April 16, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
April 16 is … National Stress Awareness Day and National Eggs Benedict Day
When is Arnold Benedict day? Yesterday would have worked. All three of the major professional sports teams from Chicago that played, lost. The Blackhawks do not play today but the Bulls do, so that could repeat today.
This is a tragic and an all too common story. It is hard to write about and even harder not to comment on some of the ignorant statements people make under the circumstances. I am not a reporter; I don’t claim to be fair and unbiased. I comment on the news of the day or week. I write down my thoughts.
A woman who had just been involved in a domestic dispute loaded her four children into a minivan before letting one out and driving the rest of them into the Hudson River, killing herself and the three other children, firefighters said. The 10-year-old boy who had been let out of the minivan Tuesday night ran to a nearby fire station and alerted firefighters, Chief Michael Vatter said. The boy told firefighters his mother had driven off a boat ramp in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, and into the murky water of the river, Vatter said. Inside with her were the boy's siblings: two boys, ages 5 and 2, and an 11-month-old girl. Firefighters and police officers responded with boats. Divers searched for the minivan for about an hour before finding it submerged in 10 feet of water about 25 yards offshore. They used a heavy-duty tow truck to pull it up the boat ramp and onto land. Everyone inside was dead, Vatter said.
The woman lived about six blocks from where she and her children perished, he said. The woman lived in an apartment in a gritty part of this humble river city. Several neighbors on Wednesday recalled her as an attentive mother who balanced care of her children with an outside job. They were shocked by the news.
"She was a very good mom," said Tina Claybourne, who lives nearby. "She took care of her kids. She always was with her kids."
Neighbors said they did not know the woman's name or where she worked. They said the children seemed energetic and happy and would play on the block and ride bikes. "You know kids, they make noise, they play around," said Shantay Means, a downstairs neighbor. The domestic altercation occurred about 10 minutes before the woman drove into the river, said Vatter, who didn't have any more information on it. The concrete ramp was just a few blocks from her apartment. The boat ramp was unguarded by gate or chain. There was no sign that anything tragic had happened save for a single teddy bear left at the end of a dock that runs alongside the boat ramp. Newburgh, which has about 30,000 residents, sits on the western shore of the part of the river that runs south through New York state and eventually splits New York and New Jersey.
A similar incident occurred in 2006, about 20 miles south of Newburgh.
In 2007, Victor Han, of Queens, was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to child endangerment. Han admitted he knew he was putting his daughters at risk when he stepped out of the family minivan on Bear Mountain in June 2006, leaving them with their mother, 35-year-old Hejin Han. She then drove the Honda Odyssey off a 300-foot drop, killing herself. The mother was killed but the children somehow survived the plunge.
It's also reminiscent of the case of a South Carolina woman who drowned her young sons in 1994. Susan Smith is serving a life sentence for killing 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex by strapping them into their car seats and driving the car into a pond. Smith originally claimed she was carjacked before the truth came out.
The woman lived about six blocks from where she and her children perished, he said. The woman lived in an apartment in a gritty part of this humble river city. Several neighbors on Wednesday recalled her as an attentive mother who balanced care of her children with an outside job. They were shocked by the news.
"She was a very good mom," said Tina Claybourne, who lives nearby. "She took care of her kids. She always was with her kids."
Neighbors said they did not know the woman's name or where she worked. They said the children seemed energetic and happy and would play on the block and ride bikes. "You know kids, they make noise, they play around," said Shantay Means, a downstairs neighbor. The domestic altercation occurred about 10 minutes before the woman drove into the river, said Vatter, who didn't have any more information on it. The concrete ramp was just a few blocks from her apartment. The boat ramp was unguarded by gate or chain. There was no sign that anything tragic had happened save for a single teddy bear left at the end of a dock that runs alongside the boat ramp. Newburgh, which has about 30,000 residents, sits on the western shore of the part of the river that runs south through New York state and eventually splits New York and New Jersey.
A similar incident occurred in 2006, about 20 miles south of Newburgh.
In 2007, Victor Han, of Queens, was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to child endangerment. Han admitted he knew he was putting his daughters at risk when he stepped out of the family minivan on Bear Mountain in June 2006, leaving them with their mother, 35-year-old Hejin Han. She then drove the Honda Odyssey off a 300-foot drop, killing herself. The mother was killed but the children somehow survived the plunge.
It's also reminiscent of the case of a South Carolina woman who drowned her young sons in 1994. Susan Smith is serving a life sentence for killing 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex by strapping them into their car seats and driving the car into a pond. Smith originally claimed she was carjacked before the truth came out.
The suicidal mother who loaded her four children into a minivan and drove off a boat ramp into the frigid Hudson River changed her mind as the van sank and cried, "I made a mistake, I made a terrible mistake," said her 10-year-old son, who survived by crawling out a window and swimming ashore. The ten-year-old said his mother had held him and the other kids - boys ages 5 and 2 and an 11-month-old girl - as the minivan began sinking.
"She was holding on to all of them and said, 'If I'm going to die, you're all going to die with me,'" sources said. "She said that two or three times."
But as the vehicle sank, the 10-year-old broke free of his mother's grasp and clambered out a window, a police spokesperson said: "While he was doing that, he heard his mother saying, 'I made a mistake, I made a terrible mistake.' And she tried to reverse the car out, but at that time it was too late. He said, 'Mommy, I'm going to go get help,' and she said, 'OK.' And that was the last he heard from his mother."
