It is no surprise that the left doesn’t know the Constitution. After all they spend so much time trying to ignore it, subvert it and get around it. Maddow has whopping flubs pretty regularly (1, 2, 3) and when we we started to look at her statements we realized that correcting and making fun of her ignorance would become a full time job. Nonetheless this flub is pretty entertaining.
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Congressman Akin was not alone in stumbling over a little basic U.S. history. He had some good company in the top Republican in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner.
(VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN BOEHNER (R-OHIO.): This is my copy of the Constitution. And I’m gonna stand here with our Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
(END VIDEOTAPE):
MADDOW (waving hands): Nnn, Constitution doesn’t have a Preamble. Not. Nope. Stop it. That would be the Declaration of Independence. Ooh.
Actually, Rach, the Constitution DOES have a Preamble, and I doth quote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
As you liberals so love Wikipedia, in its section titled “Preamble to the United States Constitution”
I was very sick while this went on, but it is worth noting that the same people that fact checked a Saturday Night Live skit teasing President Obama, put vile and totally invented quotes on the air to smear Limbaugh to prevent his consortium from buying the St. Louis Rams.
MSNBC says that Limbaugh would love to say that he owns a plantation full of black men – LINK.
MSNBC Admits: ‘Unable to Verify’ False Limbaugh Quote; No Retraction or Apology- LINK.
Since the fictional Limbaugh quotes were exposed, the networks spent only 47 seconds discussing it – LINK.
Huffington Post Pulls Bogus Limbaugh Quotes after not being able to substantiate them – LINK.
CNN Reads Limbaugh’s Denial of Alleged Slavery Quote, Doesn’t Retract Use. Says there are “Other Quotes” and couldn’t substantiate those either – LINK.
So Called ‘Journalists’ Claiming Limbaugh Praised MLK’s Assassin Offer No Proof – LINK.
ANC Claims “Limbaugh has a history of making racially offensive comments” but offers no quotes and no proof – LINK.
Video: MSNBC’s Matthews muses on killing Rush Limbaugh – LINK.
Roger Goodell from the NFL, a known Obama supporter, made disparaging comments about Limbaugh and got chewed out for it during a Congressioanl hearing by Represetative Steve King. You can watch Goodell squirm. He very much deserved this public humiliation.
My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL ’standards.’
David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn’t much care. I accepted his offer.
It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.
Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.
Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: “I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word. . . . “
Mr. Wilbon wasn’t alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.
I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.
The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?
The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.
When Mr. Goodell was asked about me, he suggested that my 2003 comment criticizing the media’s coverage of Donovan McNabb—in which I said the media was cheerleading Mr. McNabb because they wanted a successful black quarterback—fell short of the NFL’s “high standard.” High standard? Half a decade later, the media would behave the same way about the presidential candidacy of Mr. Obama.
Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.
As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.
These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.
BRZEZINSKI: — but we’re all liberals and Democrats.
SCARBOROUGH: You know that everyone you worked for, they were all liberals, they were all pro-choice, they were all pro-gun control, they were all, I mean, let me ask you this question: when did you work at CBS?
BRZEZINSKI: Collectively, over a course of 10 years.
SCARBOROUGH: Give me years.
BRZEZINSKI: ‘90, 2001 to 2007.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, how many people that you worked for at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush? Of all the thousands you worked for, how many people at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush?
BRZEZINSKI: A very small percentage.
SCARBOROUGH: Maybe 1%?
BRZEZINSKI: I don’t know.
SCARBOROUGH: Can you think–seriously–you don’t have, just use your insight, your inside head voice here, can you think seriously of one correspondent, of one producer, of one anchor, that was a George W. Bush fan?
The elite media is euphoric, saying the Obama stimulus package worked and we had 3.5% economic growth this quarter!
Unfortunately when I explain to you how the U.S. Government comes up with that number you are going to realize why the CBO likely never has an accurate forecast and why most economists are worse than weatherman at predicting economic trends. What I am about to explain to you is a tad arcane but Poligazette and my IUSB Vision readers are some very smart people and I have confidence that you will grasp this just fine.
The first thing that must be understood is the difference between a growth in GDP (Gross Domestic Product is the total sum of production within the borders of a country in a given year adjusted for inflation) and a growth in real GDP per capita. It is possible to claim that your economy is in “recovery” even at 1% growth (Joe Biden) but since 2% of production growth in the United States is because of improvements in technology and capital goods; and another 1% is needed for population growth, an economic growth rate of over 3% is required to reliably increase the GDP per capita of the United States. The GDP per capita is the most important measure of the standard of living and wealth of the average citizen.
With a claimed GDP growth rate of 3.5% and a non farm unemployment rising past 10%, how can each citizen be producing more per person while the unemployment rate is skyrocketing with another 530,000 NEW jobless claims just in the last month? This would have to mean that American consumers went on a spending spree to drive that number up or that each worker became way more productive and must be working lots of extra hours and overtime to get that per capita GDP up….
If you are starting to think that something sounds fishy you would be right.
I had a brief chat and open lecture with noted economist Bradley Schiller today. He told me that with the new 3.5% number that per capita GDP must be up and with unemployment also up the overtime worked hours must be way up. As you can see from the graphic, Schiller was wrong.
The graphic is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from October 29th. As you can see the hours of persons worked is way down in both categories. The total output is also down so how can this be? Where did the 3.5% growth come from? Could it be that Americans went on that spending spree? Sorry consumer confidence is down 5.7 points this quarter.
How can the output per hour have increased so high on the graphic when hours worked and total output are way down? Did Americans go into overdrive and suddenly become become super workers? The answer to why that number is artificially inflated is the same reason why the GDP number has been artificially inflated.
So how does the the US Government measure GDP? They use an old and very flawed Keynesian formula.
GDP= C+I+G+(X-N)
C = consumer consumption of goods and services measured. I = capital investment like building factories, production robots, machine tools etc. (X-N) is exports minus imports and since we have a large trade deficit that is always a negative number. G= government spending and this is where the smoke and mirrors come in.
Since GDP has to equal total production of the workforce, this means that if Mr. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve prints up a bunch of money and Nancy Pelosi spends it, congratulations, each worker in the United States just became more productive on paper. This is the effect that a $1.7 trillion yearly deficit for 2009 has on an economy. For the sake of comparison the yearly deficit spending for 2007 was a “measly” $211 billion.
This is why the old, flawed Keynesian model is favored by politicians, socialists and other leftist ideologues, because on paper it means that the more you spend the better your economy is and the more productive you appear. What this amounts to is that there is no economic dip, depression, or problem that cannot be fixed by government spending. It gets worse, because of another flawed Keynesian concept called “leakage” they actually believe that government spending is MORE efficient in growing the economy than tax cuts. When Vice-President Biden said that we have to greatly increase deficit spending so we don’t go bankrupt, now you know why.
The reality is that most government spending does not create much if any wealth and much of it simply amounts to a transfer payment. Government is gargantuan and bureaucratic. Government money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons or efficiency.Thus the “multiplier effect” government spending has on the economy is much less than creating real wealth like creating things or investors building a factory.
There is even an argument to be made that much of the “G” variable for government spending should be counted as a negative number towards GDP because each dollar government spends eventually is a dollar taken from you or an investor to spend it. GDP exploded after 1947 when government spending dropped from 188 billion to 58 billion. It also should be mentioned that the larger government is, it engages in more arbitrary, regulative and taxing behavior that also drives down consumer and investor confidence. Deficit spending also drives up inflation.
The old Keynesian model is what a majority of economists believe because this is what they are taught in school; they simply never think for a moment to challenge it. This is a big part of the reason why government economists are so bad at cost/revenue forecasts. The economic collapse and the inability of 80% of economists to see it coming helped to convince me that most economists are great at applying flawed theory and don’t really understand economics.
It should also be noted that some economists are saying that one percentage point of the alleged 3.5% growth measure was due to the cash for clunkers program which studies have shown mostly was utilized by those who had planned to buy a car anyways this year; so the program just borrowed some spending from the future that will result in dips in auto sales for the next two quarters. In either case, the economy really isn’t improving anywhere near the degree that the elite media and some politicians say it is.
At best the current GDP formula is not a very good measure of an economy. A new formula for GDP needs to be constructed and tested.
I saw the headline on the CBS web site “Statisticians: “Global Cooling” a Myth – Claims about Last 10 Years Are Deceptive; Temperatures Rise and Fall, But Overall Trend Is Higher”. Rest assured what is deceptive is this article that misrepresents what is already a bad study that stands in direct contradiction to a previous data set from the NCDC from January.
I was hoping that the Obama Administration had not politicized the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC) as they had the EPA when they suppressed a report showing how global warming skeptics are correct (LINK – LINK).
Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.
Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.
Ok time to stop right there, as has been documented by us (one example we reported LINK) and others such as the Media Research Center (example LINK, LINK, LINK and I could fill a page of links with examples of this problem), that almost always, the people the elite media portray as “independent” are people who are known to the reporter or news organization, with a known point of view, who will say what the reporter wants to report. The same few “random experts” appear in the elite media over and over and over again. It is a main component of how the elite media editorializes the news and hide the fact that in reality it is the news organizations editorial point of view they are presenting.
Why is IPCC author Dr. John Christy not a common talking head in the elite media?
CBS/AP continues:
In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller “Freakonomics.” Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.
Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped – thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.
Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.
The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.
[Oh wait, could they mean this, UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – UPDATED!. This was one of our little posts that went viral on the internet and got my little IUSB Vision Web Log pronounced the second most reviled web site on global warming by the Huffington Post. I really should buy Arianna a nice lunch for the publicity she gave me on that one - Chuck Norton]
Notice how they said that the study relies on ground sensors and pay special attention to the quote “recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data” …under NOOOOOO political pressure from the new administration I’m sure…
So I headed over to the WUWT blog to see if they had found the data that I was suspecting and sure enough. The data the story relies on comes from NOAA ground sensors and ignores the oceanic data sets and other important data sets. The NOAA ground censors have been discredited as controlled data because in a great many cases the NOAA censors are placed on or near asphalt, stone, heat vents, parking lots, surrounded by black tires in junk yards etc. all of which absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Also notice how the article states that they did not rely on satellite data that tends to show cooling and that presents another problem. According to alarmist global warming theory more warmth is trapped under the “greenhouse layer” of the atmosphere causing temperatures globally to rise. This layer of the atmosphere can be read by satellites and weather balloons (the John Christy method). So if you are to measure greenhouse warming according to the theory, that is the place to do it. However, measuring it that way does not give global warming alarmists the measurements they want.
This [AP] article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists) is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.
So as Pielke points out at WUWT, the “study” and the AP article doesn’t even address oceanic data sets. Nor does it address other data sets. It gets worse, would you like to see examples of NOAA ground sensors??
WUWT is up to part 91 of its “How not to measure temperature” series on these NOAA ground sensors.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor in a junk yard with black tires.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor next to that concrete porch and look to the left, its a grill. It has no cover so I guess it has been used pretty frequently.
Oh look! Its a NOAA sensor in a parking lot of asphalt. Would you like to walk barefoot on that on a warm summer day? I wonder how much heat the cars that park right next to it give off when the people who live in those apartments come home. Hey what is that a few yards behind the sensor? It's the heat pump for a home air conditioner!
But worry not scientific community and global warming alarmists, WUWT reports in “How not to measure temperature: Part 87” that NOAA “adjusts” for these types of anomalies….yup they adjust the temperatures DOWN in the PAST thus increasing the “current statistical warming trend”!! There are 91 of these ground sensors that WUWT has catalogued so far and they all seem to have one thing in common. They are placed in areas that will artificially make them read higher temperatures.
As we stated above, the new NCDC “study” ignored other data sets such as ITS OWN North American Temperature Data Set updated just last January… hmmm now what has happened between January and today….oh yes we have a new political administration that has already demonstrated that it has no problem trying to shut scientists up (LINK – LINK) who dare tell the truth about global warming.
Yet ANOTHER dataset showing the cooling of the last 10 years.
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black line is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
This data set is a collection of this continent only, but it shows the same cooling trend that other global data sets have shown. Since 1998 the Earth is cooling and it happens to coincide with a similar period of unusually low solar activity.
Of course we realize that to many people, including many radicalized professors, global warming alarmism is almost like a religion. No data set or series of data sets is going to put a dent in those people. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who are not zealots who can appreciate the information. Thanks to the famed WUWT Blog for the heads up.
Maybe this article can get the Huffington Post to rank me the number one most reviled global warming columnist on the internet. Being number two just seems so second best.
The biggest news here is the lack of transparency going on with the current process and of course all the new taxes the Democrats promised they wouldn’t levy…
In violation of the spirit of the process the bills are being merged behind closed doors with the Republicans being locked out. Remember when Obama promised transparency and how the hearings and such on the health care bill would all be on C-Span and not behind closed doors??
Just a reminder, here are Obama’s seven lies in under two minutes.
Below you will read about how what are called “Cadillac Plans” will be taxed at 40%. The bill also requires that those with pre-existing conditions and the sick cannot be turned down. It also mandates that there be limits on the differences in premiums between the old and young, healthy and sick. This will make the costs of premium go way up especially for the young. The young will choose to pay the tax penalty rather than get the insurance. But no worries, when you get sick go buy the insurance and when your better drop it.
The end result? Premiums will go up in cost and become considered Cadillac plans over time. Most good plans that are as good or better than the public option will be considered “Cadillac Plans” over time. using price forces to send you into the public option, which is the goal.
This will also make an adversarial relation ship between the doctor and the patient. The doctor will have budget schedules to meet and you will need the best care possible. One cannot serve two gods. perhaps this is why presidential advisors have said that the Hippocratic oath is taken too seriously and is a part of the problem.
This brings us back to the death panels again. Dick Morris believes that the final versions of the bill will have the same cost/benefit analysis called QARY (Quality Adjusted Remaining Years). So if you are 95 and need a pacemaker , well odds are you wont live much longer so the cost divided out over your QARY is too high so the answer is no. I know a nice married couple in their late 80’s who are in better physical shape than I am and very active. This is exactly why doctors and individuals need to make these choices and not a cost benefit analysis. And before it is said in the comments, death panels does not mean that they will decide who gets the plug pulled, rather it decides who gets the plug plugged in in the first place.
The Senate majority’s contempt for the American people rears its ugly head again. The Senate Finance Committee just voted down a GOP amendment requiring that Obamacare legislation be available online 72 hours before the panel votes. Instead, the Democrats offered to make “conceptual language” available.
Dems lied, transparency died:
WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.
Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting.
Democrats said it was a delay tactic that could have postponed a vote for weeks.
Democrat leaders legislating in special deals for their states
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Nevada would get help with its Medicaid bills. The elderly in Florida and New York would receive additional Medicare benefits. And workers in so-called high-risk professions such as firefighting and construction would get a break on a new insurance tax.
Those are provisions that Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, put in an $829 billion health-care bill to shield constituents from measures intended to pay for the biggest overhaul of the medical system in four decades.
The result is the new policies may be unevenly administered, with some U.S. states getting preferential treatment, a possibility that has given Republican lawmakers ammunition to attack the legislation.
“It’s going to hurt the bill and raise the level of cynicism about Washington politics,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican. “The provisions ought to be applied to all of the states.”
The number of special provisions is likely to grow as the full Senate begins debating the measure in coming weeks. Because Democrats are unlikely to win many Republican votes, individual lawmakers will have leverage to demand changes to satisfy parochial interests.
Baucus Senate Health Bill Costs Skyrocket Over Time
Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class? That dream began to unravel this past summer when Congress proposed a bill that failed to include any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs. It fell apart completely when Democrats began papering over the gaping holes their plan would rip in the federal budget.
As it now stands, the plan proposed by Democrats and the Obama administration would not only fail to reduce the cost burden on middle-class families, it would make that burden significantly worse.
Consider the bill put forward by the Senate Finance Committee. From a budgetary perspective, it is straightforward. The bill creates a new health entitlement program that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will grow over the longer term at a rate of 8% annually, which is much faster than the growth rate of the economy or tax revenues. This is the same growth rate as the House bill that Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) deep-sixed by asking the CBO to tell the truth about its impact on health-care costs.
To avoid the fate of the House bill and achieve a veneer of fiscal sensibility, the Senate did three things: It omitted inconvenient truths, it promised that future Congresses will make tough choices to slow entitlement spending, and it dropped the hammer on the middle class.
One inconvenient truth is the fact that Congress will not allow doctors to suffer a 24% cut in their Medicare reimbursements. Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact pushes the total cost of the bill well over $1 trillion and destroys any pretense of budget balance.
It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned cuts in reimbursements to hospitals, other providers, and Medicare Advantage (thereby reducing the benefits of 25% of seniors in Medicare). The 1997 Balanced Budget Act pursued this strategy and successive Congresses steadily unwound its provisions. The very fact that this Congress is pursuing an expensive new entitlement belies the notion that members would be willing to cut existing ones.
Most astounding of all is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less.
It might not appear that way at first, because the dollars are collected via a 40% tax on sales by insurers of “Cadillac” policies, fees on health insurers, drug companies and device manufacturers, and an assortment of odds and ends.
But the economics are clear. These costs will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums, or by fueling higher health-care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums. Consumers will pay the excise tax on high-cost plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.
Industry fees are even worse because Democrats chose to make these fees nondeductible. This means that insurance companies will have to raise premiums significantly just to break even. American families will bear a burden even greater than the $130 billion in fees that the bill intends to collect. According to my analysis, premiums will rise by as much as $200 billion over the next 10 years—and 90% will again fall on the middle class.
Senate Democrats are also erecting new barriers to middle-class ascent. A family of four making $54,000 would pay $4,800 for health insurance, with the remainder coming from subsidies. If they work harder and raise their income to $66,000, their cost of insurance rises by $2,800. In other words, earning another $12,000 raises their bill by $2,800—a marginal tax rate of 23%. Double-digit increases in effective tax rates will have detrimental effects on the incentives of millions of Americans.
Lieberman Says Baucus Health Bill Will Raise Prices and Taxes by $400 Billion:
Pricewaterhouse Coopers Report Baucus Bill will cause premiums to rise by $1700 per family by 2013.
You can examine the report yourself HERE. Fox News Analysis did an analysis with a GOP Senator
Clinton Advisor Dick Morris on What the Obama-care Bills Mean for You
Morris gives more details about the high price of Obama-care HERE and HERE.
Were Saved! Mew House Health Bill Only Costs $900 Billion and Will be Deficit Neutral for 10 Years….
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday new estimates showed a healthcare overhaul drafted by Democrats would reduce the U.S. budget deficit over 10 years and cost less than $900 billion.
The preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office moved Democratic leaders closer to finishing a merger of three separate healthcare reform bills into one for debate on the House floor.
Ok now how did they do it….. well this is the part where the proposal gets a lot less popular.
They do it by starting the new taxes now, cutting Medicare now, reducing the rates at which doctors are reimbursed now and kicking in the “reform” five years from now so that the new government expense for the program wont fully kick in for five years.
Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1970’s know what price controls do. They limit supply and choice. Oil lines, brown outs and rolling power outages in California etc. When you can’t make sufficient profit to cover costs, growth, and unexpected economic shocks would you produce more of it?
The $871 billion estimate — well under the $900 billion limit set by President Obama — is the latest of several versions scored by congressional budget analysts, according to a Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The measure would include a government-run insurance plan that pays providers at rates tied to Medicare, the aide added. That so-called “robust” public option is preferred by liberals because it would save the government money and could force private insurers to lower their own reimbursement rates, driving down the cost of health care overall. (Thats price controls which result in long wait lines and reduced quality – Editor]
But the idea is opposed by many conservative Democrats from rural areas, where Medicare rates are well below the national average. A new insurance plan that paid such low rates would be devastating to their communities financially, these Democrats say. Instead, they argue that any public plan should negotiate rates directly with providers, as private plans do.
Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com has a nice detailed explanation HERE Patientpowernow.com produced the following videos:
They produced this video criticizing Oregon State run health care and yes this is what Oregon did.
Canadians Speak Out On Health Care
This is from the Mackinac Center who has more video’s and details.
242 Patients Died of Malnutrition in British Health Service Hospitals in 2007
PRISONERS HAVE A BETTER DIET THAN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE HOSPITAL PATIENTS, SCIENTISTS WARN
Patients in Great Britain’s government-run National Health Service (NHS) hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warn.
They say frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat. Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out because meal times clash with tests and operations. Meanwhile, prisoners are enjoying carbohydrate-rich, low-fat foods which in many cases are better than they would have been eating on the outside.
The Daily Mail has been highlighting the scandal of old people not being fed properly in hospital as part of its Dignity for the Elderly campaign. Hospital meals are often taken away untouched, because they are either unappetizing or are placed out of patients’ reach:
The latest figures show 242 patients died of malnutrition in NHS hospitals in 2007 — the highest toll in a decade.
More than 8,000 left hospital under-nourished — double the figure when Labor came to power.
The NHS throws away 11million meals every year, and many nurses say they are too busy to help the frail eat.
Earlier this year the Mail revealed that some hospitals spend less on meals than the average prison:
Ten hospitals spent less on breakfast, lunch and an evening meal than the £2.12 (about U.S.$3.54) a day allocated for food by the prison service; one spent just £1 (about U.S.$1.67).
Although most hospitals do spend more than £2.12 (about U.S.$3.45), prisoners end up better nourished than patients, say experts from Bournemouth University.
After studying the food offered to inmates and across the NHS, they found patients face more barriers in getting good nutrition.
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: “It’s incredible that so many hospitals are failing to serve healthy meals. If prisons can serve good food then so can hospitals.”
Obama Administration Violating Hatch Act by using Tax Dollars to Politic for ObamaCare
And yes it’s illegal. In short the Department of Health and Human Services Web Site has a section on the right hand side of the page to sign up to support and lobby Congress ObamaCare. Of course there is only one option, to support it.Senator Grassley fired off a letter to HHS letting them know that it is illegal. Ed Morrissey at Hotair has more details. This administration seems to be politicizing most everything. Afghanistan, the CIA, FCC etc.
CEI releases global warming study censored by Obama’s EPA
Natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature fluctuations, according to a new study the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released today as Congress prepares to vote on global warming legislation.
Internal email messages show the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suppressed the report and silenced the author because the scientific evidence did not square with the Obama administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide, CEI claims. The EPA has become overly reliant upon outdated information from the United Nations and has ignored major new scientific developments, the censored study concludes.
“While we hoped that the EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency, since she took office,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.
New scientific data highlighted in the report shows that ocean cycles and solar cycles are probably the most important factors behind temperature fluctuations. Moreover, satellite information now indicates there is little chance of endangerment from greenhouse gases, according to the report.
Some of the major developments overlooked by EPA official include a continued decline in global temperatures, an emerging consensus that hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense and new studies that demonstrate water vapor will have a moderating influence on temperature.
The report was exposed by hard work from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. See the entire EPA Report HERE.
This is a key page in the report (Hat Tip Dwight Schultz):
This report has other gems like this one. The EPA and the UN have reports that they tried to hide from you that tell this simple truth. As we have said repeatedly in IUSB Vision coverage. The evidence is clear that there has been global cooling for over a decade and the WUWT Blog has published hundreds of articles and data sets demonstrating this. The bulk of global warming and cooling cycles is the result of solar activity. CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas and man’s contribution to that is minor. Water vapor is the chief greenhouse gas.
Most “peer reviewed” global warming studies are based on computer models. The problem is that when actual recorded data from the past is entered into such models they cannot even accurately predict climate from yesterday or last year.
The CEI unveils the evidence that the EPA ordered people to shut up about the findings and you can see the report with ALL of the emails HERE . Here are just two of the emails reveled (Via Powerline):
Here, the two scientists’ superior declines to make their report public because “the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment.” Click to enlarge:
Here, Carlin and Davidson are ordered not to communicate to the public their conclusion that the global warming alarmist theory is wrong:
Powerline sums up this scandalous behavior with a devastating analogy:
Global warming zealots are a bit like Iran’s mullahs. They are fanatically devoted to a series of false propositions. Unable to win an open scientific debate, they consistently resort to bullying and brute force to suppress their opposition. Once again, we see the Obama administration taking the lead in this regard, putting political ideology above scientific truth and demanding that all others do likewise.
UPDATE: Newsbusters notes the almost complete media blackout of this story, and contrasts it with the news media’s treatment of the Bush administration.
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is.
This is child abuse and I stand by that statement 110% and challenge anyone to DARE debate me publicly on the subject.
The growing list of these video’s is a real indicator of just what bad judgement many teachers have, but also to the degree the NEA will go to abuse the public trust for their own partisan reasons. How many times must we learn the lesson that cults of personality have consequences?
The caption with the video says: Sand Hill Elementary School in Asheville, NC
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
How often is this going on when we don’t find the video?
From the College Politico with absolute video proof. It proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Obama as Hitler signs are at tea parties are clearly from LaRouche Democrats and not traditionalists, libertarians or conservatives. The elite media such as NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC have been showing these signs and presenting them as if they are typical of people at the protests when they are not.
Since any close-up of the sign or interview of people carrying them makes it clear they they are from LaRouche it is next to imnpossible to believe that the elite media did not know who these signs were really from. They made a choice to slander you.
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow at MSNBC uses the LaRouche Democrats Obama=Hitler sign to smear tea party protesters.
This is a screen shot of Maddow’s show that appeared on Newsbusters.
Paul Williams has a video showing the glaring hypocrisy of the left on this matter. This is a must see if there ever was one.
Yes she really said this. So does this mean that we don’t have to do our homework any more and we can still get an A because telling me I need to take personal responsibility makes you a racist…..
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of African-American studies at Princeton, was invited on to National Public Radio to expound on the use of “racial code words” in “the current opposition to health care reform.” For example, explained professor Harris-Lacewell, “language of personal responsibility is often a code language used against poor and minority communities.”
Mark Steyn responds:
“Personal responsibility” is racial code language? Phew, thank goodness America is belatedly joining Canada and Europe in all but abolishing the concept.
Mark Steyn
“Code language” is code language for “total bollocks” [eg total bullcrap - Editor]“Code word” is a code word for “I’m inventing what you really meant to say because the actual quote doesn’t quite do the job for me.”“Small government”? Racist code words! “Non-confiscatory taxes”? Likewise. “Individual liberty”? Don’t even go there! To an incisive NPR racism analyst, the elderly gentleman telling his congressman “I’m very concerned by what I’ve heard about wait times for MRIs in Canada” is really saying “I’m unable to overcome my deep-seated racial anxieties about the sexual prowess of black males, especially now they’re giving prime-time press conferences every night.” With interpreters like professor Harris-Lacewell on the prowl, I’m confident 95 percent of Webster’s will eventually be ruled “code language.”
My colleague at America’s National Review, Jonah Goldberg, proposed a simple thought experiment: suppose Hillary Clinton had won the election and proposed the current health care reforms. Does anyone doubt that conservatives would be equally opposed to it? Would that, too, be “racist”? A reader wrote back: no, if they were opposing Hillary’s health plan, they’d be sexist. Er, okay, how about John Edwards? Would opposing his health care reforms be oleaginous trial-lawyer creepy adulterer-phobic?
Prof. Lacewell majored in English….what a shock. This far left propagandist should consider herself most fortunate that she doesn’t find me in her class because I would have a ball exposing her nonsense in front of the students daily. I would love to debate this professor. I have debated other professors and handily bested them all and for most of them it was on topics in their own field of study. The simple truth is that most far left professors are creatures of indoctrination and are in essence half educated nitwits. They are not disciplined thinkers and they lack almost any sense of introspective so defeating them isn’t tough. I realize that this is a sweeping statement but unfortunately it is a sweeping statement that matches a pattern of behavoir that fits far left academia like a glove.
President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to “step down” in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela “an incredible revolution.”
Mark Lloyd’s provocative comments – most made during a tenure at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank – are giving fodder to critics who say Mr. Obama has appointed too many “czars” to government positions that don’t require congressional approval. They are also worrying to some conservatives who fear the FCC might use its powers to remove their competitive advantage on talk radio and television.
Many of the remarks have been unearthed by conservative-leaning writers and bloggers and discussed on cable television amid a broader critique of Mr. Obama’s penchant for czars that exploded with the ouster this month of “green jobs czar” Van Jones.
In one of his more eye-opening comments, Mr. Lloyd praised Mr. Chavez during a June 2008 conference on media reform, saying the authoritarian Venezuelan president had led “really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.”
~
At another conference, Mr. Lloyd spoke about the need to remove white people from powerful positions in the media to give minorities a fairer chance.
“There’s nothing more difficult than this because we have really truly, good, white people in important positions, and the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions,” he said.
“And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions, we will not change the problem. But we’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.”
He added: “There are few things, I think, more frightening in the American mind than dark-skinned black men. Here I am.”
Andrew Breitbart published the audio of the conference on his Breitbart.com Web site on Monday. Mr. Breitbart said the recording was made during a conference on media reform and racial justice in May 2005.
Dr. Sowell is perhaps the greatest living economist.
Often times when presidents surround themselves with highly intelligent people, they end up with brilliant rationalizations for failure. – Dr. Thomas Sowell
Dr. Sowell has a new column on this very subject and Michael van der Galien has a nice commentary on it at PoliGazette:
Although that’s certainly true (and dangerous), Sowell explains that the real problem runs even deeper: “Such people have been told all their lives how brilliant they are, until finally they feel forced to admit it, with all due modesty. But they not only tend to over-estimate their own brilliance, more fundamentally they tend to over-estimate how important brilliance itself is when dealing with real world problems.”
You see, Sowell explains, not all things can be understood by ‘intelligence’ alone. Experience is just as and often even more important. As Sowell puts it: “Many crucial things in life are learned from experience, rather than from clever thoughts or clever words.”
The main weakness of those who consider themselves to be extremely intelligent if not brilliant is that they overrate intelligence and reason and undervalue traditions, culture and experience. For them only intelligence matters. There is no limit to what government can do as long as they are in charge of it.
History has taught us that there are limits and that brilliant men often end up destroying the good in a vain pursuit of the perfect.
It’s progressivism’s main weakness; it is inherently unrealistic – no matter how ‘brilliant’ its adherents may believe themselves to be.
Bravo Michael! Well said. Michael and I are of one mind on this issue and I feel that my experience with leftist academia allows me the opportunity to expand on this a little more.
The Virtue of the Collectivist vs. the Wisdom of the Individualist
The left believes that society needs to be liberated from the mysticism and ancient thinking of the past. They believe that their virtue and their normative values combined with their new thinking is what is needed to lead the rest of society to a utopia, or at least to something close to perfection. All society has to do in exchange is cooperate with their ideas.
For the traditionalist or individualist, they realize that man is flawed and cannot be perfected, so they look at the wisdom, philosophy and experiences of the past to see what worked. They seek to conserve such knowledge and good practices and implement the best of them, while accepting that it will not be perfect and “very good” is the best that can ever be hoped for.
To the leftist or collectivist the wisdom of the past IS the problem, especially the philosophy that is included with Western religion. They see it as nothing but backwards mysticism that is utterly useless. Any argument against the leftist point of view often generates a vitriolic reaction, as they see it as an attack on virtue itself. In such an argument from the traditionalist, the reality is that it is not an attack on virtue, but rather an attack on the leftist’s normative ideas. It is narcissism at its core (after all we all want equality of result, DON’T YOU? Aren’t you down with the struggle?).
Since the left sees arguments from traditionalists as an attack on virtue itself, they see traditionalists as evil and feel perfectly justified in attacking them, trying to silence them, and engage in double standards in dealing with them.
In more cases than one might suspect the leftist will engage in various forms and degrees of brutality which is totally justified in their minds as virtuous. One just needs to explore the case files of theFoundation for Individual rights in Education and the Alliance Defense Fund (2) to see countless examples where leftist academics and administrators brazenly violated the rights of traditionalist students and teachers.
Have you ever wondered why leftist academics so often gloss over or play apologetics for human catastrophes that have resulted from collectivist or centrally controlled regimes? Well now you know. To them, Castro and Hugo Chavez are just trying to live up to their virtue.
How Academia Went Wrong
With the academic left, it starts with a liberal arts education that is a pop culture based education that is very heavy on Marxist theory, rather than a classic liberal arts education that is based on Aristotle, Socrates, St. Thomas Aquinas, Cicero, Plato, Locke, Bacon, Scholasticism etc. For many, if not most American universities the premises of the far left are often presented as the academic truth.
These academics pat each other on the back and tell each other how brilliant they are….and after all it MUST be true because all of these PhD. types tell you so. Invariably this environment brings you to a point where you start to believe it. You internalize it and eventually you stop challenging your own assumptions. The end result is an atrophied thinking process.
I am a non-traditional student at a state university finishing my first degree. I have debated professors on topics within their own field of study and defeated them. This should not happen and the simple truth is that in most cases out thinking them was not difficult. It is not that I am so brilliant, rather it is that a classic liberal arts based general education teaches you how to think ethically, logically and with a sense of introspective. Without it even the most educated among us will use their education and intellect to satisfy positions that are often a result of emotional attachments. They simply are not trained thinkers and as a result they often do not apply their knowledge well.
The Hollywood screenwriter and author Andrew Klavan wrote two very entertaining short video’s explaining this very concept of leftist virtue and ‘moral authority’.
Why are Conservatives So Mean?
Night of the Living Government
The Brainy Bunch By Dr. Thomas Sowell
September 29, 2009
Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.
It was, after all, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s brilliant “brains trust” advisers whose policies are now increasingly recognized as having prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s, while claiming credit for ending it. The Great Depression ended only when the Second World War put an end to many New Deal policies.
FDR himself said that “Dr. New Deal” had been replaced by “Dr. Win-the-War.” But those today who are for big spending like to credit wartime big spending for bringing the Great Depression to an end. They never ask the question as to why previous depressions had always ended on their own, much faster than the one under FDR, and without government intervention or massive government spending.
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant “whiz kids” tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.
Such people have been told all their lives how brilliant they are, until finally they feel forced to admit it, with all due modesty. But they not only tend to over-estimate their own brilliance, more fundamentally they tend to over-estimate how important brilliance itself is when dealing with real world problems.
Many crucial things in life are learned from experience, rather than from clever thoughts or clever words. Indeed, a gift for the clever phrasing so much admired by the media can be a fatal talent, especially for someone chosen to lead a government.
Make no mistake about it, Adolf Hitler was brilliant. His underlying beliefs may have been half-baked and his hatreds overwhelming, but he was a genius when it came to carrying out his plans politically, based on those beliefs and hatreds.
Starting from a position of Germany’s military weakness in the early 1930s, Hitler not only built up Germany’s war-making potential, he did so in ways that minimized the danger that his potential victims would match his military build-up with their own. He said whatever soothing words they wanted to hear that would spare them the cost of military deterrence and the pain of contemplating another war.
He played some of the most highly educated people of his time for fools– not only foreign political leaders but also members of the intelligentsia. The editor of the Times of London filtered out reports that his own foreign correspondents in Germany sent him about the evils and dangers of the Nazis. In the United States, W.E.B. Du Bois – with a Ph.D. from Harvard – said that dictatorship in Germany was “absolutely necessary to get the state in order.”
In an age when facts seem to carry less weight than the visions of brilliant and charismatic leaders, it is more important than ever to look at the actual track records of those brilliant and charismatic leaders. After all, Hitler led Germany into military catastrophe and left much of the country in ruins.
Even in a country which suffered none of the wartime destruction that others suffered in the 20th century, Argentina began that century as one of the 10 richest nations in the world – ahead of France and Germany – and ended it as such an economic disaster that no one would even compare it to France or Germany.
Politically brilliant and charismatic leaders, promoting reckless government spending – of whom Juan Peron was the most prominent, but by no means alone – managed to create an economic disaster in a country with an abundance of natural resources and a country that was spared the stresses that wars inflicted on other nations in the 20th century.
Someone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama’s style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots– the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. But do we want to become the world’s largest banana republic?
Keep in mind that antisemitism on the academic left from which Obama comes from is very high to put it mildly. Also keep in mind that Obama sat in a radically antisemitic church for 20 years.
Yet another “capitalism & America is evil” video shown to students.
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
UPDATE: Lou Dobbs on this indoctrination video called “The Story of Stuff”
“How The World Works” Took this video apart piece by piece.
Indeed, that is what he told George Stephanopoulos LINK . After what happened (LINK) maybe we can’t blame a politician for lying.
Update – Hotair.com reports that ACORN is trying to hide its ties with teachers unions like NEA and AFT (LINK). Brietbart News has even more detail and documents HERE.
So Glenn Beck introduces us to the ACORN Advisory Board and it ends up being a who’s who of Obama’s life and administration. Why do these politicians keep lying to us so brazenly. …Hmm maybe it is because the elite media has abandoned its responsibility to the public.
By the way for those of you who didn’t get it. The assault weapon ban had nothing to do with machine guns and never did and semi-automatics he refers to aren’t machine guns either. They shoot one bullet with each pull of the trigger like most guns built since 1900.
If you think that this is not typical or was rigged, there is empirical evidence to support this right HERE.
The elite media calls the people at tea parties violent and racist (LINK), yet at every known event of violence has been committed by ACORN/SEIU thugs. There was violence at several anti-war protests, at the GOP convention and at this event, the G20 summit in Pittsburgh with 60 arrested, 6 hospitalized and businesses vandalized.
Why is CNN not featuring the nuttiest sign they can find at this protest like they do at a Tea Party, why are their reporters not getting in the face of a protestor to challenge, harass, name call and mock them like they do at Tea Parties (LINK) ….where is Susan Roesgen now? [By the way, here is how Roesgen and CNN portrayed left wing protestors wielding Hitler/Bush signs - LINK]
The National Park Service confirmed that the 9/12 protest called by Glenn Beck was the largest event in DC history and there was not one arrest…not one.
For Example.
CNN reporting on Left Wing protestors:
Notice how they do not zoom in on the nuttiest sign and present it as typical. They do not get in a protestors face to challenge them, mock them, ask them a question and don’t let them answer it, they don’t call them sexual names like “tea baggers”. It’s all just hunky dory… but…
CNN reporting on Tea Parties:
So let us take a close look at the signs at the anti-war protests and ask the protestors a few questions. Since NO ONE in the elite media would do this with any fair, we rely on film maker Evan Coyne Maloney:
Yet it is the Tea Party people who are nutty, violent, racists…. yea right.
UPDATE – The B-Cast TV program does a special on CNN’s insulting coverage of the Tea Party protests and how they spun the Fox News ad – LINK.
This is a documentary about how sing alongs, peer pressure, the want of recognition, feeling of importance, and fear of humiliation was used to indoctrinate children into the Hitler Youth.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.” – B. Obama
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
[Editor's Note - So what the Democrats and this professor is saying is that if Joe Biden were president the Tea Parties would not be protesting the wasteful spending, the corrupt pork earmarks for corporate lobbying clients, the porkulus bills, the broken promises, the government take over of health care and the banks etc? So I ask, was it racist when they opposed HillaryCare in 1994?
By that standard anyone who criticizes Michael Steele (a black American) the head of the Republican Party a racist. So by his own standard is the entire DNC racist and the professor below a race traitor? Yup thats it, anyone who criticizes any Republican is a racist because they just can't take it that the leader of the Republican Party is a black man. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.]
This man is a professor of law. He speaks in these brad brush strokes and avoids specifics on policy.
I would LOVE to debate this guy Lincoln/Douglas style. I also like how he says that he is not a leftist and then spouts every far left talking point right down the line including these baseless attacks on Glenn Beck. This guy was so transparent and phony that most thinking Americans could see right through this guy. Unfortunately this guy is representative of a great deal of college professors and administrators.
I also found it interesting how he portrayed what the National Park Service has called the largest DC event in US history; the 9/12 protest called by Glenn Beck. About 1.7 million people participated and he focussed in on the few nuts that showed up to attempt to mainstream themselves with any political movement. We also reported how plants from ACORN have been showing up to some Tea Party events with racist signs of high production value to attempt to get in front of a camera (LINK). No one who did any genuine reporting of the event said that those types of signs were even close to representative to the crowd.
So while the elite media and this professor show contempt (more contempt) for tea party protesters, I wonder where all these people were when left wing nuts took to the streets in droves with plenty of hate to spread around ….and yet they got glowing coverage from the elite media…. well as a reminder I have the video…. Watch each in total…especially the endings.
Or maybe they think the constant antisemitism that is so common at far left protests isn’t racist at all…..
UPDATE- Gary Bauer speaks on the issue (Via The Anchoress):
Bauer noted that when Obama was inaugurated, he had an approval rating of 75 percent. Yet, today, his approval rating is in the neighborhood of 50 percent. If racism is the explanation, Bauer wondered aloud, are we to believe that the quarter of the electorate that seems to have abandoned President Obama just discovered that he is black?
As Bauer made his argument, it was obvious that he was speaking directly to the reporters present. He went further by asking the crowd the question (and this is from memory so it may not be exact), “If a party were to run a candidate who was black, Asian, or hispanic and who was pro-life, in favor of free markets, traditional morality, and strong national defense, would you support that candidate?” The crowd erupted in massive, enthusiastic applause. Bauer joked with the crowd and the reporters present, “I can’t wait to run home and see that positive reaction from the crowd toward racial diversity played on CBS, NBC, and ABC!” Of course, the enthusiastic reaction in favor of a candidate of color who is also a conservative doesn’t fit the press narrative and the audience reaction would never be played on the news. Bauer knew that. The crowd knew that. And so did the press.
Yes, so I imagined. While Glenn Greenwald, for example, was accusing those on the right of being “chickenhawks” for not serving in Iraq, he was never quite able to explain why he wasn’t accumulating Congressional Medals of Honor and Taliban tooth-necklaces in the war he supposedly supported, Afghanistan.
And no, this isn’t just about some seedy, nasty liberal bloggers.
It’s about our lying POS POTUS, too.
Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy. There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?
You… um… voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?
We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.
Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.
UPDATE – Michelle Malkin finds the teacher who did this to these students and the school. One has to melt with respect at Malkin’s ability to track down the details of a story.
The school is B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township, New Jersey and the teacher is Charisse Carney-Nunes. Follow the link above to see more details!
UPDATE II – UH OH! Megyn Kelley at Fox News is now on the story. Administrators at B. Bernice Young Elementary School are hiding under their desks now. I bet they have stopped answering the phones there as this story is going viral. You heard her, its on Drudge Report so the world has seen it now.
UPDATE III – Malkin found a response from the school from a fellow blogger Exurban League HERE:
Dear Burlington Township Families:
Today we became aware of a video that was placed on the internet which has been reported in the media. The video is of a class of students singing a song about President Obama. The activity took place during Black History Month in 2009, which is recognized each February to honor the contributions of African Americans to our country. Our curriculum studies, honors and recognizes those who serve our country. The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized.
If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me or Dr. King, Principal of B. Bernice Young School, directly.
Sincerely,
Dr. Christopher M. Manno,
Superintendent of Schools
So, a public school had an official lesson using impressionable children to praise Barack Obama. The song they used even co-opted lyrics from “Jesus Loves the Little Children” with Obama’s name inserted in place of God.
A commentor at Michelle Malkin states, “Thank goodness somebody recorded it lest this school have more clandestine political brain washing sessions for the children.”
UPDATE V – Principal of elementary school praises Obama and says that she would do it again – details HERE.
This isn’t the only one folks… we also have THESE.. HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE … Glenn Beck finds yet another video HERE.
MINI-UPDATE – Pat Dollard finds yet another school indoctrination video singing to the ‘Dear Leader’ -LINK.
MINI-UPDATE II – 9-28-2009 Yup another new indoctrination video LINK !
UPDATE IV – Hotair.com posts the following video for comparison –
UPDATE VI – Ed Morrissey from Hotair.com has a GREAT NEW POST on this issue with an update from Fox News:
Ed Morrissey:
Parents angry over Obama song at NJ elementary school in which the school and the district double down on stupid.
“There was no intention to indoctrinate children. There was no political agenda underlying the activity.”
Uh, sure, pal. Those kids wrote the lyrics about equal pay all by themselves? I know that’s a big issue among the playground set. They also just happened to replace God with “Barack Hussein Obama” in saying that people are “equal in his sight,” because that’s exactly the phraseology one would expect from a roomful of kids of the “London Bridge is falling down” age.
The administration in this community may need to go back to school themselves to learn a little common sense and strategy. The teacher who led this group retired before the video hit the Internet. How much difficulty could it cause to admit the obvious and apologize for stepping over a line with these children? They’re certainly not learning a lesson about accountability, although they do seem to have adopted the ACORN strategy of blaming people for the video’s release to the Internet rather than the fact that one of their teachers was indoctrinating kids into Obama-worship, quite literally considering the song, its lyrics, and its origins.
Talk about taking the words out of my mouth and every other parent who has a historical perspective that goes beyond breakfast. Well stated Ed.
UPDATE VII- Parents appear on FNC with Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sean Hannity:
UPDATE VIII – Factreal.com posts a history of “sing-along indoctrination” and here is a sample:
This is very disturbing. And by the way, what is it with the far left and their hostility towards freedom of speech and conscience? Well the far left is statist and absolutely convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority…perhaps that has something to do with it.
Senator McConnell protests from the Senate Floor. Here is the entire clip – WATCH IT:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to go to the Senate floor on Tuesday to call out the Obama administration for using the full power of a federal regulatory agency to suppress free speech — specifically, to silence Humana’s predictions about the impact of proposed ObamaCare cuts to the Medicare Advantage program — led ABC, but not CBS or NBC, to air a story on the “gag order.”
ABC’s story began with a McConnell soundbite (“’Shut up,’ the government says, ‘don’t communicate with your customers. Be quiet and get in line,’”), before reporter Jonathan Karl explained McConnell was referring to the “Department of Health and Human Services, telling insurance companies who serve Medicare recipients, to stop ‘misleading’ and ‘confusing’ mailings, saying, quote: ‘We are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings, and remove any related materials from your Web sites.’”
Karl continued: “The extraordinary order comes in response to a mailing the Humana insurance company sent to customers in the Medicare Advantage program. The Humana mailing warned that because of Medicare cuts in the health care reform bills, quote, ‘millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many important benefits and services.’”
ABC News actually does a story on this…wow:
On Monday, HHS offered “guidance” to silence criticism: “MEDICARE ISSUES NEW GUIDANCE TO INSURANCE COMPANIES ON MEDICARE MAILINGS.”
So far, the government’s power play has succeeded. “Humana backed down, stopping the mailing and announcing that it would cooperate with the investigation,” James Taranto noted in his Monday “Best of the Web,” lamenting: “Corporations may provide lots of useful goods and services, but never count on them to take a stand for freedom.”
Now the question is, will the media champion free speech and be outraged by the abuse of power to suppress it, or will most journalists not mind the government hushing voices which go against Obama?
The story on the Tuesday, September 22 World News on ABC (transcript provided by the MRC’s Brad Wilmouth):
CHARLES GIBSON: In Washington, the Senate Finance Committee today began voting on amendments to the health care reform bill, and the bill that comes out of that committee will become the centerpiece for the health care debate. But even before the amendment process began, a war of words broke out over what one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies is saying about the bill. Here’s Jonathan Karl.
JONATHAN KARL: It’s not often you hear language like this on the Senate floor.
MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: “Shut up,” the government says, “don’t communicate with your customers. Be quiet and get in line.”
KARL: He’s talking about this order issued last night by the Department of Health and Human Services, telling insurance companies who serve Medicare recipients to stop “misleading” and “confusing” mailings, saying, quote, “We are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings, and remove any related materials from your Web sites.” The extraordinary order comes in response to a mailing the Humana insurance company sent to customers in the Medicare Advantage program.
The Humana mailing warned that because of Medicare cuts in the health care reform bills, quote, “millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many important benefits and services.” But Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus says it is misleading to say his bill cuts Medicare benefits and ordered the HHS to investigate, prompting the gag order. Some legal experts say the order is unconstitutional. Senator McConnell agrees.
MCCONNELL: We cannot allow government officials to target individuals or companies because they do not like what they say.
KARL: And even some Democratic Senators are concerned that the bill now before the Senate Finance Committee reduces spending on Medicare Advantage by $123 billion.
SENATOR BILL NELSON (D-FL): I think it would be intolerable to ask the senior citizens on Medicare who have it to give up substantial health benefits that they’re enjoying under Medicare.
KARL: HHS declined a request for an on-camera interview, but told us that they are investigating whether the mailings illegally give the impression that they are official communications from Medicare. While that investigation goes forward, Charlie, the gag order remains in place.
I’m an adjunct English professor. When the subject of adjunct faculty comes up, the predictable calls for unionization and “social justice” are often voiced by my tenured colleagues enjoying light teaching loads and by administrators enjoying comfortable salaries overseeing “multicultural” programs. But I know that I would not be among their intended beneficiaries were they made aware of my political views.
It’s not that I sought to be political when I returned to school in the 1990s to earn my Ph.D. I soon discovered, however, that political neutrality—even in literary studies—is suspect. In the academic world, the belief that great literature conveys universal, timeless themes is generally taken as evidence of an imperialistic outlook. The same holds for history, where the reliance on factual evidence and focus on major events are deemed offensive to women and those from non-Western cultures.
My fellow graduate students tailored their programs for the job market: studying African-American and gay writers, and applying the trendy postmodern, deconstructivist literary theories. Since 2002, when I earned my Ph.D. in English, the field has gotten even stranger, with such additions to the ideological postcolonial, African-American, and critical theory courses as “fat studies” and “trauma studies.” An upperclassman can enroll in “Introduction to Visual Rhetoric”—and then presumably in “Advanced Visual Rhetoric.” But how does my study of Plato and Cicero prepare me to teach these classes?
I am considered qualified to teach freshman composition, though. My experience of being called at 4:50 p.m. on a Friday and asked to be on campus at 8:30 a.m. on Monday to fill out the application and teach two classes that morning is not that unusual. At least it’s one way to avoid the scrutiny of mycurriculum vitae.
Some of my teaching is done at a community college. Even there, however, one must accept the prevailing ideology, as I discovered during a job interview.
After my teaching demonstration on a nuts-and-bolts aspect of freshman composition (semicolons), the committee chair (a black female who chaired a committee that was all-female, except for one openly gay man), asked how I addressed the multicultural needs of the student body. I mentioned Zora Neale Hurston, the black and decidedly non-political author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, as someone I like to have students read. Apparently, it wasn’t a good enough response.
Although I did not get the position, I was encouraged to apply again. To put my cv over the edge, I suppose I should attend the recommended online and Saturday teacher development workshops and publish papers on multicultural pedagogy.
I certainly could not, however, tout my writing in publications like the Weekly Standard, Pajamas Media, and Townhall, even though they might inspire student writers. Some of my colleagues openly brag about being published in the leftist magazine The Nation or having worked on Al Gore’s presidential campaign. That’s perfectly safe, but I no longer list my academic affiliations under my byline. Once I was told that I was no longer “needed” at a school after readers of my columns wrote laudatory letters to the department chair.
Here’s another illustrative case. A colleague who started at a small college as an adjunct was eventually hired on a one-year basis and told he’d be the first in line when a full-time position opened. Then he was asked to submit his application, but was later told that the position now required a “gender historian.” He was not even interviewed, despite having published a book and having received glowing student evaluations. History major “groupies” circulated petitions when they learned that his contract was not being renewed—to no avail. He just didn’t have the right political orientation. Excellent teaching and research didn’t matter.
The sad fact is that history majors, after taking the mandatory gender history class, will be taught from that same radical perspective in their other history classes. These kinds of students probably will seek other majors. I doubt I would have continued my graduate studies had I not been able to select the traditional classes of older professors, who have since retired or died.
And even at the community college level where we have to explain the difference between a noun and a verb, we have no choice in textbooks. One I currently use includes a story by Richard Wright from his communist period (which Zora Neale Hurston called “communist propaganda,” I tell my students). The introduction does not mention Wright’s repudiation of communism later. The grammar handbook uses Alice Walker’s prose as examples of elegant sentences, and the words of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as logical fallacies. At another low-tier state university we were ordered to put on our syllabi that the course had the objective of gaining “an understanding of race, class, and gender.”
I think what happened a generation ago was that conservative humanities professors failed in challenging the ideology of the radicals—especially the females—who demanded entrance. During my one-year stint as a full-time faculty member I watched a tenured Shakespeare professor voice no objection to the suggestion that a course include Tupac Shakur’s lyrics as poetry.
Or, more generously, the conservative gatekeepers assumed that the radicals demanding entrance would apply the same rules of open-mindedness, objective inquiry, and fair play they did. We now know otherwise.
The colonization of American higher education by the left is remarkably thorough. From the elite universities to the lowest-ranked schools, the deck is stacked in favor of those who want to turn everything from semicolons to Shakespeare into an ideological exercise. On occasion, dissidents like myself can sneak in the back door, but we are in a precarious position.
UPDATE – The B-Cast intervied the Professor Thomas Thibeault HERE.
A professor points out that a policy has a critical flaw and he finds himself charged under that policy, fired, given no due process or any chance to answer any charges. In fact the charges themselves were kept secret from him.
This kind aof behavior and violation of due process is not uncommon at all on todays colleges including IUSB and other universities in the IU system. The Alliance Defsnee Fund and the Foundation for Indivisual Rights in Education (FIRE) have documented more of these cases than I can count with more and more piling on every week.
ATLANTA, September 15, 2009—The abuse of campus sexual harassment policies to punish dissenting professors has hit a new low at East Georgia College (EGC) in Swainsboro. Professor Thomas Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out—at a sexual harassment training seminar—that the school’s sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused. Two days later, in a Kafkaesque irony, Thibeault was fired by the college president for sexual harassment without notice, without knowing his accuser or the charges against him, and without a hearing. Thibeault turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
“If you were to write a novel about the abuse of sexual harassment regulations to get rid of a dissenter, you couldn’t do better than the real-life story of Thomas Thibeault,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Anyone with a modicum of respect for freedom of speech or simple fairness should be aghast at this blatant abuse of power by East Georgia College.”
Thibeault’s ordeal started shortly after August 5, 2009 when, during a faculty training session regarding the college’s sexual harassment policy, he presented a scenario regarding a different professor and asked, “what provision is there in the Sexual Harassment policy to protect the accused against complaints which are malicious or, in this case, ridiculous?” Vice President for Legal Affairs Mary Smith, who was conducting the session, replied that there was no such provision to protect the accused, so Thibeault responded that “the policy itself is flawed.”
Two days later, Thibeault was summoned to EGC President John Bryant Black’s office. According to Thibeault’s written account of the meeting, which was sent to Black and which Black has not disputed, Thibeault met with Black and Smith. Black told Thibeault that he “was a divisive force in the college at a time when the college needed unity” and that Thibeault must resign by 11:30 a.m. or be fired and have his “long history of sexual harassment … made public.” This unsubstantiated allegation took Thibeault by surprise. Black added that Thibeault would be escorted off campus by Police Chief Drew Durden and that Black had notified the local police that he was prepared to have Thibeault arrested for trespassing if he returned to campus. At no point was Thibeault presented with the charges against him or given any chance to present a defense. Refusing to resign, Thibeault understood that he was fired.
Most likely realizing that he had fired Thibeault without any of the due process mandated by Georgia’s Board of Regents, Black then began attempting to justify Thibeault’s firing after the fact. On August 11,Black wrote Thibeaultto say that since Thibeault had failed to resign by the deadline, “EGC has begun dismissal proceedings. … [A] faculty committee has been appointed to conduct an informal inquiry.” He then paradoxically wrote, “Their charge is to advise me whether or not dismissal proceedings shall be undertaken.” Meanwhile, Thibeault still had not been provided with any charges, he was still banned from campus, and he still appeared to be fired-with the “dismissal proceedings” occurring after the fact.
Then, on August 25, Black wrote Thibeault again, claiming for the first time that Thibeault had actually been suspended, not fired: “the committee’s finding was that there is sufficient evidence to support your suspension.” Black added that Thibeault was about to be terminated for sexual harassment, that the charges finally would be sent upon request, and that Thibeault finally could request a hearing. Thibeault requested the charges on August 28 but has received no response. His lawyer also has inquired for weeks with no response.
“How can a public college professor in the United States be fired and kicked off campus by the president and police but, more than a month later, still have no idea why?” asked Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program. “Do Georgia’s taxpayers know this is how their colleges are treating their professors?”
FIRE outlined many of these shocking violations of due process and freedom of speech in a letter to University System of Georgia Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr. on August 27, with copies to Black and Smith. None of them has responded. Neither Black nor Smith has even bothered to comment on the discrepancies between Thibeault’s account and Black’s erratic letters.
“It is hard to imagine a worse failure of due process in this case,” Kissel said. “Nobody knows what the actual allegations are because they are being kept secret, even from Thibeault himself. In the stunning absence of any charges, evidence, or hearings, it is clear that EGC has punished Professor Thibeault for speaking out against a flawed harassment policy.”
FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America are described atthefire.org.
Tell EGC to restore the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Georgia Board of Regents. Write a letter to EGC and the Board of Regentshere.
CONTACT: Adam Kissel, Director, Individual Rights Defense Program, FIRE: 215-717-3473, adam@thefire.org
John Bryant Black, President, East Georgia College: 478-289-2027, jblack@ega.edu
Erroll B. Davis Jr., Chancellor, University System of Georgia: 404-656-2202, chancellor@usg.edu
OKLAHOMA CITY — Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
The Oklahoma City-based group enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students’ basic civic knowledge.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the organization wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
“They’re questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen,” Dutcher said.
A thousand students were surveyed by telephone and given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
“Jefferson later said that a nation can’t expect to be ignorant and free,” Dutcher said. “It points to a real serious problem. We’re not going to remain ignorant and free.”
Question
% of Students
Who Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land?
28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?
10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?
61
What are the two major political parities in the United States?
Did the administration threaten its own student newspaper to censor it? BUCC has a lawyer and I hope he is a good one.
FIRE’s Adam Kissel:
Red Alert: Bucknell University Hardens Policy Used to Shut Down Student Protests; Student Newspaper Rejects FIRE Ad
A culture of fear appears to be chilling expression at Bucknell University, where even the student newspaper fears a libel lawsuit from Associate Dean of Students Gerald W. Commerford if it were to print a critical advertisement from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). After Bucknell administrators misapplied and abused Bucknell’s Sales and Solicitation and nondiscrimination policies last semester to shut down the Bucknell University Conservatives Club’s (BUCC’s) protests of affirmative action and President Obama’s economic stimulus, the group turned to FIRE for help. Bucknell has expanded and hardened the language in its policies affecting such protests and still insists that “affirmative action bake sales” have no place in the public areas of the campus. FIRE now lists Bucknell as a Red Alert school, one of only six “worst of the worst” schools in America when it comes to student rights on campus.
Adam Kissel, Director, Individual Rights Defense Program
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
601 Walnut Street, Suite 510
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-717-3473; Fax: 215-717-3440
————————
Red Alert: Bucknell University Hardens Policy Used to Shut Down Student Protests; Student Newspaper Rejects FIRE Ad
LEWISBURG, Pa., September 21, 2009—A culture of fear appears to be chilling expression at Bucknell University, where even the student newspaper fears a libel lawsuit from Associate Dean of Students Gerald W. Commerford if it were to print a critical advertisement from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). After Bucknell administrators misapplied and abused Bucknell’s Sales and Solicitation and nondiscrimination policies last semester to shut down the Bucknell University Conservatives Club’s (BUCC’s) protests of affirmative action and President Obama’s economic stimulus, the group turned to FIRE for help. Bucknell has expanded and hardened the language in its policies affecting such protests and still insists that “affirmative action bake sales” have no place in the public areas of the campus. FIRE now lists Bucknell as a Red Alert school, one of only six “worst of the worst” schools in America when it comes to student rights on campus.
“Consider this: Bucknell has created a campus culture such that an independent student newspaper, The Bucknellian, won’t even print an outside advertisement critical of the university,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Along with the college’s ban on handbills criticizing the stimulus plan and on affirmative action bake sale protests, it has become clear that Bucknell is teaching students to fear authority and keep quiet or face punishment.”
Bucknell’s most recent forays into censorship began on March 17, 2009, when BUCC members stood at Bucknell’s student center and passed out fake dollar bills with President Obama’s face on the front and the sentence “Obama’s stimulus plan makes your money as worthless as monopoly money” on the back. One hour into the protest, Bucknell administrator Judith L. Mickanis approached the students and told them that they were “busted,” that they were “soliciting” without prior approval, and that their activity was equivalent to handing out Bibles.
The students protested, but despite the fact that Bucknell’s solicitation policy explicitly covered only sales and fundraising materials, Mickanis insisted via e-mail that prior permission was needed to distribute any materials “out in the open”—“anything from Bibles to other matter.”
Then, on April 7, administrators shut down BUCC’s “affirmative action bake sale” protest, a satirical protest of race-conscious policies commonly held on campuses across the country. A video recording shows that an hour into BUCC’s protest, Commerford informed the students that he had the “opportunity” to shut down the sale because they were charging lower prices than promised for baked goods. BUCC members quickly filed an application to hold the same event two weeks later, but in a recorded conversation, Commerford said that such a bake sale would violate Bucknell’s nondiscrimination policy—even with satirical, optional pricing. He added that affirmative action “needs to be debated in its proper forum, ok, and not on the public property of the campus.”
As part of its response to these acts of censorship, FIRE attempted to place an advertisement in the first fall issue of The Bucknellian, the supposedly independent student newspaper, to alert students that Bucknell’s own promises of free speech cannot be counted on. Bucknellian Editor-in-Chief Lenore Flower refused to run the ad, however, telling FIRE on September 1 that the ad “might be construed as libel” and “could lead to legality issues for the Bucknellian.” (The ad only reflects FIRE’s opinion and therefore is not libelous by any definition.)
“First, Dean Commerford silenced the conservative club’s expression. Now, even the student newspaper is afraid to print a perfectly lawful third-party ad about it,” said Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program. “Bucknell richly deserves its place on our Red Alert list of schools where students should think twice before jeopardizing their rights by enrolling.”
FIRE’s rejected ad in The Bucknellian was FIRE’s latest effort to convince the private university to honor its own promises to its students. After the three instances of censorship this spring, FIRE wrote Bucknell President Brian C. Mitchell, reminding him that the university’s handbook “instructs students not only that they have freedom of speech but that ‘deliberate interference’ with this freedom is prohibited.” In June, after FIRE publicized the case, Bucknell responded with false and misleading information about what actually happened, flatly contradicting the documentary evidence. FIRE wrote Bucknell a second time on June 30 to correct the record, but Bucknell refused to accept that the documentation soundly contradicted Bucknell’s position. A third letteron August 6, to Bucknell’s trustees, has gone unanswered.
As of August 25, Bucknell thus joined five other schools on FIRE’s Red Alert list of campus censors. The other schools on the list, highlighted in a full-page ad in the “ America’s Best Colleges” issue of U.S. News & World Report, are Brandeis University, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Tufts University.
Over the summer, Bucknell silently expanded and renamed its Sales and Solicitation policy as “Sales and Promotions.” It now ambiguously covers promotions that “promote … causes” and does not clarify whether distributing protest literature, an American free-speech tradition which includes Thomas Paine’s pivotal Common Sense and The Crisis, still requires prior permission. “In response to national criticism about its stifling of protest on campus, the university actually made its policies more restrictive and more clearly applicable to the BUCC. Bucknell’s retrenchment against student speech in the face of criticism should concern all students and faculty at Bucknell,” Kissel said. “The new ‘promotions’ policy remains utterly inconsistent with Bucknell’s existing commitments to freedom of speech.”
Tell Bucknell administrators to stop inventing excuses and to allow its students to enjoy the free speech rights that Bucknell has promised. Write to them here.
CONTACT:
Adam Kissel, Director, Individual Rights Defense Program, FIRE: 215-717-3473; adam@thefire.org
Listen to Limbaugh very carefully. As he reads the NYT article on the ACORN scandal he points out the information and important details that the article leaves out. Then Limbaugh does a brilliant job of expressing the attitude and tone of the article which is filled with buzz words (words that evoke an emotional response or narrative) designed to invoke an attitude in the reader. I did a 40 page paper on this very type of propaganda. it is called “Attitude Change Propaganda Theory”. With this type of propaganda you are given only some of the pertinent information and that information is delivered with an attitude that can include a false narrative.
This type of propaganda is taught in journalism schools so it is unlikely that the NYT isn’t perfectly aware of what this piece is really all about.
MITCH MCCONNELL, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: “Shut up,” the government says, “don’t communicate with your customers. Be quiet and get in line.”
KARL: And even some Democratic Senators are concerned that the bill now before the Senate Finance Committee reduces spending on Medicare Advantage by $123 billion.
