December, 2019, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: Kamala Does Not Get Democracy, Another American Dies Because of "Sanctuaries" and San Francisco Is Still A Cesspool,

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) We have often talked about how local city politicians have turned the once beautiful city of San Francisco into a cesspool. It is a city no where it is not illegal to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in broad daylight on city streets. It is a city where the homeless population has grown to almost 30,000 with no solution in sight on how to fix any of these problems.

Journalist John Stossell recently did a film documentary on the deteriorating city conditions. His report included the following random yet sad observations and quotes from those in the know about the downfall of a great American city:

• Stossell came away from his investigation with the impression that San Francisco is now the slum by the bay.
• The city found it necessary to create a permanent maintenance staff, “Poop Patrol,” that goes around the city on a daily basis to scoop up human defecation from the city’s streets.
• Stossell quotes an urban planner in his reporting: “One urban planner told me, “I just returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It’s worse than slums of India, Haiti, Africa!””
• Stossell’s on site reporting from the city caused him to compare the living conditions in the streets to slums he has seen firsthand in Haiti and India.
• Quoting one local resident: “There’s shit everywhere. It’s just a mess out here.”
• A lot of the thousands of homeless on the streets are victims of mental illness but San Francisco authorities mostly leave the mentally ill on the streets to fend for themselves.
• In 2015, there were 60,491 formal complaints to the police about vagrancy, aggressive panhandling, and going to the bathroom in public and yet only 125 people out of the over 60,000 complaints were ever arrested.
• On resident told Stossell: “It’s nasty seeing people shoot up -- right in front of you. Police don’t do anything about it! They’ll get somebody for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles.”
• Crime has also risen significantly with 85 cars broken into on a daily basis throughout the city.
• Although the homeless problem is reaching crisis proportions in the city, for decades politicians have tried, and failed, to fix the problem: current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein was once mayor of the city and she once proudly announced that she was putting the homeless in hotels: “A thousand units, right here in the Tenderloin!” It did not resolve the problem.
• Current California governor Gavin Newsom was mayor of the city when he boasted that “We have already moved 6,860 human beings.” It did not resolve the problem.
• In 2018, former city mayor Mayor Mark Farrell proclaimed, “We need to fund programs like Homeward Bound.” It did not resolve the problem.
• Stossel points out that strict and sometimes idiotic zoning laws and regulations make it impossible for a developer to build low income and moderate income housing which contributes to the homeless crisis.
• As an example: “For years, developer John Dennis has been trying to convert an old meatpacking plant into an apartment building -- but it has taken him four years just to get permission to build. “And all that time, we’re paying property taxes and paying for maintenance. I will do no more projects in San Francisco.””

Just another example of politicians that make bold promises that always end up being unable to resolve any issue of any kind. Decades and billions of dollars are wasted and in the case of San Francisco, the situation just got worse. Insanity.

Stossell’s entire video reporting can be viewed at:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-stossel-san-francisco-has-become-the-slum-by-the-bay-bad-laws-cause-citys-homeless-crisis

2) We have often discussed the reality that politicians in Washington are so out of touch with reality and life outside of their lavish and exclusive lifestyles inside the Beltway. For example, we once reported that, “Congresswoman, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell who issued the following insane observation: Illegal immigration is “really not affecting American people.””

That of course is an inane, so out of touch observation and perception of reality. Every year thousands of American citizens are killed, raped, or robbed by illegal immigrant criminals. I am pretty sure that the victims and families of victims would disagree quite strongly with her idiocy. 

And even those not directly affected by violent criminal acts by illegal immigrants, end up paying over $100 billion a year to handle our illegal immigration crisis, from detention centers, to law enforcement, to housing, to food stamps, to crime, to funding pregnancies of illegal immigrants. Recent Department of Justice statistics showed that 64% of Federal criminal arrests are of non-citizens, most of which are likely illegal immigrants. I am sure that the rapes, murders, robberies and other crimes these 64% committed did affect a lot of American people.

