The Stafford Voice

Our little place to talk about and share about life.

Daniel

Government-Pot-Pie

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There are few things you can lean on as something that seems to have it all. Pot-pies are one, and another is the democrats way of government.

But how can you compare the two? Simple. Take a look at the ingredients.

For instance, a chicken-pot-pie has almost everything you need in a meal. It’s got meats, veggies, breads and dairies. Contrast that with what a democrat sponsored government-pot-pie has: it’s got free health care, ongoing unemployment checks, hand-outs instead of hand-ups and increased taxes.

Doesn’t that just sound wonderful?

Michael Savage of the Savage Nation sums it up best by his phrase ‘trickle up poverty.’ Now, if you don’t understand, take a second to think about it. As wealth can start from the top, poverty starts at the bottom. The Dem’s suggest that the ‘elite’ don’t pay enough taxes to cover the handouts, so even more gets taken away from them while the Republicans offer tax cuts for the ‘wealthy’ to open up cash flow to those in need.

Isn’t it easy to see how scrumptious that government-pot-pie looks?

Well, while the kitchen seems to be getting pretty hot, a great deal of cancerous Dem’s look to be ‘getting out the kitchen.’ The elections coming up in November are certainly cranking the temps on the oven which are giving some that burning smell. A smell of burning government-pot-pie that doesn’t really belong on the menu.

Backlash Against Wind Energy

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by Robert Bryce 

On January 25, I got an email from Charlie Porter, a Missouri-based horse trainer. The issue: noise from wind turbines. His emails said that in 2007, a phalanx of wind turbines had been around his family’s farm near King City and that “The overwhelming noise, sleep deprivation, constant headaches, anxiety, etc., etc., etc., forced us to abandon our home/horse farm of 15 years. We had to buy a house in town, away from the turbines and move!”

I called Porter immediately. What he told me was like a bolt from the blue. His 20-acre farm was, he said, “surrounded by lots of acres that nobody lived on.” He was training quarter horses, and having good success with it. But the wind turbines, the closest of which was installed 1,800 feet from his home, changed the life his family had grown to love. The noise from the turbines “just ruined life out in the country like we knew it…. We never intended to sell that farm. Now we couldn’t sell it if we wanted to.”

I immediately began researching Porter and his background. I double checked everything he told me. I talked to the Gentry County tax assessor’s office to verify his property records, including his claim that he’d had to buy a house in town to escape the noise. Everything checked out. I also began looking at the health effects that Porter described, symptoms that are now known as “wind turbine syndrome” – a term created by Dr. Nina Pierpont, a Malone, New York-based physician who has studied a number of people, like Porter, who are suffering ill health due to the noise from wind turbines.

Since then, I’ve talked to, or corresponded with homeowners who’ve had wind turbines built near their homes in Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Nova Scotia, Ontario, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. All of them used almost identical language in describing their dislike of the wind turbine noise and the deleterious health effects the noise has had on them. And I’ve written a number of articles about the issue.

That’s a long introduction to this review of Laura Israel’s new documentary, Windfall. But as I watched the film, I realized that nearly all of the issues that Israel exposes on the screen are ones that I’ve been hearing about in my own research since Porter contacted me in January.

Continue reading . . .

Daily Dose

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“Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says No, to this question, is an Independant for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether the King, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like.” – Thomas Paine

James 1:22-25 –  22But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 25But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

Soldier Spotlight

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Best of the best: Fort Rucker names Soldier, NCO of the year

FORT RUCKER, Ala. — Fort Rucker named its Soldier and Noncommissioned Officer of the Year at the U.S. Army Aviation Museum Sept. 15.

Sgt. Keely Misemer, C Company, 1st Battalion, 11th Aviation Regiment, and Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas Beauchamp, NCO Academy Senior Leader Course small group leader, were named Soldier and NCO of the year, respectively, during a short induction ceremony.

Both said they felt honored to be given such a prestigious award, and they hope to pass on the knowledge and skills they have attained to fellow Soldiers and NCOs.

“This is really a great event for me,” Misemer said. “I think every Soldier should try to become Soldier of the Year. It takes a lot of studying and a little effort, but it’s worth it.”

Misemer plans to continue moving forward in her military career and hopes to compete for another high honor in the near future.

