Regular Posts Will Resume Soon!

Hey Everyone! Jimmy Williams here. I just wanted to take a real quick moment to apologize to everybody about the lack of new content for now over a week, maybe even two, I've honestly lost count. It's finals week here at Maryland and I've been absolutely slammed. I'm actually taking a real quick break from working on a Journalism project to give this update.

I sat two finals today, Mircoeconomics and Stats. By a stroke of luck, I picked three classes that don't have sit-down finals, although this Journalism project is worth 40 percent of my final grade in that class. I'll be done officially tomorrow afternoon and Saturday I'm headed back home. Once I'm home I hope to resume regular posting and increase my output to make up for lost time.

Again I apologize if I've let any of you down over the past two weeks or so. I'll be back soon and thank you all so much for continuing to come back and read!

Jimmy Williams

Dems Again Stumping on "Gender Discrimination"

Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I'm back at school now on the downhill run for the semester. Finals start in less than 3 weeks and it'll be Christmas before we all know it.

It is now very well known that Susan Rice, United States Ambassador to the U.N., is one of the leading candidates to replace outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Rice is deeply involved in the scandal surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attacks on September 11th and this makes her a very dicey choice for the position. Senate Republicans have solid reasons to be deeply concerned about her appointment and right now they are doing their jobs. The Senate and the American people have the right to know just what happening in Benghazi two and half months ago and until Rice can be straight with us, she has no business being confirmed to be the next Secretary of State, or to be doing her current job for that matter.

Unfortunately, a vast majority of Liberal Democrats, in the government, in the general public and, sadly, even in the media, refuse to see it this way. People in this camp are already back on the war path trying to play up sympathy for Rice, claiming that the "mean, old, angry white men" in the GOP are only going after Rice because she is a woman.

Right along with this, they also bring up how women still comprise less than 20 percent of Congress. DNC Chairperson Debbie Schultz has also been hellbent on this path again recently, claiming the GOP has gotten "more white" while trumpeting that she has helped bring a "majority minority" to the Democratic side of the House for the new Congress.

We are at a point now where even if Rice doesn't get the official nomination for Secretary of State, meaning it would instead most likely fall to Sen. John Kerry, Liberals everywhere will scream that it is because of gender and, in Rice's case, also race-based discrimination. Even if Obama nominates Kerry for the post, it will still somehow be blamed on the GOP and the media won't be rushing out there to discredit such a frivolous claim.

Has anyone on the left ever even considered the idea that the reason there aren't a lot of women in Congress or in high positions of government leadership is simply because they simply aren't the best candidates for the job? That the electorate votes for the best candidate for the job, male or female? I know that's how I vote. And guess what, Ms. Schultz? On election day I favored the FEMALE Republican in my home district. Too bad she lost to a WHITE MALE Democrat in a race that bordered on a landslide. I wonder how that race sits with Ms. Schultz. I'd love to see her explain it.

I'd also love to see her trumpet her "majority minority" with an incoming Maryland Congressional Delegation that includes 9 Democrats (of 10 total seats), in which there are just two women (Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Rep. Donna Edwards) and just two blacks (Edwards and Rep. Elijah Cummings). The other six are "old, white men", just the type Schultz routinely likes to paint as the evil enemy.

Maryland to the Big 10: A potential mistake?

I usually use this blog to discuss politics but today I figured I would take a step back and talk about the deal that has sent my school, the University of Maryland, from the ACC to the Big Ten Conference. Maryland is a charter member of the ACC. If the math is correct, next year will be the school's 60th (and now last) season in the conference, which is a pretty big deal from where I sit.

Look, I honestly want to believe this is all for the best, that Maryland will end up being fine in the Big Ten, but I and many others have some serious concerns about this move that I feel have not been addressed by those in charge of making the decisions. So let's jump right into it.

1. The issue of the exit fee:
Maryland faces a $50 million fee just to get out of the ACC and join the Big Ten. Where is that money going to come from? The athletic department is, for all intents and purposes, BROKE! That's why we had to cut seven teams last year! Many people are saying the fee really won't be that high and Wallace Loh, our university president, is convinced that the amount would not hold up in court. Well Dr. Loh, how much would it cost this university in legal fees to find out the sum doesn't hold up in court?

Some have said that the Big Ten itself is willing to pitch in to cover some of the exit fee and others have even speculated that Kevin Plank, a UMD alum and the founder of Under Armour, will be paying a large portion of the fee. To Mr. Plank: If the rumors are true and you can afford to spend millions of dollars to help Maryland exit the ACC, how come you couldn't spend millions of dollars last year to stabilize the athletic department and save the teams which were ultimately cut?

2. The Revenue Sharing:
This move to the Big Ten is all about money. Dr. Loh said as much himself on Monday. But people are missing some key points! Everyone keeps saying "We're going to get $24 million from the Big Ten every year regardless of what happens with our own sources of revenue." Well that isn't quite accurate.

Nebraska just joined the Big Ten in 2011 and they are only receiving $14 million per year as a result. It will be a few more years before they receive "full membership" and thus full benefits. Maryland is expected to receive a similar deal, meaning that, at least for the first several years, our university would be earning LESS in the Big Ten than it now does under the ACC television contract, which has a value of over $17 million per year.

Finally, adding more schools to a revenue sharing pot means each school will be getting LESS money overall. There are claims that this could be offset by getting the Big Ten Network, the conference's TV station, to break into markets in Maryland, New Jersey and New York, but I don't see how that is going to work and bring in all that much more money. I already get the Big Ten Network in my Central Maryland home through Verizon Fios. The network won't be expanding into Maryland, it's already here.

3. The loss of fan base:
It is no secret that thousands of loyal Terps, including alumni, feel betrayed by the decision to change conferences, to just throw nearly 60 years of history, tradition and rivalries aside. To the people that say Maryland has no ACC rival, that we only imagine the rivalries we have with Duke, UNC and UVA, that doesn't matter. We think the rivalries exist and we get excited for and LOVE those games. With these teams no longer on the schedule every year, thousands of people are quite angry. And the reasoning "we can always schedule them for non-conference games" just doesn't hold water for me. Very rarely does a team schedule a non-conference game it thinks it could lose. Schools generally (but certainly not always) prefer weak non-conference opponents to pad their stats and records.

Currently this is an non-issue for me, as I get all of my tickets to home games for free, but once I'm no longer a student here at Maryland, I refuse to pay money to watch our football team get hammered week in and week out by the likes of Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Penn State. One of my friends tweeted yesterday, "When Ohio State comes to play Maryland, it will be a sea of red, but not Terp red." And he's right. We can barely get Maryland fans to home games as it is now. I worked concessions at our home game against Florida State on Saturday. I'd have to say that well over half the crowd was there for FSU and they were the ones buying most of the food from us, not the Maryland fans.

4. Local recruits will probably not stay local:
I talked to a Maryland alum yesterday who is convinced that Maryland's move to the Big Ten will keep local recruits local. He said that instead of leaving Maryland to play for schools like Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State, that these recruits will now want to stay home so they can play against them for the hometown team. That's not how it's going to work! Local talent will not stay home to play against Michigan or Ohio State, it will still go to Michigan or OSU because Michigan or OSU has a dominating program! A program that can wipe the floor with Maryland.

