Teach Your Daughters to Shoot

John Lott and Sonya Jones made some excellent points in their column Flawed Laws Help Stalkers Victimize Women. I’d like to extend one of their points even further.

Firearms are often seen as “boy toys”, but it’s the ladies who really should be carrying guns.

Biologically speaking, women tend to be smaller and less able to defend themselves from physical attack than men.  That’s not sexism, that’s the cold hard facts of when biology meets physics.  Force equals mass times acceleration, and males tend to have more mass.

If you love your daughters, wives, girlfriends, mothers, grandmothers, and female friends — take them shooting.  Buy them firearms or make certain that they buy themselves firearms.  Make sure that they know how to use them and that they always have access to them.

As Trent and Sonya remind us, “The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey has shown for decades that resistance with a gun is by far the safest course of action when one confronts a criminal.”

For more information, visit these awesome groups of gals:

• Women Against Gun Control
• Women & Guns
• Armed Females of America
• Women’s Firearm Network

Tea Party Twitter Handles

The tea party movement has grown so strong so rapidly that even the leftist mass media have covered some of the events. Of course, they see men and women standing up for their Constitutional rights as dangerous extremists whose very existence threatens the socialist paradise which the new communist movement is building for Americans.

One trouble with this media exposure is that all mass media outlets appear to have some sort of dark-ages policy against helping viewers find more information. They talk about tea party groups organizing via Twitter, but they don’t list the Twitter handles you need to find people to organize with. Here are a few of those groups.

General

TaxDayTeaParty

ReTeaParty

TeaParty2

TeaPartyPatriot

BostonTea

TaxBoycott

TeaPartyTweet

Resources

FreeTeaPartyArt

TeaPartySigns

TPOrg (Tea Party Organizers)

Local Groups

Alabama: AlabamaTeaParty, WetumkpaTea, HSVTeaParty

Arizona: AZTeaParty, PhoenixTeaParty

California: SCVTeaParty (Santa Clarita Valley), TeaPartySCV, LateaParty (South Bay / Redondo Beach), OCTeaParty (Orange County), Thunder1776 (Pasadena), SVTPMovement (Silicon Valley), TeaPartyPAC, RedlandsTParty, CVTeaParty, MurrietaParty

Colorado: EvergreenTParty, LkwdTeaParty (Lakewood)

Delaware: DETeaParty

Florida: TCTaxTeaParty (Treasure Coast), SouthFLTeaParty, OrlandoTeaParty, FWBTeaParty, LakelandTea

Georgia: AtlantaTeaParty, DouglasTeaParty (Douglas County), SavTeaParty (Savannah)

Hawaii: HIKaiTeaParty

Idaho: TeaPartyBoise, IdahoTea

Illinois: ChicagoTeaParty, LCTeaParty (Lake County)

Indiana: IndyTeaParty, INTeaParty, IndianaTeaParty, THTeaParty (Terre Haute), HoosierTeaParty

Iowa: DSMTeaParty

Kansas: PittKSTeaParty

Louisiana: SBTeaParty (Shreveport Bossier), NorthShore912 (Mandeville), AcadianaTea

Maine: METeaParty

Massachusetts: BostonTeaParty

Michigan: TParTConvention, AdrianTeaParty

Minnesota: MNTeaParty, StPaulTeaParty

Mississippi: TupeloTeaParty

Missouri: KCTea, STLTeaParty

Montana: BozemanTeaParty

Nevada: SecondTeaParty

New Hampshire: NHTeaParty

New Mexico: ABQTeaParty, RedRiverTP

New York: TeaParty365, LITeaParty (Massapequa), TeaPartysInNY (Staten Island)

North Carolina: RaleighTeaParty, MaconTea, OrangeCoNCTP, NCTeaParty

Ohio: CincyTeaParty, CantonTeaParty

Oklahoma: TulsaTeaParty, OKC_TeaParty, PoteauTeaParty

Pennsylvania: PGHTeaParties

Rhode Island: RITeaParty

South Dakota: SDTeaParty

Texas: DTeaParty (Dallas), KatyTea, McAllen Tea Party, ArlTeaParty (Arlington), AMTeaParty (Southfork), CarrTeaParty (Carrollton), SLTeaParty (Sugar Land), WestTXPatriots, McKinneyTeaParty, HillTeaParty (Hillsboro), CollinCountyTea

Tennessee: TNTeaParty, ChatteaParty, MemphisTea

Utah: UtahTeaParty, CSGTeaParty (Columbus Gate)

Virginia: LibertyProject (Richmond), RoanokeTeaParty, LBurgTeaParty, GiveUsLiberty, DanvilleTea, SCVATeaParty, HRTeaParty (Hampton Roads)

West Virginia: TeaPartyNCWV (Clarksburg), WVTaxTeaParty

Wisconsin: ECTeaParty (Eau Claire)

Wyoming: CodyTeaParty

Tax Competition

Tax competition is a term you are going to be hearing a lot in the next few years.

Low taxes create growth and prosperity; high taxes strangle it. Governments that take a larger share of their nations wealth cause businesses to fail, citizens to become unemployed, and economics to shrink.  Governments that take a smaller share of their citizens wealth allow business to grow, individuals to become prosperous, and economies to flourish.  Unfortunately, some government leaders care more about enlarging their control of the economy than about the success of their nations as a whole.

People and businesses are not powerless against these predatory government officials.  If one city, state, or country decides to take too much, the people and businesses will respond by moving to a lower tax jurisdiction.  New Yorkers move their tax residences to Florida.  Brits move to the Cayman Islands, the French move to Switzerland.  Entire businesses move their headquarters to friendlier countries.

