Health Care Round Up Sticky Post – UPDATED REGULARLY!

This post has been stickied to the top of the page. Please scroll down for the latest posts & updates - Editor 

UPDATE III - Federal Health Board recommendation on Mamograms would have likely killed Carly Fiorina. She speaks out on the rationing that is in the Senate health Care Bill.  

UPDATE II – Mississippi, Ohio, Louisiana, Texas and California medical associations have all come out against Pelosi/ObamaCare. 

UPDATE: SHOCK! Speaker Pelosi’s Government-Run Health Plan Will Require a Monthly Abortion Premium – LINK. UPDATE - So does Senator Reid’s new Bill! – LINK. 

Obama Advisor and former Labor Sec. Robert Reich. Listen for yourself: 

 

We are going to let the old die because its to expensive and we are going to make the drug companies poor so they cant innovate new drugs so you young people likely will not live much longer than your parents. We have to make the young pay more. 

And the Democrats called Sarah Palin a liar …… 

.. The Roundup: 

(NEW) NPR takes sleezy shot at Tea Party activists and those who opose nationalized health care – LINK. Maybe the so called  ”public option” can “foster competition” and do for health care and be a big success just like public schools. Wait, actually public schools cost more than private schools anbd perform much much worse, but what they charge is much less because it is tax payer subsidized. Democrats oppose private and charter schools at every turn and they oppose competition with the “public option”. Maybe someone needs to tell NPR that.

(NEW) Real Clear Politics: Culture of Corruption Produces Awful Health Care Bill - LINK.

(NEW) Married Couples Pay More Than Unmarried Under Health Bill - LINK.

(NEW) Real Clear Politics Confirms IUSB Vision Health Care Bill Analysis – Speaker Pelosi used IUSB Vision editor Chuck Norton’s exact words, this bill will “Make them cry out for a public option” – LINK.

(NEW) British National Health Service late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year LINK. 

(NEW) California ends (rations) coverage of mammograms for women under age 50 – LINK. 

(NEW) The C-SPAN Lie? See Eight Clips of Obama Promising Televised Healthcare Negotiations LINK.

(NEW) CBS News Online: Obama Reneged on Health Care Transparency LINK.

(NEW) Democrat Speaker (House Leader) Nancy Pelosi: constitutional objections to the individual mandate are “nonsensical,” because “the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.” – LINK. 

(NEW) Government Vaccine Estimates off by 77% – LINK. 

(NEW) Candidate Obama vs. President Obama - LINK 

(NEW) Corrupt AARP Health Care Deal Puts Seniors at Risk – LINK. 

(NEW) FACT CHECK: Health Insurance Profits Not So Fat – LINK. 

(NEW) Oliver Wyman study commissioned by Blue Cross/Blue Shield concludes that the Senate health care bill will raise premiums by uup to 54% – VIDEO LINK 

(NEW) CBO: Democrats Health Care Bill Will Raise Family Insurance Premiums by $2100 Per Year. IUSB Vision analysis proved correct again! – LINK. 

Health Care News Roundup for October. New health bills designed to make health insurance so expensive that people cry out for a public option – LINK. 

Democrats Lied About Choice: Health Care Bill Targets Most New Private Health Insurance Policies. Watch the videos to listen to their own words - LINK 

Ten questions to ask your Congressman about ObamaCare – LINK. 

Obama health care advisors say: Very old and very young will get less care – LINK. 

Oregon State health Service tells 64 year old woman: We wont pay for the drug to save your life, but we will pay for Euthanasia – LINK. 

IBD Poll: 45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Obama/Pelosi Health Care Overhaul – LINK. 

Answering far left talking points on US health care – LINK. 

Congressional Committee confirms: Buy Insurance, Pay ObamaCare Penalty, or Go to Jail! – LINK. 

Senator Brownback on Death Panels – LINK. 

Cornell Law Professor: Palin is right about “Death Panels” for ObamaCare – LINK. 

European Member of Parliament – National Health Service has made us iller” – LINK. 

CBO says that ObamaCare will result in benefit cuts. AARP stands to make millions from ObamaCare – LINK. 

ABC 20/20 Takes on Government Health Care:  

The Case Against Nationalized Healthcare in 3 minutes 42 seconds:  

(NEW) GOP Health Care Alternative Bill Online. First Step in Moving Towards Consortium Based Health Pools & Away from Mandates Forced On Citizens by Employers, Union Bosses, and the State - LINK.

You can examine all of our health care coverage HERE. 

GOP Congressman: If Obama/PelosiCare is so good, why do you have to threaten people with jail if they try to opt out?

The Wall Street Journal Guide to ObamaCare; all of their coverage in one place HERE.

 

 

Deficit Spending: FDR vs. Clinton vs. Bush vs. Obama

The cold hard truth and how it is the opposite from the rhetoric.

By the way, politicians always give you the too rosey best case scenario, so if Obama is admitting to these numbers, how bad is it really likely to be?

Bloomberg: 77% of U.S. investors believe Obama is anti-business

Bloomberg News:

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.

Think about it, you blame everything on “the wealthy”, you tell them that you are going to punish them for investing by raising capital gains taxes from 15% to 28%, he unilaterally trie dto break the law and change the rules so that the GM bond holders didn’t get paid and his political allies did. Why would someone invest and buy bonds if the government can change the rules at the drop of a hat?

Let us not forget that Obama and the Democrats have been attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and even the Black Chamber of Commerce.

By the way, the capital gaines tax in China is zero, maybe that is a big part of the reason people are investing there and not here.

News Legend Brit Hume: Speak the name of Jesus Christ and all hell breaks loose

Very interesting clip with Brit Hume. 

Democrats: Give illegals amnesty to give them free health care (on your dime)

We first told you this was coming back in September and now it is back.

TPM (Left of center blog site):

A source familiar with the negotiations between Congress and the White House told TPMDC the Congressional Hispanic Caucus will demand an agreement from Obama that health care coverage for illegals who earn a path to citizenship will be addressed in an immigration bill.

The Senate’s health care bill bars illegal immigrants from any sort of coverage, a provision embraced after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted “You lie!” during Obama’s address to Congress when the president said that illegal immigrants would not be able to get health care under the legislation.

Those familiar with the talks say any immigration legislation will include various amnesty provisions to allow for health care coverage.

Amnesty – progressives in both parties tried to pass it and the overwhelming number of Republicans, Independents and Democrats opposed this, but the current crew really doesn’t seem to care about that, after all they know better than you, just ask them and they will tell you.

Bankruptcies up 32% to 1.4 million

AP/Yahoo:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — U.S. consumers and businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a pace that made 2009 the seventh-worst year on record, with more than 1.4 million petitions submitted, an Associated Press tally showed Monday.

The AP gathered data from the nation’s 90 bankruptcy districts and found 1.43 million filings, an increase of 32 percent from 2008. There were 116,000 recorded bankruptcies in December, up 22 percent from the same month a year before.

Legendary Polish Freedom Movement Leader: U.S. No Longer Leads Morally

Lech Walesa is someone who isn’t spoken of much in school or in text books. Walesa was the head of the “Solidarity” freedom movement in Poland that gained long time international attention resisting communism. Walesa stands second only to Ronald Reagan in his efforts to bring the cold war version of communism to an end. Walesa is a true hero and has the scars to prove it. Perhaps one should ask themselves why one of the world’s greatest leaders in history is not a houshold name to every school aged child.

Walesa considered Reagan to be a great moral leader as well as Lady Thatcher.

Poland is was our most dedicated European ally until President Obama broke a  missile defense shield agreement with Poland in exchange for nothing other than Putin agreeing to a few new business dealings with General Electric (the owner of NBC/MSNBC). Poland sent troops and vehicles to Iraq and stepped up to the plate when we asked for help. Polish newspapers are now saying that the United States has betrayed them.

In fact after abandoning Poland’s missile shield Putin said “thanks” and vowed to develop new offensive weapons systems – LINK.

Lech Walesa (via translator):

The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily.  They also lead economically but they’re getting weak. But they don’t lead morally and politically anymore.  The world has no leadership.  The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations.  There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States.  Today, we lost that hope.

UPDATE – Leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India blow off one on one meetings with Obama. – LINK.

Obama’s War on Wealth Continues: IRS hires “hundreds” for new wealth unit

/Sarcasm – so what, it’s those evil rich who don’t pay their fair share anyways, screw them!

The reality.

1. First of all the John Kerry like rich often pay less than 13% of their income in federal taxes and there is a reason why so many Democrats in the Senate are super rich; they design the tax laws so that much of their income is defined as non-taxable income or they legislate other favors for themselves.

2. The investment class didn’t get to be the investment class by not know what to do with money, they will move wealth to China or move it off shore in many circumstances anyways. This causes American economic casualties because they money isn’t being put to good use here in America. When investment or risk taking class is under assault by our government and society, why would they do business here. Money and capital go where it is treated best, which isn’t America. This costs jobs.

3. So what is left? The productivity class, the upper middle class, small to medium-sized businesses who employ more than a dozen people, are defined as “the rich” in the tax code and they are the ones who pay a huge amount of taxes and can produce and hire less as a result.

4. The top 10% of wage earners pay 50% of all income taxes. These wage earners are NOT the John Kerry rich nor are they the investment class, these are the upper middle class and the productivity class.

Reuters:

The IRS high wealth unit, part of a broader effort to combat international tax evasion, is focusing on “the entire web of business entities controlled by a high wealth individual,” IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told a tax conference this week.

Another IRS official told Reuters “hundreds” of people have already been hired to staff the new unit, including some from within the agency.

“We have drawn top talent within the IRS that have expertise involving wealthy individuals as well as examination of their related entities,” said Mae Lew, an IRS special counsel.

The high-wealth unit is focusing on trusts, real estate investments, privately held companies and other business entities controlled by rich individuals.

While use of sophisticated legal structures can be legal, in other instances they “mask aggressive tax strategies,” Shulman said.

Will they get some of the people in the investment class who are hiding their money from an increasing assault upon them by the U.S. Government, sure they will, but the money they recover will be a drop in the bucket compared to the loss in confidence and under siege feeling these people will have which will keep even more of their wealth going to China. The capital gains tax rate here in the US approaches 30%, in China the rate is ZERO as China just appreciates people taking risk by investing in China. If you were a member of the investment class what would you do?

Pinhead of the day: Noted Journalist & Scholar Calls for Forced One Child Policy…

…and has two children of her own.

I appreciate Diane Francis because she is a quintessential example of the typical “progressive intellectual”. She is absolutely convinced of her own virtue and “moral authority”, believes that elites like herself should plan our society rather than letting the rabble participate in the animated contest of freedom; she does so to the point of advocating a point of view that brushes up against social darwinism and eugenics, whose attitudes and themes are epidemic among leftist academia and journalism.

Like almost all “progressive intellectuals” Francis has one standard for herself and another for everyone else. This is a reoccurring theme among the progressive elite, free speech for me and not for thee, the desire to criminalize opposing them politically and of course, only those deemed worthy like herself should have more children. Since most progressives are “post modernists” their “reality” is a mental construct that is self-serving to themselves. As Stalin once said, “The truth to a communist is anything that supports communism”.

Like all social darwinists, each member of the progressive elite is convinced that they themselves are the genetic and/or intellectual ideal.

Diane Francis:

Humans are the only rational animals but have yet to prove it. (translation – I am rational and the rabble are not – Editor) Medical and other scientific advances have benefited by delivering lower infant mortality rates as well as longevity. Both are welcome, but humankind has not yet recalibrated its behavior to account for the fact that the world can only accommodate so many people, especially if billions get indoor plumbing and cars.

The fix is simple. It’s dramatic. And yet the world’s leaders don’t even have this on their agenda in Copenhagen. Instead there will be photo ops, posturing, optics, blah-blah-blah about climate science and climate fraud, announcements of giant wind farms, then cap-and-trade subsidies.

None will work unless a China one-child policy is imposed. Unfortunately, there are powerful opponents. Leaders of the world’s big fundamentalist religions preach in favor of procreation and fiercely oppose birth control (Thousands of years of human experience and wisdom since the time of Abraham mean nothing now that Diane Francis is here! And that whole Jesus thing, don’t you fools know that now that we have Diane Francis, Jesus has been rendered irrellevent and backwards! – Editor) . And most political leaders in emerging economies perpetuate a disastrous Catch-22: Many children (i. e. sons) stave off hardship in the absence of a social safety net or economic development, which, in turn, prevents protections or development.

China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet. (Ahhh yes once again the problem is the middle class, or shall I say bourgeoisie, the problem is YOU, and just like every other crisis both real and imagined, central control of elites like Francis is always the answer. – Editor)

For those who balk at the notion that governments should control family sizes, just wait until the growing human population turns twice as much pastureland into desert as is now the case, or when the Amazon is gone, the elephants disappear for good and wars erupt over water, scarce resources and spatial needs. (Actually in spite of the growth in population, we have more food then ever because technology in innovation and efficiency means we get more food from less. History and economics prove that policies of central control result in scarcity. The problem is not that that food is difficult to produce in great supply, the problem in most of the world is the lack of freedom to do so. As less and less of our population works in agriculture, food supplies grow more and more. – Editor)

Real Clear Politics Confirms IUSB Vision Analysis: Latest Health Care Bill Designed to Wreck Private Insurance & Make People Cry Out for a Public Option

Update Pelosi confirms….video and more commentary see update below.

Read this carefully…

As we at IUSB Vision have stated again and again and again…. 

Real Clear Politics:

Rather than increasing the number of insured by making health insurance more affordable, this bill makes health insurance more expensive and increases the incentive to simply drop your insurance until you need someone to pay for your medical bills. It is an attempt to turn health insurance into what the left really wants: another welfare program in which everyone is entitled to free benefits, mandated by the government. But this would wreck private health insurance, making the whole industrial financially unsustainable.

Following the usual pattern of government intervention, the health-care bill offers another intervention as the solution for the problem created by the first. The “individual mandate” requires everyone to buy health insurance and subjects us to a tax if we fail to do so. But this is an especially onerous new tax, the first tax not tied to any kind of income or activity. It’s not a tax on stock-market profits, say, or a tax on buying cigarettes. It’s just a tax for existing.

So fearing a public backlash, Congress didn’t have the guts to make this new tax very large-only $750. Yet actual insurance can cost more than $3,000 per year-and as we shall see, this legislation goes out of its way to drive up those rates by mandating more lavish coverage. So we end up getting the worst of both worlds. This provision won’t actually drive anyone to buy health insurance and prop up the risk pools for those who are insured. All it will accomplish is to create a brand new form of tax.

But the biggest power-grab in the bill is the government takeover of the entire market for health insurance. The bill requires all new policies to be sold on a government-controlled exchange run by a commissioner who is empowered to dictate what kinds of insurance policies can be offered, what they must cover, and what they can charge.

Right now, your best option for reducing the cost of your health insurance is to buy a policy with a high deductible, which leaves you to pay for routine checkups and minor injuries (preferably from savings held in a tax-free Health Savings Account) but which covers your needs in catastrophic circumstances-a bad car accident, say, or expensive treatment for cancer. This is the kind of coverage I have.

But the health-insurance exchange is intended to eliminate precisely this kind of low-cost catastrophic coverage. Its purpose is to force health-insurance companies to offer comprehensive coverage that pays for all of your routine bills-which in turn comes at a higher price. So under the guise of making health insurance more affordable, this bill will restrict your menu of choices to include only the most expensive options.

So there we have the real essence of this bill. It restricts our choice of which insurance to buy and pushes us into more expensive plans. At the same time, it destroys the economic incentive to purchase insurance in the first place and replaces insurance with a free-floating tax on one’s very existence.

By all means, let’s debate some of that in the Senate.

When you understand what this bill does, you can see why the Democrats would be happy to compromise and drop the public option-for now. This bill so comprehensively wrecks private health insurance that pretty soon a “public option” will seem like the only alternative, and they will already have put into place one of the new taxes needed to pay for it. If the left’s goal is to impose socialized medicine in America, this bill does it in the most callous and destructive way possible. It smashes private health care-then leaves us stranded in the rubble, at which point we will be expected to come crawling back to the same people who caused the disaster and ask them to save us.

UPDATE – Speaker Pelosi used IUSB Vision writer Chuck Norton’s exact words “make them cry out for a public option” on C-Span.

Also in the clip Speaker Pelosi makes the outrageous statement that the Health Care Bill negotiations were the most transparent ever. Pelosi said that they had witnesses in committee hearings, townhall meetings and people talked about the bill on the internet.

What she doesn’t say is that most of the bills were written outside of the normal committee markup process which makes that irrellevent and Republicans and the public/press got to see the 2000 page bills only just a short time before a final vote….at which time it was a mad scramble to see what was in them and talk about it on the internet before the vote.

An example of the most transparent process ever…. LINK

Of course Speaker Pelosi loved townhall meetings before she demonized them LINK.

Tea Party leads both Democrats and Republicans on the generic congressional ballot among independents.

We informed readers previously that Democrat Party ID (voter self identification) is at an all time low, but now we move to something even more interesting. 

The Tea Party leads both Democrats and Republicans on the generic congressional ballot among independents. This means that generic tea Party candidate vs generic Democrat candidate vs generic Republican candidate the Tea Party candidate wins.

Rasmussen polls have called elections often within a tenth of a point of the actual result.  

It is difficult to understate the impact of this news.

Keep in mind that Ross Perot received about 19% of the vote and the last successful third-party sweep of election was Abraham Lincoln’s new Republican Party which formed to oppose the Democrats and the Whigs.

Expect Democrats to try and demonize the Tea Party people with smears and lies, such as what MSNBC has been doing by taking pictures and information from LaRouchie’s and attributing them to the Tea Party participants LINK.

Rasmussen Reports:

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

Among Republican voters, 39% say they’d vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.

Obama Appoints Another Judicial Radical – Says Rulings Depend on Race

We had told you about the first judicial radical President Obama appointed Judge Hamilton, who tried to dictate to the Indiana Legislature what kind of prayers could be delivered at the opening of session. Hamilton’s silly ruling was overturned on appeal as has many others of his. Hamilton has also been scolded for ignoring law and precedent.

I would have posted this earlier but I had missed this story and ran into it recently.

Washington Times:

Another day, another Obama nominee who doesn’t appear to love America. Another nominee who thinks the United States is inherently racist. Another nominee who thinks that judges should let their “ethnic and racial background” have an effect on how they conduct their trials. President Obama’s radicalization of American government needs to be stopped.

In this case, the nominee is Northern California federal district court nominee Edward Chen, forwarded by the Senate Judiciary Committee to the full Senate last Friday on a party-line vote. Mr. Chen is currently a federal magistrate in San Francisco, and a lawyer long active with the American Civil Liberties Union before that.

Judge Chen’s words speak for themselves. When the congregation sang “America the Beautiful” at a funeral, Judge Chen told the audience of his “feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted with appeals to patriotism – sometimes I cannot help but feel that there are too much [sic] injustice and too many inequalities that prevent far too many Americans from enjoying the beauty extolled in that anthem.”

In a speech on Sept. 22, 2001, he said that among his first responses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America was a “sickening feeling in my stomach about what might happen to race relations and religious tolerance on our own soil. … One has to wonder whether the seemingly irresistible forces of racism, nativism and scapegoating which has [sic] recurred so often in our history can be effectively restrained.”

And talking about the role of judges, he in effect embraced the “empathy standard” that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was forced to denounce in her own confirmation hearings: “Simply put, a judge’s life experiences affect the willingness to credit testimony or understand the human impact of legal rules upon which the judge must decide. These determinations require a judge to draw upon something that is not found in the case reports that line the walls of our chambers. Rather judges draw upon the breadth and depth of their own life experience…. Inevitably, one’s ethnic and racial background contributes to those life experiences.”

You get the picture. To quote and paraphrase Sen. Charles E. Schumer from another occasion, this man’s attitude “doesn’t even whisper ‘judge.’ ” Instead, it yells out that he is a biased radical willing to impose his own politics from the bench. Judge Chen should not be confirmed.

Yale Bans F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

Our friends at FIRE once again have to fight the most idiotic examples of censorship, which usually come from academics and college adfministrators. Adem Kissel sends the first shot across Yale’s bow:

President Richard C. Levin
Yale University
President’s Office
P.O. Box 208229
New Haven, Connecticut 06520

Sent via U.S. Mail and Facsimile (203-432-7105)

Dear President Levin:

     “You’ll hate school for a while, too, but I’m glad you’re going to St. Regis’s.”

     “Why?”

     “Because it’s a gentleman’s school, and democracy won’t hit you so early. You’ll find plenty of that in college.”

     “I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.”

     Monsignor chuckled.

     “I’m one, you know.”

     “Oh, you’re different—I think of Princeton as being lazy and good-looking and aristocratic—you know, like a spring day. Harvard seems sort of indoors—”

     “And Yale is November, crisp and energetic,” finished Monsignor.

     “That’s it.”

     They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Princeton X ‘17, This Side of Paradise

It is not a happy day when a Yale College dean with degrees from Yale and Princeton, an historian of art, declares that T-shirts quoting Fitzgerald are “not acceptable.” “What purports to be humor by targeting a group through slurs is not acceptable,” Dean Mary Miller wrote to the Yale Daily News, explaining her decision to “pull” the Freshman Class Council’s democratically chosen design targeting Harvard students as “sissies.”

No, not acceptable, not at Yale, the institution that issued the Woodward Report as official policy under President Brewster. This inspiring document argues that free speech “is a barrier to the tyranny of authoritarian or even majority opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of particular doctrines or thoughts” and argues for “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” Yet, Dean Miller apparently knew what had to be done. She did not even see a need to consult the senior academics, diplomats, or national security experts who had so carefully assessed Jytte Klausen’s book.

Does it help the university’s case that the Freshman Class Council independently, afterward, decided to pull the design? It helps the students’ case; they listened to Dean Miller but made up their own minds, if we believe them. It does not, however, help Dean Miller’s case. Or did the Yale Daily News report incorrectly on November 19 that Dean of Freshman Affairs Raymond Ou “told” the Freshman Class Council to meet with students concerned about the T-shirts, and that Miller “decided to pull the design”?

President Levin, I trust that you are aware of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and some of our work on America’s college campuses. FIRE unites leaders in the fields of civil rights and civil liberties, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, academic freedom, freedom of association, and freedom of religion—as well as due process and legal equality. You might have seen FIRE’s name among many on the September 14, 2009, letter to you from Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, regarding Yale’s removal of cartoons of Mohammed from Jytte Klausen’s The Cartoons That Shook the World. Just a few weeks earlier, Yale’s press had defended this censorship but qualified its moral position with this contradictory statement:

The University has no speech code, and the response to “hate speech” on campus has always been the assertion that the appropriate response to hate speech is not suppression but more speech, leading to a full airing of views.

The world—and Yale—are facing challenges much more serious than a word on a shirt. Yet, the world and the Yale community ought to be able to count on Yale College deans to respect freedom of expression enough to hold in abeyance any urge to censor. Does the Woodward Report exclude the word “sissies” from the principle that “the results of free expression are to the general benefit in the long run, however unpleasant they may appear at the time”? Does the report exclude images in a book from Yale’s stated principle that “a free interchange of ideas is necessary not only within its walls but with the world beyond as well”?

In matters large and small, Yale has taken steps that erode the freedom it once championed, teaching its students that the authorities ultimately decide which expressions are acceptable or unacceptable. This seems the very opposite of a liberal education in a free society.

Now that these decisions have been made, others may follow more easily and more quickly. Meanwhile, will students and even faculty members self-censor to avoid the deans’ hands, or will they test the boundaries of the deans’ tolerance? Are the deans prepared to spend time and resources on further censorship? Please let Yale be governed by its own admirable policies, including its own Woodward Report. In the end, these policies will serve truth and tolerance more than censorship will. Please respond by January 12, 2010, and reassure us that Yale will no longer seek to censor “the unmentionable.” We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Adam Kissel (Harvard ‘94)
Director, Individual Rights Defense Program

Obama administration reverses course on TARP

He said he was winding the bailout program down and now has expanded it till almost 2011. Once again the rhetoric is 180 degrees apart from the action.

Our friends at Hotair.com have the details – go check it out HERE.

Congressional Candidate Lieutenant Colonel Allen West: We Were Tricked in 2008

Wow, this guy reminds me of Sam Adams. 1.9 million hits on Youtube.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Swiss ban on minarets was a vote for tolerance and inclusion

Editor’s Note – Ayaan Hirsi Ali escaped from radical Islam, female genital mutilation, an arranged marriage and a life of servitude under islamic culture. When sent on a plane to her forced marriage she fled to the Netherlands and received political asylum where she went to school, became a scholar and was elected to parliament. Ali made a film about how women are treated in the Islamic world with the famed Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was stabbed in the chest and murdered with a death note addressed to Ali. Ali now lives with an islamic death mark and requires 24 hour security. Ali is the winner of many human rights awards. Her memoir is entitled Infidel.

CS Monitor:

The recent Swiss referendum that bans construction of minarets has caused controversy across the world. There are two ways to interpret the vote. First, as a rejection of political Islam, not a rejection of Muslims. In this sense it was a vote for tolerance and inclusion, which political Islam rejects. Second, the vote was a revelation of the big gap between how the Swiss people and the Swiss elite judge political Islam.

In the battle of ideas, symbols are important.

What if the Swiss voters were asked in a referendum to ban the building of an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles as a symbol of the belief of a small minority? Or imagine a referendum on building towers topped with a hammer and sickle – another symbol dear to the hearts of a very small minority in Switzerland.

Political ideas have symbols: A swastika, a hammer and sickle, a minaret, a crescent with a star in the middle (usually on top of a minaret) all represent a collectivist political theory of supremacy by one group over all others.

On controversial issues, the Swiss listen to debate, read newspapers, and otherwise investigate when they make up their minds for a vote.

What Europeans are finding out about Islam as they investigate is that it is more than just a religion. Islam offers not only a spiritual framework for dealing with such human questions as birth, death, and what ought to come after this world; it prescribes a way of life.

Islam is an idea about how society should be organized: the individual’s relationship to the state; the relationship between men and women; rules for the interaction between believers and unbelievers; how to enforce such rules; and why a government under Islam is better than a government founded on other ideas. These political ideas of Islam have their symbols: the minaret, the crescent; the head scarf, and the sword.

The minaret is a symbol of Islamist supremacy, a token of domination that came to symbolize Islamic conquest. It was introduced decades after the founding of Islam.

In Europe, as in other places in the world where Muslims settle, the places of worship are simple at first. All that a Muslim needs to fulfill the obligation of prayer is a compass to indicate the direction of Mecca, water for ablution, a clean prayer mat, and a way of telling the time so as to pray five times a day in the allocated period.

The construction of large mosques with extremely tall towers that cost millions of dollars to erect are considered only after the demography of Muslims becomes significant.

The mosque evolves from a prayer house to a political center.

Imams can then preach a message of self-segregation and a bold rejection of the ways of the non-Muslims.

Men and women are separated; gays, apostates and Jews are openly condemned; and believers organize around political goals that call for the introduction of forms of sharia (Islamic) law, starting with family law.

This is the trend we have seen in Europe, and also in other countries where Muslims have settled. None of those Western academics, diplomats, and politicians who condemn the Swiss vote to ban the minaret address, let alone dispute, these facts.

In their response to the presence of Islam in their midst, Europeans have developed what one can discern as roughly two competing views. The first view emphasizes accuracy. Is it accurate to equate political symbols like those used by Communists and Nazis with a religious symbol like the minaret and its accessories of crescent and star; the uniforms of the Third Reich with the burqa and beards of current Islamists?

If it is accurate, then Islam, as a political movement, should be rejected on the basis of its own bigotry. In this view, Muslims should not be rejected as residents or citizens. The objection is to practices that are justified in the name of Islam, like honor killings, jihad, the we-versus-they perspective, the self-segregation. In short, Islamist supremacy.

The second view refuses to equate political symbols of various forms of white fascism with the symbols of a religion. In this school of thought, Islamic Scripture is compared to Christian and Jewish Scripture. Those who reason from this perspective preach pragmatism. According to them, the key to the assimilation of Muslims is dialogue. They are prepared to appease some of the demands that Muslim minorities make in the hope that one day their attachment to radical Scripture will wear off like that of Christian and Jewish peoples.

These two contrasting perspectives correspond to two quite distinct groups in Europe. The first are mainly the working class. The second are the classes that George Orwell described as “indeterminate.” Cosmopolitan in outlook, they include diplomats, businesspeople, mainstream politicians, and journalists. They are well versed in globalization and tend to focus on the international image of their respective countries. With every conflict between Islam and the West, they emphasize the possible backlash from Muslim countries and how that will affect the image of their country.

By contrast, those who reject the ideas and practices of political Islam are in touch with Muslims on a local level. They have been asked to accept Muslim immigrants as neighbors, classmates, colleagues – they are what Americans would refer to as Main Street. Here is the great paradox of today’s Europe: that the working class, who voted for generations for the left, now find themselves voting for right-wing parties because they feel that the social democratic parties are out of touch.

The pragmatists, most of whom are power holders, are partially right when they insist that the integration of Muslims will take a very long time. Their calls for dialogue are sensible. But as long as they do not engage Muslims to make a choice between the values of the countries that they have come to and those of the countries they left, they will find themselves faced with more surprises. And this is what the Swiss vote shows us. This is a confrontation between local, working-class voters (and some middle-class feminists) and Muslim immigrant newcomers who feel that they are entitled, not only to practice their religion, but also to replace the local political order with that of their own.

Look carefully at the reactions of the Swiss, EU and UN elites. The Swiss government is embarrassed by the outcome of the vote. The Swedes, who are currently chairing EU meetings, have condemned the Swiss vote as intolerant and xenophobic. It is remarkable that the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said in public that the Swiss vote is a poor act of diplomacy. What he overlooks is that this is a discussion of Islam as a domestic issue. It has nothing to do with foreign policy.

The Swiss vote highlights the debate on Islam as a domestic issue in Europe. That is, Islam as a set of political and collectivist ideas. Native Europeans have been asked over and over again by their leaders to be tolerant and accepting of Muslims. They have done that. And that can be measured a) by the amount of taxpayer money that is invested in healthcare, housing, education, and welfare for Muslims and b) the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who are knocking on the doors of Europe to be admitted. If those people who cry that Europe is intolerant are right, if there was, indeed, xenophobia and a rejection of Muslims, then we would have observed the reverse. There would have been an exodus of Muslims out of Europe.

There is indeed a wider international confrontation between Islam and the West. The Iraq and Afghan wars are part of that, not to mention the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. That confrontation should never be confused with the local problem of absorbing those Muslims who have been permitted to become permanent residents and citizens into European societies.

British National Health Service: late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year

Sadly, this speaks for itself.

UK Daily Mail:

Late diagnosis of cancer needlessly kills up to 10,000 patients every year, the Government’s director of cancer services has revealed.

Professor Mike Richards will this week unveil a shocking study of the three deadliest forms  -  lung, bowel and breast cancer  -  showing that early detection could save twice as many lives as previously thought.

He blamed the ‘unacceptable’ situation on both GPs and patients who fail to seek medical attention in time.

Professor Richards said: ‘Efforts now need to be directed at promoting early diagnosis for the very large number of patients  -  over 90 per cent  -  who are diagnosed as a result of their symptoms rather than by screening.’

The findings will add to the pressure on the NHS to make sure doctors recognise the vital signs which can enable a patient to benefit from life-saving surgery or chemotherapy.

Professor Richards, who compared one-year survival rates for the three cancers in England and other European countries, told the Guardian the number of preventable deaths was between 5,000 and 10,000.

His research will appear in the forthcoming British Journal of Cancer, published by Cancer Research UK.

CNN: Palin’s Popularity on the Rise

In December Governor Palin’s favorable rating matched President Obama’s at 46%. While it is interesting that CNN reported this, we are now at the end of January so the trajectory of Obama going down and Palin going up means that her approval by now is greater than the Presidents, so I do not expect to CNN to continue reporting these numbers. We shall see.

Governor Palin’s charm and credibility offensive has been pretty effective so far, especially the onslaught of mostly baseless attacks made against her by the elite media (To see a list of these attacks and how they were debunked mostly without retraction follow this LINK ; it starts on page 6 of our Palin category and continue forward). 

After Oprah she decided to talk only talks about serious policy issues which has served her well. Of course, those of us who have studied her record as Mayor, Energy Regulator and Governor are well aware that her record of accomplishment is outstanding, which is why her opponents either attack her children or just make up accusations that don’t bear 10 minutes of fact checking.

CNN:

Washington (CNN) – Sarah Palin has erased her drop in the polls that followed her resignation as Alaska governor, according to new national survey.

But when it comes to opinions of Palin, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday suggests a partisan divide and a gender gap.

The survey indicates that Americans are split on Palin, with 46 percent saying they have a favorable opinion of her and an equal amount saying they have an unfavorable view of last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee.

By the way, the Battleground Poll and Gallup Poll give similar results just as other have in recent weeks, once again the CBS Poll comes up with a way lower result for Palin, and (shocker) its a partial weekend poll; about what we have come to expect from CBS.

Culture of Corruption: Senator Baucus Nominated Girlfriend for U.S. Attorney

Roll Call Magazine:

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ (D- Montana) office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. attorney in Montana.

According to a source familiar with their relationship, Hanes and Baucus began their relationship in the summer of 2008 – nearly a year before Baucus and his wife, Wanda, divorced in April 2009. The Senator had informally separated from his wife in March 2008 and they were living apart when he began dating Hanes, according to Baucus’ office.

If a Republican had done this the elite media would see to it he would be a household name .

Climate Scientist Idiotic Quote of the Day: Only 10% of Population Will Survive Global Warming

Can only a PhD be this stupid? And of course he is advising the government. Create crisis= get funding.

UK Daily Scottsman:

Warming will ‘wipe out billions’

By Jenny Fyall

MOST of the world’s population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree a method of stopping current rates of global warming, one of the UK’s most senior climate scientists has warned.

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet’s population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson’s warning comes just eight days before global leaders meet in Copenhagen for the most crucial talks on climate change reversal since the Rio summit in 1992. Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were “terrifying”.

“For humanity it’s a matter of life or death,” he said. “We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive.

More Censorship on Campus: St. Louis University is banning David Horowitz as a campus speaker

Via Minding the Campus:

A Ban On Horowitz

Posted by John Leo

Yet another act of censorship by yet another college. St. Louis University is banning David Horowitz as a campus speaker. According to the College Republicans, who had invited the conservative activist to give a talk on October 13, Dean of Students Scott Smith said he could not allow the speech because Horowitz might “insinuate that all people of the Islamic faith are fascists.” Horowitz called this statement “a malicious falsehood.” John K. Wilson has an impressive commentary on his web site, College Freedom.

Follow the Campus Freedom link, it shows you the rank intellectual and rhetorical dishonesty St Louis U went through to at first wage a non-denial denial, and then play semantics to make the most unreasonable of positions, seem reasonable. College Republicans should sue.

Rasmussen Poll: 71% of Americans Angry at Government, 46% “Very Angry”

Up 5 points since September.

Sleeping giant awakening?

Rasmussen Reports:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government’s policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry.

Men are angrier than women, and voters over 40 are more angry than those who are younger. A majority of those over 40 are Very Angry. Only 25% of under-30 voters share that view.

The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September.

Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

Elite Press Still Spinning Bad Economy for Obama – “Unexpected Growth in Job Loss” – Oh Really?

Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, spending was down 8.6%, November retail sails fall, December home resales are down 17%, consumer spending is down again, ….

…so with numbers like that, would someone care to explain how a rise in unemployment can be described as “unexpected”?  This was the spin from much of the elite media to the newly released jobless numbers:

Labor Department Reports Unexpected Rise In New Jobless Claims

Unemployment figures for those newly seeking jobs continue to bounce around, as the latest Labor Department figures show an unexpected rise. While the trend has been downward, this week’s numbers rose unexpectedly to 482,000.

While many say the economy has exited recession, to those seeking jobs, the economy is still in bad shape. Layoffs have slowed, but new hires have not picked up at the pace that many would expect. The unemployment rate overall remains at 10 percent.

The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment insurance rose by 36,000. Wall Street economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a small drop.

Drops in consumer spending means more unemployment; or as a teenager might say, “No Duhhhh”.

If Bush were president would this be reported as “unexpected”, or would they list what I have and say “See….”?

This is another of the countless examples of a simple truth, most economists are good at applying flawed Keynesian theory, but do not genuinely understand economics, and most economists are either political “whores” or creatures of ideology, using their education to push a political agenda because they are paid to or because they have ideological and/or emotional hangups.

Partisan economist’s like Teresa Ghilarducci can write great papers on 401K reform and talk about how they need to have more diversity of investment to help prefund people’s retirement, and at the same time say that Social Security should not prefund people’s retirements at all as President Bush proposed. I am convinced if Obama had said the same thing Ghilarducci would be all for it.

Obama Chief Economist Christina Romer is a good economist, as some of her papers are required reading for many economics students, and now that she is in the White House she makes statements as if she had forgotten much of what she had written previously.

Some people claim that the NYT writer Paul Krugman is a good economist, yet I am amazed at the amount of basic economics he has to forget to write much of the nonsense he does every week.

UPDATE – Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com went back and looked up the “unexpectedly” use in the elite media and they apply it to almost every piece of economic bad news in recent months – LINK.

Democrats Party ID at Record Low

One of the key indicators, and perhaps the key indicator, of the political mood of voters is the party identification poll. This is the measure used often by political scientists who try to get to the real mood instead of making a poll to make news to be spun and consumed by the “masses”.

Rasmussen Poll:

In December, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports.

Currently, 35.5% of American adults view themselves as Democrats. That’s down from 36.0 a month ago and from 37.8% in October. Prior to December, the lowest total ever recorded for Democrats was 35.9%, a figure that was reached twice in 2005. See the History of Party Trends from January 2004 to the present.

*Rasmussen Reports tracks this information based on telephone interviews with approximately 15,000 adults per month and has been doing so since November 2002. The margin of error for the full sample is less than one percentage point, with a 95% level of confidence.

Columbia Journalism Review Abandons Journalism Standards

As we have reported before, Columbia Journalism Review might as well be an arm of the Democrat National Committee.

I get a copy of the review when it comes out and there is no attempt at objective journalism whatsoever; it is bold-faced partisan advocacy and today we have a new example. The CJR attacks ProPublica, a non-profit news service, for daring to report the wasteful spending of the Obama stimulus package.

CJR refers to ProPublica as “some obscure tea bagging organization”. CJR doesn’t tell you that the Tea Party movement is now the mainstream, as Tea Party candidates defeat Democrats and Republicans in generic polls. A recent Senate election on Massachusetts reminds us of this reality. So it has coem down to sexual based name calling.

Via the Instapundit Prof. Glenn Reynolds:

Columbia Journalism Review goes after a fellow non-profit news organization, ProPublica, for a ProPublica article on wasteful stimulus spending. Columbia Journalism Review criticizes ProPublica for using a quotation from a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, which Columbia Journalism Review sneeringly and condescendingly and dismissively and, well, offensively, characterizes as “some obscure tea-bagging operation.” Citizens Against Government Waste has been around since 1984, and its 2007 IRS Form 990 indicates it had revenue and expenses of about $4.4 million, more if you include an affiliated 501(c)4 group. It claims “more than one million members and supporters.” Its directors as of the 2007 Form 990 included Vin Weber, who is a big deal. Its annual “pig book” report is widely covered. I’m on the CJR spam list, and it seems to me that the quality of work there has fallen notably over the past several years, while the CJR has grown progressively more politicized. That they’ve reached the point of attacking ProPublica — hardly a right-leaning organization itself — is indicative.  Posted at by Glenn Reynolds

 

Chicago Tribune: White House pressuring Democrats not to appear on Fox News

Chicago Tribune:

At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.

Political consultants are a staple of cable television talk shows, analyzing current events based on their own experiences working on campaigns or in government.

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, “We better not see you on again,” said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that “clients might stop using you if you continue.”

In urging Democratic consultants to spurn Fox, White House officials might be trying to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan.

Government Vaccine Estimates off by 77%.

And some of you want these people to run health care….

Tarrant County College denying free speech to students, faces law suit it has no chance of winning..

Stories like this don’t amaze me because it seems that every other week something like this is happening. What does amaze is that allegedly highly educated faculty and administrators at universities, the latter often paid six figures to exercise good judgement, just can’t seem to bring themselves to obey federal law and the Constitution of the United States.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):

FORT WORTH, Texas, November 5, 2009—Tarrant County College (TCC) students Clayton Smith and John Schwertz filed suit in federal district court late Tuesday against TCC. The students are seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent TCC from quarantining protected speech to the school’s tiny “free speech zone” when they participate in a national “empty holster” protest coordinated by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) that is scheduled for November 9-13. TCC has prohibited students from participating in identical symbolic protests twice in the past two years. The suit was filed by Fort Worth attorney Karin Cagle in cooperation with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas.

“For far too long, Tarrant County College has flouted the First Amendment and prevented its students from engaging in core political speech on campus anywhere outside of its so-called free speech zone,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “By restricting campus speech to this tiny ‘free speech zone,’ TCC has stifled students and ignored its legal obligation to ensure that speech remains free on campus. After failing to heed repeated warnings from FIRE, TCC now must answer for its brazen disregard for the Constitution in federal court.”

The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, asks the court to ensure that Smith and Schwertz are allowed to fully participate in the upcoming protests. As members of SCCC, a national organization that “supports the legalization of concealed carry by licensed individuals on college campuses,” Schwertz and Smith seek to distribute flyers in public areas on TCC’s campus and to wear empty holsters. The empty holsters would signify opposition to state laws and school policies denying concealed handgun license holders the right to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. The suit also asks the court to enjoin TCC’s requirement that students wishing to use the free speech zone submit a form requesting permission at least 24 hours in advance of the planned expressive activity.

Of course, after jumping through all of TCC’s illegal hoops and paperwork, they were still denied anyways.

FIRE wrote to President Thomas on April 24, 2008, explaining that TCC’s free speech zone represented a serious threat to liberty on campus and that FIRE has defeated similar free speech zones on campuses across the nation, including the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, West Virginia University, University of Nevada at Reno, Citrus College in California, and Texas Tech University. A TCC administrator responded on May 20, 2008, informing FIRE that the university would not reverse its decision. Poulos’ protest did not take place.

Flashback Laugh of the Day, Associated Press: Republicans doomed in 2009 elections…

November third the elite media was predicting doom and gloom for the GOP. Now Republicans have won governors races in New Jersey and Virginia, swept lesser statewide races on swing states such as Pennsylvania and Florida and now have won the vacated Senate seat in Massachusetts where Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats 3 to 1.

Here are the key excerpts.. hilarious.

Associated Press Washington — For Republicans, an election win of any size today would be a blessing. But victories in Virginia, New Jersey or elsewhere won’t erase enormous obstacles the party faces heading into a 2010 midterm election year when control of Congress and statehouses from coast to coast will be up for grabs.

So even if political winds start blowing harder behind them and even if they can capitalize on Democratic missteps, Republicans will have a long way to go over the next year because of their party’s own fundamental problems – divisions over the path forward, the lack of a national leader and a shrinking base in a changing nation.

In fact, 2009 seems to have underscored what may be the biggest impediment for Republicans – the war within their base.

Al Gore could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.

UK Telegraph:

Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Washington Examiner: White House Featherbedding Stimulus Numbers

Examiner:

Featherbedding occurs when paychecks are issued for nonexistent employees and the money goes directly into union coffers. Thousands of the jobs Obama officials say were saved or created by the stimulus program are no more real than those invisible positions invented by unions to bulk up their treasuries. We know this to be the case because as Obama’s chief economist, Christina Romer, admitted several weeks ago, “It’s very hard to say exactly because you don’t know what the baseline is, right, because you don’t know what the economy would have done without [the economic stimulus program].”

Even if we take at face value the White House claim that it created or saved all these jobs with approximately $150 billion of the economic stimulus money, a little simple math shows the taxpayers aren’t getting any bargains here: $150 billion divided by 650,000 jobs equals $230,000 per job saved or created. Instead of taking all that time required to write the 1,588-page stimulus bill, Congress could have passed a one-pager saying the first 650,000 jobless persons to report for work at the White House will receive a voucher worth $230,000 redeemable at the university, community college or trade school of their choice. That would have been enough for a degree plus a hefty down payment on a mortgage.

Actually, taxpayers would be better off with such a deal, too, compared with the reality of the Obama stimulus program. Among the top 10 stimulus contracts awarded, there is the one for nearly $339 million that allegedly created or saved 41.19 jobs, or about $8.3 million per position. It was even worse with the $258 million contract to Brookhaven Science Associates in New York, where 25 jobs were saved or created, at a cost of $10.3 million per position. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the ranking House minority member of the Joint Economic Committee, said it best: “What we know for certain is that 2.7 million payroll jobs have been lost since the Obama stimulus was signed into law, hundreds of thousands of more jobs are being lost each month, and America is so deep in debt, China and France are lecturing us to get our financial house in order.”

Dems Culture of Corruption: Dozens in Congress Under Ethics Inquiry

Washington Post:

Dozens in Congress under ethics inquiry.

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. Watchdog groups have accused the committee of not actively pursuing inquiries; the newly disclosed document indicates the panel is conducting far more investigations than it had revealed.

Washington Post:

Nearly half the members of a powerful House subcommittee in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, who have trained their lens on the relationships between seven panel members and an influential lobbying firm founded by a former Capitol Hill aide.

The investigations by two separate ethics offices include an examination of the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), as well as others who helped steer federal funds to clients of the PMA Group. The lawmakers received campaign contributions from the firm and its clients. A document obtained by The Washington Post shows that the subcommittee members under scrutiny also include Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) , C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.).

Confirmed: Long-term English as Second Language programs lower performance.

L.A. Times:

Many L.A. students not moving out of English language classes

Almost 30% of those placed early on in such programs in L.A. Unified were still in them when they started high school, study says. The sooner students moved out, the more they excelled.

October 29, 2009|Anna Gorman

Nearly 30% of Los Angeles Unified School District students placed in English language learning classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they started high school, increasing their chances of dropping out, according to a new study released Wednesday.

More than half of those students were born in the United States and three-quarters had been in the school district since first grade, according to the report by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC.

The findings raise questions about the teaching in the district’s English language classes, whether students are staying in the program too long and what more educators should do for students who start school unable to speak English fluently.

“If you start LAUSD at kindergarten and are still in ELL classes at ninth grade, that’s too long,” said Wendy Chavira, assistant director of the policy institute. “There is something wrong with the curriculum if there are still a very large number of students being stuck in the system.”

Researchers tracked the data on 28,700 students from the time they started sixth grade in 1999 until graduation in 2005. They found that students who were moved to mainstream classes by the time they were in eighth grade were more likely than students who remained in English language classes to stay in school, take advanced placement courses in high school and pass the high school exit exam.

Flashback: Pelosi’s Public Option Unveiling Closed to the Public…

This is another part of what Pelosi calles the most transparent process in history…. wow the lies are just amazing.

October 29th.

and via Brietbart News they denied all access to the anouncemnt for the unveiling…

Washington Times – Democrats handpick reform bill audience…

What if George W. Bush had done that?

Politico:

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser. 

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

Indeed. Add to the list breaking promises about transparency while claiming the most secretive process in history is the most open, breaking his tax pledge in the campaign in mere weeks of attaining office, having a fiscal responsibility summit that was a lobbyist convention, having a jobs summit with far left special interest and no Chamber of Commerce, or NFIB or any small business allowed to attend, having a banking summit to encourage them to give loans to small businesses when government rules (such as the benchmark lending rate and others) encourage exactly the opposite, campaigning against lobbyists and then signing an order relaxing lobbyist restrictions…

… this is a list that could go on for the entire page.

Prager University: It is actions that matter; not thoughts or often even intentions