Policy Archives - Page 1456 of 1768

Death by Demography: The 2016 Presidential race will decide America’s future

June 1, 2016/in Immigration, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Ann Corcoran

It is as simple (and as scary as that)!

And, everyone of us must now, immediately, begin or continue to educate ourselves about Islam and what the expanding Muslim population will do to Western Civilization, America and our way of life.

We can already see what it is doing to Europe, what more do we need! Do we think that somehow we will escape? Do you believe America’s melting pot can withstand the Islamic demographic juggernaut (the hijra!) coming our way?

Update May 31: be sure to see Leo Hohmann’s story at WND about the huge numbers of green cards we are giving out to Muslims from all over the world, here.

Representatives Keith Ellison and Andre Carson went to the National Press Club last week to speak against ‘Islamophobia’ and said of Trump: Trump in particular appeals to people’s “paternalistic, tribalistic impulse,”…. Sheesh, and of course Ellison isn’t doing the same for his Islamic tribe!

After seeing this enlightening and provocative post at ‘Gates of Vienna’ thanks to Richard at Blue Ridge Forum, I wanted to say something here about how every one of you reading this must begin to thoroughly educate yourselves about what Islam really is!Do you know the ten Arabic words?***And, since I read that post last week, I see that America’s first Muslim Congressmen took to the podium at the National Press Club to exhort their fellow Muslims to get into the Presidential election to defeat Donald Trump and “Islamophobia” here.

It is not about ‘Islamophobia,’ it is all about migration and the fear among Islamists that Trump (and you) will demand a halt to the migration, the hijra.

In Minnesota, where Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison represents the large and growing Somali ‘community’ we see the Minneapolis Star Tribune (also last week) go ballistic over speaking engagements throughout the state by an Egyptian Coptic Christian using the Koran to explain to the public what Islam’s goals for world domination entail. (Hint: It involves migration!)

We have Daniel Greenfield, writing at Frontpage magazine last week telling us that the Muslim migration will not end because Muslim countries are largely dysfunctional and Muslims procreate at higher levels than do westerners. The invasion will not end, for Europe and for us, there are just too many of them!

So how much do you know about Islam? Do you know what the ten words mean?

RELATED ARTICLES:

May: 1,035 Syrian Muslims admitted to U.S., only 2 Christians

U.S. to deport illegal alien Somalis

Does Janesville, Wisconsin get refugees?

Some states are pretty secretive about refugee health data—Tennessee is one of them

Bowling Green, KY pastor: ‘we need to have more faith in the process’

What will Senator Rand Paul do about new influx of Muslims to his hometown?

Florida: Eleven refugees entered the Sunshine State with active TB since 2013

May 31, 2016/in Culture War, Featured, Healthcare, Immigration, Policy, Politics/by Ann Corcoran

This is the next in a series of stunning refugee health reports from Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart.

Most Americans are shocked to learn that we are still admitting tens of thousands of Cuban “refugees” each year with most going to Florida. Now to add insult to injury we learn that they are not screened for TB and some have arrived with an active form of the communicable disease.

Cuban immigrants off loading in Florida.

We knew refugees were permitted to move to your towns and cities with latent Tuberculosis but had never heard that cases of active TB were arriving until Leahy began his series.

Do you remember a few years ago the media was going berserk because one guy with active TB flew on a plane somewhere and the news media was going crazy trying to piece together information on where he had been and with whom he sat on the plane.

Well, just think about this, eleven cases were walking around Florida’s mostly Cuban community with active TB in the last couple of years.

So where is the mainstream media now?

Here is Leahy again in a very detailed account of the situation:

Eleven refugees with active tuberculosis (TB) were among more than 111,000 refugees who arrived in Florida during the three years between 2013 and 2015, according to a report the Florida Department of Health recently sent to Breitbart News.

Their active TB status was determined in medical screenings completed within 90 days of their arrival in the Sunshine State.

This news comes barely a week after Breitbart News reported that four refugees with active TB were sent to Indiana in 2015

[….]

The vast majority of these refugees who arrived in Florida between 2013 and 2015–104,000 of the 111,000– came from Cuba under the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy,” the 1995 “amendment to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. . . [that] gives migrants from Cuba special treatment that no other group of refugees or immigrants receives… [and] puts Cubans who reach U.S. soil on a fast track to permanent residency,” as Dan Moffett reports.

Only a small percentage of these 104,000 Cuban refugees–an estimated total of 3,000–entered as “traditional arrival” refugees, the program through which approximately 70,000 refugees per year enter the United States from over 100 different countries.

If you are confused by the numbers, Leahy explains that the huge number of Cuban supposed “refugees” admitted to the US are given the same special treatment that regular refugees receive. However, at least the regular refugees have some screening abroad while the Cubans do not. They can literally walk around in your neighborhoods for weeks before they even get any health screening.

Continue reading here.

This is our 300th post in our ‘health issues’ category. Some of Leahy’s earlier reports are archived there.

I wonder, are volunteers who work with refugees briefed by the resettlement contractor about what diseases, parasites etc. the refugees might be carrying?

RELATED ARTICLES:

Great mystery in Sweden: How do we suddenly have more men than women?

Some in Germany worried about large number of conversions from Islam to Christianity

Disease spread by sand fleas arriving in the West with Syrian refugees

Top resettlement states in last ten years

West Virginia you are up next as expanding federal refugee program looking for fresh territory

It’s Time to Put the Market Back in Housing Finance

May 31, 2016/in Budget and Finance, Economy, Policy, Regulation/by Edward Pinto

Today’s government-centric housing finance system is an “economics free zone” indifferent to supply and demand. Composed of an alphabet soup of agencies, this system has fostered a massive liberalization of mortgage terms and provided countless trillions of dollars in lending in up and down markets. At the same time, other government polices constrain supply. As a result, housing has become less, not more affordable or accessible. Here’s why.

“[In a seller’s market] it is more likely that the liberalization of mortgage terms will increase both price and the amount of the debt, with debt service remaining approximately unchanged. … Thus, the liberalization of terms easily becomes capitalized in higher prices.” (Fisher 1951).

Because of a reliance on excessive leverage, US homeownership policy has failed to broaden homeownership access, failed to achieve wealth accumulation for low- and middle-income homeowners, and led to 11 to 12 million foreclosures since 1973.

US multifamily policy failed to promote plentiful rental housing opportunities at rents accessible to low- and moderate-income tenants (Fisher 1975; Jakabovics et al. 2014). With the supply of unsubsidized, economical, workforce housing stagnating, there are calls for large expansions in subsidies.¹ Building hundreds of thousands of high-cost apartment units—with inflated costs because of federal, state, and local regulations as well as layers of subsidies to lease to extremely low and very low income households—is not viable (Fisher 1975).

The Case against Current US Homeownership Policy

For 60 years, policymakers have loosened mortgage lending standards ostensibly to promote broader homeownership and wealth accumulation, particularly for low- and moderate-income households.

In 1954, Federal Housing Administration (FHA) borrowers had an average loan-to-value of 79.9 percent, an average loan term of 21.4 years, and an average housing debt-to-income ratio of 15 percent.
By 1964, these metrics had risen to 92.8 percent, 29.9 years, and 16.5 percent, respectively.
Today, the average figures are 96 percent, 29.5 years, and 28 percent, respectively.

Today’s FHA borrowers spend nearly twice as much of their income—2.15 times the debt, for a home at 1.79 times the price, with 6 times the default risk under stress—compared with typical 1954 FHA borrowers with the same nominal income.

It not surprising that the FHA has experienced 3.4 million foreclosures from 1973 to 2014 (one in eight purchase borrowers) compared with a near-zero rate in its first 25 years.² For the 25 percent of FHA borrowers living in the highest default rate zip codes, an estimated one in five lost their homes, with untold neighborhood devastation (Pinto 2012).

Fact 1: The US homeownership rate is no higher today than in the early 1960s and is only marginally higher than in 1956, before FHA loans with low down payments or 30-year terms became broadly available.³

Fact 2: Homes are less affordable today, standing at a multiple of 3.32 times median home price and median income compared with 2.95 times in 1979 or 2.86 times in 1992. A new round of increasing loan leverage began after 1992, the year Congress imposed government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) affordable housing mandates. This helped drive home prices to unsustainable levels (4.05 times in 2006). After hitting a trough of 3.03 times in 2012, the ratio now stands at 3.32 times.⁴

Fact 3: Low- and middle-income households have lost wealth since 1989.

Fact 4: Liberalizing credit terms during a seller’s market inflates home prices and sets up future price volatility and higher default rates under stress.⁵Extended periods of increasing leverage fuel a price boom that makes homes unaffordable, promotes price volatility, and leads to unforgiving mean reversion.⁶

Figure 2 confirms FHA’s first chief economist Ernest M. Fisher’s 1951 prediction that in a seller’s market, liberalized credit terms easily translate into higher prices. During the current up cycle, real home prices are up 16 percent.

