They have just hired a production manager and are presently in over 40 stores hoping to exceed their target of 50 plus by year end.
After the first of the year Sweet Tammy's intends to refurbish the blog site and be in the position of taking e mail orders again.
The demand for their products is accelerating. Building a national brand remains their ultimate goal!
Their accomplishments testify to the fact that extraordinary hard work ( sweat equity,) a willingness to accept sound counsel combined with a superior product and a local banker with vision remain the ingredients for success.
Sweet Tammy's was not one of Obama's shovel ready green projects and the tax payers have not lost a dime. Without government involvement, Sweet Tammy's has hired seven people and expanded their ability to meet increasing demand by purchasing Italian baking equipment because American companies no longer make such.
Get government out of the way Obama. Get government off the backs of young American entrepreneurs. Leave them alone. This is the message I get from Sweet Tammy's .
Maybe one day the owners of Sweet Tammy will become rich and you and the 'it takes a village' lady running for the Senate by the name of Warren, can tax them to death and transfer their wealth to the more deserving.
That is the changed 'American Way' Obama envisions for us.
Re-elect him at our peril! (See 1 below.)
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Muslim students found guilty of purposely disrupting Amb. Oren's speech on a Cal. University campus, lamented the verdict claiming it proved Islamophobia is alive in America. The verdict, they claim, proves their right to disrupt another's speech is a violation of their right to free speech. They obviously never heard of Justices Holmes and Black or read any of their opinions on the limits to free speech.
As the U.S. Arab - Muslim population expands get prepared for more aberrant behaviour and ultimate violence from the more radical elements. Chaos is the tactic employed by all demagogues and fascistic brutes.
It was the way of The Klan, Black Panthers, Germany's Brown Shirts, union goons and those of their ilk.
I salute the county attorney for bringing charges, pursuing them and gaining the convictions as well as those on the jury who heard the evidence and rendered their opinion.
As for the convicted students, I would suggest they beat their heads against a brick wall. (See 2 below)
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No sooner had I written about the liberal media being a shill for Obama then I learned, from a credible source, their characterization of Obama's 'praiseworthy'
U.N. speech was given after extracting more concessions from Netayahu regarding future discussions with Abbas.
I was told Obama threatened to withhold America's threatened veto if Netanyahu did not agree to more concessions.
That said an op ed in a Liberal Israel newspaper suggests Obama will now turn his attention to his re-election because of Netanyahu's obstinancy and that Russia and The Quartet will now take the lead to Israel's detriment.
Then another view from a Nobel Winner.
Time will tell which version is correct. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)In Arizona, nibbling away at free enterprise
By George F. Will
Cindy Vong is a tiny woman with a problem as big as the government that is causing it. She wants to provide a service that will enable customers “to brighten up their days.” Having fish nibble your feet may not be your idea of fun, but lots of people around the world enjoy it, and so did some Arizonans until their bossy government butted in, in the service of a cartel. Herewith a story that illustrates how governments that will not mind their own business impede the flourishing of businesses.
Vong, 47, left Vietnam in 1982, and after stops in Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, settled in San Francisco and lived there for 20 years before coming here to open a nail salon with a difference. Her salon offered $30 fish therapy, wherein small fish from China nibble dead skin from people’s feet. Arizona’s Board of Cosmetology decided the fish were performing pedicures, and because all pedicure instruments must be sterilized and fish cannot be, the therapy must be discontinued. Vong lost her more-than-$50,000 investment in fish tanks and other equipment, and some customers. Three of her employees lost their jobs.
The plucky litigators at the Goldwater Institute are representing Vong in arguing that the Constitution protects the individual’s right to earn a living free from unreasonable regulations. In a 1932 case (overturning an Oklahoma law requiring a new ice company to prove a “public need” for it), the U.S. Supreme Court said that the law’s tendency was to “foster monopoly in the hands of existing establishments.” The court also said:
“The principle is imbedded in our constitutional system that there are certain essentials of liberty with which the state is not entitled to dispense. . . . The theory of experimentation in censorship [is] not permitted to interfere with the fundamental doctrine of the freedom of the press. The opportunity to apply one’s labor and skill in an ordinary occupation with proper regard for all reasonable regulations is no less entitled to protection.”
