The University of Montana School of Law has agreed to stop discrimination against a Christian group in its allocation of student funds.
Prior to this, the leftist dominated school administration and student government had denied funding to the student chapter of the Christian Legal Society on the basis of its religious and political viewpoints.
In response, the group filed a lawsuit, assisted by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal aid group.
You would think that a law school would know how to follow clearly established anti-discrimination laws. The truth is that of course U of M Law knew full well what the law was as said law can be looked up in minutes, but their zeal for anti-Christian bigotry was more important to them than the law, as evidenced by the fact that they held out until they faced a lawsuit they had no chance of winning.
Now keep in mind this is the University of Montana where the people there are as traditional and religious as can be and yet look at how detached the university is from the people it is paid to serve. This is an indicator of just how completely the radical left has compromised the public education system. University departments tend to clone themselves. The only place most Americans are likely to encounter neo-Marxists and genuine ‘capital C’ communists is on a university campus. The truth is that even moderate and center/right professors are persecuted at most colleges and that includes IU South Bend.
Would a university such as the University of Montana whose entire administration engaged in obviously illegal view point discrimination and anti-Christian bigotry to the point of having a lawsuit filed against them even hesitate to not hire or drum out a traditional or conservative professor?
Is your group being discriminated against by your administration or student government association? Contact your Regional Field Coordinator to learn about the legal resources you can use to ensure fair treatment for your conservative group on campus.
UPDATE II – Bachmann calls for Tim Geithner’s resignation:
This will affect you.
Moody’s said it was going to hold off for a while but after this they may follow suit.
Unsecured credit will be more expensive. This means those who use short-term loans such as farmers, import/exporters etc will pay more. It means that interest the USA pays on the debt will go up, costing up to $110 billion a year and there will be other impacts.
[Note: This was released late on a Friday night. Releasing at this time skips the weekday news cycle and my Monday there will be other big news to report. As a result most people will not see this in the news therefore it will have less of an effect on Obama.]
· We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’ and affirmed the ‘A-1+’ short-term rating.
· We have also removed both the short- and long-term ratings from CreditWatch negative.
· The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics. · More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
· Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any time soon.
· The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.
The message is clear, the cuts are not good enough, and if we spend more than the current cuts (which are actually not cuts at all but planned decreases in the increase of spending) we will get lowered again. As IUSB Vision readers are well aware, we have a history of enacting spending cuts down the road that are reversed by a later Congress.
Our revised downside scenario–which, other things being equal, we view as being consistent with a possible further downgrade to a ‘AA’ long-term rating–features less-favorable macroeconomic assumptions, as outlined below and also assumes that the second round of spending cuts (at least $1.2 trillion) that the act calls for does not occur.
Expect Democrats to read the first point and say, “See it fell short because we did not increase taxes” but as you can see point five makes it crystal clear. S&P is not threatening our rating if tax rates drop or stay the same, they are threatening to lower us again if we spend more than we say.
We must not forget that the Democrats rejected every that had a real shot of preserving AAA. This latest calamity is very solidly in the Democrats responsibility. I know that leftist partisans will reject that fact, but to them I ask, what plan did the Democrats put up that had a shot of preserving AAA? The Democrats did not put up even one plan that would bring us to the point where we just stopped having yearly deficits even ten years down the road.
Granted the GOP could have fought for a slightly better deal, but the government cannot be controlled from just one House of Congress. This is why elections matter.
The S&P Report linked in the PDF above continues to say that there have only been modest reductions in intended discretionary spending and that the real problems of Medicare and other entitlements have not been addressed. The GOP has put forward a plan that will work, the Democrats have been promising to come out with an entitlement reform plan but have reneged.
We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.
Analysts say that, over time, the downgrade could push up borrowing costs for the U.S. government, costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. It could also drive up interest rates for consumers and companies seeking mortgages, credit cards and business loans.
A downgrade could also have a cascading series of effects on states and localities, including nearly all of those in the Washington metro area. These governments could lose their AAA credit ratings as well, potentially raising the cost of borrowing for schools, roads and parks.
UPDATE – Here are the talking points from the NYT and Paul Krugman in reaction to this. Quite frankly their response is a joke and is designed to fool people who are not trained in economics.
It was S&P that had Lehman Brothers rated AAA just a month before they went bankrupt.
The truth: the overwhelming majority thought that the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac junk paper and the credit default swaps that insured them were backed up by the US Government, and they were, as this was what most of the bailouts were about, but the government decided to pick winners and losers as to who would get bailed out and who would not.
AIG got bailed out in large part so that it could pay Goldman Sachs who it owed a massive amount of cash. Lehmen Brothers did not get bailed out, by and large because they were Goldman Sachs biggest competitor. All too often Bank A would apply for bailout and so would Bank B; Bank B would get bought out by Bank A using TARP funds and then Bank A would give a large donation to ACORN or another Democrat ally.
This is why so many smaller banks got bailout while Lehman Bros was allowed to collapse arbitrarily and capriciously.
It was S&P that rated AIG’s credit default swaps as rock solid investments.
The truth: and the US Govt bailed them out and the credit default swaps were paid, just as almost everyone expected would happen, so yes indeed they were pretty solid, they got overextended and the claims could not be paid, so you and I paid them and the Goldman Sachs of the world made megabucks.
Of course, if Fannie Mae had not engaged in the behavior it did; buying high risk loans, pushing banks to issue more high risk loans, issuing junk investments based on those loans, and long term massive internal corruption, all while it was being given total cover by Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama and Paul Krugman defended them with the zeal of a defense attorney.
The Democrats Financial Regulation Bill doubled down and reimplemented the exact same government policies that started the ball rolling towards mortgage collapse in the first place, e.g. the government forcing banks to give out high risk loans in inner cities. Paul Krugman supported that legislation and this policy and does to this day.
It was S&P that admitted to making a $2 trillion accounting error (remember, playing with numbers is their core business and reason for being) in advance of the downgrade of U.S. debt.
The truth: and the Dept. of Education has lost over a billion dollars and has no idea where it went, all in all this adds up to a colossal “so what” as is explained further below.
A downgrade in U.S. debt means functionally that U.S. treasury bills are, in S&P’s oh-so-wise opinion, less trustworthy and a greater credit risk to investors. This comes only a day after investors fled the DOW and S&P500 into the safe and waiting hands of…you guessed it: U.S. treasuries. The same treasuries that S&P suddenly finds a more dangerous buy. So what does that say about the stock market, and the S&P500? Perhaps S&P might wish to re-evaluate the credibility of its own market index.
The truth: with every plan to lead to a balanced budget rejected by Democrats for as long as the eye can see, it is a crystal clear message that the government, as long as Democrats are in power, has no intention to pay off the debt, ever. If you don’t think that this makes our Treasury Bills less secure than you are likely smoking something you shouldn’t be.
History has shown that when a nation’s deficits exceed 100% of GDP its currency and credit have a rapid collapse. It happened to Greece as it approached 120% of GDP. It is predicted that it will soon happen to Spain. If you think it cannot happen here please see the previous paragraph.