To that list of American citizen victims that the Congresswoman claims do not exist, we add another victim in a sad piece of irony:

• Sean Buchanan had been a long time advocate for illegal immigrants.
• He had often cited Trump’s position on illegal immigration as racist and compared Trump to Hitler.
• Sadly, Mr. Buchanan’s life came to an end when he was driving his motorcycle on a Colorado highway and illegal immigrant Miguel Ramirez Valiente drove into Mr. Buchanan’s lane and killed the father of five.
• Valiente had avoided deportation for being here illegally because he was hiding in a so-called “sanctuary church.”
• Valiente was arrested and charged with reckless driving and driving with a revoked license.
• ABC News Channel 7 Denver interviewed a close acquaintance of Valiente who claimed that he was “an alcoholic and an abuser.” 
• He had previously been arrested for reckless endangerment in 2011 and domestic violence in 2016. 

Again, a sad, tragic story for his family. But just another example to show how Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell is clueless when it comes to understanding what is really going on in the country. And if you cannot understand the reality of a problem you have no chance of resolving that problem. And Congress has shown many times how inept it is when it comes to creating a viable and SAFE immigration plan for the country.

3) Kamala Harris is a U.S. Senator from California. Up until the past week or so she was also a Democratic Candidate for President. She is now a failed Democratic candidate for President since she has shut down her effort due to lack of funds and more importantly, a lack of a cohesive plan for the country that resonated with any type of American. 

Now, Kamala Harris is also a black woman. Thus, as expected, many liberals are attributing her failed campaign to the standard liberal boogeymen, racism and sexism and not the fact that she failed miserably to connect with the country.

And maybe one reason she did not connect is that even though she is a Senator, she has a very ignorant grasp of what it means to live in a free country. At a recent political gathering she discussed the high cost of healthcare in this country, a real issue that affects millions of Americans. That discussion is a good thing.

Unfortunately, her plan to attack the high costs makes her look more like a Soviet dictator than someone in Congress who has promised to defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights along with our freedom. She promised the crowd that if drug companies did not reduce the cost of drugs she would take drastic, totalitarian action: “I will snatch their patent. So that we will take over. And yes we can do that. Yes, Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. It’s a question of if you have the will to do it. I have the will to do it.” “We” in this case is the government and the politicians that operate it.

Uh, no Kamala, you can't do that. And if you tried you would be destroying the very fabric of this country, leading the government to forcibly take anything you own, anything you have developed, anything that you invested in at the whim of some politician who does not understand democracy. Charge too much for drugs, we will confiscate your proprietary patents that you probably invested millions of dollars to create. Charge too much for food, will confiscate your farm and operate it as a government bureaucracy. Charge too much for gasoline, we will confiscate your refineries.

You get the idea, the government, which is really nothing more than a set of usually lame and ignorant politicians, cannot go around stealing private property in whatever form it is in. For a potential Presidential candidate to think that it is okay is very, very scary. Also, everytime that has been done, government confiscation, form the old Soviet Union to current Venezuela, the results have been a catastrophic decline in the quality of life for citizens since as we all know, government stinks at doing anything efficient and effective.

So today we learned that: A Senator and Presidential candidate has no idea what living in a democracy and a free country entails, a Congresswoman has no clue how illegal immigration often violently affects Americans, and San Francisco liberal politicians STILL have no idea how to operate a major city, turning it a public cesspool and illegal drug shooting gallery. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2018: Why I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.”This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) The Joe For America website recently did a review of all of the research and scientists that has come out that show that global warming never really existed or stopped long ago:

• According to the author of the article, Scott Osborn on April 7, 2018, “Over the last few years, global warming has taken a strong hit as proof of serious data manipulation has surfaced, and now scientists are coming out of the closet everywhere showing true data that man-made climate change never even existed. Hundreds of scientists involved in a plethora of recent scientific papers are admitting that the scare about global warming is based on hysteria and false science.”
• In 2018 alone, 46 peer reviewed research reports have been published to debunk the global warming theory.
• During 2017, 150 graphs taken from 122 research papers were also published in peer reviewed publications which showed that current Earth temperatures are not unusual relative to history, i.e. they do not “fall outside the range of natural variability.”
• The Global Warming Policy Forum explains that the contemporary warming of the 20th century “does not stand out in the 2500-year perspective” and is “of the same magnitude as the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Climate Anomaly.”
• Global warming is not an issue according to a number of research reports including McGowan et al., 2018, Northern Alaska (Hanna et al., 2018), the Tibetan Plateau (Li et al., 2018), South Korea (Song et al., 2018), Antarctica (Mikis, 2018), to cite just a few among dozens of others.
• Global warming advocates often point to Greenland as being the leading indicator of worldwide global warming but a study by Mikkelsen et al., 2018 shows that Greenland temperatures going back over 150 years are lower now than they were in the 1930s.
• In fact, another study, Westergaard-Nielsen et al., 2018, examined the most recent and detailed trends based on MODIS (2001–2015) and concluded that if there is any general trend for Greenland it is “mostly cooling”.
• The article republishes some graphs of historical temperatures over many decades and the result is always the same: no big deal going on relative to global warming:

 

• A study by Cerrone and Fusco, 2018 found a large increase in the south pole sea ice and that south pole cooling has been going on since the 1990s.

More reasons why it is perfectly sane to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

2) Libertarian journalist, John Stossel, writing for the Constitutional News Network website on march 20, 2018, pointed out the joke that the Paris Climate Agreement was:

• As most know, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, that was never legally binding since Obama was too lazy to get Senate approval of the agreement as required by the Constitution, and correctly calling the agreement a “massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.”
• Of course, people like Al Gore, Barack Obama, and other global warming advocates went crazy to see the country pull out of their supposedly Earth saving agreement.
• But we know now, even admitted by people like Al Gore, that the agreement would not have done if anything to curtail global warming, assuming that it even exists.
• Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass actually read the Paris accord and concluded it was so bad that it landed “somewhere between a farce and a fraud.” 
• He went to state that the to get the accord, “They stapled it together and held it up and said, ‘This is amazing!'”
• And while Obama and John Kerry along with their cohorts in the mainstream press claimed that India and China, major greenhouse gas producers were also sacrificing, that was a big lie: “They [China and India] either pledged to do exactly what they were already going to do anyway, or pledged even less. China, for instance said, ‘we pledge to reach peak emission by about 2030.’ Well, the United States government had already done a study to guess when Chinese emissions would peak, and their guess was about 2030.”
• Even more comical was Pakistan which promised that after it reached an undefined peak in the undefined future, it would then begin to reduce emissions and undefined amount.
• According to Case, the U.S. as represented by Obama, was the only country that was serious about reducing this country’s greenhouse gas emissions (by 26%), killing off U.S. economy while the rest of the world committed to nothing and intended to do nothing.

Solving a problem that does not exist, way to go Barack.

3) Up until about 20 years ago the Earth’s temperature had been rising slowly. However, as we have shown and a multitude of scientists have shown, in the past two decades there has been absolutely minimal if any, global warming. This flattening out of the trend showed that all of the gloom and doom forecasts of global warming advocates were incredibly wrong and thus held no value in supporting what was becoming a myth, global warming.

But indeed, there was warming up until twenty years ago or so. While global warming alarmists said this was a horrible, horrible trend, there are some other scientists who observed that that long ago global warming might have actually been a good thing:

• According to a recent article on the Constitution website, Robert Murphy, an economist with the Institute For Energy Research, says that higher temperatures have resulted in better harvests and fewer elderly deaths in the winter.
• Murphy claims that one of the major climate forecast models, the FUND model, and the model Obama used to establish a “social cost of carbon” showed that global warming actually had a net positive benefit, “showed global warming was a net positive through about 3 degrees Celsius of warming — a full degree higher than what the U.N. considers “dangerous.”
• Environmental economist Richard Tol’s work concluded that global warming, at least short term, would provide a net benefit to society and humanity: “Tol’s paper examined projections from 27 models and found net benefits from “initial warming,” then net costs to society after that. Tol said net costs appear around 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — that could be 40 to 50 years away.”
• Tol also concluded that, “Plants grow faster and tolerate drought better if there is more carbon dioxide in the air.” 
• Satellite data shows that the world has greened up over the past few decades which many researchers attribute to extra carbon dioxide being in the air: “Scientists on the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit, publicly argue that higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations are more of a benefit than a burden. One of their members, scientist Craig Idso, has catalogued a slew of studies pointing to the benefits of more atmospheric CO2.”

