A twenty-year-old journalist, Hannah’s name may not instantly ring a bell. But she played a vital part in bringing down the enormous, controversial institution, ACORN, by exposing criminal activity within the organization itself. Wearing a tiny, hidden camera, she and friend James O’Keefe dressed up as a prostitute and pimp and infiltrated the organization as a couple looking to start up an underage prostitution ring. Videotaping their response, Hannah and James recorded the ACORN workers as they went out of their way to assist the couple, even ignoring those who had made appointments and waited in the lobby, and spoke to Hannah openly, revealing throughout the conversations that they had already been long involved in such illicit activities. They gave her advice to keep from being discovered while setting up such a ring, and then advised her on ways to evade trouble should something occur after her business had been established. Hannah’s revealing expose of this organization ultimately contributed to its downfall, as it brought to light the proof needed to convict ACORN of its illegal activities.
Excitingly, Hannah Giles will speak at the Collegians Leadership Summit next week to share more on her experience with ACORN. You won’t want to miss this! To register, visit here: http://www.efcollegians.org/2010/info.html
Frederic Bastiat’s "broken window fallacy" is an economic parable explaining how destroying wealth cannot create wealth and how policies that favor one industry will hurt another. A broken window, for example, may give the glassmaker more business, but the shopkeeper who must fix his window uses money for the new window that he would otherwise use to buy something else--like a new suit. The shopkeeper only has the window (that he paid for twice) instead of a window and a new suit. Henry Hazlitt discusses this fallacy extensively in his Economics in One Lesson.
You might think this fallacy would be easy to avoid. However, as recently as June 11th in Pennsylvania lawmakers were being caught falling prey to Broken Window thinking. The topic here is green jobs.
Jobs in "green" and alternative energy fields are themselves great things—but sometimes they’re like replacing a window with more expensive glass and only benefit the glass industry. Subsidizing green energy specialists means they get work just as the glassmaker does, but overall our society is worse off. Why? Because government support is being given to an industry that cannot sustain itself. Katrina Currie, research associate at the Commonwealth Foundation stated the problem clearly before the PA House Republican Policy Committee by saying that “when government attempts to pick winners and losers—by identifying which industries are ‘green’ or ‘good’ and subsidizing them at taxpayers’ expense, mandating their use, and even punishing their competitors with costly regulations—it hinders our overall economy.”
In Pennsylvania $2 billion in alternative energy subsidies has been spent since 1999, yet the state sits in sixth place for total jobs lost. European studies cited by the Commonwealth Foundation show that for every green job created, 2.2-4.8 jobs are lost. Thus, we have more "green" jobs, but other people losing their jobs results in a net loss of jobs. As Commonwealth’s testimony says, “Jobs created in industries that depend on government assistance are not sustainable, will not stimulate the economy, and will not result in net job growth.” We can’t afford that now, nor can we afford paying $2 billion (at a state level) to keep an inefficient market afloat.
Yes, we must do what we can to attempt to reduce the environmental harm we are inflicting on our planet, but we must be cautious when we let emotions replace sound economics. We must be sure that our green laws are the best policies for all groups.
Emoly West, a former attendee of Eagle Forum’s Collegians Conference, was just crowned Miss Oklahoma 2010. Growing up politically involved, Emoly’s mother, Stephanie, lobbied pro-life legislation at the state capitol, bringing Emoly along in a stroller; her grandmother, Mollie, had actively assisted STOP ERA in Oklahoma and introduced Emoly to Eagle Forum at an early age. In addition, Emoly became involved in Teen Eagles, and attended Eagle Forum Collegians Leadership Summit a few years ago.
Now 24, and having won many beauty pageants, Emoly will represent Oklahoma (and Eagle Forum) in the Miss America Pageant in January. She has tried for the title five times.
“I’ve been looking forward to this moment for five years,” Emoly said during her first press conference. “It’s one of the best pageants in the nation….There was disappointment, but it was also a process of humility.”
She remembers watching the Miss America Pageant with her grandmother on television when she was younger. “I saw women of poise and character,” she says of the contestants. Now, she is among those women she previously watched, as she won the Miss Oklahoma title against 42 other contestants.
However, she remains humble about the process, saying that the opportunity was an honor “not for me, but representing everyone else.”
West is a senior at the University of Central Oklahoma working toward majoring in dance performance with a minor in broadcast journalism. She hopes to become a sports correspondent at the Olympic Games.
Which events in our history have been among the most significant and culture-shaking?
The question usually conjures up grandiose images of Columbus’s first landing, the Constitutional Convention, the Civil Rights’ Movement, or 9/11. However, some of the answers may not be nearly so obvious as you think. Larry Schweikart, a renowned author, historian and one of Glen Beck's favorite authors, outlines the implications of seemingly insignificant events and their lasting implications on our nation in his new book, 7 Events that Made America America.