None of the other ratings agencies are taking the drastic step that S&P has. S&P is all alone in their move to downgrade U.S. credit.
The truth: There is nothing drastic about it, both S&P and Moodys have warned since 2009 that this would happen if the United States continued to burrow like this. They both put out warning after warning. I have written about those warnings and so has the elite media. Moody’s will likely follow suit in a matter of months. Mini-UPDATE – This talking point is a LIE. Egan-Jones Rating Agency downgraded the USA to AA+ on July 16, 2011.
When all is said and done, U.S. treasuries are still the safest investment in the world, and it would take either an idiot or someone with a strong political agenda to contend otherwise.
The truth: and that is why so many countries are dumping our debt and buying Gold, Euros, oil futures, etc. Why? The economic policy the Democrats and the Federal Reserve is following reduces the value of the dollar so that the dollars we pay back are worth far far less than the dollars the government burrowed.
The investments are safe IF you consider the mass printing of money to pay those bills and service the debt to be just fine. What good is a 4% interest long-term T-Bill when the dollar loses twice that plus in inflation/devaluing?
As is often the case Paul Krugman’s talking points that are nothing but a pack of mostly irrelevant half-truths (read lies as half-truths are just lies designed to paint a false picture).
Lastly, it does not matter what you or Paul Krugman things of S&P and Moodys. Slandering them will not change the fact that the interest we pay on debt will go up, local governments will see a major impact, those who use unsecured debt such as seasonal loans for farmers, import/exporters etc will have to pay more and the credit markets will freeze up even worse than they are now. All of this will cause inflation that impacts the poor the most.
It has been well reported that the markets have expected this and have been bracing for it for months so that the impact would not be as immediate, but even the markets meltdown of the last 10 days is an indicator as the market has not behaved like it has of late since Jimmy Carter.
UPDATE III – Rick Santelli understands basic economics, Ezra Klein does not (what a shock). Listen to what Ezra Klein calls for policy wise. Did you catch it?
UPDATE V: The latest spin and talking points from the left as of Saturday, August 6.
It amazes me how dishonest the far left will go to paint a false picture. The latest tactic is to snip out every instance of revenue from the S&P report and present it as if the credit rating was lowered because the GOP would not raise taxes.
In essence this is the leftists case –
Blaming the Republicans (Tea Party):
“We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.”
“The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.”
Tax Increases Needed:
“It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.”
“The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them.”
“..if the recommendations of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction–independently or coupled with other initiatives, such as the lapsing of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners–“
Here are a couple of opinion pieces in the elite media taking that spin:
Is the U.S. Credit Rating a Victim of GOP Sabotage? – http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daniel-gross/u-credit-rating-victim-gop-sabotage-021622372.html
First of all, the attempt to spin the S&P report as a slam on the GOP is debunked by the text of the report itself:
Standard & Poor’s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.’s finances on a sustainable footing.
Second, S&P uses the word revenue several times in the report, but in context they make it clear that what they want to see is a plan that cuts spending with the cuts actually happening, and any revenue enhancing plan actually enhance revenue. Here is the rub, when non-partisan economic realists use the word revenue, this does not always means raising tax rates on wage earners and small businesses as the Democrats define it. There are a number of ways to raise revenue. For example when Bill Clinton signed off on the Newt Gingrich/John Kasich budgets in the late 1990’s this included a temporary reduction in the capital gains tax rate.
In 1997, the Republican Congress passed a tax-relief and deficit-reduction bill that was resisted but ultimately signed by President Clinton. The legislation:
Lowered the top capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent
Created a new $500 child tax credit
Phased in an increase in the estate tax exemption from $600,000 to $1 million
And we all know what happened, government revenues shot up in a big way and we actually had a deficit free year.
President Bush and the GOP used this same strategy to increase revenue after the Clinton/Gingrich/Kasich capital gains tax cut expired.
Reducing the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% increased capital gains tax receipts by 79% from 2000 to 2004. Cutting the dividend tax rate by more than half–from 39.6% to 15%–increased dividend tax receipts by 35% from 2002 to 2004. And corporate tax receipts have nearly tripled since 2003, reaching $250 billion for the past nine months, 26% higher than the same period last year. (WSJ July 25, 2006)
———
For anyone willing to read it, the January 2007 Congressional Budget Office annual report settles any debate. Citing the original CBO forecasts of capital gains tax revenue of $42 billion in 2003, $46 billion in 2004, $52 billion in 2005, and $57 billion in 2006, Democrats who opposed the rate reduction in 2003 claimed that the capital gains tax cut would “cost” the federal treasury $5.4 billion in fiscal years 2003-2006.
Those forecasts were embarrassingly wrong. The 2007 CBO report revealed that capital gains and dividends tax collections were actually $51 billion in 2003, $72 billion in 2004, $97 billion in 2005, and $110 billion in 2006, the last two years nearly doubling initial forecasts.
In other words, forecasts in earlier CBO reports were low by a total of $133 billion for the four-year period. (Am Thinker September 11, 2010)
By lowering the rate we increased the revenue. Why is that?
It is the same reason that the Obama Deficit Commission, which was totally ignored by the Democrats, said that the best way to increase revenue is to lower the tax rates, including the corporate tax rate, make the progressive taxes flatter, reform the tax code so that it is easier and less expensive to comply with. Their reasoning is simple, the expense of compliance causes people to resist the tax code, or to often avoid taking action that will be taxable. High tax rates encourage people who have disposable assets/income to just park their money in such a way that it is not taxed. The money just sits there, or is invested in gold, or in China, or is sheltered. This is why “tax the rich schemes” actually transfer the tax burden to the lower middle class and accomplish exactly the opposite of their stated intent. For explanations in great detail of why that is examine the following LINK. Also the tax increase plan put forth by the administration does not target the millionaires and billionaires hardly at all, but guess who it will impact the hardest – LINK?
There are two more ways that this report has been spun. They quote this section of the report on page four:
Our revised upside scenario–which, other things being equal, we view as consistent with the outlook on the ‘AA+’ long-term rating being revised to stable–retains these same macroeconomic assumptions. In addition, it incorporates $950 billion of new revenues on the assumption that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration is advocating.
But here is what the left leaves out; immediately above those lines it says the following:
Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade.
So what does that mean in English? It means that IF we have a REAL GDP growth of 3% steady and inflation stays below 2% a tax increase can work. But you see that is the problem, those are BIG ifs. Real GDP growth is under 2% and close to 1% in the private sector. Inflation, when measured with the same formula that was used under Carter/Reagan is at almost 10%. This figure also assumes that growth will not be impacted by such a tax increase, and since small businesses and upper middle class wage earners would get hit hardest by the Administration’s proposed tax increase (as we demonstrated above) the impact on economic growth would be substantial.
Some, like the economically incompetent and flamboyantly partisan Daniel Gross who writes in the Yahoo Finance column linked above, simply engage in the most dishonest demagoguery imaginable:
It has long been obvious to all observers — to economists, to politicians, to anti-deficit groups, to the ratings agencies — that closing fiscal gaps will require tax increases, or the closure of big tax loopholes, or significant tax reform that will raise significantly larger sums of tax revenue than the system does now. Today, taxes as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows. Marginal rates on income and investments are at historic lows. Corporate tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows. Perhaps taxes don’t need to rise this year or next, but they do need to go up in the future.
