Wolf Howling: Texas

Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Attack Of The Laffer Curve

Art Laffer is an economist famous for his rule, the Laffer Curve. Unlike Paul Krugman, who is a NOBEL prize winning economist, Laffer has, one, actually had his theories work in the real world, two, he hasn't been proven horribly wrong by advocating for a near trillion dollar stimulus as the school solution to our economic meltdown, and three, unlike Krugman, he hasn't yet been economic advisor to a failed criminal enterprise like Enron. I realize these things render Laffer less than qualified to the left, but let's listen to him explain the Laffer Curve anyway:

The Laffer Curve is at the heart of supply side economic theory. Under his theory, tax policy is dynamic. The opposite of that is the claim of the left, that tax policy is static - that raising rates by x percent will always yield x dollars. When the left claimed that the Bush tax cuts caused our deficit, they did so using the canard that, if only we had left taxes high, we would have taken in that much more revenue. The reality was that the Bush tax cuts raised government revenue significantly.

The Laffer curve applies equally in the positive and negative at the state level. Just compare Texas and California.

In response to the Great Recession, Texas resisted the urge to raise taxes and instead cut its spending "to the bone." Today, its economy is "humming," with revenues up over 20% over 2011 and sales tax receipts at an all time high.

California, on the other hand, did not cut spending, it raised taxes to the highest in the nation, fully expecting the money just to roll in. The opposite has occurred. After the vote on increasing tax rates, tax revenues actually fell 10% by a billion dollars.

I wonder how many times the Laffer Curve has to be proven before someone on the left finally admits to its validity. Ha ha - just joking.

At any rate, we are going to get another chance to test it this year, with Obama tax rates taking us back to the Carter era. Anyone want to bet against the curve - that the government will actually collect the $600 billion in new revenues over the next ten years. Only Krugman, Pelosi and a few others living in a fantasy world of socialist economics would ever take that bet. But we as a nation will pay for it.

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Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Wages Of Gun Control - Testimony of Suzanna Hupp (Updated)

Gun control laws - as well as "gun free zones" - do nothing more than disarm the law abiding, with of course disastrous effect when a gun is needed for defense of self and others. Little puts that into more perspective than the now near two decade old testimony of Suzanna Hupp in support of a Texas concealed carry law.

Ms. Hupp was in Luby's Restaurant in Killeen, TX in 1991, eating a meal with her parents, when a gunman entered and began a slaughter that would eventually take the lives of 23 people, including Hupp's parents, while wounding 20 others. Ms. Hupp, who was trained to use a weapon and who regularly carried a weapon in her purse, had earlier taken the gun out of her purse and left it in her car because of then Texas law. She testified that she could have stopped the slaughter had she had her weapon still in her purse.

Here is her testimony.

As a consequence of Ms. Hupp's testimony and activism, Texas, in 1995, passed a shall-issue gun law, which requires that all qualifying applicants be issued a Concealed Handgun License.

Compare and contrast the Texas response with the myriad of calls from the left today for stricter gun control laws in the wake of Sandy Hook. Had some of the teachers or staff had concealed carry, could they have stopped the slaughter before a very evil, insane man managed to kill 26 women and children? When seconds counted, the police were minutes away - there in time to take stock of, but not stop, the carnage. How the left thinks that disarming the law abiding and insuring they don't have access to a weapon to defend themselves and others is an appropriate response to a horrendous mass murder is something I don't understand.

H/T to the fine Aussie blog, Crusader Rabbit

Update: At least one school district in Texas has responded to the threat of school shootings by recently authorizing certain of its teachers and staff to be armed with concealed weapons. This from Fox News:

. . . Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.

Superintendent David Thweatt told FOXNews.com the policy was initiated because of safety concerns.

"We have had employees assaulted before by people in the last several years," Thweatt said. "I think that safety is big concern. We are seeing a lot of anger in society." . . .

The Texas superintendent linked gun-free zones with the uprising of school shootings in recent years. . . .

"When you make schools gun-free zones, it's like inviting people to come in and take advantage," Thweatt told FOXNews.com.

