Let's Face It: Conservatives Are Not a Majority

The news of Colin Kaepernick’s endorsement deal with Nike came as shock to conservatives. It seemed that Kaepernick was a has-been after his departure from the NFL, but suddenly he’s back with a lucrative deal to be the face of Nike. That should be a wake-up call that conservatives do not represent a majority of Americans.

If conservatives were a majority, then selecting the man whose claim to fame lies in taking a knee during the National Anthem as a spokesman would be an act of corporate suicide. In that case, one would expect that the stock would tank and a meaningful boycott would occur. And that’s exactly what many conservative news outlets were reporting.

The truth is a little different.

The deal was announced on Sept. 3. Nike stock closed on the previous day at $82.20 per share. By the close of trading on Sept. 4, Nike stock had indeed plunged… all the way to $79.60, a loss of a little over three percent. On Wednesday, the stock closed just under $79.92, not far under the 52-week high of $83.68. Trading in Nike was much higher than is the norm. 18,548,800 shares changed hands on Tuesday as opposed to an average volume of 7,073,191.

Nike’s stock declined, but it is only slightly off from prior to the announcement. There were a lot of sellers, but there were also a lot of buyers. That observation says a lot about American politics in general.

What’s more, most conservatives have not heard that Nike received an estimated $43 million in media exposure after the rollout of Kaepernick’s ad campaign. Bloomberg reports that almost half of the exposure was positive. Less than a quarter of the media coverage was negative.

The nature of modern communication is that most of us live in an echo chamber. Conservatives read conservative blogs, listen to conservative radio, watch Fox News and talk to other conservatives on Facebook and Twitter. When we don’t have contact with many – or any – people with opposing viewpoints, we lose sight of the fact that not everyone thinks like we do.

The story goes that Pauline Kael, a film critic for the New Yorker, said after the 1972 election, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” The story is somewhat apocryphal. The quote has been paraphrased to make Kael seem more out of touch than she really was, but the sentiment is real.

This week it is conservatives’ turn to say, “I can’t believe they hired Kaepernick. No one likes him.” Two years ago, it was the Democrats. Just substitute Donald Trump’s name.

If conservatives are to be successful in the long term, they need to face some hard truths. The first is that conservatives do not represent a majority of Americans. Close on the heels of that bitter pill is the fact that most voters do not like Donald Trump. Finally, some conservative ideas are popular, but some are not.

We can look back at Gallup’s survey of political ideology to see that, for the 30 years that the poll has been taken, conservatives have never represented a majority. The survey, taken in December 2017, actually shows a slight decline in conservative identification since the Tea Party revolution. About 35 percent of Americans now identify as conservative.

How do conservatives win elections then? The good news is that liberals are actually doing worse. About 26 percent currently identify as liberals. This represents a long slow climb from 17 percent in 1992.

The mathematically astute are probably thinking that liberals and conservatives only represent about half of the people polled. They’re right. The third major group in American politics is the moderates. Weighing in at 35 percent, the moderate group is as large as conservatives and larger than liberals. With neither conservatives nor liberals constituting a majority on their own, moderates are the deciding factor in elections.

The problem faced by both parties is that they need moderates to win, but moderates don’t like extremism from either party. Primary voters, on the other hand, love to vote for the candidates that promise to deliver the most change for their respective ideology.

What happens often is that a party will win an election by a slim margin and then proceed to govern as if they have an enormous mandate. It happened to Barack Obama, who answered a Republican offer of compromise with the words “I won,” and it is happening to Donald Trump now.

The Trump Administration is pushing an agenda that many voters are not happy with, but Republican voters are ecstatic with the “winning.” The problem for the GOP is that rather than winning the hearts and minds of voters, they have pushed their advantage with party-line votes and executive actions while ignoring public opinion. This is basically the same strategy that cost Democrats both houses of Congress and more than 1,000 legislative seats under Obama.

There is a disconnect on several core issues between the Republicans and the rest of the country. The most notable achievement of the Trump Administration is the tax reform bill, but Republicans have not sold the new law to the public. Nine months after passage of the law, numerous polls show that the country is split but the tax plan remains slightly more unpopular than popular.

Opinion on the president’s policy of separating families at the border as a disincentive to immigration is not even close. Numerous polls found that Americans opposed the separations by more than a two-to-one margin. However, the opinion of Republicans was just the opposite with an average of about half of Republicans supporting the plan.

On Colin Kaepernick and the anthem protests, opinion is also split. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken last week before the current brouhaha erupted found that voters felt that taking a knee during the National Anthem was not appropriate by a margin of 54-43 percent. However, a Quinnipiac poll from June showed almost exactly the opposite.

The bottom line here is that the target market for the Nike campaign is not white conservatives. Nike almost certainly test-marketed the Kaepernick campaign before they launched what they had to know was going to erupt into a tornado of fecal material, yet Nike is confident enough that the campaign will make money for them that they did it anyway. The logical answer is that Nike understands that, while millions of people will be angered by the ad, those millions of people are still a minority. In fact, Nike may be banking on conservative outrage to generate more publicity… just as Kaepernick has used the outrage to make his name a household word over the past few years.

The collective clout of American conservatives showing their anger can’t make a mainstream sports apparel company decide against hiring one of the most infamous men in sports because aggrieved conservatives are just one small segment of the population. Nike has apparently determined that angry conservatives don’t buy enough of their merchandise to make a difference. The left learned the same lesson with protests of Chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby.

What both parties seem never to learn is that in order to propagate real and lasting change, you have to win over the voters in the middle. That isn’t likely to happen by being shrill and calling athletes traitors. If conservatives could find a coherent spokesman for the movement who could reach the moderates in the middle, then maybe one day conservatives will be a majority. Until that day, conservatives do not have the mandate to force their will on the rest of the country. They must remember that or pay the price.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

Liberal fake news doesn't excuse conservative fake news

News and media (Sollok29/Wikimedia)

Two of the big concerns of many conservatives about Donald Trump were that he would drag the party to the left on policy issues and that he would drag it into the gutter with his behavior. Trump’s proposals for an economic stimulus and more government spending have arguably moved the party toward the position of Keynesian liberalism. The response of many in the party to attacks on fake news sites fulfill the prediction about the corruption of Republican morality.

Articles on conservative sites have popped up all over the internet citing examples of fake news from mainstream media organizations. The examples are numerous and most of them are true. From Brian Williams who was fired for exaggerating his Iraq War reporting at NBC to Dan Rather who was fired for airing a “fake but accurate” report about George W. Bush’s national guard service to Hillary Clinton’s claim that she came under sniper fire in Yugoslavia to reports that Michael Brown was killed while his hands were up, bad reporting has been a frequent problem for even large news organizations.

The problem is that many conservatives seem to take the attitude that since liberal reporters don’t care about truth and accuracy, why should we? This is a bad response that does nothing to curb the publishing of fake news on either the right or left. Instead, it merely cheers on conservative bloggers in a race to the bottom where neither side can be trusted.

