Blog Archives

August Topics

8/1/2017

I spent a good amount of time this month negating liberal talking points regarding “free” things and getting the money from the Upper 1%. If you have any teenagers or young adults in your family who believes in the world according to Bernie Sanders, please copy and paste what I’ve written into an email message to them, because it will completely shut them down.

I’ve also included information and my opinions on issues such as Capitalism vs. Socialism, North Korea, transgenderism in the military, the impact of Hillary losing the election on women, and the minimum wage being turned into a living wage.

Along with the political issues above, I’ve included articles on: 1) What’s your purpose? 2) The great Rocky Marciano. 3) The King Cobra. 4) An amazing story missing from our history books. 5) Merle Haggard. 6) Captain James Cook. 7) What makes people happy? 8) What are the chances of being murdered in the U.S.? 9) Facts behind Wikipedia.

Thanks again for taking the time to visit my site and I hope you have a fantastic August!

The U.S. Murder Rate

8/1/2017

There are plenty of television shows that show murders taking place every night so I thought I’d provide a little insight into murders in the United States.

First of all, the U.S. averages around 16,000 murders (68% by guns), a year which means your chances at worst are .005% of being killed. Our murder rate (rate = number of murders per 100,000 people), ranks 126th out of 219 countries which is embarrassing considering several middle-eastern countries are safer than here (i.e. Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Even the African country of Sierra Leone has a lower murder rate than us. Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore are all some of the safest places in the world.

You’ve probably heard we are the second worst country when it comes to murder but the high count is due to us having one of the largest populations in the world so it’s misleading and why it’s necessary to use a murder rate (how many murders per 100,000 people ), to have a fair comparison.

In reality we’re in the middle of the pack when it comes to the murder rate in a comparison of countries around the world and we’d be much better off if it weren’t for a couple of things. The U.S. has a large drug trade and many times it’s behind why someone gets killed. Another major problem we have is that many minority communities mostly African American and Hispanic drive up our murder rates substantially. Places like south Chicago and some parts of Los Angeles are like war zones because of drugs and gangs.

African Americans make up around 13% of our demographics but they account for around half the murder victims with 93% of them being killed by other African Americans. The Black Lives Matter movement shouldn’t have been focused on the police as they rarely kill a black person but instead they’re killing each other. The south has the highest concentrations of African Americans and it’s the section of our country with the most murders.

Louisiana by far is the most dangerous place to live while most of the states in the northeast are extremely safe. I don’t know if you go with the thought process that it’s a privilege to be white but the fact is if you’re white and live in a decent neighborhood, there’s an extremely low chance (by my calculations .000048%), that you’d get murdered and in most of these cases it isn’t random violence but someone you know; what the police refer to as domestic violence or a crime of passion.

It’s easy to watch crime dramas and begin believing murder is a common occurrence but it’s not. Many liberals like to use scare tactics over gun ownership but most studies show that 92% of the guns used in murders are not registered to the murderer so unless you hang around people who are in need of an illegal gun, you should be safe. So in other words, sleep tight and don’t let the liberals bite. :)

What is Your Purpose?

8/1/2017

This seems to be a popular question and many people feel bad for not knowing what their purpose is when it’s actually not that hard to figure out. There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to the words “purpose” and “passion.” The fact is, figuring out our various purposes is much easier than figuring out what we’re really passionate about.

Our purpose is our reason for doing things. I think some people get confused about the concept because they think one’s purpose is on a grand scale when for almost everyone it’s not; but it doesn’t mean our purposes aren’t extremely important and rewarding.

Take parenting for example. An effective parent first and foremost must make sure they’re healthy so they can fulfill their purpose of taking care of the mental and physical wellbeing of their children. What’s a parent’s primary reason for working? Parents have to work in order to take care of their children. If it’s a job they enjoy then great but it isn’t always the case. I’m not sure my dad ever had a job that was personally fulfilling but he worked to take care of my three siblings and me. Hopefully he took pride in accomplishing this purpose; I was sure thankful and proud of him.

Although some people might not consider being a parent to be on the grand scale of having a purpose but I think it’s critical because good parents are contributing to the wellbeing of the future of our country even though they may not see it or feel the importance of it that way. When I see someone who’s a parent I’m in awe; I’m way more impressed by this than what occupation he or she might be in.

