What's a löggæslumyndavélar?

Travel Tip: While driving your car in Manitsoq, Vestgronland, Greenland, here is an important safety advisory. When you see a road sign that reads "löggæslumyndavélar," it's the Icelandic word for "police cameras" as you speed by roadside radar that quickly snaps your photo.   

Below are examples of what travel rules are in effect in Greenland which is not a member nation in the European Union, EU. That means they do not follow the prevailing EU attitude of gratuitous acquisance to multicultural pressures--do not bend to restrict racial profiling or other politically incorrect practices that would further abandon their own country's security--"However, on regular flights from Denmark or Iceland entry customs immigration formalities are nearly non-existent unless you look particularly different." 

When you read this, see how these visitor customs and immigration regulations are restrictive, direct and without apologies for protecting their country's sovereignty or their rule of laws--it's not like the liberal U.S. visitor requirements which are underserved by United States laws due to no law enforcement by agencies under Obama which allow open borders with no active visa checks or valid passport controls to regulate non-citizens' entry, financial status or activities upon entry to the United States. 

1. Travel Alerts and Security Advice: "With a[our] travel advisery, tourists can be informed about security risks during traveling or vacation in a foreign country. Be informed about the risks of kidnapping, armed robbery, bombings, natural disasters or war. Know which areas are unsafe in Greenland. Be vigilant, or avoid certain areas when on vacation in Greenland." 
2. Visas: "The tourist entry requirements for Greenland are similar to the entry requirements for Denmark, but be aware that Greenland is not in the EU or a party to the pan-European Schengen visa agreement. To enter Greenland, citizens of Nordic countries need only a valid identification card. Three-month visa-free stays are available to citizens of EU nations, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Israel and several central-European and Latin American countries. Most ex-Soviet and African nationals require a Danish visa. South Africans should apply at the Royal Danish Embassy (12-430 9340, 342 7620; www.denmark.co.za; Parioli Office Park, Block B2, Ground Fl, 1166 Park St, Hatfield 0028, Pretoria, South Africa) or the Danish consulate in Cape Town."
3. "It is a requirement that all tourists applying for Danish visas must show bank-account details proving 'sufficient funds', a confirmed itinerary with accommodation bookings (or detailed explanations if you plan to camp) and proof of medical insurance coverage of at least €30, 000 [$36,600]. Before the visa is issued you'll also be expected to show a return ticket, though buying one isn't advised until the visa is approved. Note that you're supposed to apply in your country of residence. The Dkr260-equivalent application fee won't be refunded in case of visa refusal. Full regulations are listed on www.udlst.dk but upon consultation may prove to be somewhat flexible according to specific circumstances. The addresses of Danish embassies are listed on www.um.dk."
4. "Technically, even those tourists who aren't required to have a visa must show that they have 'sufficient funds' for their intended length of stay. However, customs and immigration formalities are normally rudimentary or nonexistent if you're entering Greenland on a standard flight from Denmark or Iceland, unless you look particularly different."  

Cap & Trade Tax is Coming Up! - Higher Fuel Costs!

I worry more about the proliferation of global graphitti than global warming in an ice field.

After watching some of the Global Warming "documercials" with dramatic, alarming pictures of enormous ice walls cracking and caving into the ocean; it's obvious they're selling indelible impressions to casual viewers on an impending catastrophic flood of sea levels leading to total world obliteration. Far from the truth, though, these documercials fail to differentiate that ice calving is the result of expansion not contraction which are chunks of ice that break off glaciers and fall into water creating floating icebergs. The melting and growth of sea ice, in contrast to land ice, does not affect sea level.

Factoid: Academy Award and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore's 2006 movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" documents this dishonest documercial format of half truths and lies about global warming.

