Contemporary Slave-master Bastards...

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Two stories bring to mind the continuing scourge of chattel slavery.

It’s vital to note that while Britain, America and Western Europe eradicated chattel slavery over a century and a half ago, it STILL remains the rule, rather than the exception in most places around the world...and all too often, in the hearts of men.

In the Arab Mideast, in large tracts of Asia and throughout sub-Saharan Africa, chattel slavery is alive and well TODAY.

According to the Associated Press, Lassissi Afolabi, a man from the West African nation of Togo has confessed his role in the smuggling of dozens of young women who were forced to work at hair braiding salons in New Jersey (one of the salons is pictured above).

Mr. Afolabi pled guilty Wednesday in federal court to conspiring with his ex-wife and others to commit forced labor and related crimes in Newark and East Orange, where he lived.

Mr. Afolabi has been held without bail since his arrest in September 2007.

Prosecutors claim that between October 2002 and September 2007 at least 20 young women were taken from Togo using fraudulent visas and brought to Newark, NJ, where the girls were forced to work six or seven days a week and to turn over all of their earnings to the defendants.


AND this from the bowels of California, where Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy (both pictured above), were arrested after the bizarre abduction and forced imprisonment (sexual slavery) of Jaycee Lee Dugard, when she was just eleven years old.

Garrido, held Ms. Dugard prisoner, hiding her in various tents in his large backyard. He impregnated Jaycee Dugard when she was barely fourteen y/o.

Jaycee Dugard was freed after the arrest of the Garrido’s. She is now 29 and the mother of two children, by the pedophile, Phillip Garrido.

According to the AP, Phillip and Nancy Garrido are in jail, suspected of abducting Dugard 18 years ago and subjecting her to nearly a lifetime of torment in a squalid backyard compound. They pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.

Saturday, three police agencies on Saturday searched the Garrido’s home to see if there is evidence linking him to other open cases in the area, including the unsolved murders of prostitutes.

The invest igations are "preliminary," said Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department, east of San Francisco Bay. He declined to discuss what cases were being reviewed. My ONLY question is, "Why did they take these two ALIVE?"

Both these cases highlight the depths of human depravity.

And it SHOULD serve as an instructive lesson to those obsessed with American and Western Europe’s shameful role in the practice of chattel slavery. America and Western Europe eradicated that practice OVER a century ago, while it’s still going strong in many regions around the world, including, ironically enough, in sub-Saharan Africa!

“ALWAYS Love Your Country, But NEVER Trust Your Government”…R.I.P. Robert Novak...

Those were the immortal words of the great freedom-lover and great Conservative commenator, Robert Novak, who also died this week.

It is ironic that a man who worked tirelessly AGAINST individual LIBERTY (freedom), Ted Kennedy, is often erroneously lionized as a “champion of freedom,” while a true lover of individual LIBERTY (freedom), Robert Novak, has often been excoriated as though he championed anything but individual LIBERTY.

It creates an odd juxtaposition of those two deaths.

While Kennedy’s “Liberalism” eschews real “fend-for-yourself” freedom (individual Liberty), Novak’s entire life was spent espousing and defending free minds and free markets.

It’s odd that so many people who laud Kennedy and revile Novak would probably attribute the above quote (“ALWAYS love your country, but NEVER trust your government”) to the wrong man.

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That point is as poignant as it is sad. R.I.P. Bob Novak...R.I.P.

Ted Kennedy R.I.P. ....

Well, there's not much good I can say here, except to note that he's the first Kennedy male of his generation to die of natural causes, so I won't say anything else.

I would like to see Massachussetts atone for their sins by electing a Conservative to that seat. That would be fitting.

Where'd All the "Anti-War" Protestors Go???...

Suddenly and abruptly, after five long and loud years, the protests against "America's war against Islam" have stopped.

The question is WHY?

After all, we DIDN'T elect an "anti-war" President, if we had, we STILL wouldn't have the same number of troops in Iraq as we did last October. If we had, we STILL wouldn't be engaged in the war in Afghanistan...a war which has been ratcheted UP over the last 6 months and we STILL wouldn't have Gitmo open.

So, since we haven't elected an "anti-war" President and there are now MORE U.S. troops engaged in the war in the Mid-East then there were last year, and since the NSA surveillance programs are STILL in effect, why have the protests died down?

There's ONLY one reason...there were NEVER ANY "anti-war" protests, there were merely anti-Republican protests disguised as anti-war ones.

That's an undeniable FACT.

