get a little bit out of control and not dealing with economic problems effectively in the ’70s led to a very uncomfortable crisis. We don’t want to have to go through big recessions again to teach people fiscal responsibility. Instead, we should anticipate what needs to be done while maintaining the growth of the economy. And the threat will always be an unstable economy and an unstable currency. And that’s not just destructive to economic life. It can be destructive to America’s position in the world.
Regards,
Paul Volcker
for The Daily Reckoning
June 17th, 2013
Remember the debt? That $17 trillion problem? Some in Washington seem to think it’s gone away.
The Washington Post reported that “the national debt is no longer growing out of control.” Lawmakers and liberal inside-the-Beltway organizations are floating the notion that it’s not a high priority any more.
We beg to differ, so we came up with 17 reasons that $17 trillion in debt is still a big, bad deal.
1. $53,769 – Your share of the national debt.
As Washington continues to spend more than it can afford, every American will be on the hook for this massive debt burden.
2. Personal income will be lower.
The skyrocketing debt could cause families to lose up to $11,000 on their income every year. That’s enough to send the kids to a state college or move to a nicer neighborhood.
3. Fewer jobs and lower salaries.
High government spending with no accountability eliminates opportunities for career advancement, paralyzes job creation, and lowers wages and salaries.
4. Higher interest rates.
Some families and businesses won’t be able to borrow money because of high interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and more – the dream of starting a business could be out of reach.
5. High debt and high spending won’t help the economy.
Journalists should check with both sides before committing pen to paper, especially those at respectable outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times. A $17 trillion debt only hurts the economy.
>>> Click here to read the full list
June 15th, 2013
June 15th, 2013
Liberty in shambles
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano FoxNews.com
Modern-day British soldiers — our federal agents — are not going from house to house; they are going from phone to phone and from computer to computer, enabling them to penetrate every aspect of our lives.
We all have the need and right to be left alone. We all know that we function more fully as human beings when no authority figure monitors us or compels us to ask for a permission slip. This right comes from within us, not from the government.
Thomas Jefferson made the case for natural rights in the Declaration of Independence (“endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”).
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to reduce to writing the guarantees of personal liberty. (“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of … religion … speech … press … assembly…” “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”)
And, of course, to prevent the recurrence of soldier-written search warrants and the government dragnets and fishing expeditions they wrought, the Constitution mandates that only judges may issue search warrants, and they may do so only on the basis of probable cause of crime, and the warrants must “particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Last week, we discovered that the government has persuaded judges to issue search warrants not on the constitutionally mandated basis, but because it would be easier for the feds to catch terrorists if they had a record of our phone calls and our emails and texts.
How did that happen?
In response to the practice of President Richard Nixon of dispatching FBI and CIA agents to wiretap his adversaries under the guise of looking for foreign subversives, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978.
It prohibited all domestic surveillance in the U.S., except if authorized by a judge based on probable cause of crime, or if authorized by a judge of the newly created and super-secret FISA court. That court was empowered to issue warrants based not on probable cause of crime, but on probable cause of the target being an agent of a foreign power.
The slippery slope began.
Soon the feds made thousands of applications for search warrants to this secret court every year; and 99 percent of them were granted.
The court is so secret that the judges who sit on it are not permitted to keep records of their decisions. Notwithstanding the ease with which the feds got what they wanted from the FISA court, Congress lowered the standard again from probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person.
After 9/11, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This permitted federal agents to write their own search warrants, as if to mimic the British soldiers in the 1760s. It was amended to permit the feds to go to the FISA court and get a search warrant for the electronic records of any American who might communicate with a foreign person.
In 30 years, from 1979 to 2009, the legal standard for searching and seizing private communications — the bar that the Constitution requires the government to meet — was lowered by Congress from probable cause of crime to probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person.
Congress made all these changes, notwithstanding the oath that each member of Congress took to uphold the Constitution.
It is obvious that the present standard, probable cause of communicating with a foreign person, bears no rational or lawful resemblance to the constitutionally mandated standard: probable cause of crime.
Now we know that the feds have seized the telephone records of more than 100 million Americans and the email and texting records of nearly everyone in the U.S. for a few years.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/06/13/liberty-in-shambles/#ixzz2WK0jC2Sd
June 15th, 2013
http://chooseliberty.org