The United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.  The combined federal and (average) state tax burden on corporations is approximately 39% — almost double that of most other developed nations.  It’s no wonder American companies can’t build products which are competitive with other nations.  It’s no wonder that American consumers are importing almost everything they purchase — American companies are competing with one hand tied behind their backs.

Today, many multinational companies are based in the U.S.  Profits they earn overseas, however, are not taxed until they bring them into the U.S.  This lets the U.S. government tax these corporations only on their U.S. activities.  Obama has promised to change this system and force all of these companies to pay U.S. taxes on their global operations.

At first glance, this might appear to be a good way to increase tax revenue — but in reality it will have exactly the opposite effect.  The companies are not stupid.  All they need to do is to move their legal tax residences to another country, one with a less grasping corporate tax rate.  They will then pay that government about half of what they used to pay the U.S. government and they will take the savings as profit.

Tax competition is not just an issue for corporations.  Many individuals have discovered that moving themselves, or just moving their tax residences, can save them enormous amounts on their taxes.  At one time, this was mainly done by extremely wealthy individuals with dedicated tax planners.  It is now becoming popular among two new groups: American retirees and Internet workers.

Retirees can reduce their tax burdens and lower their cost of living by moving to countries with less fiscally oppressive governments.  People who make their living on the Internet can work and live almost anywhere on the planet.  They can earn high salaries, pay little or no income tax, and live like royalty — all by relocating to a more favorable tax climate.

Governments are now in competition for these individuals and businesses.  The economic immigrants are highly desirable for the wealth they bring with them and the jobs they create.

The U.S. has effectively decided to lose this tax competition.  President Obama plans to raise the tax rates for both corporations and individuals.  This will cause the best and the brightest to abandon the United States and will hasten the decline of our once-great nation into poverty.

The Border is Indefensible

The American border is indefensible and until we recognize and accept this fact we will continue to waste precious resources attempting to accomplish an impossible goal. I am not speaking here only of our Southern border, but also our Western and Eastern sea borders and our Northern border with Canada.

Our Southern border is 1,969 miles wide. We have spent billions of taxpayer dollars to build fences along much of the border and billions more to pay government employees to patrol the border. Despite these expenditures, approximately half a million people cross our Southern border illegally every year.

Immigrants currently scale the border fence with ladders, dig under it with ditches and tunnels, and tear it apart with hacksaws and blow torches. They even drive trucks up to the fence and unload cargo over the top of it. We need to face the fact that fencing is useless against human ingenuity.

If we were to build and maintain an effective solution for a secure Southern border, it would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year to maintain — and it still wouldn’t achieve the desired goals.

One reason it would fail is that we have three other borders — all of which are far less secure than even our current Southern border. Illegal border crossings would just shift to our other borders.

A larger reason it would fail is that 45% of the approximately twelve million illegal immigrants currently in the United States came here legally using visas or border crossing cards. They came here legally and then stayed past the lengths of their authorized visits. Even a truly secure border would do nothing to prevent these occurrences.

We should not feel alone here. The Great Wall of China was built upon the deaths of a million Chinese peasants and it ultimately failed to protect the empire. The Maginot Line diverted resources which could have been used for the defense of France to a static line which provided no defense against the German blitzkrieg. The Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union was somewhat effective in preventing the escape of Soviet subjects, but at a debilitating cost to the Soviet empire.

If we truly want to stop illegal immigration, we must remove the incentives for people to engage in that activity. By and large this means not granting taxpayer-funded welfare to everyone who applies. If we are able to do that successfully, we will stop attracting immigrants who travel North to take advantage of our government’s largess. We will still, however, attract immigrants who come to the United States seeking to work. Perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. Our nation was founded by immigrants who were willing to work hard to build a better future.

The Real Tragedy of National Health Care

Bankrupting the American people and their children for generations is one tragic result of the irresponsible actions of the Obama administration and their cronies in the U.S. congress. However, it is not the most serious tragedy of their actions.

Our Declaration of Independence states clearly “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Our founding fathers believed that individuals possessed rights and that government gained it’s legitimate power from the consent of the governed. Leftists like Barack Obama don’t think that way. They believe that governments have power and from that power they may grant, if they so choose, rights to individuals.

The current push for national health care isn’t a new idea. The Nazi’s developed the concept of Züchtungsstaat, or “breeding state”, in which individuals existed only to create children for the state. The important decisions regarding procreation and child rearing were regulated by government bureaucrats. Freedom was replaced with control.

I will never accept that my body is property of the state. I am an individual and the power of the state comes from me. When the U.S. government fails to remember these self-evident truths, the Declaration of Independence has a solution for that also:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Terrorists Still Want to Kill You

Even if…

• you voted for Barack Hussein Obama
• you think Islam is “cool”
• you’re a lesbian
• you live in California
• you’ve never even seen a gun
• you’re under eighteen
• you think that Saddam Hussein was a great leader
• you hate Jews
• you’re a pacifist
• you’ve never been to church in your life
• you’ve never touched alcohol
• you think that Leon Klinghoffer got what he deserved
• you’re a virgin
• you protest at the WTO every weekend
• you think that GWB blew up the World Trade Centers

… terrorists still want to kill you.

The only thing that you can do to keep the terrorists from wanting to kill you is to convert to their specific brand of fundamentalist Islam.

If you are not will to do that — and I am not — then the only reasonable course is to kill the terrorists before they kill us.

The leftist seem to be calling for America to make peace with the terrorists. They don’t seem to understand that the terrorists have no interest in making peace with us.