Is Barack Obama Jesus Christ?

From PJTV Andrew Klavan



HT Public Secrets

Friday Family photo--Caleb

Next week-end we're heading to Indianapolis for a going away party for Caleb, who is going into the Army. It's hard to believe. This is me holding him when he was 2 weeks old in 1990. It was taken at his grandmother's home on Heritage Lake, Indiana.

Alternative to coupons

I found the article--it was in the September 2, 1981, Upper Arlington News--about 28 years ago. Here's the points I made.

• I did the research after a conversation with co-workers who felt guilty that they didn't clip coupons, or didn't like it.
  
  
• At the time I was a librarian in the OSU Agriculture Library and had access to little known publications that provided the answers.
  
  
• If homemakers would use their time in preparation instead of coupon clipping and sorting and parties, they would save much more and serve their families better food.
  
  
• Coupons were most often available for highly prepackaged food which are the most expensive.
  
  
• I attributed women's (housewives) need to do this to being convinced they needed a paycheck to feel valuable (remember, we were only 10 years into the rush to go back to work as a result of the women's movement). "Clipping, filing, storing, redeeming--why it is just like office work, and you sometimes even get a check in the mail for your efforts. At last there is tangible reward for all your efforts," I said.
  
  
• Homemakers are given a false sense of contributing to her family's economic well-being by being convinced that she's saving money.
  
  
• The writer found my food budget very interesting--"she feeds her family of 4 (including a teenage son and daughter) for $50 or less a week. That's less than the government figures a family of four using food stamps must spend."
  
  
• I'd gradually changed my shopping habits to include more fresh items and I "shopped the walls" for produce, dairy and meat avoiding the sea of prepackaged foods found in the center aisles.
  
  
• I didn't drive around looking for bargains, read labels, bought generic brands.
  
  
• Our children thought "real cheese" tasted funny when I made the change, so I recommended making changes gradually and ease the family into healthier, lower cost eating.
  
  
• And of course, because I was a librarian, I recommended some books, "The supermarket Handbook" by the Goldbecks, and "Diet for a small Planet" by Frances Moore Lappe, and More with Less Cookbook by Doris Longacre. I still use the Longacre book occasionally.

I get a chuckle out of today's greenies who think they invented this.

Speaking of old letters--a 1981 thank you

I mentioned I found a 1993 letter I'd written to "The Lutheran" about 15 Health Care values and principles. I also found a 1981 letter thanking me for my views on coupons which apparently stemmed from an article about me in the Upper Arlington News (or possibly the Columbus Dispatch, don't remember). [Loyalty cards are just the more up to date form of couponing.] This woman "got it." But not many do. If there's anything harder than convincing the American public that the government doesn't create jobs, it's convincing them that businesses don't exist to give away their products. She wrote:

"Thank heaven someone has finally spoken out to say what I have thought about couponing for some time now! Although I am not a Northwest area resident, I work in the area, and saw the article about your views in this week's paper.

Since I am a working mother who drives 36 miles each way to and from work everyday, I don't have a lot of time to read anything other than the essentials, or to learn new skills (i.e. couponing), but I kept asking myself why everyone else seemed to be able to save so much with coupons (or at least that is what the avalanche of articles about couponing would lead you to believe), when I could rarely find coupons for anyting I buy other than Pampers.

I didn't think I was dense (I have a degree in home economics, although I am not working as a home economist at this time), but either I was not cooking like all those who were couponing, or I had missed the boat somehow, because I never found coupons for fresh fruits or vegetables, whole wheat flour, meat or frozen vegetables that weren't suced, friend, or practically pre-digested!

Thanks for your views speaking out for those of us who seem to be losing out to all the convenience food junkies. I can only guess that the myriad of articles pertaining to nutrition and good health are falling on deaf ears, if they are noticed at all. Why is it that the extremists always seem to get the most press? In this case, the convenience food freaks must just have more time for publicity than those of us who are spending time preparing good, wholesome meals. Thanks again for your well-reasoned input into a subject which has been irritating me for some time now."

Update: I checked this woman on google and found her at the Plaza of Heroines at Wichita State University to honor everyday women who are heroines in people's lives.

Connect the dots, says Thomas Sowell

Will you call him a racist too, or just an Uncle Tom?

"Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Moammar Qaddafi, and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama’s many previous years of associations and alliances with people who hate America — Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, and so on — at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots?"

Read his entire essay. It was in today's Columbus Dispatch.

Report on Health care, 1993 edition

The apple cake tasted a bit dry, so I decided to go through my files to see if I could find the source sent to me in 1993 (3 different relatives). Didn't find it. But I did find a letter I'd written in 1993, when I was still a Democrat (but obviously catching on) to "The Lutheran" magazine about health care. It had a special report on Universal Coverage in the December 1993 issue which included 15 ethical values and principles. It reminds me of something I heard this summer from the Catholic priest who lectured at Lakeside on religion and the civil war. He said the churches had split up long before the regions went to war. In my letter I addressed the draft on sexuality (homosexual marriage and gay pastors), so you can see how long that's been dragging on. The ELCA hierarchy split from the people in the pew years ago.

First, I don't have the entire report--I apparently photocopied just enough to attach to my copy of the letter. But here's the gist--the classic leftist, cop-out. . . "Others are dying because we have too much." The specific phrase on p. 32 was, "When we see our brothers and sisters dying on Chicago's South Side due to the lack of prenatal care there's something wrong--because too many of us have too much."

Many Americans, including some minorities, immigrants and native Americans, have cradle to the grave government health care, food stamps, housing allowances and/or public housing and still, nothing is healthier for a baby or assures a climb out of poverty like having a married mother and father. (And first they have to make it through the birth canal, something the liberals don't necessarily support if it's an inconvenient truth.) Married parents--you would think that would be a natural for a church magazine to point out--it's a big deal in both the Old and New Testaments. Its imagery is the foundation of God's relationship with Israel, and Christ's relationship with the church. But no. More government reassignment of wealth is their plan. "The resources are available here--they just have to be redistributed. And we have to distribute them justly. . . Justice in the deepest most fundamental biblical sense refers to balanced relationships. Relationships between individuals, between individuals and community, between individuals an communities and their God. That's what I see in health-care reform. It's an attempt to do justice, to balance the relationships."

Now, I have no idea who Laurence O'Connell is (or was), but he was obviously reading Saul Alinsky, not the Bible, because there's nothing in the Bible about the government taking from one and giving to another and renaming it justice. Here's my letter, November 28, 1993.

With the coverage given the disastrous sexuality draft in the December 1993 issue, it would be easy to overlook an equally suspect document--the Health Care 15 values and principles published on p. 31-34. Instead of placing personal responsibility for good health as the first principle, the task force put it as number 13. We would not have a need for such a document or billions spent on health care if it were not for abuse of alcohol, cigarettes, food and sexual behavior. Once those health problems, all of which are personally manageable, are set aside, we can afford the rest with pocket change.

How can Laurence O'Connell decide it is ethical for me to pay the social and economic costs of someone else's abortion, drunk driving, obesity, STDs, or even failure to floss? Where are the Judeo-Christian values and traditions to back up rights with no responsibilities? He needs to study American religious history and see that it was the strength of the moral values of the Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals and Presbyterians that pulled people out of poverty and degradation and cleaned them up, educated and sanitized them and pushed them into the middle-class (where they have forgotten that it wasn't government programs that got them there).

Where is the justice in "redistributing" our resources? Hasn't socialism, which is what "redistribution" and "communal sharing of risks" means, shown itself to be a complete failure in Eastern Europe and the USSR in the past 80 years? Would O'Connell ever want to have a blood transfusion in a Russian hospital? O'Connell claims the 15 principles "resonate" with the Christian message (p. 32) I didn't hear a single jingle, clink or tone that sounded like the Gospel."

Note, the reason I didn't include Lutherans in my list of which religious groups pushed people into the middle class is that I was referring to the various "great awakenings" or revivals that swept the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. For the most part, Lutherans stayed within their ethnic communities and just helped each other. I'm not a cradle Lutheran, but I don't recall them being a part of those revivals.

