Top States for Job Growth: Virtually All Republican

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ALASKA, TEXAS & NORTH DAKOTA

From Eric Dondero:

Congress just approved yet another extension for unemployment benefits. And Some have been on the government dole for over 2 years. Now new numbers have been released. And they show that if these displaced workers would simply move to a Republican State, their job-finding prospects would be improved dramatically.

The Top 3 States in the Nation for Job Growth for 2010 for the first two quarters of fiscal year 2010 are North Dakota, Alaska, and Texas; All 3 solidly Red States. Out of the Top 10, 8 out of 10 are Republican-run. The two exceptions are the glaring anamoly of the District of Columbia coming in at #5, and oddly enough New York.

From Reuters:

Here are the state-by-state rankings as of mid-2010:

1 North Dakota
2 Alaska
3 Texas
4 South Dakota
5 District of Columbia
6 Nebraska
7 Louisiana
8 New York
9 New Hampshire
10 Utah

Conversely, making up the bottom of the list a number of deeply Blue Democrat states like Michigan, California, Rhode Island, and Ohio. Though, two Republican states - Florida and Georgia - are also near the bottom of the list. One swing state - Nevada - is at the very bottom.

Photos - Gov. Sean Parnell of Alaska, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Gov. John Hoeven of North Dakota.

Libertarian Politics Live: Jordan Lorance and Jennifer Keeton

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ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence will be our guest tonight 9:00-9:30 PM Eastern tonight. Tonight we will be discussing the case of Jennifer Keeton, a counseling student at Augusta State University, who is being threatened with expulsion because she expressed her christian convicitons about homosexuality. Her only alternative is to complete a "remediation program," in whcih she'll be asked to write papers and attend seminars on "diversity, GBLT issues," etc. She is even being censured for views she expresses outside the classroom. Suing on her behalf is the Alliance Defense fund, which is once again to be commended for standing up for the underdog and supporting the cause of liberty.

ABOUT Jordan Lorence: Jordan Lorence serves as senior counsel and senior vice-president of the Office of Strategic Initiatives for the Alliance Defense Fund at its Washington, D.C., Regional Service Center. He has litigated religious liberty, free speech, and marriage cases across the nation since 1984. Lorence earned a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1980. He is admitted to the bar in three states, the U.S. Supreme Court, and multiple federal courts. Host Andre Traversa, Co-host Jim Lagnese

Call in at 1-646-915-9887

Streaming page is here.

See her videos here:

http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/video/KeetonVNR.mov

http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/video/KeetonSOT6.mov

Alaska Cruise Ship passengers, now to pay less Taxes thanks to Republican Governor

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Tax was taking $25 million a year from dock workers and other support industries

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has signed a bill which would lower taxes dramatically on tourists visiting the State. His Cruise Ship legislation reduced the passenger tax from $46 per person to $19.50.

"Through this legislative session it became very clear as I talked to small business owners around the state that what they needed was for state government to step out of the way and create more opportunity."

Parnell continued:

"This really gives Alaskans, thousands of Alaskans, hope that we have turned the corner now and we will no longer have the exodus of ships and capacity out of our state and that we will start to build the business back and get those Alaska jobs back for Alaskans."

According to AK3 one industry source estimated that the tax was "taking about $25 million a year away from docks and other work supporting the industry and addressing tourism impacts."

The tax was snuck into a proposition approved by voters, that was pushed by environmentalists and other liberal special interest groups in 2006. The result of the tax was almost immediately felt by Alaska workers along the southeast Coast.

Juneau lost a ship that was permenently berthed at the city's harbour. From JuneauEmpire.com, July 26:

Royal Caribbean this year has relocated the 2,100-berth Serenade of the Seas from Alaskan waters after a dispute with the state over the commercial passenger vessel tax, commonly known as the "head tax," established by voters in 2006.

Overall, Juneau is expecting 14 percent fewer cruise ship visitors this year.

The Legislature has reduced the head tax, beginning next year, and also rolled back associated environmental regulations in a effort to win ship visits in future years.

North Dakota moves to create even more Jobs through Property Tax cuts

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Cut State Workers; dramatically increase Private Sector Jobs

From Eric Dondero:

Bucking a national trend, particularly in Democrat states like New York, California and Illinois, North Dakota is moving to cut its property tax through initiative.

From the North Dakota Policy Council:

If property taxes were eliminated and the state government had to fund 100% of local government revenue that is generated by property taxes, North Dakota's private sector would create nearly 12,000 new jobs in the first year and more than 13,000 new jobs by 2015. Personal income would increase a staggering $877 million in the first year and by more than $1 billion by 2015. Private investment would increase nearly $700 million in the first year and by more than $1 billion by 2015. These are good things for North Dakota's economy.

