Dayhoff Westminster Soundtrack: 11/01/2013

Saturday, November 30, 2013

#andymelissa2013 Wedding guests dance to New York New York

#KED #Westminster

Melissa and Andy entertain the wedding guests #andymelissa2013

#KED #Westminster

#andymelissa2013 Table 12 After toasts by Christiana and Benito we share dinner

#KED #Westminster

#andymelissa2013 After wedding conference with Rev.Dave Kieffer

#KED #Westminster

#andymelissa2013 Prayerful consideration after wedding vows have been exchanged

#KED #Westminster

#andymelissa2013 The wedding message based on Revelation 21 It's a great share

#KED #Westminster

#andymelissa2013 The wedding ceremony is quite lovely. What a wonderful couple.

#KED #Westminster

#andymelissa2013 wedding is about to begin. We're excited for them

#KED #Westminster

Friday, November 29, 2013

License Plate Readers Force Privacy Debate in States

License Plate Readers Force Privacy Debate in States: "By Maggie Clark, Staff Writer

A police officer prepares to go out on patrol using a license plate reader, which photographs license plates and then compares them with those in a database of stolen vehicles. Some states are considering limits on how long police can keep the data. (AP)

Police have used cameras that read the license plates on passing cars to locate missing people in California, murderers in Georgia and hit-and-run drivers in Missouri.

The book-sized license plate readers (LPRs) are mounted on police cars, road signs or traffic lights. The images they capture are translated into computer-readable text and compiled into a list of plate numbers, which can run into the millions. Then police compare the numbers against the license plates of stolen cars, drivers wanted on bench warrants or people involved in missing person cases."

Read more: http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/license-plate-readers-spark-privacy-public-safety-debate-85899521301?utm_campaign=20131125_StatelineWeekly.html&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
... 'via Blog this'

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Uncle Kevin and Olivia share a Thanksgiving moment toether

#KED #Westminster

Carroll Co YMCA Thanksgiving Turkey Trot 5K finish line

#KED #Westminster

Carroll Co YMCA Thanksgiving Turkey Trot 5K finish line

#KED #Westminster

Westminster Fire Dept helps out Carroll Co YMCA Thanksgiving Turkey Trot

#KED #Westminster

Westminster Fire Dept helps out Carroll Co YMCA Thanksgiving Turkey Trot

#KED #Westminster

Carroll Co. YMCA Turkey Trot is about to begin. Happy Thanksgiving

#KED #Westminster

Carroll Co. YMCA Turkey Trot is about to begin. Happy Thanksgiving

#KED #Westminster

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Thanksgiving major surgery on the netbook continues...

#KED #Westminster

Uncle Kevin and Nora share a moment at Thanksgiving at Willis St

#KED #Westminster

Macaroni and cheese is my favorite Thanksgiving tradition.

#KED #Westminster

Macaroni and cheese is my favorite Thanksgiving tradition.

#KED #Westminster

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Looking forward to the annual Westminster YMCA Turkey Trot 5K

November 28, 2013 Westminster YMCA Turkey Trot

http://www.slideshare.net/kevindayhoff/20131128-y-turkey-trot-papers

http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2013/09/westminster-maryland-online.html

http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2013/08/fw-registration-is-open-for-y-turkey.html

Labels: Sports Running, Sports Running Y Turkey Trot Charity 5K, YMCA - See more at: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2013/08/fw-registration-is-open-for-y-turkey.html#sthash.YP925ujL.dpuf

Registration for the 2013 Y Turkey Trot Charity 5K is officially open and we invite you to be among the thousands who will kick-off their Thanksgiving Day family tradition with the Y!

This year you may choose to participate in one of five races around Central Maryland including two new locations:

As you may know, the Y Turkey Trot is a charitable event. The proceeds (about $12 per entry) help children throughout Central Maryland whose families live in poverty, enjoy enriching Y programs.

Your participation in this event gives you a chance to demonstrate your commitment to your community and help us put more "Thanks" and "Giving" in Thanksgiving! Plus, the Y Turkey Trot Charity 5K is a great way to spend fun quality time with family and friends before digging into a glorious feast!

We'll see you at the starting line!

