I just got an op-ed published at TownHall.com: http://townhall.com/columnists/julieborowski/2012/05/31/the_uns_law_of_the_sea_treaty_threatens_our_national_sovereignty
I should have a twice monthly column at TownHall.com. I’m pretty excited about it.
My book review for Brian Doherty’s new book. Highly recommended! Get it NOW!
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
The liberal political website Think Progress has posted a new blog titled “5 Things You Should Know About the Paycheck Fairness Act.” As a supporter of the bill, Annie-Rose Strasser writes that:
1. The Paycheck Fairness Act is not new
2. Pay Equity is a real problem
3. Lost Earnings have serious consequences
4. Existing law doesn’t go far enough
5. Mitt Romney has not taken a position on the bill
Click here to see her more detailed post.
It’s true that the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) is not new and Mitt Romney has not taken a clear public position on the bill but the rest of her points are simply misleading. As a woman who is strongly opposed to the Paycheck Fairness Act, I decided to make my own list on what you should really know about the Paycheck Fairness Act:
1. The Wage Gap is Due to Individual Choices Made by Women, Not Discrimination.
Strasser writes that, “overall, women make 77 cents to a man’s dollar.” This oft-repeated statistic is entirely misleading because it neglects occupation and education. It just compares the median wage for a wage-earning female with the median age for a wage-earning male. On average, women do earn less than men but that’s mostly because of individual choices.
Men and women tend to be interested in different career choices. Men are more likely to choose highly lucrative college majors such as engineering and computer science. On the other hand, women are more likely to choose lower-paying majors such as education, English, and psychology.
Women are also more likely to choose safer and more flexible jobs. Studies show that women enter and leave the workforce at a much higher rate than men. Men are more likely to have dangerous jobs, high stress jobs, work longer hours, and travel more for work.
2. The Wage Gap Disappears When Comparing Apples to Apples.
When you compare apples to apples, the so-called wage gap disappears. Actually, the wage gap swings the other way: men are paid less than their female counterparts on average. The average salary for a female mechanical engineer is $61,100 a year, while for males it’s $60,400. Young, childless, single urban women earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts. Women who have never had a child earn 113 percent of what men earn. Unmarried college-educated males between the ages of 40 and 64 earn nearly 15 percent less than their female counterparts.
3. It is Already Illegal to Discriminate against Women in the Workplace.
The PFA is completely unnecessary. The 1963 Equal Pay Act already bans sex discrimination in the workplace. We need fewer laws, not more. This bill is less about stopping female discrimination and more about benefiting trial lawyers.
4. The PFA Would Expose Small Businesses to Frivolous Lawsuits.
The PFA would be a gift to trial lawyers. It would require the federal government to collect information on workers’ pay classified by race and sex. The PFA would make it much easier for any person to file a frivolous class-action lawsuit with punitive damages against employers. It would enrich trial lawyers since damage awards would be uncapped under the PFA.
5. The PFA Could Increase Female Unemployment.
The PFA raises the liability employers’ face when hiring women. The bill could have the unintended consequence of actually hurting the same people it was supposedly trying to help. It could lead to employers hiring fewer women due to fear of costly frivolous lawsuits. The last thing we need is a law that makes employers hesitant about employing women.
This sounds like such a conspiracy theory… but it isn’t.
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
The Senate is expected to vote on four competing budget plans introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) today. Passing an annual budget for the federal government is a fundamental responsibility of Congress. Yet under Harry Reid’s leadership, the Senate has not passed a budget in over three years and no Democrats in the Senate have even offered a budget proposal this year.
All of these proposed budgets would be an improvement from the status quo but Rand Paul’s Platform to Revitalize America shines above the rest. It would repeal ObamaCare, reform the tax code, block grant Medicaid to the states, reform Social Security, and balance the federal budget in just five years without raising taxes.
Most Republicans pay a lot of lip service to cutting spending but their actions rarely live up to their limited government rhetoric. But true fiscal conservatives like Rand Paul actually walk their talk. His budget plan is the only one that will abolish entire departments. The Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development would be axed under his plan. Poof! These needless bureaucracies would be gone. That’s what I call a real budget plan. This is the strongest budget plan in a generation and all senators serious about reducing the size and scope of government should stand behind Rand Paul’s budget.
The Rand Paul budget would slow up the regulatory state. The American people are forced to comply with thousands and thousands of outrageous new rules and regulations issued by the executive branch annually. The term “major rule” refers to any rule or regulation that has an annual economic impact of $100 million or more. Regulatory agencies issued 100 major rules in 2010 without any input from our elected representatives in Congress. Anyone who remembers the classic School House Rock! video that shows how a bill becomes a law can testify that unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch aren’t supposed to make the laws.