A better attitude would to follow your mother’s advice instead of following the mainstream media’s bad example. Who hasn’t been asked by their parents, in response to the juvenile defense that someone else did it too, “If so-and-so jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”

Put bluntly, the mistakes and faults of others don’t give us an excuse to make the same mistakes. If we criticize the mainstream media for lackadaisical fact-checking and then write and spread stories like last year’s claim that Barack Obama was planning to implement martial law in Texas under the cover of the Jade Helm exercise, that doesn’t make us equal with the liberals who peddle lies. It makes us hypocrites.

An equally appropriate aphorism is that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” It’s impossible to fight lying liberals when conservatives are also lying. To fight lies requires credibility, which many conservative sites lack thanks to stories with no basis in fact like those about Jade Helm or Obama’s birth certificate.

If conservatives want to have the moral authority to criticize fake and erroneous reporting from mainstream outlets, they first have to clean up their own house. There are plenty of good, objective news sites that report from a conservative viewpoint without stooping to dishonesty and constant outrage stories. The Wall Street Journal is notably conservative and one of the best newspapers in the country. If you care about politics and current events, the subscription is well worth the few cents that it costs per day.

I’m proud to say that The Resurgent is also a dependable site. While not a “hard news” site, The Resurgent is a conservative outlet that steers clear of the liberal-outrage-of-the-day brand of journalism. At The Resurgent, we strive to present an accurate look at politics from a conservative viewpoint. We aren’t in the business of manufacturing clickbait. And, unlike the Wall Street Journal, The Resurgent is totally free, although we do accept donations to help defray our costs.

So be skeptical with what you read and forward. Fact check for yourself. Don’t spread false stories. When we put an end to the lies on conservative sites, we’ll be in a better position to attack liberal lies.

Originally published on the Resurgent

Trump's election drives left beyond bounds of decency and civility

Twitter post of the "Rape Melania" sign (screenshot by David Thornton)

The election of the Donald Trump seems to have pushed many in the liberal left over the brink of sanity and common decency. First came the protests and violence. Ironically, this was the same sort of violence that some had expected of Trump supporters in the then-likely event that Hillary Clinton won the election. Even as the protests continue, the leftist response among many non-rioting leftists ranges from the irrational to loathsome.

In one bizarre case, Rachel Zarrell of MTV News tweeted a threat to mail Mike Pence a “monthly bag of period blood” if he “tries to regulate my uterus.” The tweet, posted on Daily Wire, was an apparent reference to Pence’s pro-life views, although another Twitter user answered Zarrell and pointed out her confusion. “Clearly you're ignorant of biology,” DC MCallister wrote. “A uterus and a fetus are two different entities. Saving the latter isn't ‘regulating’ the former.”

Zarrell may also be confused about Mike Pence’s role in the federal government. Laws are passed by Congress and Mike Pence, as the incoming vice president, will have a primarily ceremonial role in Congress. The vice president has very little control over anything. John Nance Garner, vice president to Franklin Roosevelt, famously observed that “the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm spit.”

Speaking of containers of bodily fluids, Zarrell might also want check into the Post Office regulations on shipping organic matter. Blood can be considered a biohazard and subject to hazardous materials regulations.

If Zarrell’s tweet was bizarre and disgusting, another anti-Trump protester’s message was, well, deplorable. The message on a protest sign spotted at a Washington, DC rally read, “Rape Melania.” This sign was all the more ironic and reprehensible in light of the campaign issue of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton’s treatment of women.

As the husband of a victim of sexual assault, let me just say that any call to rape or sexually assault anyone has no place in civilized discourse. Even in jest, the suggestion that someone would think that raping a candidate’s wife is an appropriate response to the democratic will of the people is morally bankrupt and indefensible.

Thankfully, as Heat Street pointed out, an associated #RapeMelania hashtag on Twitter was primarily used to condemn the sign.

If rape weren’t bad enough, some online leftists have openly called for and speculated about the assassination of Trump. The New York Post reported that the CEO of a California cybersecurity firm was forced to resign after tweeting a “flawed joke” about killing Trump with a sniper rifle. WCSH News reported that an Ohio man had actually been arrested for tweeting his intention to kill Donald Trump.

Opponents of Donald Trump have the freedom to criticize and protest his election, but should remember that words have meaning. Some words go beyond the bounds of civility and decency and cross the line to criminal behavior.

Voice your opposition, but watch what you say. The Secret Service will.      

Originally published on The Resurgent

Settlement in Kolfage lawsuit with alleged trolls

Two years ago, the conservative internet community was in the midst of a campaign of harassment by a group of liberal “trolls” who called themselves “goats.” “Trolling” is an internet term that essentially refers to cyber-bullying, harassing people online and, sometimes in the real world as well. The secret group was led by a shadowy figure known as “Busta Troll.” Now the law may have caught up with some alleged trolls.

Last year, Senior Airman Brian Kolfage, a conservative activist and owner of WoundedAmericanWarrior.com, filed a lawsuit against seven of the alleged trolls. The lawsuit alleged assault, slander and libel against Kolfage. Kolfage, who lost both legs and one arm in Iraq in 2004, became a frequent target of the goats and trolls online according to Military.com. The harassment allegedly even extended to harassment of the Kolfages and their relatives at home, school and work.

Kolfage declined to be interviewed for this article citing ongoing legal proceedings and court orders, but spoke last year to Fox 10 Phoenix, saying, “The same people would write stuff on my Facebook page, and the stuff they would write is just horrendous. They would say they wished I had died, they said I was a drain on the government system, just really nasty stuff. I started sharing the comments, and it went viral. Because I was just fed up with it.” He added, “And once they brought my family into it, and tried to do things against my family, and ruin my wife's career, I decided I needed to take legal action to stop it.”

Court documents reveal that five of the seven recently reached an agreement with Kolfage and his wife. The settlement agreement was reached between the Kolfages and Nathanial Downes of Puyallup, WA; Justine Grant of North Fort Myers, FL; Paul Loebe of Nashville, TN; John Prager of Wheeling, WV; and Kenneth Vanderzanden of Beaverton, Oregon. Three of these defendants are reportedly bloggers for Addicting Info, a popular liberal site.

Two defendants, Louis Caponecchia of Toledo, OH and Darren Remington of Nashville, TN, did not join in the settlement. The lawsuit against these defendants is still proceeding.

As a result of the agreement, the lawsuit was dismissed while keeping in place an agreement that required both sides to not “disparage one another going forward in the future and that they won't take action through third parties to disparage one another. And that to the extent that they have the power to affect, they will, in good faith, attempt to remove anything that is disparaging that's within their control” from the internet. The agreement stipulates that all parties would call the settlement “equitable.”

