Author: Administrator

Leaving for Las Vegas: California’s minimum wage law leaves businesses no choice

Guest Post by Houman Salem

California’s minimum wage jumped to $10.50 an hour at the start of the new year. As the founder of a small fashion design house and clothing manufacturer in San Fernando, I’m not a disinterested observer in this change.

After two years in business, my company now has more than 150 clients from all over the world and 18 employees. It’s what’s known as a cut-and-sew house, part of the garment industry that generates about $17 billion in annual economic activity in Los Angeles County, including $6.9 billion in payroll, according to a 2016 industry report by the California Fashion Assn. This is the epicenter of apparel design and manufacturing in the United States; domestically manufactured clothing is more expensive, but retail and wholesale customers who care about quality and working conditions have historically been willing to pay for it.

Unfortunately, the industry is on a downward trend. Los Angeles County used to have more than 5,000 apparel factories; today, my company is one of roughly 2,000 — and  many (e.g. American Apparel) are looking for a way out. One Los Angeles Times headline, quoting a California State University economist, warned that “the exodus has begun.”

Continue reading “Leaving for Las Vegas: California’s minimum wage law leaves businesses no choice”

Can Trump Fix The Economy In 2017?

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

The Western world and that part of the world that partakes of Western explanations live in a fictional world. We see this everwhere we look—in the alleged machinations of Russia to elect Donald Trump president of the US, in claims that Saddam Hussein and his (nonexistant) weapons of mass destruction were a threat to the United States (a mushroom cloud over American cities), that Assad of Syria used chemical weapons against his own people, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, that a few Saudi Arabians outwitted the entirety of the US, EU, and Israeli intelligence services and delivered the greatest humiliation to the “world’s only superpower” in the history of mankind, that Russia invaded Ukraine and could at any moment invade the Baltics and Poland, that the US rate of unemployment is 4.6%, that China’s trade surplus with the US is due to Chinese currency manipulaion, and so on and on.

Allegedly we live in a scientific era of information, but what good can come from faulty orchestrated information? As long as fake news delivered by presstitutes serves powerful private and governmental interests, how can we know the truth about anything?

For example, consider the claim found everywhere in US government and US media statements that the massive US trade deficit with China is the result of Chinese currency manipulation, keeping the yuan underpriced relative to the US dollar.

Continue reading “Can Trump Fix The Economy In 2017?”

When America Was Still The Land Of Opportunity

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Last week during a long overdue vacation, a close friend of mine recommended reading the autobiography of Rich DeVos called Simply Rich.

DeVos is a billionaire entrepreneur who started countless ventures during his nine decades on this earth.

Back in the 1946, for example, DeVos started an airline… virtually overnight.

He just bought an airplane and started flying people around. No rules. No regulations.

They didn’t even have an airport. The local airfield north of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they were based, hadn’t been completed yet.

As DeVos recounts in his book, “We put pontoon floats on our plane and took off and landed on the Grand River, which ran along the airfield.”

His first office at the airfield was an old chicken coop that he found, washed in the river, and re-painted.

Continue reading “When America Was Still The Land Of Opportunity”

The War on Whitey: How “Education” Is Fanning the Flames of Racial Division

Guest Post by Daisy Luther

Across the country, schools are causing even more racial division by teaching kids that being white isn’t okay.

From kindergarten through college, kids are being shamed because of their “privilege.” They’re being taught to feel guilty about their race. The education system is brainwashing them into believing that by simply being born to white parents, they are the problem with society. At the same time, by referring to white kids as “privileged,” isn’t it teaching black kids that they are without privilege? That they are somehow born “lesser” to the white kids? That they require some sort of special treatment?

Both of these things are completely unacceptable.

To point out the insane double standard, I thought it might be fun to do an experiment.

I looked for quotes and curriculum that denounce whiteness, and then I switched the around the races. It’s pretty cringe-y either way, but imagine the public outrage if schools were teaching that black kids were inherently bad and should feel ashamed about being black.

Gasp.

How racist.

Continue reading “The War on Whitey: How “Education” Is Fanning the Flames of Racial Division”

The Saudis and Israelis

Guest Post by The Zman

According to the CIA Fact Book, Israel is a country of 8,174,527 people, including the settler in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. If it were a US state, it would rank 13th in population, behind Virginia and ahead of Washington. Interestingly, the population density of Israel is 377/km2 which is roughly the same as New Hampshire. The images of Israel on the news show it as a crowded place, but that is not the case. There’s lot of nothing between the cities and towns.

If you put Israel into a search engine it returns 888 million results. If you put New Hampshire into the same search engine, you get 168 million results. No one, of course, cares much about New Hampshire, but just about everyone cares about Israel. Every American politician is required to have an opinion of Israeli and its difficulties with the Arabs. More important, they are required to have the correct opinion about Israel. This is even true of liberals as we saw with Obama and his last minute UN gambit.

Continue reading “The Saudis and Israelis”

Laws Don’t Apply to Heroes

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Here’s a video documenting another case of law enforcers not enforcing the law… on law enforcers.

A man who had been issued a ticket – that is, ordered to hand over a sum of money as punishment for violating the law requiring both a front and a rear license plate – went to the local police department parking lot, where he video’d several vehicles without front license plates (and one – a Chevy Tahoe – with no license plates at all) but no tickets being handed out.