In January 2015, the FHA announced a mortgage insurance premium cut during a seller’s market. It had the effect predicted by Fisher: nearly three-quarters of the additional buying power was absorbed by price (18 percent) and quality/quantity (55 percent) effects.⁷ Because the price effect increased the cost for all FHA buyers, the marginal cost of attracting each new first-time buyer was high ($82,000).⁸

Fact 5: Averages are misleading, and home prices are volatile.

National averages are misleading because they mask price volatility (figure 3) and price dispersion at the metro, zip code, and neighborhood levels (figures 4 and 5).

Lower-priced homes, generally owned by low-income and minority households, experience higher price volatility and lower nominal gains. In figure 5, the bottom price tier of all 28 cities had a lower nominal price increase per year than the top tier (computed over 18 years). These borrowers also experience higher default rates because of the higher leverage.⁹

Fact 6: Post crisis credit is not tight;¹⁰ underwriting and regulatory changes promote rather than constrain a boom.¹¹ Whether leverage is exotic is less relevant than the relative change in buying power generated by increasing leverage, which drives deviation from the price mean.

Fact 7: Federal, state, and local policies increase home-building costs (Jakabovics et al. 2014). The 10 metros with the lowest multiples of 2013 median home price and 2013 median household income had less restrictive land-use regulations. The 15 metros with the highest multiples had more restrictive land-use regulations.¹²Even California has recognized that public policies are largely responsible for it being the most expensive housing market in the country (Taylor 2015). Burgeoning impact fees have a disproportionate impact by constraining the construction of entry-level homes.¹³

The Case against Current US Multifamily Policy

Fact 1: Rents are increasingly less affordable. In 1979 (earliest Zillow data available), median rents nationally stood at 24 percent of median incomes (Los Angeles rents stood at 30 percent of median incomes). Today, the national rate stands at 30percent with Los Angeles at 49 percent.

Fact 2: Federal, state, and local policies increase apartment construction costs. Eight of the 10 metros with the lowest multiples of 2015 median rent and median household income had less restrictive land-use regulations. Thirteen of the 15 metros with the highest multiples of 2015 median rent and median household income had more restrictive land-use regulations.¹⁴

Fact 3: Multifamily debt (in 2010 dollars) is rising much faster than the number of total units because of liberal financing from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, and Ginnie Mae, as well as highly accommodative monetary policy.¹⁵

Fact 4: While the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the primary means of promoting the construction of “affordable” apartments, it’s expensive and opaque.

New LIHTC credits total $10 billion annually, funding about 100,000 LIHTC units.

These units have high construction costs (estimated $175,000 to $200,000 per unit).
These units serve few low-income tenants; 80 percent are either extremely low income (area median income less than or equal to 30 percent) or very low income (area median income from 31 to 50 percent); only 7 percent have an area median income greater than 60 percent but less than or equal to 80 percent (Furman Center 2012).
These units benefit from layers of subsidies, driving subsidy costs to $12,000 per unit, raising questions about unfair distribution of scarce resources. These subsidies include government-aided financing, state and local subsidies, and rental assistance (e.g., Section 8 and Housing Choice Vouchers) targeted to very low and extremely low income households.
This tax credit risks repeating same errors as previous housing subsidy programs.
- Tenants are overwhelmingly minority households (61 percent), and nonelderly units are concentrated in metropolitan statistical area census tracts with high minority concentrations (Office of Policy Development and Research 2016).
- Many developments face fiscal challenges to avoid blight that sets in after 16 to 20 years.

Market-Based Solutions to Bring Home Prices Back in Line with Median Incomes and Improve Accessibility

Objective: A more stable housing finance market that provides a reliable path to wealth building and broader low- and middle-income access to homeownership.

Repeal Title XIV (qualified mortgage) and section 941 (qualified residential mortgage) provisions of Dodd-Frank (Pinto 2016) (legislative action needed)
Require the FHA and GSEs to adopt sound underwriting, pricing, and capital standards (legislative and administrative action needed)
Repeal the GSE affordable housing goals (see replacement Low-Income First-Time Buyer tax credit below) to end destabilizing competition between the FHA and the GSEs (legislative action needed)
Adopt policies to support market stability by ensuring a high preponderance of good-quality mortgages (administrative action needed)
Help low- and middle-income families with wealth-building strategies
- The American Enterprise Institute’s Wealth Building Home Loan offers such a path, but the 30-year mortgage does not.¹⁶(administrative action needed)
Enact the Low-income First Time Homebuyer (LIFT Home) tax credit (legislative action needed)
- This credit would allow low-income,¹⁷ first-time buyers to forgo the interest deduction and receive a one-time refundable tax credit.
- This credit is equal to 4 percent of the mortgage loan ($10,000 maximum) and can be used to buy down the loan’s interest rate for at least seven years on loans with terms of 20 years or less.
- The legislation would funnel $4.5 billion per year to fund 500,000 LIFT Home buyers, 250,000 of whom would be incremental low-income, first-time buyers. This assumes that 150,000 live in apartments (freed-up units would be a bonus).
- Funding LIFT Home would require the following:
  - Reductions in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget
  - Repurposing other budgeted amounts that support affordable housing to push tax dollars directly to homebuyers instead of having the money siphoned off by bureaucracies and advocacy groups
  - Restructuring home mortgage interest deductions to promote wealth, not debt accumulation
    - For future homebuyers, this restructuring would
      - limit interest deductions to purchase loans and exclude second mortgages and cash-out refinances (also for existing homeowners) and
      - cap mortgage interest deductions to amounts payable on a loan with a 20-year amortization term.
  - For existing home loan borrowers, the restructuring would
    - grandfather current interest deductions, ameliorating impact of change on current home prices; and
    - direct any interest savings (from refinancing an existing loan at a lower rate) toward shortening the loan term.

Over 10 years, these solutions would reduce capital needs by 60 percent and allow weaning off the federal government’s overwhelming loan guarantee role. Outstanding debt would be reduced by approximately 20 percent, and risk-absorbing capital per loan would be reduced by 50 percent.

With less interest rate risk and lower capital requirements, these loans would be safer and easier for depository institutions to hold in portfolio. Today, these institutions hold about 50 percent of total single-family mortgage debt.

Market-Based Rental Housing Solutions to Bring Rents Back in Line with Median Incomes and Improve Accessibility: the “Blight Preventer” Loan

Objectives: Shift from the current debt- and government-centric finance system to a rental housing market where supply is permitted and encouraged to meet demand; establish life cycle underwriting¹⁸and the “Blight Preventer” Loan as best practices in financing subsidized multifamily housing.

Repeal GSE affordable housing policies and the Community Reinvestment Act
Increase supply of unsubsidized economical workforce and entry-level apartments
Use lifecycle underwriting and 15- and 20-year self-amortizing first mortgage—the “Blight Preventer” Loan (White and Wilkins 2016):
- Excessively long loan terms used to finance affordable multifamily properties leave many properties unable to fulfill affordability commitments without additional public subsidies and leaves those properties poorly maintained, leading to blight and urban decay.
- Most affordable multifamily housing is located in lower-income neighborhoods, leaving public funders to accept blight or throw good money at bad investments.

Bending the Cost Curve to Increase the Supply of Unsubsidized Economical Workforce and Entry-Level Houses and Apartments

Local and state governments should
- authorize expedited permitting and “just-in-time” building inspections;
- identify building code interpretations to reduce cost impact;
- review and amend density and parking requirements, height maximums, size minimums, and other provisions that increase barriers and raise costs;
- expand permitted uses in a zoning district that are not subject to special review and approval by local government;
- review and amend building codes that dictate costs and amenities that put economical workforce developments at a disadvantage;
- reduce regulatory complexity and include staff flexibility in applying and interpreting burdensome requirements (direct staff to be as flexible as possible);
- adjust impact and permitting fees to reflect any reduced impact of such housing;
- establish a “good enough to be economical” standard; and
- reduce the expenses calculated as a percentage of costs.

Designers and builders should implement innovative and economical techniques for
- design and construction,
- sustainability,
- utilizing existing infrastructure,
- repurposing existing structures, and
- management.