"She was holding on to all of them and said, 'If I'm going to die, you're all going to die with me,'" sources said. "She said that two or three times."
But as the vehicle sank, the 10-year-old broke free of his mother's grasp and clambered out a window, a police spokesperson said: "While he was doing that, he heard his mother saying, 'I made a mistake, I made a terrible mistake.' And she tried to reverse the car out, but at that time it was too late. He said, 'Mommy, I'm going to go get help,' and she said, 'OK.' And that was the last he heard from his mother."
A quote in this story says “She was a good mom. She took care of her kids.” The woman who made these statements, named above, should have any children she has taken from her. She should be sterilized. The killer of her own children, who this woman thought was a good mom, was 25 years old with a 10-year-old son. Do the math. She was having unprotected, reproductive sex when she was 14 years old. The father would be arrested today. I do not think a woman that kills three of her children should ever be confused with a good mom. I named the woman who made the quote but intentionally did not name the killer or her children.
The following article is by John Hayward and it appeared on Anne Coulter’s web site April 15, 2011. http://www.humanevents.com
It’s Tax Day, a time when Americans briefly think about how much their government costs, instead of daydreaming about all the wonderful things it promises to do for them.
Who pays for government? The Evil Rich provide the lion’s share of the income taxes. According to the Tax Foundation, the top 5 percent of income earners bring home about 35% of the nation’s income, but pay 59% of federal income tax. The Super Evil Rich – people who earn over $6 million per year, a new category the IRS has been tracking recently - earn 10% of the income, but pay 18.5% of income taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom half of earners account for roughly 13% of our national income, but pay only 3% of the federal income tax.
We are constantly told none of this is “fair,” because the Evil Rich need to pay more than 59% of the income tax. Liberals never tell us what a truly “fair” percentage would be – they always just complain that the current rates are too low, and persist in the absurd and easily debunked belief that taxing the heck out of rich people can fund their insane government spending. Perhaps if the Evil Rich paid 70%, which would be double the 35% of national income they take in, we would achieve “fairness?” You already know the answer to that.
Don’t worry, because even if you’re in the lower half of wage earners, you still pay plenty for government. For one thing, you might be anticipating a nice tax refund this year. That’s all money you loaned the government interest-free. This is not just sour grapes, for you could have earned interest on that money by investing it, or placing it in a savings account. Perhaps more importantly, you could have used it to pay down your own debts. If you get a $1000 refund from the IRS, that’s a thousand dollars you could have knocked off your credit card balances this year. What interest rate did you pay Visa or Discover on that thousand bucks?
You’re also paying for government every time you fill your gas tank. As you may have noticed, that costs a lot of money these days. Much of this goes to the government, in the form of gas taxes. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. States add an average of 20.6 cents to that total. More significantly, the high cost of gas is a direct result of deliberate Obama policies, including a refusal to allow the exploration of American oil resources.
You are funding this exercise in environmentalist ideology, and you pay for even more of it through EPA regulations that increase the cost of energy generation. The EPA has been working to quietly enforce the “cap and trade” concept – defeated by the representatives of American voters in the Congress. It already imposes fantastically expensive “climate change” ideology on Americans, many of whom correctly see “climate change” as an international fraud. Regardless of your income level, you pay for all that.
These energy policies contribute to the rising cost of almost all goods, as do high corporate tax rates. Corporations do not pay taxes. They pass them along to their customers. You’ll have a hard time finding an example of an industry whose profit margins were reduced in equal proportion to rising taxes and regulatory costs. They correctly, and ethically, view rising taxes as an increase in the cost of goods, and recover most of that cost through rising prices or diminished quality.
You pay for government through the cost of opportunities it forecloses, and jobs it eliminates. Obviously the vast ranks of the unemployed are paying most directly. True, they receive unemployment benefits – which cost the rest of us a fortune to fund, as the government keeps expanding them – but these benefits are a fraction of what they could be earning in their chosen professions. Further, the people who are still employed suffer from lost advancement opportunities. When your company hires people, your chances for promotion are increased. The reverse is equally true when staff is downsized.
And, of course, don’t forget about all the money government is sucking out of your paycheck, before you ever receive it. The entire point of the exercise is to prevent you from noticing the extraction of these funds. You’re pouring a lot of your regular paycheck into a Social Security fund that absolutely will not be there when you retire – President Obama and the Democrat Party work tirelessly to thwart any real attempt to save it. That money is not being put into some kind of “lockbox.” The government spends it immediately.
Rest assured though, we are all paying for government. Few of us will ever really know exactly how much we paid. As the size of government increases, and the Termite State burrows into every inch of our economy, its true cost becomes harder to account for. You don’t know exactly how much you’re paying, any more than you know exactly what Washington does with all the money. This is by design.
I find this interesting and believable. It is impossible to keep giving away money in any form no matter what you call it, welfare, entitlement, public aid, foreign aid or whatever, without running out of money. The money we give away or waste comes from somewhere. It comes from the rich. Since there are more poor than rich, the rich have to pay a disproportionate share. That’s the way it is.
Just a couple of thoughts I had.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011
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Book Titles:
Holmes the Ripper
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"It is difficult to give children a sense of security unless you have it yourself. If you have it, they catch it from you." - William C. Menninger
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