Same with homelessness, which first exploded due to Carter's "deintitutionalization" in the 1970s and ignored UNTIL a Republican (Ronald Reagan) occupied the White House and brought the U.S. economy back from the brink of annihilation (Carter's STAGFLATION and a record high 22 point Misery Index) to an economy of SINGLE DIGIT Misery Indexes within five years, where they remained through the rest of Reagan's tenure.

So, can we now say the "anti-war" protestors, who failed to utter a peep over another earlier "UN opposed, unilateral attack on a soveriegn nation" (Serbia and Croatia), screamed loudly over Bush's post 9-11 engagement in the war against global jihadism and now have returned to silence now that a Democrat presides over the same wars, with even MORE troops and with even MORE vigor is a F.O.S. astroturfed political phenomenon ginned up by Democrats?

I think the events prove that is exactly the case. And considering that it was three Supply Side leaders (Reagan, Clinton and Gingrich) who were most responsible for getting the government out of the way and allowing America's private sector to deliver a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity, there's no rational reason why ANY American would protest the GOP.....UNLESS, of course, they were protesting the Liberal "Moderate" (Country Club) wing of that Party.

TEXAS MONTHLY TALKS - TED NUGENT

This is a GREAT interview with Ted Nugent.....yes, I too would like to see "dead offenders" rather than "repeat offenders."

How’s That Socialism Working Out for You???...

One of the few remaining Socialist/Command economies in the world (Cuba) is currently going through, among other things, embarrassingly enough – a toilet paper shortage!

As if MORE proof were needed that governments can’t run businesses, “WHOOOPS there it IS.”

Rueters reports, “Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said Friday...Cuba's financial reserves have been depleted by increased spending for imports and reduced export income, which has forced the communist-led government to take extraordinary measures to keep the economy afloat.”

For all those U.S. dimwits who still say inane things like, “The government runs the Post Office and NASA just fine, so why don’t you think a government-run economy couldn’t work?”

Well, here’s even more proof....let's just call this "Exhibit 1,784, 693"...

SEE: http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5792F420090810

Way to Go GUS!...

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This is a note of CONGRATULATIONS to 72 y/o Charles (Gus) Augusto, the Harlem store-owner who was forced to shoot four armed intruders with a shotgun the other day, as they beat one of his employees, J B Hall, killing two of them and wounding the other two.
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Mr. Augusto has expressed regret that he “couldn’t talk them out of it” (the robbery), yet that didn’t stop some in the media from siding with the thugs and against the store-owner.
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NY Daily News writers, Barry Paddock, Alison Gendar and Corky Siemaszko wrote, “Born in Yonkers, Augusto said he is the father of two other children and has been married for 48 years. A registered Republican, he said he learned how to handle a gun while serving in the Coast Guard...While Augusto’s store is far from swanky, a police source said, “He did a large cash business.” He earns enough to have an $880,000 mansion in a secluded Westchester neighborhood.”
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Apparently any success at all makes one a “greedy, capitalist pig” to some journalists.
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That entire line was designed to slime the real victim in this case (Gus Augusto) by political affiliation (“a registered Republican”) and base class envy (“He earns enough to have an $880,000 mansion in Westchester”), as IF Mr. Augusto didn’t have a right to be an independent thinker (a/ka/ “registered Republican” in a town that’s over 80% registered Democrats) or a right to some measure of success (ie. that $880,000 “mansion” in Westchester”).
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Worse yet, it’s not merely biased “journalism” but it’s misleading, inaccurate and factually challenged “journalism” as well.
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Turns out that the average house price in Westchester County is $635,000, similar to home prices on Staten Island and Queens NY. So, though slightly above the median home price, Mr. Augusto’s home seems FAR from a “mansion” by any stretch of the imagination.
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As IF the Daily News “writers” didn’t know this! Right, like they didn’t know that the $880,000 price tag they trumpeted about Mr. Augusto’s Westchester home would buy an 850 square foot Co-OP in their own town of very swanky Manhattan!
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Why does the media continue to do this?
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Here they smear a hard-working 72 y/o businessman, a man who like his workers, people like J B Hall, served their community every day, far greater than any or all of the four thugs who attacked them ever did.

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You done good Gus!



ADDENDUM:


Earlier today (Thursday, August 27, 2009) I received an email from Corky Siemaszko of the NY Daily News both defending the News position and explaining that the facts were what were they were and that they did not intentionally slant the story one way or another.


Corky’s email read:

Hey, just was directed to your blog: http://workingclassconservative.blogspot.com/.
Kudos to you for embracing the web to get your point out. Agree or disagree, it's good to debate the big issues of the day.

