Jeff Barnes, Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency director; Major Gen. Gregory J. Vadnais, Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs director and adjutant general; State Reps. Gail Haines and Greg MacMaster; and Brigadier Gen. Michael A. Stone, MDMVA assistant adjutant general, following House approval of HB 4328, the state budget measure that includes $1.5 million to implement the Heroes 2 Hired veterans employment program in Michigan.

Michigan military veterans looking for work will be able to easily find potential employers through Pure Michigan Talent Connect once the state links its jobs program to Hero 2 Hired (H2H) to help compare military and civilian employment skills.

The House approved a Military and Veterans Affairs budget that includes $1.5 million to integrate the H2H software platform with the state’s program, said state Rep. Greg MacMaster, a military veteran who serves on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military and Veterans Affairs, who has been researching bringing the program to Michigan for the past year. H2H translates Military Occupation Codes (MOC) to comparable skill sets in civilian jobs and has been endorsed by all military branches, as well as being the designated job-seeking tool for the Michigan National Guard.

Understanding military skills and acronyms can be confusing to employers on the civilian side of hiring, causing many veterans’ military learned skills and knowledge to go untapped. Translating the military ranks and command leadership skills qualifications into easily understood professional or management job training education or experience requirements will help increase employers’ recognition of the capabilities and employ-ability of our servicemen and women.

The effort in Michigan has already attracted recognition in Washington, D.C., as the White House is viewing the program as a pilot project for the rest of the nation. The H2H drastically improves the skill translation gap that is a barrier to employment and includes translations for MOCs from the 1970s forward. The funding is expected to operate the program for four years, including a three to four month start-up period.

The Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency, Workforce Development Agency, Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and Department of Military and Veterans Affairs support the program and estimate 14,000 soldiers and airmen will be added to the talent pool in Michigan. The departments and agencies are expected to offer more information on the program as it is developed. The military and veterans affairs budget in House Bill 4328 awaits Senate confirmation expected next week before going to the governor for consideration.

Senator Ted Cruz discusses this President disrespect of our 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendment RIGHTS!!!

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/8ZGrA3nqTj8″]

After much debate and consideration of all of the test results, rankings, data, opinions and “facts” regarding Michigan’s education standards (Common Core), curriculum and testing methods,…I personally believe that ALL Conservatives/TEA Party/Patriot and child advocacy groups should be demanding the following regarding K-12 Education and it’s funding here in our State;

1.)  PARENTS,….(NOT Federal, State OR EVEN Local governments) should control our Children’s Education;

PARENTS,…informed enough to request the Federal and State funds that are currently being spent on their children’s education, they should be given a “My EDU Card” (like a Bridge Card) with those funds on it.

PARENTS,…should become “Consumers of Education” for their children’s educational choices.  Competition between various educational options,…should be “Purchased” with those funds on their “My EDU Card”.

PARENTS,…should be able to have the option to purchase education from their local Christian School or use those funds to Home-School their children,…as well as Private or Charter schools.

2.)   DO NOT PURCHASE EDUCATION FROM ANY SCHOOL THAT RECEIVES FEDERAL FUNDING;

We the People KNOW that with Federal involvement via funding, comes control, socialist/communist agendas and strings attached!  Continuing to choose federally funded education will continue the failed results we are experiencing today and will NOT affect the changes we need in education,…NOW.

3.)   TAKE THE CHILDREN AWAY FROM UNION TAUGHT PUBLIC SCHOOLS;

The union Bosses dictate agenda, policies and politics that directly influence education.  DEFUND THEM,…by taking the children and those education dollars away from them.  We need to protect the children from them and their liberal, socialist/communist agenda and the indoctrination of our children.

Question,…would you allow your children or grandchildren to attend a classroom being taught by a sexual offender of young kids?  Heck NO,…you say?  Then why do you allow your young people to be indoctrinated with liberal, socialist/communist agendas being pushed by union protected public school teachers?