An additional agreement between the Kolfages and Paul Loebe requires Mr. Kolfage to write an acknowledgement for publishing the personal information of Jan Vrotsos in retaliation for her alleged post calling him “a worthless fake hero” among other things. Mr. Kolfage also agreed to express regret for anything said or done to Vrotsos as a result. This acknowledgement will be delivered to Mr. Loebe by June 30. Ms. Vrotsos has since been shown to be innocent of posting the remark.

A blogger pointed out that some of the defendants may have violated the terms of the agreement with posts after the lawsuit was dismissed, but these posts have since been deleted. At this point, seems that both sides are trying to live up to the settlement agreement.

An attempt was made to contact the defendants and the Kolfages for more information about the case. The first response was from Darren Remington, whose case is still pending. Remington alleges that it was Kolfage who aggressively stalked and intimidated critics online. He and his partner have filed a suit against the Kolfages, their attorney and another conservative blogger, Scott Kuhnen. Remington denies that he has ever been a “goat” or a “troll” and says that he is a “registered conservative Republican.”

Louis Caponecchia also denies being a goat or a troll, saying, “I never hid my identity.” He also claims to have been the victim of harassment by conservative fans of Kolfage, who he says, “purchased a background report on me, called my military service fraudulent, he and his father and others prank called my father, mother and sister, as well as my cell phone dozens of times a day.” He alleges that the Vrotsos post was fabricated and asserts a willingness to debate at any time. According to Politichicks, Kolfage stated in 2014 that he had also come to the conclusion that Vrotsos was innocent.

Caponecchia says, “Kolfage will never win, nor get one penny. And when its [sic] over, I'm going to punch Brian Kolfage in the face numerous times, and laugh as he flails his one arm around, screaming for help.”

Paul Loebe, who also denies being a goat or a troll, calls the settlement fair and says that he has offered Kolfage the “opportunity to help me amend, retract, or correct any mistakes in the new article. He has tacitly refused my offer and sent my wife threatening messages towards her and my daughter as a result.” When asked for details, Loebe declines to comment, but says, “I would like to resolve this without court proceedings if at all possible.”

Loebe also discusses the case in a May 31 article on Patheos, two days after the final order in the case. In his blog, he alleges that the lawsuit “did not appear to be a way to stop the bullying he stated he was receiving. Instead, it gave the appearance as a way to quell any dissent.” Loebe claims that he did not know the other defendants until they met through the lawsuit.

Nathaniel Downes also denies being a troll, saying he has a “prejudice against trolls in general” after having been trolled himself. He calls the settlement “a meeting of the minds.”

“I may not agree with the Kolfages' politics or positions,” Downes says, “but remember your Heinlein, ‘I never learned from a man who agreed with me.’ I wish them luck in their future endeavors and a long, peaceful life.” Downes says that he is writing a detailed book about the lawsuit.

John Prager also denies being a goat or a troll. It should be noted that all of the defendants denied guilt in the harassment of Kolfage and his family. The court did not determine guilt or innocence of the parties.

A blogger pointed out that some of the defendants may have violated the terms of the agreement with posts after the lawsuit was dismissed, but these posts have since been deleted. At this point, seems that both sides are trying to live up to the settlement agreement.

The best lesson from the lawsuit may be that people should remember that they are dealing with real people when they argue online. Tempers flare and, in the anonymity of the social media world, people say and do things that they would not in a face-to-face confrontation. This is especially true of those who use fake online personas. As the legal world catches up to technology, it is likely that there will be more cases involving cyber-bullying and stalking. People will be forced to pay a price in time, worry and legal fees to defend things that they said or did in online rants. The best answer is to think before you type.

Last year, Kolfage’s lawyer, Logan Elia, told Fox 10, “He did everything he could beforehand to get these people to stop. He begged them to stop online, he attempted to clear his own reputation. Nothing he did led them to backing off, in fact they just became more aggressive in their pursuit of him.” If Kolfage’s goal was stop the harassment and to have the defamatory posts removed, the lawsuit can be judged a success since both sides seem to be enjoying a fragile online peace.

DISCLOSURE: David Thornton’s Examiner articles are republished on Brian Kolfage’s WoundedAmericanWarrior.com.

Perry indictment is part of campaign of harassment against conservatives

The news of the indictment against Texas Governor Rick Perry on charges of abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public official surprised the country and shook up the early presidential race for 2016. Debate ranged from how the charges would affect Perry’s chances at winning the Republican nomination and the White House to whether Perry would be convicted. A surprising number of liberals and Democrats have broken ranks to defend what many call an unconstitutional attempt to criminalize politics as usual. This is not the first time in recent memory that prosecutors have pressed charges against Republicans on dubious grounds.

In Texas, the Travis County DA office has prosecuted other high profile Republicans. In 1993, Rosemary Lemberg’s predecessor, Ronnie Earle, indicted newly elected U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on charges of misusing her previous office of state treasurer according to National Review. Hutchison was originally elected in a special election and faced the prospect of running for reelection in 1994 with the indictment hanging over her head. She pressed for a quick resolution and, when the case went to trial, Earle told the court that he could not proceed without the admission of records seized from Hutchison’s office without a search warrant. The judge promptly ordered the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.

After the acquittal, Hutchison requested that the records be released, saying, “The case was not there. They turned around and ran because they knew the longer they went, the more embarrassing it was going to be. . . . They thought the lady would crack. Well, the lady wouldn’t crack.”

In 2010, it was Tom Delay’s turn to face the Travis County DA. Delay was convicted on money laundering charges stemming from accusations that he funneled corporate money to Republican candidates. Delay, a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was sentenced to three years in prison, but remained free on bail while he appealed. His conviction was overturned in 2013 by a three judge panel of a Texas appellate court. The decision said that evidence in the case was “legally insufficient” according to the Washington Post.

In 2008, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was indicted on felony charges of failing to properly report gifts less than four months before that year’s election. He was found guilty of making false statements on Oct. 27 and promptly lost his reelection fight to Mark Begich. A few months later in February 2009, an FBI agent became a whistleblower and revealed that prosecutors and FBI agents had withheld key evidence and witnesses that would have supported Stevens’ claims of innocence as well introducing evidence that they knew to be false. In April 2009, a federal judge vacated Stevens’ conviction. Politico reported in 2012 that a special investigator’s review of the case found that misconduct by the prosecutors and FBI had tainted the trial. Stevens died in a plane crash in 2010 and his Senate seat remains in Democratic hands.

Two other Republican governors, Chris Christie (N.J.) and Scott Walker (Wisc.), are also potentially under investigation according to Salon. In New Jersey, prosecutors are trying to tie Chris Christie to the “Bridge-gate” scandal as well as diversion of Port Authority money to New Jersey road and bridge projects and real estate deals by David Samson, Christie’s appointee to chair the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners. According to Esquire, anonymous “sources with intimate knowledge” of U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman’s investigation say Christie’s Port Authority appointees and former chief counsel “face near-certain indictment and are being pressed to hand up Christie.”