Aunt Gladys' Apple Cake (or pudding)

Tomorrow our "community" at UALC is having a brunch. We have 9 services, and after a number of experiements, our leadership has decided we're not a megachurch, we're 9 communities. Everyone we knew or did things with since 1976 when we became members are scattered around, but we like to go early, so we are part of the 8:15 traditional service. Personally, I would prefer a mix of music with liturgy, the way we did about 15-17 years ago before music defined everything, but no one asked me.

Anyway, back to the title of this blog--Aunt Gladys' Apple Cake or Pudding. I decided to use the family cookbook (1993) for this event, and was quite charmed by my cousin Judy's remark about this recipe of her mother who died in 1976.

"When I take a bite of this it brings tears to my eyes--it brings back so many memories of Mom."

That's the beautiful thing about using a family recipe--you can spend some time thinking about that family member.

Aunt Gladys and Uncle Ken lived in Byron, Illinois during my young years. They would bring my 3 cousins, Melvin (Mike), Kirby, and Judy to my grandparents on Sunday afternoon, and we'd all be together, because my parents brought the four of us from Forreston before we moved back to Mt. Morris in 1951. Then later they added a fourth--Rodney. As a youngster I thought my aunt was terribly old to be having another baby, but I just took a look at my genealogy, and she would have been 32! That shows you how children perceive their elders--they are always, always old and usually very wise!

It's still in the oven, and the mix was terribly stiff. It has no liquid and no salt. I substituted Splenda for the sugar, and often it doesn't cream the same way.

Beat together
1 cup of sugar (Splenda)
1/2 cup butter
1 egg

Add
3 medium apples, cored, peeled and sliced
1 1/2 cups chopped nuts (I used walnuts)
1 1/4 cups of flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. soda

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
Judy suggested a 3 qt round casserole dish, which I don't have, so I reserved a bit, so I could taste it, and she suggested 325 degrees. Several other relatives of Gladys submitted this recipe, so I sort of blended it.

I'm guessing this works best if it is served warm, which it won't be tomorrow when it appears (if it passes my taste test) in Founders Hall at Lytham Rd. UALC traditional service brunch.

Update: Tasted sort of dry--I'm looking for the original--I must have it somewhere.

Update 2: Found all three versions of this. No liquid. It is what it is. Dry. I think I'll take some Cool-Whip along.

Leftist attacks on Glenn Beck, go after his advertisers

Isn’t it strange--every conservative and libertarian who disagrees with Obama's economic policies is being called a racist, but when Glenn Beck calls Obama out on much more evidence--his personal behavior--it’s a crime against humanity worthy of destroying the man. When SNL mildly poked fun at Obama, his supporters scaffolding in the media went crazy! Look. Bush withstood 8 years of pounding by the DNC, European heads of state, South American dictators, late night talk show hosts, the hyper-hysterical left wing press in the United States, Puffington Post, the Dixie Chicks and the View. He was called Hitler, Stalin, a Rove-puppet, a Cheney-puppet, and the Devil incarnate. But Obama has to be constantly propped up and coddled by these same people who are delighted that he was selected for the Nobel peace prize after 11 days in office for nothing except promoting the Euro-socialist view of the USA.

Here's an interesting take Is this news or a comedy tour :

"When news organizations consistently slant their coverage and ignore major stories because they don’t fit their template or further their agenda it’s time to re-evaluate what they are. They portray themselves as objective yet everyone can see they’re partisan publicists for a particular party and a particular radical left-wing of that party. Study after study shows the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media are perceived by the public as advocates whose left-wing agenda is self-serving and deceptive. Instead of the fourth branch of government, honest brokers working to keep the public informed they’ve degenerated into craven corporate cheerleaders for Progressivism.

Then there’s Glenn Beck. If you’re missing Glenn Beck’s daily television program you’re missing some of the most honest, hard-hitting television journalism ever produced. Despite a leftwing inspired boycott his daily ratings for the time-slot are through the roof. He’s so honest and forthright he’s become the bell-weather for journalistic freedom. Glenn is doing the heavy-lifting when it comes to exposing the corruption that’s destroying the tap-root of American democracy…..As long Glenn is still on the air we know freedom of speech still exists in America."

Note: that should be bell-wether, one who leads.

It could be 7-8 years before we get back to the Bush economy

84 months. Economists are hopeful that unemployment won't go beyond 10.2%. Is that enough change for you. He did promise that he would fundamentally change the United States.