In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls.

Thweatt said the small community is a 30-minute drive from the sheriff's office, leaving students and teachers without protection. He said the district's lone campus sits 500 feet from heavily trafficked U.S. 287, which could make it a target. The kindergarten through 12th grade school district is home to 110 students. . . .

Texas law outlaws firearms on school campuses "unless pursuant to the written regulations or written authorization of the institution."

While the district's plan shot them into the national spotlight, carrying guns to school is nothing new some states. In Utah, the law allows anyone with a permit to carry a gun in public schools and state institutions of higher education. . . .

H/T Instapundit, who labels his post "What Constructive Action Looks Like.

Update: I noted in the post below that what the Sandy Hook massacre should ignite is a conversation on mental illness and its treatment in our society. At Huffington Post, Liza Long, the mother of a mentally ill, potentially dangerous and, at the same time, high performing child has made precisely the same call. As she writes in a must-read column:

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys — and their mothers — need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness." . . .

When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. . . .

Monday, March 12, 2012

Holder's DOJ Drops The Race Card On Texas's Voter ID Law

Our race baiting Attorney General, who has directly compared any attempt at insuring the sanctity of the ballot with a return to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes, has struck again. The Justice Department today officially "objected to a new photo ID requirement for voters in Texas because many Hispanic voters lack state-issued identification."

This from Politico:

[T]he new law, known as S.B. 14 and signed by Gov. Rick Perry last May, requires that the state issue special free IDs for voting. However, there would still be a cost to individuals who lack the required underlying documentation, like a birth certificate, Perry wrote.

"There is a statistically significant correlation between the Hispanic population percentage of a county and the percentage of a county’s population that lives below the poverty line. The legislature tabled amendments that would have prohibited state agencies from charging for any underlying documents needed to obtain an acceptable form of photographic identification," Perez noted.

Perez said many voters were likely to have difficulty getting to a Department of Public Safety office to get an ID, either because of distance or limited hours.

"Even after submitting data that show over 600,000 registered voters do not have either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by DPS – and that a disproportionate share of those registered voters are Hispanic – the state has failed to propose, much less adopt, any program for individuals who have to travel a significant distance to a DPS office, who have limited access to transportation, or who are unable to get to a DPS office during their hours of operation," Perez wrote.

So there are 600,000 people, largely hispanic, registered to vote in Texas for whom there is no proof of their citizenship. Yet the DOJ's concern is not with the sanctity of the ballot box, but with insuring that 600,000 people are able to vote without even minimal proof of citizenship. And on top of that, Holder's DOJ justifies this travesty it on civil rights ground. The true irony here is that, in a democracy, the penultimate civil right is the right to vote and, equally, to have that vote fully count. Vote fraud insures that valid votes do not fully count.

As Stacey McCain has weighed in on this, writing:

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, “civil rights” has become a code phrase for “whatever Democrats want,” so that anyone who disagrees with Democrats is said to be “anti-civil rights.” . . .

Isn’t the Justice Department’s entire rationale for opposing the Texas voter ID law an extension of the belief that the partisan interests of the Democratic Party are coterminous with “civil rights”? Democrats actually believe they have the right to win elections, even by blatantly illegal means, and so any measure that might prevent ineligible people from voting is a violation of “civil rights.”

Now you know why “corrupt Democrat” is redundant: No honest person would ever get involved in the Democratic Party.

Also a worthwhile read as regards vote fraud was an NRO column by Hans A. von Spakovsky, "Not A Race Card." As he points out, vote fraud has a long and ignominious tradition in the U.S., and minimal efforts to protect the sanctity of the vote are both warranted and do not amount to an attack on minorities.

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Thursday, August 5, 2010

EPA & The Second Battle Of The Alamo.

The EPA is making good on Obama's threat to force control of carbon on America through the back door if Congress refused to act. It is doing so with an extremely heavy hand as it tries to skate around the sytemic problems of regulating greenhouse gasses within the legal framework of the Clean Air Act - a law ill designed for such a purpose.