PLAN OF ACTION;

1.)   Become an advocate for “My EDU Card”.  Tell your family members, friends, co-workers and church members. Talk about “My EDU Card” to fund K-12 education at public meetings of your local, county and state officials.  Start using the phrase,…”My EDU Card”, the REAL SOLUTION for Education in Michigan!!!

2.)   Have your children and grandchildren make plans to be home-schooled or attend a local Christian school (that does not receive federal dollars) for the 2013-2014 school year.   JUST DO IT,…FOR THIS UPCOMING YEAR!!!

3.)   Tell your State Representative, State Senator and Gov. Snyder (all of them are up for re-election in Nov. 2014) that you will NOT vote for them unless they make these changes and fully fund “My EDU Card” for the State of Michigan’s parents that want the use of those Federal and State funds to educate their children as they deem necessary.  Tell them that we want to become “Consumers of Education,…and purchase it”!!!

We need to be “FOR” changes that will affect real improvements in K-12 education,…not simply “AGAINST” standards like the Common Core!!!

By – Priscilla Miller, ACRP Secretary (May 23, 2013) 

By the age of two, little girls love their daddy and if for some tragic reason death shatters that special relationship, the child really has no understanding of why he has left her.

All she knows are days of painful longing as she waits for him to return, but eventually the finality of what has happened, becomes her reality, and though the longing will always continue, she stops asking for him.

Only photos in a worn album are left behind to remind her of the brief time they shared together, and occasionally, the sweet, faintly familiar scent of pipe smoke wafting in the air stirs something deep inside of her that speaks his name.

There are also those little letters he wrote to her each day, back in 1944, from the Naval Training Center where he met his untimely death at the tender age of 29.  Those letters, along with the flag that once draped his coffin, are all she has left to treasure throughout the years.

Tending his gravesite and planting geraniums then proudly placing a small flag next to his grave marker became a Memorial Day tradition.  Along with the parade on Main Street and the memorial service that always followed.  The sound of a lone bugle playing “Taps” always filled her with a sense of pride and made her think of him. She grew into womanhood, had a family of her own and throughout the passing years, she always felt her Father’s love was with her.

I know this, because I was that little girl.

Several years ago, when I learned that after nearly 60 years of holding a Memorial Day Parade in Alden, there wasn’t going to be one, I just knew I couldn’t let that happen.  I began making phone calls, arranging for various people and organizations to play a part in Alden’s parade.

On the morning of the parade, I mentally went through a checklist of parade participants and suddenly realized I had forgotten to get horses for the parade, but it was just too late to do anything about it. As I hurried out the door on my way to the parade staging area, I paused for a moment and whispered,     “This one’s for you, Daddy.”

We were turning down a side street, and I was still wishing I had remembered to get some horses, when suddenly two riders on horseback, both holding flags appeared in front of us.  We stopped the car and they came over to inquire if there was going to be a parade in town that day.  At the staging area, antique cars, band members, veterans, Boy Scouts, Shriners, firefighters were all assembled and waiting, I gave the signal to begin and Alden’s Memorial Day Parade, complete with horses, went off without a glitch.

Upon my return home, as I breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction, a vague memory suddenly came to mind.  It was something about those little letters my father had written to me so many years ago that prompted me to go and reread his words.  There in one of the letters, written just two days before his death, I read, “Dearest little Angel Girl,…Someday, when you are a big girl, maybe Daddy can get you a nice horsey.”

I knew in my heart, he had heard my words that morning and he was smiling down on me from heaven.

Please right mouse click the link below and open it in a new tab,…to hear that lone bugle playing tribute to all of our lost Soldiers and PLEASE remember this story on Memorial Day with it’s message about the effects on our American families!!!

 “Taps”

By Jim Meyers

True the Vote, a leading voters’ rights organization, has filed suit in federal court against the Internal Revenue Service following disclosures that the IRS has been targeting the TEA Party and other Conservative groups for scrutiny.