5. Big Ten is a downgrade for our non-revenues:
For those who do not know what a "non-revenue" is, this is the term that applies to every college sport that isn't football or men's basketball. Some of these other sports may charge for admission, but the price is usually very low and the teams cannot cover their own expenses. At Maryland, I believe a regular season men's soccer ticket costs around $5. Women's basketball tickets are just $10 for the general public. Softball and field hockey are completely free.

The ACC is without question the best conference in men's soccer and for proof of that I can point to Maryland, UNC and Duke, three powerhouse men's soccer programs nationally. The Big Ten just isn't there. The same holds true for ACC women's soccer, although not necessarily with the same schools I mentioned for the men.

When it comes to field hockey, the ACC is the who's who of the sport. Going back to 1987, there have been just three NCAA Division I Field Hockey finals that did not feature an ACC team. 2008-2011 were all-ACC finals and Maryland and UNC played each other in the final in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Syracuse, joining the ACC next year, has a fantastic field hockey program. The only Big Ten school that jumps? Maybe Northwestern.

Lacrosse is going to take a huge hit, both men's and women's. Lacrosse is Maryland's sport and ACC teams such as UVA and UMD have been the teams one has to beat if they want to have a shot at a national title in that sport. In the Big Ten, lacrosse isn't even an official sport offered by the conference. So would we have to go independent in that sport then?

Men's basketball will probably end up being okay when it comes to competitiveness by the time 2014 rolls around, but the major criticism is that the style of play in the Big Ten is too slow and too boring. Plus, who wants to watch UMD vs. Minnesota? Not I. Women's basketball will have the same issue. On the bright side, they would be playing for the Big Ten in the annual Big Ten-ACC Challenge, which has seen the Big Ten come out on top in recent years.

Two last interesting pieces of information. The move to the Big Ten means that Byrd Stadium will become the 5th smallest football stadium in the Big Ten at 54,000 once you factor in the Rutgers stadium. Problem is, we can't even fill those seats! This is less than half of the capacity at Michigan, 109,901. And they fill that stadium every week.

Maryland will, however, have the 2nd largest basketball arena in the Big Ten, about 1,000 shy of Ohio State and about 230 more than Michigan.

Like I said, I really hope this move ends up working out for the best, although I will miss the ACC, but it just seems like there is too much that could go wrong. Basketball will probably stay competitive, but we'll be lucky if football ever wins again. And if the seven sports Loh cuts don't come back, there will be hell to pay.

The move also throws out years and years of history and tradition. And all of this for a few extra million dollars per year. With Wallace Loh, it's always about the money, the bottom line. Tradition doesn't seem to matter to him.

Jimmy Williams

Review of Atlas Shurgged, Part 2

            I went and saw Atlas Shrugged Part II about a month ago so that I could write a review on the move for the paper that I write for here on campus, The Terrapin Times (umdtimes.com). Now that the review has been published, I’d like to share it with all of you, with some slight modifications from how it appeared in print. I highly recommend this movie to everyone and I also recommend you go back and watch part one. It can be found on Netflix or can be purchased on iTunes for just $6.99.

            Atlas Shrugged Part II is the second in a trilogy of movies bringing Ayn Rand’s 1957 New York Times bestselling novel to the big screen. Set “sometime in the near future”, the United States as depicted in Atlas Shrugged is quite simply falling apart. Brilliant and creative minds are vanishing left and right, unemployment has climbed to over 20 percent, gas has reached over $40 per gallon as energy prices skyrocket, more business are closing every day and the government is asserting more and more control as it all gets worse.

            One of the movie’s characters, Francisco d’Anconia, played by Esai Morales, explains the title perfectly about halfway through the movie when he says, “If you saw Atlas, knees buckling, arms trembling, but still trying to hold up the world with the last of his strength, what would you tell him to do?” He goes on in that sequence to say that he would tell Atlas to shrug, to just let it all fall away.

            Central to the movie and trilogy as a whole are two key pieces of legislation: the “Fair Share Law” and “Directive 10-289”. The Fair Share Law makes it so that all companies are to produce the same amount as any other company in an industry regardless of size, with what is produced being distributed according to need. The penalty for breaking this law is 10 years in prison and a fine of $50 million. Other parts of the law prevent businesses from moving from poor states to rich ones and implement a federal tax on the state of Colorado, undergoing an immense and very profitable oil boom at the time, to redistribute the wealth to those states which are struggling. People are only allowed to own one business. Owning the entire manufacturing process for a good is now impossible.

            Directive 10-289, introduced in the middle of the movie, goes even further. It fixes the quantities of materials companies are allowed to buy and produce, makes it illegal for anyone to be fired and freezes all forms of income at current levels. After this law was signed, a news anchor added, “With the stroke of a pen, the nation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been altered forever.”

            What makes this movie relevant is just how close this country appears to be to something like what is depicted in Atlas Shrugged. No, we aren’t at 20 percent unemployment, but U6, or so-called “true” unemployment, is stuck around 15 percent. No, we haven’t collapsed into socialism yet because capitalism has proven superior time and time again. However, there is a real “Recovery Czar” in the current administration, who has duties very similar to those of the “Recovery Czar” and “Unification Board” from the movie. As the news anchor in the movie rightly said, it only takes the stroke of a pen to fundamentally alter the path of a great nation.

            Although Rand’s 1,168 page novel was first published 55 years ago, she wrote the story without giving any specifics as to the time, giving the story a quality of timelessness that allowed the movies to be set in the future beyond 2012 without any problems.

            The movie definitely could have used a major boost in its special effects budget, but that problem really did not take away from the story as a whole. The movie features a host of well recognized actors, including Robert Picardo from Star Trek: Voyager; Jason Beghe and Arye Gross, recurring actors on several television shows including Castle, CSI, Law and Order and NCIS; and Kim Rhodes, probably best known by our generation as Carey Martin in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. It is worth noting that all the roles in Atlas Shrugged were recast between parts one and two.

            Most film critics have given Atlas Shrugged Part II incredibly negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 0 percent rating, despite users on Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a rating of over 80 percent. Users on IMDB have given the film a 5.4 out of 10 rating. In this case, the critics should not be believed in any case. Atlas Shrugged is an excellent story and it could not be any more relevant than it is right now. It shows in a very accurate way what happens when a government decides to redistribute the wealth in the name of the “greater good”.

Jimmy Williams

Keep Up the Good Fight

Hi everybody. Sorry I've spent another week plus away from the blog. I was in Dallas for an editor's conference the first weekend of November and I had a test on the Wednesday after the election and another test today. Not surprisingly, I didn't do so well on the test last Wednesday. Scheduling it for the day after the election wasn't the smartest decision in my opinion, but I digress.