Further a study commissioned by Council, by the Massachusetts-based Beacon Hill Institute, indicated that a cut in the state work force would dramatically increase private sector employment. Continuing:

In 2009, $693,184,750.09 were collected in special taxes and property taxes. According to the Beacon Hill Institute's study, the increase in disposable income for North Dakotans and increased business activity because of that income - along with new private investment - would generate $65.88 million in new state revenue.

Simple Math - if you cut the State Work force, you don't need Revenue increases to make up a Tax Cut shortfall

Predictably, liberals in the State are framing the proposed tax cut as a loss of revenue to State coffers.

North Dakota Tax Commissioner Cory Fong is suggesting that the State will have to make up for it, with increases in other revenue sources.

Rob Port of the conservative blog Say Anything, based in ND, shoots that argument down:

flying in the face of Fong’s suggestion that other taxes in the state would have to be drastically increased to make up for the property tax is a study just released by the Beacon Hill Institute showing that if the tax were to go away the state would really only have to make up about $29 million in tax revenues. And that’s a conservative estimate. The reality is probably quite a bit less.

the state could save $25 million annually that it spends now in assessing the property tax. That combined with reductions in the state’s work force and other cuts in wasteful spending put the study’d estimate at the amount of revenue that would need to be made up through other tax increases at only $29 million (worst case scenario).

Governor Rick Perry helps open yet another Production Facility in Texas

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Loss for Democrat-run states like New York, Illinois, and Ohio is a big gain for Texas

From Eric Dondero:

Governor Rick Perry attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Reyes-Amtex Automotive’s production facility, in San Antonio.

From the Office of the Governor (release):

Reyes–Amtex Automotive is part of a joint venture that is comprised of three companies with a combined 120 years of manufacturing experience. The three entities will combine their strengths to make trim components and carpet manufacturing for the next generation Toyota Tundra pick-up trucks using injection molding, blow molding and various assembly techniques.

While other States mainly in the Northeast, Mid-West and California, are losing jobs at a record pace, Texas continues to be among the leaders in job creation. Commented Perry:

“As Americans look for the best place to live, work and raise a family, more of them are heading to Texas all the time,” Gov. Perry said. “The root cause of our economic success is hardworking Texans, but pro-job policies, low taxes, predictable regulations and fair legal system have also helped Texas lead the nation in job creation.”

The Business world is taking notice. CNBC recently named Texas "America’s Top State for Business" for a second year in a row. CEO named Texas the "Best State to Do Business" for the sixth time in a row. Finally, Forbes named Texas Metro-areas like San Antonion, among "America’s Recovery Capitals."

Libertarian/Tea Party Republican Bob McConnell wins Sarah Palin’s endorsement

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From Eric Dondero:

Sarah Palin has endorsed a string of libertarian Republicans for congress, senate and governor's races this year, including most prominently Nikki Haley for South Carolina Gov., Tim Scott for Congress in SC, Tom Emmer for Minnesota Gov. and Rand Paul for US Senate in Kentucky. Now add Ayn Randian, Pro-Military Vietnam War Veteran and staunch gun rights advocate Bob McConnell in Colorado.

From Sarah Palin's Facebook, July 19:

Bob McConnell is considered a grassroots underdog candidate running a dynamic, prudent campaign to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. Bob sometimes describes himself as a “recovering lawyer,” but that’s just one of his professions. Impressively, he’s a retired Colonel and Airborne Ranger. He’s a husband and the proud father of three and grandfather of seven, and he’s a true American patriot who wants to serve his fellow Coloradans for all the right reasons. Bob knows that in times like these ordinary citizens must be bold and take a stand to return our country back to our Constitutional roots of limited and fiscally responsible government. A decorated combat veteran, Bob is supported by the honorable Combat Veterans for Congress, and was unique in being able to tell a rally crowd at the Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum that he’s parachuted out of three of the aircraft in that museum! He’s also an avid outdoorsman who climbed Mt. Everest and lived off the grid as a mountain guide for a number of years.

Please join many other concerned Americans in moving the country onto the right path by supporting Bob McConnell. Visit his website at http://www.mcconnellforcongress.com and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

McConnell is in a tight race with moderate-conservative Scott Tipton. The District stretches from southeast Colorado - Pueblo to the Western Slope and Grand Junction.

Fireworks fly in Red Hot! Colorado Senate Primary – Who is the "Real Tea Partyer"?

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Obama Birth Certificate now the big issue

From Eric Dondero:

The Colorado Republican Senate Primary is just two weeks away. Battling for the nomination are fmr. Lt. Governor Jane Norton and Well County Prosecutor Ken Buck. From the beginning Buck has been regarded as the Tea Party favorite. But Norton has sharply challenged that notion.