Responding to the EPA's heavy handed approach, the Texas Attorney General has forwarded a caustic and detailed letter that, as AJ Strata points out, reads almost like a declaration of war. The AG repeatedly points out how the EPA is vastly overstepping its authority and takes extreme umbrage at the EPA's attempts to steamroll Texas into submission. Read the whole story at The Stratasphere.

Update: Dr. Melissa Clouthier, posting at Liberty Pundit, sees this as another manifestaton of push back by states and individuals against the vast overreach of the Obama administration. I would have to agree.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The Force Was With Her

Hillary manages to stay in the race with big wins in Ohio and Rhode Island and a squeaker in Texas. Democrats take that next step closer to a contested convention.

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I must admit, I didn't think Hillary could pull out the major wins she needed yesterday to stay alive in the race. I wrote off Hillary because she couldn't run to the left of uber liberal Obama and because the fawning press and huge crowds Obama was drawing to his "post-partisan" neo-religious movement seemed unstoppable.

So what happened?

Hillary's "Who do you want to answer the phone at 3 a.m." advertisement was apparently quite effective. Obama is the weakest of all the viable presidential candidates on national security and this ad drove that point home while side-stepping Iraq. Exit polls showed that voters in Ohio said she would make a better Commander in Chief by 57% to 40%. Then there was Hillary's appearance on Saturday Night Live where the skits ridiculed the press corps for being in the tank for Obama. That clearly had an effect as the press corps finally begin to treat Obama as a candidate rather than the second coming of the messiah. Add to that the stumble by the Obama campaign on the NAFTA issue and it obviously made a huge difference, particularly in Ohio where Hillary far outperformed the pre-election polls.

And then there was another surprise. I listened to Obama's speech last night. There was a distinct lack of emotionalism in the crowd - which is the very fuel of Obama's candidacy - let alone the adoration I had heard from the crowds during his past speeches. The rhetoric was the same; the crowd response was not. It may just have been that the Texas crowd was depressed by the reality of an Obama loss in the state's primary. But if Obama has peaked and comes to be seen as another politician rather than a movement above the political fray, his problems are just beginning.

So what now?

Hillary stays alive and picks up a few more delegates than Obama. She is still far behind on the elected delegate count. The super delegates will come under ever more pressure to declare for one candidate or another. Hillary will continue to press for seating delegates from Michigan and Florida. And the Democrats will move ever closer to what has the potential to be a visciously contested nominating convention in late August. That is, at least, if Hillary can continue to cut into Obama's delegate lead. Wyoming (18 delegate - Democratic only) and Mississippi (40 delegates) hold their primaries in the coming week, with the next big prize, Pennsylvania (188 delegates), not scheduled until April 22.

Update: In what can only be considered a horrendous omen for Obama, Hillary, with her win in Rhode Island, has captured the mantle of "Hope."

Rhode Island State Flag:

(H/T: Instapundit)

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Second Super Tuesday - 4 March 08

In play tonight, for the Republicans, whether McCain closes the door on the Republican nomination. For the Democrats, it's whether the battle continues or whether Obama is annointed. And the results are . . .

UPDATE: McCain clinches Republican nomination; Huckabee to formally withdraw.

UPDATE: Clinton crushes Obama in Ohio

UPDATE: Fox News calls the Texas primary for Clinton in a close race.

Delegate Count

Republican: Needed to clinch nomination - 1,191

McCain - 1,095

Huckabee - 247

Democrats: Needed to clinch nomination - 2,025

Obama - 1,386

Clinton - 1,273

Democratic numbers do not include 842 super delegates

Delegates in play tonight:

Republican: 256

Democrat: 370

Ohio - Republican: 85 Democrat: 141

Texas - Republican: 137 Democrat: 193

Vermont - Republican: 17 Democrat: 15

Rhode Island - Republican: 17 Democrat: 21

7:29 - Vermont: With 1% of the votes in, McCain and Obama are projected the winners.