Notes

“Cantwell Launches National Campaign to Increase Federal Resources for Affordable Housing,” press release, March 24, 2016, https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cantwell-launches-national-campaign-to-increase-federal-resources-for-affordable-housing; Peter Dreier, “How to House the Working Poor,” How Housing Matters, last updated April 7, 2016, http://howhousingmatters.org/articles/house-working-poor/.
FHA Actuarial Studies and author. See Pinto (2012).
Edward J. Pinto, “Housing finance fact or fiction? FHA pioneered the 30-year fixed rate mortgage during the Great Depression?” AEIdeas (blog), June 24, 2015,http://www.aei.org/publication/housing-finance-fact-or-fiction-fha-pioneered-the-30-year-fixed-rate-mortgage-during-the-great-depression/.
Zillow and author.
Liberalization of credit terms takes many forms, including smaller down payments, higher debt-to-income ratios, longer loan terms, lower interest rates, quantitative easing, and reduced mortgage insurance premium.
Mean reversion is a theory suggesting prices and returns eventually move back toward the mean.
The 0.50 percent decrease in premium increased buying power by 6 percent. This could be “spent” in three ways: price effect (seller raises price), quality/quantity effect (buyer purchases larger or better-quality home), or expanded access (attracts new buyers).
Forthcoming research to be published by Stephen Oliner, Edward Pinto, and Tobias Peter.
Default risk increased in zip codes where median family income and median home prices are low. See Pinto (2012).
First-time buyer credit metrics are follows: 69 percent of buyers have a combined loan-to-value ratio less than or equal to 95 percent, 97 percent have a 30-year loan, 29 percent have a debt-to-income ratio less than 43 percent, and 22 percent have a FICO score below 660. See “Mortgage Risk Index Release of March 2016 Data,” American Enterprise Institute’s International Center on Housing Risk, last updated April 26, 2016. As an up real estate cycle ages, credit maximums usually become minimums, thus leading to calls for even more liberal credit terms, including less traditional ones. See Fisher (1951).
For example, income leverage (measured by borrower debt-to-income ratio) is largely unconstrained by Dodd-Frank’s qualified mortgage regulation. Its 43 percent limit is swallowed by agency exemptions (Fannie, Freddie, FHA, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Rural Housing Service guarantee some 85 percent of all primary home purchase loans). An effective income leverage limitation operates to “take the punch bowl away” before a leverage-fueled price boom goes too far.
Demographia.com and author. “Regulations Add a Whopping $84,671 to New Home Prices,”NAHBNow (blog), May 9, 2016, http://nahbnow.com/2016/05/regulations-add-a-whopping-84671-to-new-home-prices/.
Nick Timiraos, “How City Hall Exacerbates the Entry-Level Housing Squeeze,” The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/05/how-city-hall-exacerbates-the-entry-level-housing-squeeze/.
Demographia.com and author.
Paul Bubny, “CRE Debt Increase Hits 8-Year High,” Law.com, March 15, 2016,http://www.law.com/sites/paulbubny/2016/03/15/cre-debt-increase-hits-8-year-high/?slreturn=20160419120431.
Edward Pinto and Stephen Oliner, “WBHL,” American Enterprise Institute’s International Center on Housing Risk, accessed May 19, 2016, http://www.housingrisk.org/category/wealth-building-home-loan/.
Incomes below 80 percent of the area median income.
Lifecycle underwriting considers a property’s ability to cover its long-term capital needs (e.g., replacing worn-out roofs, air conditioners, and appliances) over the property’s life cycle. See Brennan and colleagues (2013).

References

Brennan, Maya, Amy Deora, Ethan Handelman, Anker Heegaard, Albert Lee, Jeffrey Lubell, and Charlie Wilkins. 2013. “Lifecycle Underwriting: Potential Policy and Practical Implications. Working paper. Washington, DC: Center for Housing Policy.http://media.wix.com/ugd/19cfbe_891b4788e2e64d0cb71a75940a101f2f.pdf.

Fisher, Ernest M. 1951. “Financing Home Ownership.” In Urban Real Estate Markets: Characteristics and Financing, edited by Ernest M. Fisher, 61–90. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c3180.pdf.

———. 1975. Housing Markets and Congressional Goals. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers Inc.

Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. 2012. “What Can We Learn about the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program by Looking at the Tenants?” New York: New York University.http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/LIHTC_Final_Policy_Brief_v2.pdf.

Jakabovics, Andrew, Lynn M. Ross, Molly Simpson, and Michael Spotts. 2014. Bending the Cost Curve: Solutions to Expand the Supply of Affordable Rentals. Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute.http://uli.org/wp-content/uploads/ULI-Documents/BendingCostCurve-Solutions_2014_web.pdf.

Office of Policy Development and Research. 2016. Data on Tenants in LIHTC Units as of December 31, 2013. Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development.https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/LIHTC-Tenants-2013.pdf.

Pinto, Edward J. 2012. How the FHA Hurts Working-Class Families and Communities. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute. http://www.nightmareatfha.com/how-the-fha-hurts-working-class-families-and-communities/.

———. 2016. “Repealing Dodd-Frank’s Qualified Mortgage and Qualified Residential Mortgage.” InThe Case Against Dodd-Frank: How the “Consumer Protection” Law Endangers Americans, edited by Norbert J. Michel, 31–38. Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation. http://thf-reports.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/The%20Case%20Against%20Dodd-Frank.pdf.

Taylor, Mac. 2015. California’s High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences. Sacramento, CA: Legislative Analyst’s Office. http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.pdf.

White, Tom, and Charlie Wilkins. 2016. “‘Blight Preventer’ Loan: Property Lifecycle Underwriting and 15–20 Year Self-Amortizing First Mortgage Debt as a Best Practice for Financing Subsidized Multifamily Housing.” Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.http://www.housingrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/White-Wilkins-MF-debt-paper-final.pdf.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Urban.org website.

Florida Atlantic University Professor Defends Horrific 7th Century Islamic punishment

May 31, 2016/in Courts & Law, Education, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Suzanne Shattuck

People who attended a recent Islamophobia conference on the campus of Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, Florida, may have thought themselves teleported to Saudi Arabia when listening to one of the expert panelists advocate for the chopping off of hands as a perfectly acceptable way to discourage theft.

The conference called, Islamophobia, Voices from the Muslim Community, was in the form of a panel discussion, and put on by the Muslim Student Association (MSA). Three of the five panelists, incidentally, are linked to terrorism themselves. According to Joe Kaufman with FrontPage Mag, they are,

“They are Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, the imam of the Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida; Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, the legal counsel for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); and Bassem Abdo Alhalabi (al-Halabi), an Associate Professor at FAU.”

It happened to be the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering Associate Professor, Bassem al-Halabi, who made the incredible statement in front of the Florida crowd. It was Tom Trento and his group from The United West, an organization that is dedicated to defending and advancing Western Civilization against the kinetic and cultural onslaught of Shariah Islam, who captured the professor advocating for Shariah. See video on Brietbart.

Al-Halabi said,

“Shariah is being practiced in the United States. We at the Islamic Center of Boca Raton practice Shariah, if someone doesn’t know. When there’s no Shariah, Islamic Shariah, they die in dozens and hundreds every day because of organized crime. People kill people, other people for steal pizza for ten dollars and so.

So when Islamic Shariah is saying about capital punishment, so even though it sounds very severe, but if that is the solution to prevent any crimes then it still has a lot of rule and regulations. I will just mention one and stop here which is. Let’s say cutting the hand off a person if they steal. It sounds very severe, it sounds very barbaric I know, but if it takes one or two people to have their hands cut off and then there is no more stealing in the whole nation that’s a much better resolution than having hundreds of people die every day.”

Several thoughts come to mind after realizing what he said.

Rather cynically, I wonder what other crime besides theft al-Halabi’s Shariah could “fix” by chopping off body parts. Because, it seems like sexual assaults by Muslim immigrant males all over the world is something that is totally out of control. It has been grossly under-reported in Europe because of the negative publicity to those countries. I’m sure tourism to Sweden, France, Norway, and Austria must be in decline because of it. If Sweden is the rape capital of the West, I can’t imagine too many people who would want to venture into that atmosphere. Maybe al-Halabi could propose that practice here in America along with the cutting off of hands for theft. Of course this is highly unlikely because, according to Bill Warner’s book, Sharia Law for Non-Muslims, the Shariah allows for: men to beat their wives, take the testimony of a woman to be worth only half of a man’s, encourages Female Genital Mutilation, and stoning for adultery. Therefore, I don’t think the males would be punished in the extreme for harming females in a sexual way.
The Muslim Student Association (MSA), of which Professor al-Halabi is an advisor, is a Muslim Brotherhood related front organization that has been in service to spread Islam in America since 1963 when the first chapter was formed at the University of Illinois. With that simple fact, it seems way past time to ban the MSA from all college and university campuses. They are seditious in that they practice and pay allegiance to the Shariah, and seek to overthrow our Constitution.
The Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas, according to Shariah, the Threat to America, says this about its numerous front groups, “In order to be considered by the Muslim Brotherhood to be one of ‘our organizations’…all these entities had to have embraced the aforementioned Ikhwan (the brothers) creed: ‘Allah is our goal; the Messenger is our guide; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our means; and martyrdom in the way of Allah is our inspiration.”
How ironic for the panelists to whine about being victims and experiencing hardships in our country from others because they are Muslim. Maybe they need to look at footage of gang rapes, beheadings, crucifixions, terrorist attacks, and burnings of non-Muslims around the world and in our country simply because they aren’t Muslim.
Maybe if our Congress would have the spine to stand up and actually make good on their oath of office to defend the country from enemies both foreign and domestic, they would vote for HR3892, a bill in the House to request the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maybe then we could deport those associated with Muslim Brotherhood to an Islamic state, starting with the ones on the panel. After all, it would be better for them to practice the Shariah in another country, instead of trying to ruin ours.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood here in America, like this professor, are in positions of influence throughout our country whether it be in government, institutes of higher learning, doctors, lawyers and the like, or are active in the numerous front groups like the MSA, CAIR, or Muslim American Society. What is in their heart is the Shariah, as al-Halabi apparently let slip out of his mouth the other day. They are indeed terrorists in sheep’s clothing.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Face of Evil: Surveying the ISIS Killing Fields in Northern Iraq