Now a new controversy has erupted over Obama's Birth Certificate. Buck, off mic made a disparaging remark about so-called "Birthers."

At an event Buck said:

"Will you tell those dumbasses at the tea party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera?"

A Buck campaign spokesman has since apologized for the candidate and stated that Buck was simply tired from a long day's campaigning and was "venting."

But Norton is not letting it pass. Her spokesman remarked (via AP, Politics News):

“Ken Buck is two steps short of fraud. He’s a self-proclaimed tea partier who trashes tea partiers when he thinks no one is looking,” Norton spokeswoman Cinamon Watson said.

Just last week Norton praised former Congressman and now Constitution Party candidate for Governor Tom Tancredo for saying Obama posed a worst threat to the U.S. than the "Soviet Union... or Al Qaeda."

Polls have shown a virtual dead heat, with Buck slightly ahead.

Hagerstown, Indiana – Elected Libertarian Central

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(By Mark Rutherford, National LP Vice Chairman. Originally posted on LP.org.)

Hagerstown, Indiana is a hotbed of elected Libertarian activity.
It is a community of 1800 people, the community center of a significantly populated rural area and has Libertarians elected to partisan office.
It is the home of Rex Bell, Wayne County Libertarian Chair, and the [...]

State Department versus Climate

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Proposed Enbridge Pipeline

Hillary Clinton is trying to get another gigantic oil pipeline approved.  The EPA is trying to stop her.

Maybe someone can explain to us how a pipeline carrying dirty tar sands oil from Canada keeps us safe. The Enbridge corporation keeps building oil pipelines into the U.S. from Canada, and they all seem to be approved, despite our government knowing the dangers of oil spills and pollution and GHG emissions.  Enbridge pipelines have frequently spouted oil spills and leaks in the past.  Enbridge has pipelines in Minnesota, most recently the one Hillary Clinton approved last year called the “Minnesota Alberta Clipper” pipeline, carrying dirty tar sands oil into the state and down to locations in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. Enbridge also has pipelines in several other states, and also owns the pipeline that just ruptured in Michigan.

Why do we keep allowing foreign oil companies, and foreign pipeline companies, to threaten our environment with spills and leaks, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions?

The State Department is calling the tar sands oil from Canada a necessary part of our national security, along with the pipelines that carry it.  That’s nonsense.  National security, keeping us ’safe’, should stop this pipeline from ever being built. The population of the U.S. is far less safe if this pipeline is built because it will increase pollution, climate change  and potential oil spills (like the horrible oil spill that just happened in Michigan) and that has serious health affects.  After the biggest oil spill in our history in the Gulf of Mexico, the State Department thinks we need more oil pipelines in this country!  It’s astounding — and wrong.  Naturally, all the wrong people are going to get rich from this pipeline too, (including fossil fuel enthusiast T. Boone Pickens, who is heavily invested in tar sands oil. )

Yet Hillary Clinton argues that our “national security” depends on dirty foreign oil from Canada.  Wrong!  (I remember during the presidential campaign when Hillary said we needed an “Apollo program” to address climate change.  I guess that was just a lot of hot air.)  A lot of stupid things are done in the name of “national security” and this proposed pipeline, pictured above, should not be one of them.  The EPA is trying to stop the pipeline.

“The project, known as the Keystone XL Project, would have a nominal capacity to deliver up to 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from Hardisty to the terminals in Texas. In total, the Keystone XL Project would consist of approximately 1,702 miles of new, 36-inch-diameter pipeline, consisting of about 327 miles in Canada and 1,375 miles within the United States.”

If the EPA succeed in stopping this pipeline, it could be overturned and approved by the President himself.  From SolveClimate:

White House could intervene as environmental security takes equal place next to energy security as concern of national interest

The EPA has slowed down the approval process of a permit [...]

Martian Dust Devil Whirls Into Opportunity’s View

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This is the first dust devil that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has observed in the rover's six-and-a-half years on Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/Texas A&M - Larger image

In its six-and-a-half years on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had never seen a dust devil before this month, despite some systematic searches in past years and the fact that its twin rover, Spirit, has seen dozens of dust devils at its location halfway around the planet.

A tall column of swirling dust appears in a routine image that Opportunity took with its panoramic camera on July 15. The rover took the image in the drive direction, east-southeastward, right after a drive of about 70 meters (230 feet). The image was taken for use in planning the next drive.

"This is the first dust devil seen by Opportunity," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, a member of the rover science team.

Spirit's area, inside Gusev Crater, is rougher in ground texture, and dustier, than the area where Opportunity is working in the Meridiani Planum region. Those factors at Gusev allow vortices of wind to form more readily and raise more dust, compared to conditions at Meridiani, Lemmon explained. Orbiters have photographed tracks left by dust devils near Opportunity, but the tracks are scarcer there than near Spirit. Swirling winds at Meridiani may be more common than visible signs of them, if the winds occur where there is no loose dust to disturb.