Look, I'm not going to waste a terrible amount of my time or yours digging too much into the results of last week's election simply because everyone else is already doing it. I won't let the results of the election go and I'm sure to make repeated references to it in the future, but we cannot change the results. Sixty million Americans were fooled by one of the best liars this country has ever seen. On top of that, an estimated 3 million Conservatives stayed home because they believed "Mitt is too moderate." One would think they would rather have Mitt over Obama though because if Mitt is too moderate, then what does that make Obama?

Regardless of the outcome of the election, the lies that Obama told to get reelected and the lies the main stream media told to help get him reelected, it is safe to say that you and I still know the truth. And come 2016, when we have gas over $6 a gallon, a $20 trillion national debt, unemployment back around 10 percent and skyrocketing energy and food prices to go along with out of control inflation, I'm confident everyone else will see it, too. The money will run out folks, that is unavoidable.

Now is the time to stay the course, to keep up the good fight. The Republican Party does not need to moderate itself further. If it does, more of our Conservative base will stay home next time around than did this year. We have Marco Rubio, Allen West, Mia Love, it's time to put them to good use! The problem isn't our party's positions, it's that our positions are a lot harder to explain to voters, especially youth and minorities, than are Obama's positions of "we'll get the 'rich' to pay more so I can spend more and then you'll get more free stuff!" Or, "I need some time here, everybody! Just look at this mess I inherited from myself!" Obama doesn't put it quite like that, but that's essentially what he means.

But seriously, the GOP needs to figure out how to explain its positions better because they are hard to get. Just after Obama had been declared the winner of the election on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I got into a heated debate with people on my floor over politics. They have no idea what quantitative easing is and they didn't know what Romney meant when he said we needed to crack down on China, just to name two things they were clueless about. To be honest, that even took me a long time to figure out, but at least I figured it out! Their biggest concern on Tuesday night? That Mitt Romney "beat up a gay kid in high school." Seriously?!

We've already seen the signs that America is headed for trouble in a second Obama term: The stock market crashed epically to finish out last week and it's been flat for the past two days. Boeing has now announced plans for layoffs along with nearly 50 other companies. The layoffs range from in the 20s to nearly 4,000 proposed layoffs at Pepsi Co. More companies are almost certain to follow. And let's not forget the companies who were planning on hiring only if Romney won.

So like I said, keep up the good fight, I know I certainly will. May God bless you all.

Jimmy Williams

Brains and Class vs. Stupid and Classless

I'm happy to report the University of Maryland made it through Sandy in remarkably good condition. I will be resuming my studies in the morning as life in central Maryland begins to return to "normal". However, I certainly can't say the same for people further North and East and I continue to pray for their safety. I hope the lights come back on soon and hopefully everyone comes out of this thing okay. Best of luck to the power crews and all the emergency responders who will be leading our states out of this thing over the next several days.

Yesterday and today...oh hell, let's be honest, this entire campaign season, we've known the two men running for the presidency are VERY different. With Sandy came even more proof of that. We've now been shown who is a clear leader and who leans on others to get things done, to make him look good.

Brains and Class: Mitt Romney has completely suspended his campaign in order to help with storm relief efforts. As a former governor, he knows both how important this is and how to get it done. We have seen this in several ways so far. Before Sandy even hit, the Romney campaign was collecting donations from campaign offices all over the East Coast, piling them on a campaign bus donated to the cause, and getting them ready to ship to areas which would be in most need. Today Romney turned a scheduled campaign stop in Ohio into a massive donation collection center for the storm relief efforts. He was personally involved in collecting and loading donations down on the floor on the building they were in. Two televisions were also put on display reminding those who stopped by to send donations via text message to the Red Cross.

Stupid and Classless: So what is team Obama doing during all this? Although they've "suspended" their campaign, all that means is that Obama isn't out on the campaign trail anymore. But that hasn't stopped the campaign from sending Bill Clinton to replace Obama at every rally he was supposed to be at! Clinton appeared for Obama on Monday in Florida, on Tuesday in Colorado and will be making an appearance in the former Democrat stronghold of Minnesota tomorrow! That's no "suspension of campaign"! Romney's team is not out there having some surrogate replace him!

So that takes care of classless, I think. At least the simple part of it. Now onto brainless. Prior to the storm, Obama flew to Florida, delivered pizza to a campaign office and then flew home the next day after cancelling his rally appearance. As I saw one pundit put it, that has to be one of the most expensive pizza deliveries in history. Obama also made an appearance before the storm and reminded people to stay tuned Internet updates on ready.gov, Facebook and Twitter as well as to their televisions for storm updates. He didn't mention any phone numbers to call nor did he list any radio stations or frequencies to turn to. Last I checked, no power means NO Internet and even smart phones have a limited battery life. What a fool.

The choice has always been clear, folks. But it became a lot clearer today.

Jimmy Williams

The Liberal Media Stuns Me

Good afternoon everyone. I'm sorry it's been so long since I've gotten a post up. I've had a decent amount of school work to keep me busy over the last week or so but thanks to Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the University of Maryland, I find myself with no classes and no job to go to today, so I figured I'd be productive and get a new post up.

Putting the trash heap and voter fraud breeding ground that is early voting aside, we now have just over a week remaining until the real Election Day. And now that things are starting to go downhill for Obama and in a hurry, the liberal media is spinning stories as fast as it can to try and save their boy in the White House.

Four years ago, Rasmussen was rated as the most accurate polling company in that election. Rasmussen has always been ranked among the best in election after election. Now, with Rasmussen projecting Romney pulling ahead overall, in the swing states and now today in Ohio, liberal media whack jobs are running around portraying Rasmussen as a hack who has no idea how to conduct a poll. What changed? Oh right, he's got Romney winning now.

When Bush was in office and when McCain was running against Obama, it was the president who ran the economy, created jobs and controlled gas prices. Four years later with Obama about ready to fall off of a cliff, the economy, jobs and gas prices AREN'T Obama's fault?! What changed? Oh right, Obama is a Democrat so it's not his fault.

Reuters ran a story just today entitled "Hurricane forces Obama to balance governing, campaigning." Oh you poor soul! You mean to tell me a sitting president can't do both? He can't chew gum and walk at the same time? George W. Bush ran a very effective campaign in 2004 and he still led the country effectively. I don't see how this is a story and I don't see how Obama should be having any problems figuring it out. I thought he had a "billion dollar campaign machine" doing it all for him.

And now that the newspaper endorsements are flooding in, now that paper after paper is flipping from Obama to Romney, now that Obama has become the first Democrat in 40 years who failed to secure endorsement from the Des Moines Register, all the sudden newspaper endorsements don't mean a thing! Just read the AP story about it below.

This is all really and truly sickening and disgusting. As someone studying to become a journalist myself, I am appalled. Journalism is supposed to be fair and balanced. This shows that it's not.

Reuters Story: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/29/storm-sandy-obama-idUSL1E8LS1OR20121029

AP Story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=163842918

Debate Postmortem

Wow was that ever a crazy debate on Tuesday night! I know I’m only 19, so I don’t remember very many town hall presidential debates, but I’ve never seen the candidates go face to face and repeatedly interrupt each other like they did last night. And I’ve never seen a candidate duck direct questions as bad as Obama did last night.