For most people, their purpose for working isn’t to fulfill a passion they might have. I know a lot of people who are frustrated because they don’t seem to have a passion for anything in particular. I enjoyed my work over the years as I went from one job to the next but it wasn’t until I was 36 that I stumbled into work that I was passionate about and it was marketing analytics.

I found that I loved studying demographics and figuring out how well products would sell in areas around the country. I’d calculate how much product would sell in various stores when it was on display and had a particular price point so that retailers knew how much product to buy. I figured out the best places to put products on the shelf. I used a variety of unique marketing software programs and I became extremely good at using Excel because of all the databases I used and I became a master at Power Point because I was constantly giving presentations.

Some people would say that I found my purpose but I don’t know if this is true. I really enjoyed my work but even with this, at the end of the day no matter how much someone enjoys their work, there’s good days and bad; that’s just how life works. You might not like your job but let’s face it, you do have some good days. If you want to know my purpose for doing the job, it was to get a paycheck so I could take care of my family. The fact is, I loved my job but I wouldn’t do it for free.

I guess that what I’m getting at is don’t get down on yourself for not feeling like you’ve figured out what you consider to be a grand sense of purpose for your life. Your true purpose is quickly found in why you get up in the morning. Do you have to get your kids ready for school? Do you have to get dressed and go to work to earn a paycheck? Do you have to get up to go visit your mother who lives in a nursing home? These are all very important purposes in my book.

We have many purposes for living and in one way or another it’s to serve other people; so let’s set a goal to do it well. We can have a purpose of lifting other people’s spirits versus bringing them down. We can make people laugh and smile. To me, making other people’s lives more enjoyable is a fantastic purpose. The great news is, it’s very doable and not out of reach. Doesn’t helping other people have better lives also make our lives better as well? This is called a win-win.

Young People and Socialism (5 Minutes to Read)

8/1/2017

Around 40% of college students say they identify with Socialists’ views although almost none of them can define what it actually is. Socialism is the political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

They think among other things that college education and healthcare should be “free” and that student debt should be forgiven. What would debt forgiveness do to the financial institutions that provided the use of their money considering there’s around $1 trillion in student loan debt in our country? Do you think it’s even remotely possible to increase taxes enough to pay these financial institutions off? It would be a financial collapse yet some Democrats are using this promise on their campaign trails.

I’ve seen countless interviews of these young people and they regurgitate what they hear from the Democrat Party because when they’re asked how to pay for the “free” stuff they say to take it from the upper 1%; by the way, none of them could answer who the upper 1% were. Nor could a single one of them answer why if the Top 1% of income earners are paying over 50% of the tax revenues, how can they not possibly be paying more than their fair share? The bottom 50% of income earners are paying around 3% of tax revenues does this seem like fair share distribution?

This is extremely important…if we taxed the Upper 1% at 100% of their income it wouldn’t be enough to pay down the student debt in our country which also means there’s no way they could sustain sending kids to college for free. Liberals keep saying the Upper 1% can pay for everything but it’s a lie.

The IRS tax tables are available for anyone to see and I have a link on my laptop to their database. It doesn’t take long to figure out that based on all the “free” stuff liberals are asking for that it would take substantially increasing tax rates on the middle and lower-middle income earners to pay for it. This won’t happen. Democrats know this but continue to push the narrative to gain votes. The greatest problem with this is that they demonize Republicans for not supporting it when it isn’t about not wanting to help young people but knowing we can’t afford to do it.

Why based on some of the liberals’ tax reforms like Bernie Sanders’, would someone be willing to have a salary of $250,000 a year but receive $37,500 after taxes (85% tax rate), when he or she could have a salary of $50,000 and after a tax rate of 15%, make $42,500? It’s ludicrous. I admit I’m shocked that some people actually think this makes sense. It worries me for our country that some people are okay with stealing money from others through rigging an extremely unfair tax system that will only ended up hurting everyone rich and poor.

I realize that some liberals like Bernie Sanders believe that by paying for college we’ll have young people who are more valuable to the marketplace thus making more income and paying more in taxes to cover the “free” college but this isn’t true. As it is now, college graduates are struggling to get jobs. Having more people graduate without having jobs to go to means more money invested by the government without any return. Plus if a college graduate replaces another employee who’s leaving for another company or retiring then the tax revenues aren’t incremental, it’s just one taxpayer taking the place of another. The fact is there’s nothing more important than job growth for an economy because this generates incremental tax revenues.
There’s no way a non-partisan economist could prove that we’d generate enough tax revenues to pay for “free” college. I say non-partisan because both parties pick and choose who’ll do their research and coincidentally the reports always come back in their favor. Even the Congressional Budget Office has a terrible track record in predicting policy impact so the best thing we can do is use our common sense.