But I have to tell you it was a leap to suggest that mentioning in the Augusto story that this guy was a registered Republican was some kind of smear. It's just a fact.

If he was a registered Democrat, we would have slapped that into the paper.

Also, we had a reporter eyeball his house. And while you are correct that shacks in Westchester are worth a fortune these days, this guy has a sweet spread in a very nice neighborhood.

Anyway, best of luck to you in your writing and stay safe on the job.

Corky Siemaszko
New York Daily News


I was both touched and humbled by Corky’s reaching out to explain the writer’s viewpoint and I responded:


Hi Corky,

I want to be fair, as well and I will make an addendum to my post based on your email.

First, I DO very much appreciate your taking the time to respond to me. I also believe agree or disagree it's always good o have more communication that less, in fact I think more thought is stimulated by exchanges between those who disagree than anything else.

I was admittedly unpleasantly surprised when I read the article in question, in that after it chronicled the families of the thugs who were shot extolling what "great guys they all were and how they planned to attend College in the Fall", Mr. Augusto was described, a least in NYC parlance, in a most unflattering way - "registred Republican (in a City that's over 2/3s registered Democrat), I am a registred Democrat myself, albeit one that is "to the Right of the great Zell Miller.") and living in a "Westchester mansion!"

Let's be honest about this, that reportage certainly appears designed to perculate class envy and a sense of alienation toward Mr. Augusto - a "registered Republican," doing "a large cash business and living in a mansion in a secluded Westchester neighborhood," alienates Mr. Augusto and serves to make him appear less sympathetic than he (the real victim in all this) should to most of those who'd read that piece.

My question is why?

Is it the idea that violent self defense is "as wrong and arbitrary as thuggish violence?"

If so, I must state that I feel that that is an absolutely indefensible position.

Colin Ferguson's LIRR rampage should show that when guns are strictly prohibited only the thugs have guns. Had another rider had a gun that day, it's more than likely that Colin Ferguson would've been cut down early on and many INNOCENT lives (Ferguon's would not count as an "innocent life" since he CHOSE to be the aggressor in that scenario) almost certainly would've been saved.

Same here, IF Mr. Augusto hadn't had that shotgun, OR if that gun didn't work, it was more likely than not that all of the people in that store that day may have been killed.

I know you all were merely doing your jobs reporting on this story, and you probably see me as overly sensitive about this, but the tone and tenor of that article made a very clear statement AGAINST the rightful actions of Mr. Augusto, who certainly saved the life of J B Hall and perhaps others...and that de facto becomes a statement IN FAVOR of the view that the thugs who were shot, were "driven to criminality by an unjust society"....in short espousing an old Left-wing lie that "we ae all responsible for driving the 'dispossessed' to lives of crime and violence."
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One of the worst things about violent crime is its dysgenic function...that is, invariably, the victims of violent crime tend to be far more productive than the perpetrators. That's true whether it's a case like this, the LIRR rampage or the murder of Ted Ammon by a handyman....in each case, more productive people are eliminated by less capable and less productive people and that diminishes us all and weakens society - Ted Ammon was far more productive than Danny Pelosi and Ammon's wife, just as Mr Augusto and J B Hall were both more producive than any of their attackers.

If the reverse were occurring, waves of more productive people slaughtering primarily non-productive victims, the criminality and immorality would be equal, but there would be NO/ZERO dysgenic impact on society oingg forward.

But, of course, we don't have that and have never had that. Instead we have what we've always had, the non-productive and most limited among us harming us all by eliminaing members far more productive and capable than themselves.

I just think the article was decidedly unsympathetic and unfair to the realvictims of this crime (Mr. Augusto and J B Hall) and, as a result, somewhat sympathetci toward the thugs in question.

Again, I VERY MUCH appreciate your contacting me and adding your insights. I will add an addendum to this post.


My very best regards,

JMK

I don’t believe disagreement is at all bad. In fact, I think far more thought is provoked by clashes of disagreement than with harmonious agreement. I greatly appreciate Corky taking the time to reach out and defend the New York Daily News’ position and set the record straight from their end.

Who Are “the Bad Guys” in the Current Healthcare Debate?

That’s the crux of the question that must be answered, “Just who “the bad guys” in this current healthcare debate?

Is it the Conservatives, many of whom already benefit from government-run healthcare in the form of Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Hospital care, OR is it the liberal-Democrats who want to impose rationing and restrictions on care for all, so that a few more Americans can be covered under an umbrella of what by current standards is sub-par care, with those who CAN afford to, being able to buy expensive gap insurance to avoid those restrictions?