Obama was certainly stronger in this debate than the last time out. Of course he did so bad the last time that it didn’t take much to see improvement. But his solution to “be stronger” was pathetic. He talked louder; he lied even more and interrupted more. But he also had help. Without Candy Crowley’s repeated interruptions of Romney, she interrupted Romney 28 times to just nine for Obama, and without her inability to let Romney respond to some of the outright lies of Obama, it made Obama look way better off than he really was. The bottom line is that Romney stuck to the facts, stuck to his guns, didn’t really lose his cool and won this debate despite yet another moderator out to get him. Some of the key takeaways:

1.      Obama ducked two huge direct questions from Romney during the debate and Crowley helped him do it.

A question about energy policy came up early in the debate and Romney turned to Obama and asked him how far down new drilling permits had fallen under his administration. Rather than answer the question, Obama went to some BS talking point about how we were drilling more domestically under him than before. Regardless of the truth that is or isn’t behind that statement, that wasn’t the question! Fact: New drilling permits are down 62 percent under Obama. That’s not the way to get energy independent.

The next question Obama ducked was about investing in China. After Obama yet again accused Romney of investing in companies that outsource jobs to China, Romney asked Obama was kind of investments are in his pension. Obama’s pension apparently includes Chinese investments. Rather than answer, Obama made a snarky comment about how Romney’s pension was bigger, another attempt at playing class warfare rather than getting serious about this election. Obama then turned and looked right at Crowley, all the sudden decided this pension discussion was off topic. He begged Candy to move on from the topic, it looked and sounded completely pathetic. 

2.      Romney finally elaborated some on what he means by “China is cheating”.

On a question about why companies have been outsourcing jobs to China, especially a big name company like Apple, Romney finally explained what he means when he runs ads that say “China is a cheater”. He said that China artificially holds down the value of its currency to make things cheaper, among other things. He said that China steals U.S. patents and technology, as evidenced by the knock-off Apple stores that have sprung up in the country recently. Those ads finally make sense to me.

3.      Obama outright lied about how Arizona S.B. 1070 works.

Obama stood on stage last night following a question on illegal immigration and told the entire country that S.B. 1070 allows police to ask for someone’s papers if they just suspect that the person may be an illegal alien. That is not how the bill works! For those of us who have actually read and understand the bill, we all know that a person must be stopped for committing an actual crime first. Once the police have stopped the person for an actual crime, then they can ask for papers to prove identification if they have reasonable belief the person may be an illegal.

4.      Answers on contraception should give Romney a boost.

Romney said last night that he does not want to cut access to contraception, birth control, etc. if he is elected president. He is not going to let his personal religious beliefs affect the government, which is smart and sensible. Of course Obama countered with his overused rebuttal that Romney wants to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. As I’ve previously said, Planned Parenthood is essentially a PAC; it donates to political campaigns and makes campaign commercials. As such, Planned Parenthood does not deserve federal funding! No group which actively campaigns for one candidate or against another deserves federal funds. Planned Parenthood isn’t the only group like this, they are just the most well known. The group has plenty of other sources it can turn to for funding besides the federal government; ironically Susan G. Komen is among them. 

5.      Obama made himself look stupid by continuing to cling to his fantasy Romney tax cuts for the rich.

It is well proven by this point that Romney’s tax plan is revenue neutral without raising taxes on anyone. It allows for tax cuts for everyone in America. Six studies have now shown this. Yet Obama said three times in the first debate and at least twice on Tuesday that “the governor wants to give the rich a $5 trillion tax cut and raise taxes on the middle class!” and various restatements of that. The one study Obama keeps referencing in debates and in his commercials even shows Romney’s plan to be revenue neutral. Just last week the authors of this study told the Weekly Standard that Obama was misusing their study. They said that Romney’s plan works with no new taxes. Yet Obama claims they said Romney would need to raise them. It’s time for Obama to shut up on this one, but we all know he won’t. Look to see him bring it up again Monday.

6.      Obama YET AGAIN took credit for ending the Iraq War and for killing Bin Laden.

Look, I’ve beaten this one to death in multiple blogs already and so have so many others in the credible media. Of course no one on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, or any of the networks seems to be too keen on pointing out that Obama cannot take credit for either of these things.

7.      Romney and his schools claim.

Now I’ve picked up on this, and so have many of my friends, but that’s probably just because we’re all from Maryland ourselves. Romney has claimed in both debates so far that Massachusetts has the best schools in the nation. This title actually belongs to Maryland and has for the past four years running. But hey, every candidate wants to make himself look as good as possible and I’m sure that at some point every governor claims to oversee the best school system in the nation. Just like I’m sure every governor has at one point said their SAT scores are above the national average, a statistical impossibility. And if that’s my only major pick about Romney, I think we’re in good hands.

Jimmy Williams

It's time for "Round 2"! Debate Preview!

It's time for round between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. Tonight's debate will begin at 9 p.m. in the East and will be a town hall style meeting at Hofstra University. Candy Crowley will serve as the moderator. There will be segments on both foreign and domestic policy.

By this point we all know what happened in the first debate. Obama messed up big time and Romney has gotten a big boost in the polls over the past two weeks (even the ones with a huge liberal tilt). Here are some thing to look at tonight, especially seeing that foreign policy will now be on the table:

1. Obama will need to be more aggressive.
This is something that he has vowed to do, but no one is quite sure what exactly this will entail. He may take a "Joe Biden Route" tonight, which would include talking louder, being more disruptive, sneering even more than he did in the first debate and, of course, outright lying. Hey, it seemed to work for Joe!


2. The plays on Libya will be different based on last night's news.
It came out yesterday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is taking "full responsibility" for what happened in Benghazi on September 11. From where I'm sitting, it looks like Clinton took the fall for the Obama Administration in an attempt to deflect pressure from the president on this issue. Should the opportunity for Romney to attack Obama on Libya come up, look for Obama to try and pass the blame onto the State Department. That's not how it should work at all, seeing as Obama oversees the State Department as part of his job and is still very much accountable for what happened, but the media has found its scapegoat now and look for the media to do all it can to help Obama on this issue.

3. Obama will use the bogus jobs report to tout his "success".
The jobs report released on October 5 is supposed to make it look like Obama is succeeding at getting people back to work. The fact of the matter is that the numbers just don't add up! Anyone should be able to see that. Of course just this morning, my economics professor told a class of about 400 students that anyone who thinks the BLS cooked the books for Obama is crazy. She's the crazy one for being so compliant and willing to accept what she is told, but I digress. Romney knows what's really going on, most of America knows what's really going on, but "I've gotten unemployment back under 8 percent as president" will probably be a line out of Obama's mouth tonight anyway.


4. Crowley will not be a fair moderator and should not be working this debate tonight.
Candy Crowley has numerous problems that should have prevented her from being the debate moderator this evening. First off, she has called the Romney ticket a "death wish". That by itself should be enough to disqualify her! Clearly she is biased against Romney and will more than likely moderate as such.If she is allowed to "moderate" at all that is! The contract signed by the campaigns stipulates that Crowley is to simply serve as what one might call a  "mic holder", taking the questions from the audience without restating them, commented on them, or adding to them in any way. That is what the Romney and Obama campaigns have signed off on. However, Crowley went on CNN earlier today and said that is not what she will be doing at all. She promised to interject herself into the debate instead of just passing the mic off to people in the crowd. She's biased, she can't follow the rules of the debate, great choice! NOT.