The suit filed in Washington on Tuesday asks the court to grant True the Vote its long-awaited tax exempt status, and seeks damages “for the unlawful actions by the IRS in the processing of its application for exempt status,” the organization said in a press release.
ActRight Legal Foundation, a 501(c)3 fundamental rights and public interest law firm, represents True the Vote in the lawsuit.

“We’ve been waiting for three years to receive a decision from the IRS about our tax exempt status,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said in the release.

“After answering hundreds of questions and producing thousands of documents, we’re done waiting. The IRS does not have the power to pocket veto our application. Federal law empowers groups like True the Vote to force a decision in court — which is precisely what we aim to do.”

Cleta Mitchell, counsel to True the Vote and of counsel to ActRight Legal Foundation, stated: “We are not going to allow the IRS to claim, as it has been doing in the past week, that the targeting of conservative groups is over and ‘everything has been fixed.’ It is not yet fixed and this litigation is a vital step both to resolve True the Vote’s status and to learn exactly what happened inside the IRS.”

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV on May 14, Mitchell — who represents six groups that claim they were targeted — said she has tangible proof that high-ranking IRS officials in Washington were fully aware of the agency’s campaign to target conservative groups for heightened scrutiny.

Mitchell said she was told by a Cincinnati IRS agent that applications by two of her conservative clients were being processed by — and would ultimately be approved or denied in — Washington.

She also said she doesn’t believe the President or the White House was uninvolved in the IRS activities, as the administration has claimed.

The True the Vote release states that one count of the lawsuit seeks “recognition of True the Vote as a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization pursuant to 26 USC § 7428.”

A second count seeks “damages and injunctive relief from the IRS and IRS employees and agents, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), for violation of True the Vote’s constitutional rights by virtue of the actions of the government in unlawfully targeting and delaying recognition of True the Vote’s exempt status.”

A third count asks for injunctive relief against the IRS and IRS employees for their “unlawful intrusions” into True the Vote activities by requiring the filing of “voluminous materials with the IRS, then unlawfully inspecting and potentially disseminating the information.”

Dr. John Eastman, Chairman of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and of Counsel to ActRight Legal Foundation, said: “This is just the first of several cases ActRight Legal Foundation plans to file against the IRS and those within the agency who have violated the constitutional rights of these citizens’ organizations.

“ActRight Legal Foundation has established an IRS Litigation Fund to support the suits against the IRS. We are asking for assistance from concerned citizens nationwide to help pay the costs of bringing these cases, which will help us learn the truth about what the IRS has been doing to conservative, non-partisan organizations and patriotic American citizens.”

By JB Williams:

Who knows the whole truth about why Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty along with State Department officials Chris Stevens and Sean Smith died in Benghazi 11 September 2012?

It’s now public knowledge that the ever evolving official administration stories on Benghazi are all bold faced lies. It’s clear that the four Americans who were brutally murdered in Benghazi did not have to die. What’s not clear yet, is who is responsible for these murders? Nothing the Obama administration has told the people about Benghazi is true… but who is responsible?

General Carter Ham and Admiral Charles M. Gaouette know the answer to this question. Where are Ham and Gaouette today? Why hasn’t Issa’s investigative committee called these decorated Military officers to testify before the committee investigating Benghazi?

We have known since 30 October 2012 that these two officers…

1. Were ordered to STAND DOWN in Benghazi
2. Ignored those orders
3. Were relieved of duty for refusing orders to STAND DOWN

We know from the unclassified cables between Benghazi and DC and the subsequent Executive Brief, that cables were firing in all directions in the hours before and during the Benghazi attack that ended in the brutal death of four Americans.

General Ham was head of AFRICOM and Commander of the 2011 US-NATO operation to depose Gadhafi in Libya. Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette was in command of the Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3), then deployed in Middle Eastern waters during the attack on Benghazi.

Both Ham and Gaouette reported receiving the same desperate cables for additional security and backup that Obama administration officials received and ignored from Benghazi. They did not ignore those desperate calls for help ringing out from the Benghazi installation on 11 September 2012.