To be able to answer that question, we first have to look at the problem.

The same liberal Democrats who chant “America’s healthcare system is broken,” conveniently overlook the undeniable FACT that the part that is broken is, in fact, Medicare and Medicaid not only account for a large and growing share of federal spending — 23% last year, they now account for appx 50% of all U.S. healthcare spending, that is about 6% of GDP, for a nation that currently spends 12% of GDP on healthcare.

Both Medicaid and Medicare are rife with fraud, waste and cost-overruns.

Moreover, the fact is that the primary reason that the United States spends more per capita on healthcare than other countries is because we have access to and consume far more healthcare services at baseline. Countries that utilize various forms of socialized or universal healthcare spend less than the United States because they ration care, to some degree or another, by restricting what services patients can have access to through a variety of mechanisms.

Those rationings and restrictions come with a very high human price.

Recently, a review of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that the United States ranked at the top in terms of access to advanced medical technology such as CT scanners, MRI machines, and Cardiac Catheterizations. As a result of this access to newer services and technologies, Americans enjoyed among the highest rates of cancer survivorship and survival from major medical illness around the world.

An recent study from the Eurocare-4 working group, which appeared in Lancet Oncology, found that the United States outperformed European countries in 5-year relative survival rates for all malignancies in men (66.3 versus 47.3) and women (62.9 versus 55.8) and was among the highest performers in terms of 5-year relative survival rates for colo-rectum, lung, soft tissue, skin melanoma, breast, uterine, prostate, thyroid, and non-hodgkins lymphoma.

In addition to these live sustaining measures, increased utilization and access to healthcare services improves the quality of life for many patients suffering from painful and debilitating diseases such as joint, eye and cardiovascular disease. Regarding "disease specific outcomes", which were not taken into account in the WHO rankings, the US performs at the top.

But all of this comes at a cost.

The liberal Democrats are pushing healthcare rationing and restrictions to cut costs, specifically to the most poor and vulnerable – those unable to purchase the needed supplemental insurances to circumvent the rationed care that comes with any government-managed healthcare.

Some Conservatives are being equally hypocritical, in that they too support reining in healthcare costs by eliminating access to top level care to those unable to afford it, but they too, don’t want to annunciate this. Why do so? There’s no downside in them politicizing this issue to the hilt the way the liberal Democrats politicized national security over the past decade!

So, bottom-line, there’s no way to cut America’s healthcare costs nor keep them from continuing to mushroom other than restrictions and rationing of care.

That can be done by BOTH government AND the private sector.

One thing that MUST be done is to get the out-of-control costs of Medicare and Medicaid under control BEFORE any misguided politician even considers using them as “a workable healthcare system,” as in their current form, they’re far from that.

Another thing that MUST be done is to eliminate that inane “unfunded mandate” that maintains that ANYONE who comes to an American hospital’s emergency room in need of care MUST be cared for AT TAXPAYER’S EXPENSE! It’s a mandate that DOES NOT EXIST anywhere else in the modern industrial world and it’s now a luxury we cannot afford.

Then, we must look at rationing care, restricting access AND really cracking down on Medicare and Medicaid fraud, waste and abuse.

Government funded healthcare is NOT “free” because no commodity (and healthcare is a commodity) is ever delivered for free. The cost of all our current, government-funded “free healthcare” (in the form of Medicare and Medicaid) is 6% of GDP or appx. $900 BILLION every year.

What America can no long afford is giving people who don’t pay into the system unlimited access to expensive, advanced care. Those of us who recognize that fact and accept that some form of rationing and retrictions for existing government healthcare programs are wrong to argue against universal, government-run healthcare plans for their restrictions and rationing, just as surely as those who support the "public option" are wrong for claimiing that the most dysfunctional portion of our current healthcare system (Medicare & Medicaid) can be blueprintss for any kind of "solution" to our current healthcare cost problems.

The Housing Bubble is Officially OVER...

This week we had the best economic news on TWO fronts in years – FIRST, existing home sales rose for the third straight month and SECOND, the stock market inched over 9,000 for the first time this year.

This news is vital because it signals that there’s no way to blame ANY of the policies going forward on the now “long past policies,” of the Bush administration. That’s now off the table.

WASHINGTON (AP) - July 23, 2009 -- A real estate group's report says sales of previously occupied homes rose 3.6 percent from May to June, the third consecutive monthly increase and a sign that a housing recovery is under way in much of the country.

The National Association of Realtors says home sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million last month, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.72 million in May.