There’s also something else to consider about their plan. Does someone not attend college mostly because he or she can’t afford it or is it because they don’t want to go to college for various reasons? There are scholarships galore for African American and Hispanic students yet their high school dropout rates are much higher compared to white students. Would the kids who have a mindset of not finishing high school pursue graduating if they could get a free ride into college? Maybe a few but I think the problem isn’t about the availability of tuition but other factors that are related to culture.

The bottom line is a lot of young people are fighting for free educations because people like Bernie Sanders mislead them into thinking it’s a Constitution right that should be paid for by the greedy, wealthy, and elite. These young people don’t have a clue about what would happen if college was made free and the impact it would have on their lives when it comes to future taxes. They can’t seem to get it through their heads that nothing is free.

I just don’t understand the concept of being able to take more from someone just because he or she has the money. For example, let’s say four people are going to a concert and each ticket costs $100. If one of them makes more money than the others is it right and just to expect or demand that she pitches in more than everyone else for the tickets? No, because it’s unethical. If she volunteers to do it that’s one thing but punishing her for having a higher income job, isn’t right or just.

Why don’t we allow the lower income classes to walk into rich peoples’ homes once a year and take a certain amount of money from them? Cutting out the middleman (IRS), and going directly to the upper class and taking their things seems like it’s more efficient. Or why is it not a problem to take $88 billion dollars from Bill Gates which is what I heard a college student say recently? He’d still have $1 billion left so isn’t that plenty of money to leave him with? Of course if someone tried this he’d get arrested for stealing. So here’s the crazy thing, since it’s illegal for someone to steal directly why is it okay for the IRS to do it?

What this college student doesn’t grasp is that Bill Gates doesn’t leave his money under his mattress, it’s invested. It’s money being used by other businesses to grow their organizations and create jobs. His money going to the Federal Government and having them waste it doesn’t help our economy.

The public sector isn’t a driver of economic growth. It doesn’t create jobs and new industries through innovation. The public sector doesn’t produce trailblazers like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, etc. The bottom line is the public sector doesn’t grow an economy the private sector does. The more money we can keep out of our governments’ hands the better off we’ll be; it’s Economics 101.

The mentality some of the young people have to take from the rich and give it to the poor is because they consider themselves morally superior to their elders. My question is who decides who’s rich? When I was making $15,000 a year I thought people who made $50,000 were rich (it’s relative). Based on their way of thinking I should’ve gotten money from the “rich guy” making $50,000 and then he could get money from the rich folks making more than $100,000. Where are all the lines drawn? This mentality is so wrong.

Why not create a flat tax with no deductibles or write-offs of any kind? If you take 25% of my income compared to 25% from someone who’s a successful lawyer, you’d get more tax revenue from the lawyer. Doesn’t “fair share” mean to pay the same tax rate as me? Most socialists don’t want a flat tax because it’s not actually about a principle of fair share for them it’s about getting more than their fair share and them not wanting a flat tax proves this.

The fact is we’re too poor to be a Socialist country at this point. We’re over $19 trillion dollars in debt and we can’t balance the budget based on our current expenditures let alone tacking on more costs. We can’t afford any type of universal healthcare and we can’t afford free college tuition or write-off current college debt. We also can’t afford for people to come into our country who won’t immediately begin contributing to tax revenues and we need them to pay in at least as much as they’re taking out in benefits.

Young people are so caught up into what seems to be the moral thing to do in supporting illegal immigration but don’t understand that it’s dangerous to our country not so much from fears of terrorism when it comes to those flooding across the borders of Mexico, but how it will and is, crippling our economy.

There are millions of illegal immigrants who even after an extended period of time living here, haven’t learned English and are working menial jobs and being paid under the table. The USA Today shared a report that stated 51% of illegal immigrants are receiving at least some form of welfare (i.e. Medicaid, free education, free school breakfasts & lunches, phones, etc.). Needless to say, we can’t afford this.