Unfortunately, soon after 1932, New Deal progressivism washed over the courts, which became derelict regarding their duty to protect economic liberty. Courts deferred to governments eager to experiment with economic micromanagement. Inevitably, this became regulation in the service of existing interests. And regulatory agencies often succumbed to “regulatory capture,” whereby regulated businesses and professions dominate regulatory bodies. Arizona’s Board of Cosmetology consists mostly of professional cosmetologists.
In the Cato Institute’s journal Regulation, Timothy Sandefur of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation examines how “certificate of necessity” (CON) laws stifle opportunity and competition. For example, Michael Munie of St. Louis has a federal license for his moving business to operate across state lines, but when he tried to expand his business to operate throughout Missouri he discovered that state law requires him to somehow prove in advance that there is a “public need” for his business outside St. Louis.
Who, Sandefur wonders, could have proved 20 years ago that Americans would support a nationwide chain of coffee shops called Starbucks? And in 1985, experts at Coca-Cola thought they knew the public wanted New Coke.
CON laws began with early-20th-century progressives who, like their ideological descendants today, thought that resources should be allocated not by markets but by clever, disinterested experts — themselves.
As Sandefur says, the toll on opportunity is obvious: “Requiring an unknown dreamer, with no political connections, reputation with consumers, or allies among local business magnates to persuade a government board to let him open a new business can often be a prohibitive cost.”
Such laws often are explicitly biased against new businesses. In Illinois, someone wanting to open a car dealership must get a certificate from the Motor Vehicle Review Board, and if any existing dealer objects, the board must consider, among other things, “the effect of an additional franchise . . . upon the existing” dealers and “the permanency of the investment of the objecting motor vehicle dealer.”
When in March Florida’s legislature considered a bill to end licensing requirements for 20 professions, including interior design, the interior design cartel, eager to restrict entry into the profession, got a professor of interior design to ask legislators: “Do you know the color schemes that affect your salivation, your autonomic nervous system?”
In regard to her concern over unsanitary hospital fabrics, a Tampa interior designer warned the panel: “What you’re basically doing is contributing to 88,000 deaths every year.”
Fatal color schemes? Who knew. This overwrought designer should calm down, perhaps by having some fish nibble her feet.
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2)Muslim students guilty of disrupting Jewish speaker
Jurors found 10 Muslim students guilty Friday of disrupting a lecture by the Israeli ambassador at a California university in a case that stoked a spirited debate about free speech.
Jurors delivered the verdicts in Orange County Superior Court in the case involving a speech by Ambassador Michael Oren in February 2010 at the University of California, Irvine. The students were also convicted of conspiring to disrupt Oren's speech.
They were charged with misdemeanor counts after standing up, one by one, and shouting prepared statements at Oren such as "propagating murder is not an expression of free speech."
About 150 people, including relatives and supporters of the students and Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, attended the verdict. Some community members gasped and started crying when the verdict was read and about a dozen of them walked out. The students showed little reaction but later huddled with their attorneys and shared hugs with family and friends.
Shakeel Syed of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California said he was shocked.
"This is yet another reaffirmation that Islamophobia is intensely and extensively alive and thriving in Orange County," he said. "I believe this will be used as precedent now to suppress speech and dissent throughout the country. This is the beginning of the death of democracy."
Prosecutors said the students broke the law by interrupting Oren's speech on U.S.-Israel relations and cutting short the program, despite calls to behave from campus officials. Defense attorneys argued the students had a right to protest.
Nearly 200 people packed the courtroom to hear closing arguments at the trial that some community members called a waste of taxpayers' money and an effort to single out the defendants because they are Muslim.
Prosecutor Dan Wagner told jurors the students acted as censors to block the free flow of ideas and infringed upon the rights of 700 people who had gone to the Irvine campus to hear Oren.
Wagner showed video footage of university officials pleading with students to behave, but they kept interrupting the lecture. Wagner also showed e mails sent among members of UC Irvine's Muslim Student Union planning the disruption and calculating who was willing to get arrested.
Defense attorneys countered there were no hard rules for the speech, and the students might have been discourteous but didn't break the law.
Lawyer Reem Salahi, who represents two of the defendants, said the demonstration was modeled after a series of protests at UC Irvine and elsewhere in which students shouted at lecturers but weren't arrested.
She said the students never intended to halt Oren's speech entirely but wanted to express their views on the Israeli government's actions in Gaza.
