Author Archives: SkOw4Liberty

05.02.13
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CBS Seattle: Teachers Shocked, Frightened After School Holds Unplanned Shooting Drill

Teachers were shocked and caught off guard when an Oregon school held a school shooting drill.

The Oregonian reports Pine Eagle Charter School in Halfway held the drill last Friday as children were home for an in-service day. Two masked “gunmen” burst into a meeting room holding 15 teachers firing blanks. Teachers only realized it wasn’t a real shooting when none of them were bleeding.

“There was some commotion,” school principal Cammie DeCastro told The Oregonian.

Teachers were frightened about what happened.

“I’ll tell you, the whole situation was horrible,” Morgan Gover told the paper. “I got a couple in the front and a couple in the back.”

The school held the unplanned drill in hopes to better educate teachers on how to deal with a school shooting. Of the 15 teachers in the room, only two would have survived.

“I’m in charge of a pile of kids,” Gover told The Oregonian. “It made me analyze as a teacher what my role is for these babies.”

The drill has been criticized but the school has dismissed the criticism.

“For us not to know how we were going to respond is leaving us open,” DeCastro told The Oregonian.

DeCastro added that arming teachers or having armed volunteers at the school are possible outcomes for the future.

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Click below for the full article.

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/05/02/teachers-shocked-frightened-after-school-holds-unplanned-shooting-drill/

05.02.13
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Disinfo: Out of All Drugs Legal And Illegal, Which Ones Kill?

drug_overdose

If we were to have a sane and adult conversation about drug use and abuse in America instead of waging a war on drugs the same way we wage a war on terror, we might come to the realization that  we’re letting the bad ones in our homes freely while some of the most helpful to improving the quality of life of the average person carry some of the highest minimum prison sentences of all, while touting an infinitesimal number of related deaths.  Some of you may have read Thad McKracken’s well thought out article on the state of drugs in society today.  The numbers fall in lockstep with his thoughts.

It turns out that, aside from Alcohol, Big Pharma is the #1 killer  while drugs that have been used traditionally as entheogens hardly appear in the statistics at all.  Drugs like LSD, DMT, Marajuana, Peyote and other psychedelics are used as a religious sacrament in many belief systems around the world, but are vilified because of their tendency to provide people with what Terence McKenna simply called ‘funny ideas’.

Popsci.com reports:

In 2010, there were 80,000 drug and alcohol overdose deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database. The database, maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics, keeps a tally of all the deaths listed on certificates nationwide. They’re classified by the ICD-10 medical coding reference system.

Death reporting in the U.S. requires an underlying cause—the event or disease that lead to the death. This chart represents all those listed in the CDC database as “accidental poisoning,” “intentional self-poisoning,” “assault by drugs,” and “poisoning with undetermined intent.” In addition to the underlying cause, a death certificate has space for up to 20 additional causes. That’s where “cocaine” or “antidepressants” would show up. The subcategories are limited in their detail—many drugs are lumped together, like MDMA and caffeine, which are listed together as “psychostimulants.” And about a quarter of all overdose death certificates don’t have the toxicity test results listed at all, landing them in the “unspecified” stripe.

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Click below to access the article on disinformation.

http://disinfo.com/2013/04/out-of-all-drugs-legal-and-illegal-which-ones-kill/#sthash.YcXRCkak.HNN1sB0a.dpbs

05.02.13
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FOX NY: 30 arrested in NY during rally against drones

Thirty people protesting against unmanned aerial drones outside Hancock Field  Air Force National Guard Base have been arrested.

The Post-Standard  reports that the arrests Sunday came after a series of rallies and  workshops held in Syracuse over the weekend by the Upstate Coalition to Ground  the Drones and End the Wars.

A group of people lying on the base’s driveway were arrested. Charges include  disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration and loitering. About  250 people had marched to the gates, some pounding drums and chanting.

