Wednesday, July 25, 2012

June 2012 OK Employment Statistics

 

Unemployment

Initial claims rose from 2,450 week ending 6/2/2012 to 2,997 the week ending 6/30/2012, or an increase of 547 new claims filed during June.

June2012 Initial Claims

Continued claims decreased by 11 from 22,470 from the 6/2/2012 week to 23,261 for the week ending 6/30/2012. AS the image below shows, the number has been increasing since the second week of June.

June2012 Continued Claims

According to the BLS the number of unemployed persons in June rose by 9,487 from May to 96,477. This is almost an 11% increase from may, although it is still lower than the beginning of this year.

June2012 Unemployed

Employed

The total number of employed persons rose by 18,958 from May to June meaning that there were 18,958 more people with jobs in June that there were in May.

June2012 Employed

The reason for an increase in both unemployment and those employed is due to the increase of 28,445 in the labor force from May to June. As the image below shows, the labor force and number of employed persons has continued to grow in Oklahoma this year.

LaborForce_Employed

The final image below shows the labor force, employed and unemployed changes throughout this year in Oklahoma.

LaborForce_Employed_Unemployed

While the data shows the labor force has grown faster than the available jobs a growth of nearly 19,000 jobs is good news to a lot of Oklahomans!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Supreme Court Sets Precedent - Teachers Can Bully Students

 

Chad Farnan

These days we are more sensitive to the bullying that students dole upon one another in school. Apparently, the teachers can bully students with verbal assaults as long as the student is a Christian.

Nearly every day in class, James Corbett, who had taught at the school for the past 20 years, would ridicule and harass Chad Farnan about his Christian and creationist views.  One of the statements made by Corbett in the classroom in front of Farnan’s fellow students was,“When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.”

After repeated verbal abuse in front of his classmates, Farnan filed suit against the teacher in December 2007.  He accused the teacher of promoting hostility to Christians in the classroom and in promoting ‘irreligion over religion’ which is a violation of the First Amendment.

The case was appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the most liberal court in the entire US.  In keeping with their liberal history, the Ninth Circuit Court overturned the District Court’s ruling declaring that the teacher had a qualified immunity since there was no precedent of any case where a teacher had been held liable for anti-religious statements and those statements been ruled to be unconstitutional.

Based on his belief that there was no justifiable reason for his attacks on his student, the judge ruled in favor of the student but the victory was short-lived as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals predictably ruled to the left of center and overturned the district judge.
 
The case then appealed to the US Supreme Court in hopes that they would make a precedent setting ruling to defend the religious rights of students in public schools.  In March this year, the US Supreme Court announced that they will not hear the case, thus making the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling will stand as the final decision.
 
A precedent in this case has been set, but not the one hoped for.  The precedent that was set allows teachers to verbally abuse, ridicule and harass the religious beliefs of any student and they can do so in the classroom in front of other students.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

UN Calls on Countries to Impose Global Taxes

 

The United Nations on Thursday urged countries to impose international taxes to raise more than $400 billion a year, such as a carbon tax, a currency transaction tax and a billionaire’s tax, to offset cutbacks in aid by many countries amid global economic turmoil.

The report states that flows would need to more than double in order to meet the long-standing United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of donor-country gross national income. Remember the Global Poverty Act, supported by then congressman Obama, was aiming for this target in 2008 when it died in congress.

In a clear attempt to pluck at the heartstrings of humanity, the U.N. World Economic and Social Survey said the needs of developing countries were not being met, more money was needed to fight challenges like so-called climate change and new taxes would help "donor countries overcome their record of broken promises."

The United Nations has no authority or mechanisms to enforce an international tax and can only urge its 193 members to do so. The world body plays a marginal role in economic issues, which is the realm of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

"Donor countries have fallen well short of their aid commitments and development assistance declined last year because of budget cuts, increasing the shortfall to $167 billion," the survey's author, Rob Vos, said in a statement.

"We are suggesting various ways to tap resources through international mechanisms, such as coordinated taxes on carbon emissions, air traffic, and financial and currency transactions," he said.

The survey asserts that such a tax could raise $50 billion a year. The report notes that there are more than 1,200 billionaires across the world — 425 in the United States, 315 in Asia, and 310 in Europe — whose net worth is $4.6 trillion.

“The ’average’ billionaire would own $3.7 billion after paying the tax,” according to the report. “If that billionaire spent $1,000 per day, it would take him or her over 10,000 years to spend all his or her wealth.” The report actually asks- “ Would this hurt them?”

Some United Nations officials have made various global economic proposals such as replacing the U.S. dollar as the world's currency with IMF Special Drawing Rights, an idea that a number of countries have been pushing.

One suggestion made in The World Economic and Social Survey was that regular allocations of IMF Special Drawing Rights and use of idle Special Drawing Rights could produce about $100 billion annually to buy long-term assets that would then be used as development finance.

The survey also said a $25 per ton tax on carbon emissions in developed countries - collected by national authorities but allocated for international causes - could raise an estimated $250 billion a year.

The Guardian reported that the United States has an annual per person 20 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. Based on these figures, the tax would cost each of us $500.00 per year. A family of four could expect to pay $2,000 per year.

Another $40 billion a year could come from a 0.005 percent transaction tax on the four main currencies, the U.S. dollar, euro, yen and the British pound. A tax of 1 percent on billionaires could also be explored, the survey said.

"Realizing the potential of these mechanisms will require international agreement and corresponding political will, both to tap sources as well as to ensure allocation of revenues for development," Vos said.