No, both Ham and Gaouette attempted to launch ready response teams in the region capable of provided the much needed assistance during the seven hour long assault on Benghazi. Both were then relieved of command for their actions, described by the US Military as “allegations of inappropriate leadership judgment.”

General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready to deploy to Benghazi. Then, General Ham received the order to stand down. His response was “screw it,” – he was going to help anyway.

Within minutes after issuing an order to deploy his ready response team, Ham’s second in command APPREHENDED the General and told him that he was now relieved of his command. Ham knows who issued the order to STAND DOWN as well as the order to relieve him of his command at AFRICOM.

Adm. Gaouette had also received the startling requests for support as the attack unfolded in Benghazi. Like Ham, he readied a response from Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3). Gaouette was also ordered to STAND DOWN and like Ham, he decided to refuse those orders. Gaouette readied vital intelligence and communications operations for an extraction effort to be launched by Ham.

Stars and Stripes reported October 18, 2012 that General Ham is being replaced by Gen. David Rodriguez. They also reported on October 27, 2012 that Adm. Gaouette is being replaced by Rear Adm. Troy M. Shoemaker. The Navy stated that it was “replacing the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment.”

What were the “inappropriate judgments” of these two decorated Military leaders? Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Navy’s chief spokesman, declined to discuss the investigation.

What we know is that these two highly unusual acts to remove two highly decorated commanders is related to the 11 September 2012 strike on Benghazi. We also know that the congressional investigation has not yet called these valiant men in to give testimony.

We know that months’ worth of warnings and requests for additional security at Benghazi we ignored and denied by the Clinton run State Department and that someone gave the DoD order to STAND DOWN when American troops were in the region and ready to assist.

We know that the Obama administration manufactured a lie about some obscure anti-Islam youtube clip that had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of 11 September 2012 Benghazi. We know that the Obama administration is holding that filmmaker in prison today. We know that Benghazi survivors have been threatened and silenced.

But most of all, we know that Gen. Ham and Adm. Gaouette can provide very real answers to a laundry list of very important questions regarding the Benghazi attacks and Issa’s alleged investigation.

On 23 April 2013, Five House Committees investigating Benghazi issued a joint Interim Progress Report. In it, all five committees fail to ask the right questions and all five demonstrate a clear intent to keep the truth about Benghazi under wraps, though the report does confirm almost everything stated herein.

The attack in Benghazi of 11 September, 2012 is now almost eight months old and yet, the truth about that attack is still a distant fog sheltered by government officials engaged in blatant obstruction of justice, made possible by the help of a totally incompetent or complicit press.

If you want to know what really happened in Benghazi, demand that Issa’s congressional committee subpoena both Gen. Ham and Adm. Gaouette to testify before the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.

And then, recall Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta once Ham and Gaouette have testified.

Someone is responsible for the murder of Americans in Benghazi and the lies that followed. That someone, in fact all who are involved in the Benghazi murder and the cover up, must be held fully accountable.

© Copyright by JB Williams, 2013. All rights reserved.

Three Words To End The IRS…”The Fair Tax”!!!

Why do attorneys tell defendants, “Never apologize”!!!???  Friday, the IRS apologized for its “inappropriate” targeting of political groups during the 2012 election, to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.   Not all political groups,…just ones with certain terms in their names – like “Patriot” or “TEA  Party.”   You know, conservative terms.

As the story snowballed, we learned that senior IRS officials knew of it as early as 2011.   And a pro-Israel group was already suing the IRS, after they were allegedly told that their views conflicted with prevailing government policy.

Conservative groups had long complained about IRS persecution, but were dismissed.   Now, the House Ways and Means Committee has demanded the IRS hand over by Wednesday every record containing those conservative terms.

You see, what the IRS calls an apology is more accurately termed a “confession.”   What they call “inappropriate,” legal experts might call “felonious.”   And if you want a simple three-word term that could end IRS abuses of power for good, try this: “The Fair Tax.”

