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I know of three people I know well that have died or will soon die of cancer. This put my faith and my bucket list in mind. I have many places I want to visit before I die but if I am like my friends and I get a 1 year to live acclaim I can see by them....I won't be healthy to enjoy... An Alaskan Cruise...Inspired by visiting the CPAC page and watching Palin's show. So I looked into Alaskan Cruises What is your bucket list anybody ever been on an Alaskan cruise? leave Vancouver or Seattle?

The United States faces a crushing debt of well over $14 trillion and adds to it at a rate of roughly $4.15 billion per day on average. The absolute first step in paying off this debt, which will be a problem to be dealt with likely through this entire century, is to balance the federal budget so that no more is added to it. This process will be extremely difficult and very drawn out in and of itself because the total gap between what the government collects in taxes and what it currently spends is about a $1.5 trillion deficit...

...California, facing a half of trillion dollar unfunded pension liability, is home to the nation’s largest ticking pension time bomb. Noteworthy is that calls for pension reform are becoming increasingly bipartisan, especially in blue states like California where left-of-center interests are beginning to recognize that ballooning pension costs are taking up an increasing share of the budget and diverting scarce state resources from progressive pet projects and programs. As the Manhattan Institute’s Fred Siegel recently noted in the Wall Street Journal, government-sector unionism is a relatively recent development, a product of the 1930s, that liberals originally had great reservations about......

...Feb. 4, 2009 – Obama signs federal tobacco tax hike: Just sixteen days into his presidency, Obama signed into law a 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco– a hike of 62 cents per pack. Obama’s signature on this tax hike was a violation of his central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” that no American making less than $250,000 would see “any form of tax increase”. The median income of smokers is just over $36,000. March 23, 2010 –Obama signs the healthcare bill into law: Obama’s signature on the health care bill enacted two dozen new...

College students may not face brighter job prospects after graduation but they feel better about themselves. “Through a recent social media study of Facebook, Twitter, and message board posts and comments regarding New Year’s resolutions, CUnet, a leading provider of performance marketing solutions for the higher education sector, found users to be optimistic toward completing or pursuing higher education goals,” according to PR Newswire. “Using CUnet’s social media analysis tools, the study looked at 1,093 resolutions about higher education that were posted between December 25 and January 8 to gain a better understanding of the attitudes and concerns of students.”...

...As a board member, Becker will likely support initiatives to give union organizers access to private property, force employers to promote unionization, and require the names and addresses of employees to be provided to an involved union. He and others on the NLRB have threatened various states with lawsuits for passing anti-Card Check legislation. All of these moves throw the door wide open to union monopolies and worker intimidation. With control of the House and Senate split, the Left has resorted to pushing noxious rulings through federal agencies. There is no reason to expect this to cease without direct congressional...

During his testimony at a Jan. 26 House Ways & Means Committee hearing on the new healthcare law, Austan Goolsbee squirmed and obfuscated while repeatedly denying an inconvenient truth about Obamacare: the law contains numerous tax hikes on those making less than $250,000 per year -- a violation of President Obama’s central campaign promise not to sign into law “any form of tax increase” on these families. Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio) simply asked Goolsbee, -- chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers -- whether a series of tax hikes in Obamacare were indeed tax hikes. Below are the...

A U.S. District Court halted the imposition of a new Internet sales tax law last week. The court granted a preliminary injunction against the law, arguing discriminates against out-of-state retailers and violates the Commerce Clause. The case was brought by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) following the passage of HB 1193 in last year's legislative session. The law enforces three obligations which violate the constitution. The bill requires out-of-state retailers that do not collect Colorado sales tax to notify Colorado customers of their requirement to remit taxes to the Department of Revenue. Retailers must also report the customer’s name and...

Moody’s Investor Service announced that they will begin factoring unfunded public pension obligations into calculations used to determine state credit ratings. This move was recently pointed out by the New York Times in an article that highlights the nation’s growing recognition of the threat posed by massive unfunded obligations. The numbers are staggering. American Enterprise Institute and Northwestern University have estimated that states unfunded public-pension liabilities is $3 and $5 trillion, respectively. Unfortunately, the board that writes the rules for state financial reporting does not require the inclusion of public pension obligations, funded or unfunded, in state financial documents. This...

As Baby Boomers begin to enter retirement, the reality of the threat that an estimated $3 trillion in underfunded pension liabilities poses to states’ financial futures and taxpayers is starting to set in with lawmakers and the public. An American Enterprise Institute study found states claim to be underreporting their unfunded public-employee pension liabilities by more than $2 trillion. In fact, more realistic estimates show that the unfunded pension liability in California alone exceeds that figure. A more recent study by Northwestern found the collective unfunded liability to be even higher at $5 trillion. With that said, Public Sector Inc....