Otherwise, the math of deficit reduction simply doesn’t work. And that’s how the deficit reduction deals signed off on by Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush came about.
Yet the action in Washington in the past year has all gone in the opposite direction. President Obama deserves some of the blame. Several months ago, he struck a deal with Congress to make the fiscal situation worse — extending the Bush tax cuts for two more years and enacting a temporary cut in the payroll tax.
Wow it sounds horrible doesn’t it? Can we just tax ourselves into prosperity or is there something missing from Mr. Gross’ assessment?
Today, taxes as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows
That is because government spending as a percentage of GDP is at historic highs. The way that GDP is calculated the formula (which is greatly flawed but that subject is a 40 page term paper) adds governments spending to all private sector consumer, investment, exports minus imports, and capital goods spending – so when government spending goes up by 80% and the tax rates stay the same the percentage of the tax rate to GDP drops. If you simply compare the private sector part of the equation to how much is taxed that paints quite the opposite picture. So in essence, the more the government prints, burrows and spends, the lower it pushes that tax to GDP ratio. In 2007 the yearly deficit was a measly 198 billion, whereas last year just the yearly deficit approached $2 trillion – an increase by a factor of 10. 2010 YEARLY DEFICIT: $2.08 Trillion. That is 10 times higher than the last year Republicans had budgetary control.
Marginal rates on income and investments are at historic lows.
In the 1950’s the top marginal tax rate was 90% and after 1964 the trop marginal rate was lowered to 70% by JFK. So this appears to be true, or is it? Here is what he forgot to tell you. Back in those days almost every transaction was a cash transaction. It is very easy to keep cash transactions off the books and they did not have computers tracking things like we have today. The simple fact is that there was massive tax noncompliance. If you were going to have to pay 90% tax on doing a business transaction why would you do it? People just cheated and did not report many of their transactions. Much of the private sector did this as a matter of survival to stay competitive. The fact is that we pay much more now than we did before because compliance is much higher than it was back then. Also Mr. Gross looks at only two taxes, the wage rate and the capital gains rate, but how many other taxes are there now which we did not have back then? There are hundreds of smaller other taxes now of phones, internet, etc and this list could go on forever. There is a great deal of direct inflation cause by being taxed right and left.
And speaking of that capital gains tax, which we showed you before that actually takes in more money as the rate is lowered; China has zero capital gains tax because they see it as a disincentive to engage in economic activity. China has been enjoying 9% plus GDP growth for some time now and they buy much of our debt.
Corporate tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are at historic lows
Also keep in mind that Canada and Japan have recently lowered their corporate tax rates to attract business back home. When Ireland lowered its corporate tax rates they attracted a lot of companies to set up shop there and their revenue went way up. Higher taxes on businesses cause businesses to either go out of business or flee the country. When companies decide to stop being American companies the tax from them vanishes. The more you tax corporations, the more will leave, the less money you will get and the more unemployed you will have. Never forget that when corporations have to pay high taxes, they simply raise the price of their product to cover it so it is YOU that pays. A high corporate tax simply inflates prices and makes the corporation the tax collector for the state.
But just for good measure:
One place it (the “unexpected” revenue) has come from are corporations, whose tax collections have climbed by 76% over the past two years thanks to greater profitability. Personal income tax payments are up by 30.3% since 2004 too, despite the fact that the highest tax rate is down to 35% from 39.6%. The IRS tax-return data just released last month indicates that a near-record 37% of those income tax payments are received from the top 1% of earners — “the rich,” who are derided regularly in Washington for not paying their “fair share.” (WSJ Oct. 6 2006) – The rich paid more in real dollars after the tax cuts.
Please forgive the lack of updates as I described in our previous post we have not been in a position to do a lot of blogging lately. A new web site is coming as well for the editor.
As far as the budget deal we thought we have a few comments.
1 – We were never in danger of a default. The government brings in almost 200 billion a month in tax dollars which is more than enough to service the debt. Anyone who said that the August 2nd date would result in default is just lying straight up. Judging by how the elite media has been repeating this it furthers my personal observation that journalists are lazy and are, as a collective, the most uninformed people I have ever encountered.
2 – These polls that you here about in the news saying that the people want “republicans to compromise” are polls like the CBS News poll that had a sample which included only 25% Republicans, so the sample was rigged. Notice how the Democrats are not asked to compromise in the press? When the people were stone against Obama Care by a 60% margin where was the press pounding the polls than? Where was the compromise when the Democrats would not allow the GOP into the room and would only see the bill a few hours before a vote?
3 – “Reagan increased the debt limit”… Reagan did not have a House controlled by his own party. During that time we had the 24/7 nuclear triangle operating at the pinnacle of the Cold War and a government shut down at such a time would have undermined our efforts to posture and beat the Soviets.
4 – “We need to raise taxes on the rich”. First of all we have been “raising taxes on the rich” for decades now so why is it that John Kerry paid 12.34% on $5,072,000 worth of income? The dirty little secret is that the tax rate that the Democrats are talking about is the wage earner rate which is paid by high-end wage earners such as doctors and engineers, but it is also the rate paid by most small businesses that have employees. Most of the income that the “rich” bring is defined by the tax code as “unearned income”, so you could raise this tax rate to the moon and the multimillionaires and billionaires will laugh as it will not be they who pay it. For more details on why this is follow this LINK.
Using static models as the CBO likes to use the Democrats proposed tax increase would pay for all of 10 days of deficit spending. Of course since people do not operate in a static universe the result would be an impact on job creators and even less revenue growth to the government. Can anyone name a mainstream economic theorist who said to raise taxes during what appears to be a double dip recession?
4 – As far as spending cuts in the “deal”, we must remember base line budgeting. If we froze spending at current levels Washington would consider that to be a $9.5 trillion dollar “cut”, so all we are talking about here is a small reduction in the typical increases in spending. As far as spending cuts are concerned this is not a serious plan as spending under this deal will continue to skyrocket. Democrats and some leftist journalists are calling these “draconian cuts” and are simply engaging in the most dishonest demagoguery imaginable.
5 – But here is the rub, when we lose our AAA credit rating, which now appears unavoidable as both Moodys and S&P have said that neither the Boehner plan nor the Reid plan are serious about getting spending under control, it will cost us more than $100 billion a year in interest alone; when that is factored in there are no reductions even in the increases in spending. It gets worse. When you add the damage to the economy that loss of AAA will bring it makes all of this worse.
The loss of AAA will impact most unsecured credit, it will impact the value of the dollar (inflation), it will impact those who use short-term credit such as farmers who use seasonal loans and import/export businesses. It is going to damage the economy in such a way that most people will feel it. We did not lose AAA even during the great depression. The “deal” which passed is also easy to demagogue because the left will say that this deal IS the “Boehner Plan” (which is largely isn’t any more do to an almost total cave on spending cuts) and HIS plan caused us to lose AAA.