1 Year After Steinle Death, San Francisco Unveils Immigration Policy Keeping ‘Sanctuary’ Protections

Georgia: Muslim woman in burqa attacks family with American flag

EDITORS NOTE: Readers may click here to send an email to urge Florida Atlantic University officials to terminate the employment of Professor Bassem Alhalabi for praising Sharia backed punishment of cutting off hands and his ties to Islamist extremism.

Abraham Lincoln fought against ‘political correctness’

May 31, 2016/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

The first president elected by the Republican Party fought political correctness during his time.

Professor Hadley Arkes in the column Lincoln’s Teaching – and Our Politics writes:

Lincoln famously complained that there was nowhere that people could talk about slavery – they couldn’t talk about it in the churches because “it didn’t belong there.” It was too political, too divisive. And they couldn’t talk about it in politics because it was too explosive. It was a moral and religious question, too unsettling for our politics. It was the gravest issue before us. It was the issue that truly went to the core of the kind of regime we meant to establish and the kind of people we had sought to be. And yet we couldn’t talk about it readily in public.

[Emphasis added]

From the time of Lincoln let’s fast forward to today and Donald J. Trump, the GOP nominee for president of the United States. Professor Arkes wrote:

We bring back here one of the most enduring lessons Lincoln taught, with a problem that persistently haunts our politics: One of the prime tasks of the political man is to teach, through his own, artful example how ordinary people can talk about the issues that truly run to the root. But that presupposes the prior, truly first task. The political man or woman will need to get clear in the first place on the questions that really were central; the questions, as Lincoln said, from which everything else radiated. [Emphasis added]

Trump has been criticized for his lack of “civility.” But is civility a code word for political correctness? Is Trump talking about “issues that truly run to the root”?

Democrats, Republicans and world leaders alike call for Mr. Trump to tone down his rhetoric. The Democrats have called Mr. Trumps comments racist, bigoted and hateful. Some blame the violence seen at Trump rallies on his words. Daily the media bombards us with polls showing the unpopularity of Mr. Trump. However, let is not forget that President Lincoln was also unpopular in his time.

Professor Arkes noted, “That is why, as he [Lincoln] said, that proposition, ‘all men are created equal’ really was the ‘father of all moral principle’ in us. As Lincoln showed, the case in principle for slavery could not be confined to blacks. A government that could accept the slavery of black people could easily begin disfranchising certain classes of whites as well. And with a simple shift of labels, a whole other class of ‘human persons’ can be removed altogether from the circle of ‘rights-bearing beings’.”

“But if a politician uses the N-word, if Donald Trump says a derisive word about women – none of these things has been beneath the notice, and the lingering attention, of the media,” writes Professor Arkes.

Therefore are not topics such as immigration, abortion, women, homosexuality, religion and Islam worthy of public discourse?

In the column Why Morality is the Only Thing We Should Legislate Selwyn Duke writes:

“You can’t legislate morality!” is a common battle cry today.

It’s thought to be a quintessentially American idea, even though the Founding Fathers never expressed such a sentiment. Nor did the early Americans who would unabashedly enforce a biblically based code of morality in their localities, both via social pressure and governmental laws, with transgressors sometimes spending time in stocks — or worse. No, our common battle cry is a modern idea, and one of modernism. It also betrays a fundamental, and dangerous, misunderstanding of law’s nature.

In reality, the only thing we should legislate is morality. The only other option is legislating whims or immorality.

American voters will decide on November 8th if saying things that are unpopular is needed and necessary or if being political correct is the new normal.

As George Orwell noted, “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Perhaps it is time to stop deceiving ourselves?

Canada: ‘Police’ in Arabic on Ontario Police Car

May 31, 2016/in Courts & Law, Immigration, National Security, Policy/by Dr. Rich Swier

The word ‘Police’ in Arabic on a London Ontario Police Service Car serving the Arabic speaking population draws outrage. Canadians see this as an example of favoritism and inconsistent with French Canadian values.

To see the Arabic language becoming an official provincial language in Ontario instead of French is unconscionable.

A reader from Ontario writes:

As a true Canadian I am outraged and insulted by these pictures I have recently seen of the London Police Service cars. Are we in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Syria???

The fact that the decals are on the car in the first place should be insulting and disturbing to all Canadians. However the fact that they’re situated above the Canadian flag is is not only insulting, it’s demeaning to the memory of our Canadian soldiers who fought and died in all wars.

What do these words say? As a Canadian who speaks one of the two official languages I have no idea. I can tell you this. If I was a French speaking citizen of not only London but Canada in general I would feel doubly outraged. I don’t see any French words on the car.

Why do we keep bending over backwards and selling out our true Canadian culture for a small minority of the population. You come to this country then assimilate. Learn our language and our laws. If you don’t like it then leave.

It’s time to put an end to this. We are slowly losing our identity and we’re just passively letting it happen.

Esphandyar Ghyassi posted on Facebook, “I called London Ontario Police now and officer came with a kind of explanation which I really didn’t get it. This is the number (519) 661-5670 Please call them and raise you voice. 30% percent of population in B.C. are Chinese. But I never saw Chinese language 警察 (means police) on Police cruisers.”

This is yet another example of the Islamization of Canada.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Suspect in double stabbing at Canadian Forces recruitment centre now facing terrorism charge

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EDITORS NOTE: The images used in this column are by Thomas B. Bidgood.

Global Airline Security Threat: ‘Fraudulent Travel Documents’

May 31, 2016/in Immigration, Must Read, National Security, Policy/by Jerry Gordon

We posted on the illegal identities trade involving Syrians and Palestinians in Honduras and Mexico in a NatSecDaily Brief this Memorial Day, weekend in the US, “Does Illegal Identities trade in Mexico and Honduras threaten US National Security?” How problematic that is to global airline security is illustrated by this Air Travel World report on the concern raised by security specialists this week at the Barcelona SITA Air IT Summit, “Fraudulently obtained travel documents a growing security challenge .” The author, Ms. Anne Paylor, wrote:

Matthew Finn, managing director at independent security consultancy AUGMENTIQ, told the SITA Air Transport IT Summit in Barcelona this week that there had been a shift away from people trying to falsify travel documents, but an increase in identity fraud involving genuine but fraudulently obtained passports.

“You can’t assess the risk of a person if you don’t know who they are,” Finn said.

He cited one European Union government as having recently declared that it issued some 6 million passports in 2015. However, it estimated that of these, as many as 650,000—or roughly 10%—were issued to false identities.

Finn of AUGMENTIQ noted how daunting the verification problem is:

“They were genuine documents, but issued to someone who doesn’t exist. The weak link in the chain is the breeder documentation used to establish identity,” Finn said. He pointed out that in many states, particularly failed or fragile states, fake birth certificates and other “breeder” documents are relatively easy to obtain. The integrity of breeder documentation, he said, should be considered as important as the integrity of travel documents themselves.

Finn pointed out that governments and industry need to be able to verify the identity of passengers in order to address security and other challenges.

According to AUGMENTIQ, identity fraud is increasing dramatically and the share of fraudulently obtained genuine travel documents accounts for a growing share—as much as 23% in 2009 (the most recent figures available).

“Our challenge now is more about determining that the document truly belongs to its holder rather than whether the document itself is a forgery or counterfeit,” Finn said.

He also urged much greater collaboration between all stakeholders, pointing out that Interpol holds a database of 57 million lost and stolen ID documents that, if more widely distributed, could help flag cases of ID fraud.

“Where vulnerabilities exist, they will be exploited,” he said. “If there is no confidence in the integrity of the document issuance process, there cannot be any confidence in the authenticity of the document being presented or the veracity of the holder’s identity.”

Finn concluded:

If we cannot establish a person’s identity, we cannot ascertain the risk he or she may pose to the aviation industry or, indeed, to the countries they are traveling to along the way.

We don’t know whether EgyptAir and the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry has availed of the opportunity to run checks of the passenger manifest on Flight 804 against the Interpol data base cited by Finn of AUGMENTIQ. Nor do we know how complete that data base is and the process for updating it. Surely the proportion of false identifications since 2009 has grown with the mass flight from hot spots in the Muslim Ummah since 2011 and the rise of the Islamic State in 2013. The magnitude of false identities using legitimate passports, birth certificates and driver licenses has soared given the Middle East refugee crisis. This has exacerbated the infiltration of Islamic terrorists, among the stream of refugees and migrants, whether in the EU or in the Western Hemisphere. This ATW report illustrates the huge problems confronting the TSA and the DHS ICE in the US given what is already a hot air travel season with massive travel delays and failures to vett screeners, let alone detect possible terrorists.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the NatSecDaily Brief.

Obama Appoints Grandson of a Terror Suspect as Gov’t Liaison to Muslims

May 31, 2016/in Featured, National Security, Policy, Religion/by Clarion Project

Zaki Barzinji worked for ISNA, an organization named as a Muslim Brotherhood entity by the Justice Department. His grandfather was a MB terror suspect.

The Obama Administration has chosen the grandson of a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect as its new liaison to the Muslim-American community. The new official also led the youth section of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an identified Muslim Brotherhood entity that was labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial.

The official, Zaki Barzinji, previously served as the deputy director of intergovernmental affairs for Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (more on that further down in this article), who is now under investigation for possible political corruption. Before that, Barzinji was the president of the Muslim Youth of North America, which describes itself as the youth wing of ISNA.

ISNA was labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history, with the Justice Department specifically listing it as an entity of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s own documents list ISNA at the top of its list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”

ISNA’s links to the Brotherhood and Hamas are laid out in bipartisan legislation titled the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act. The bill now has over 75 supporters in the House and Senate.

How did Zaki Barzinji rise through the ranks in ISNA and McAuliffe’s office to become the new associate director of public engagement for the White House?

He is the grandson of a prominent Islamist leader named Jamal Barzinji, who passed away last year. Indeed, Jamal Barzinji was a founder and/or senior official in virtually every group identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front in America. He also frequently donated to political campaigns. He was nearly prosecuted, but the Obama Justice Department dropped the planned indictment.

Zaki accepted an award on his grandfather’s behalf in 2013 at the Hamas/Brotherhood-linked Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia, which the late Barzinji helped found. The mosque is most known for having Al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki as its imam in 2001 before he officially joined the terrorist group.

Jamal Barzinji was most involved with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). The group’s office, Jamal Barzinji’s home and the offices of other organizations that Jamal Barzinji was affiliated with were raided in 2002 as part of a terrorism investigation. The affidavit said has being investigated because of evidence leading the U.S. government to “believe that [Jamal] Barzinji is not only closely associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (as evidenced by ties to [Sami] Al-Arian…), but also with Hamas.”

Jamal Barzinji’s group was so close to Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian that IIIT’s president considered his group and Al-Arian’s to be essentially one entity. The indictment of Al-Arian and his colleagues says that they “would and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals, in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights.”

Keep that quote and the investigation into McAuliffe’s political contributions in mind when you consider how Zaki Barzinji apparently rose to his new position with some help from his grandfather’s political connections.

In 2011, IIIT (again, the late Jamal Barzini’s organization) donated $10,000 to the New Dominion PAC, which has strong Democratic party ties in the state, particularly as a donor to current Senator (former Governor) Tim Kaine, who spoke at a New Dominion PAC event honoring Jamal Barzinji in 2011.

Barzinji’s grandson became the outreach coordinator for McAuliffe’s campaign for governor in April 2013, per his LinkedIn profile. The Barzini/IIIT-linked PAC raised $15,000 for McAuliffe’s campaign two years later on September 29, 2013.

Zaki Barzinji became McAuliffe’s special assistant for policy in January 2014 and was promoted to deputy director of intergovernmental affairs in July 2014. This month, he became the White House’s liaison to the Muslim-American community as its new associate director of public engagement. Quite a rapid rise for a 27-year old.

There are no Islamist-sounding quotes from Zaki Barzinji but important questions remain.

Is it really wise to have the grandson of a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect, who served as the head of the youth wing of an identified Muslim Brotherhood identity with Hamas links, as the White House’s liaison to the Muslim-American community?

What role did the political ties and donations of his Islamist grandfather and IIIT play in his remarkably fast rise through state politics and to the White House?

And what about his own work as president of the youth wing of ISNA, an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood?

ABOUT RYAN MAURO

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Zaki Barzinji. Photo: White House.

Why Morality is the Only Thing We Should Legislate

May 30, 2016/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Selwyn Duke

“You can’t legislate morality!” is a common battle cry today. It’s thought to be a quintessentially American idea, even though the Founding Fathers never expressed such a sentiment. Nor did the early Americans who would unabashedly enforce a biblically based code of morality in their localities, both via social pressure and governmental laws, with transgressors sometimes spending time in stocks — or worse. No, our common battle cry is a modern idea, and one of modernism. It also betrays a fundamental, and dangerous, misunderstanding of law’s nature.

In reality, the only thing we should legislate is morality. The only other option is legislating whims or immorality.

One problem with addressing this issue, which I have done several times, is that many readers have a reason-clouding emotional reaction induced by the assumption that I’m advocating big government. So I’ll preface what follows by saying that even if we enact just one law — let’s say, prohibiting murder — we have legislated morality. The only people who could credibly say they wouldn’t legislate morality are those who wouldn’t legislate at all: anarchists.

I’ll start by putting this simply. Could you imagine a legislator saying, “This law doesn’t prevent something that’s wrong, but I’m going to impose it on you anyway”? What if he said, “This other law doesn’t mandate anything that is a good, but I’ll compel you to adhere to it simply because I feel like it”? Would you suppose his legislation had a sound basis? Or would you think that, unlike a prohibition against murder or theft, the imposition of something lacking a moral foundation (“rightness” or “wrongness”) was the very definition of tyranny?

Generally speaking, a law is by definition the imposition of a value (which can be positive, negative or neutral), and a just law is the imposition of a moral principle (good by definition). This is because a law — with the exception of laws for naming post offices and such (which don’t constrain us and which won’t be included henceforth when I speak of “laws”) — states that there is something you must or must not do, ostensibly because the action is a moral imperative, is morally wrong, or is a corollary thereof. If this is not the case, again, with what credibility do you legislate in the given area? There is no point imposing something that doesn’t prevent a wrong or mandate some good. This is why there will never be a powerful movement lobbying to criminalize strawberry ice cream or kumquats.

As an example, what is the possible justification for speed laws? Well, there is the idea that it’s wrong to endanger others or yourself, and, in the latter case, it could be based on the idea that it’s wrong to engage in reckless actions that could cause you to become a burden on society. Of course, some or all of these arguments may be valid or not, but the point is this: if a law is not underpinned by a valid moral principle, it is not a just law. Without morality, laws can be based on nothing but air.

One cause of the strong negative reaction (generally among libertarian-leaners) to the above is the word “morality” itself; as with “capitalism” in liberal circles, the term has taken on a negative connotation. Yet this is partially due to a narrow and incorrect view of what morality is. Use the word, and many imagine the Church Lady or a preacher breathing fire and brimstone; moreover, reflecting our libertine age’s spirit, people’s minds often automatically go to sex. “Stay out of the bedroom!” we hear, even though the only side legislating bedroom-related matters today is the Left (e.g., contraception mandate, forcing businesses to cater faux weddings). It’s almost as if, dare I say, some people are worried that others may ruin their fun.

Morality encompasses far more than sexual matters, however. Yet it is narrow in one way: it includes only correct principles of rightness. And, again, when these are not the stuff of laws, elements of wrongness will be.

Speaking of which, everyone advocating legislation seeks to impose a conception of morality or, as modernists are wont to put it, a “values” set. For example, the only justification for forcing bakers to service faux weddings is the (incorrect) notion that it’s “wrong” to deny such service. ObamaCare could only be justified based on the idea that providing medical care for those who can’t afford it is a moral imperative. And “transgender” bathroom laws would have to be based on the fancy that it’s wrong to disallow someone from using facilities associated with his “gender identity.”