20131128 Y Turkey Trot 5K

YMCA, Carroll County, Westminster, running, walking, 5K running, Thanksgiving

http://www.scribd.com/doc/172011737/November-28-2013-Westminster-YMCA-Turkey-Trot

http://www.slideshare.net/kevindayhoff/20131128-y-turkey-trot-papers

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Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

Patuxent Publishing Co., The Carroll Eagle: www.explorecarroll.com: http://www.explorecarroll.com/search/?s=Dayhoff&action=GO
The Tentacle: www.thetentacle.com http://www.thetentacle.com/author.cfm?MyAuthor=41

Westminster Patch: http://westminster.patch.com/search?keywords=Dayhoff

Soundtrack: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.net/
Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ or http://kevindayhoffart.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.com/
Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/ or http://www.westgov.net/ = www.kevindayhoff.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoffTwitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net

Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com
My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/
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New York Times: U.S. Flies B-52s Through China’s Expanded Air Defense Zone

BREAKING NEWS Tuesday, November 26, 2013 12:47 PM EST

U.S. Flies B-52s Through China’s Expanded Air Defense Zone

Two long-range American bombers have conducted what Pentagon officials described Tuesday as a routine training mission through international air space recently claimed by China as its “air defense identification zone.”

The Chinese government said Saturday that it has the right to identify, monitor and possibly take military action against aircraft that enter the area, which includes sea and islands also claimed by Japan. The claim threatens to escalate an already tense dispute over some of the maritime territory.

American officials said the pair of B-52s carried out a mission that had been planned long in advance of the Chinese announcement this past weekend, and that the United States military would continue to assert its right to fly through what it regards as international air space.

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Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ or http://kevindayhoffart.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.com/ Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/ or http://www.westgov.net/ = www.kevindayhoff.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoff Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net Explore Carroll: www.explorecarroll.com The Tentacle: www.thetentacle.com

Daily Grind: Fed's $1 trillion a year subsidy to banks to continue under Yellen's watch

Nov. 26, 2013

Fed's $1 trillion a year subsidy to banks to continue under Yellen's watchWith no filibuster, the Senate is set to rubber stamp Janet Yellen as the next Fed head, meanwhile, the American people and their representatives have no idea which banks foreign and domestic are benefitting from the Fed's $1 trillion annual subsidy.

A Life LineHarry Reid seems to have thrown not much of a life line to Democrats.

The 17th Amendment: 100 years laterAny elementary social studies student can tell you that the Senate is the "legislative cooling saucer" and the voice of the smaller, less powerful states. Now compromised on both fronts, it is worth repeating Thomas Jefferson's query: What exactly is the purpose of the Senate?

Crudele: On false job numbers, did the White House know?"Did White House know about fabricated and manipulated job numbers before 2012 election?"

Fed's $1 trillion a year subsidy to banks to continue under Yellen's watch

By Robert Romano

With the filibuster against most presidential nominees now eliminated — well, sort of, Senate Democrats did not actually amend the rules, they just voted to pretend they don't exist — the confirmation of Janet Yellen to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve is all but certain.

Which is too bad.

Of all nominees, blocking cloture on Yellen could have been worthwhile. With the Fed creating $85 billion a month in its quantitative easing programs, the Senate has no business confirming any Fed chair until it and the whole country knows more about the policy.

Specifically, the American people and their representatives have no idea which banks are benefitting from the Fed's $1 trillion annual subsidy.

The only way to know will be if there is a regular audit of the practice, since all that can be seen now is by how much the central bank's balance sheet of securities is expanding — telling us very little about who is receiving the money?

In the last one-time audit of the Fed under Dodd-Frank in 2010, it was ascertained that of the $877.3 billion of mortgage bonds the central bank had purchased that were included in the audit, some $442.7 billion — more than half — were bought from foreign banks.

These included $127.5 billion given to MBS Credit Suisse (Switzerland), $117.8 billion to Deutsche Bank (Germany), $63.1 billion to Barclays Capital (UK), $55.5 billion to UBS Securities (Switzerland), $27 billion to BNP Paribas (France), $24.4 billion to the Royal Bank of Scotland (UK), and $22.2 billion to Nomura Securities (Japan). Another $4.2 billion was given to the Royal Bank of Canada, and $917 million to Mizuho Securities (Japan).

According to the Federal Reserve, the securities were purchased at "Current face value of the securities, which is the remaining principal balance of the underlying mortgages." These were not loans, but outright purchases, a direct bailout of foreign firms that had bet poorly on U.S. housing.

According to the New York Fed's website, the purpose of the program was to "foster improved conditions in financial markets." But whose financial markets were we really propping up? The United States', or foreign countries'?

The $442.7 billion overseas was just a snapshot in time. The last transactions covered in the audit date all the way back to July 2010.