Democrats need to stop lying to voters about the “free” things they have a right to when this isn’t the case. There’s no Constitutional right to a free college education. There’s no Constitutional right to government sponsored healthcare. There’s actually no Constitutional right to a retirement account either; it was part of the New Deal legislation that was passed in 1935 by President FDR. What scares me is that I tried to find where it would be a Constitutional right to get our money back should Social Security go bankrupt and I couldn’t find it; I’m not saying the guarantee isn’t there, just that I couldn’t locate it.

Although many people don’t realize it, Welfare isn’t a Constitutional right, it’s a privilege. The problem is that welfare becomes an expected benefit which makes it not appreciated. Some people who consider welfare due them have more of a propensity to take advantage of the system through fraud because they think they’re sticking it to the man when they’re actually sticking it to taxpayers.

As taxpayers we can authorize almost anything as long as it doesn’t take away any Constitutional rights. This is what the Supreme Court was saying regarding Obama Care; that if taxpayers wanted it then we could have it as long as we were willing to pay for it. They absolutely didn’t say free healthcare was a right.

Democrats had to show in the legislation how they were going to collect the money (tax revenues), even though they were telling their constituents it would pay for itself. As premiums continued to soar they had to put more and more money in the system to offset costs of insurance companies who were given financial guarantees and to reduce premiums for people who couldn’t afford the increasing costs of Obama Care; thus our mounting debt.

Almost everything a U.S. representative votes for is “volunteering” our tax dollars toward a cause and as it is now, we allowed the Federal Government to run things into the ground like with Medicaid and Social Security. The funds in these accounts are borrowed and politicians on both sides keep kicking the can down the road realizing that it will be political suicide to actually address the problems.

This creates a scenario of musical chairs because eventually the creditors will stop funding the accounts and the music will stop then the taxpayers left standing (those still paying income taxes), are going to go through an extremely painful process of severely downgrading their retirement packages and paying the bill through horrendous tax increases. As it stands now, many people understand that when they reach retirement age Social Security might not be around. This is sad.

The bottom line is a lot of young people see Socialism as attractive because they feel it’s morally superior to Capitalism. They are impressionable and even though they believe their thought process is independent it can’t be because they’re inundated with information from liberal sources. We can see in college campuses across our country that it isn’t independent thought but group thinking which has led them to believe that Capitalism is bad and that Republicans are evil, greedy, people.

Needless to say, this isn’t healthy because it divides our country and makes it easier for Democrats and Republicans to constantly point their fingers at the other side and not get anything done. People like Bernie Sanders have these young people so enchanted by the simple-minded ideology they preach that they can’t see a very simple truth and that Socialism is an easy sell but has dire consequences.

Merle Haggard (1937 - 2016)

8/1/2017

I could write a book on this famous country singer, songwriter, and musician but I’ll keep it to a short article. First of all, he had 38 number one hits on the country charts including classics like Okie from Muscogee and Mama Tried.

Besides his unique voice the reason Merle was so popular is that he was the real deal when it came to country. He grew up extremely poor and picked up a guitar when he was young to help him get over the early death of his father. He got into all kinds of trouble as a teenager and ended up in juvenile detention. Then when he became a young adult he was sent to prison for robbery. He tried to break out of prison but was caught and sent to San Quinton where a famous country music singer stopped by to give a concert by the name of Johnny Cash.

Hearing Johnny sing inspired Merle to turn his life around and pursue becoming a country music singer so when he got out of prison that’s what he did successfully for 50 years. There’s no doubt Johnny Cash positively impacted millions of people throughout his life.

Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779)

8/1/2017

Captain James Cook was a sailor in the Royal Navy during the revolutionary war and he became a famous explorer who sailed around the world and managed to survive many terrible tragedies. One day he and his crew landed on the island paradise of Hawaii and the natives mistook him for a god. He enjoyed every minute being on the island and having people worship him but eventually he had to leave to finish an exploration he was being paid for.

He was filled with excitement when he finally returned to Hawaii but realized when they docked the ship that the Hawaiian’s didn’t appear happy to see him. He quickly realized that they had somehow figured out that he wasn’t a god so they took him away and killed and mutilated him. He would’ve been way better off that first trip letting them know he wasn’t a god but he took advantage of the situation and paid for it dearly.

What a terrible way for one of the greatest explorers and sea captains to die. There were hundreds of times during previous journeys where his entire crew was shocked that they survived but it was this one incident on Hawaii that took their captain out.