Walker may come under investigation for illegally coordinating with outside groups in his 2012 fight against recall. Walker triumphed in the election, but, as described by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Milwaukee County prosecutor, a Democrat, launched a John Doe probe, an investigation allowed under Wisconsin law that allows the government to “compel people to produce documents and give testimony, as well as bar them from talking publicly about the investigation.” A federal judge ordered an end to the probe in May 2014, according to MSNBC, noting that no laws had been broken. Under Wisconsin law, issue ads that do not endorse or attack a specific candidate are not considered expenditures for a campaign and are not subject to laws regarding coordination with the candidate. This issue was previously decided in Wisconsin Right to Life v. Barland.

Republicans do not have to be prominent elected officials to attract the attention of partisan prosecutors. Since 2013, a series of articles in the Wall St. Journal have detailed how prosecutors in Wisconsin have subpoenaed 29 conservative groups in the John Doe probe. In June 2014, the Journal noted that so far prosecutors have failed to show probable cause that any crime had been committed and pointed out that the coordination in Wisconsin strongly resembled the President Obama’s 2012 campaign. Nevertheless, recent reports by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Fox News indicate that personal information from members of conservative groups such as Wisconsin Club for Growth were released by a federal appeals court and posted online, allegedly by mistake.

The John Doe probe in Wisconsin is reminiscent of the IRS harassment of conservative groups that has been ongoing under the Obama Administration. Far from targeting high profile Republicans, the IRS focused its abuse on grassroots leaders of Tea Party groups. In one instance, cited by the Chicago Sun-Times, Catherine Engelbrecht, a small business owner involved with two nonprofit political groups beginning in 2010, was suddenly subjected to more than 15 federal audits and inquiries. In addition to the IRS, she was contacted by OSHA, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, among others.

The IRS admitted to both the harassment of conservative groups and illegally leaking confidential tax information to liberal groups during the 2012 presidential election. In June 2014, the Daily Signal reported that the IRS had agreed to pay $50,000 to the National Organization for Marriage. The IRS had leaked the group’s donor list, including names and contact information to the gay activist group, the Human Rights Campaign, which then published the data. Even though leaking confidential tax information is a felony, no criminal charges have been filed against anyone at the IRS.

There are also indications that Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the IRS scandal, may have had a history of malicious prosecutions at the Federal Election Commission as well. The Illinois Review reported that Republican senate candidate Al Salvi was the subject of several FEC complaints regarding campaign finances in the last weeks of his 1996 campaign against Dick Durbin. The complaints were ultimately dismissed in 2000, but not before Salvi received a strange offer from an FEC official he identified as Lois Lerner. Salvi says that, in a conversation that included Mike Salvi, his brother and attorney, Lerner told him, “If you promise to never run for office again, we'll drop this case.” Salvi refused. Four years and $100,000 in legal fees later, the FEC case against Salvi was dismissed.

These high profile cases are likely not the only instances of malicious prosecution of conservatives. At the state and local level, it is easy for such cases to avoid national scrutiny. The Wisconsin John Doe probe has largely been ignored by the national media. (Those aware of similar cases can contact the author.) In many other instances, such as harassment of California supporters of Prop 8 and the demonization of the Koch brothers, there was no prosecution, but a blatant attempt to intimidate and silence conservatives.

It is increasingly evident that the harassment, intimidation and malicious prosecution of Republican officeholders and conservative activists, often in the name of campaign finance reform, are an integral part of the Democratic playbook. As long as such attempts at stifling free speech succeed with no consequences for the left, they are likely to continue.

 

Read the full article on Examiner

Interview with Busta Troll

Last week, the infamous internet “goat” leader, the identity of Busta Troll was revealed by a group of conservative activists (read the story here). Examiner contacted Christopher Lyman, Busta’s true identity, via Facebook messages on Monday. Lyman agreed to the email interview with the stipulation that his answers be repeated in their entirety. What follows are Busta’s own words with only minor grammatical editing for clarity. The conclusion is also Busta’s.

How and why did you start goating pages?

I started goating pages because I can’t stand it when a page posts ridiculous rumors that can be easily debunked by five minutes of searching Google. When they post those things and won’t listen to reason, I feel it’s better for the general public to see a harmless picture of goats instead.

Why goats?

Goats became a staple of our [liberal troll] community before I became Busta Troll. I use them out of respect for those who started this movement.

How many pages were you responsible for goating?

I personally goated 17 pages.

Are you done with goating for good?

This is how my career will end. I don’t see a future in it or in Facebook for that matter. I plan to ride off into the sunset having accomplished my mission.

Now that you are out of the goating business, will you return control of the goated pages to their original owners, shut them down, or leave them in place?

The pages I was given were in turn given to others. I remained an admin on them until yesterday when I deleted myself. After the initial admin change, I very rarely post. The herd takes over from there. Those pages will always be for the goats.

Have you actually been harassed or contacted by anyone since your identity was revealed? Are you still concerned for your safety or your job?

The employment information given about me was old. I am no longer employed there. I have resigned my position as Little League umpire for the safety of the people in my town and my children. I am and always have been an advocate for responsible gun ownership, gun safety law, and reasonable restrictions on military grade equipment like most Americans. If these nut jobs think they’re going to show up at my house and threaten me or my family they have another think coming.

Are you concerned that the owners of the goated pages will take legal action against you (i.e. theft by fraud)?

I’m not at all concerned that the previous admins of goated pages will take legal action against me. Before you make someone an admin on your page, you have to enter your password after reading the disclaimer that they will have the same power as you. The pages are still there and I have never even been contacted by Facebook telling me I’ve violated their terms of service.

Is it true that you were a “paid liberal troll?” If so, who paid you?

No. I was not paid to troll.

Do you have anything to say to the owners of the pages that you goated?

To the original owners of the goated pages I say this: You posted pure hate and lies. You refused to talk about it, listen to reason, or even debate in a civil manner. Therefore, you got what you deserved.

~Busta Troll smiles and waves and walks off into the sunset.

 

Read the full story on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Santa Barbara murderer had much in common with other spree killers

By now, most are familiar with the story of Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara mass murderer who killed six people last weekend before turning his gun on himself. Rodger’s loneliness, angst and longing for meaningless sex are now well known. What may be less well known is that Rodger shared many characteristics with a number of other recent spree killers.

As Examiner reported last year, a number of features are common in the random mass killings that seem prevalent in recent years. First, almost all of the mass killers are known to be habitual players of violent video games. Second, the killer often comes from a broken family. Finally, in most cases, the killer can be reasonably determined to have undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. Elliot Rodger fits into all three categories.

Rodger’s own writings, excerpted here in the Daily Mail, say that he was “immersed entirely” in “online games like World of Warcraft.” Other reports, including this one from World Net Daily, suggest that Rodger used phrases from the game in his manifesto.

Frequent use of video games alone does not explain Rodger’s actions. Millions of people around the world play video games, even the most violent games, without descending into madness. There is the possibility, however, that violent video games can trigger violent behavior in some people. Lt. Col. (ret.) Dave Grossman, a former West Point psychology professor, has long studied the phenomenon in a field that he calls “killology.”