For example, how did Martin Van Buren’s decisions make the election of Barack Obama possible today? How did Dwight Eisenhower’s heart attack create a government movement for control over American diets? And how did rock and roll ultimately help to bring about the decline of communism and the Soviet Union?
Schweikart discusses all of these and more; history may be much more than you ever learned in school!
Larry Schweikart is scheduled to speak at the 2010 Collegians Leadership Summit on July 14th and 15th in Washington D.C.
In the United States, we possess a standard system of measurement of what government can and cannot do: the U.S. Constitution. These standards provide a solid foundation on which government may rest. Imagine that you and a team of workers construct a house, each using your own standard of measurement instead of industry standards. The house will inevitably face instability and collapse. The solution remains not to create a new system of measurement that matches up to your own redefinition, but to return back to the original standard of measurement and proven foundational system.
However, the U.S. Congress is currently trying to use it's own standard instead of relying upon our current standard, created by the Founding Fathers in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. As a result, efforts have arisen calling for another constitutional convention (con con); though this is not the first time these calls have been made, efforts to call a Constitutional Convention to stop Congress from ignoring our Consitution is not the solution.
Efforts calling for a Con Con came strongly in the 1970s and 80s, and even as current as 2008, to pass good amendments such as a balanced budget amendment. These efforts were not successful becausethe evidenced danger of the Constitution being entirely rewritten outweighed arguments that only good amendments would be added. This danger still remains.
It must be understood that the con con endeavors today are not solely of radical Marxists or rabid leftists to recreate a new foundation to lead America to pure communism; it is largely an undertaking of conservatives and self-identifying Republicans who do not like the current functioning of our government and administration. The danger, however, remains the same.
James Madison discussed these very threats when, in November of 1788, he wrote:
“If a General Convention were to take place for the avowed and sole purpose of revising the Constitution, it would naturally consider itself as having a greater latitude than the Congress appointed to administer and support as well as to amend the system; it would consequently giver greater agitation to the public mind; an election into it would be courted by the most violent partisans on both sides; it would probably consist of the most heterogeneous characters; would be the very focus of that flame which has already too much heated men of all parties; would no doubt contain individuals of insidious views, who under the mask of seeking alterations popular in some parts but inadmissible in other parts of the Union might have a dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric.
“Under all these circumstances it seems scarcely to be presumable that the deliberations of the body could be conducted in harmony, or terminate in the general good. Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a Second, meeting in the present temper of America, and under all the disadvantages I have mentioned.”
Should a Con Con take place,myriad “bipartisan” compromises wouldinevitably lead tothe reshaping or even complete reconstruction of our current Constitutioninstead of the simple addition of a few amendments.
The question must also be asked: If trust in our current administration is at an all-time low, why would we hold faith in their abilities to resist sculpting our current standard of law to their own liking? If Americans do not believe that our administration effectively represents our core beliefsin their contemporary policies, why do we believe that they could successfully do so in the proposed shaping of our Constitution? Do we trust our leaders to make the decisions as to what actually “needs” amending, or as to what changes would ensue?
Our Constitution was created by our Founding Fathers to protect the freedoms they had suffered to live without. Several generations have passed since our Founding Fathers met, and not having lost our freedoms completely since then, nor knowing ully a life without them other than the writings of our ancestors and the faded pages of history, or perhaps the examples of other countries, we would be wise to heed their words.
Every concerned voter should approach the economic analyses of politicians with a wary eye. Henry Hazlitt, in his book Economics in One Lesson, states that one must look at the long term as well as the short term effects of an act or policy, and one must look at the consequences of an act or policy on every group.
Too often the public is given different forecasts for the same issue. What can be done to sort through these conflicting opinions? Hazlitt suggests taking a step back from the contradictions that arise with special-interest analyses and review all the interests involved.
Too often, nonvisible groups are forgotten, sometimes on purpose, and sometimes because people just don’t explore every side of an issue. The visible groups are the interests being helped by a policy, and these are the people to whom the focus and attention is given. But Hazlitt reminds us that improving one group's conditions must come at the expense of groups in the shadows, and so one must probe the shadows.
An understanding of efficiency is crucial to understanding Hazlitt’s principle. The goal of our economy should be to make our production as efficient as possible because both consumers and producers benefit from the maximization of productivity.
Government subsidies are passed without considering the forgotten taxpayer or the established worker in an already successful industry. Hazlitt uses many such examples to point out the repeated fallacy of ignoring a group when analyzing the economic effects of an action on productivity and how it hurts all of society to favor only special groups.
...Hannah Giles will be speaking at Collegians Summit, 2010?? If you don't know who Hannah is, check out the video below! We're so excited to get to hear from her!
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