The following was emailed to me from a friend on youtube named noguff He is an excellent activist promoting libertarianism and always has something excellent to say. He emailed for example this...25 OF THE BIGGEST PROPAGANDA LIES FROM THE LEFT 1. OUR FOUNDING FATHERS were rich racist White men only interested in their own wealth & status, and were non-religious Liberals. 2. THE CONSTITUTION is outdated and has nothing to do with a modern society. It was made to be constantly changed to serve the changing needs of society. Politicians no longer need to abide by it because we should...

President Obama doubled down on his party’s energy policy during the State of the Union. Typical of Democrats, he demonized America’s oil and natural gas producers and looked to subsidize inefficient, alternative sources of energy. Obama: With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 If Obama’s endgame is energy independence, it is impossible to accomplish this goal without increased access to America’s outer continental shelf and vast natural gas deposits. America currently imports around 60 percent of its...

...A hope, an aspiration, a goal is not the same thing as a plan. The White House now has an obligation to come up with their plan for corporate income tax reform, and we look forward to seeing it. We hope it maintains the following principles: The rate needs to come down--way down. Our 40 percent rate is much higher than the average European rate of 25 percent. Ideally, we'd want to be under that in order to attract jobs and capital from the rest of the worldDon't raise taxes. The President has argued this should be a tax revenue-neutral...

The president’s State of the Union Speech was – at long last – the one I wanted him to give. It went after the very poison that has so sickened the United States of America. His call for us to shake off the Cult of Future-Hatred, indulged in by both right and left, was about urging us to start looking forward again, instead of to some mythically better past.

Please note – I have only quoted what I felt were relevant points. If you would like to read the speech yourself, you can find the full transcript at any number of places online. Now, by itself, this simple recognition won't usher in a new era of cooperation. What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow. Ah, yes, “era of cooperation”. Translation: Barry thinks that he can calm down the right. He just wants us to...

During all of the furor over Arizona’s SB1070 immigration enforcement law last spring, one of the most egregious attacks on the sovereignty of the border state came in the form of a highly inappropriate and insulting speech by Mexican President Calderó n before the U.S. Congress. As the Democrat dominated chamber applauded the attack on Arizona, our hapless commander in chief and his constitutionally challenged attorney general were threatening legal action despite having not taken the time to have read the 10 page bill. Comparisons were made to Nazi Germany and liberals expressed outrage over the mere thought that Arizona...

...The REINS Act requires Congress to affirm any major rule authored by an executive agency. The bill promises true reform to scale back growing regulatory overreach under the Obama Administration, which, despite its lip service to prudence, continues to see regulatory action as the preferred avenue for controversial policy. In 2009, Congress passed and the President signed into law only 125 bills while over 3,000 rules were administered unaccountably by regulatory bureaucrats...

Rep. Steve King introduced the National Right-to-Work Act (H.R. 4107 in the 111th Congress). If passed, this legislation would give all American workers the freedom to choose whether or not to be represented by a union. Christopher Prandoni, Executive Director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, has written a letter urging congressmen to support Rep. King's initiative: "Since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, states have been free to pass laws that prohibit union membership as a condition of employment. Today, 22 states have some form of Right-to-Work legislation in place. The remaining 28 are known as “forced dues” states, wherein...

...As the Alliance for Worker Freedom has previously reported, the rise of public sector unions—SEIU, AFSCME, and NEA are all big players—is partly responsible for the fiscal crises confronting many states today. While job security, gold-plated retirement packages, and good benefits attract employees, they’ve been bankrupting state and local treasuries across the nation. At the same time, private sector workers have had fewer and fewer reasons to choose collective bargaining, that is, if they get a choice at all: Big Labor has been viciously holding onto power by fighting against Right-to-Work and Paycheck Protection while pushing for mandatory membership and...

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Email to a Friend NEW YORK, NY (January 19, 2010)-- The results are in from the poll of the Top 100 "Dream" Interview Guests of 2010, conducted by InterviewGuests.com in conjunction with other PR agencies and professionals throughout the broadcast media business. Scott Rasmussen, author, independent pollster and founder/president of Rasmussen Reports, the electronic media company that specializes in the collection and distribution of public opinion data, ranks 15th on the list. That positions him as a more desirable interview ahead of such notable personalities as actor Johnny Depp, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons and presidents Barack...