A common argument I’ve heard in response to the above is “No, I don’t legislate morality; something should only be illegal if it harms another.” Other arguments are that we should merely prohibit “force” or protect “property rights.” Leaving alone the deep matter of what constitutes “harm,” these assertions are, with all due respect, dodges. Is it “wrong” to harm another, use unjust force against him or violate property rights? If not, why trouble over it?

People making the harm, force or property-rights argument are almost universally sincere, except with themselves, as it’s self-deception. It’s a way of preserving a mistaken ideological principle (“Don’t legislate morality”) by obscuring what it is you’re actually doing when making law. It’s also dangerous because it keeps things on a more superficial level. It’s a way relativistic moderns can avoid dealing with something they consider inconvenient, messy and divisive: determining “What is good?” But when you don’t work hard to settle what is good, you end up with what is bad.

Another reason many people are oblivious to the values/morality underpinning their conception of law is that many moral principles are now woven so seamlessly into our civilization’s fabric that we don’t recognize them as “morality.” Yet a moral does not cease to be a moral because it becomes a meme. Consider that while we take for granted that theft, murder and slavery should be governmentally prohibited, most pre-Christian pagans would have found such an idea foreign. Pillaging for a living, Viking-style, was common and accepted; might made right. And while you might not murder or enslave your fellow group members (one problem Athenians had with Spartans was that the latter enslaved other Greeks: the Helots), outsiders were fair game. In fact, if there had been such a thing as a libertarian Roman, he just might have said to Christians endeavoring to outlaw the brutality of the arena, “You can’t legislate morality!”

There can be no such thing as a separation of morality and state. That is, unless we want to regress to man’s default, the immoral state.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Do CEOs Make 335 Times More Than Average Workers? by Mark J. Perry

May 28, 2016/in Culture War, Economy, Labor & Unions, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Manufacturing Ammo for Class Warfare.

The AFL-CIO released its annual report on CEO pay last week (see details here and here), and has calculated a CEO-to-worker-pay ratio of 335-to-1 for 2015, based on the average total compensation package for S&P 500 CEOs of $12.4 million last year, and average annual pay of $36,875 for America’s 99 million rank-and-file workers.

Here are some observations on the AFL-CIO’s questionable methodology that is uses every year to calculate an inflated CEO-to-worker pay ratio (see this related CD post from last May), and an analysis of how a complete confiscation of CEO pay would affect average worker pay.

Dubious Math for Worker Pay

In its 2016 report, the AFL-CIO reports that the average nonsupervisory rank-and-file worker made $36,875 annually in 2015 based on “average nonsupervisory worker pay according to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2015 data.”

No other details are provided, but the $36,875 annual average worker pay calculated by the AFL-CIO is apparently based on an hourly wage of $21.04 for the average nonsupervisory worker in 2015 (BLS data here), an average workweek of only 33.7 hours (BLS data here) for the average rank-and-file nonsupervisory worker, and an assumption of 52 weeks of work per year ($21.04 per hour x 33.7 hours per week x 52 weeks ≈ $36,875).

Here’s an important statistical issue: Every year the AFL-CIO does an apples-to-oranges comparison of: a) total CEO compensation for only 500 CEOs working full-time to b) the cash wages only for 99 million rank-and-file workers, who work less than 35 hours per week on average, and are therefore mostly part-time workers.

But you would never know that from the AFL-CIO’s website because the details of average worker pay are never really explained, and I guess nobody has ever bothered to check and find out that the AFL-CIO is using average annual worker pay for mostly part-time employees who only work 33.7 hours per week on average.

Questions: a) How would the AFL-CIO’s CEO-to-worker pay ratio change if we calculate average worker pay for full-time workers, b) how would the ratio change if we compare the average pay for a rank-and-file workers who work the same number of hours that a typical CEO works, e.g. 45, 50 or 60 hours per week, and c) how would the ratio change if we compare total compensation of both CEOs and rank-and-file workers working full-time?

The chart above summarizes how the CEO-to-worker pay ratio would change, here are the details:

a. Assuming a 40-hour workweek for a rank-and-file worker at an hourly wage $21.04 and average annual pay of $43,763, we would get a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 283-to-1.

b. Assuming a 45-hour workweek for rank-and-file workers at an hourly wage $21.04 (and 5 weekly hours of overtime at $31.56 an hour) and average annual pay of $51,969, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio would be 239-to-1.

c. Assuming a 50-hour workweek for rank-and-file workers at an hourly wage $21.04 (and 10 weekly hours of overtime at $31.56 an hour) and average annual pay of $60,174, we would get aCEO-to-worker pay ratio of 206-to-1.

d. Assuming a 60-hour workweek for rank-and-file workers at an hourly wage $21.04 (and 20 weekly hours of overtime at $31.56 an hour) and average annual pay of $76,585, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio would be 162-to-1 (or less than half of the AFL-CIO’s reported ratio of 335-to-1).

e. Assuming a 40-hour workweek for full-time rank-and-file workers at $21.04 an hour, and adding the monetary value of employer-provided benefits of $9.59 per hour (based on the 45.6% average that benefits represent as a share of hourly earnings according to the BLS), and total compensation of $63,719, we would get a CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 195-to-1.

If we further considered a 50 or 60 hour workweek and fringe benefits for rank-and-file workers for an even more accurate apples-to-apples comparison, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio starts approaching 100-to-1, which is a far cry from the AFL-CIO’s 335-to-1 ratio that will be generating sensationalized media coverage in the coming weeks.

Confiscation and Redistribution of CEO Pay

And what’s the whole point of the AFL-CIO’s annual reports on CEO-to-worker pay ratio? The sub-title of the AFL-CIO’s 2015 Executive Paywatch websitepretty much sums it up: “High paid CEOs and the low wage economy.” The AFL-CIO’s message seems to be that if CEOs weren’t being so generously over-compensated then the rank-and-file workers would be doing much better and making higher wages. For example, according to the AFL-CIO in 2014:

America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, a country where hard work and playing by the rules would provide working families a middle-class standard of living. But in recent decades, corporate CEOs have been taking a greater share of the economic pie while workers’ wages have stagnated.

The AFL-CIO has fallen here for the zero-sum, fixed pie fallacy, one of the most common economic mistakes that falsely assumes that one party can gain only at the expense of another. But let’s assume that there is a “fixed pie of wages” and do some confiscation and redistribution of CEO compensation to see how that would affect average rank-and-file worker pay.

Question: If the CEOs of the S&P 500 companies received $12.4 million on average last year, then as a group, those 500 CEOs received about $6.20 billion in total compensation in 2015. If the AFL-CIO could wave a magic wand and confiscate that entire amount and redistribute $6.20 billion to the current 99 million rank-and-file workers, what would each one get?

Answer: An annual increase in pay of about $63 for each rank-and-file worker before taxes, or about $1.20 more per week, or 3.5 cents per hour. In other words, complete confiscation and redistribution of S&P 500 CEO compensation would make almost no difference for the average rank-and-file worker.

Bottom Line

The AFL-CIO can only get a distorted and inflated CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 335-to-1 with an apples-to-oranges analysis that compares the total annual compensation of a small, select group of CEOs heading America’s largest multi-national corporations, who probably typically work 50-60 hours per week or more, to the average annual cash wages of part-time rank-and-file employees who work less 34 hours per week on average.

Once we make a more statistically valid apples-to-apples comparison, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio falls in half from the AFL-CIO’s 335-to-1 ratio to only 162-to-1 if we assume a 60-hour work week for the average worker (to be comparable to the workweek of an average CEO), and the ratio falls to less than 200-to-1 once we consider total compensation for both CEOs and full-time rank-and-file workers. Further, even if we could confiscate 100% of the compensation of all S&P 500 CEOs, the typical rank-and-file worker would probably get less than $1 per week in after-tax earnings. Big deal.

Just like last year, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio reported by the AFL-CIO gets my annual “Biggest Blindly Accepted Statistical Fairy Tale of the Year Award.” Well no, it’s actually a tie with the gender wage gap myth and the incessantly repeated “77 cents on the dollar” statistical falsehood. What’s disappointing is that much of the mainstream media seem to blindly accept both of these statistical falsehoods without ever challenging the “statistical legerdemain” that are used to produce and perpetuate these statistical myths.

One exception was this excellent article last year by IBD’s John Merline (“Do CEOs Make 300 Times What Workers Get? Not Even Close“) who concluded:

What’s not understandable is why the mainstream press keeps repeating the massively inflated 300-to-1 number without noting the statistical legerdemain that produced it.

This article is reprinted with the permission of the American Enterprise Institute.

