Saving Our Family Business From the Government

Amy Herrig / Townhall Columnist 

 

(Editor’s Note: The author is vice president of Gas Pipe, Inc., a Texas company faced with extinction because of a civil asset forfeiture to the federal government of more than $16 million. 

Neither Herrig nor her father, Gas Pipe founder Jerry Shults, have been charged with any criminal offense. The U.S. Department of Justice has alleged that people associated with their business were selling what it calls ‘synthetic marijuana,’ an allegation Shults and his daughter deny.)

My dad, Jerry Shults, was born and raised in San Antonio, TX. He was the youngest of seven children and came from very humble beginnings. After graduating high school and attending college for a short period, he volunteered for the Air Force and served in Vietnam. There, he defended the American base at Khe Sahn during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Following the battle, he was awarded the Bronze Star for valor and the Army Accommodation Medal for his support of the Army Air Cavalry.

After coming home from the war, Jerry moved to Dallas and began selling novelty items - clothing, pipes, and so forth - at pop festivals throughout Texas. Soon after, he opened the first Gas Pipe store on Maple Avenue in Dallas, using as venture capital the money he saved while in Vietnam. The first location had the gas pipes exposed in the ceiling, accounting for the store’s name.

Jerry was always an entrepreneur and in 1980, the second Gas Pipe was opened in North Dallas. He also started slowly acquiring real estate around the Dallas area during that time, expanding his investment and income possibilities. Gas Pipe also added two more stores, in Arlington, TX and Austin.

An avid fisherman, Jerry made several trips to Alaska over the years, staying at various lodges.

Combining his love of fishing and entrepreneurism, he built Rapids Camp Lodge in 1994, realizing his dream Alaska wilderness fishing experience. At about the same time, Jerry also achieved his goal of opening the first Gas Pipe outside of Texas - in Albuquerque, NM. That was followed by additional stores in Austin and a second Albuquerque outlet.

The Gas Pipe did start out as what many people in the 1970s would call a “head shop,” but over the years the product lines increased to include casual clothing, sporting goods, gifts and novelties, cards and candles, and yes, smoking supplies. Our slogan, “Your Peace, Love, and Smoke Headquarters,” reflects the unique lifestyle of our stores and patrons must be over 18 years of age to enter. It was my father’s business and it thrived.

What If a Death Panel Evaluated Obamacare Itself?

John C. Goodman / Townhall Columnist

 

One of the most controversial features of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was the desire on the part of many of its backers to subject medical decisions to a “cost effectiveness” standard. In a nut shell, that means asking of various medical procedures if the addition to good health or life expectancy they promise is worth what they cost.

But if it’s good to ask that question about a medical procedure, isn’t it equally good to ask the same question about the entire Obamacare program? When we do it turns out that Obamacare fails the test.

To a lot of Americans, comparing health care outcomes with their money cost is an abhorrent idea.

But in his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, Tom Daschle, President Obama’s first choice to head the Department of Health and Human Resources, said that such health care rationing is essential if we are to control costs. Daschle pointed to Britain as a country that routinely does what he had in mind.

According to a 2002 World Health Organization report, 25,000 cancer patients die prematurely in Britain each year -- often because of lack of access to drugs generally available in the United States and Europe. (See also this 2013 NHS estimate on all causes of premature deaths.)

So how do the British determine who gets what in their health system? As Aaron Carrol writes:

Other countries routinely use cost-effectiveness data to make decisions about health coverage. In Britain, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, a government agency that gives guidance about which services the National Health Service should cover, has a threshold of 20,000 to 30,000 pounds per QALY (about $31,000 to $47,000).

They don’t make decisions on whether to cover therapies based on this number alone, but it is certainly considered a factor.

Obamas Dine at Highly Exclusive Restaurant in Hawaii

By Sean Piccoli / NEWSMAX

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The first couple kicked off the new year with dinner on Thursday at an exclusive Honolulu restaurant that offers $500,000 memberships and boasts $1 billion in artwork and furnishings, The Hill reports.

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama dined at Vintage Cave, an underground foodie lair that seats 32 people and where meals for non-members start at $295 a person, not including wine, the Daily Mail reports.

White House pool reports on the Obamas' meals didn't detail what they ate, but the highly rated restaurant's exotic menu includes caviar, foie gras, brioche, quail egg topped with black truffle, and caramelized white chocolate.

