Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators

This is the GOP plan copied from Jobs.GOP.Gov

Summary of the Plan

Empower Small Business Owners and Reduce Regulatory Burdens:

Require congressional review and approval of any government regulations that have a significant impact on the economy or burden small businesses.

Audit existing and pending regulations to identify and address those that hinder economic growth.

Fix the Tax Code to Help Job Creators:

Increase American competitiveness to spur investment and create more American jobs by streamlining the tax code and lowering the tax rate for businesses and individuals including small business owners to no more than 25%.

Reform the tax code to allow American businesses to bring back their overseas profits without having to pay a tax penalty so they can invest in our economy and create American jobs.

Increase Competitiveness for American Manufacturers:

Pass the three pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea to create up to 250,000 jobs.

Continue to open new markets to American made products.

Encourage Entrepreneurship and Growth:

Modernize our patent system to protect our nation’s innovators, discourage frivolous lawsuits, and expedite patent reviews.

Re-Authorize and improve federal programs and approval processes to streamline development of new products. Remove barriers to building a first class workforce so that the United States can compete in the global marketplace and lead the way in technological development and growth.

Maximize Domestic Energy Production to Ensure an Energy Policy for the 21st Century:

Promote lower energy prices through increased domestic production. Encourage all forms of energy production.

Pay Down America’s Unsustainable Debt Burden and Start Living Within our Means:

Build upon the House Republicans’ Budget by enacting significant spending cuts.

An American Bridge Made in China

Shanghai - Bay Bridge — Workers at Shanghai Zhenhua finish the welding on a section of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

The United States had established itself as the industrial center of the world. Somehow we have lost that standing to China. It should be a wake up call to America when we must import steel spans for a new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge from a country that we considered our economic opponent. Should we blame Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for opening trade with China? No! We should we blame ourselves for our own in-fighting while the rest of the world passes us by.

The New York Times featured this article “Bridge Comes to San Francisco With a Made-in-China Label” in today’s paper. The eye opener in the story is Pan Zhongwang, a 55-year-old steel polisher, is a typical Zhenhua worker. He arrives at 7 a.m. and leaves at 11 p.m., often working seven days a week. He lives in a company dorm and earns about $12 a day.

How can America compete in a global world that will pay some of its workers $12 a day? We must set aside our political and philosophical ideas and come together or the United States will cease to be the power it was in the 20^th century.

Four Tips for Photographing Fireworks

Thanks to Costco Photo Center, without the advertising, and some additonal information.

Turn the camera’s flash off. If you are including people in a shot you can try the Night Portrait flash setting, but otherwise, shut if off.
Turn off Autofocus. Autofocus will probably have difficulty finding the right focal point for fireworks.
Set the camera to Manual and the f/stop to the largest possible aperture (lowest aperture number). Remember with f/stop, the smaller the number the bigger the aperture.
Set the shutter speed to 1/60^th of a second. It’s a good place to start but be sure to experiment with slower speeds like 1/30 & 1/15 (this will probably require a tripod).

The Most Feared Interview Question

“Tell Me About Yourself”

interview fear — "Tell Me About Yourself"

When I was searching for a job I anticipated this question. I had my answer prepared.

If you’ve ever interviewed, you’ve probably gotten America’s LEAST favorite question, “Tell Me About Yourself.” Most applicants HATE it, because they don’t know how to answer and, usually, it comes at the start when logically, the interviewer doesn’t know anything about you. Let everyone else blow this one! If you have a killer answer ready, you can sew up the interview right here. When I was searching for a job I anticipated this question.

How To Answer The Question

Here’s your formula to shine: Before every interview, make a list of the qualities & skills they need for the position, then give specific examples of how you possess those traits. You want to show them that you are exactly what they need.

You can’t use just a list of words because people forgot words — that’s why we all make grocery lists. Actually, words are only 10% of our true communication, while your voice — the way you use your words — represents 20-25%, and the largest chunk, 65-70% is your image and body language. Since people believe what they see, you have to paint them a picture of how your skills meet their needs by reassuring them that you’re a great fit.

Suppose you’re interviewing for an administrative assistant position, with responsibilities including answering phones, taking messages, returning calls, and flexibly executing any/all assignments. Your most effective approach is to tell stories about similar past experiences. “I’m good answering the phone, taking messages and making calls” will be easily forgotten. What detailed, distinctive examples can you offer to show you’ve got the goods?