Two other factors that may act as triggers are broken families and mental illness. CNN reports that Rodger’s parents had divorced in 1999 when he was seven years old. While the specifics of Rodger’s family life are not known, it is well established that children, particularly boys, do not fare well in single parent families for reasons that vary from economic insecurity to inadequate supervision and time with their parents.

Mental illness was also a factor in Rodger’s actions. According to Hollywood Life, his mother said that he had Asperger’s syndrome, the same form of autism that Sandy Hook murderer Adam Lanza was known to have. A friend of the family told Radar Online that Elliot had “heard voices” and suffered from “extreme paranoia.” The source also said that Rodger had been prescribed a psychiatric medication, but refused to take it. Before moving to Santa Barbara, Rodger had been under the care of a psychologist.

There were warning signs. Rodger had posted violent threats on the internet before. About a month before the killing spree, the videos prompted his mother to send the police to his apartment. According to the Washington Post, the murders were not his first brush with violence. He had splashed hot coffee on girls who didn’t smile at him, shot people in a park with a Super Soaker filled with orange juice, and, shortly before his last birthday, tried to push girls off a 10 foot high ledge at a party.

Culture, like video games, cannot bear the brunt of the blame, but also likely played a role. Cultural icons have spent decades giving children and teenagers the message through movies and television that sex can – and perhaps should - be free of love and commitment. The normalization of pornography and the hookup culture, while seen as empowering to women by some feminists, does much to dehumanize and objectify women. This may be especially true to boys from broken homes who lack positive male role models to show them how women should be treated.

Rodger’s ramblings show that his sense of entitlement was complementary to his view of women as nothing more than sexual playthings. He believed that his family status and connections entitled him to sex with beautiful girls and he resented the boys that were chosen over him. He viewed wealth as a means to attract girls and blamed his parents for not providing him with the money he needed for a lavish lifestyle. He felt that his mother should have remarried to a wealthy man and was angry that his father’s failed documentary, “Oh My God,” had caused the family financial hardship.

The easiest solutions to the problems that created Elliot Rodger and the other spree murders deal with reforming how we treat mental illness. After the Sandy Hook massacre, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey described the federal mental health failure in the Wall St. Journal. Speaking on the May 28 episode of Michael Medved’s radio show, Torrey listed several reforms that would make future spree killings by the mentally ill less likely. First, he cited the need to reform commitment laws for those who are mentally ill and refuse voluntary treatment. Second, HIPAA privacy laws need to be reformed to make it easier for doctors and government officials to communicate about potentially threatening patients. Third, more beds are needed in mental health facilities to treat patients. Finally, mental health experts should perform evaluations. Currently, police who are not trained in mental health make field determinations about whether someone is potentially dangerous.

As the list of mass murders by the untreated mentally ill grows, it should be possible to get a bipartisan agreement on mental health reform. In a time of close scrutiny of federal spending, most Americans would probably agree that preventing the violently ill from arming themselves and committing mass murder would be money well spent.

 

Read the full story on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Leader of liberal ‘goat’ con men outed on Facebook

The true identity of the leader of the group of liberal con men known as “goats” has been made public by a rival group of conservative internet activists. The leader of the goats, who used the online persona of “Busta Troll” as well as many other false identities, was revealed last week by a Facebook community page called Kevin Kopper. Kopper provided the details of the outing to Examiner.

As Examiner reported last January in a story that went viral, Busta Troll and the goats would befriend the administrators of conservative Facebook pages to gain their trust. This was accomplished by using false identities and making promises to help administrators expand their pages by gaining “likes.” In some cases, the goats apparently ran their own pages and recruited real conservatives to run them. When the administrators could be convinced to give the con men administrator status on their pages, the goats would hijack the page, deleting the other administrators and replacing the content with memes of goats and vulgar attacks on conservatives and Republicans.

“One of our friends had their pages taken and goated by Busta Troll and we decided to stop him,” Kevin Kopper told Examiner. “We posted a $1,000 reward for the real identity of Busta Troll so we could shut him down and stop him from stealing and goating any more conservative pages. We had no idea how many different people were working on it independently from our efforts and the leads started pouring in.”

Eventually, Kopper said that several leads led to Christopher Lyman, a cabinet maker from a small town in Maine. When Lyman’s name and personal information were linked to Busta Troll in online postings, Busta/Lyman admitted that the information was accurate in a post on the Busta Troll Facebook page saying, “Posting my name is all well and good, I don’t really care, but when someone posts the name of my employer and the little league I umpire at so a bunch of teatarded [sic] gun nuts can show up and scare a bunch of kids, mine included, they’ve crossed the line.” Lyman continued, “My wife is absolutely mortified and I actually fear for the safety of my children.” Christopher Lyman’s Facebook page currently features a meme that announces “I am Busta Troll.” Examiner attempted to contact Lyman, but had received no response at press time.

Kopper says that Busta/Lyman “is lying about his family being threatened. Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply posted his correct ID. If anyone else has acted in a threatening manner we are unaware of those activities and certainly would not condone any threats of harm to him or his family.”

The personalization of politics is becoming more common as the country becomes more divided. Liberal activists have harassed the supporters of conservative initiatives such as California’s Prop 8 definition of marriage amendment. The most well known victim of the effort was Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich who was forced to resign in April after the fact that he had contributed to the effort to pass Prop 8 became publicized. In another incident, the IRS leaked the donor list of the conservative National Organization for Marriage to its chief political foe, the Human Rights Campaign, which then passed the list along to the Huffington Post. National Review reported that NOM chairman John Eastman told Congress that the harassment and intimidation of the group’s backers included business boycotts, physical assault and vandalism. Eastman said, “Our donors tell us ‘We are fearful of giving money to you to help support the cause that we believe in because our businesses and our family are at risk.’”

So far the goats have apparently limited their harassment to the internet. R.W. Burgin, owner of a Facebook page called “The Seditionist,” said that liberal internet trolls had copied pictures from his page and used them to make parody pages and videos. The pictures, which included Burgin, his girlfriend, their parents and grandchildren, were put on other pages. In some cases, the pictures were photo shopped onto pornographic videos. Burgin says that he was called a pedophile and that personal information, including his employer’s name, was posted online and that the trolls threatened to try to get him fired. The trolls also contacted his mother and girlfriend. Burgin is not sure if the trolls that harassed him were affiliated with Busta/Lyman, but says the he hopes Busta’s unmasking “will make people start to think before they threaten or torture people.”

Kopper says that he has been in contact with Busta/Lyman via Facebook private messages and that “he has informed us that he has taken down his pages and is done.” Examiner confirmed that the Busta Troll Facebook page, as well as a second page called “Busta’s Army,” is no longer active.

“We feel very satisfied with the outcome and will be providing Lyman’s information and messages to the admins of the pages he took,” Kopper said. “If they decide to pursue legal action we won’t have any problem with that.”