7:30 - Ohio: McCain crushing Huckabee, 72% to 15%; Dems too close to call

8:31 - Fox calls Ohio for McCain, 69% to 22% with 1% of the vote in. Ohio and Vermont put McCain over the top on delegates. Clinton has an early lead in Ohio. Obama's lawyers have successfully brought suit to have some precincts remain open til 9 p.m. in areas heavilly expected to favor Obama.

9:11 - Fox calls Texas for McCain, 56% to 32%, and Rhode Island, 59% to 26%. McCain sweeps. Huckabee announces his withdraw.

9:18 - With almost 50% of the vote in, Obama leads 59% to 39% in Vermont.

9:19 - Fox is calling Rhode Island for Clinton with 13% of the vote in. She leads 53% to 36%.

9:21 - Huckabee gives a gracious withdraw speech, complimenting McCain and calling the party to support McCain.

10:58 - Fox calls Ohio for Clinton with 55% of the vote, 58% to 40%

12:10 - Texas has in 64% of the primary vote for Democrats with Clinton holding a slight lead, 50% to 48%. No word on the Texas caucuses.

12:50 - Fox calls Texas for Clinton with 75% of the vote tallied. She leads 51% to 48%. The caucus results - with will account for a third of the delegates to be decided - are just starting to trickle in.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

More On The Mad Archbishop's Call for Introducing Sharia Law In The UK

I blogged on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan William's call for officially recognizing aspects of Sharia law in Britain. In the wake of that, there have been calls by many for the resignation of the Archbishop. The BBC, on the other hand, asked whether this reaction is "Islamophobia?" There have also been several good articles out as to Sharia law and why it has no place whatsoever in the West - even though, it has apparently been reconized as a means of dispute resolution in Texas and Minnesotta.

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If one questions how deeply the socialist multicultural mindset has poisoned Britain, one need only look to the BBC, which, on the evening the news broke about the Archbishop's call for Sharia law in the UK, ran their "Newsnight Programme" on the issue of "Has the reaction to the Archbishop's Sharia law comments been Islamophobic?" To question anything about another culture is racism in the socialist world of identity politics and multiculturalism.

This article from the Daily Times covers most of the issues that have arisen in the wake of the Archbishop's call:

The Archbishop of Canterbury was facing demands to quit last night as the row over sharia law intensified.

Leading bishops publicly contradicted Dr Rowan Williams's call for Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system.

With the Church of England plunged into crisis, senior figures were said to be discussing the archbishop's future.

. . . Officials at Lambeth Palace told the BBC Dr Williams was in a "state of shock" and "completely overwhelmed" by the scale of the row.

It was said that he could not believe the fury of the reaction. The most damaging attack came from the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.

He said it would be "simply impossible" to bring sharia law into British law "without fundamentally affecting its integrity".

Sharia "would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence.

"This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and of expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy

. . . Politicians joined the chorus of condemnation, with Downing Street saying British law should be based on British values. Tory and LibDem leaders also voiced strong criticism.

Even prominent Muslims were rounding on Dr Williams. Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury, said: "I haven't experienced any clamour or fervent desire for sharia law in this country.

"If there are people who prefer sharia law there are always countries where they could go and live."

Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, rejected the idea that British law forces Muslims to choose between their religion and their society.

He said: "This will alienate people from other communities because they will think it is what Muslims want - and it is not."

The Muslim Council of Britain came to Dr Williams's aid, however, describing his comments in a lecture to lawyers and a BBC interview as "thoughtful".

But Oxford University Islamic scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan admitted: "These kinds of statements just feed the fears of fellow citizens. I really think we, as Muslims, need to come up with something that we abide by the common law and within these latitudes there are possibilities for us to be faithful to Islamic principles."

. . . Liberal and feminist critics have been appalled by the thought of sharia law while evangelical opponents believe Dr Williams has failed to defend Christianity.

. . . He was more blunt in a circular to clergy in his diocese, saying he had yet to be convinced of the feasibility of incorporating any non-Christian religious law into the English legal system. . . .