Just one day before Opportunity captured the dust devil image, wind cleaned some of the dust off the rover's solar array, increasing electricity output from the array by more than 10 percent.

"That might have just been a coincidence, but there could be a connection," Lemmon said. The team is resuming systematic checks for afternoon dust devils with Opportunity's navigation camera, for the first time in about three years.

Opportunity and Spirit arrived on Mars in January 2004 for missions designed to last for three months. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about the project and images from the rovers.

For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-250

Springville player dies from accident injuries – Salt Lake Tribune

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KSL-TV
Springville player dies from accident injuries
Salt Lake Tribune
Springville • By early evening Wednesday at Springville High School, only small pods of young people remained. Cross-legged in the parking lot, ...
Springville football player Brandon Curtis dies from injuries suffered in accidentDeseret News
Teen Critically Hurt In Crash At Utah High SchoolLocalNews8.com
Springville football player dies, taken off life supportFox 13 Now - Salt Lake City
ABC 4 -KSL-TV -Daily Herald
all 23 news articles »

Video: Think Big Picture – For Just a Moment

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Keith's note: I feel compelled to feature this masterful video by Karen Lau and David Sanders at least once a year. This was done when Craig Steidle ran ESMD. For a brief moment, they "got it".

So folks, drop the petty internal and external politics, and think big picture - just for a moment.

I don't see this sort of thinking at NASA any more. NASA will go nowhere unless it finds its mojo again.

Locking in Climate Change for Thousands of Years

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Monsoon rains continued in different parts of the country on Tuesday, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department's website.

Many parts of the world are suffering from torrential rains and violent storms this summer.  Can they be related to climate change?  They probably are.  And the weather will continue to worsen, unless we do something about GHG emissions as soon as possible.  It’s not just people alive now we have to worry about either.  What kind of crime will we be accused of by future generations for forcing them to live in an inhospitable climate?

According to a new report from the National Research Council, choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia.

See the report and read more here. You can also read the entire report online free on this page.

Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.

Policy choices about emissions can be informed by recent advances in climate research that quantify the relationships between atmospheric CO2 and warming levels, and between warming levels and future impacts. Drawing upon this research, the report estimates changes in precipitation, stream flow, wildfires, crop yields, and sea level rise that can be expected with different degrees of warming. It also estimates the average temperature increases that would be likely if CO2 were stabilized in the atmosphere at various target levels. However, the report does not recommend any particular stabilization target, noting that choosing among different targets is a policy choice rather than strictly a scientific one because of questions of values regarding how much risk or damage to people or to nature might be considered too much.

Increased Confidence About Future Impacts

Although some important future effects of climate change are difficult to quantify, there is now increased confidence in how global warming of various levels would relate to several key impacts, says the report. It lists some of these impacts per degree Celsius (or per 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming, for example (these apply for 1 C to 4 C of warming):

5 percent to 10 percent less total rain in southwest North America, the Mediterranean, and southern Africa per degree Celsius of warming.
5 percent to 10 percent less stream flow in some river basins, including the Arkansas and Rio Grande, per degree Celsius of warming.
5 percent to 15 percent lower yields of some crops, including U.S. and African corn and Indian wheat, per degree Celsius of warming.

While total rain is expected to decrease in some areas, more of the rain that does occur is [...]

Video: SpaceUp DC

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"We're going to carve out some time for people to give some Ignite talks at SpaceUp DC this year. Ignite is a great format. You provide 20 slides that will auto advance every 15 seconds. If you could tell the world anything about space in 5 minutes what would it be? We double dog dare you to give it a try. Here's an example of a VERY popular Ignite talk from the first SpaceUp in San Diego in Febuary. This should make your blood boil."

Anna Maria Island: Lunch & Beach

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I drove down to Bradenton to meet a buddy for lunch today, but his work schedule intervened and I faced the horrible prospect of lunch alone. Boo, hoo. So I did what any self-employed Florida native would do when faced with such a dire situation in the middle of the week on a hot July [...]

Medical devices injure 70000 kids per year. Contact lenses were main culprit – Examiner.com

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Gossip Jackal
Medical devices injure 70000 kids per year. Contact lenses were main culprit
Examiner.com
Medical devices can create complications for people everywhere. For example, a needle-based blood sugar testing device used by the UNM School of Medicine, ...
More Than 70000 Kids Injured By Medical Devices Each YearMSN Health & Fitness

all 423 news articles »

Sipuleucel-T Linked to Prostate Cancer Survival Benefit Appears to prolong … – ModernMedicine

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Reuters