Global warming scare is science used as a political tool to steal liberties

They are predicting snow for Chicago this week-end and they are already skiing out west. Temps haven’t changed in a decade. But politics is politics. And the lobbyists and CEOs are getting on the bandwagon. But don’t you just hate it when speakers say, “very unique.” Folks, something is either unique or it isn’t.

A mean spirited law suit

Read the whole story at American Daughter. If the Sunrise Rock cross comes down (right now they've just covered it with plywood), don't you think for a minute that will be the last of it.

Currently, the Supreme Court’s nine justices are divided on the issue along progressive and conservative lines. Progressive justices view the Constitution as a living, breathing document emanating meanings from ethereal penumbras of the actual text, which often contradict the plain understanding of the words themselves; and conservative justices focus on a strict interpretation of the text of the Constitution based on the originally intended meaning of the text.

When it comes to the Establishment Clause, progressive justices have interpreted the emanations from the clause to mean government hostility toward religion in general and Christianity in particular; whereas conservative justices have interpreted the clause to mean government neutrality toward religion and accommodation for Christianity in particular.

However, the final battle won’t be won until the Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and that could take weeks. It’s also quite possible the high court will ignore the broader question of whether the presence of the cross on a federal preserve establishes a religion, and will address the narrower question of whether Congress was right to transfer the land on which the cross sits to private ownership.

It's not called the 9th circus for nothing.

$54 billion in 10 years

That's all. The CBO says tort reform would reduce health care spending by .05 percent. Lawyers must be wetting their pants. Now, to the rest of us, that sounds like A LOT of money, but in government, which now doesn't bat an eyelash at trillions and thinks the stimulus actually stimulated something, that's nothing. That's play money. That's Monopoly money in pretty colors. We could save more than that by just cleaning up graft in the food insecurity programs in USDA.

Tort reform could affect costs for health care both directly and indirectly: directly, by lowering premiums for medical liability insurance; and indirectly, by reducing the use of diagnostic tests and other health care services when providers recommend those services principally to reduce their potential exposure to lawsuits. Because of mixed evidence about whether tort reform affects the utilization of health care services, past analyses by CBO have focused on the impact of tort reform on premiums for malpractice insurance. However, more recent research has provided additional evidence to suggest that lowering the cost of medical malpractice tends to reduce the use of health care services.

CBO now estimates that implementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2 percent from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3 percent from slightly less utilization of health care services. (Those estimates take into account the fact that because many states have already implemented some of the changes in the package, a significant fraction of the potential cost savings has already been realized.)

Saving these lives gets no peace prize or international praise

"I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Karen Hughes, former Bush adviser, speaking on CNN April 24, 2004.

But the No-bel judges were correct in stating that Obama had caught the world's attention--during the long campaign and his 10 months in office he talks mostly about himself (which may have cost Chicago the Olympics), which necessarily deceases the emphasis on the United States, which enormously pleases both our enemies and envious friends. Link.

Wealth For Life Principles

These were found at Black Enterprise. I was reading an on-line article on how to survive on one income for a formerly 2-income household, although I'm not sure these 10 were part of that article.

1. I Will Live Within My Means
2. I Will Maximize My Income Potential Through Education and Training
3. I Will Effectively Manage My Budget, Credit, Debt, and Tax Obligations
4. I Will Save At Least 10% of My Income
5. I Will Use Homeownership as a Foundation For Building Wealth
6. I Will Devise An Investment Plan For My Retirement Needs And Childrens’ Education
7. I Will Ensure That My Entire Family Adheres To Sensible Money Management Principles
8. I Will Support the Creation and Growth of Minority-Owned Businesses
9. I Will Guarantee My Wealth Is Passed On To Future Generations Through Proper Insurance And Estate Planning
10. I Will Strengthen My Community Through Philanthropy.