I guess the moral to this story is never act like you’re a god because it could come back to haunt you. :)

Rocky Marciano (1923 – 1969)

8/1/2017

Even if you’re not a boxing fan you’ve probably heard of this boxing legend. His last name is actually spelled Marchegiano, Rocky changed it so boxing announcers would have an easier time saying his name and sports reporters would have an easier time writing it. Even with all the greats that came after him like Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier, Rocky is still the only undefeated heavy weight champion with 49 wins and no losses. Forty-three of his wins were by knockout which is another record he holds.

Rocky grew up in a large Italian family in Massachusetts. He quit school in the 10th grade and went on to do a lot of heavy labor jobs as he was already a good sized kid. His dad always had a weight set and Rocky loved to work out and even later in life trained under Charles Atlas.

He was drafted by the Army in 1943 but never fought directly in the war but he did try his hand at boxing while serving and won the Armed Forces Boxing Championship in 1946; he was discharged from the Army that same year.

Rocky played baseball and football in school and baseball was a passion of his so he and a few friends decided to try out for a Chicago Cubs farm team in Fayetteville, North Carolina. None of the boys made the team and Rocky was cut after three weeks so he went back to Massachusetts with very few career options. He moved to Chicago to try to be a professional wrestler but didn’t enjoy it so he went back home and thought he’d see if he could make a living off being a professional boxer.

Rocky ended up being a terror. He knocked out his first sixteen opponents after only a couple of rounds. During his career only six boxers lasted the entire fight and it was always very clear who won those. Other boxers made comments that it hurt their hands to hit Rocky that it was like hitting a steel door. They said he had an iron chin and it didn’t matter how hard they hit him that he wouldn’t go down. Fighters said that he would crowd them up close to where they couldn’t get a good punch off but that Rocky could hit extremely hard no matter how far he was from them.

Rocky retired the undefeated heavy weight champion of the world when he was 32 years old. Although he certainly looked like a bruiser he was actually a good businessman and got into a few businesses including an Italian restaurant franchise called Papa Luigi Spaghetti Dens. He had a weekly television show on boxing news and he was a sports broadcaster for major boxing events.

Rocky was asked to attend a lot of different events and he was travelling on a small plane to Des Moines, Iowa the night before his 46th birthday. The pilot hit a tree while approaching the landing strip and all three people on board died including a friend of Rock’s son. The extreme weather conditions and the pilot’s lack of experience were listed as the cause of the crash. Rocky didn’t know it but there was a big surprise birthday party waiting for him for when he arrived.

Rocky was married for 19 years to his wife Barbara and they had two children: Rocco and Mary Ann. Barbara passed away from lung cancer five years after Rocky died; she was 46 at the time of her death.

Capitalism vs. Socialism

8/1/2017

Since progressives are sending us down the path to socialism, I wanted to point out something very critical. Even though it wasn’t called capitalism at the time, the only economic model that has helped get people out of poverty throughout history is capitalism. To young people and many progressives capitalism is nothing more than greed that only serves the rich, but this isn’t the truth.

Anyone who has studied people like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Mark Zuckerberg, John Westinghouse, etc., knows that greed didn’t drive their ambitions it was the need to create something that people would want. Because of their personal drives a massive amount of new jobs were created in industries that didn’t exist.

Communism and Socialism don’t breed entrepreneurship. These jobs the innovators created help/helped employees provide for themselves and their families. I’m very thankful for the entrepreneurs who helped start and build the companies I’ve worked for over the years and this includes Thomas Edison who laid the foundation for me to work for General Electric around 100 years after he started it. Think about all the people G.E. has employed since its beginning; this is what capitalism is all about.

If you peel back enough layers it’s easy to see that what many liberals want is “equality of outcome” and not “equal opportunity.” Equal opportunity to achieve success isn’t enough for them anymore because it isn’t working. Access and opportunities are greater now than ever before, especially for minorities, but the spread between those who have money and who don’t has widened. There’s a very easy answer to why this has happened it’s just that many liberals don’t want to hear it because it goes against their ideology of blame versus accountability.

As I mentioned in my article about young people and socialism, there are all kinds of scholarships available to African Americans yet their high school dropout rate is terrible compared to whites. Since their community is getting worse off liberals need to assign blame for politically correct purposes but they don’t bring up that the biggest part of the problem is the African American culture in low-income areas.

I mention low income areas because there are many African Americans who are working professionals in the middle to upper classes. They make a good living with their children graduating high school and going off to college; no different than some white families (and better than the white family I came from). They also have fewer children born out of wedlock and less children being incarcerated. Their culture is different. They had the same road blocks as other African Americans but they made it. Why? Why if according to many liberals white people are trying to oppress blacks, did it not work on these successful people?