During the case, attorneys showed dueling pie charts breaking down how much time the students demonstrated, how long their supporters cheered and how much time Oren spoke. The evidence was intended to show whether the meeting suffered a significant disruption.
Attorneys for the students -- who attended UC Irvine and nearby University of California, Riverside -- argued before the trial that charges should never have been filed and that the issue was already handled on campus.
In 2010, the students were cited, released and disciplined at UC Irvine, which revoked the Muslim Student Union's charter for a quarter and placed it on two years of probation.
Earlier this year, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas filed criminal charges against 11 students, prompting an outcry from the American Civil Liberties Union and a host of Jewish, Muslim and campus groups. Charges against one defendant later were dropped.
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3)Pyrrhic Victory: Bibi won, Israel lost
Op-ed: Netanyahu defeated Obama, prompting America to give up its lead role in peace process
By Orly Azoulay
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won: He proved that on the American court, in an election year, political trickery and provoking the Jewish street in the US can make a president capitulate.
In his speech at the United Nations, President Barack Obama wholly adopted the Israeli narrative and erased the Palestinian people’s hope. Netanyahu, even if he did not intend to do so, proved that the US can no longer serve as an honest broker in the Middle East; at least not during Obama’s current term in office.
However, Netanyahu’s win is Pyrrhic victory, because the moment Obama gave up the Quartet was drawn into the vacuum: The Quartet is the one that urged the sides to launch negotiations, it is the one that will have progress presented to it, and it is the one that invited the parties to a festive conference in Moscow.
The lead role shifted to the Quartet’s hands. The US is there, yet not as the leader of the process, but rather, as one partner out of four.
Obama divorced the Middle East, and until November at least we shall not see him acting aggressively in a bid to secure Israeli-Palestinian peace, which he pledged to do upon entering the White House. The president is frustrated by and tired of the Mideastern bazaar forced upon him. He finalized the divorce in his General Assembly speech, using pretty words that are empty of all substance to blur the sense of revulsion.
From now on, the rules of the game shall change: No longer will only the White House speak out; now, the Kremlin shall speak out as well. Even before the ink dried on the Quartet’s declaration, it turned out that Russia rejected the possibility of the document including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Medvedev’s and Putin’s agenda is different; so are their interests.
US lead good for Israel
At the beginning of the road, Obama positioned himself as an honest broker: He vowed to ensure Israel’s security but was also attentive to the Palestinians. With all the criticism leveled at Barack Hussein Obama in Jerusalem, he was better for Israel. Netanyahu disqualified America as an honest broker the moment he forced the president to give up too much.
Through the years of the peace process, the State of Israel preferred to see the US leading it. Indeed, it was always better for Israel to have the Americans as judge, mediator, compensator and the party that prepares its lawns for ceremonies.
Even when the American power is sinking, it is still the one that provides Israel with bunker-busting bombs and rejects condemnations of Israel. Hence, it is for Israel’s benefit to see America as the mediator. Yet this is over.
Should Obama be elected for a second term in office, and the chances of it aren’t bad, he shall never let Netanyahu orget how he forced the baton to be handed over to Russia. Netanyahu won, and we are on our way to the cold.
3) Op-Ed: Israel's Conflict as Game Theory: Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Yisrael Aumann
Two men—let us call them Reuben and Simon—are put in a small room containing a suitcase filled with bills totaling $100,000. The owner of the suitcase announces the following:
“ I will give you the money in the suitcase under one condition…you have to negotiate an agreement on how to divide it. That is the only way I will agree to give you the money.”
Reuben is a rational person and realizes the golden opportunity that has fallen his way. He turns to Simon with the obvious suggestion: “You take half and I’ll take half, that way each of us will have $50,000.”
To his surprise, Simon frowns at him and says, in a tone that leaves no room for doubt: “Look here, I don’t know what your plans are for the money, but I don’t intend to leave this room with less than $90,000. If you accept that, fine. If not, we can both go home without any of the money.”
Reuben can hardly believe his ears. “What has happened to Simon” he asks himself. “Why should he get 90% of the money and I just 10%?” He decides to try to convince Simon to accept his view. “Let’s be logical,” he urges him, “We are in the same situation, we both want the money. Let’s divide the money equally and both of us will profit.”
Simon, however, doesn’t seem perturbed by his friend’s logic. He listens attentively, but when Reuben is finished he says, even more emphatically than before: “90-10 or nothing. That is my last offer.”
