09/24/11

Crypto Communist Institute for Policy Studies Claims Credit for Successful Tax Shame Campaign

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

I have long maintained that the Washington DC based Institute for Policy Studies is one of the most influential leftist organizations in America.

The video below, I believe, proves that claim.

In the video, IPS takes credit for a successful campaign to highlight the sweetheart tax deals enjoyed by many of the US’s largest corporations.

IPS certainly has a point, but unfortunately is not advocating lower taxes for everyone, coupled with reduced government spending. IPS wants more government spending, coupled with higher taxes on corporations and the rich – a sure recipe for even greater economic slowdown and joblessness.

One commentator in this video describes IPS as non-partisan, an image the organization likes to project.

IPS is in fact the ideas factory for the Obama Administration.

IPS is way to the left and enjoys close ties to Democratic Socialists of America, Communist Party USA, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the labor movement, the “peace movement” and the Democratic Party.

IPS also has a long history with several Marxist regimes around the world, from Cuba and Nicaragua, to the “former” Soviet Union.

So friendly was IPS to Soviet intelligence officers in the 1980s, that Brian Crozier, director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict, described the organization as the “perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB.”

IPS has the ear of almost every major US media outlet, hundreds of “people’s organizations,” dozens of key US Congressmen and Senators and almost certainly President Obama himself – once a founding trustee of IPS “partner” organization Demos.

Watch this video and tell me IPS doesn’t have substantial influence.

09/24/11

A Life Worthy of Notice

By: Garry L. Hamilton

Every so often in passing we hear of someone’s having lost a friend and we send our condolences.

Occasionally, however, while the event — in and of itself — may not be particularly “newsworthy” to the world, the man in the event is quietly larger than life.

I serve as a moderator on The High Road (a Second Amendment oriented forum), and we have a surprising breadth and depth among our staff. We have young guys and old guys, shooters, hunters, pilots, policemen, soldiers, engineers, computer geeks, a scientist, and… missionaries.

One of our staff, Brian, is currently in Cambodia with his wife on mission there. He received word yesterday that an old friend of his, a fellow missionary and mission pilot named Paul Westlund, had died in a crash in Indonesia. He shared a video Paul made of some of the flying they do over there. There’s another related video from that same locale, a montage of missionary bush plane landings in Indonesia. (For you geeks, that’s a Pilatus Porter.) Twenty five years of doing that. I am simply awed.

I am of the opinion that when this guy gets where he’s going he won’t have to “earn his wings.” Issued on arrival, I should imagine.

The intro to Paul’s video has this caption: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. To which I can only say, amen. The song that accompanies that video (When It’s All Been Said and Done) is touching. I got all wet-eyed about it.

For those of you who pray, I offer a remembrance for Paul, a man of God, a man who lived his life doing what he loved, and doing it for others. There really is no higher calling. I knew him not, yet I am profoundly glad he lived.