Close the IRS,…Repeal the 16th Amendment and Replace our current Tax System.  We should STOP taxing Income, Profits and Gains,…and make EVERYONE pay into our tax revenue system when they CONSUME items or services.  “Illegal Immigrants, Prostitutes, Pimps and Bookies” and ALL other cash earners would start paying to fund our Federal government!!!

Many very wealthy people who have sold businesses, stocks and real estate in the past have moved those profits/gains to offshore bank accounts in the Grand Cayman Islands to avoid U.S. federal taxes.

Over $18 Trillion Dollars now sits in those accounts and could be brought back into our U.S. economy, if we close the IRS and repeal our current income tax system and replace it with The Fair Tax.

What would these very wealthy people do with those newly “tax-free” funds?  Invest it in our stock market, U.S. real estate and new businesses that would employ Americans in an effort to make more “tax-free” income, profits and gains!!!

We could turn America around IMMEDIATELY,…with three simple words,…”The Fair Tax”!!!

After American diplomatic facilities in Libya came under sustained assault by militia forces, the Obama administration – including the president and Secretary of State themselves – spent days insisting that the attacks were a spontaneous reaction to an obscure YouTube video that insulted the Muslim prophet Muhammed.

The intelligence community was incensed at what some called a “cover up” of the administration’s mishandling of the situation.

As more information trickled out, the administration was eventually forced to admit that the attacks that claimed the lives of Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans were acts of terrorism.

But the “cover up” hasn’t stopped there. Information continues to emerge suggesting poor preparation for the anniverary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and potential disregard for the safety of personnel there. Stevens requested a prolonged stay for a 16-member security detail there, for instance, but that request was denied.  The Obama administration owes the American people a full, honest explanation for its actions in Libya. Its rhetoric does not match reality, as Heritage’s new video indisputably shows.

An Incriminating Timeline: Obama Administration and Libya

The latest incriminating information on the U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya indicates that the State Department turned down a request for additional security from concerned U.S. embassy staff.

New evidence shows there were security threats in Libya in the months prior to the deadly September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Despite these threats, the State Department left its personnel there to fend for themselves.

And when the terrorist attack did take place, the Obama Administration peddled the ridiculous story that an offensive, amateurish, anti-Islam YouTube video was to blame in order to avoid characterizing the murders of four Americans as terrorism.

Read more of the story and see the video evidence at this link:  http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2012/10/cia-agents-confirm-obama-told-them-not-to-aid-ambassador-chris-stevens-the-white-house-disinformation-campaign-on-libya-2445322.html

Justice Department secretly obtained AP phone records

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an Al Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP’s source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.”

Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual and largely unprecedented.

In the letter notifying the AP received Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Pruitt’s letter and attorneys for the AP. The records were presumably obtained from phone companies earlier this year although the government letter did not explain that. None of the information provided by the government to the AP suggested the actual phone conversations were monitored.

Among those whose phone numbers were obtained were five reporters and an editor who were involved in the May 7, 2012 story.

The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media and has brought six cases against people suspected of leaking classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.

Justice Department published rules require that subpoenas of records from news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained though subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.

Spokesmen in Machen’s office and at the Justice Department had no immediate comment on Monday.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/13/justice-department-secretly-obtains-ap-phone-records/#ixzz2TDNwAJPH

The Antrim County Republican Women is hosting their monthly meeting on Monday, May 13th, 2013 at 12 p.m. (Noon) at the Pelican Inn in Central Lake, MI.

The Luncheon’s cost is $15.  Guest speaker will be Antrim County Republican Party Chairman, Randy Bishop who will be making a presentation regarding “Agenda – Grinding America Down” and “Agenda 21 – The History and Future of Northern Michigan”.

A short trailer can be viewed at this link: http://vimeo.com/13722147

Please come join us to be informed and network with other Antrim County Republican Women.

Link for driving directions: http://binged.it/13iw3gB