Read the article.There are several major points in the above article worthy of further highlighting. One, Sharia law is substantively different from the laws and customs of the West, as Bishop Nazir-Ali noted. You can find a good explanation of Sharia law here. It should be noted that Sharia law is fundamentally different even on issues of family law, where, for example, the male is favored, polygamy and paedophilia is allowed, and a woman's testimony carries less weight than a man's.

Further, as one commentor in the Telegraph noted, just because we allow some religious courts to function, does not mean that Sharia courts should be afforded the same rights:

. . . Archbishop Williams looks, in a similar spirit, at the realm of law. He sees law as deriving ultimately from religious, not rationalist, principles. He notes how orthodox Judaism has its own Beth Din courts which do not quarrel with the secular law. His own Church of England, too, has its courts, he pointed out. Because we have an Established Church, their decisions have the force of secular law. They settle things like the rights of parochial church councils. Few people see them as instruments of clerical oppression.

So, says the archbishop, we in Britain clearly do not have "a monopolistic understanding of jurisdiction". Why not extend this plurality to Muslims? Why not allow sharia in some areas, such as marriage disputes?

Many people, surely, would want to follow the broad arguments of president and archbishop, but then stop before they do. Most people with any understanding of European culture will disagree with the militant secularists such as Richard Dawkins, who want any trace of Christianity expunged from our institutions and public life.

In the British context, many non-believers would recognise that, for instance, the state funding of Church schools has done much more good than harm. It would be crazy to cut the schools off now, in the abstract interests of neutrality.

And yes, most of us, believers or not, surely agree that one must permit Muslims to worship freely, and encourage all their genuine charitable and educational activities.

Yet there is a dreadful sense of unreality about the assertion, made both by Mr Sarkozy and by Dr Williams, that whatever applies to Christianity and to Judaism in the West can be applied, just like that, to Islam.

As a post-Vatican II Catholic myself, I share the ecumenical beliefs of most modern Christians. One of these is that Islam, being one of the three "Abrahamic" religions, has a great deal in common with Christianity, and that these common roots should be cultivated. It contains truth, and wisdom, and has built civilisations.

But it is also blindingly obvious that the current state of Islam is quite different from that of Christianity. Western societies are hosts to large numbers of Muslims, who quarrel fiercely among themselves and include extreme, sometimes violent minorities. Goodness knows, the history of Christianity is scarred with such things, but at the moment, in the West, Christian violence is not a big problem. Muslim violence is. If we incorporated sharia in our legal system, whom would we accept as its authentic interpreters?

In his lecture, Archbishop Williams tiptoes round the question, in sharia, of apostasy. He says it is unacceptable that people are punished for leaving the Muslim faith. But he cannot bring himself to say, which he knows to be true, that all the Muslim schools of law agree that the punishment for abandoning the Muslim religion is death. Some people, even in this country, live in hiding because they fear this.

"Sharia," says Dr Williams, "is not intrinsically to do with any demand for Muslim domination over non-Muslims." Actually, under sharia, Jews and Christians have only what is called "dhimmi" status, a sort of protected, but second-class citizenship.

But in a way, he is right. Sharia does not "demand" domination; it assumes it. The law of Islam is radically different from the law of Judaism, which is the law of a minority that accepts the authority of the majority, non-Jewish state. Islam, like Christianity, is a religion of conversion. Its sharia, unlike the teachings of Christianity, is a programme of law to be turned into a political reality, if possible everywhere.

Poor, dear Dr Williams mutters into his beard about a "market element" of taking a bit of sharia, and a bit of this and a bit of that, as if these things were herbs to spice our multicultural soup. People who want sharia do not see it like that. For them, it must be the only dish on the table.

And if I were French, even though I would agree with President Sarkozy's rejection of doctrinaire secularism, I would not accept that building lots more mosques is the same as building more churches. More than these leaders wish to admit, this is a zero-sum game.

I am surprised that Dr Williams did not, apparently, consider a rather important moment in the history of his own faith. When Jesus was tried, the Roman civil power could find no fault with him. But because it was under such pressure from the religious authorities of Judaea, who said that Jesus was a blasphemer, it handed him over to them.