VP Debate Preview

Last week's debate was very interesting indeed and shed a lot of light on how the General Election may shape up. However, tonight's Vice Presidential Debate between current Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan should not only prove to be informative and enlightening but could also be incredibly entertaining.

Joe Biden gifts of making gaffes and using racist or otherwise inappropriate jokes will be thrust once again into the national spotlight. He's already made a ton of mistakes in this election season ranging from implying that Mitt Romney and the GOP are slave masters to forgetting which state and century he was campaigning in to making sexually inappropriate jokes about high school cheerleaders.

This will be contrasted with the level-headed speaking abilities of Paul Ryan. Ryan has the ability to masterfully explain almost any subject and break it down into simplest terms for everyone. He has used these talents before to expose the Obamacare scam to President Obama's face, which is the major reason that is the only face-to-face meeting Ryan and Obama ever had. He also went out on stage in Tampa and made his acceptance speech for vice president without a teleprompter, according to reports.

With all that in mind, I'd like to make a few predictions for tonight:

1. Biden will lie big and lie frequently. Expect Ryan to go after him on that.
Last week's debate gave us the now famous Romney line, "Mr. President you are entitled to your own house and your own plane, but not to your own facts." Joe Biden will probably tout some of his own "facts" tonight, including his claim that the auto bail-out saved over 1 million jobs when there are only 700,000 jobs in the entire auto industry. Ryan will not be shy about calling Biden on those lies and he will slam Biden for them.

2. Biden will shoot himself in the foot by working in some sort of insensitive joke.
Biden just can't stay away from those jokes, his most recent being about how cheerleaders perform at basketball games (I'll leave you to figure that one out if you haven't already heard about it, it was incredibly inappropriate). Not only are these jokes highly insulting, they are embarrassing for Biden, if he even notices. Regardless of rather he notices or not, the American public will. And with around 70 million people expected to tune in tonight based on numbers from this same debate in 2008, those potential jokes will not go unnoticed.

3. Despite Biden taking 6 days off the campaign trail to prepare for this debate, Ryan will still win it and win big.
Simply put, Ryan is a way better speaker than Biden could ever hope to be, although Biden is known for being a good debater, a notion I really can't comment on seeing as most of Biden's national political career took place in the years before I was even born. Biden doesn't have any kind of positive record to run on and he lacks credibility, so expect him to try and make some credibility up. Ryan has a strong record of fiscal responsibility and he is clearly the more popular candidate going into this debate. I expect a big Ryan win and that the main stream liberal media will once again be beside itself as they try to break down the debate and make excuses for their man Biden.

Jimmy Williams
 

Voting for the Voiceless

Today I saw a YouTube video shared on Facebook that speaks volumes about a demographic that always seems to get ignored: Those too young to vote.

That YouTube video, "Voices Without a Vote," can be viewed by clicking here.

Contrary to popular belief, young people do care about the electoral process and some of them care quite a lot, such as the young people featured in this video. When I was growing up, I was always involved in the political process, even though my friends would frequently ridicule me and tell me that "it didn't matter because I wasn't old enough to vote." Oh those few people couldn't have been anymore wrong.

As the teenagers appearing in the video point out, we who are of voting age now aren't just voting for the present, we are voting to set policy for years to come, to define the direction of America for years to come. It's always been that way, but the 2012 election is about that more than any other election in the history of this country. Although the left-wing media will never admit it, this election is not just Romney vs. Obama, this election is not change vs. status quo and this election is certainly not "two people, same choice" and third party candidates are trying to make people believe! No, this election is about self-reliance vs. government dependence and socialism. This election is about what made America great vs. what has brought Greece, Italy and Spain to their respective knees.

It is so reassuring to see young people who already know at such a young age what this election means for America. To me, it shows that maybe America still does have hope for the future, something I myself question at times when I see people blindly follow Barack Obama, something I question when I see the media outright lying and distorting the news that millions in this country consume.

I began writing political opinion pieces when I was 16. I helped on my first campaign in the fall of 2010 at the age of 17.  And now as a 19-year-old, I find myself considering a run at a state-level seat as early as the next election cycle in 2014. The idea becomes more and more appealing almost every day. I and everyone reading this blog can only hope the teens who appear in this video are as politically active as they appear. I hope that some of them consider running for office and trying to make a real difference in this country. As America's youth, we are the future. We need to keep this country strong, we need to keep it fiscally sound, and we need independent citizens continuing to be self-reliant.

Jimmy Williams

The Ignorance and Immaturity of the Left

UPDATE Tuesday, October 9th at 3:35 p.m. EDT:
INCREDIBLY Disturbing video has surfaced thanks to The Schilling Show, a talk show based in the state of Virginia, which shows Democrats gone absolutely insane defacing campaign signs, GOP property, etc. PLEASE BE WARNED that the language is extremely strong and there are VERY graphic images shown. So if there are younger eyes and ears that will be near by, please ask them to leave before viewing if you don't want them exposed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxDzPyd4XX0&feature=youtu.be

ORIGINAL POST Monday, October 8th
Sorry for the delay in posts. I've been very busy the past week and things are finally calming down some.

Recently I've been noticing increased hatred and vitriol coming from those who call themselves members of the Democratic Party, Liberals,  the "Left", etc.  To be completely honest, I've always considered these people to be full of hate, but in this election cycle in particular it is has reached particularly disturbing levels and I can't believe it is considered to be acceptable behavior.  Then again, when your party controls the White House and the media, it's not that hard to get away with.

Earlier this week on debate night, a Facebook "friend" (I've really started to notice I need to clean up my friends list as this is my second post dealing with "friends" on Facebook), posted a status in all caps saying she wished she could smack Romney in the face very hard.  I questioned her on this point, asking if it was because Obama was getting his butt handed to him by Romney.  She then spouted off random stuff about how Obama was great, but he's done great things like bring the troops home (lies, it was Bush who took care of that), and how he killed Osama Bin Laden (Really? I didn't know that Obama was in Pakistan that night pulling the trigger on an assault rifle.)

She then said Romney was still an "asshole".  So I asked her if she could prove that, if she had evidence.  She didn't and convienently ignored my prods.  Sorry for the common and overused phrase coming up here but, typical liberal.

And just now, late on a Saturday night, I received a Facebook message from someone else I used to consider a friend.  The message was a simple, two-word phrase: "F*** Romney" with no evidence to back up the claim.  Really?  That's very mature of you, sir.

These examples just compound an ever-growing issue we have in this country.  People on the left are insensitive, immature and straight-up ignorant.  They're entitled to have whatever opinions they want and they claim that we as Republicans and Conservatives are as well...so long as their opinions are treated as fact.  I'm not the only one who has noticed this, am I?