In one scene filmed, a mother polar bear and cub are described as drowning on a broken-off melted Alaskan ice cap floating helplessly out to sea. It was later exposed as a bogus scenario. I realize a polar bear can drown... if, say, it's exhausted and swimming over 50 miles. But basically, these bears can swim 15 miles easily, at a speed of 6 miles an hour, and they use the edge of an ice floe as a platform from which to hunt. An on site photographer reported that those bears afterwards dived off to swim back to shore--talk about an inconvenient truth!

It is uncertain to NASA observations, however, whether the world's two major ice sheets--Greenland and Antarctica--have been growing or diminishing. Together, Greenland and Antarctica contain about 75% of the world's fresh water. 

"Global warming could therefore be expected initially to increase both melting and snowfall. Depending on which increase dominates, the early result could be either an overall decay or an overall growth of the ice sheets. This is of particular importance because of the huge size of these ice sheets, with their great potential for changing sea level." [It leaves any computer software models literally out in the cold because it could be either scenario A or B depending on mother nature, not anything due to man's logic to decide the actual global change to expect--only time will tell.] 

An interesting corollary is that the Greenland ice sheet is warmer than the Antarctic ice sheet and as a result, global warming could produce serious melting on Greenland while having less effect in the Antarctic. In the Antarctic, temperatures are far enough below freezing that even with some global warming, temperatures could remain sufficiently cold to prevent extensive surface melting. It then leads with an assumption of a null outcome, negative results to support any significant overall global net change.

All this technical talk is exactly what the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency. as a federal bureaucratic organization does not want the voters to understand. As an administrative and enforcement arm of a very liberal, progressive government, it promotes the Washington political agenda. They must raises more taxes on high earner taxpayers including hiding from the stupid middle class an income tax increase too, and so want to enforce a "Cap and Trade" policy to tax "greenhouse emissions", the hydrocarbons emitted from coal-fired power plants and automobiles by restricting oil production and by forcing the public to curb personal utility power usage. Of course, Al Gore and his political cronies have invested heavily in promoting this Cap and Trade program too.

V.P. Al Gore invested tens of millions of dollars in green energy projects not because they work, but the profit potential of 'credits' generated by EPA regulatory controls he can command. So, Al Gore and other wealthy investors establish the marketplace for a Cap & Trade Exchanges to buy and sell  "energy credits." You will be limited to how much electricity you use or save through Federal government mandated allocations, you are literally fined with excess usage levies; but, if you use less, you can sell your unused credits in the Cap & Trade Exchange--Hello, Al Gore? By the way, they say that this practice provides an alternative source to create an additional supply, say what?

Give Charitable Donation Money? -- Bah, Hum-Bug!

The devastating, widespread 2010 Haitian earthquake had recorded a massive catastrophic 7.0 M_w magnitude seismic shock.

The earthquake epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and is ranked 149th of 182 countries on the U.N. Human Development Index.

It was almost 25 years after the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier (1971-1986) who like his father "Papa Doc" Duvalier (1957-1961) ruled with an iron fist where thousands of Haitians were tortured or murdered. After "Baby Doc" had been deposed himself by a military coup in 1986 that finally collapsed in on itself in 1989. Just more corruption continuing on under Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1990-1996 & 2001-2003). The Haitian government then further squandered considerable domestic and foreign goodwill with one of "Baby Doc" Duvalier's former Haitian Army generals. General Hérard Abraham as the Affairs Minister under the de facto regime of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue (2003-2010) continued on with more government corruption which enabled the country to debilitate even further.

After January 12, 2010, from the U.S. alone the earthquake donors started paying forward, to date over $12 Billion of donations, to help the relief efforts for the Haitian peoples as it certainly has put a lot of blood out into the waters attracting the shark-like human predators.

On January 16, 2011, "Baby Doc" Duvalier unexpectedly returned from exile to Haiti after two decades in self-imposed exile in France. The following day, he was arrested by Haitian police, facing possible charges for embezzlement. He was also charged with human rights crimes as former Haitian President within days of his return, but he successfully argued in court that the statute of limitations had expired on charges that included torture, rape and extrajudicial killings. In February 2014, upon reversal by the courts that the statute of limitations was still in effect, another legal trial was to begin. But in October 2014, "Baby Doc" Duvalier, 63, then died of an unpredicted apparent heart attack. 