“My immediate goal is to pass on what I’ve learned and help other Soldiers achieve their goals,” she said. “I also really want to (be inducted into the Sgt. Audie Murphy club).”

Beauchamp said he doesn’t plan to work toward getting any more awards for now, but he does plan to motivate his Soldiers to pursue their own goals.

“I accomplished my goal of leading by example,” he said. “From here, I plan to continue representing my unit to the best of my ability.”

He echoed Misemer in encouraging other Soldiers and NCOs to work hard when attempting to gain high honors.

“Study hard and prepare because it takes a lot of work to get there,” he said. “Everyone should make the most of the opportunities they’re given.”

Guest speaker retired Sgt. Maj. Bufford Thomas, former installation command sergeant major, congratulated the Soldiers, but reminded them of the responsibility they have after receiving the honor.

“The NCO and Soldier of the Year program is a mentorship program for enlisted servicemembers,” he said. “A senior leader recognized the demonstrated potential in these Soldiers. These Soldiers are prepared to lead and accomplish any mission at any time. It is required and expected that these Soldiers become leaders and mentors of their peers to make sure they’re trained to the best of their abilities.”

Taxing the Rich

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by John Stossel

Progressives want to raise taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year because they say it’s wrong for the rich to be “given” more money. Sunday’s New York Times carries a cartoon showing Uncle Sam handing money to a fat cat. They just don’t get it.

As I’ve said before, a tax cut is not a handout. It simply means government steals less. What progressives want to do is take money from some — by force — and spend it on others. It sounds less noble when plainly stated.

That’s the moral side of the matter. There’s a practical side, too. Taxes discourage wealth creation. That hurts everyone, the lower end of the income scale most of all. An economy that, through freedom, encourages the production of wealth raises the living standards of lower-income people as well as everyone else.

A free society is not a zero-sum game in which every gain is offset by someone’s loss. As long as government keeps its thumb off the scales, the “makers” who get rich do so by making others better off. (When the government allocates capital or creates barriers to competition, all bets are off.)

Of course, this is not the prevailing view among the intelligentsia. Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill tells me, “Those who have more should pay more.”

But is there a point where they stop producing wealth or leave altogether?

Continue reading . . .

Daily Dose

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“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” – John Adams

Proverbs 1:5 – A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.

Politics vs Gold

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by Thomas Sowell

One of the many slick tricks of the Obama administration was to insert a provision in the massive Obamacare legislation regulating people who sell gold. This had nothing to do with medical care but everything to do with sneaking in an extension of the government’s power over gold, in a bill too big for most people to read.

Gold has long been a source of frustration for politicians who want to extend their power over the economy. First of all, the gold standard cramped their style because there is only so much money you can print when every dollar bill can be turned in to the government, to be exchanged for the equivalent amount of gold.

When the amount of money the government can print is limited by how much gold the government has, politicians cannot pay off a massive national debt by just printing more money and repaying the owners of government bonds with dollars that are cheaper than the dollars with which the bonds were bought. In other words, politicians cannot cheat people as easily.

Continue reading . . .

The ‘Islamophobia’ Weapon

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by Robert Spencer

“The Muslim world is going through an unprecedented difficult and trying time,” said the Secretary General of the 56-state Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, on Friday.

One might reasonably have thought that he was referring to the recent increase in violent jihad incidents in the West, perpetrated by Muslims who explained and justified their actions by reference to Islamic texts and teachings. But no, Ihsanoglu was exercised about “Islamophobia,” the invented term Islamic supremacists use to try to stifle realistic analysis of the global jihad in all its manifestations.

“We are facing daunting challenges and severe hardships,” Ihsanoglu complained. “Islam and Muslims are under serious attack, and Islamophobia is growing and becoming more rampant and dangerous by the day.”

It is not at all established that “Islamophobia” really is growing. In fact, the FBI has recently released data establishing that hate crimes against Muslims are comparatively rare. But if there is any actual suspicion of or negative feelings toward Muslims in the United States, it is solely and wholly the responsibility of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihadist; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas underwear jihadist; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who killed one soldier and murdered another in a jihad shooting outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark.; Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square jihadist; Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden on 9/11; the London jihad bombers of July 7, 2005; and so many others.

Continue reading . . .

Daily Dose

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“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” – Benjamin Franklin

Ephesians 1:4 – He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.