The base is home to the 174th Attack Wing of the New York Air National Guard,  which operates unmanned, armed drones. They are used for intelligence gathering  and bombing ground targets.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.myfoxny.com/story/22104555/30-arrested-in-ny-during-rally-against-drones

05.01.13
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Reuters: Fed holds steady on stimulus, worried by fiscal drag

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Ben Bernanke attends the Treasury Department's Financial Stability Oversight Council in Washington April 25, 2013. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Wednesday it will continue buying $85 billion in bonds each month to keep interest rates low and spur growth, and added it would step up purchases if needed to protect the economy.

Expressing concern about a drag from Washington’s belt-tightening, the Fed described the economy as expanding moderately in a statement that largely mirrored its last policy announcement in March. Fed officials cited continued improvement in labor market conditions and did not change their description of inflation, saying it should remain at or below the central bank’s 2 percent target.

But policymakers reiterated that unemployment is still too high and restated their intention to keep buying assets until the outlook for jobs improves substantially.

“Fiscal policy is restraining economic growth,” the U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee said in its policy statement at the close of its two-day meeting. “The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation.”

Some economists were surprised that the statement did not contain a clearer acknowledgement of a recent weakening in the economic numbers.

Until recently, analysts had expected the Fed to buy a total of $1 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities during its ongoing third round of quantitative easing, known as QE3, with expectations the Fed would start to take its foot off the accelerator in the second half of this year.

Now, things are looking a bit more shaky.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/01/us-usa-fed-idUSBRE94003X20130501

05.01.13
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The Week: Why I could never be a liberal

Decisions, decisions...

For years now, I’ve been urging conservatives to embrace immigration reform.

It sometimes feels like an uphill battle. Increasingly, bloggers, pundits, and talk radio hosts are decrying the “Gang of Ocho’s” attempt at “Shamnesty.” Killing this effort could permanently solidify the Democratic Party’s lock on Hispanic voters, and potentially render the GOP irrelevant.

What is more, a crushing defeat could also sink the presidential prospects of Sen. Marco Rubio, arguably the most eloquent and visionary communicator since Reagan.

But though my friends on the activist Right may sometimes drive me nuts, I’ve never ever entertained the thought of going over to the dark side of the Left. David Brock might have garnered a lot of attention and publicity by switching sides, but for me, the Left is never an option.

This isn’t just because I believe conservatism will lead to a more prosperous and virtuous society, but also because — in the unlikely event either side were to obtain carte blanche authority — the Left scares me more than the Right.

There’s no shortage of examples. Melissa Harris-Perry, for instance, recently revealed a terrifying tenet of the Left, which says our children belong to the collective, not to parents or families. As I wrote, this sentiment was so feared by George Orwell that he included it in both 1984 and Animal Farm. I should have also mentioned Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Look at extremists abroad: From Stalin to Castro to Chavez, some on the Left have consistently displayed not just a tolerance for heavy-handed authoritarian regimes (as the Right has admittedly sometimes also done) but also an admiration of them.

In recent weeks, some on the Left have mourned the death of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, even while cheering the death of Britain’s Margaret Thatcher. And a similar sentiment was on full display when Jay-Z and Beyonce, perhaps naively, enjoyed Cuban hospitality — without noticing the dissidents or the gulags they conveniently avoided on their vacation.

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Unfortunately for the author the Establishment GOP of today isn’t any better.  Click below for the full article.

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/242780/why-i-could-never-be-a-liberal

05.01.13
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Motley Fool: GM Still Taking Taxpayers for a Ride

Last September when Reuters calculated that General Motors  (NYSE: GM  )  was losing almost $50,000 on every Chevy Volt it sold the carmaker was apoplectic with indignation at the “grossly wrong” numbers being thrown around. Sure they were losing money, every new technological advance does, but as they built more cars and then released Volt 2.0 they would become profitable.

Well, GM has certainly built more Volts over the last six months or so and they’ve even sold a few more, too, but then so has Tesla Motors  (NASDAQ: TSLA  )  and Nissan  (NASDAQOTH: NSANY  ) . In fact Tesla sold more of its all-electric Model S cars in the first quarter of the year than GM did with its Volt, and Nissan turned itself around enough so that its LEAF outsold the Volt in March.