By January 24, 2010 at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake. Death toll estimates range from 100,000 to about 160,000 to Haitian government figures from 220,000 to 316,000 that have been widely characterized as deliberately inflated by the Haitian government. Of course, the Haitian government wants higher figures to boost its cut from the $Billions coming in for their relief efforts.

On March 18, 2011, Jean-Bertrand Aristide then returned from exile. The White House, however, was less than thrilled by Aristide's return, warning then that it would prove destabilizing. In turn, a confusion of charities began proliferating as they beckoned many donors to send millions into their bank accounts for more assistance funds.

In May, 2011, Haitian President Michel Martelly took office. Youri Latortue is one of Haiti’s most powerful politicians and as an outspoken Senator, he is an ally of the Haitian President. Youri Latortue is also a drug-trafficker, gang godfather, and death-squad leader, according to the testimony and reports of many colleagues, crime witnesses and government officials, both Haitian and international.

By 2014, the fraud and larceny has only grown bigger. All of the collected relief funds have been diverted to many bogus charities and looted while depriving the Haitian people of any substantive disaster relief. 

The economy of rice in Haiti says everything about the condition the country is in. The US government subsidizes and "donates" ton after ton of rice in Haiti and in so doing has through the last several decades completely undercut Haitian rice farmers and left them destitute and migrating into cities where they live in hovels that were destroyed by the quake. 

Here is perhaps some bitter irony here that the subsidies were promoted in large part by President Clinton to help his home state of Arkansas, the largest rice producing state in the US, thereby crippling a sector of the economy in Haiti where Clinton has worked so tirelessly to help with the recovery-- any ulterior motives here?

Not that the people of Haiti didn't benefit from all this money and assistance. But, really, over the last two years, the effort to assist post-earthquake Haiti has mostly benefited -- or at least subsidized -- the aid and relief institutions and private corporations that nominated themselves to help Haiti in its 2010-based time of need.

"In the end," says Robert Fatton Jr., professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia and a son of and authority on contemporary Haiti, "if you read the reports -- the UN Report and so on -- you’ll see that actual Haitians got less than 1 percent of all the American money pledged."

Conclusion: Bottom line, the country of Haiti sucks for its people. It's location, location, location; so it is terminally earthquake ridden real estate and always subject to total destruction by hurricanes too. Its government is totally ineptly run from the top on down by officials rife with corruption and apathy. It is poor beyond a third world banana republic's standards without decent housing, clothing, running water, toilets, electricity, heat, education and medical care after many natural disasters. 

The Salvation Army - One of the Highest Rated CharitiesI feel that so many good-hearted, generous American people, the electorate, did not know all of this as the Haiti disaster took over the TV news cycle and social media to generate a frenzy to send donations. I believe all of this effort was wasted and a travesty, a sham was perpetrated by our government officials, various leaders and celebrities performing to raise acute awareness while stirring up emotions to send money to be thrown away into a pit full of vipers within a den of thieves. It was akin to those bogus, phony money scams out of Liberia, et. al.--but it's just done on a much bigger global Billion $ scale.

No one now ever talks about where are the accounting books or provable net results from any of the dollar amounts given to these charities went--and that includes the fly-by-nights and legitimate ones too.

Isn't it about time to stop wastefully depositing monies ino the pockets of the good-for-nothing ne'er-do-wells? -- Be an active consumer/donor by giving to reputable organizations to give more for your buck. Well known Wealth investor Phil DeMuth, a Forbes contributor, offers some suggestions:

(1) At the most elementary level, avoid all celebrity or athlete charities. Almost without exception, these are dodges set up to avoid paying taxes and employ deadbeat relatives while posturing to make themselves look noble. E.g., Kim Kardashian’s generous donation of 5% of the proceeds of her “Charity Auctions” to the likes of the “Life Change Community Church” owned by her mom, or Lady Gaga’s charity that took in $2.6MM in donations and then spent the money on lawyers, consultants and publicity (including $50,000 on ‘social media’) but only gave away $5,000 in grants. 