Socialists think we must take care of people so they want to take from the “rich” and give to the “poor” but does it work? Does it improve their standard of living? Does it create a culture of self-improvement and self-actualization so people can lift themselves up by striving to become more so they can get more? I do believe that liberals have good intentions but if the goal is to help people in need, they need to accept what does and what doesn’t work.

I’ve heard many young people talking about income disparity between African Americans and Whites and that somehow white people are the cause when the truth is very simple. When they have more students dropping out of high school than white students it creates income disparity. Before the Civil Rights Movement around 20% of black women were unwed mothers now it has reached 72%, and this negatively affects their job opportunities thus more income disparity between blacks and whites.

Both of the above issues largely contributes to the widening gap in income levels since the 60’s but it’s not an income inequality issue where white people are holding African Americans down. All African Americans have to do is work towards fixing these things which they have complete control over as we’ve seen millions of successful African Americans do. The fact is whites aren’t creating the current income disparities, blacks are, so it has nothing to do with racism at this point in our country’s history.

There’s no doubt there was systemic racism in our country’s past but the Civil Rights Act was in 1964 and African Americans have every bit of privilege to make great things happen for themselves in our country as long as they hold themselves accountable and responsible. Playing victim will only serve to hold them down and I find this very sad.

Why aren’t black leaders telling their communities how great they are and what they’re capable of accomplishing? Why do they treat African Americans who have become successful like pariah? There’s only one logical answer…it would put black leaders who feed off of racism out of business. Who’s the real enemy to the African American community, whites who’d love to see them do well which would help make our country even stronger, or the black leaders who want to hold them down for their own personal gain? I sure wish they recognized this.

It’s as simple as this…both a white single mom who hasn’t finished high school is in the same economic boat (below the poverty line), as the African American woman who has the same circumstances. If there were white privilege that impacts wages wouldn’t the white woman be somehow better off?

The fact is if the circumstances are the same for a young African American, Hispanic, and White male and they all didn’t finish high school they’ll all be in poverty. They all have an “equal opportunity” to finish high school but they’ll all suffer the same “equal outcome” regardless of race, if they don’t. If there were a race advantage, the White high school dropout would end up in a better economic situation but data proves otherwise. Bad choices equal bad results and it doesn’t matter what your skin color or gender; this has been a constant for thousands of years.

Many minorities don’t accept these truths and instead pursue victimhood to explain their lack of mobility thus holding them back from better things in life. The fact is, race won’t impact someone’s upward mobility as much as good behaviors and values. Why in the world would whites have a monopoly on these critical things? It isn’t the color of a white person’s skin that gives him a special advantage or privilege because if his behaviors and values are bad, he’ll end up in just as bad of a place as anyone with the same characteristics who might have black or brown skin. Where’s the white privilege? The fact is we’re privileged to live in a country where regardless of the color of your skin, if you make good choices in your life, you can get ahead.

Some young people, especially some minorities, seem to hate our country so much yet there are no communists or socialists countries that have better overall living conditions for their citizens than we have in the United States; it’s not even close. Progressives aren’t accepting the empirical data which easily proves that capitalism isn’t perfect but it’s the moral and most effective approach to lift more people up.

Capitalism rewards good life choices and hard work whereas socialism doesn’t. I heard one liberal say that she thinks the tax rate for the Top 1% of income earners should be at least 80%. What incentive would there be to earn money beyond a particular income bracket? An income tax rate of 80% along with all the other taxes someone has to pay like a fuel tax, property tax, and sales tax means the person at this high tax rate would be losing money for each dollar earned. The last thing our economy needs is for people to not want to strive for more.

It’s simple, do you want your children to accept mediocrity or do you push them to do better? Why do you push them? You push them so they’ll know they’re capable of better performance and can achieve good things in life. This isn’t a socialist’s mentality it’s a capitalist’s mentality.

I think it’s extremely important that parents help their children understand the many benefits of living in our country because unfortunately too many young people aren’t proud of living here and this isn’t good for our future.

I think you could very easily share this thought with your teens…people vote with their feet. Not many people leave the U.S. to become citizens of other countries but we’re inundated with people who want to come here. Does China have to worry about an onslaught of people flooding in from Hong Kong (a capitalist city in a communist country), or do they worry about people trying to leave China for Hong Kong? Communists and Socialists countries don’t usually show up as good places to live if you Google them.