We present logic, facts, etc. to reject affirmative action programs and we're "racist".  We don't rush to support Barack Obama and we're "racist" and "full of hate".  We voice support of traditional marriage and we're labeled as "hateful bigots".  We stand up against funding for planned parenthood and we "hate women".  And that's just a small sampling.

A group of school children sings a song praising Barack Obama and they're "Brilliant". Another girl sings, "MMM MMM MMMM! Barack Hussein Obama!" and she is labeled "Amazing". But when a 6-year-old and his family make a YouTube video with seven simple reasons to not vote for Barack Obama they're hateful, awful, and deserve to be shot, according to hundreds of liberals and haters on the left.

The contrast is stark and awful. Despite the attempts of numerous people to try and contradict me, without credible success I might add, Conservatives would never unleash the kind of hate you see from liberals and the left. We don't wish death upon Barack Obama and his family but the left does that to Mitt Romney and his family. We don't wish hate on people who are pro-choice and pro-gay marriage but the left issues death threats on Jane Pitt when she writes a letter expressing a pro-life, pro-traditional marriage viewpoint. I believe the children who made those pro-Obama songs have been brainwashed to the extreme as they've grown up and that they were too young to know what they were doing, but I don't think they should be shot and killed along with their families. Yet the left thinks that of a 6-year-old and his family.

Hmm, which party is the party of tolerance again? The choice is yours.

Jimmy Williams

These Men (and Women) They Call “Journalists” Part 2

Today I will continue with the feature that I started last week about the intense media bias that clearly favors Barack Obama and his campaign by touching on a few more topics in which the media would like you to think one way, but the reality is starkly different.

Obama/Media Claim: As president, Barack Obama personally brought an end to the war in Iraq.

Reality: Barack Obama did nothing to end the war in Iraq that a different president, i.e John McCain, wouldn’t have also done.  Obama ended the Iraq war on the exact timetable that his predecessor, George W. Bush, established before he left office.  The Bush Administration negotiated and signed a Status of American Forces (SOFA) with Iraq and signed it near the end of Bush’s tenure in 2008.  An article in The Daily Beast explains this, the link for which can be found below.

Yet Obama goes on TV, goes to fundraisers, runs all across the country spiking the football and claiming it was him who ended the war in Iraq.  That without him we would still be engaged in major combat operations in Iraq.  Mr. President, you are a liar, and a big one at that.  But asking him to tell the truth is next to impossible these days.

And what about Afghanistan, Mr. President?  You promised that war would be ended within 16 months of your assuming the presidency.  Now here were sit just over a month from the 2012 election and our troops won’t be leaving Afghanistan until 2014 at the earliest.  Now more troops have died in Afghanistan under your watch than during Bush’s entire Presidency!  Because of your inability to act, someone I consider to be one of my close friends was just recently sent over for a minimum 5 month tour of duty.  One would think since Obama “ended” the combat in Iraq so efficiently that he’d be able to do the same in Afghanistan.

Obama/Media Claim: Mitt Romney is out of touch.  He knows nothing about the problems of most Americans.

Reality: Yes, these people really say that and imply that on a nearly daily basis.  But last time I checked it was Barack Obama who is absolutely in love with Hollywood and it is Barack Obama who out raises Mitt Romney among people in Hollywood by an enormous margin.  It was Barack Obama who just recently held a massive fundraiser with Jay-Z and Beyoncé that pulled in millions.  It is Barack Obama who goes on talk show after talk show, avoiding hard hitting questions from the media at all costs.

Thanks to Obama’s policies, this country faces the massive “fiscal cliff” come January.  Barack Obama told all of us to “tighten our belts” and not take to go on vacations.  But he’s spent millions of dollars going on upscale vacations in Hawaii, Martha’s Vineyard, etc. all on the taxpayer’s dime!  Not to mention he’s gone golfing 104 times as of September 14^th!  As a side note, regardless of your opinion of George W. Bush, at least he owned his ranch, which kept his travel costs way down.

Mitt Romney is the one out of touch?  Really?  Mitt Romney has the plan to balance the budget, improve global trade and create 12 million new jobs in his first term.  And that’s 12 million real new jobs, not the job record Obama wrongly claims to have.  Mitt Romney isn’t the one who spends what seems like more time hanging with celebrities than he does running the country.

There may be one more part to this series depending on what develops this week, I’ll keep you all posted and thanks for reading!

Jimmy Williams

The Daily Beast Article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/24/obamas-war-crime-taking-credit-from-bush-adminsitration-for-ending-the-iraq-war.html

These Men (and Women) They Call “Journalists” Part 1

I apologize for today’s posting coming so late in the day.  I had some personal matters that had to be attended to which prevented me from finishing the post and getting it up on time.

We have a serious problem with the media today that well-known pundits have touched on repeatedly as we run up to the month prior to the election.  And that problem is that we now have a “media” full of “journalists” that is basically no more than the strong arm of the Democratic Party.

Look, it’s no secret that at least since Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for the presidency during the summer of 2008 that the media has been strongly pro-Obama and anti-Republican.  It has been clear that the main stream media (MSM) wants to advance the Obama agenda and as such you rarely see a bad word said about Obama or his policies unless it is a truly egregious story.  The evidence is everywhere and I’ll be frank on this one: If you don’t see it, you are just kidding yourself.  The following are two scenarios the media likes to ignore and distort, while taking the chance to slander Mitt Romney and Republicans in the process if the chance arises:

Obama/Media Claim: Since taking office, Barack Obama’s administration has created 4.6 million jobs, “saved or created” 3 million jobs with the “stimulus” and lowered the unemployment rate.

Reality: By the time Obama took office, national payrolls had basically hit rock bottom and there was nowhere to go but up.  Regardless of who was in the White House, there was a good chance these jobs were going to be added anyway.  Additionally, the 4.6 million jobs that have come back are not the same ones that have been lost and hiring saw a major boost in 2010 due to all the temporary jobs for the census.  Surprisingly, CNN actually fact-checked Obama about his jobs numbers.  That report can be seen here.  Further, leading economists have said that just to keep up with the expanding labor force, the U.S. needs to add at least 150,000 jobs per month and that only anything over that is recovery.  Anything less is WORSE and a step back.

The claim that the stimulus saved or created 3 million jobs is incredibly hard to prove, as it has been found that many jobs Obama claimed were saved were never in jeopardy anyway.  Yet journalists go right on reporting that number.  Additionally, Obama claimed that by this point in 2012, unemployment would be at 5 percent thanks to his stimulus.  Well, it’s not!  Where’s the media on that one?  Silent.

The main reason the unemployment rate has done down under Obama’s watch is because people are leaving the labor force in record numbers.  While the “official” rate is 8.1 percent, real unemployment, the U6 number, is still hovering at 15 percent.  Yet the media won’t report that, it will only jump all over the 8.1 percent number.

Obama/Media Claim: Obama is way up in the polls, doing better than ever.  Romney doesn’t stand a chance and the race is essentially over.

Reality: The MSM is skewing the polling data so bad that is a joke.  Well, maybe it’s more of a scary problem because what they report, the general population seems to believe.  Even some Romney supporters have started to adopt a so-called “defeatist” attitude.  Let me assure you that any polling data being reported by a MSM outlet is simply false!  These polls are oversampling Democrats by as many as 10 percentage points, assuming a record turnout of Democrats while Republicans stay home.  That’s not going to happen, yet the media says this is so.

