Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Everyone believes they need to make big changes but the only big change you need is the change to your thinking.  Change your thinking and you will automatically change dozens of small things you do every day. That’s because action follows thinking.  Things to Think About in 2014: (1) Why?  Why am I doing things the way I am doing them? Why am I using that media? That message? Who suggested it? Am I testing it? (2) Think of each day as a gift. What you do with that gift is up to you. Will you waste it? Make it productive? Enjoy it? (3) Consider that who we are is determined mostly by our environment — until we become aware of this fact — then it’s up to us. (4) Remember that you can’t eliminate all mistakes, but you can stop repeating them. Are you repeating mistakes?  (5) Just because something has never been done doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Maybe you were meant to do it. (6) Share what you learn. Share the credit. Share the ...

The Justice and State departments  cite a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack. The Obama administration is "changing names" of the Benghazi survivors and "creating aliases" to keep them hidden from congressional investigators and the American people. Rep. Gowdy  said the administration is "dispersing them around the country" to keep them out of sight. CNN revealed there were "dozens" of CIA operatives on the ground in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, the night of the deadly attack that killed four Americans. Meanwhile, the CIA is taking "unprecedented" steps to keep whatever it was doing in Benghazi a secret, according to reports. These Benghazi revelations come at the same time that the Obama administration has decided to start referring to the Benghazi and IRS scandals as "phony."

This is the kind of emotional rhetoric and propaganda promoted by the progressive liberal anti-gun movement: "Over 11,000 people died from guns this year, Over 200 were children. 2014 needs to be the year we put pressure on the House to represent our desires to tighten gun safety, background checks, penalties for unsecured weapons and limit weapons of war on the streets!" But let's dissect the facts, and remove the emotions from the equation, shall we? There are roughly 32,000 gun deaths per year in the United States. Of those, around 60% are suicides. About 3% are accidental deaths (less than 1,000). About 34% of deaths (just over 11,000 in both 2010 and 2011) make up the remainder of gun deaths. Sometimes the 32,000 and 11,000 figures are used interchangeably by gun control advocates. Clearly, the 32,000 figure is a far more dramatic number and is often used for impact. These numbers are also regularly compared to other countries' gun statistics. But are they ...

There is no clearer demonstration of the differences in the two major political parties than their position on the minimum wage. Democrats generally are in favor of a higher minimum wage, Republican generally oppose it, although in recent times they have certainly caved. In truth, there is only one way to regard a minimum wage law: it is compulsory unemployment. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. Remember that the minimum wage law does not provide any jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result. All demand curves are falling, and the demand for hiring labor is no exception. So laws that prohibit employment at any wage that is relevant to the market must result in outlawing employment and causing unemployment. If the minimum...