Reuben’s face turns red with anger. He is about to punch Simon in the nose, but he steps back. He realizes that Simon is not going to relent, and that the only way he can leave the room with any money is to give in to him. He straightens his clothes, takes $10,000 from the suitcase, shakes Simon’s hand and leaves the room humiliated.
This case is called 'The Blackmailer’s Paradox” in game theory. The paradox is that Reuben the rational is forced to behave irrationally by definition, in order to achieve maximum results in the face of the situation that has evolved. What brings about this bizarre outcome is the fact Simon is sure of himself and doesn’t flinch when making his exorbitant demand. This convinces Reuben that he must give in so as to make the best of the situation.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict:
The relationship between Israel and the Arab countries is conducted along the lines of this paradox. At each stage of negotiation, the Arabs present impossible, unacceptable starting positions. They act sure of themselves and as if they totally believe in what they are asking for, and make it clear to Israel that there is no chance of their backing down.
Invariably, Israel agrees to their blackmailing demands because otherwise she will leave the room empty handed. The most blatant example of this is the negotiations with Syria that have been taking place with different levels of negotiators for years. The Syrians made sure that it was clear from the beginning that they would not compromise on one millimeter of the Golan Heights.
The Israeli side, eager to have a peace agreement with Syria, internalized the Syrian position so well, that the Israeli public is sure that the starting point for future negotiations with Syria has to include complete withdrawal from the Golan Heights, this despite its critical strategic importance in ensuring secure borders for Israel.
The Losing Solution:
According to game theory, Israel has to change certain basic perceptions in order to improve her chances in the negotiations game with the Arabs and win the long term political struggle:
a. Willingness to forego agreements:
Israel’s political stand is based on the principle that agreements must be reached with the Arabs at any price, that the lack of agreements is untenable. In the Blackmailer’s Paradox, Reuben’s behavior is the result of his feeling that he must leave the room with some money, no matter how little. Because Reuben cannot imagine himself leaving the room with empty hands, he is easy prey for Simon, and ends up leaving with a certain amount of money, but in the role of the humiliated loser. This is similar to the way Israel handles negotiations, her mental state making her unable to reject suggestions that do not advance her interests.
b. Taking repetition into account
Game theory relates to onetime situations differently than to situations that repeat themselves. A situation that repeats itself over any length of time, creates, paradoxically, strategic parity that leads to cooperation between the opposing sides. This cooperation occurs when both sides realize that the game is going to repeat itself, and that since they must weigh the influence present moves will have on future games, there is a balancing factor at play. Reuben saw his problem as a onetime event, and behaved accordingly. Had he told Simon instead that he would not forego the amount he deserves even if he sustains a total loss, he would have changed the game results for an indefinite period. It is probably true that he would still have left the game empty handed, but at the next meeting with Simon, the latter would remember Reuben’s original suggestion and would try to reach a compromise.
That is how Israel has to behave, looking at the long term in order to improve her position in future negotiations, even if it means continuing a state of war and fore going an agreement.
c. Faith in your opinions
Another element that crates the “Blackmailer’s Paradox” is the unwavering belief of one side in its opinion. Simon exemplifies that. This faith gives a contender inner confidence in his cause at the start and eventually convinces his rival as well. The result is that the opposing side wants to reach an agreement, even at the expense of irrational surrender that is considerably distanced from his opening position. Several years ago, I spoke to a senior officer who claimed that Israel must withdraw from the Golan Heights in the framework of a peace treaty, because the Golan is holy land to the Syrians and they will never give it up. I explained to him that first the Syrians convinced themselves that the Golan is holy land to them, and then proceeded to convince you as well. The Syrians’ unflinching belief that they are in the right convinces us to give in to their dictates. The only solution to that is for us to believe unwaveringly in the righteousness of our cause. Only complete faith in our demands can succeed in convincing our Syrian opponent to take our opinion into account.
As in all of science, game theory does not take sides in moral and value judgments. It analyzes strategically the behavior of opposing sides in a game they play against one another. The State of Israel is in the midst of one such game opposite its enemies. As in every game, the Arab-Israeli game involves interests that create the framework of the game and its rules.
Sadly, Israel ignores the basic principles of game theory. If Israel would be wise enough to behave according to those principles, her political status and de facto, her security status, would improve substantially.
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