So in essence, we are living in the best possible scenario from a climate perspective. The warming that did exist but which stopped growing about twenty years ago boosting farm and foliage growth. But it not get so high that it has caused catastrophic climate conditions on the Earth which means that we do not need any kind of international agreement on climate change control and that Trump was right to pull us out of it for the many reasons listed above. Hopefully no, based on all of the science and the realities we now know, people like Al Gore will please just ...go….away.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

What Economic Experts Suggest For Digging Us Out Of Our Economic Hole

On Wednesday of this week we put forth a series of short term actions and steps that are needed to start turning turning around the very bad economic conditions that are plaguing our economy. Yesterday, we went through a series of long term steps that also need to be taken to make economic growth and prosperity a long term certainty in our economy. All of these steps are common sense, logical, simple approaches that somehow escape the grasp and understanding of our current set of politicians.

But we do not have a monopoly on how to fix what ails the country. Consider the following expert opinions from people more experienced than me in the world of economy, finance, and the Federal government. These expert opinions were listed out in the November, 2011 issue of Reason magazine and are summarized below. I have not given the full reasoning behind their opinions but hopefully I have provided enough detail to justify and explain their rationale.

As you go through these experts' opinions, take note how many of them line up with the common sense, simple, and logical ideas we presented versus the tired, ineffective, and useless ideas the Obama administration and the rest of the political class have implemented to no avail:

• John Stossel, Fox Business Network - Close the Federal Departments of Labor, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, and HUD to cut government spending. Terminate 75% of all Federal regulations.
• Robert Higgins, author and senior fellow at the Independent Institute - Repeal Obama Care since it is so large, unwieldy and confusing it is introducing confusion and uncertainty (his word, not mine) into the minds of business owners, increasing the risk of them hiring permanent workers. As a result, they cut back on hiring, especially permanent workers who made add a substantial cost increase to their operations under Obama Care.
• Peter Schiff, author and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital - substantially reduce government rules that oversee and regulate wages, benefits, and all other issues related to employment. In other words, make it easier, less bureaucratic, less dangerous, and less risky for businesses to hire employees to fulfill their business needs.
• Ira Stoll, author and the editor and founder of http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/ - Restructure unemployment insurance so it creates an incentive for recipients to get a job rather than an incentive for them to remain unemployed. This suggestion is consistent with one of the tenets of the United States of Purple as laid out in the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/united-states-of-purple-fixng-our.html