COLUMN BY

Mark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

Kindergartner Suspended for Princess Bubble Gun

May 28, 2016/in Education, Gun Rights, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by NRA Institute for Legislative Action

Early last week, school officials at Southeast Elementary in Brighton, Colo. suspended a 5-year-old kindergartner for bringing a “fake weapon” to school. Illustrating the fanatical manner in which school weapons policies are enforced throughout the country, the “weapon” in question was a battery-powered clear plastic gun that blows bubbles when the trigger is pulled. The item’s clear plastic construction may not have been enough for the administrators to distinguish it from an actual weapon, but if the zealots had been in less of a fervor to punish the young student they might have noticed the portrait of two Disney princesses on the toy.

In an interview with Denver’s KDVR, the young girl’s mother made clear that she was upset with how her daughter had been treated, telling a reporter, “If they had contacted me and said can you make sure this doesn’t happen again, we just want you to be aware, I think that would have been a more appropriate way to handle the situation. Could we have a warning? It blows bubbles.”

Princess Bubble Gun

Despite attention from the local media, Southeast Elementary officials issued the following statement defending their actions:

While we hear and understand the parents of this student being concerned about this discipline in light of the student’s age and type of item, this suspension is consistent with our district policy as well as how Southeast has handled similar situations throughout this school year. This has involved similar situations where students have brought items such as Nerf guns to school and also received one-day suspensions. The bringing of weapons, real or facsimile, to our schools by students can not only create a potential safety concern but also cause a distraction for our students in the learning process. Our schools, particularly Southeast because of past instances with students bringing fake weapons to school, make a point of asking parents to be partners in making sure students are not bringing these items to school. This includes asking parents to check backpacks.

Note the word “facsimile.” The Southeast Elementary Student Code of Conduct cites a school district weapons policy that states:

Carrying, using, actively displaying or threatening with the use of a firearm facsimile that could reasonably be mistaken for an actual firearm on district property, when being transported in vehicles dispatched by the district or one of its schools, during a school sponsored or district-sponsored activity or event, and off school property when such conduct has a reasonable connection to school or any district curricular or non-curricular event without the authorization of the school or school district is prohibited. Students who violate this policy provision may be subject to disciplinary action including but not limited to suspension and/or expulsion.

Facsimile typically connotes an exact copy, however, the policy does broaden the definition to allow for punishment if a student brings an item that “could reasonably be mistaken for a firearm.” It is hard to imagine how any reasonable person could mistake a clear, Disney-branded bubble toy for an actual firearm. But, here lies the problem, this kindergartner was clearly not interacting with reasonable individuals. Worse, the school’s response reveals that this type of unreasonable behavior is standard procedure for the school’s administrators.

Incidents like this are why NRA has supported legislation in some states to protect children and parents from the abuse of weapons policies by overzealous school officials. In Florida, NRA helped enact the “Right to be a Kid” Act, also known as the “Pop Tart” bill – referring to a well-publicized incident where a student was disciplined for chewing a breakfast pastry into the shape of a firearm. This law targets some of the worst abuses, by making clear that “Simulating a firearm or weapon while playing or wearing clothing or accessories that depict a firearm or weapon or express an opinion regarding a right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is not grounds for disciplinary action or referral to the criminal justice or juvenile justice system.”

Given an apparent pattern of weapons policy abuse by Southeast Elementary school administrators, Colorado lawmakers would be wise to better define how school officials deal with innocuous toys and other harmless items and behavior. Such harmful encounters with school officials can have a lasting negative effect on students. As the mother in this this case explained to a reporter, “What bugs me is this is going to be something they can refer to if we have any issues in the future which I don’t foresee, but it’s always going to be lingering there in her school file.”

Katie Couric is an Anti-Gun Fraud and Hypocrite

May 28, 2016/in Gun Rights, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by NRA Institute for Legislative Action

Google-search “Katie Couric, gun control, edited” and you’ll see what we’re talking about. Actually, you’ll see what most news organizations are talking about.

Fox News: Katie Couric slammed for ‘deceptive’ documentary about gun rights

Washington Post: Audiotape: Katie Couric documentary falsely depicts gun supporters as “idiots”

New York Times: Audio of Katie Couric Interview Shows Editing Slant in Gun Documentary, Site Claims

Reason: Katie Couric Anti-Gun Doc Deceptively Edited to Suggest Gun Rights Activists Don’t Have Answers

The Blaze: Katie Couric Documentary Accused of Deceptively Editing Gun Rights Activists—Here’s the Evidence

Washington Free Beacon: Audio Shows Katie Couric Documentary Deceptively Edited Interview with Pro-Gun Activists

Daily Caller: Katie Couric Edited Gun Documentary to Silence Pro-Gun Opinions

The articles’ titles pretty much tell the story, but the details go something like this: Couric has produced a documentary promoting gun control. Lest there be any confusion on that point, the documentary’s website says that its partners include Everytown, Moms Demand Action, the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and other anti-gun groups. And it urges people to “Reject the NRA” and to contact lawmakers, urging them to support background check legislation and other gun control efforts.

In the documentary, Couric interviews members of a local, Virginia-based pro-Second Amendment group. She asks them why they don’t support “universal” background check legislation. What is shown on camera thereafter is the interviewees sitting speechless for a full nine seconds, after which time the video cuts away, as if they never figured out an answer and the cameraman gave up and turned the camera off. The implication? Couric had proven once and for all that gun control opponents are incapable of producing a single argument against gun control.

But an audio-only tape of the interview, available here, proves that several of those being interviewed answered Couric immediately and at considerable length. Couric’s team simply deleted their answers, and inserted the “speechless” video footage in their place.

The articles linked above make clear that Couric and her director, Stephanie Soechtig, set out not to “document” anything, but to persuade viewers to adopt their anti-gun views. All of this reminds us that Couric is the same political activist that she has always been, first as a “journalist” that would bend the truth to propagandize audiences, and now as a “filmmaker” that will do the same.

According to CNN, Couric says she is “very proud of the film.” Her hubris notwithstanding, it remains to be seen if Couric’s legacy is forever tainted – as it should be – from her attempt to mislead the American public into believing a false narrative on gun control.

Arms for Adversarial Nations but Not Us

May 28, 2016/in National Security, Policy, Politics/by Ron Edwards

President Obama Barack Hussein Obama has wiped out a multi decade ban on selling arms to Vietnam. Part of his reasoning for lifting the ban has been his effort to place Vietnam at the center of his crappy foreign policy legacy. Mr. Obama announced that he has vowed to leave behind the troubled history between the former war adversaries and embrace a new era with increasingly prosperous nation.

Of course as is his custom with all brutal dictator nations, Muslim terrorists and others, Obama steered clear of correct condemnation of what observers see as Vietnam’s horrendous treatment of those who may disagree with government cruelties. Instead, the president praised Vietnam’s meager progress on rights in the one party state. Some rights activists have declared that his decision to lift the embargo destroyed the best United States leverage for pushing Vietnam toward correcting her abusive ways.

Believe it or not, Obama had another motivation to lift the arms embargo against Vietnam. The president’s move to allow Vietnam to arm herself is the latest in his usually meager efforts to counter China’s growing influence in Asia and elsewhere. Obama’s mission to strengthen ties with a Chinese neighbor was most assuredly eyed with suspicion in Beijing. The leaders in China have consistently bristled against U.S. engagement in the region and have boldly warned against taking sides in the heated territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

I find the Chinese demand rather rich, considering the fact they are fully engaged in activities at numerous locations within the Western Hemisphere. China controls the Panama Canal. China is buying up so much real estate in Vancouver, British Columbia that overall real estate prices are through the roof. Chinese submarines are consistently plying the waters, just off the western coast of the United States. China has also displaced the U.S. as the primary naval presence in the Fiji island area. Oftentimes it is gleefully stated by U.S. detractors that America lost the Vietnam conflict.

However, 57,000 American soldiers lost their lives in that epic battle, while over two million Vietnam fighters and others lost their lives at the hands of American military might. In fact I will venture to say that on the battle field, the U.S. was cleaning Vietnam’s clock rather severely. That is until, dumb, or unscrupulous American government officials agreed to join Hanoi negotiators at the Paris peace talks, where the U.S. was convinced to place our military at a disadvantage through horrendous rules of engagement that basically stopped our military from fighting to win.

I find it ironic that Barack Hussein Obama is lifting the arms embargo against Vietnam so she can defend herself. Yet at the same time he thinks “We the People” of the United States are going to sit by and allow him to disarm our own military and abolish the second amendment. Oops, He’s already dismantled America’s military prowess.

How Obama can say with a straight face that his little limp wristed plan to allow Vietnam to arm up can be a deterrent to China is not only stupid, but potentially dangerous for the United States. Obama’s systematic dismantling of the U.S. military has rendered the American military threat to our enemies, including China to be non-existent.