A law enforcer was present, so the man approached him to ask why he wasn’t doing anything to enforce the law which was enforced without mercy on him. As they talk, the SUV with no plates at all starts up and leaves. The law enforcer takes no action to enforce the law prohibiting the operation of a vehicle on public roads without tags. He expresses no “concern” about this “suspicious” vehicle.

Continue reading “Laws Don’t Apply to Heroes”

Assange To Hannity: “Our Source Is Not The Russian Government”

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Jan 2, 2017 10:04 PM

It won’t be the first time Julian Assange was interviewed and asked whether the source of the hacked DNC and Podesta emails was Russia; however, it will be the first time everyone pays attention to his answer. Recall that the first such interview of Assange – when the question of who had sourced Wikileaks with the hacked emails came up – took place exactly two months ago, on November 3. Back then, in an interview televized by RT, John Pilger explicitly asked Asange where the emails in question had come from.

Assange’s response was straightforward: “The Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything. Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That’s false – we can say that the Russian government is not the source.”

Continue reading “Assange To Hannity: “Our Source Is Not The Russian Government””

THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Noriega surrenders to U.S. – 1990

Via History.com

On this day in 1990, Panama’s General Manuel Antonio Noriega, after holing up for 10 days at the Vatican embassy in Panama City, surrenders to U.S. military troops to face charges of drug trafficking. Noriega was flown to Miami the following day and crowds of citizens on the streets of Panama City rejoiced. On July 10, 1992, the former dictator was convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Noriega, who was born in Panama in 1938, was a loyal soldier to General Omar Torrijos, who seized power in a 1968 coup. Under Torrijos, Noriega headed up the notorious G-2 intelligence service, which harassed and terrorized people who criticized the Torrijos regime. Noriega also became a C.I.A. operative, while at the same time getting rich smuggling drugs.

Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Noriega surrenders to U.S. – 1990”

Can Trump and Putin Avert Cold War II?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Can Trump and Putin Avert Cold War II?

In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland’s Eastern shore.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that 35 U.S. diplomats would be expelled. But Vladimir Putin stepped in, declined to retaliate at all, and invited the U.S. diplomats in Moscow and their children to the Christmas and New Year’s party at the Kremlin.

“A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger,” reads Proverbs 15:1. “Great move,” tweeted President-elect Trump, “I always knew he was very smart!”

Among our Russophobes, one can almost hear the gnashing of teeth.

Continue reading “Can Trump and Putin Avert Cold War II?”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization.”

Judith Lewis Herman


For Democrats, 2017 Will Be The Year of Living Stupidly

Guest Post by Kurt Schlichter

For Democrats, 2017 Will Be The Year of Living Stupidly

If you thought 2016 was packed full of liberal foolishness, just wait until you get a load of 2017. As 2016 ends, progressives enter the new year terrified that Donald Trump will continue to run circles around them, and their epic meltdown is only going to get more epically meltdownier. They’ve been shrill, stupid, and annoying for the last two months, but brace yourself for the next 12. Fear is going to make them go nuts – not the fear that Trump will be a failure, but the gut-wrenching, mind-numbing fear that Donald Trump will be a success.

And it looks like Trump may very well be one – something I previously and publicly doubted.

Continue reading “For Democrats, 2017 Will Be The Year of Living Stupidly”

Your Body is Your Brain Too

Guest Post by Scott Adams

We humans like to organize our perceptions into categories. It makes it easier for us to communicate and to keep track of things. But sometimes the impulse to organize our thoughts into buckets is a problem. I’ll give you the best example of that today.

Most of us believe that our brains are special because they are the center of our consciousness. Some people also believe brains are where your free will and your soul lives. We also believe brains are somewhat of a closed system when it comes to our thoughts. It feels as if your brain produces some random thoughts, wrestles with those thoughts, and turns them into bodily actions. That makes the brain a special little organ that is doing its own thing in isolation and letting the rest of the body know about it later. In other words, we put our brains in the “brain” bucket. All by itself. Doing its thing.

That’s a huge mistake.

Today I’ll tell you how the brains-is-special framework for looking at life is one of our biggest sources of unhappiness. In my worldview, also known as the Moist Robot Hypothesis (from my book on that topic), humans are wet robots that respond to programming. If you aren’t intentionally programming yourself, the environment and other people are doing it for you. Luckily you have a user interface to your brain. And that interface is your body. Your body is collecting inputs from all over and feeding them to your brain to reprogram it.

Continue reading “Your Body is Your Brain Too”

Father Arrested & Charged After Child Accidentally Walked to School on a Saturday

Via The Free Thought Project

Berwick, PA — A Pennsylvania father found himself under arrest after his five-year-old son — not understanding it was a Saturday — walked to school by himself.

Forty-three-year-old Jeffrey Wagner now faces a child endangerment charge for his son’s nearly two-mile walk to school amid freezing temperatures on a weekend morning, a local CBS News affiliate reports.

Wagner awoke to his son, Mitchell, insisting it was time for him to go to school, but the father explained there wasn’t school on Saturday and told him to go back to bed — then fell asleep, himself.

After Wagner dozed off — thinking the point had been made — the 5-year-old proceeded to dress himself and bundle up to walk to the bus stop. When the bus didn’t arrive, the diligent child decided to walk the two miles to get to class.

A concerned motorist spotted the boy and called police, who then picked him up  — and subsequently arrested his father.

Continue reading “Father Arrested & Charged After Child Accidentally Walked to School on a Saturday”