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Marie Lozito	June 4, 2011 Marie Lozito is a Registered Nurse, Licensed Massage Therapist, wife, mother, grandmother and life-long conservative. She wrote a text on medical massage and taught at New York College of Health Professions.  Interested in, and observing politics since 1960, she ran for elected office in 2010.

MISCELLANEOUS MUSINGS

An accumulation of thoughts about a few different topics.

FIRST: Congratulations to the Sullivan County Republicans for their new headquarters in Newport!

The new SCGOP headquarters is at 36 Main St., Unit 12 – on the lower level, just below the Alice Peck Day Center. The ribbon cutting ceremony is Saturday June 25th at 10AM. All Republicans are welcome.

You probably heard the other week about yet another outrageous infringement on “free enterprise” and private companies: Obama appointee, Lafe Solomon, filed a complaint on the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) behalf, seeking to force the Boeing Company to build its new plant in Washington State. Boeing originally planned to build its new plant near Washington's Puget Sound, but after tangling with the International Association of Machinists, the company gave up. 

This union had already cost the company nearly $2 billion in revenues due to its penchant for striking. Boeing instead moved to South Carolina, a right-to-work state. It then set to work constructing the plant and hiring over 1,000 locals. Solomon claims that in moving the company out of the union's reach, it is infringing the workers “fundamental right to strike”. Never mind that previously the Supreme Court had ruled that companies can take union actions into account when making decisions. Since when did anyone in Obama's administration care about the law or rulings from Federal courts? They are acting in contempt of direct court rulings in several matters already, what difference does one more make? However, I do hope court rulings will matter to the administrative law judge who will hear the case on June 14th!

Remember the scandal about the SEC after the financial crash in '08? Did you wonder how come the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) didn't know about the risky real estate bundling and do something to control it before there was a crash? It's partly because SEC government employees were surfing internet pornography while at “work”. 

In 2010, 31 employees were found to have spent their workdays downloading Internet pornography in the 2 1/2 years during and preceding the financial crash. Seventeen of those employees were being paid government salaries of $99,356 to $222,418. One senior lawyer at SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., admitted to spending eight hours a day looking at Internet pornography. An employee with the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance admitted watching up to five hours a day of pornography in his office. (Try doing that if you work in the private sector instead of for the government!) 

Even after admitting to watching pornography all day on the taxpayers' dime, not one of the SEC employees was fired. Just one more unbelievable abuse of our tax dollars by the federal government.

Is it any surprise that stimulus funds for "green energy" just happened to be directed to some of Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors? For instance, the government is backing a $535 million loan for a solar panel manufacturing plant in California. An investor in the company "bundled" between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama's campaign. The company promised 1,000 new "green" jobs with the taxpayers' money, but a year later, 200 workers were laid off when the plant shut down. 

Four companies in another venture capitalist's portfolio received more than $500 million in loans, grants or other stimulus money. The venture capitalist bundled $500,000 for Obama. This “you help me, I'll help you” backscratching was repeated for another big donor whose investment firm backs Fisker Automotive, an electric car company. Fisker received a $528 million loan. 

All told, the inspector general of the Department of Energy has "64 open investigations" into stimulus funding channeled through that department. Meanwhile, George Kukla, a retired professor of paleoclimatology at Columbia University and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is predicting another ice age. He also says, "The only thing to worry about global warming is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid."

"What entitlements do, and what the transformation of entitlements into rights does, is create a citizenry that increasingly lacks the most important character trait - gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. That is why we teach our children to say 'thank you.' But the welfare state undoes that. One does not express thanks for a right. So, instead of 'thank you,' the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, 'What more can I get?' Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people. They succeed in part because demonizing conservatives and their values is a left-wing art. But the truth is that capitalism and the free market produce less selfish people. Teaching people to work hard and take care of themselves (and others) produces a less, not a more, selfish citizen. Capitalism teaches people to work harder; the welfare state teaches people to want harder. Which is better?" 
– Dennis Prager

"It was self-serving politicians who convinced recent generations of Americans that we could all stand in a circle with our hands in each other's pockets and somehow get rich." 
- Paul Harvey

“Socialism only works until you run out of other people's money.” 
- Margaret Thatcher