The bottom line is America isn’t perfect but comparatively speaking, it’s awesome!

Wikipedia

8/1/2017

I’m not sure based on the number of users each month (374 million), that anyone with an internet connection hasn’t used Wiki to find out about different subjects at one time or another. Even though it’s used so much I doubt if many people know about the organization so I thought I’d share some things.

Its name is derived from “Wiki” which is a Hawaiian word for “quick” and of course “pedia” is short for encyclopedia. The website was launched in 2001. Wikipedia is one of the products of the Wikimedia Foundation which is a non-profit organization located in San Francisco.

Wiki is an open source (mostly anonymous volunteers), website meaning anyone can contribute to its content through its web portal but with various restrictions to ensure the integrity of the information. There are around 70,000 active contributors which is why the website is so fast at updating information. For example when Carrie Fisher died I was able to go to Wiki that same day and found information about what happened.

There are approximately 41 million articles written in 294 languages which to me is mind blowing. All someone has to do is go to Wiki’s website and choose a language and millions of articles pop up. Of course if someone is French the articles are more applicable to that country and in this case there are around two million articles written in French compared to over five million articles in English. If you use Wiki you also know that within each article are many links that helps the user drill down further on people, places, and things of interests.

I’m so thankful that someone had the vision to create a free on-line encyclopedia that is loaded with outstanding and credible information. By the way you can go to places like www.encyclopediabritannica.com for information as well but I prefer Wiki’s site for the more extensive content and numerous links.

Since I research and write a lot Wiki is a godsend to me because before 2001 I was mostly at the library looking through encyclopedias; I was too cheap to buy my own set. :)

Missing From History

8/1/2017

I’ve mentioned before that there is a lot of history we were never told and there are various reasons for it. In many cases some of the extraordinary accomplishments and events were conducted by minorities (i.e. African Americans, American Indians, women, etc.), and quite frankly many historians didn’t give them the credit they were due and this is one such story.

Our forefathers were amazing men but even they had to glean their wisdom from somewhere and building a great nation wasn’t something schools taught. Our history books didn’t cover it but we owe a ton of gratitude for the start of our amazing country to the leader of the Iroquois Confederacy, Canassatego (1684–1750), and the Six Nation Council.

The Six Nations-were a league of Indian tribes that included the Cayuga, Iroquois, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. They put together a system of government which would allow them to work together on things that were mutually beneficial like security and trade but left each tribe the autonomy to operate on their own in matters that affected them locally so they could maintain their own cultures.

Canassatego met with colonists as a diplomat for the Six Nations 25 years before our Declaration of Independence. He was extremely well liked and some colonists considered him one of the wisest men they had ever known or read about. He took the time to educate them on how to create a centralized government for the primary reason to provide services to the colonies. The point he stressed was that it worked for them because the central government (council), was there to serve the tribes not the other way around.

Representatives of each tribe would meet at least a couple of times a year to make sure everyone was pleased with how things were going and if there were any needs that had to be addressed like food supplies, land encroachment by settlers, or trade problems. Indians had pride in their own tribes but they were also very proud of being part of the Great Council because it gave them greater leverage in dealing with Britain (including our colonies), and France.

Benjamin Franklin was a great admirer of Canassatego and this is why he fought so hard for the colonies and later state rights. He kept a watchful eye on others who were framing the Constitution to ensure the Federal Government had limited powers and that it served the greater good of each colony (i.e. domestic and international trade, monetary system, military, postal system, etc.).

It’s believed that Canassatego was assassinated (poisoned), by a French spy while the Six Nations were working with Britain and the colonies to prevent France from getting a foothold in the Ohio Valley. Sixteen years after his death some of our forefathers wrote a beautiful letter to the Iroquois Nation crediting Canassatego and the Six Nation Council for helping them better understand how to establish an effective system of government; yet as I wrote earlier, our history books didn’t capture this bit of our history. We were told how awesome our forefathers were but we weren’t given insight into why they were so awesome besides their personal stories of triumph over the British monarchy.

I wrote this article because I strongly feel that Canassatego and the Six Nation Council deserves for us to remember their contributions to our great country. There are so many unspoken heroes. I hope you’ll do what you can to pass this story on so they get the legacy they deserve.

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Author: John Mann

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