So-called “Unskewed” polling data reveals a far different reality.  When polling data is controlled and adjusted for more realistic samples, Mitt Romney is leading Barack Obama by an average of 7.8 points!  And not only that, but Obama’s “unskewed” disapproval spread stands at an average of 8.8 points!

For all of this “War on Women” talk being put out by the Obama campaign, a recent ABC/WaPo poll showed that more women favor Romney than favor Obama.  And just this week, this Bloomberg National Poll indicates that Romney now has a huge 6 point lead in who would be tougher on terrorism, a massive change from just last month.

Next week I will continue revealing more issues that show huge Democratic media bias, on topics ranging from the economy to the recent terror strikes in Libya to Afghanistan, etc. so be sure to stay tuned and check back this Tuesday, October 2^nd!

Taking on the Teachers: Romney and Education Reform

Last night one of my Facebook friends posted a primer that supposedly compared Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s stances on education on her wall.  She provided a summary of how, as a future teacher, she found it “crazy” that Mitt Romney wanted states to reduce teacher rights and that Romney wanted to institute merit-based pay for teachers.  She then said that Romney wanted to eliminate teacher certification and railed against that!  The primer can be found here on the site “Care 2 Make a Difference,” a site with a decided liberal bias that you see as soon as you open the link.  Except the funny thing is, if you read the whole primer, it makes the Romney plan sound WAY better when I know that wasn’t their goal.

The claim that Romney wants to eliminate teacher certification is debunked and destroyed within the first few paragraphs of the primer.  All Romney wants to do is modify some requirements for certification so that it is easier for good people who want to teach to realize that dream.  It’s no secret that our country doesn’t have enough teachers; all media outlets routinely cover that story.

As for teacher’s rights, those have gotten out of control.  The recent Chicago Teacher Strike is a very relevant example of that problem.  Chicago teachers now have the highest rate of pay before benefits in the country at an average of about $89,000.  And yet Chicago students rank near the very bottom in time spent in the classroom and the graduation rate in Chicago is only 60 percent!  The person who posted the primer and those who rose to her defense were practically making out the teachers to be the victims in this case!  And one said I was misinformed because Chicago has four of the top 10 high schools in Illinois.  Four schools do not a district make.

Yes, teachers have a somewhat limited earning potential.  Public school teachers know that when they get into the profession, they are becoming public servants collecting a salary from the taxpayer.  But teachers get paid more than enough to live decent lives and the longer they teach, the more they make.  My high school history teacher, probably my best teacher ever, retired in 2012 after over 30 years on the job with a salary 10 times his starting pay!  With hard work comes reward!  Right now, too much money is going into the teacher’s pocket and not into the student!  Just look at Maryland’s higher education system which I touched on last week!

My notion that tenure is “a good thing because it protects good teachers” is also ridiculous.  Fine, standardized tests aren’t the best measure of success and we all know that.  But if a teacher is a “good” teacher, then why do they need to hide behind tenure?!  Good teachers will have natural protection because students love the good teachers!

I was the victim of a tenured teacher in 11^th grade.  I disagreed politically with my English teacher and all year she marked me lower than the rest of the class.  I had proof.  But I couldn’t do anything about it because she had a union and tenure backing her up.  Had I tried to make a case out of it, I would’ve gone nowhere and spent a lot of money doing so.

Finally, what is so wrong with merit-based pay?  One person said studies have found that merit-based pay “doesn’t work as well as it was hoped”.  Really?  Several years ago, Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, developed a new labor deal (subject of this op-ed) that would have included merit-based incentives for teachers and removed tenure.  Under the plan, salaries for teachers performing well stood to rise substantially.  The maximum pay under the new system would have been $130,000!  But, because the union knew there were teachers in the system doomed to be fired under the plan, D.C. teachers rejected it and instead got much smaller raises.

The reality is that tenure and unions are holding America’s youth back.  The educational system is broken and needs to be reformed.  Unions need to be scaled back, tenure needs to be slowly reformed, phased out and replaced and merit-based pay needs to come to public schools.  Until then, students are at the mercy of unions and the threat of strikes.  Lost educational time from striking unions only makes things worse.  More money into teachers’ pockets means less money buying new technology or new computers for students.  I am confident that the Romney plan will reform education while cutting costs and that children will actually start learning more and performing better in school.  America needs to wake up and realize that.

College: Not as “affordable” as you were led to believe

Just as a “for your information” and in addition to my posting from yesterday, we did interview one black student who said he was going to be voting for Obama just because he is black.  I have updated yesterday’s posting appropriately with more information, so please check it out.

College affordability is a major issue that parents and students alike grapple with every year.  It is also a problem that both President Barack Obama and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley have said they planned to deal with.  Both have championed their “successes” on that front.  Reality check, gentlemen.  You two haven’t done anything for college affordability and as a result my family and thousands of other families like mine are hurting.

Barack Obama claims he has kept college affordable for students.  Yet according to College Board, college costs have risen 25 percent since Obama took office.  Obama also considers himself to be a champion of low student loan rates, a lie the main stream media is happy to press on the American people.  The reality is that the extension of the student loan rate was an act of Congress passed with strong bipartisan support.

Experts have also debated the ease of getting a federal student loan, another thing Obama champions on the campaign trail.  And what they say isn’t promising.

In a Diamondback article dated August 30, 2012, Jim Bach published another random act of journalism about how the federal loan program hurts students (To me, it seems as if Bach might be one of maybe three reporters at the Diamondback capable of such acts).  In the article, Cliff Rossi from the business school here at Maryland explained that easy federal loans create artificial demand for college, causing two problems.  Number one, it encourages schools to charge inflated tuition rates because of the “demand” and two, it creates a demand for jobs that far outpaces the rate of hiring.

And now we get to O’Malley, who claims he has kept tuition rates for Maryland schools very low, citing tuition “freezes” he enacted in his first term and only a 3 percent hike in the rate from last year to this year.  What he doesn’t explain is that while tuition may have been frozen during his first term, the University of Maryland raised its student fees significantly, something the local media did actually report on (surprisingly).  But since student fees aren’t technically tuition, O’Malley could claim tuition was frozen.

Second, O’Malley kept the tuition increase to just 3 percent this past summer by ramming yet another tax increase through the General Assembly in a special session that hit the middle class in this state hard.  The result?  Even though my tuition bill may have only gone up 3 percent, my family has now been saddled with an increase in their tax bill of several hundred dollars.  It would have been cheaper for my family to have paid the potential 10 percent increase in tuition instead of having it go the way it went!

Who Martin O’Malley helped with this tax increase: No one in this state.

Who it hurt:
      ·         In-state students paying not only more in tuition, but also more in higher taxes.

·         Maryland residents who send their children to out-of-state schools who had to deal with both tuition increases at those schools and higher taxes here at home.