We’ll get the April sales numbers in a day or so to see if any traction has been made as spring has gotten under way, and if GM was able to recover from March sales plunging 35%. One thing hasn’t changed month to month and that is that the Volt is still a money-losing proposition for GM and for the taxpayers who bailed it out.

In a presentation yesterday, CEO Dan Akerson admitted GM is still losing money on every Volt sold and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. So what’s the solution? Not to admit defeat, that’s for sure, at least certainly not when the taxpayer is still nominally footing the bill for your company. Nope, what you do is double down and say you’re going to make even more of your money-losing cars than you did before and you’re going to make them even cheaper than they are now!

Akerson didn’t say how much GM was losing on each Volt, but he did say that if it ever hoped to make a profit on them the carmaker would need to cut as much as $10,000 from the cost of production. That, however, won’t be happening until the next-gen model is introduced, which won’t be until 2015 or 2016 at the earliest.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/05/01/gm-still-taking-taxpayers-for-a-ride.aspx

04.30.13
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The Week: Conservatives must end their incoherence on counter-terrorism

What do we stand for? It’s not easy to pin down, and that’s a major problem.

In politics, effective leadership requires more than passionate words. You also have to strategize toward an achievable end game. And you must communicate that plan and those goals to your constituents.

Nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than with counter-terrorism policy in America today. Nowhere is true leadership more greatly missed.

In the Bush years, America’s counter-terrorism strategy was driven by unapologetic strategic purpose — deterring state adversaries and defeating international terrorists. This was a worldview with a vision — more freedom would equal more peace. Whether you agreed with him or not, we all knew where George W. Bush stood with it came to fighting terrorists.

Today’s conservatives have failed to offer such a compelling and clear vision on counter-terrorism.

We can’t agree on the threat and how to handle it. We can’t agree on our objectives, and how to achieve them. What do we stand for? It’s not easy to pin down, and that’s a major problem.

Listening to some conservative politicians, you’d consider the Islamist terrorist threat as unitary in nature. But this understanding is neglectful of undeniable facts — the fact, for example, that Shia and Sunni extremists hate each other almost as much as they hate us. It’s not simply us vs. them. There are many thems, and sometimes, it’s them vs. them.

We conservatives have also allowed our counter-terrorism discourse to be tarred by sociopaths like Pamela Geller; deluded souls who see all Muslims as a threat. We have to be smarter and better than this.

We also need to get away from the common conservative belief that regards engagement with the Islamic world as unnecessary. The reverse is true. If we conservatives are silent, Muslims around the world hear only one voice from America — that of President Obama. And let’s face it — his message, even if it’s well-intentioned — is essentially one of equivocation. It breeds the false idea of an America without courage of conviction. An America unworthy of friendship and unworthy of respect.

It needn’t be this way.

Many commentators, especially on the left, believe that America is hated abroad because of our supposedly ill-conceived actions. In reality, though, we’re hated based on the false perception of some nefarious motive behind our actions. This is a critical distinction. We’re hated because instead of articulating why we support Israel, we just support Israel. We’re hated because instead of explaining why Guantanamo Bay must remain open, we just keep it open. We’re hated because we wage wars of liberation and then quietly wish for authoritarians. We constantly fail to justify our actions — even when clear justifications exist.

Conservatives need to step in and remedy this. Defending America doesn’t just require arms. It also requires explanation.

The urgency is profound. But first, we conservatives must get on the same page. And we must get serious.

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Click below to read Tom Rogan’s article on The Week’s website.

http://theweek.com/article/index/243443/conservatives-must-end-their-incoherence-on-counter-terrorism

04.30.13
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Yahoo News: Lower tuition for immigrants becomes law in Colorado;

A Bill granting in-state tuition for students illegally in the US signed into law in Colorado.

Immigrant students will pay significantly less in tuition at Colorado colleges under legislation signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday.

Hundreds cheered as the Democratic governor ratified legislation that was first proposed a decade ago but regularly rejected under less favorable circumstances for people in the U.S. illegally.

