Freedom of speech is one of the most precious and important rights granted to an individual citizen by the Bill of Rights under the U.S. Constitution. The right to speak freely was considered so fundamental that it was incorporated into the First Amendment. Even while framing the Constitution, the Founding Fathers realized that a totalitarian regime begins to assert complete control over the people when individual citizens are no longer allowed to criticize their government. So they took immediate steps to ensure that individual right was preserved. Although one of the most important symbols representing the United States is the American flag, for which brave men and women have sacrificed their lives to serve and protect, in the case commonly known as Texas v. Johnson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag is a protected form of free speech allowed to government protestors. However, in today's madness of political correctness, merely flying a Confederate flag at her personal residence might become the reason a twenty-year veteran police officer can be terminated from her job with no warning. Of course, not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. Exceptions do exist. You can't libel or slander another citizen with impunity. You can't incite panic or mob violence. And unless your last name is Clinton, you can't commit perjury or disseminate classified information into public domain without facing serious criminal charges. And as everyone probably knows by now, you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre and cause a general panic, … [Read more...]
The real minimum wage
The "real" minimum wage is zero. Meaning zip. Nada. Nothing. Don't believe me? Then let me give you a brief lesson in basic economics. Several years ago I was an active real estate investor, until the bottom dropped out of the housing market. Looking for a way to earn supplemental income, I took a special class to learn the business of real estate appraisal, finishing with the second highest score of about fifty people. However, in order to actually earn an income as a real estate appraiser, a minimum number of hours would have to be "earned" by me working on the job as an unpaid apprentice to a licensed appraiser before I would be granted my license. But guess what? Because so few houses were being bought and sold at the time, I couldn't even find a single real estate appraisal business in the Atlanta area that would let me work for them for free. I couldn't even give my work away. Nobody wanted new competition for what little work the market offered at that time. As a result, the $750 fee that I paid for the real estate appraisal course turned out to be a complete waste of money, unless we count the chunks of the plot of my first novel, Coastal Empire. Speaking of which, there is something much better than minimum wage: residual income. As long as I live and copies of my books sell, I will earn residual income in the form of book royalties, which is a beautiful thing. Do the work once, and get paid forever. The only tricky part is, books need to be sold to produce income, so we need to know marketing. By taking that class, excelling but then failing, … [Read more...]
The effort to save Simpsonwood
Imagine what it would feel like to reach into your pocket and find a lottery ticket you didn't remember buying. You check the numbers and discover that you've won the jackpot. That's sort of what it felt like to buy a house in Peachtree Corners a few months ago, only to discover that our back yard borders with Simpsonwood Park. Of course the real estate agent mentioned something about the woods behind our new house had been purchased from the Methodist Church by Gwinnett County, but we had no idea what Simpsonwood really is -- a chance to experience what heaven must be like, a pristine natural experience hidden in the suburbs north of Atlanta. Simpsonwood Park is "223 acres of unspoiled natural beauty on the Chattahoochee River" according to a postcard sent by the people associated with the website www.savesimpsonwood.com. Though I have no official affiliation with that organization, I have decided that I firmly support their cause and plan to attend the meeting to be held this Thursday, June 30th, at the Simpsonwood United Methodist Church located at 4500 Jones Bridge Circle in Peachtree Corners. According to the organized opposition to the plans to develop Simpsonwood Park, hundreds of trees will be cut down to allow for paving roads, sidewalks, and parking lots. These changes will be in spite of the fact that Jones Bridge Park, located only about a mile from Simpsonwood and has much easier, more direct access to the general public. Conversely, the main entrance to Simpsonwood can only be accessed by making several turns and using roads that navigate through … [Read more...]
David Cohen’s appeal to authority
David Cohen is (allegedly) a Constitutional law professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, the very city where the Declaration of Independence was penned in the days leading to July 4th, 1776, Why someone would pay this man to teach law students about the Constitution is beyond me, because the drastic solution he proposes won't solve the problem he thinks is epidemic -- gun violence. In a recent op-ed published in Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Cohen argued for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment on the grounds that the Founding Fathers "got it wrong" when they granted ordinary citizens the right to bear arms (radical liberals: 'bear arms' means the right to own a gun.) Mr. Cohen began his embarrassing article with the somewhat pompous declaration, "I teach the Constitution for a living." This statement is intended to imply to Mr. Cohen's audience that he possesses superior knowledge about the Constitution, even to the Founding Fathers (implied by his "correcting" them and identifying things he claims were mistakes in the original document, and only in his own mind, of course) -- an appeal to establish his opinion as authority - which by doing with his very first words, commits a logical fallacy. Mr. Cohen continues: "I revere the document when it is used to further social justice and make our country a more inclusive one. I admire the Founders for establishing a representative democracy that has survived for over two centuries. But sometimes we just have to acknowledge that the Founders and the Constitution are wrong. What is this nonsense about social justice? … [Read more...]