Obama is on a mad man 24/7 mission to continue disarming the U.S. military and to usurp the Second Amendment that recognizes our right of self-protection. Let us pretend for the time it takes you to read this that Vietnamese government officials actually like America and the two nations are now buddy buddy. Actually, so what because thanks but no thanks because if China decided to start a military battle with America, our military (thanks but no thanks) to Obama is in no shape to take on a massive Chinese challenge.

Our once vaunted Air Force is so decimated due to the cutback efforts of the imam in the White House. Now to keep aircraft in the skies, mechanics have been forced to scavenge parts from jets that are on display in museums. That is so third world and so far below the legacy of our great republic. It cannot be denied, that President Obama poses a clear and present danger to both America and world stability. He is more interested in arming a communist nation than seeing to it that our republic’s number one and technically only ally in the Middle East, Israel is armed and safe from bigoted daily Muslim missile attacks.

The White House occupier wants to take your guns if you have any or prevent you from purchasing weapons you may need for protection from street cretins or government tyranny. But he has no problem seeing to it that communist dictators can rearm. I guess he prefers armed communist regimes over a polite society of legally armed sovereign Americans.

Please refer to 2nd Chronicles 7:14 in your Bible act accordingly. It will go a long way toward rescuing and restoring America the beautiful to greatness. God Bless America and may America Bless God.

Democratic Congressman Admits the Islamic State is ‘Islamic’

May 28, 2016/in Featured, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

Over at PJ Media, I discuss some recent strange remarks from Rep. Brad Sherman:

It’s absolutely unprecedented: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) has become the first notable member of the Democratic Party to depart from the Obama administration’s official line and admit the obvious. Sherman has admitted that the Islamic State — ISIS, or ISIL, as Barack Obama insists on calling it — is in fact Islamic, and that its appeal among Muslims is rooted in its claims to be the quintessential expression of Islam.

Sherman did not say this directly, of course. But his quote nails it — the implication is clear, rational, and unmistakable. Said Sherman:

We have a State Department with people who think that you can show the evil of al-Baghdadi if you can show him personally executing a defenseless Yazidi.We need people who understand that if you can just get a picture of him eating a ham sandwich, that would undermine ISIS and its recruiting ability.

The State Department persists in working under the assumption that the people who are candidates to join the Islamic State will be turned off by its brutality. This is based on the further assumption that the potential ISIS recruits share the values and perspectives of contemporary non-Muslim Westerners.

State Department wonks can’t seem to conceive of the notion that anyone might nothold those values. Worse, they are bound as a matter of policy not to consider Islam in evaluating Islamic State recruitment. They cannot consider the possibility that a young man who reads that his god wants him to kill or subjugate unbelievers (cf. Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 9:5, 9:29, etc. for starters) might be attracted rather than repelled by the sight of the caliph “personally executing a defenseless Yazidi.”

Sherman is not correct about his next assertion, however. Would a photo of al-Baghdadi eating a ham sandwich really undermine the Islamic State?

Sherman’s reasoning appears to be that such a violation would classify al-Baghdadi as not worthy to be the emir al-momineen, the leader of the believers. Sherman is to be commended for saying analysts dealing with the Islamic State should study Islam — a refreshing departure from the prevailing denial and willful ignorance — but he also reveals that he doesn’t know much about Islamic jurisprudence himself.

One hadith depicts Muhammad saying:

You should listen to and obey your Imam (Muslim ruler) even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin.” (Bukhari 9.93.7142)

Muhammad is attempting to give what he thinks is an outlandish example in order to make his point that Muslims should obey the ruler even in extreme circumstances. Those circumstances include even if the ruler is sinful.

Another hadith depicts Muhammad saying:

There will be leaders who will not be led by my guidance and who will not adopt my ways. There will be among them men who will have the hearts of devils in the bodies of human beings. … You will listen to Amir and carry out his orders; even if your back is flogged and your wealth is snatched, you should listen and obey.

Is there ever a circumstance in which Muslims should not obey the ruler? Yes — only when he commands something sinful.

In another hadith, Muhammad says:

It is obligatory upon a Muslim that he should listen (to the ruler appointed over him) and obey him whether he likes it or not, except that he is ordered to do a sinful thing. If he is ordered to do a sinful act, a Muslim should neither listen to him nor should he obey his orders.

If al-Baghdadi was seen eating a ham sandwich? That wouldn’t do the trick.

But if al-Baghdadi was seen forcing another Muslim to eat a ham sandwich, that just might.

In his comments, Sherman also remarked:

We need State Department people to [have] an understanding of Islamic jurisprudence. That’s not the kind of knowledge that you can get at Princeton. Woodrow Wilson did a great job. He did not memorize the Koran.

What he means by dragging Woodrow Wilson into this is unclear, but Sherman is spot-on in declaring the obvious: if State Department analysts hope to have any chance of defeating the Islamic State and other jihad groups, then — at a minimum — a good knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence should be a prerequisite for the job.

Of course, no one at State is going to heed Sherman’s advice….

Read the rest here.

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Nora Patterson former Democrat and Planned Parenthood Board Member running for Florida Senate

May 28, 2016/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

nora patterson at opening of pp facility in sarasota

Nora Patterson (sixth from the left) at ribbon cutting of largest Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Florida, located in the City of Sarasota.

Career politician Nora Patterson has filed to run for the Florida Senate in District 23. Patterson will be running against Florida State Representatives Ray Pilon and Greg Steube and former Florida State Representative Doug Holder in the Republican primary in Sarasota County, Florida.

Patterson is a long time supporter and former President of the Board of Directors of the largest Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Florida, located in Rosemary District, a minority area in North Sarasota County.

In 1998, when running for the Sarasota City Commission, Rod Thompson from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Patterson “has served as president of the board of directors for Planned Parenthood of Southwest Florida” … and she is “very much a supporter of Planned Parenthood.”

John and Nora Patterson at the March 2013 Planned Parenthood annual dinner. Source: Gulfshore Media, LLC.

In June, 2006 Patterson, with her husband John who is a partner with Shutt & Bowen, LLP law firm, attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. Sarasota Magazine reported on the Ruby Gala and wrote:

At the Ruby gala, big names were everywhere: Cornelia Matson in regal purple, Lee Peterson, Nancy Reinheimer, Betty Schoenbaum, Anita Holec, Caren Lobo, Flori Roberts,Leila Gompertz-too many to name. And husbands galore! Many politicos-Mayor Mary Ann Servian, former Mayor Mollie Cardamone, Commissioner Ken Shelin, School Board members John Lewis and Carol Todd, County Commissioner Nora Patterson and Betty Castor. Alex Sink, and other candidates for office were also there.

In 2007 Sarasota County voted for an $8 million bond to help fund a new Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.

While a Sarasota County Commissioner Patterson was the only one to vote to continue using county taxes to fund Planned Parenthood. Steven Ertlet from LifeNews.com in 2008 reported:

Sarasota County in Florida has cut the money it sends to a local Planned Parenthood abortion business. Officials, citing poor economic conditions and the need to better balance the city budget, removed the second $12,500 of the original $25,000 allocated for Planned Parenthood family planning programs.

[ … ]

Nora Patterson was the only member of the commission to vote to retain the Planned Parenthood funding. The county gave the abortion center a $30,000 grant in 2007 and $28,000 in 2006.

Zac Anderson from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports, “Patterson is viewed as a moderate on a number of issues. She is a former Democrat who supports abortion rights ‘up to a certain point in the pregnancy’ and once served as president of the board of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Florida, although she noted her board stint was before the local affiliate performed abortions.” [Emphasis added]

Patterson’s efforts to distance herself from Planned Parenthood is misrepresenting the fact that she has consistently supported abortions, and the funding thereof, using Sarasota tax dollars ever since she left as President of Southwest Florida Planned Parenthood.

Stephanie Armour from the Wall Street Journal reports:

Three Planned Parenthood Federation of America clinics in Florida were ordered to stop performing second-trimester abortions after an investigation found they didn’t have the proper licenses, the state Agency for Health Care Administration said Wednesday.

The investigation also found one clinic that wasn’t keeping proper logs relating to fetal remains, according to the agency. The state may take additional actions, including administrative sanctions, against the clinics.

“Licenses are in place to protect the patient from unscrupulous operators and the state of Florida will ensure every facility is held accountable for its actions,” the agency said in a news release.

[ … ]

Florida Gov. Rick Scott last month ordered an investigation of Planned Parenthood clinics in the state following an antiabortion group’s release of undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the procurement of fetal tissue for research following abortions.

Perhaps Sarasota County voters should judge Nora Patterson on the company she keeps? That company being Planned Parenthood, and the industrial complex that makes a profit off of baby body parts.

Nora Patterson has been a loyal soldier in the war against the innocent and unborn.

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