The radical recommendations have drawn heavy criticism from groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which warns that compliance with the UN’s directives would mean yet a further loss of national sovereignty. Myron Ebell, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy, declared, "The chief ambition of the United Nations for many years has been to increase funding for their vast bureaucracy by creating some sort of new global tax that flows automatically without any control by the U.N.’s member governments.

"Such a taxing authority would thus be totally unaccountable to elected officials in the U. S. (or to officials in any other country for that matter). Money is power: hundreds of billions of dollars in additional annual revenue would allow the U.N. to create the institutions of global governance that are contained in several U.N. environmental treaties but that have never been realized due to lack of funding."

According to the UN Statistical Annex to SG report on funding, the United States donated $4.29 billion of our tax dollars to the United Nations in 2010.

Rise of the global tax collectors

The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to tax Americans at the federal level. Yet Congress continues to give away this most fundamental responsibility to international organizations, the most dangerous of which is the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Most Americans probably would not approve of their tax dollars being used to support an international organization that undermines their fundamental liberties and promotes giving their hard-earned money to other governments, often run by corrupt or dictatorial regimes. This is precisely what the OECD is doing, with the blessing of the majority members of Congress.

The OECD has just released a report bragging about its “progress” in getting countries to engage in automatic sharing of tax information. The report states: “The automatic exchange of information involves the systematic and periodic transmission of ‘bulk’ taxpayer information by the source country to the residence country concerning various categories of income (e.g., dividends, interest, royalties, salaries and pensions).” The Obama administration is actively supporting this effort.

This means that the most vile governments will receive financial account information automatically about individuals from other countries. Assume you are standing up to or protesting some corrupt or authoritarian regime in your own country - there are too many to name - and to protect your family, you have a bank account in the United States, Switzerland or some other nation that offers basic protections of civil liberties. Under automatic information-sharing, the thugs you are opposing will be receiving information about your finances from the U.S. government and other governments, which can put your property and your life at risk. The response from the bureaucrats in the OECD and Obama administration is “we protect confidential information,” as if they had never heard of Wiki-Leaks or the other never-ending hacks of government data. Again, we are told that governments will increasingly engage in “automatic” information-sharing and will “protect confidential information,” but please don’t notice the disconnect. Most people view their tax returns and bank account information as “confidential.” Would you voluntarily risk your life on the unenforceable promise of someone in government not to lose, misplace, sell or leak your financial information?

Read full article here

Friday, July 13, 2012

Tulsa Woman Has Garden Cut Down by City

 

Denise Morrison    A Tulsa woman is suing the city's code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.

Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.

She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.

Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.

She got a letter from the city saying there had been a complaint about her yard.

She said she took pictures to meet with city inspectors, but they wouldn't listen, so she invited them to her home so they could point out the problem areas.

"Everything, everything needs to go," Morrison said they told her.

When she heard they wanted to cut it all down, she called police. The officer issued her a citation so it could be worked out in court.

She said she went to court on August 15, and the judge told them to come back in October. But the very next day, men were cutting down most of her plants.

They even cut down some of her trees -– ones that bore fruit and nuts -– and went up next to her house and basically removed everything in her front flower bed.

"I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left," Morrison said.

Morrison said she had a problem at her last property with code enforcement, so this time, she read the ordinance, which says plants can't be over 12-inches tall unless they're used for human consumption. She made sure everything she grew could be eaten, which she told the inspectors.

"Every word out of their mouth was, 'we don't care,'" Morrison said.

Morrison said she used many of the plants that were destroyed to treat her diabetes, high-blood pressure and arthritis.

"Not only are the plants my livelihood, they're my food and I was unemployed at the time and had no food left, no medicine left, and I didn't have insurance," Morrison said. "They took away my life and livelihood."

Morrison finally went to court last week for the citation she got last August at another property. The garden portion of the citation was dismissed and she pleaded no contest to having an inoperable truck in her driveway.

She filed a civil rights lawsuit this week, accusing the inspectors of overstepping their authority.

The City of Tulsa said it hasn't received the lawsuit yet, so it couldn't comment.

See the article here with Pictures and Video

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

US Constitution 1st Amendment




Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Pastor Goes to Jail for Hosting Home Bible Study

Michael Salman, the pastor from Phoenix who was fined and sentenced to jail for holding Bible studies in his home, started his 60-day jail sentence at 10 a.m. today.

The preacher asked for prayers as he left his wife and six kids to report to Maricopa County Jail.

"I have spent time with my family this morning praying, crying and saying our goodbye. My heart is broken, but glory to God," Salman wrote on his Facebook page this morning. "Our God wil take care of us and my family. Please pray for us! Until God opens the prison's door, I will be with you all in prayer and spirit."

Salman was found guilty of code violations for hosting Bible studies on his 4.6 acre property, which he has been doing for the past 7 years. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail along with three years probation and ordered to pay a $12,180 fine.




Town repents after threatening to shut down Bible study

An Apple Valley couple was in shock after they were told their home Bible Study was in violation of town law, according to a citation found on their front door.

“I was appalled when I read the letter,” said M. Sharon Rogone, who leads the weekly study with her husband, Phillip. “Soon we will be an underground movement. If this is America, then where is our religious freedom?”

The “courtesy” citation, posted Wednesday by a code enforcement officer, stated the town’s code and a complaint “that church services are being held at this address.”

The citation also gave the Rogones until June 27 to comply, or else the town would take legal action.

“I wrote to Bill O’Reilly, FOX News, Glenn Beck and to as many people as I could,” said Rogone, who attends High Desert Church in Victorville and has hosted the study in the couple’s Choco Road home for the last seven years.

“There are about 15 of us, and we have about seven cars here that all fit in our driveway, or in front of our property,” Rogone said. “We’re not rowdy or obnoxious. We even invited the entire neighborhood over to hang out.”