“Holy smokes, are you guys fired up?” he asked the loud, spirited crowd at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. “Yeah, I thought so.”

Colorado becomes the fourteenth state to allow immigrants who graduate from state high schools to attend colleges at the tuition rate other in-state students pay, rather than a higher rate paid by out-of-state students.

This month, a similar proposal was signed into law in Oregon. Texas was the first pass such a measure in June 2001.

Among those in attendance at the signing ceremony was Val Vigil, a former lawmaker who first introduced the bill in 2003 when only a few states had passed it. At the time, only two people signed up to testify in favor of the bill in committee, he recalled, and more than 20 people showed up to oppose it.

When the plan was discussed in 2008, immigrant students who signed up to testify in favor had their names turned over to federal immigration authorities by opponents of the bill.

When the bill was heard in the House Education Committee in February, no opponents signed up to testify.

“It took 10 years of coalition building,” Vigil said.

The new law grants in-state tuition for Colorado high school graduates regardless of their immigration status. To qualify, students must also sign an affidavit saying they are seeking, or will seek, legal status in the U.S.

The out-of-state rate immigrants in Colorado had been required to pay is sometimes more than three times higher than the in-state rate.

“Every kid matters,” Hickenlooper said. “We need every child that we can get to be as educated as they are capable.”

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Click below for the full article.

http://news.yahoo.com/lower-tuition-immigrants-becomes-law-152911238.html

04.30.13
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The Week: Why Ron Paul is slamming Boston’s response to the bombings

Ron Paul isn't a fan of the "surveillance state."

Criticizing the Boston Police Department, which has been hailed for capturing Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, isn’t exactly a PC move. Here, however, is former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) on libertarian Lew Rockwell’s site:

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself. [LewRockwell.com]

He goes on to criticize our modern “surveillance state,” and argues that “we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties.”

While Paul appears to be alone in equating the reaction to the bombings with the bombings themselves, plenty of commentators from across the political spectrum have voiced objections to how law enforcement shut down the city of Boston. Comedian Bill Maher warned of a creeping “police state” on his show a few days ago, according to Politico.

And others have said the government is prone to overreaction any time terrorism is involved. “Whenever the word ‘terrorist’ is mentioned in this country, reason tends to go out the window, and many other things go with it, too, such as intellectual consistency, a respect for civil liberties, and a sense of proportion,” wrote John Cassidy a couple of weeks ago at The New Yorker.

Ross Douthat at The New York Times argues that such reactions could set a worrisome precedent if terrorist attacks become more common:

Because the Marathon bombing was such an unusual event, the city of Boston could muster a sweeping, almost crazy-seeming response without worrying that it would find itself having to do exactly the same thing six months later. But if such attacks started happening more frequently, as they obviously very well could, then last Friday’s precedent would put public officials across the country in an extremely uncomfortable bind: Repeatedly reproducing the lockdown might seem like a non-starter, yet not matching what Boston did would open you up to all kinds of scapegoating if, say, an on-the-loose bomber struck again.

Last week, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) defended the city’s response, telling The Boston Globe, “I think we did what we should have done and were supposed to do with the always-imperfect information that you have at the time.”

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Click below to read the article on The Week’s website.

http://theweek.com/article/index/243435/why-ron-paul-is-slamming-bostons-response-to-the-bombings

 

04.29.13
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Army says no to more tanks, but Congress insists

<p> FILE - This undated file photo provided by the General Dynamics Land System shows the production of an Abrams tank in Lima, Ohio. Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams, which the Army refers to with a moniker that befits their heft: the M1A2SEPv2. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army, and service officials say they have plenty of them. (AP Photo/General Dynamics Land System, File)

 

Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”

It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located.

If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.

“The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country,” said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.

The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too expensive in order to ensure there’s enough money for essential operations, training and equipment.

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, faces a daunting task in persuading members of Congress to eliminate or scale back projects favored by constituents.

Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army’s position.

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Well it seems that both the Republicans and Democrats still have their stake in the Military Industrial Complex.  Click below for the full article.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/army-says-no-to-more-tanks-but-congress-insists-1.5155180