Prepare to impress at your interview by making a list of 8-10 specific examples of when you worked really hard (on the job, through volunteer work, in school, extracurriculars, etc.) utilizing the skills they need. Interviewers are smart, but they’re not mind readers — they’ll only know what you tell them. And if YOU don’t reassure them you’re a great fit for the job, someone ELSE will, and THEY’LL be hired.

summarized from http://galtime.com/article/money/43161/13584/most-feared-interview-question

Breaking News – Politics Over Wisdom

Weekly Initial Job Claims have been above the 400,000 level for the past 11 weeks. That number includes this past week. “President Obama’s big Afghanistan speech caused nary a tremble in the polls. Before he spoke, most Americans didn’t support him. And after? His popularity continues to sink” are the words of Wayne Simmons on HumanEvents.com. What’s a politician to do? Why not release some oil from the national reserve? That’s it! And so 30 million barrels will be released even though there is no shortage, gasoline prices are falling, and Saudi Arabia has quietly increased its production.

The Los Angeles Times front page story on June 24 calls the decision a “Hail Mary Pass” to help boost the economy. Really? Lower gasoline prices will induce business to start investing or consumers to start spending when they save 50 cents a gallon. That is a dream.

Is this “change we can believe in?”

Withdrawing From Afghanistan

I heard President Obama’s speech tonight on reducing our military participation in Afghanistan. He has kept his word about a withdrawal of troops starting in July 2011. I was disappointed in him for sending a total of 60,000+ troops to that country. I believed that Joe Biden’s idea of drones, special operations and targeted strikes would better serve America’s interests.

I know Senator John McCain fears that we are becoming isolationist. His appraisal is incorrect. Not every situation demands a high level invasion. McCain suffers from his Vietnam experience.

The Afghanis and Pakistanis view America as an invading and occupying force. This is not the way to win friends and influence people.

America’s withdrawal is the right thing to do.

What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path?

Postwar Jewish refugees left everything they had in Europe—no ‘right of return’ requested.

By WARREN KOZAK

It is doubtful that there has ever been a more miserable human refuse than Jewish survivors after World War II. Starving, emaciated, stateless—they were not welcomed back by countries where they had lived for generations as assimilated and educated citizens. Germany was no place to return to and in Kielce, Poland, 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust were killed in a pogrom one year after the war ended. The European Jew, circa 1945, quickly went from victim to international refugee disaster.

Yet within a very brief time, this epic calamity disappeared, so much so that few people today even remember the period. How did this happen in an era when Palestinian refugees have continued to be stateless for generations?

In 1945, there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors living in DP Camps (displaced persons) across Europe. They were fed and clothed by Jewish and international relief organizations. Had the world’s Jewish population played this situation as the Arabs and Palestinians have, everything would look very different today.

To begin with, the Jews would all still be living in these DP camps, only now the camps would have become squalid ghettos throughout Europe. The refugees would continue to be fed and clothed by a committee similar to UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (paid for mostly by the United States since 1948). Blessed with one of the world’s highest birth rates, they would now number in the many millions. And 66 years later, new generations, fed on a mixture of hate and lies against the Europeans, would now seethe with anger.

via Warren Kozak: What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path? – WSJ.com.

Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN

This came to me today. snopes.com verfied its accuracy. Theodore Roosevelt was talking about legal immigrants.

Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.’
Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Affordable Cities

AARP has an article titled “Pinpointing Affordable Cities” that offers the top 10 most affordable cities in the United States. First we need to define the word “city.” Even merriam-webster.com has a difficulty doing that. They call it “an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village.”

Wikipedia isn’t any better with this introduction, “A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement.^[1][2] Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.”

Wikipedia’s link to the United States offers this disturbing definition. “The lack of a clear-cut definition of a city in the United States can lead to some counter-intuitive labeling; for example, before it was dissolved in 2002^[49] Maza, North Dakota, with only 5 inhabitants, was a city as by North Dakota law any incorporated location is deemed a city regardless of size. California has both towns and cities but the terms “town” and “city” are considered synonymous. The nation’s top five largest cities are New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia.”

I choose to aribtrarily say that for a town to be a city it must have 1 million residence. Here then is the AARP list. Most of the places they identify are not cities by my definition. They will suffer from a lack of hospitals, doctors, art and music, employment opportunities, and other city venues.

1. Oklahoma City, Okla. has a population of about 560,000. It’s not a city.

2. Pittsburgh, Pa. has a population of about 311,000. It’s not a city.

3. Buffalo, N.Y. has a population of about 270,000. It’s not a city.

4. Rochester, N.Y. has a population of about 206,000. It’s not a city.

5. Nashville, Tenn. has a population of about 605,000. It’s not a city.

6. San Antonio, Texas has a population of about 1,373,000. It’s a city.

7. Houston, Texas has a population of about 2,257,000. It’s a city. The fourth largest in the country.

8. Louisville, Ky. has a population of about 262,000. It’s not a city.

9. Birmingham, Ala. has a population of about 230,000. It’s not a city.

10. Austin, Texas has a population of about 786,000. It’s not a city.