Since then, say, July 8 of that year, the Fed has bought another whopping $1.689 trillion of securities. And we have no idea where the central bank bought the securities from — because the practice is not audited.

If the previous audit was any indication, one presumes about 50.4 percent of the $1.689 trillion of purchases — more than $851 billion — has gone to foreign banks. But then again, who knows?

As for the $1.36 trillion of treasuries the Fed has bought since the financial crisis began in Aug. 2007, we have no idea which banks received that money.

How can Senators make an informed decision about who should serve as Fed chair overseeing a $1 trillion a year bank subsidy when they themselves have no idea where the money is even going?

Were there still a filibuster, this would have been a ripe issue for Senate Republicans to block against any Fed nominee until there is legislation providing for an annual audit of Fed securities purchases.

The fact is, the Fed's $1 trillion a year bank subsidy to banks will be continuing for the foreseeable future under Yellen's stewardship. If we're really going to still be bailing out banks more than five years after the financial crisis, shouldn't the practice at least be transparent?

It is bad enough that Congress ceded its constitutional, legislative powers over monetary policy 100 years ago to the Fed. The American people and their representatives should at least be allowed to analyze the institution's policies which have such a dramatic impact on our economic well being.

Is that really asking too much?

Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.

A Life Line

By A. F. Branco

The 17th Amendment: 100 years later

By Tom Toth

Since its original design, the United States Senate has undergone two integrally related transformations in design and purpose.

In 1913, states voted away their federal legislative voice by ratifying the 17^th Amendment to the Constitution, changing the appointment of Senators to a direct election.

Under the original bicameral design of the United States legislature, the Senate was the voice of the individual, co-equal states of the union and its members were appointed by state legislatures to represent the interests of the state. The House of Representatives was conversely designed to be the complimentary voice of the people, where members from relatively small districts face election by their neighbors every 24 months.

The existence of the Senate as a second chamber of Congress was the great Constitutional compromise for small states who would have been rendered powerless to the political wills of the larger states in the union. The 17^th Amendment ended this compromise.

Direct elections shift the political motivation of the individual Senator from representing the interests of his or her state to representing the same electorate as the House of Representatives, using the same device of election, changing the purpose and makeup of the Senate as a legislative body.

As with any change in the law, Constitutional amendments have consequences. If the 17^th Amendment were removed and Senators were representing the states, members of the Senate would be intimately familiar in the civil affairs of their states and there would conceivably be no unfunded mandates allowed to be imposed upon states from the federal government. Further, local elections would have tangible ramifications over the national political landscape resulting in greater individual civic engagement.

Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as a Minister in France during the Constitutional Convention, inquired of George Washington why the delegates to the convention had created the Senate. Washington responded famously, "Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?" "To cool it," said Jefferson. "Even so," responded Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it."

In 2013, the Senate abandoned its role as the "legislative cooling saucer" when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the compliant members of his party unilaterally suspended minority power in the Senate by destroying filibuster rule for virtually all presidential nominees. The filibuster is the sole means by which the minority party in the Senate can practice legislative oversight as a governing check and balance by continuing debate until a 60-vote cloture agreement can be made. Once removed, not only do states have no representation, but neither do the nation's minority voices.

There was a common notion among the nation's framers that the deliberative process (often called "gridlock" today) is beneficial for the long-term health of the republic as a preventative protection against radical change. Conversely, "Progressives," by virtue of even their self-assumed title, resist the very notion of gridlock when they are in power. They practice public policy as if the greater good is only achievable when the "progressives'" notion of forward progress is constantly being made, otherwise their work as statesmen is irrelevant. The filibuster, a staple of Senatorial deliberations, is the tool of practical deliberation that, although frustrating for the majority party, ensures a layer of protection against bad policy. It exists to keep simple mob rule from dominating deliberations in the small, powerful legislative body.

Harry Reid stated on the morning he changed the Senate rules that action was necessary for the chamber to "evolve" in order "to remain relevant." Killing the filibuster, no matter how shortsighted politically, is the only expedient option for the left if "progress" is challenged on any significant scale. Republicans stood in the way of progress, and evolution became a necessity.

If kept, this rule change will mark as significant a fundamental transformation in the Senate as the 17^thAmendment.

Contextualizing the Senate in the light of its original design, then, what is the purpose of the Senate's modern existence? The people already have direct legislative representation in the House of Representatives. The states have no federal representation from either chamber. Now, Presidential appointments can be passed by simple majority fiat and any other filibuster rules are one motion from a majority vote away from nonexistence.