Who gets off somewhere in the middle: Out-of-state students attending Maryland schools, who may have seen their tuition rate increase 5 percent, but who aren’t paying any new taxes to the state of Maryland in addition to that hike.

Instead of raising taxes, Martin O’Malley and the General Assembly should have spent the summer de-bloating the over-bloated higher education budget in this state.  It is a system where bureaucrats have run unchecked for far too long.  Chancellor Brit Kirwan shouldn’t be making $490,000 per year.  Nor should Wallace Loh, president of UMD, be making $450,000 per year.  The list goes on and on.

Taxes should not have been raised in Maryland this summer, the spending on obnoxious, public sector salaries should have been cut.

Jimmy Williams

Diamondback article: http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/national/article_2ec83abc-f26e-11e1-9cb9-001a4bcf6878.html

College Students Appear Engaged, Still Very Uninformed

Today I’m providing a special “bonus” edition of the blog because I wanted to share my experiences from journalism class today.  By the way, follow me on Twitter! I actually have two accounts.  @j1mmy_williams is the account I use for sports and other general postings and @right_wing_terp is the account that I use for political posts.  I try my best to keep sports and politics from mixing on that first account, but every so often you will see a political tweet in that account.

Today in my journalism class we shot man on the street interviews with random students pulled off the street.  Each student in the class had to find a person to interview.  We asked them if they were registered voters, who they would be supporting in the presidential election and why they made that choice.  We actually got a fairly equal response in our quick survey, about half of the 20 or so people we found supported Mitt Romney and about half supported Barack Obama, with maybe three or four undecided (And one member of the Green Party, poor soul is wasting her vote).

Two things stunned me about this exercise.  First, I was surprised that the split was actually about even.  I personally expected that being on the University of Maryland campus would mean a massive slew of Obama supporters in our “sample”.  Two, I couldn’t believe how uninformed a vast majority of the people who said they support Obama were!  It was scary how little they knew about the man they want to put back in office.

One student, who identified himself as a graduating criminology major, said he will vote for Barack Obama because “he’s going to keep the student interest rates low,” and “I’m trying to find a job, and it seems like the economy is getting better under Obama.”  First off, Barack Obama had nothing to do with keeping student loan rates low, that job fell to Congress over the summer.  Obama said he would like to see the rates kept low, but ultimately the rates were kept at their present levels by a measure passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress.  The rates were never seriously in jeopardy.

Second, I’m not sure what economy this gentleman was looking at.  Today it was announced that unemployment claims were 382,000 and the forecast called for only 375,000, which still would have been ridiculous.  We also learned that U.S. manufacturing has hit its lowest point in nearly three years!  Obama promised that with his stimulus, unemployment would be in the 5 percent range today.  It’s stuck at 8.1 percent with real unemployment at 15 percent.  If this student votes for Obama and Obama happens to win, I hope he enjoys staring at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom just as much as all the other recent jobless grads do.
 
Another student said he was voting for Obama because he is part of the “47 percent”.  Nice to see that almost overnight we’ve gone from “the 99 percent” to twisting Romney’s words around to say that he hates 47 percent of America.

And another student just totally disgusted me when he came and admitted to all of us there that he was voting for Obama because he's black and Obama is black. I cannot even begin to convey just how utterly disgusted I was by that statement. The only other thing he said was that he wanted to be a part of history.  The "history" was in 2008, buddy.  This is 2012 and Obama is huring America.

To be fair, there were some concerning responses from Romney supporters.  One said he was voting for Romney because his family is Conservative.  It really would have been nice to hear some specifics besides that.  Another indicated he was leaning towards the GOP ticket but couldn’t really back up why, saying he was waiting for more information from Romney first.  However, at least these students weren’t basing their choices off completely false and twisted information like the pro-Obama students were.  The notion that economy has improved is laughable, even at its best.  For sure this was an interesting exercise and while it proved that college kids do pay attention to elections, it also proved that there are still plenty of misinformed college kids out there.

There will be another posting going up tomorrow afternoon, so be sure to check back in then as well!

Jimmy Williams

September 18th, 2012: Table Games in Maryland and Question 7

Here in Maryland, we as voters are facing several big votes on November 6th that are sure to shape the direction of this state for years to come. Notable measures we will see on the ballot include a measure to fix the awful congressional district lines that Martin O'Malley and the Democrat-controlled Maryland General Assembly drew after the last census (more on that in another post next week), Question 6 on "Marriage Equality", the DREAM Act and Question 7, which would allow Maryland to add a 6th casino site along National Harbor in Prince George's County. Question 7 might sound really good on paper, it might sound like Gov. O'Malley actually cares about the students in this state. But in reality, Question 7 won't do anything for students in this state and the measure creates inherent math problems that the Democrats in the General Assembly seem to be completely ignorant of.

First, supporters of Question 7 claim that a new casino in Prince George's County would add "hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue" for the state. Here's the problem with that: Democrats assume that when a new casino opens on the National Harbor, that all of the sudden people who have never gambled before will just start gambling out of the blue. This is not the case! When Hollywood Casino in Perryville opened in September 2010, it brought in millions in revenue because it was the only casino open in the state. This Hollywood Casino location has been followed by the opening of a casino at Ocean Downs in Berlin, Maryland and, in June 2012, the opening of Maryland Live at Arundel Mills Mall. All the while, Democrats assumed gambling revenue would somehow infinitely expand. Summer 2012 provided a harsh reality check to that. Hollywood Casino in Perryville has seen its revenues slumping drastically, so much so that now the location wants to return as many as one-third of its slot machines to the state.

The true fact of the matter is that opening a new casino on the National Harbor won't add millions in new revenue. All it will do is take the revenue provided by people who currently gamble in Maryland and dilute it even further among the four casino locations. People do not just start gambling because a new casino opens. If a casino opens in Prince George's County, people who live there will now just gamble there instead of driving to Perryville or to Arundel Mills as they have been. If there is any additional revenue, it will not be significant.

And then today in The Diamondback here at University of Maryland, we saw what Rush Limbaugh would call "a random act of journalism" about Question 7, the link for which I will provide below. In the article, Senior Staff Writer Jim Bach outlines what the anti-Question 7 commercials have been saying all along, that Question 7 really won't fund Maryland schools.

Sean Johnson, part of political and legislative affairs for the Maryland State Education Association (MESA) said in the article that the $200 million slot machines have generated so far just offset monies in the general fund that are then used for other projects. The net effect, he said, is that schools don't see any increased funding.

State Comptroller Peter Franchot, a Democrat, also forcefully condemned gambling in Maryland, saying, "It's a sad exercise to watch Democrats in Maryland approve gambling, which everyone knows is a regressive tax."

Question 7 won't help Maryland schools, we won't see millions of dollars in extra revenue. And, by the way, Martin O'Malley already jacked up taxes on thousands of families in this state in May, so supporters of the measure lied about that, too. Question 7 might not increase taxes, but Democrats took care of the tax increase anyway. Now we can only hope enough voters realize Question 7 is worthless, that it only sounds good but in reality does no good for Maryland.

Diamondback article: http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_712f5694-014e-11e2-b881-001a4bcf6878.html