So Pontius Pilate, you could argue, let Dr Williams's "market element" into the rule of law, with fatal results. Jesus was crucified.

Read the entire article. And it cannot be emphasized enough that all evidence is that the majority of Muslims in Britain want nothing to do with Sharia law.

That said, the truth is that the Labour has allowed Muslim Courts to assert dominance and, indeed, tolerates "Sharia" courts that solve not only family law issues, but also, in some cases, criminal matters:

The extent to which sharia law already operates in Britain was the subject of concern yesterday after it emerged that at least 10 Islamic "courts" are sitting across the country.

The existence of the courts, in towns and cities including London and Birmingham, heightened anxiety following the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks that the introduction of some elements of Islamic law was "unavoidable".

The majority of cases heard in the courts involve divorce or financial disputes, but one reported case involved a gang of Somali youths who were allowed to go free after paying compensation to a teenager they had stabbed.

Extremists were said to have used the spread of sharia courts to justify calls for Islamic law to be adopted "wholesale" for Muslims living in Britain.

Anjem Choudary, a solicitor and former senior figure in the banned organisation Al-Muhajiroun, said: "Some element of family law or social and economic law will not work. It has to be adopted wholesale. It will not happen tomorrow but it is inevitable because sharia is superior and better for mankind."

Despite grave warnings from lawyers about the dangers of a dual legal system, criminal cases are already being dealt with by some of the unofficial courts.

In 2006 an Islamic Council sitting in Woolwich, south-east London, heard the case of the Somali gang, who had been accused of stabbing another Somali teenager and were reportedly arrested by the police.

Aydarus Yusuf, a youth worker, told Radio 4's Law in Action programme that the suspects were released on bail after the victim's family said the matter would be dealt with by the Islamic community. "All their uncles and fathers were there," said Mr Yusuf.

"So they all put something towards that and apologised for the wrongdoing." The Metropolitan Police said it was unaware of the case, but admitted that officers sometimes did not proceed with assault cases if the victim decided not to press charges.

Mr Yusuf told the programme that he felt more bound by sharia law than by the laws of his adopted country.

"Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law,'' he said. "It's not sharia, it's not religious, it's just a cultural thing.''

. . . The first sharia court in the UK started in Birmingham in 1982, and others have followed in London, Rotherham and Dewsbury, West Yorks.

Although their rulings are not recognised by English law, participants often agree to abide by the court's decision in the same way that Jewish civil disputes are often settled in their own court, the Beth Din.

. . . Omar Bakri Mohammed, the former leader of Al-Muhajiroun, who is banned from entering the UK, said: "If sharia law were introduced it would have all kinds of benefits. It would get rid of drinking, night clubs, casual sex, homosexuality, prostitution, gambling and usury."

David Pannick QC, a leading human rights barrister, said that if criminal law and marriages were dealt with by sharia courts "it would lead to the breakdown of society, if some groups could just ignore laws that applied to others".

Read the entire article. My own belief is that the Sharia courts, even operating unofficially on matters of family law, should be declared illegal and Britain should enforce its status as the sole authority to grant marriage or divorce. I base this on the degree of coercion of women in the Muslim community and how it all plays into honor violence. You can read the very recent report on that issue here.

I also blogged yesterday that we are seeing some allowance in our own courts in Texas and Minnesotta for the application of Sharia law iarbitration agreements. The way our legal system works, you can decide in advance which law shall govern your contractual obligations. The courts will enforce those obligations under the chosen law so long as it does not contravene public policy - i.e., fair and equal treatment of women, etc. I have not seen the cases in which it has been applied in America, but I have confidence that they involve discreet matters and would, in no case, approach the degree and dimension of allowing Sharia courts to function as a legal body under their own laws, such as the Archbishop suggested. Further, I would hope our courts refuse to enforce even discrete agreements when it involves people of different sexes, given the misogony and coercion systemic in Islam.

See another update here that includes discussion of a court case in the UK asking to rule on the legality of forced marriages.