• Jeffrey Miron, Director of  undergraduate studies and professor of economics at Harvard University - The political class should focus on getting rid of economic policies that impede economic efficiency such as runaway debt and entitlements, over regulation, an ineffective tax code, and impediments to free trade, i.e. get out of the way and let the free market economy heal itself.
• Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University - cut EMPLOYERS share of the payroll tax.
• John Berlau, director of the Center For Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute - repeal financial regulations include parts of the Sarbannes-Oxley Act, parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, which Mr. Berlau feels "has created hundreds of pending rules causing uncertainty (his word, not mine) and a halt in hiring from banks and credit unions to retailers," and pass the Small Business Lending Enhancement Act which would raise the cap on business lending done by credit unions, freeing up more capital for small business growth opportunities. 
• Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute - shrink the size of our bloated government and replace our current tax system with simple and fair flat tax which would eliminate tax loopholes and provide incentives to work, save, and invest while terminating the need to play games with wealth and resources which reduce the efficiency of a free market.
• Allan Meltzer, professor of economics at the Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business - He has a four prong approach to fixing the economy which includes reducing the amount of uncertainty in the market by freezing the creation of all new Federal regulations for five years (with an exception for national defense exceptions), reduce government spending to get debt under control, reduce the corporate tax rate and pay for the reduction by simplifying the tax code and reducing loopholes, and work hard to keep inflation under control.
• Donald Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University - simply the entire tax system by replacing the whole system with a consumption tax and and in the absence of this overhaul, amend the Constitution so that all types of incomes taxes are capped at 20%.
• Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute - Build the Keystone pipeline to 1) generate tens of thousands of long term and short term jobs and 2) increase the amount of oil we import from friendly nations while reducing the amount of oil we import from unfriendly nations.
• Deirdre McCloskey, professor of economics at the University of Illinois in Chicago - Eliminate the minimum wage regulation for anyone under the age of 25 years old as a short term solution to the jobs problem and eliminate government intervention in the employee/employer relationship, e.g. eventually eliminate the minimum wage for everyone and let the market set the "price" for labor.
• Mitchell Munger, director of the philosophy, politics, and economics program at Duke University - Dump Obama Care since "the fiasco of the health care reform in 2008 made this problem (job creation) worse, not better. The new law created a complex, expensive system with no cost controls. And since insurance cannot cost less than the care it provides, this implicit but very real tax on job creation is hamstringing the recovery."
• John Berlau, director of the Center For Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute - Repeal many of the regulations put forth by Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank to reduce the business uncertainty from the hundreds of defined and still to be defined regulations from both laws which are restricting hiring and business expansion. Pass the Small Business Lending Enhancement Act to lift the arbitrary cap on lending imposed on credit unions for small business loans.
• Alex Tabarrok, professor of economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University - Implement Quantitative Easing 3 (QE3).
• Bruce Bartlett, former Presidential advisor and U.S. Treasury official - Stimulate consumer and market demand by increasing government spending.

With the exception of the last two experts, all of the other experts have the same types of opinions and recommendations that we have been already talking about. We have to reduce the amount of uncertainty that exists in the marketplace, uncertainty that has been greatly increased by ill fated and stupid actions of the political class.

Removing uncertainty will provide all businesses, both large and small, with a clearer, more stable and less risky view of the future which will go a long way to getting business expansion and consumer demand underway. Reducing regulations, reducing government spending, simplifying the tax code, cleaning up government spending waste, keeping taxes low, and getting government and the politicians that operate it out of the way is the only way to get the economy rolling again.

Regarding the last two opinions, we have already tried these two approaches and the have failed miserably. With regards to Mr. Bartlett's suggestion, the Obama administration's budget this year is almost $4,000,000,000,000. It has been close to that for three years. Given the atrocious amount it spends already, with a very large percentage of it being pure waste, I doubt if it spent anymore we would solve our economic problems.

The original $813,000,000,000 government spending stimulus did no good, spending more is unlikely to do anything positive either. With the government already spending almost $4,000,000,000,000 and the nation's GDP about $15,000,000,000,000, there is not enough money laying around that Washington could spend that would make any real difference.

With regards to the suggestion of implementing QE3, since QE1 and QE2 did nothing long term for the economy, except insert over $2,000,000,000,000 of fake money into the financial system, fake money that will eventually cause a pretty good shot of inflation, why would we do QE3? Remember the words of Einstein: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." QE3 would be the same insanity of the failed QE1 and QE2 efforts.

Also, consider the conversation between the two experts in the following video as they discuss the folly of quantitative easing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k

They do not see quantitative easing being the answer either.

The politicians and the Obama administration have had their chance to fix what ails the economy. Their tired ideas have resulted in persistently high unemployment, wasteful government spending, skyrocketing national debt, sovereign debt credit downgrade, and a work force that is becoming very discouraged. Their failed concepts need to be put to permanent rest.

We need to clear the decks and get rid of excessive government regulation, excessive government interference, escessive and complex taxation, excessive government bureaucracy, and let the market and the economy start healing itself. Recent attempts to do that by the political class has been nothing more than voodoo economic theory by voodoo doctors in Washington.





We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of our times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment