Anyone out there like Starbucks? It seems wherever you turn; there’s a Starbucks. They have stand-alone stores, they’re found at airports, and they are even in grocery stores. There’s even one next door to my office!

I like Starbucks, but not for their coffee. In fact, I hate coffee. The reason why I like Starbucks is for their unwillingness to be bullied into changing their policies in regards to “open carry” laws. (And before I go any further, I want to tell you that I hate guns almost as much as I hate coffee.)

The issue centers around the privilege that California residents have to walk around in public with a gun openly displayed. Most states within the Union allow open-carry of guns by registered/licensed gun owners – a practice that bothers gun-control advocacy groups. One of these groups is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and they’ve adopted an unusual strategy to fight the open-carry laws.

It started in Northern California when the establishments Peet’s Cafe & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen were identified as popular gathering places for gun owners. The Brady Campaign approached the restaurants and asked them to change their policy on allowing people to openly display their firearms indoors, with which they complied. Noticing this was a coordinated attack, the gun owners decided to shift to Starbucks.

The gun owners hedged their bets that Starbucks was too large of a company to be pushed around while at the same time believe the company would not want to lose the sudden increase in customer revenue. The Brady Campaign approached Starbucks with the same request, but was turned away after citing they were in compliance with state laws. Not happy with the lack of the preferred response, the Brady Campaign when on the offensive publicly. Brian Malte, a director within the Brady Campaign, stated, “Starbucks put out a statement today saying they don’t want to be in the middle of this fight. Well, they are.  They are the middle. Why are they in middle?  Because they chose — they chose — not to bar guns, so far, in their stores.”

Malte is wrong, of course. Starbucks was placed in the middle by the Brady Campaign, not because they “chose” to observe state laws. As a result, the Brady Campaign has decided to harass a law-abiding company over a difference of opinion.

Starbucks has tried to keep this issue below the radar since they didn’t want to get involved in a war of words. However, after protests and press conferences in front of their stores, the company felt that their employees and customers were being pulled into an uncomfortable position and decided to go public.

We recognize that there is significant and genuine passion surrounding the issue of open carry weapons laws. Advocacy groups from both sides of this issue have chosen to use Starbucks as a way to draw attention to their positions.

While we deeply respect the views of all our customers, Starbucks long-standing approach to this issue remains unchanged. We comply with local laws and statutes in all the communities we serve. In this case, 43 of the 50 U.S. states have open carry weapon laws. Where these laws don’t exist, we comply with laws that prohibit the open carrying of weapons. The political, policy and legal debates around these issues belong in the legislatures and courts, not in our stores.

…

As the public debate continues, we are asking all interested parties to refrain from putting Starbucks or our partners into the middle of this divisive issue.

The Brady Campaign needs to stop this gutter campaign against Starbucks and go back to working with the state legislatures around the nation. If they continue, I encourage Starbucks to challenge the Brady Campaign and sue them for damages due to any loss of sales as well as for harassment. They have a right to allow law-abiding customers to patron their stores.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be a millionaire? Just think of all the things you could do (other than subsidizing our national debt through higher taxes). You can put your kids through college, buy a better home, or retire comfortably without the fear of Social Security going bankrupt a month after you toss our your suit and tie. Yes, being a millionaire would be nice.

In honor of tax season, I’ve decided to give away my copy of “The Millionaire Next Door,” written by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. and William D. Danko, Ph.D. In this book, the authors provide you with years of research findings on the millionaires in the United States. They cover how they earned their money as well as how the spend it. Additionally, they reveal what professions these millionaires held in order to grow their wealth.

When we think of millionaires, we tend to think about the Wall Street brokers riding around in their limousines while wearing expensive suits and shoes. However, most of the millionaires in the United States come from “dull” careers, such as owners of mobile-home parks, paving contractors, and janitorial service providers. This is just one of the many surprising findings found in the book.

The authors cover seven key principles which the millionaire next door observe when building their wealth:

1) They live well below their means.
2) They allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conductive to building wealth.
3) They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status.
4) Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care.
5) Their adult children are economically self-sufficient.
6) They are proficient in targeting market opportunities.
7) They chose the right occupation.

Don’t you wish our Congress would practice those principles when crafting their budgets and spending our money?

Contest rules

Since I only have one copy of this book to give away, I want to turn this into a contest. The rules are as follows:

For those operating a blog
- Post an article on your site mentioning this book offer.
- Link to this article using the tag “U.S. Common Sense”.
- Post a link to your article in the comment section below.

For those who do not have a blog
- Leave a comment below on one of these three topics: what business you would like to start, how would you use your wealth to help others, or how you would change the U.S. tax code.

Make sure you enter a valid e-mail address in your profile when you leave your comment. That will be the means by which I contact you so I can mail you the book.

Since this contest is in honor of the tax season, all entries must be submitted by April 14th. I will announce the winner on April 15th. The winner will be chosen by random.

For those of you who do not know, a massive 8.8 mag earthquake struck right off the coast of Chile during the early hours of the morning today. This earthquake has created a tsunami which has just now reached Tahiti, bringing 6 foot waves to the island. Hawaii is expecting the tsunami around 11am local time (around 4…pm EST). Please keep everyone in Chile and in the path of the tsunami in your thoughts and prayers today.

As we know with the recent Haiti earthquake, these massive quakes are usually followed by large aftershocks.  One look at the map below shows the swarm of quakes of 5.0 or more in both Chile and Argentina.

If you are interested in watching the live news coverage of the tsunami, KITV in Hawaii is streaming live news coverage from their site.  Simply click on this link to watch the reporting in a new window.  In the mean time, regardless of your religious (or non-religious) affiliation, please keep all of those impacted by these quakes and tsunami in your thoughts and prayers.

For seven hours, the President and representatives from the two major parties sat around a square table to debate the merits of the omnibus Health Care Reform package put together by the Democrats in the House and the Senate, as well as the framework released by the President earlier in the week. For seven hours, talking points were passed back and forth, and the President challenged the Republicans on their criticisms and proposals. For seven hours, the only thing that was accomplished was localized global warming and an increase in noise pollution.

I’m still going through all of the accounts of the day as well as watching some of the video clips of the exchanges, and the only thing that I learned was that Republican Representative Paul Ryan should become the party’s face for their position in the debate. He came across well studies, articulate, and knowledgeable on not only the Democratic legislation but on the CBO scoring as well. He, by far, was much better than Senator John McCain. McCain sounded like he was stuck in 2008 campaign mode, but with more rambling and less on-topic discussion.

Reading through the members on the Political Blog Listing, I have found two bloggers who have posted their initial views on the summit.

Our friend over at the First Door on the Left said:

President Obama hosted what was billed as a bipartisan health care summit in D.C. today. There was, in reality, nothing bipartisan about it. The Republicans (as expected) spent the entire day whining and insisting that unless things are done their way they won’t be done at all.

This was balanced by QandO:

I’ve been watching and/or listening to the health care summit today and it became fairly obvious from the opening bell that there wasn’t going to be much of anything worthwhile or substantive accomplished – not that I’m surprised. 5 hours into it, it has been mostly the exchange of talking points. Right now I’m forced to listen to Henry Waxman give his. He’s claiming his version of the bill is the best and the Republican’s version sucks. Pretty much the way it has gone all day (Republicans have mostly said they want to start over with a clean sheet). Every one of the Democrats are appealing to emotion via tragic anecdotes.

Open Congress had this to say:

On the surface, today’s health care summit didn’t change much of anything. No bipartisan agreement on how to move forward was struck. Members of Congress didn’t put away their talking points in exchange for an honest discussion. And, despite the summit being broadcast live on television, it’s clear that behind-the-scenes, un-televised negotiations will to continue to take place.

UPDATE:

From Connecting.the.Dots:

The bottom line is that the President tried but must realize that he succeeded only in revealing his own total grasp of the subject against the emptiness behind most of the Republican rhetoric for a minority of Americans willing to watch for hours. That ultimately may be the best Obama could hope for, as he ended with a clear warning that, if there is no sign of GOP engagement in the next month, Democrats in both Houses will move ahead without them.

A Disgruntled Republican said:

Watching the health care summit, I thought “Barack” came across as arrogant and condescending. I was struck by how Barack referred to everyone by their first name, calling Senator John McCain, who is certainly old enough to be his father, as “John” yet all of the senators referred to Barack as “Mr. President.” … This is an outrage. If senators must call the President “Mr. President” then he should return the courtesy by referring to the senators as “Senator.”

Taxes, Stupidity, and Death continued with:

And when Paul Ryan took 6 or so minutes to talk about the numbers from the CBO, the group actually charged with figuring out what these little love letters from Congress cost we, the unhappy recipients, Barack Hussein Obama looked like someone peed in his ice cream. It was like Congressman Ryan didn’t realize that he was actually addressing Barack Hussein Obama, who didn’t appreciate anyone making light of the fact that a gargantuan increase in a government entitlements don’t save us money, especially when the entitlements they already gave to us are choking the states, and ballooning uncontrollably.

As stated over on Cato @ Liberty:

There seemed to be a division between representatives who knew the technical subject matter and those who—for lack of a better phrase—knew the emotional subject matter. Surprisingly astute commentaries on fiscal realities were met with appeals to the story of one constituent or another—or of members’ own families’ health predicaments.

TalkLeft stated:

It is not even remotely possible that this was the last act imo. As I said before, nothing that happened yesterday will change any GOP votes. And the Dem votes in the room were already secure. The actual debate left to be had involves Democrats only. And indeed, it always only involved Democrats.

From the Right Wing Nut House:

Did one side “win” the day yesterday?” I’d say from what I saw of the summit (the first 4 hrs – then I watched woman’s hockey which was far more interesting), the Republicans had a clear advantage. It’s always better to be on offense and the GOP speakers scored several hard blows to the Democrats while offering some modest reforms of their own. For their part, the Democrats weirdly tried to get everyone watching to break down weeping as they related story after story of Americans losing insurance, having inadequate insurance, or some insurance executive beating them up, eating their children, or sucking their blood vampire like from their necks. I’m sure the wonks who were watching the fiasco had to excuse themselves to dry their eyes and blow their noses. Or not. Such emotionalism plays well on campaign commercials but only made Democrats look unserious and mostly silly for their going for the heart tactics.