The executive branch has completely disregarded article 1, section 7 of the Constitution, which outlines the process of creating a new law and clearly gives that power to the legislative branch. Rand Paul’s budget would implement the REINS Act which requires congressional approval for all “major rules” proposed by the executive branch. The REINS Act wouldn’t be necessary if the Constitution was strictly followed in Washington, DC. Congressional representatives are the most accountable to the people and must be allowed to stop harmful regulations that will erode individual liberty and crush job growth.
Under the Paul plan, Americans would no longer fear sexual harassment at the airport since the plan would privatize the TSA. Rand Paul knows a little something about how incompetent and abusive the TSA can be. He was detained at the Nashville airport for hours and ended up missing his speech at the March for Life back in January. The TSA picked the wrong guy to mess with. Now the senator is pursuing his mission to abolish the TSA with a vengeance.
As the budget report card complied by Dean Clancy and Daniel Anderson shows, Rand Paul’s plan earns an A+. The plans introduced by Sens. Mike Lee and Toomey earn an A- and B+, respectively. All three plans would balance the federal budget and save trillions of dollars within the next decade. But as FreedomWorks noted in our key vote notice, we do have serious concerns about the health care reform proposal in the Lee Budget and the Medicare provisions in the Toomey and Lee budgets—proposals that trace their roots to the Heritage Foundation plan that provided the template for RomneyCare and ObamaCare.
Why haven’t more Republicans rallied behind Rand Paul’s plan? Only seven senators had the courage to vote for Rand Paul’s almost identical budget plan last year. Do most Republicans senators want to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic? Simply nibbling around the edges of the budget won’t cut it.
Will the real conservative senators please stand up? The time has come to make your actions match your rhetoric.
Wow, what a misleading headline from CNN.
Ron Paul did not drop out of the race or “suspend his active campaign.”
He is very much still in the race despite the lack of coverage from mainstream media.
He has only suspended campaigning in PRIMARY states that have not yet voted. The media unfortunately doesn’t understand the difference between primaries and caucuses. They desperately need a civics lesson.
Ron Paul has announced his campaign strategy to acquire delegates. That is all. He is now solely focused on CAUCUSES. It’s a smart move. He’s going to continue to do what he has been doing which has been working. Tampa could get rowdy as there is still a possibility that Mitt Romney may not have all 1,144 delegates necessary to secure the nomination.
Ron Paul has recently won Iowa, Minnesota, Maine, Alaska, Louisiana, Colorado, Massachusetts, Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Washington. Ron Paul will continue to rack up delegates as there are still caucus states that have not yet voted. It ain’t over yet.
Disregard media, acquire delegates. Onward.
Ron Paul’s full letter:
Got profiled in the Business Insider. They chose a goofy picture of me 
http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-women-of-the-ron-paul-revolution-2012-5#julie-borowski-4
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
1. The TSA Violates the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
This means that government officials must have probable cause that a person has committed a crime in order to search them. The TSA routinely violates the Fourth Amendment by subjecting airline passengers to X-Ray scanners and invasive pat downs without probable cause or a warrant. A person boarding an airplane does not justify probable cause.
2. The TSA Invades the Privacy of Airline Passengers.
The TSA allegedly randomly selects airline passengers to go through the X-Ray scanners. These full body scanners create a detailed outline of the passenger’s naked body for a TSA agent to examine in a back room. A lot of travelers are understandably highly uncomfortable with this procedure. Those passengers that opt out of the body scanners will be subjected to an invasive full contact pat down from a government bureaucrat. Many passengers who have experienced the pat downs equate them with sexual assault.
3. The TSA’s X-Ray Scanners May Have Health Risks.
The TSA claims that these X-Ray scanners are perfectly safe but some expert scientists say otherwise. A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco wrote a letter to the White House stating that “there is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations.” Pilots and other frequent fliers have expressed concern that the level of radiation may have long term health damages.
4. The TSA Cost Too Much Money.
The TSA’s budget has increased from $4.7 billion in 2002 to $7.8 billion in 2011. Despite the 60 percent increase in funding in less than a decade, the TSA has not improved safety at airports. Taxpayers should not be forced to pay billions of dollars a year for an incompetent bureaucracy.
5. The TSA Harasses and Humiliates Innocent Passengers.
The TSA has a long history of harassing and humiliating innocent airline passengers. For instance, a bladder cancer survivor was left embarrassed and covered with his own urine after the TSA roughly patted his urostomy bag despite warnings at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The TSA harasses airline passengers regardless of their age. Back in April 2011, a viral video surfaced of a TSA agent patting down a visibly upset six year old girl. Stories of the TSA fondling innocent young children and women are far too common. In June 2011, a 95 year old cancer-stricken woman was detained by the TSA for 45 minutes and asked to remove her adult diaper before boarding her flight at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport.
6. The TSA is Too Slow.
Many travelers complain about how long it takes to get through airport security when the TSA is in charge. The Pittsburgh International Airport recommends that passengers show up 90 minutes before a domestic flight and 2 hours before an International flight partly because it takes so long to get through security lines. Some travelers miss their scheduled flight because the TSA is taking too long to do their invasive procedures.
7. Abolishing the TSA Would Likely Minimize Wait Times.
Private security companies will likely minimize security waiting lines at the airport. It has been found that private screeners generally work faster than TSA agents. A 2011 House Transportation Committee found that, in the time it takes TSA screeners at the Los Angeles airport to process 100 passengers, private screeners at the San Francisco International Airport process 165 passengers. Private screeners were significantly faster than TSA agents in that particular study.
8. The TSA Doesn’t Make Us Safer.
The TSA is nothing more than Security Theater. It is a government monopoly that has no incentives to improve their screenings. The TSA has not caught a single terrorist since its inception. The now infamous “shoe bomber” and “underwear bomber” were not stopped by the TSA. These terrorists were instead stopped by airline passengers. A leaked TSA report found that security screeners failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as airline passengers in more than 60 percent of tests. TSA screeners at the Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75 percent of stimulated explosives and bomb parts that the undercover testers hid underneath their clothes or in their carry-on luggage.
9. Abolishing the TSA Would Likely Make Us Safer.
The TSA should be abolished and airline companies should be free to provide their own private security. Private airlines companies will then be held directly liable for any security lapses or harassment towards passengers. This means that airline companies have incentives to provide high quality security that treats consumers with respect.
A handful of airports use private screeners instead of TSA agents—the TSA is currently no longer permitting any additional airports to opt out.13 According to the same leaked TSA study cited above, the private screeners at the San Francisco International Airport detected a bomb hidden on the undercover agents 80 percent of the time—a rate much higher than TSA agents.
10. The TSA is Expanding its Reach.
The TSA isn’t just in airports anymore. The agency is increasingly conducting searches and screenings at subways, train stations, ferry docks, and other mass transit locations. It is time to end the TSA before they seize more control over transportation in the United States.
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
President Obama believes that health care is a right for every American. This is a perversion of the Founding Fathers’ idea of rights. There is an abundance of problems associated with ObamaCare but not enough attention has been paid to the dangerous philosophy behind the law. The underlying problem with ObamaCare is that too many Americans now see health care as a human right rather than a good.
The Declaration of Independence states that we have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That doesn’t mean that other people should be forced to sustain our life or make us happy. Many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the negative rights listed in the founding document. A negative right is a right to not have something done to us. The right to not be killed, the right to not have our property confiscated and the right to not have our speech punished are negative rights.
These legitimate rights do not place obligations on anyone except to not infringe on the rights of others. Otherwise, people are free to do as they please.
Progressives have invented so-called positive rights that are listed nowhere in our founding documents. A positive right is a right to something such as health care, housing, and clothing. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights claims that everyone has a right to health care. Of course, there’s no such thing as free health care. The government has no money of its own which means that it cannot “give” anyone health care without first taking away something from someone else.
There is a big difference between a need and a right. Health care is a basic need that everyone is free to pursue. This means that the government cannot infringe on our right to pursue health care but no one owes us health care. Health care is a good just like food, clothing, and shelter.
Positive rights contradict the very notion of rights. The so-called right to health care infringes on negative rights by imposing forceful obligations on taxpayers and health care providers. What about the right of the taxpayer to keep the fruit of his own labor? Should a doctor ultimately decide who he treats—or should he be forced to treat everyone whether he likes it or not? To say that we have the right to someone else’s time and services takes us back down a dark path in American history.
A right is not something someone gives you- it’s something that no one can take away.
Those who reject the idea that health care is a right are not dismissing the importance of health care. Quite the opposite is true. Health care is too important to be left to the incompetent federal government. Due to a lack of proper incentives, government generally destroys everything they touch. The government has never been able to run anything more efficiently than the for-profit private sector.
Anti-ObamaCare activists are often accused of being selfish, greedy people. That isn’t the reality. ObamaCare was passed under the guise of compassion. But as the late economist Murray Rothbard said, “it is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.” There is nothing virtuous about spending other people’s money without their consent, no matter how well-intentioned the cause. Where’s the compassion for taxpayers—who are forced to foot the bill?
Theft is seen as immoral in practically every society on earth. Most of us would never dream of stealing money from a neighbor to give to someone less fortunate. Why then do some people demand that the government do it for them? Private charities that run on voluntary donations are the best way of helping the poor obtain health care, not government welfare that relies on force and coercion.
President Obama seems to believe that he can simply repeal the economic law of scarcity. There will never be enough of anything to satisfy all human wants. People can complain about the alleged unfairness of reality, but the fact is that health care will always be a scarce good. No laws can change that fact.
Bad ideas have bad consequences. The idea that health care is a right has led to more government involvement in health care. Government now pays for more than 50 percent of all health care costs in the United States. In order to stop government control and increase freedom, Americans must reject the idea of so-called positive rights. Health care is a valuable good that would be better left to the free market.
