Oil, Jobs, and Hot Air!

Carl Levin has been very helpful to the citizens of Michigan for the past 30 years. We can thank Carl Levin for the high price of oil, loss of jobs, destruction of business opportunities, and 30 years of nothing but empty promises filled with hot air.

Carl Levin has done so many great things for Michigan in the past 30 years, we can be thankful for all these benefits:

  • Every time you fill your truck up with fuel it costs $300 to $500. Thanks Carl Levin.
  • When you fill up your car or mini-van with gas, it costs $50, $75, or $100. Thanks Carl Levin.
  • Every time you turn around in Michigan, another manufacturing plant closes. Thanks Carl Levin.
  • Every time someone tries to start a new business in Michigan, Carl Levin is there to help shut it down with empty promises, higher taxes, more red-tape, failed energy policies, government waste, and more promises full of hot air. Thanks-again Carl Levin
  • Carl Levin is very good at something. Carl Levin is very good at raising taxes.
  • Oh that’s right — Carl Levin is good at another thing too — breaking promises.

Jack Hoogendyk makes a lot of sense.  It’s time for real change in Michigan. It’s time to return to core principles. Jack has great ideas for bringing business opportunities back to Michigan. Jack understands that less government means more business opportunities, faster economic growth for Michigan, and more jobs in Michigan. Jack understands that lower taxes — means we will have more money to invest in Michigan business, and the creation of Michigan jobs. That’s why I’m voting for Jack Hoogendyk for US Senate in 2008. We need a new leader — a leader who will serve the people of Michigan.

There is only one winner who will make everyone a winner in Michigan in 2008. His name is Jack Hoogendyk.

Bono (Paul David Hewson)

Bono turned 48 yesterday. Bono is the lead singer for the popular Irish rock band U2, and a prominent “human rights activist”. Bono was born on May 10, 1960. His real (family) name is Paul David Hewson. Bono has frequently used his fame as a rock musician — as a platform (or pulpit) — to proclaim the message of reconciliation, salvation, redemption, and the Year of Jubilee (canceling debts, and setting slaves free). The message is not always understood, but this has not seemed to hinder his huge success as a “Rock Star”.

To celebrate his 48th birthday, Bono had a small dinner party at Sass’ Café in Monaco. On the guest list: Brad Pitt, Monaco’s Prince Albert II and the Edge.

Bono was born to a Roman Catholic father and a Protestant mother during a time when Ireland was sharply divided among sectarian lines. Back in 1977 (the year I graduated from high school), in the city of Dublin, Paul (Bono) and “school friends David Evans (later ‘the Edge’), Larry Mullen, Jr., and Adam Clayton formed a band that would become U2. They shared a commitment not only to ambitious rock music but also to a deeply spiritual Christianity.”

In this YouTube video clip he talks about growing up when “Ireland was divided along religious lines”. He shares a few memories and says that “young people like me were parched for the vision that poured out of pulpits of black America, and the vision of a black reverend from Atlanta — a man who refused to hate, because he knew love would do a better job.” (See M.L. King video with U2-Bono song - In the Name of Love.)

Continuing in the video clip Bono says:

“These ideas travel you know [ideas about love, instead of hate] and they reached me, clear as any tune, and lodged in my brain like a song… and may I say it was the poetry, and the righteous anger of the black church that was such an inspiration to me, a very white, almost pink Irish man growing up in Dublin…. True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedoms. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice. It’s a command.”

Sources:

Youtube video clip of Bono speech at NAACP gathering (posted 2-March-2007) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRY2sOiBZxI>.

Bono.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 11-May-2008 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/860737/Bono>.

Uncle Sam’s Plantation – How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can Do about It

Uncle Sams Plantation

Star Parker, founder of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Eduction ( CURE ), has written 3 books. Uncle Sam’s Plantation, published in 2003, is her second book. ISBN:0785262199

Prior to her involvement in social activism, Star Parker was a single welfare mother in Los Angeles, California. [ Wikipedia article about Star Parker ]

Back Cover Synopsis:

“America has two economic systems: capitalism for the rich and socialism for the poor. This double-minded approach seems to keep the poor enslaved to poverty while the rich get richer. In Uncle Sam’s Plantation, Star Parker offers simple yet profound steps that will allow the nation’s poor to go from entitlement and slavery to empowerment and freedom. Parker shares her own amazing journey up from the lower rungs of the economic system and addresses the importance of extending the free market system to this neglected group of people.”

Book Cover - How Big Government Enslaves America\'s Poort and What We Can Do About It

Gary from Kansas City says: “This lady is bold and very aware of what is going on in America, especially in the black community. She is saying what everyone’s thinking but afraid to say.”

Jason Sheck says: “Growing up a ‘privileged white male’ allowed for me to become complacent and uninformed of America’s most significant social ills. Star Parker’s book has totally showed me the reality that people are facing everyday in this country.”

Tucker Anderson says:

Star Parker doesn’t hesitate to speak truth to power, since she has the credentials to do so. She has lived the self destructive and joyless life so prevalent in the welfare community and she has overcome incredible obstacles (often self imposed). Thus, while anyone can fairly disagree with her often controversial conclusions and recommendations, she clearly has the moral legitimacy to present them. These are insights invariably gained from personal experience and sharpened by an inquiring mind.

… the book describes the devastating effects of government dependency not from an academic perspective but rather through the eyes of someone who has escaped from the addiction which entraps so many individuals. The book is almost conversational in tone, yet provides many powerful philosophical insights and much well reasoned discussion. At times, some of the imagery created by the author’s prose almost becomes poetic. While I was familiar with both the author’s background and much of her philosophy, I still found the book both enjoyable and thought provoking.

Mr. Club Soda says:

… a once free people are inexorably drawn into the bondage of the nanny state and the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Star Parker, a black woman who was once a slave to the cycle of welfare and abortion, calls it Uncle Sam’s Plantation, which is an apt description of the powerful force government’s endorsement of vice and misery has on regular people, and particularly the disadvantaged.

The book is also referenced in the International Journal of Public Administration, Volume 30, Number 1, January 2007, pp. 77-93

Abstract:

“African-American and Latino under-representation in the Information Technology (IT) industry appears to be perpetuated throughout institutions in society. An examination of the institutional and ideological social forces which arguably perpetuate the exclusion of African Americans and Latinos from greater representation in the IT field will be provided.”