[Note: The first plans that were introduced by the Tea Party/GOP were much more serious and had a real chance of preventing the loss of AAA. While this is indeed a failure of government, is there any doubt that the Democratic Party is intent on blowing up our credit rating? The first proposals from the House had a chance of preserving AAA and the media/Democrats had a conniption fit calling called it extreme. Think about this folks, preserving AAA is now an extreme position according to much of the elite media and a political party. The Constitution does have limits and the GOP cannot run the government from the House. This is why elections matter.]
6 – The deal also includes a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment to send it to the states. If this amendment resolution passes the Democrat controlled Senate and gets to the states it will be a great tool to begin to get this spending problem under control. If it looks like it will pass the Senate I expect the Democrat leadership will pull some stunt prevent the vote or prevent its passage. Government has a structural institutional incentive to spend more and more, so the only way to curb that is to make a structural change. Aside from a vote on this Amendment, which I will stress has not happened yet, this was not a tough deal or a Herculean compromise by any stretch.
This is a must see exchange between Marco Rubio and John Kerry on the debt limit debate. Be sure to watch every second as this is invaluable.
Kerry will think twice before trying to posture Marco Rubio again. Notice also, even though Rubio did not join the TEA Party Caucus he defends their position, which is to offer a plan that fixes the problem. Rubio uses a most interesting analogy to show why this is so important.
UPDATE – The latest version of the deal includes $2.1 Trillion in cuts over 10 years with half planned now and the other half planned by a “budget cut committee later”. Keep in mind that cuts in “Washington Speak” are not cuts, but rather a decrease in the increase in spending. So instead of a planned increase in spending over 10 years of $9.5 Trillion they will plan to increase spending by $7.4 trillion. The president gets his debt increase limit extended to well passed the campaign, deficit spending shoots up, no entitlement reform, no plan to balance the budget over the next eight years. There are some actual small cuts in discretionary spending, but entitlement spending that is on autopilot. Of course even this is a fraction of the increase in discretionary spending that has gone up since 2008.
The government says that where there is oil drilling there are less of these lizards per mile. An interesting method of measurement as there are no shortage of deer and how much space in my home town is covered by parking lots and malls? Deer can be seen every day and is hunted just to keep the numbers from getting out of control.
Massive new oil shale finds have been found in Texas and parts of New Mexico, enough to increase domestic production by 25%. The Obama Administration, if recent history is a guide, won’t have that. The lizard is very skiddish and lives mostly under the sand, so most people have never seen one (hmm I wonder how hard that makes them to count).
ABC News:
The sand dune lizard is a small reptile that has become the scourge of the Texas Oil industry, not because it is dangerous but because the threatened species could put land ripe for oil exploration off limits.
“As far as I am concerned, it is Godzilla,” Texas land commissioner Jerry Paterson told ABC News. “[It’s] the biggest threat facing the oil business in memory,” said Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. They believe the small tan-colored, insectivorous lizard could cost the oil industry and surrounding communities thousands of jobs.
About 63,000 Americans work in the oil and gas well industry as of September 2009, the most recent period available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program. Most of those jobs are in Texas.
The federal government said the sand lizard is on the verge of extinction, and is expected to place it on the endangered species list soon.
If the species makes the list, its 800,000 acre habitat in the shinnery oak sand dune communities of southeastern New Mexico and southwestern Texas would receive protected status. That habitat happens to be right in the heart of Texas oil country.
“If the lizard is put on the endangered species list, then [rigs] would [be] shutdown,” Leslyn Wallace, a land manager at RSP Permian, told ABC News. That would cost many Texans their jobs.
But here is the rub, The eco-radicals in the government have used the Endangered Species Act as a weapon before to target the industries they despise. After the polar bear population had risen 30% the government decided to put the polar bear on the endangered species list anyways because of reductions in polar sea ice, which saw a cyclical low in 2007, but had already rebounded 27% in the following year and is still growing today.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins today issued subpoenas to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, demanding information on what the government knew about accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan prior to the Nov. 5 incident.
In a letter accompanying the subpoenas, Lieberman, I.-Conn., and Collins, R.-Me., the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said they had been forced to issue the subpoenas by a lack of cooperation from the Obama administration.
“We have repeatedly sought your departments’ cooperation for more than five months,” said the letter. “Our efforts have been met with delay, the production of little that was not already publicly available, and shifting reasons for why the departments are withholding the documents and witnesses that we have requested.”
During a conference call with reporters, Lieberman said he wanted to learn what information the government had about Hasan’s contacts with radical Muslim cleric Anwar Awlaki. “What were the signals, what was done to stop them,” said Lieberman, “and why wasn’t an investigation done then?”
“We think our request is quite reasonable,” said Lieberman, “”Our goal is to look back and see what these two federal agencies could have done to stop this man from committing a massacre of 13 Americans.”
The subpoenas demand information on contacts between Hasan and Awlaki in the months before the shooting spree. “Given the warning signs about Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s extremist radicalism,” asked the letter, “why was he not stopped before he took thirteen American lives?”
The subpoenas command Holder and Gates to appear before the committee on April 27 at 10:00 a.m., and to bring specified materials with them.
Holder is asked to provide the names of individuals on the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego and Washington or the National Joint Terrorism Task Force who might have been familiar with emails between Nidal Hasan and Awlaki prior to the shooting.
Gates is ordered to produce Hasan’s official personnel file and any performance evaluations. He is also commanded to provide the names of defense department intelligence and criminal investigation employees who had knowledge of Maj. Hasan prior to the shootings, or who may have worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in D.C. and San Diego “during the period of time in which information linked to Major Hasan came to those entities.”
Lieberman and Collins had been threatening to issue the subpoenas for nearly a month. On Thursday, they restated their intention to issue the subpoenas during a press conference.
On Friday, Secy. Gates told reporters that the administration was not seeking to hide information from Congress, but that its first priority was the prosecution of Maj. Hasan. [Editor’s Note: This excuse is a crock as a Senate Committee can meet in closed session.]
If General Motors CEO Dan Akerson had anything to say about it, you would be paying a dollar more a gallon for gas. Yes, with $4/gallon prices hitting consumers in a tough economy, Akerson told the Detroit News: “You know what I’d rather have them do — this will make my Republican friends puke — as gas is going to go down here now, we ought to just slap a 50-cent or a dollar tax on a gallon of gas.”
Akerson, 61, was appointed CEO of GM last fall, having previously served as an Obama-appointed member of the board. He has been critical of the Obama Administration on several issues, including fuel economy standards, but now has discovered something in common: a love of high gas prices. He, like President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, believes that higher gas prices will force taxpayers to buy more fuel-efficient (and usually more expensive) vehicles.
In 2008, Secretary Chu said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” And it was President Obama who told CNBC in 2008 that he preferred a “gradual” increase in gas prices. Obama and Chu know that only when matched dollar-for-dollar will Americans choose alternative energy sources that are much more expensive today. Since the already heavily-subsidized alternative energy sources are not getting cheaper, the only solution is to make cheap energy more expensive.
Akerson, Chu and Obama are wrong to embrace high gas prices. Hitting lower-income Americans with a punitive gas tax while unemployment remains near ten percent is a bad idea, regardless of what behavior you are hoping to mandate.
Akerson’s comments came in the context of a larger conversation on energy policy. Akerson correctly stated that the government’s imposed fuel standards are taxing production, which will cost jobs and raise the purchase price of cars. But passing that burden directly to consumers at the gas pump isn’t the solution. The idea that the government must either increase taxes on businesses or struggling taxpayers is a false choice.
High gas prices alone won’t encourage consumers to buy the hugely unpopular Chevy Volt. The Volt isn’t selling because even after substantial tax credits that the government cannot afford, the additional cost in buying a not-ready-for-market Volt, plus the cost of electricity (which isn’t free) is far greater than any potential gas savings.
President Obama and congressional supporters estimate that his health care plan will cost between $50 and $65 billion a year. Such cost estimates are lies whether they come from a Democratic president and Congress, or a Republican president and Congress. You say, “Williams, you don’t show much trust in the White House and Congress.” Let’s check out their past dishonesty.
At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. That’s nine times Congress’ prediction. Today’s Medicare tab comes to $420 billion with no signs of leveling off. How much confidence can we have in any cost estimates by the White House or Congress?
Another part of the Medicare lie is found in Section 1801 of the 1965 Medicare Act that reads: “Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine, or the manner in which medical services are provided, or over the selection, tenure, or compensation of any officer, or employee, or any institution, agency or person providing health care services.” Ask your doctor or hospital whether this is true.
Lies and deception are by no means restricted to modern times. During the legislative debate prior to ratification of the 16th Amendment, President Howard Taft and congressional supporters said that only the rich would ever pay federal income taxes. In 1916, only one-half of 1 percent of income earners paid income taxes. Those earning $250,000 a year in today’s dollars paid 1 percent, and those earning $6 million in today’s dollars paid 7 percent. The lie that only the rich would ever pay income taxes was simply a lie to exploit the politics of envy and dupe Americans into ratifying the 16th Amendment.
The proposed tax increases that the White House and Congress are proposing will probably pass. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, during 2006, roughly 43.4 million tax returns, representing 91 million individuals, had no federal tax liability. That’s out of a total of 136 million federal tax returns. Adding to this figure are 15 million households and individuals who file no tax return at all. Roughly 121 million Americans — or 41 percent of the U.S. population — are completely outside the federal income tax system. These people represent a natural constituency for big-spending politicians. Since they have no federal income tax obligation, what do they care about higher taxes or tax cuts?
Another big congressional lie is Social Security. Here’s what a 1936 government pamphlet on Social Security said: “After the first 3 years — that is to say, beginning in 1940 — you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year … beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. … And finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year.” Here’s Congress’s lying promise: “That is the most you will ever pay.” Let’s repeat that last sentence: “That is the most you will ever pay.” Compare that to today’s reality, including Medicare, which is 7.65 cents on each dollar that you earn up to nearly $107,000, which comes to $8,185.
The Social Security pamphlet closes with another lie: “Beginning November 24, 1936, the United States government will set up a Social Security account for you … The checks will come to you as a right.” First, there’s no Social Security account containing your money, but more importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on two occasions that Americans have no legal right to Social Security payments.
We can thank public education for American gullibility.
Bill O‘Reilly and Glenn Beck don’t always see eye-to-eye — they don’t always agree on everything. But one thing that O’Reilly is agreeing with Beck on now is that there are those on the left who would love to see an economic collapse so that they can remake the system. Chief among those cheerleaders, O’Reilly says, is Beck’s “spooky guy” — George Soros.
Bill O’Reilly resisted accepting this premise for a long time; years even. But as the evidence mounted up it became hard to ignore.
The Democrats are the party of the status quo when it comes to Social Security and Medicare while the governments own numbers admit that these programs will go bankrupt and crash very soon. The reductions in spending discussed in the video were not real cuts at all, they were only reductions in Obama’s proposed budget, and even so it was not even a 1% cut in that budget proposal. The truth is that spending was higher this year than last year, so in reality there were no real cuts, yet the left was still upset.
One of the big problems with Medicare is that the bureaucracy is expensive and truly gargantuan. Billions of dollars go to fund those government jobs that should go to seniors care. The Democrats benefit in the short run and the long run by letting Medicare collapse. In the short run, Medicare not being reformed will mean countless thousands of government employees, will be paying Democrats and the government union dues which is used to finance Democrat political campaigns. Government employees make between 30% and 300% more than their private sector counterparts depending on the job field. That is right folks, Medicare funds are essentially being used to fund Democrat political campaigns.
In the long run, when Medicare explodes seniors will be forced into ObamaCare, which can ration care and push doctors into just “giving gramps the pain pill” kind of care. This is why the Democrats raided half a TRILLION DOLLARS of Medicare funds to pay for the ObamaCare implementation. The administration had moved to implement “death panels” like language but outrage forced them to delay implementation. The bottom line is that ObamaCare gives the President, or the HHS bureaucrat the regulatory authority to implement “death panel” like rationing with the stroke of a pen.
This is kind of technical and legalistic, but this is the argument the government is making to the court. They are also arguing that there are no limits to government power under the “Commerce Clause” and the “Necessary & Proper Clause”. This takes the entire idea of limited government and tosses it out the window, just as this web site said was one of the goals of the legislation back in 2009.
President Obama’s solicitor general, defending the national health care law on Wednesday, told a federal appeals court that Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.
Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting solicitor general, made the argument under questioning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, which was considering an appeal by the Thomas More Law Center. (Listen to oral arguments here.) The three-judge panel, which was comprised of two Republican-appointed judges and a Democratic-appointed judge, expressed more skepticism about the government’s defense of the health care law than the Fourth Circuit panel that heard the Virginia-based Obamacare challenge last month in Richmond. The Fourth Circuit panel was made up entirely of Democrats, and two of the judges were appointed by Obama himself.
During the Sixth Circuit arguments, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, asked Kaytal if he could name one Supreme Court case which considered the same question as the one posed by the mandate, in which Congress used the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution as a tool to compel action.
Kaytal conceded that the Supreme Court had “never been confronted directly” with the question, but cited the Heart of Atlanta Motel case as a relevant example. In that landmark 1964 civil rights case, the Court ruled that Congress could use its Commerce Clause power to bar discrimination by private businesses such as hotels and restaurants.
“They’re in the business,” Sutton pushed back. “They’re told if you’re going to be in the business, this is what you have to do. In response to that law, they could have said, ‘We now exit the business.’ Individuals don’t have that option.”
Kaytal responded by noting that the there’s a provision in the health care law that allows people to avoid the mandate.
“If we’re going to play that game, I think that game can be played here as well, because after all, the minimum coverage provision only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income,” Kaytal said. “So it’s a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It’s not just on self insuring on its own. So I guess one could say, just as the restaurant owner could depart the market in Heart of Atlanta Hotel, someone doesn’t need to earn that much income. I think both are kind of fanciful and I think get at…”
Sutton interjected, “That wasn’t in a single speech given in Congress about this…the idea that the solution if you don’t like it is make a little less money.”
The so-called “hardship exemption” in the health care law is limited, and only applies to people who cannot obtain insurance for less than 8 percent of their income. So earning less isn’t necessarily a solution, because it could then qualify the person for government-subsidized insurance.
Throughout the oral arguments, Kaytal struggled to respond to the panel’s concerns about what the limits of Congressional power would be if the courts ruled that they have the ability under the Commerce Clause to force individuals to purchase something.
Sutton said it would it be “hard to see this limit” in Congressional power if the mandate is upheld, and he honed in on the word “regulate” in the Commerce clause, explaining that the word implies you’re in a market. “You don’t put them in the market to regulate them,” he said.
In arguments before the Fourth Circuit last month, Kaytal also struggled with a judge’s question about what to do with the word “regulate,” to the point where the judge asked him to sit down to come up with an answer. (More on that exchange here). Kaytal has fallen back on the Necessary and Proper clause, insisting that it gives broader leeway to Congress.
Judge James Graham, a Reagan district court appointee who is temporarily hearing cases on the appeals court, said, “I hear your arguments about the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause, and I’m having difficulty seeing how there is any limit to the power as you’re defining it.”
Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who spoke out against Islamic violence, so the leftist parties used one of their appointed cronies to prosecute him for “hate crimes”, all while admitting that everything he said is true.
Add Charlotte N.C. on the list of towns I will go out of my way not to spend a penny in. This is why once Obama and these Alinsky Democrats are put out of power the TEA Party need to turn it’s focus on local government.
Originally it was reported that the fine was $1400, now it may be as high as $4,000.
Every two to three years, Eddie Sales trims and prunes the crape myrtles at his church, Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church.
But this year, the city of Charlotte cited the church for improperly pruning its trees.
“We always keep our trees trimmed back because you don’t want to worry about them hanging down in the way,” said Sales, a church member.
The church was fined $100 per branch cut for excessive pruning, bringing the violation to $4,000.
“I just couldn’t believe it when I heard about it,” Sales said. “We trim our trees back every three years all over our property, and this is the first time we have been fined.”
The fine will be dropped if the church replaces each of the improperly pruned trees, said Tom Johnson, senior urban forester for city of Charlotte Land Development Division.
“When they are nonrepairable, when they have been pruned beyond repair, we will ask them to be replaced,” Johnson said. “We do that for a number of reasons but mainly because they are going to come back unhealthy and create a dangerous situation down the road.”
Except these trees are not unhealthy and are pruned very nicely as evidenced by the picture:
It’s known as the candy-cane case. And it’s all about religious discrimination.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments today in Morgan v. Swanson. The case demonstrates just how badly political correctness has corrupted our public schools and illustrates the extremes to which radical school administrators will go to impose their ideological, anti-religious views on our children.
The lawsuit was filed by the families of several elementary-school students in Plano, Texas. The suit states that, although the schools hold birthday and “winter break” parties, no Christmas parties are allowed. Moreover, the schools ban all “references to and symbols of the Christian religion and the celebration of the Christian religious holiday, Christmas,” at the winter-break parties. Even “red and green Christmas colors” are banned. And students were explicitly instructed “not to write ‘Merry Christmas’ on greeting cards sent to United States soldiers [or to retirement homes] because that phrase might be offensive.”
Apparently the schools never considered that such rigorous censorship might be offensive. Indeed, they went further. Students were allowed to exchange gift bags at the winter-break parties. However, the suit alleges, “students and parents [were] interrogated by school officials . . . as to whether or not the contents of their gift or ‘goodie’ bags . . . contain any religious viewpoint, religious references or religious message.” If they did, the bags were confiscated by school officials.
One student’s bags were seized because they contained pencils inscribed with the phrase “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” Another student was banned from giving his friends candy-cane-shaped pens with a laminated card entitled the “Legend of the Candy Cane,” which explained the Christian origin of candy canes. Another student, “during noncurriculum times and with no material and substantial disruption to the operations of the school,” was giving her friends tickets to a free Christian drama production at her church. Principal Jackie Bomchill ordered the tickets confiscated and destroyed because they “expressed a ‘religious’ viewpoint.”
One student’s mother asked for a meeting with Bomchill to get prior approval for her daughter to give her friends two pencils at her own birthday party during lunch recess, one inscribed with the word “moon” and the other with the phrase “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” Instead of engaging in a calm discussion, the principal handed the mother a letter threatening that “law enforcement officials” would be called to arrest her and told her that the Jesus pencils could only be distributed “outside of the school building.” However, when the daughter attempted to do just that, outside of the school building, Bomchill grabbed her, took the pencils, and berated her. Bomchill told the mother her daughter would be “kicked out of school” if she made any further attempts to distribute religious items. School officials even called the police, who pulled over the mother on her way home.
Since these events, the school district and the principals have only compounded their errors. Rather than acknowledge that they made a mistake, apologize, and change their discriminatory policies, they have spent over a million taxpayer dollars fighting this lawsuit all the way up to the federal appeals court. In fact, they claim that they did nothing wrong and should be granted “qualified immunity” because “the First Amendment does not apply to elementary school students” and the “Constitution does not prohibit viewpoint discrimination against religious speech in elementary schools.” And these are the people teaching civics to our children!
As a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit wrote in its review of the case, “It has been clear for over half a century that the First Amendment protects elementary school students from religious-viewpoint discrimination.” This issue was decided in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, a 1943 decision of the Supreme Court. The Court recognized that school officials are subject to the Constitution and that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment is no exception. Students do not “shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” As the Court pointed out in Barnette, the fact that school officials “are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.”
The Texas school district has tried to argue that the Barnette decision really doesn’t say what it says, or that it doesn’t really apply to elementary schools because supposedly there is no evidence that the plaintiffs in that case were elementary-school students. In a delicious irony, former U.S. solicitor general Ken Starr has filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Barnette sisters, the plaintiffs in the 1943 case.
The two sisters, now in their seventies, were elementary-school students in West Virginia at the time. As practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses, they believed that pledging allegiance to the flag was a form of prohibited idol worship. After declining to participate in that ceremony, they were expelled from school. The sisters’ family took their challenge all the way to the Supreme Court and won. As their amicus brief says, the Plano school district is trying to “unravel decades of clearly established law” and to “unwisely turn back the clock to an era in this nation’s history when religious bigotry was often tolerated in the public schools.”
What is worrisome about this case is that the Fifth Circuit granted en banc review after its own three-judge panel clearly reached the correct decision when it ruled against the school district and these intolerant principals. We may hope that the entire court will not overturn this panel decision or grant immunity to the school officials for their biased and inequitable behavior. This case is a clear example of how the extreme liberal view that nothing may be said or done that could somehow, possibly “offend” anyone leads to gutting the First Amendment and destroying our free-speech rights.
There are times when you need to pick your battles, even when you are a police officer. These people were not even causing a disturbance. Now there is this video which has done more damage to the Park Police and Washington DC than letting three couples silently slow dance together ever would. What jury in a civil suit is going to look at this and side with the police?
By the way, notice the RT sign in the video, that is Russia Today. RT is not huge with the USA, but internationally it is very popular. Fair or not, now the world sees that the “Home of the Free” just isn’t.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A special type of government search warrant that allows authorities to search homes without informing the owner for months is becoming more common, Target 7 has learned.Imagine someone walking through your neighborhood, coming into your home and rifling through your intimate belongings.“(They) search through your home, your dresser drawers, your computer files,” Peter Simonson, with ACLU New Mexico, said.These search warrants don’t involve knocking on doors or any type of warning at all. Delayed-notice search warrants, or “sneak-and-peek” warrants, allow federal agents to enter your home without telling you they’ve been there until months later.
The warrants have always been around, but their use has spiked since the revamped Patriot Act in 2005. The number of delayed-notice search warrants spiked nationally from nearly 700 in fiscal year 2007 to close to 2,000 in 2009.Upwards of 200 approved during that same three-year stretch came out of the 10th Circuit Court, which covers a handful of states including New Mexico. The majority of those delayed search warrants aren’t even for terrorism-related cases. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s figures, the majority of the warrants are for drug cases.“While billed as an anti-terror tool, (a sneak-and-peek warrant) had no requirements on it that it precluded it from being used in standard criminal investigations,” Simonson said.The warrants are so secret that the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office wouldn’t go on record with Target 7 about them.The ACLU said it expects delayed-notice warrant numbers to keep growing each year as long as certain parts of the Patriot Act remain on the books.
You can read the story HERE at the Washington Post:
Sean Lanigan’s nightmare began in January 2010, when the principal at Centre Ridge Elementary School pulled him out of the physical education class he was teaching and quietly walked him into an interrogation with two Fairfax County police detectives.
He had no warning that a 12-year-old girl at the Centreville school had accused him of groping and molesting her in the gym.
The girl, angry at Lanigan about something else entirely, had made the whole thing up. But her accusations launched a soul-sapping rollercoaster ride that still hasn’t ended.
“Emotionally, a part of me has died inside,” Lanigan said in a recent interview. “I’m physically and mentally exhausted all the time, how the whole process has been dragged out to this date. It certainly has affected the quality of life for me and my family at home.”
Lanigan remains in limbo, nearly a year after a jury’s acquittal. The Fairfax School District transferred him from Centre Ridge in a move that ultimately forced his wife to quit her job. School officials are now transferring him again. And the district has refused to pay his $125,000 in legal fees, even though Virginia law allows reimbursement for employees who are cleared of wrongdoing on the job.
~snip
A jury found him not guilty after just 47 minutes of deliberation — virtually unheard of in a child sex abuse case. Jurors were outraged by the lack of evidence, with one weeping in sympathy during closing arguments.
~snip
But this is the part that really rubs me bad…
Police declined to allow Nicole Christian, the lead detective on the case, to be interviewed for this article. Several months after Lanigan was acquitted, Fairfax prosecutors dismissed another of Christian’s child abuse cases in the middle of trial, a rarity, when the detective acknowledged that she had “misstated” some key facts in her sworn testimony.
This kind of nonsense happens just too often. Be sure to go to the Washington Post’s web site to read the entire piece and be sure to watch the video. It is not every day that I get to commend the Post on a solid piece of journalism, I just wish it would become a trend.
In what is fast becoming a weekly event, the Obama administration granted 200 more companies aivers from the Democrats’ sweeping health care law in the Friday night news dump. That brings the number of companies receiving waivers to 1,372. (You can get a full list of the companies exempted here.)
Not surprisingly, it helps to be a Democratic ally when seeking a waiver. The Republican Policy Committee reports that over half of the workers that have been exempted so far belong to unions:
The plans newly approved for waivers cover more than 160,000 people, bringing to nearly 3.1 million the number of individuals in plans exempted from the health law’s requirements. Of the participants receiving waivers, more than half – over 1.55 million – are in union plans, raising questions of why such a disproportionate share of union members are receiving waivers from the law’s requirements. The percentage of participants receiving waivers that come from unions also continues to rise – the number was 48% in April, and 45% in March.
Unions already received a generous concession in the health care bill. Their generous “cadilac” insurance plans were exempted from being taxed until 2018, adding about $120 billion to the bill’s cost over ten years. For more on how the administration has helped unions, see my story in THE WEEKLY STANDARD from a few weeks ago.
This is one of the bad things about state and local politics and this problem is moving into the federal level more and more, that judgeship’s are becoming more like ambassadorships. No longer are qualified people demanded, or are great legal minds sought out; volunteer, lick some envelopes, make some donations, plan a few fund raisers, attend a few cocktail parties, and book a great guest at the State Barr Assoc. Dinner and whamo your a judge!
Unfortunately several states have courts like this. This will of course make it’s way to the federal courts where it will be overturned …….eventually, but that is not the point.
Here are the Indiana Supreme Court Justices and they must face the voters for a retention election come the end of their terms. While Justices Rucker and Dickson least voted no and are tolerable, the other three need to be made an example of and must be replaced by an upcoming Governor Pence. The governor cannot just pick who he likes, he must pick from a list of people chosen by the Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission which is made up mostly of the Bar Association. To put people like this up, who would have failed a 4th Amendment Question with this answer if they had taken Constitutional Law with Judge Allen Sharp as I did, tells me that the so called “Missouri Plan Method” of selecting judges has broken down, and either the Indiana Commission is a political body giving the illusion of merit, or it is infected with ideologues. In either case if a majority of judges on the court are this radical, the system is broken. More humiliation for Indiana when one day a federal court will site precedent and reverse this. The 4th amendment is incorporated to the states by the 14th Amendment, and this also gives the federal courts judicial review over such flawed state court decisions.
What is most painful, is that Justice David who wrote this abomination of a ruling, was just appointed by Governor Daniels, whose primary opponents will have a ball with this. I was just starting to get some guarded enthusiasm about Gov. Daniels possible White House run, this hurts.
Politics is politics, but messing with God-given rights recognized since Magna-Carta is something else. Print out this page and put their names on your refrigerator, when retention election time comes send them packing.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. — 4th Amendment to the US Constitution
The Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that the 4th Amendment needs a disclaimer when it comes to officers of the law acting unlawfully (at which point, by definition, wouldn’t they cease to be “officers of the law”?).
Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.
The author of the story reporting this is right – somehow the ISC managed, in one fell swoop, to overturn almost 900 years of precedent, going back to the Magna Carta.
In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry. [emphasis mine]
Or said another way, your home is no longer your castle.
Remember the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution?
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Bzzzzzt.
Wrong – in Indiana
“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”
David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.
One has to wonder what part of “unlawful” Justice David doesn’t get. What part of the right of the people to “be secure… shall not be violated” wasn’t taught to him in law school.
How secure is anyone in their “persons, houses, papers and effects” if, per David, a police officer can waltz into any home he wants to “for any reason or no reason at all?”
The given reason by the Justice is resistance is “against public policy?” What policy is that? For whatever reason, most believe our public policy as regards our homes is set by the 4th amendment to the US Constitution. Since when does Indiana’s “public policy” abrogate the Constitutional right to be “secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects”?