I think it is an excellent list, although most of them we didn't follow (especially #8--even most hair products and hiphop music are white controlled). We were in our upper 40s by the time we even thought about saving for retirement (there weren't as many tax shelters back in the old days for the ordinary citizen). That's when I went back to work and joined a tax deferred savings plan. Before we became DINKS, everything that didn't go for the kids went to the house. We learned in our 30s about tithing our income (loosely #10), and I think that's a tremendous advantage to start at a young age. Just take it off the top, from the gross, not the net. I have my personal doubts that home ownership (#5) builds wealth. . . although its better than owning a boat. Owning income property and renting does create an investment, however. It's a huge hassle and one I wouldn't recommend for the faint of heart, but that crummy duplex we bought in 1962 put us on the road, not to wealth, but to better housing and income growth for us. For the first 25 years of our marriage our savings (#4) was "put and take" certainly nothing for the long run.

Catching up with California

That's what Lisa Jackson, EPA, wants the rest of the country to do. From her speech analysis at The Foundry, Heritage Society.

"According to Jackson, climate change regulations have their “roots” in California, and much of what the President is trying to accomplish is guided by what California has already achieved. She touts that the United States is finally “catching up with what’s happening [in California]”

But what do we want to catch up to? A report by the American Lung Association from May 17, 2009 shows that Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Visalia, and Hanford all rank in the top ten of one or all three categories of pollution: short-term particle pollution, ozone pollution and year-round particle pollution. Maybe the results will come in the future but it’s highly unlikely the economic pain will be worth the negligible environmental benefits.

California’s unemployment rate for August 2009 was 12.2 percent, nearly 5 percentage points higher than a year ago and tied for fourth highest in the country. While supporters argue that thousands of green jobs will be created, David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation warns that green job growth is “grossly overstated because they don’t take into account the jobs lost elsewhere.”

The irony of mainstream environmentalists praising one of the most polluted states as a model to follow in one of the most polluted cities in America has not been lost on critics. It has become very clear that the concern is not so much for the pollution itself: mainstream environmentalists offer effulgent praise to California, calling it a “green state” not because it is clean but because it has installed stringent greenhouse gas regulations. The California energy plan should be used as a lessons learned model rather than hailed as a success.

In April she spoke to Black Enterprise, praising Van Jones, who is the unvetted, avowed Communist with a prison record, who resigned in the middle of the night when the president's closed circle of marxist appointees decided he was expendable (moved over to Podesta's think tank).

"We’re already seeing political and local leaders be very thoughtful about ways to really be transformative [with her share of $7 billion in ARRA]. Obviously the job part of it we touch, but we’re not leading. The White House has hired Van Jones from Green for All to be the special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the Council on Environmental Quality." Lisa Jackson, EPA

How long to read the bill?

I actually know Bonnie James, quoted in this article, who teaches speed reading.

"We read the entire House version when it came out in July. Certainly, at just over 1,000 pages, it was long. At times, it was exceedingly boring. We took frequent Diet Coke breaks. Day passed into night, then day, then night, then ... memory fails. We're sorry to report that we didn't think to time how long we took.

So to explore Bachmann's comment, we wanted a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much time it might take the average person to literally read the text of the bill. A computer program told us the House bill weighed in at 163,000 words. The average adult, meanwhile, can read passages aloud at an average rate of 154 words per minute, according to a 2003 measurement of basic adult literacy by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. At that rate, the average person would need about 18 hours to read the bill aloud. So if you had the three days Pelosi would guarantee, you'd only have to spend six hours per day reading the bill.

Most people, though, can read faster when they're reading silently. The estimates we found for adult readers ranged from 200 to 400 words per minute. At those rates, a person could conquer the bill in seven to 13 hours.

Let's say that you're a better-than-average reader, though -- even a speed reader. We spoke with Bonnie James, the president of Advanced Reading Concepts, an organization that teaches speed reading to students at weekend courses and in corporate settings. James said that graduates of her classes can read, on average, anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 words per minute. At that rate, you could read the bill in about two or three hours.

But those times would be for someone who had a general understanding of the material and what it contained, James said.

"A trained speed reader, looking for specific things, could probably go through it at 1,200 words a minute," James said. "But you don't just open the bill and then read it really, really fast. You need to be looking for information, looking for certain words. You don't just go into a trance." Polifact.com

The real cost of the Baucus bill--$2 trillion

"The CBO score of the Baucus bill is like a mystery novel with the last 50 pages missing. It fails to reveal both the full cost of the bill and the budget gimmicks that Mr. Baucus uses to hide that cost.