It was the highest level of sales since October 2008 and beat economists' expectations.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/business&id=6929258

Ironically enough the stimulus packages have done nothing to bring about the current “recovery”. With less than 5% of the stimulus monies being spent, it’s been China’s recovery that has helped bring a large sector of the American economy back.

So why’s this so important?

For one thing, it’s nothing less than the official end of the “Bush-Pelosi-Reid” economy. Even though we’ve had a “Democratic economy” since January of 2006 and a concomitant period of economic disaster along with it, up to now, most of the last two years were wrongly blamed on the lame duck Bush administration, but now we have the official start of the “Obama economy”.

Economists across the board expect dire consequences from our exploding national debt, rising unemployment and declining revenues – fewer people working and less profitable industries has meant lower tax revenues for city, state and the federal government.

This mini recovery breaks with the past and makes ALL the future consequences the result of the failures of Democratic Keynesian policies.

Economists across the board agree that we’re currently facing some very dire consequences as a result of the exploding National Debt and declining revenues due to higher unemployment and far less profitable American industries.

At the end of next year, the Bush tax cuts expire and both tax experts and economists predict that the top 10% of American income earners, who now pay about 80% of the income taxes, will simply defer more of their incomes as tax rates rise, thereby DECREASING tax revenues. They predict that because that’s what the highest income earning Americans ALWAYS DO when tax rates rise.

So, now, a full six months into this administration, we can now, and without ANY rational opposition, say that “We are NOW officially in the Pelosi-Reid-Obama economy”.

From here on in EVERY rise in the unemployment rate, EVERY spike in inflation, EVERY hike in interest rates and ALL the concomitant economic pain is unquestionably due to the Democratic agenda and their Keynesian policies.

THIS should be welcome news to ALL Conservatives and economic Libertarians.

We’ve already had “the recovery” without any “feel good”, now, everything going forward can and will be blamed on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid policies.

Why Universal Healthcare is Losing Support Among Americans

Quite frankly, most Americans simply DON’T want to pay MORE for LESS and most Americans certainly DON’T want to pay more so that others may have what they’re currently paying for.

With an estimated 39 million people in America currently uninsured, it’s been shown that 43% or 17 million of those are “uninsured by choice”, that is, they are largely young, healthy Americans who choose more take-home pay over paying into their health insurance premiums. Another 15 million are illegal immigrants who would NOT be covered under any proposed plan and which 88% of American citizens DO NOT support being insured by any program financed by American taxpayers.

That leaves a grand total of about 7 million Americans (at the highest estimates) uninsured and many, if not most of those are employed in part-time and per diem jobs that offer no benefits.

That is hardly a crisis, certainly not grounds for the federal government to look to seek greater control over 1/6th of the American economy.

Many Americans support “lower cost healthcare”, but the primary reason American healthcare costs more is because it IS cutting edge. It DOES offer patients a wide array of tests and treatments that cost more.

American business AND government supports a healthcare system that rations care for the poor and those both unable and unwilling to spend MORE to get better quality care.

What’s more, many, if not MOST Liberals, folks like Ted Kennedy support healthcare rationing and restrictions too!

Recently, William Kristol wrote, “For Kennedy and his co-author, Bob Shrum, have let the rationing cat out of the bag. And that's a problem for President Obama and the Democrats. Make no mistake: Beyond all the other crippling problems with the Democrats' health care proposal--its cost at a time of massive deficits, the tax increases it requires at a time of recession, its preference for government over the private sector and for central planning over free competition--the deepest vulnerability of Obamacare is that it (intentionally) puts us on a course towards government rationing of health care.

“Here's the key paragraph from Kennedy and Shrum:

We also need to move from a system that rewards doctors for the sheer volume of tests and treatments they prescribe to one that rewards quality and positive outcomes. For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days - at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we'll save billions while improving the quality of care for patients.”

Even in countries like France, Germany, Sweden and England, healthcare is NEVER rationed for the rich. The wealthy in ALL those countries are free to go anywhere in the world to get the very best healthcare available.

The same would be true under ANY healthcare plan offered here in the USA. In fact, EVERY plan to date would severely restrict both visits and treatments to those on the government plan, BUT traditional insurers would be free (under ALL such plans) to come in and offer “gap insurance” for those willing and able to pay more to avoid the rationing and restrictions that the likes of Ted Kennedy would impose.

What Kennedy and his cohorts have failed to do is sell the American people on the need for rationing and restrictions to reduce the costs of healthcare...maybe they should’ve hired someone who could get that job done.