(2) Does your old school really have any good use for the money? Ben Stein has pointed out that Yale is essentially a $21 billion hedge fund with a small college attached as a loss leader.  Whenever people donate down this type of big, traditional sinkhole for philanthropic dollars, it always raises the question of whether, with a little more thought, they might have made a shrewder investment elsewhere.

(3) Never give to anyone asking for money. The last thing you want is for half your donation to be siphoned off by some professional solicitor. Don’t put money in the box next to the cash register, even if it has a heartrending picture on it (unless it’s a tip jar — keep reading).  Be very afraid of any charity that happens to cross your path: all that means is that they have a big marketing budget.

(4) To put it more positively: everywhere and always where money is concerned, trust your money to the people you find, not to the people who find you. Give to the cause you prayerfully decide to back — not to the one in your face doing the big ask. If you want to throw them a bone, offer to look up their outfit on Charity Navigator when you review your annual giving. How much does your proposed charity spend on administration and fundraising? What does the CEO earn?  Put as much effort into selecting your charity as you would in, say, selecting a new mobile phone.

5) Do not confuse the worthiness of the charity with the worthiness of the cause.  Many of us would like to see peace on earth.  That does not remotely suggest that a charity with peace on earth as its goal would have a clue how to use any money you gave them.  I suspect that many big medical charities are overfunded beyond any intelligent ideas on to spend their next dollar.

6) The more generic the mission, the less your impact. Don’t toss nickels into the Grand Canyon. Give Well tracks how cost-effective a charity’s spending is. The more you concentrate all your giving on a single well-targeted charity (and that charity over a period of years), the more likely you are to actually accomplish something.

7) If it includes a gala night (and as Groucho said, a gala night is enough for any man) or tickets to some swell event, it’s not charity, it’s consumption. Similarly, while you may be blackmailed into giving to ankle biting friends when they hit you up for their walkathon to whatever, that’s office politics, not charity.

8) A dollar spent abroad goes much further than a dollar spent in the USA.

9) Congress has just extended the option to donate your mandatory IRA distribution to a charity--that is a rookie move! You will almost always do better giving appreciated stock from your taxable account to charity (getting rid of your embedded capital gains tax), and then using the deduction to convert a like amount from your traditional IRA to a Roth (lowering your future taxable required minimum distribution).

10) A dollar given directly to a person who needs it will be spent far more efficiently than a dollar put through the sieve of a benevolent bureaucracy in the hope that it trickles down somewhere. While you won’t get a tax deduction, you can give away half as much money and do far more good. As Milton Friedman says, the most efficient operation is where you have people spending their own money on their own behalf. The least efficient operation is where you have one group of people spending other people’s money on behalf of a yet a third group of people (which is how governments and charities operate).

For an instant proof that will restore your faith in humanity, look at the effect of giving $100 tips to fast food workers. Watch  4 min. video here: TIP Paid Forward (get out your handkerchief and watch to the end). Overtipping entry-level workers has the salutary effect of rewarding those who are working hard to get ahead in life, as opposed to going on welfare or worse. The marginal George Washington means far more to them than the extra Ben Franklin stuffed in your wallet means to you.  

Your donations could help the homeless in Washington DC.



t

OMG! You screaming at the T.V. Screen? ...Again!!

What's up with those "Ivy League" liberal progressive, elitist law students? They are all so traumatised over the Ferguson and New York police shootings that they are now filing petitions to the Harvard Law School so they can delay their final exams. Apparently Harvard law minority students cannot study due to participation in street demonstrations and the like which is their free speech rights to protest. They are so emotionally upset they could not study too and need more time now to cram for final exams. Even some have petitioned that since their exams were taken during that period were low scores, they need a second chance to retake them too. ...Saay whaat??