Any elementary social studies student can tell you that the Senate is the "legislative cooling saucer" and the voice of the smaller, less powerful states. Now compromised on both fronts, this observer repeats Jefferson's query: What exactly is the purpose of the Senate?

Tom Toth is the Social Media Director for Americans for Limited Government.

ALG Editor's Note: In the following featured column from the New York Post, John Crudele asks what the White House knew and when did it know it on the Census Bureau's false unemployment numbers:

On false job numbers, did the White House know?

By John Crudele

Let me be the first to ask: Did the White House know that employment reports were being falsified?

Last week I reported exclusively that someone at the Census Bureau's Philadelphia region had been screwing around with employment data. And that person, after he was caught in 2010, claimed he was told to do so by a supervisor two levels up the chain of command.

On top of that, a reliable source whom I haven't identified said the falsification of employment data by Census was widespread and ongoing, especially around the time of the 2012 election.

There's now a congressional investigation of how Census handles employment data. And we can hope that we'll find out this was just an isolated incident.

But let me tell you why it might not be.

Back in 2009 — right before the 2010 census of the nation was taken — there was an announcement that the Obama administration had decided that the Census Bureau would report to senior White House aides.

The rumor was that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was in charge of the nationwide head count.

Get full story here.

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No rise in Mass attendance for American Catholics, despite pope's popularity | Reuters

No rise in Mass attendance for American Catholics, despite pope's popularity | Reuters:

"BY LAILA KEARNEY Tue Nov 26, 2013 "

No rise in Mass attendance for American Catholics, despite pope's popularity

(Reuters) - The popularity of Pope Francis, who became pontiff in March, has failed to draw more U.S. Catholics to attend Mass, according to a Pew Research Center poll released on Monday.

'via Blog this'

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Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:

Westminster Patch: http://westminster.patch.com/search?keywords=Dayhoff

Winter storm lashes eastern U.S., threatens Thanksgiving travel | Reuters

Winter storm lashes eastern U.S., threatens Thanksgiving travel | Reuters: "BY IAN SIMPSON WASHINGTON Tue Nov 26, 2013 "

Winter storm lashes eastern U.S., threatens Thanksgiving travel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm lashed much of the eastern United States with rain and snow on Tuesday, threatening to snarl travel plans for millions over the busy Thanksgiving holiday, forecasters said.

'via Blog this'

In California, a vision of Republicans' challenge on immigration

CERES, California (Reuters) - For most Republicans in the U.S. Congress, a large gathering of Hispanic voters to discuss immigration would be politically perilous - an invitation to complaints about the party's longtime resistance to measures aimed at helping undocumented immigrants.

Florida Republican party calls on Congressman Radel to resign

(Reuters) - The Republican Party of Florida called on Republican Congressman Henry "Trey" Radel on Monday to resign after he pleaded guilty last week to a misdemeanor charge of cocaine possession.

Seven wounded in Oakland shooting, police say

(Reuters) - A shooting in a residential area of Oakland left seven people wounded on Monday evening, police said.

No rise in Mass attendance for American Catholics, despite pope's popularity

(Reuters) - The popularity of Pope Francis, who became pontiff in March, has failed to draw more U.S. Catholics to attend Mass, according to a Pew Research Center poll released on Monday.

Insight: A new wave of U.S. mortgage trouble threatens

(Reuters) - U.S. borrowers are increasingly missing payments on home equity lines of credit they took out during the housing bubble, a trend that could deal another blow to the country's biggest banks.

U.S. government plan adjusts 2014 risk payments for health insurers

(Reuters) - The U.S. government has issued a proposal that would likely increase risk payments in 2014 to health insurers offering plans on the Obamacare exchanges after the companies complained a recent policy change allowing people to keep their insurance policies had changed the financial equation.

Connecticut school shooting probe ends with gunman's motive unknown

NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) - Around the time of the massacre of children at an elementary school in Connecticut last December, gunman Adam Lanza was living an isolated existence, communicating with his mother by email only even though they lived in the same house.

Wife of American pastor imprisoned in Iran fears for his life

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - The Idaho wife of an Iranian-American Christian pastor imprisoned in Iran said on Monday she felt betrayed and feared for her husband's life after the Obama administration failed to secure his release as a condition of an Iranian nuclear deal.

California university president says he 'failed' black student in hate crimes case

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The president of a California university said on Monday that he "failed" a black student whose roommates have been charged with hate crimes and battery for allegedly clamping a bicycle lock on his neck and weeks of harassment.