Dakota Beacon

With or without laws that require adult involvement for kids to have questionable material, parents must be parents. Laws are no substitute for parental monitoring. While I find the Court’s decision disappointing, it highlights the need for parents to be proactive and willing to make tough decisions.

Should a 13-year-old be able to purchase a school-shooting simulator without parents’ knowledge or consent The research on the effects of violent video games shows that parents and society have reason to be concerned. Today, we are not talking about the games from my youth like Space Invaders or games that involved a cartoon-like image of a person falling over. We are talking about games with graphic, movie-quality images of death and dismemberment. Unlike a movie, however, which is viewed passively, game players are actively causing the scenes which unfold before them.

It was 20 years ago this summer that the final disintegration of the Soviet Union rapidly unfolded... Historians debate the credit that goes to various players for that collapse, from Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel, to name a few. These are the people who get books written about them. But there were many behind-the-scenes players who performed critical roles that have never seen the light of a historian’s word processor. Here I’d like to note one such player: Herb Meyer. Specifically, I’d like to highlight a fascinating memo Meyer wrote eight years before the Soviet collapse. This Memo ought to rank among the most remarkable documents of the Cold War.”

Economically least stressed state, The state was astounded, hear those checkbooks slamming shut, heat index of 116 degrees, most prominent political family in the state, persistent stubbornness about wearing seat belts, two young men were killed, “This puts us in a recalculation mode”, This is a deliberate strategy, “Long, slow recovery begins”, The perfect marriage?, Amtrak service in the state will be resuming, That is apparently where they still are, turn the basement into a mosque, It’s about time,  The Great Spirit has spoken, reduced farm subsidies, players were struck by lightning.

Earlier this month, Moody’s downgraded Irish government debt to junk. Which left the Irish somewhat peeved. The Department of Finance pointed out that it had met all the “quantitative fiscal targets” imposed by the European Union, and the National Treasury Management Agency said that Ireland was sufficiently flush “to cover all its financing requirements until the end of 2013”.

Which is more than the Government of the United States can say.

The modern world is like a perpetual Nuremburg rally: everything that was wrong with Nazi Germany is more or less typical of other modern states, even those states that imagine they are the opposite of Nazi Germany. Political enemies usually turn out to be cousins, whose most violent differences are essentially superficial, masking deeper agreements in principle. Stalin, Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill were closer to each other than they realized; so are Bill Clinton and Slobodan Milosevic.

Treasury confirms that the process was used in past debt crises. Geithner surely know this. Obama should know. If the President is aware of the workaround process, then he is revealing himself to be a liar by making bogus Social Security nonpayment threats to Seniors. If Obama is unaware of the accounting solution, then he is, once again, ignorant.

Neither the dishonesty nor bewilderment scenario should surprise the American people at this point.

Never mind that communism had killed tens of millions of people: communist sympathies were signs of good taste, while anti- communism was vulgar, silly, and vicious. Most liberals could always forgive a communist, but never a Joe McCarthy. "McCarthyism" signified not only tyranny, but, worse, low company and bad taste. Nowhere was this truer than in the prestigious universities of the Ivy League, where the nominal egalitarians of the Left enlisted snobbery as their weapon of choice against the reactionary Right.

Democrat Senate Budget Chair Senator Kent Conrad and the Democrats have not offered the American people a budget in over two years as required by law. Over that period they have increased spending by trillions on programs that we cannot afford like Nationalized Healthcare. Now that the adults are in charge and trying to write a budget, Democrats are throwing a temper tantrum. Democrats have done everything but show us their plan.

As our nation nears bankruptcy, Americans must watch and learn. We must realize why the left needs to be thrown out of power for good. That includes “Republicans in name only”.

This brings us to yet another reason why I oppose hate-crime legislation.  Not only is it an attempt at thought control, as it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the extra punishment it mandates is for the thoughts expressed through the commission of the crime, but it will never be applied equally.  The government just has too much room to fudge when it’s assigned the role of mind-reader.  And in a politically correct time, it’s not hard to figure out what form that fudging will take.  Hate-crime laws are not designed to punish hate, but, rather, the thoughts, actions and groups the Left hates.

What Obama has done in the education arena has weakened education. What the man has done overall has weakened America. Obama’s economic policies have hurt the middle class. Yet reality doesn’t seem to register with the progressives at the NEA. After all, to lefty zealots such as those who populate NEA leadership, “talking about the importance” of something is as valuable as actually making that something happen. Having a “vision for a stronger America” makes America stronger. To the NEA’s starry-eyed “educators,” just as with all staunch liberals, noble intent is everything. Results are irrelevant.

The "old guard" is having as much trouble with a "fair and equal" approach to income taxation as they did with the elimination of earmarks. That is why it was so important to eliminate earmarks, not because they amount to much spending reduction but that it is the RIGHT thing to do. The old guard is not used to doing what is RIGHT, only what gets them re-elected. Soon they will realize that those days are gone...

It is time that the issue of out-of-state tuition subsidization be brought out from the shadows and discussed in a serious and non-confrontational way.

 How much longer will North Dakota taxpayers be asked to subsidize low cost education for college graduates that simply leave the state for better pay?

In 2010, there was a ‘tax gap’—i.e., the difference between federal taxes owed and those actually paid—of $410–$500 billion. Some of the gap stems from the complexity of the tax code. Much of it, though, is deliberate­­: self-employed individuals working for cash, table-servers under-reporting tips, taxpayers claiming unauthorized credits and deductions. And don’t forget the highly paid White House, congressional, and federal agency staff (including some at the Internal Revenue Service) who, according to reports last year, collectively underpaid their taxes by tens of millions of dollars.

One cannot condone breaking the law, but if millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans are defying a law, then maybe something is wrong with the law itself. Millions of Americans despise our tax laws. They believe that taxes are excessive and that the tax regime is arbitrary, discriminatory, and oppressive…. The fundamental problem is the widespread perception that our political system itself is immoral, dishonest, and corrupt.

A few liberal Republican wannabes, desiring to be liked and re-elected, followed the Democrat vote-buying scheme. However, to say that Republicans share a major part of responsibility in perpetuating the myth of the “little guy” is a stretch.

Embracing the myth is embarrassing. It’s time to retire the myth that Democrats are the party of the “little guy.”

Bad news for Minot flood victims, 6.5 million acres are affected by flooding, dropping service to individual farmer, homeowners should not panic, Jamestown is warming up for a lurid trial, cut and muck, column overweights the UND Fighting Sioux issue, What if Kelley and others fought back?

Obama’s cousin Milton points out, “The eye does not see what the mind does not know.” Indeed, Barack Obama understands little about sound economics but a great deal about ideological agenda pushing. The American people will not experience anything resembling sound economics from the Ideologue in Chief. In the debt resolution standoff, if Republicans blink and agree to raise taxes on Americans, we shall suffer Obama’s ideology all the way down. The distance to the bottom is anyone’s guess.

Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.

In a recent editorial, The Wall Street Journal calls 2011 the ‘year of school choice.’ Parents and the legislators who represent them, particularly in inner-city schools, are tired of waiting for the promised effects of ‘educational reform’ on the public schools their children attend…. Despite progress in many places, New York City children, many of them African-American, may not be able to return to charters or start in them anew in the fall due to a lawsuit instituted against the NYC’s Department of Education by what would seem to be a tragically ironic twosome: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

Here is a case where political/ideological dedication to the public-school monopoly is stronger than loyalty to the very people which the NAACP is pledged to help.

To a hard-core relativistic leftist, there is no Truth, only “truths.”  And a person’s “truth” is just his own perspective.  It thus possesses no special status.  This failure to recognize transcendent Truth – that great author of morality – causes the leftist to become his own source of right and wrong.  His desires then take on the character of Truth in his own mind, and, consequently, whatever contradicts them takes on the character of a lie.  This is what enables a leftist to condemn those who speak the Truth as liars.  They have contradicted the only god the leftist knows – himself.

The idea that the activity caused by damage can help the economy grow is a foolish misunderstanding of basic economics.

This level of economic illiteracy is no surprise as it is pervasive within all levels of government.  North Dakota's policies of economic development over the last decade have also defied the economics explained by the Broken Window Fallacy. 

Here is Bernanke’s problem: As of June 30, the Fed’s ‘Quantitative Easing Two’ program ended … If nothing else changes, the removal of $80 billion of demand for government debt means lower prices for bonds and consequently higher interest rates…. There are only two ways to avert a painful rise in interest rates in the post-QE2 environment. One would be ... to agree on spending $80 billion less per month. Think: ‘snowball in hell.’ The other option would be if other buyers lined up to replace the Fed. But who could take up so much slack? The Chinese, Russians, and others are already reducing their purchases of U.S. debt, and the Europeans are engulfed in their own sovereign debt crises.

MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky recently denounced Hugo Chavez, accusing the Venezuelan strongman of making an “assault” on his nation’s democracy and of cruelty with respect to a female judge he imprisoned for issuing an unwelcome ruling.  The criticism made headlines, as the “renowned scholar” had long given aid and comfort to Ego-and-Mouth Chavez.  In fact, when the leader denounced President Bush in an infamous 2006 U.N. address, it was Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance that he waved and used as a prop.  And Chomsky often praises Venezuela’s socialist revolution, most recently saying, “It's hard to judge how successful they [the Venezuelan socialists] are, but if they are successful they would be seeds of a better world.”

The final maneuver, which was designed to provide cover for waffling senators by providing anonymity and preventing a vote on the bill itself, was the culmination of three and a half weeks of maneuvers, deceptions, delays, and a final rush orchestrated by Olafson, apparently in collusion with the Senate Republican leadership.

It takes vigilance to maintain freedom as it was handed to us by the Founding Fathers after the Constitutional Convention.

And vigilance requires a vigilante-a Lone Ranger- until others begin to be emboldened to follow.  He lost friends from the ranks of the Senate and has lived with criticism and isolation.  But he knows the cause is worth it.

Nobody should be forced to pay for anything that benefits other people but not himself. This is axiomatic. Being compelled to support other people is surely "involuntary servitude." If taxation can be justified at all, it must be for the common good, not for the advantage of some at the expense of others.

Otherwise, government becomes an instrument of depredation and extortion - as indeed it now is. People like me can use it to rob people like you, and vice versa. Modern democracy serves organized greed.

"We don't necessarily need to change what we say-we talk about being conservative in terms of limiting government, promoting growth for the economy, and following the Constitutional guidelines set by the Founders.  We just need to get a lot better at doing what we say." 

As a one-term senator, Barack Obama voted against raising the debt limit. In his March 20, 2006, floor speech he said, “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies....Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’...America deserves better.” That’s when Bush was president.