Kopper said that the $1,000 reward would be sent on Monday. He declined to name the recipient, citing the source’s wish to remain anonymous. He did note that the source was a retired military veteran.

The desire to remain anonymous is understandable given the vitriol that the goats have unleashed upon Kevin Kopper’s Facebook page. The postings there by the goats include the typical goat pictures along with profane insults and graphic sexual innuendo.

Jason Doolin, owner of the goated Citizens’ Post Facebook page, hailed the news of Busta’s retirement: “I’m happy about it. He deserves the agony of every person he terrorized and stole from” Doolin said that he hoped that Lyman would find something less harmful to replace “whatever was leaving that hole in his heart which he used hatred to fill.”

Doolin added, “There was a time when I would have gladly disseminated his personal information, whether or not anything negative came out of it. I would have been neutral or happy even. I’m ashamed of myself for that. In an effort to be more like [my friends who were calling for people not to be hateful] I want to share that same message: Love. Period.” Doolin says he has no plans to take legal action.

Kopper says that the team that identified Busta will remain in place. “We will absolutely be continuing our work, focusing on stopping goatings wherever and whenever possible. We have more tools and tactics at our disposal and we intend to use them.”

Read the full story on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

New poll shows conservatives outnumber liberals in 47 states

A new Gallup poll released on January 31 shows that conservatives outnumber liberals in 47 states. Although liberal identification has reached a new high in the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection, conservatives still make up the largest ideological group in most states. Nevertheless, the average gap between conservatives and liberals shrank from 15.9 to 14.6 percent since 2012.

The three states in which liberals outnumbered conservatives were Hawaii, Massachusetts and Vermont. Other states that rounded out the liberal top ten were Delaware, New York, Oregon, Maine, California, and New Jersey. The District of Columbia is the most liberal “state” with 38 percent of its population identifying as liberal.

Wyoming is the most conservative state with 51 percent of its population considering themselves conservative. Mississippi, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Alabama make up the rest of the conservative top ten, all with greater than 44 percent conservatives. Last year’s most conservative state, Alabama, fell to number 10.

The swing states from recent elections all boast a double-digit conservative advantage leading one to question why Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, and Ohio all voted for Barack Obama. According to Gallup, the answer lies with moderate voters.

Even though conservatives are the largest ideological group in most states as well as nationally, the fact that they make up less than 50 percent of the electorate means that Republicans need to reach out to moderate voters, something that they have had problems with in recent years. An Examiner analysis of exit polls from 2008 and 2012 found that moderates made up 44 and 41 percent of the electorate in the two elections. In both years, Barack Obama won moderates handily. In 2008, Obama won 60 percent of the moderate vote. In 2012, he won 56 percent. North Carolina was the only swing state in which Mitt Romney was able to eke out a victory even as he lost moderates.

Gallup notes that the percentage of liberals has been slowly increasing since the 1990s and suggests that the resurgence in liberal identification may be a result of Americans becoming comfortable with the term once again. After being popular in the civil rights era and 1970s, the term “liberal” fell into disfavor in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many liberals eschewed the label and chose to identify themselves as “progressives” or “moderates.”

Originally published on National Elections Examiner

Leftist con men hijack conservative Facebook pages

In the early morning hours of January 11, a group of leftist con men launched a sneak attack on an undetermined number of conservative Facebook pages. The perpetrators, calling themselves the “Goatz Alliance,” gained access to the conservative pages, deleted the page administrators, and began posting anti-conservative propaganda and memes depicting goats.

Jason Doolin, owner of the conservative Citizens’ Post page on Facebook, said that Patrick Blair, allegedly a representative of The Freedom Alliance contacted him several months ago about helping him to expand his page. Blair gained his trust over a period of months. There is a real Freedom Alliance as well, a Virginia based charity organized as 501(c)(3) organization that educates young Americans in civic responsibility and provides scholarships to the children of American soldiers.

Blair apparently operated several fake conservative Facebook pages and websites as a cover. In some cases, he seems to have even recruited conservative activists to administer and work on these pages, only to delete their work and revert the pages to goats later. Blair used the fake conservative pages to make conservative friends and seem more credible to his targets.

Doolin said that after gaining his trust Blair proposed an “admin exchange” in which the various pages in his Freedom Alliance would grant each other administrator status and exchange ideas. The plan was also promoted as a way to increase awareness of smaller pages like Doolin’s Citizens’ Post.

Blair allegedly put his plan in to action on January 10. He asked Doolin to grant administrator status to himself and a friend, Lyman Briggs. Late that night, Blair and his comrade deleted Doolin and his other page administrators and vandalized the page with anti-conservative and anti-Republican hate.

Doolin attempted to contact Facebook to report the abuse and theft of his page, but it is almost impossible to get in touch with Facebook’s customer service and security personnel. Although Facebook says on its legal page that the company “respects the intellectual property rights of others and is committed to helping third parties protect their rights,” the company makes it very difficult to report problems.

Emily Garman on the blog, The Social Animal, posted a video that describes the process to recover control of a hijacked Facebook organizational page. The process is essentially to report the abuse via dropdown menus on the page and hope that a Facebook representative deigns to contact you. A search of the internet did turn up a Facebook page with a procedure for reclaiming business pages. Depending on how the page was set up, this procedure may allow users to regain control of hijacked sites.

Patrick Blair was traced to a Facebook page in Buxton, Maine. On his timeline, he admitted to duping conservatives and “goating” their pages. Blair appears to also be involved with pages called “Busta Troll” and “Busta’s Army.” These pages are dedicated to “trolling,” visiting opposing sites and trying to provoke arguments. A post on Busta’s Army from January 10 claims responsibility for hijacking Doolin’s Citizens’ Post.

Various posts on the three pages refer to “paid liberal trolls.” It is unknown whether these internet denizens are actually paid and, if so, by whom. On his Facebook page, Blair claims to be paid by George Soros, but this is doubtful.

Examiner’s investigation turned up an several earlier attacks by the Goatz Alliance. Miss Lilly (name changed to protect her identity) was an administrator on a conservative page called, “America, the Next Generation.” One of the other administrators on the page posted a picture of President Obama in a noose, a picture that Miss Lilly agrees was “in bad taste.” The page’s owner removed the picture, but not before it was noticed by leftist bloggers.

Orlando Liberal Examiner Robert Sobel was apparently the first to notice the picture on December 31, 2013. The next day, Addicting Info, a far left-wing blog picked up the story and credited Steve Marmel, “a TV writer and producer with a left-wing Facebook page,” for pointing it out.

As the story hit the liberal blogs, Miss Lilly said their page was inundated with liberal trolls. “These were the nastiest, vilest [people],” she says. “I have never encountered such utter hatred and contempt. This goes way beyond racism. They called us racists, but what they said and did to us was beyond the scope and definition of racism. They are truly sick people.”