Honolulu Magazine writes that Vintage Cave, bankrolled by a billionaire Japanese developer, is "not accessible to 99 percent of the population."

"It's not difficult to see why," the Daily Caller reports, "what with an entryway adorned with antique Galle lamps — costing $850,000 apiece — and walls composed of 150,000 antique-style bricks and floors of granite sourced from the mountains of India."

Related Stories:

• Serendipity: Press Bus Tailing Obama in Hawaii Breaks Down
• Another Day of Golf For Obama, Joined by Malaysian Leader

Islamic State using US-made anti-tank missiles

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

I have documented for years the flow of America weapons into the hands of the Islamic State. This is not new.

This is a pattern — US arms and aid have been falling into the hands of the Islamic State for over a year. Obama has been supporting these savages – here and here.

Not only did Obama help create the Islamic State by withdrawing precipitously from Iraq; he also gave the “moderates” in Syria weapons, but they weren’t moderates, and they turned over their weapons to the Islamic State, or in some cases the Islamic State captured them. The Islamic State has won some of its victories with help from American weaponry, and Obama continues to arm them.

 

The Obama nightmare continues, and the enemedia scrubs.

“Islamic...

Read the whole entry »

    

Egypt’s Sisi: Islamic “thinking” is “antagonizing the entire world”

Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch [Via RaymondIbrahim.com]

Speaking before Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry on New Year’s Day, 2015, in connection to Prophet Muhammad’s upcoming birthday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date on the subject.

Among other things, Sisi said that the “corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years” are  “antagonizing the entire world”; that it is not “possible that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world’s Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live”; and that Egypt (or the Islamic world in its entirety) “is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

The relevant excerpt from Sisi’s speech follows (translation by Michele Antaki):

I am referring here to the religious clerics.   We have to think hard about what we are facing—and I have, in fact, addressed this topic a couple of times before.  It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma[Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!

That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it it from a more enlightened perspective.

I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

Note: It is unclear if in the last instance of umma Sisi is referring to Egypt (“the nation”) or if he is using it in the pan-Islamic sense as he did initially to refer to the entire Islamic world.

Egyptian government accused of having double standards and failing to protect Copts in Libya

Egyptian writer charged for tweet "defaming" Islam

 

Mike Rogers: Obama Weakens Intel as Terror Threats Multiply

 

By James Morrison / Newsmax

 

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The Obama administration is crippling the United States' spy service with regulations as terrorist threats to U.S. interests soar “off the charts,” a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee charged in a wide-ranging interview about America’s shadow war with Islamic militants.

“We have this big, growing problem, and we have handcuffed our capabilities, one arm behind our back,” Mike Rogers, a Republican congressman from Michigan for 14 years, told The Daily Beast.

He called for more intelligence officers and more paramilitary forces to fight the Islamic State and other militant groups that have pledged allegiance to the terrorist army, which still controls vast areas of Iraq and Syria despite U.S. airstrikes that have killed some of its leaders and disrupted some of its operations.

The U.S.-led coalition Thursday launched its heaviest round of strikes on the ISIS-held Syrian town of Raqqa since the terrorists captured a Jordanian fighter pilot on Dec. 24, Fox News reported.

Rogers advocates greater autonomy for the CIA and special-operations forces in Syria and a robust expansion of intelligence services.

“If we don’t want the 101st Airborne Division fighting all over the world, and I don’t, then we need a capability to leverage up these other countries’ counterterrorism capabilities,” he said.

“So, I believe in that regard, our paramilitary division needed to have more resources,” something he supported as intelligence chairman but wants to see continue.

He complained that President Barack Obama’s National Security Council is exerting too much control over what should be tactical decisions made by commanders on the ground.

“They are trying to micromanage this whole thing,” he said. “It’s more like stomping a fire out with your foot.”

Rogers warned that terrorist threats against “U.S. interests and Western interests are off the charts” and that half of the 21 known al-Qaida affiliates are “now talking about supporting ISIS.”

NSC spokesman Ned Price disputed Rogers’ accusations, insisting that the White House leaves “tactical targeting decisions” to the “operational agencies to ensure their agility and effectiveness.”

Rogers retired from Congress after seven terms and is scheduled to debut as a radio talk-show host on Monday. The show, syndicated through Westwood One, is titled “Something to Talk About.”

RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS...LIVE...TODAY

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