Harvard University has already stated that they will accept requests by students filing exam continuances for those otherwise "special circumstances" exemptions established for exceptional family emergencies and personal distress; hardly seems fair to the legitimate petitioners and remaining student body who studied that those distant weak related reasons can be filed too.  

Can these wannabe lawyers get a "free pass" in courts like in Harvard Law School? Will they demand that any presiding judge allow a "time-out" when events outside the purview of the court activities is too disturbing for the attorney? I believe that a judge's "judicial activism" is appropriate here--a swift gavel ruling in keeping on task or suffer real-life courtroom levies and penalties. 

I would not like to be that client with my councilor's cry-baby, wah-wah, poor-me, adult-child mentality when his unrelenting pressures with multiple distractions affect the outcome of my life or death verdict.

   

Net Neutrality - Don't Troll on Me!

Obama's "Net Neutrality" Program to provide freedom of access is a total sham! Barring the possibility of not getting it approved by the FCC Board, Obama is feverishly directing the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, to rein in the Internet into a public utility entity before the "stupid voters" realize what he has done.  This action would automatically bring it under immediate political controls of the Federal Government Laws on how businesses or individuals conduct themselves on the Internet. Applicable state, federal, local taxes will be charged on any utility services which will only add to monthly internet access charges--what a tax boondoggle and annual $Billion Federal tax revenue stream. It further offers Obama unbridled FCC regulations to be imposed without the interference of the Congress as a body to provide any public stop-gap check on FCC overreach on privacy or web content bans.

Up to present, ICANN has all been conducted as a private U.S. based, non-government entity. ICANN, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the technical coordination body. ICANN primary objectives which always have been non-political since its inception, has been ensuring the stability of the Internet's system of assigned names and numbers without the purvue of any legislation or sovereignty. 

Now, Obama has a political movement afoot, effective July 2015, to turn over the U.S. registration of all Internet registered users from our U.S. base to a U.N. international body with an "independent governing board." Why is this move necessary now? That's an easy answer: Many countries see $Billions in taxes and want to levy international "access Internet fees" on users.  All of the totalitarian governments cannot control their populations any longer with their propaganda with the unbridled access to facts, 24 hour news cycle, You Tube, blogs and social media.  It is true that some information is either unfactual, malicious, sketchy at best or rumor where irresponsible speculation exists.  But, that's how the "word of mouth" has operated over thousands of years and how all generations told stories, only now it is instantaneous. So today subversive or repressive regimes operating within the shadows cannot hide under the bright lights of the Internet era and they want the freedom of information curtailed or crushed. 

A perfect example of a totalitarian regime's abuse is the way Facebook’s detection systems work. Once a post is reported by enough users—no matter the content, intent or who is reporting it—the post is marked as a "terms-of-use violation." As it happens, the Iranian regime, much like the Chinese and Russian governments, is adept at mobilizing trolls to report activity it doesn’t like. Facebook inadvertently becomes the morality police, and that will always work to the advantage of these tyrants.

Well-intentioned Facebook policies are designed for U.S. Constitutional values such as the prohibition on anonymous users which malign or attack other individuals. However, Facebook inadvertently has kicked off thousands of activists who use pseudonyms to protect their own safety. Whistleblowers, advocates for political prisoners, rally leaders, labor activists, feminists and bloggers all use the platform to organize without detection. But in addition to eluding dictators, these activists must also worry that Facebook employees (or data machines) in Menlo Park, Calif., will detect that their names are not real and have trouble getting their official page “verification” from Facebook, something that could help protect users from threats and troll attacks from those draconian regime governments.

Facebook and others have a challenge to remain free of this corruption. I believe that also starts by keeping ICANN as a U.S. based organization, not as a utility company, to maintain its own integrity--it's neither right or left, Republican or Democrat, Red State or Blue State, it's the United States--sound familiar?