She continued, “We must have banned hundreds and hundreds of them. Facebook did nothing to help.”

Eventually, the site’s owners were contacted by James M. Ritchie, a.k.a. “Ranger,” who claimed to be a “troll killer.” Ritchie offered to help the site’s owners fight off the liberal attacks if they granted him administrator status on the page.

About the same time, the goats first appeared on the page, posted by a user calling himself “Vlad the Emailer.” Vlad claimed that goats were “an international peace sign” and offered his help as well. Another user who offered help, “Irwin Jr.,” may also be one of the goats.

There are several levels of administrators on Facebook pages. Content creators can post content, moderators can delete comments and messages, and managers have the ability to delete other administrators. Ritchie quickly persuaded the site’s owner to grant him manager access. Almost immediately, the page was hijacked and the legitimate administrators were deleted.

At this point, Patrick Blair enters the story. Miss Lilly says that he contacted the owners and told them that he had seen what happened to their page and that he wanted to help as well. He said that he had several pages that were “abandoned” by other administrators and offered to give one to the owners of America, The Next Generation. Where Blair got these pages is uncertain, but they may have been hijacked as well. Miss Lilly worked on one of these pages until Blair changed it back to goat pictures again over the weekend. “All they got from me the second time,” she says, “was the pleasure of calling me a dummy.”

Miss Lilly also said, “We took the goats for what they are, symbols of Satanism.”

While there is no evidence that Blair and his band are Satanists, they have made anti-Christian and anti-religious postings on their pages. It is likely that they have the same anti-religious beliefs that many members of the modern left seem to share.

At this point, Examiner has identified at least seven pages that have been hijacked by the goats. Owners of conservative Facebook pages should be aware that Patrick Blair and Busta’s Army may try to target them as well. While it might be difficult to stop a horde of liberal trolls like the one that assaulted Miss Lilly’s page, owners can prevent their pages from being hijacked by not elevating anyone to administrator status that they do not know personally. In most cases, the page owner should keep manager status for himself or closely trusted associates.

Abuse or harassment should be reported to Facebook. This can be done by clicking the gear symbol at the top of the offending page or user’s timeline and selecting “report page.” Individual posts can be reported as well. Click the “v” symbol in the upper right corner of the post. This will open a menu with an option to “report post.” Any threats should definitely be reported to Facebook as well as to the police.

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Cognitive dissonance

As I get older and wiser (some would dispute the latter), it seems more miraculous that anyone could ever be saved.

As humans we are so set in our ways and committed to our rationalizations that it is amazing that God could ever change our minds about anything. Even in the face of overwhelming objective evidence, we choose to deny reality and have faith in our own baseless beliefs.

For example, a committed liberal can stare at figures of the mounting federal debt and still believe that Barack Obama cut spending. They can look at crime data and still believe that we need gun control. They can look at our ravaged economy and still believe that we need more entitlements and stimulus.

Conservatives do the same thing. Many still believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or that the NDAA allows for indefinite detention of Americans, that Ted Cruz saved the Republican Party instead of splitting it.

If we can stare past mountains of evidence that are right in front of our eyes to cling to our erroneous beliefs, then how miraculous it is that we could ever be persuaded to believe the evidence of things not seen?

There, but for the grace of God go I.

Romney is more charitable than most, tax returns show

When Mitt Romney released his tax returns earlier this week, most of the attention was on the tax rate that he paid on his income. Romney paid less than 15 percent of his income in taxes due to the fact that his money comes from capital gains and dividends rather than from a salary, but he still pays a higher rate than most Americans.

The real surprise in Romney’s tax return is that the Republican presidential candidate is more charitable than most Americans. The Wall Street Journal states that Romney gave 13.8 percent of his income to charity in 2010 and more than 19 percent in 2011. This means that Mitt Romney is giving more to private charities than he is giving to the federal government.

In dollars, Mitt and his wife, Ann, earned $21.7 million in 2010 and $21 million in 2011 according to an analysis by CNN. They paid $3 million in taxes in 2010 and $3.2 million in 2011. They donated $2.9 million to charity in 2010 and $4 million in 2011 according to the WSJ figures.

In comparison, the Journal notes that Barack and Michelle Obama gave 13.6 percent of their income to charity in 2010. This was a marked increase from previous years. Between 2005 and 2009, the Obamas gave between 4.6 and 6.2 percent to charity. Before Obama became a national political figure, the rate was much lower, between 0.4 and 1.4 percent.

In another incident last week, Romney put his wallet where his mouth was. On January 14, ABC News reported that an unemployed woman asked Romney for money while he was meeting voters in South Carolina. Romney pulled out his wallet and gave the woman “a wad of cash,” later estimated to be about $50-60. Romney also introduced the woman to Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina, and the state treasurer, Curtis Loftis. Loftis reportedly gave the woman $150 to pay her light bill. The woman, Ruth Williams, told ABC that God directed her to Romney’s campaign bus and told her to follow it. She has reportedly been volunteering for the Romney campaign since meeting the candidate.

The Washington Post reported that the Romney’s action was not filmed, but was witnessed by an ABC News print reporter who later interviewed Williams. The Post writes, “There was no indication that Romney’s cash gift was calculated or anything more than a spontaneous reaction to one woman’s story of personal struggles.”

Contrast this with President Obama’s reaction when Henrietta Hughes asked him for help at a rally in February 2011 being filmed by Fox News. Hughes was unemployed and living in a car and asked for help finding a house. On live television, Obama responded, "We're going to do everything we can to help you, but there are a lot of people like you."

Hughes did get a house. A local NBC affiliate reported that a couple who owned a vacant rental house had donated its use to Hughes and her family “for as long as she needs it.” The house belonged to Nicholas and Chene Thompson. Nick Thompson is a state representative. They are Republicans. There is no evidence that Obama or his staff ever followed up with Hughes.

These figures may be surprising, but they are not atypical. The 2006 book, “Who Really Cares,” examined giving trends in America. Its author, Arthur Brooks, found that on average conservatives gave more to charity even though liberals typically earned more. This may be partly due to the fact that conservatives tend to be more religious and both Christianity and Judaism encourage charity (Proverbs 14:21, 2 Corinthians 9:6-7).

The difference between Obama and Romney underscores the different philosophies of liberals and conservatives. Where liberals believe that it is the role of government to help people like Ruth Williams and Henrietta Hughes, conservatives see it as their personal responsibility. The liberal philosophy is one of waiting on the government for help while conservatism empowers individuals. Obama made vague promises that help was on the way while Romney and Chene Thompson actually worked to make a difference. Conservatives like Mitt Romney believe that charity, like the economy, is better left in the hands of individuals than delegated to government bureaucrats.

It is obvious that many, if not most, conservatives do not deserve their reputation as heartless moneygrubbers. After all, is it really giving when it doesn’t come out of your own wallet?