The Baucus bill will not reduce the deficit, and it would ultimately cost taxpayers more than $2 trillion—just like every other bill Congress has produced so far."
Cato Institute

Social media

I guess I'm still back in the dark ages.

Ideas on downsizing the government

Now this should shake a few people up, the Cato Institute's Downsizing the Federal Government. Downsize agriculture? Although if the problem is shifted to the states, the taxpayer won't save anything.

All agricultural and rural subsidies in the Department of Agriculture’s budget should be abolished to save taxpayers $25 billion annually. In addition, agricultural trade barriers should be repealed. Current agricultural and rural policies are economically and environmentally damaging, and they create unfair transfers of wealth.

The department's food subsidy activities—food stamps, school lunches, and WIC—are properly local and private functions. They should be devolved to the states, with each state determining appropriate policies for its own residents. Such reforms would save federal taxpayers $79 billion annually. Some states may decide to fund food subsidies on their own, but competition between the states would likely result in smaller, more innovative programs.

Forest Service subsidies to state governments and private businesses should be ended. Congress should also explore options to transfer the national forests to the states or to new independent trusts that would be self-funded from forest-related receipts.

The table shows that these reforms would eliminate more than 90 percent of the USDA’s budget, saving federal taxpayers $108 billion annually, or about $923 per U.S. household. Under the proposal, the USDA would retain responsibility for animal and plant health inspections, food safety, grain and packing inspections, and conservation activities. Department of Agriculture

Notice Medicare and Medicaid together total more than defense. And bailouts and interest total more than Medicare. I wonder what's in "other."

But they can't do anything about illegal immigrants?

Local law enforcement agencies aren't allowed to do much about illegals--they aren't Homeland Security or ICE trained, they aren't federal agents. So why were police in Missouri last year asked to participate in Obama "truth squads?"

"One year ago on September 23rd, KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis reported that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough and St. Louis Circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce joined a high-profile group of law enforcement officials (including Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer) threatening to invoke “Missouri ethics laws” against anyone the prosecutors determined had spread misleading information about Obama." Big Government

Which is a more serious infraction of the law and more expensive to the state: illegals taking jobs from Americans, joining criminal gangs and sucking up benefits or a nasty campaign ad?

"Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has just ordered Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop arresting suspects based solely on the fact that they are illegal aliens. The Arizona sheriff who has been called the “toughest” in America, defiantly said he will continue his sweeps which have netted thousands of illegal aliens.

Sheriff Arpaio has vowed to maintain his “crime suppression operations,” conducting street patrols looking for suspected illegal aliens. He says that he can still operate within the law, under Arizona human smuggling laws.

“It’s all politics,” Arpaio told reporters.

Earlier this year, the Maricopa County Sheriff said: “If I'm told not to enforce immigration law except if the alien is a violent criminal, my answer to that is we are still going to do the same thing, 287g or not. We have been very successful."

Under Sheriff Arpaio, his department has either identified in jail, or arrested on the street more than 30,000 illegal aliens in and around Phoenix, AZ." Examiner.com

"The issue under consideration today is the use of the E-Verify system in Ohio. Although the E-Verify system is not a panacea, it is a relatively inexpensive ($100 or less per employer), efficient (an inquiry takes 15 seconds or less), and reliable (96 percent) online method of ensuring that Ohio jobs are filled only by Ohioans and those who are lawfully present. With Ohio's unemployment rate at 10.8 percent and increasing, such a law would provide much-needed job opportunities for those out-of-work Ohioans at both the unskilled and skilled lev­els. Specifically, many entry-level jobs currently filled by illegal border crossers (who make up 60 percent of all illegals) and some technical-level jobs currently filled by individuals who have overstayed their work or education visas (40 percent of all ille­gals) would become open as those holding the jobs illegally were let go." Controlling Illegal Immigration, Ohio House Bill 184.

"Eight officers returned Tuesday from four weeks of special training that allows them to perform some limited immigration-related duties.

As a result, the Butler County Sheriff's Office became the first police agency in the Midwest to receive immigration enforcement powers that are typically reserved for federal agencies, authorities said Thursday - about a year-and-a-half after Sheriff Rick Jones first tried to get those powers." Feb. 8 2008, Cincinnati Enquirer.