This article was first published on Examiner.com:

Occupy Atlanta back in Woodruff Park

Four months after Atlanta police evicted Occupy Atlanta protesters from Woodruff Park, they are back. With apparently little to no fanfare, a small number of Occupiers and less than ten tents have again taken up residence the downtown Atlanta park.

The new encampment is a far cry from the group that was evicted in October. In mid-October, the activists had set up a thriving hamlet within the confines of what they called “Troy Davis Park” in a nod to the convicted cop-killer who was executed by Georgia in September. At that time, the activists in the park easily numbered more than 100 and scores of tents filled the park. There was a “free store,” a medical tent, and a “free child care” tent. Signs proclaiming “we are the 99 percent” littered the grounds of the park. Visitors were welcomed at tables under a large canopy. The sound of drums permeated the air and protesters marched up and down the sidewalks at intervals. (View photos from the October occupation here.)

In contrast, the new encampment consists of only a handful of tents and three visible occupiers, all men. Two occupiers talked while another played with his dog on the grass. The only sign in evidence, other than scribbled notes on the tents, was one with a rambling message about a “Jewish rebel,” an apparent attempt to link the encampment to Jesus Christ.

One of the occupiers said that he had been a protester during the Vietnam War. The man said that he believed that the U.S. did “need to be in Afghanistan,” but offered his belief that that the City of Atlanta discriminated on the basis of economic status as justification for the presence of the protesters.

As justification for this belief, he said that an Atlanta police officer allegedly arrested him for jaywalking while he was dressed shabbily and had his long hair down. He said that he later did the same thing in front of the same police officer while wearing business clothes with his hair tucked under a hat. On that occasion, he said the officer simply waved at him.

The man said that he had been camping in the park for several months although he did not live there full time because he “like[s] to be indoors.” He did not offer a specific date for when the protesters returned to the park after the Mayor Kasim Reed had them evicted in October. He did say that the current group was very different from the idealists who inhabited the park in the fall. He said that fights now occurred frequently. In October, both police and protesters said that there was no trouble from the Occupiers.

A downtown ambassador wasn’t sure how long the Occupy Atlanta encampment had been back either. He confirmed that the new group was not as peaceful as the original encampment. According to the ambassador, 80 to 90 percent of the new Occupiers were homeless people who spend their time in the park drinking. This often leads to violence. The larger encampment in October prohibited the use of alcohol and drugs. The ambassador did not know if the mayor plans to order the new Occupiers evicted from the park as well.

A spokesman for the mayor was not aware that Occupy Atlanta was camping in the park again. He stated that the group was allowed to be in the park until it closes at 11:00 p.m., but that no overnight camping is allowed. He planned to have Atlanta police officers investigate.

This article was first published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/occupy-atlanta-back-woodruff-park

Conservatives are from Mars, liberals are from Venus

Venus (Chosovi/Wikimedia Commons)

A well known relationship book a few years posited the obvious truth that men and women thought and communicated differently.  The same seems to be true of conservatives and liberals. 

While there are exceptions to every rule, it seems that conservatives are more logical and rational while liberals tend to be more emotional and spontaneous.  This is evident from frequently heard charge that conservatives are heartless or lack compassion, while liberals are often referred to as “bleeding hearts.” 

The truth is that, for the most part, both conservatives and liberals share the common goal of improving America and making life better for its citizens.  The irony is that without thinking through the consequences of their policies, both sides often end up doing just the opposite.  This is particularly true of liberals.

In many cases, liberal social programs, while well intentioned, do more harm than good.  In some cases, the harmful effects are obvious and logical.  In others, they are masked by other factors and can only be ascertained through careful study. 

One example is the minimum wage.  Raising the minimum wage has long been viewed as a way to increase the income of the working poor.  However, numerous studies show that raising the minimum wage actually hurts the very people that it is intended to help.  Most economists now accept as fact that raising the minimum wage leads to increased unemployment among unskilled workers.  University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan notes that minimum wage increases hit younger workers especially hard.  According to Mulligan, after the minimum wage rose from $6.55 to $7.25 in July 2009, the employment rate among teens fell by eight percent in three months, a fast decline even considering the recession.

A second example is gun control.  As more states enact concealed carry laws and federal law changed in 2010 to allow guns in national parks, many liberals predicted that violent crime would increase sharply.  The same claim was made in 2004 when the Clinton-era “assault weapons” ban expired and was not renewed by Congress.  These predictions have not come true.

In contrast, in the book More Guns, Less Crime John Lott shows that states with the largest numbers of gun owners show the largest drops in violent crime.  Recent FBI statistics show that all categories of violent crime decreased in 2010.  The crime rate has been falling since 2007 even though gun sales increased dramatically following President Obama’s election in 2008.  During this time, the number of people licensed to carry guns in public has also increased sharply.  It is also noteworthy that the crime rate has decreased during a deep recession, disproving the supposed link between crime and poverty.  If liberals were correct, more guns in public, more licenses to carry in public, and more poor people should have increased the crime rate, but that has not happened.   

The FBI statistics show that the south saw the largest drops in crime of any part of the country.  The northeast with its strict gun control laws actually had increases in some types of violent crime.  The report does not break down crime rates by state, but the actual number of reported offenses is available for four Georgia cities.  Although most decreased from 2009 to 2010, Atlanta reported a significant increase in murders.  Georgia allows open or concealed carry of pistols with a Georgia Weapons Carry License (formerly called a Georgia Firearms License).

An additional example is federal spending.  It is becoming apparent to most Americans that the orgy of government spending under President Obama has not helped the economy recover.  It has been over two years since Congress passed the stimulus bill that was supposed to revive the economy. 

As a percentage of GDP, both the federal debt and the deficit are higher now than at any point since WWII according to USgovernmentspending.com.  At of the end of fiscal year 2011, the total national debt will stand at more than $18 trillion.  This represents an increase in the national debt of almost $8 trillion from 2008. 

For all that money, the results have been decidedly mixed.  The average length of a recession is eleven months.  The Great Recession officially lasted eighteen months from December 2007 to June 2009.   According to an analysis by Politifact, it is true that the recession is technically over, but unemployment remains high with many Americans out of work.  Many other economic indicators are lagging as well.  In Georgia, the unemployment rate has consistently been above the national average since the economic crisis began in 2008. 

Liberal emotionalism is exemplified by repeating calls for more of the same policies even when, in cases such as these, there is objective, empirical evidence that their effect is the opposite of what was intended.  Liberals and conservatives should both slow the rhetoric and take an objective look at the results of their policies.  Programs that don’t work or that are not cost-effective should be discarded.  States should be given the freedom to experiment with their own solutions rather than merely being forced to implement federal policy.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  The noticeable failure of liberal policies probably goes a long way in explaining why conservatives outnumber liberals by two-to-one according to Gallup.  In fact, conservatives outnumber liberals in every US state.  Perhaps the US is on the verge of stopping the insanity.

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/conservatives-are-from-mars-liberals-are-from-venus#ixzz1NTYwOn9B">