Additionally, most would assume it is the job of the police not to “escalate the level of violence”, not the homeowner. Like maybe a polite knock on a door to attempt an arrest instead of a battering ram and the violent entry of a full SWAT team to arrest a suspected perpetrator of a non-violent crime. Maybe a little pre-raid intelligence gathering, or snagging the alleged perp when he leaves the house to go to work, or walk the dog, or go to the store.
Now citizens in Indiana are to give up their 4th Amendment rights because it might “elevate the violence” if they attempt to protect themselves from unlawful activity? Sounds like the “don’t resist rape” nonsense that was once so popular.
And check out this “analysis”:
Professor Ivan Bodensteiner, of Valparaiso University School of Law, said the court’s decision is consistent with the idea of preventing violence.
“It’s not surprising that they would say there’s no right to beat the hell out of the officer,” Bodensteiner said. “(The court is saying) we would rather opt on the side of saying if the police act wrongfully in entering your house your remedy is under law, to bring a civil action against the officer.”
So we’ll just throw out your 4th amendment right to satisfy the court’s desire to “prevent violence,” is that it?
One hopes the decision is destroyed on appeal and if the Justices are in an elected office they become very “insecure” in their probability of staying there.
The two dissenting Justices got it mostly right:
Justice Robert Rucker, a Gary native, and Justice Brent Dickson, a Hobart native, dissented from the ruling, saying the court’s decision runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“In my view the majority sweeps with far too broad a brush by essentially telling Indiana citizens that government agents may now enter their homes illegally — that is, without the necessity of a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances,” Rucker said. “I disagree.”
Rucker and Dickson suggested if the court had limited its permission for police entry to domestic violence situations they would have supported the ruling.
But Dickson said, “The wholesale abrogation of the historic right of a person to reasonably resist unlawful police entry into his dwelling is unwarranted and unnecessarily broad.”
I say mostly right because they indicated that in the case of domestic violence, they too were willing to throw the 4th amendment under the bus.
How does one say “it runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment” and then later agree to a partial abrogation of the 4th under certain circumstances? What part of “shall not be violated” don’t they understand? It doesn’t say “shall not be violated except in case of domestic violence” does it?
Oh, and just to point out that this likely isn’t an outlier for this crew:
This is the second major Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week involving police entry into a home.
On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge’s permission to enter without knocking.
Because, you know, it would be just asking too much to have the police actually justify a no-knock entrance to a judge, wouldn’t it?
Amazing.
And you wonder why you have to constantly protect your rights daily from attacks within?
There have always been a difference between daytime “knock warrants” and smash and grab “no-knock” warrants. The “no-knock” smash and grab often ends up with the family dog being shot on entry. These kind of rulings encourage the police to use less restraint. With more reports of younger cops getting in trouble because of a lack of restraint (everyone has a camera phone now) if anything we should have more incentive for restraint, not less. These jackanapes on the court for some reason that abandons all logic, cannot understand that. They need to be sent back to private practice.
UPDATE – Apparently judging by what some lay people have sent via messages they completely do not understand this ruling.
If there was probable cause for the police to check on the welfare of the wife (which there may have been) than it was not an illegal entry. The problem is that the judges took it one step further and said, even if it was totally illegal and unjustified it still has our blessing – THAT is the problem. Hence the press coverage.
Essentially the three judges opinion position boils down to this, you have a Fourth Amendment right AFTER the fact. You do not have rights to be presumed presumed innocent, but rather you are presumed guilty, but IF you can afford a big fancy lawyer to take on the govt, and IF that lawyer is up to the task, and IF you can find a lawyer who is willing to sue the police YOU can go to court and if you prove you were innocent and the police invasion was unlawful, and you win you might get a damage award, after whatever damage is done to your family is already done. This takes away the burden of proof away from the state and puts it on the citizen.
What if that citizen does not have the resources to launch such a legal battle, now defacto he has no rights. It gets worse, if you have to sue, the government will defend, so they will do all they can to defeat (smear) you, investigate you up and down, do all they can to discourage you form continuing, and violate you even further because you were “foolish” enough to dare stand for your constitutional rights, but wait, it is not a right if you are presumed guilty and the burden of proof is on you, which is the entire point. So what is the incentive for the police to respect the rights of the people? Oh there is none. Instead of working to protect your rights the government must defend in court and thus work against them. Welcome to King George’s wet dream. The Constitution and the basis for Western Civilization is turned on its head. Jefferson would NOT be amused.
President Barack Obama is to release up to 2,000 photographs of alleged abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in a move which will reignite the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.
Talk about a slow response to Katrina, how about no response because you are a Republican.
White House: Gov. Perry disrespected us because he would not greet us when the President flew in.
The Facts: Obama flew into El Paso, a two-hour flight for Gov. Perry and yet just a few hours later Obama was to be in Austin, where Gov. Perry was, for two fund-raisers. “We offered to meet the President here in Austin” says Gov. Perry. President Obama refused to meet with him.
White House: Border counties are safer than ever.
The Facts: The White House bases that number on the number of illegal immigration apprehensions. The apprehensions are down because the economy in the USA is bad and fewer people are coming across, but the drug cartels and border violence are up and some parts of the border have been ceded to the drug cartels and are not under our control.
White House: Gov. Perry is not telling the truth about the fires as the federal government is paying 75% of the bill.
The Facts: The Federal Government is helping with 25 fires out of 9000. [Editor’s Note – By the way, wild fires would not be so bad if the federal government did not have restrictions on forest management such as cutting fire breaks and cleaning underbrush.]
UPDATE – If you want to see the depth of President Obama’s border security lie, the Federal Government through the BLM is posting these signs in Arizona just south of Interstate 8. This is not just on the border as Interstate 8 is THREE COUNTIES inland.
If the border is safer than ever, why are these signs needed now and say not when Reagan was president or even Clinton?
The Arizona TEA Party recently posted this message on one of their web sites:
“Sheriff Dever’s Dept. (Cochise County) and also the Pinal County Sheriff’s Depts (Sheriff Paul Babeu) which are the two counties that are directly on the AZ/Mexican border, are now being sued by Obama and Eric Holder to prevent them from enforcing immigration laws? Mark, this situation has become extremely dangerous now. Not only are thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants crossing our border daily, we have thousands of OTM’s (Other Than Mexican….a-hem, middle-easterners). Obama and Holder want to stop these Sheriff Depts from apprehending them, and handing them over to ICE for deportation.”
ABC’s Jake Tapper makes a few observations about the president’s border speech. He quotes the increase in border agents from the early Bush Administration, counting the increases authorized by the former president as his own. In short putting up a light fence on a few hundred miles of border when that border is thousands of miles long is hardly securing it, and neither is adding 3000 border agents which is an ounce in the bucket. Obama has hardly secured the border and in fact files harassment suits against local law enforcement to stop serious enforcement of it.
The Euros have lost it and are heading head first into dhimmitude.
One of my history professors lectured about how and why great societies get conquered. Europe is being conquered right now as they will not defend their culture, their values, or even their women.
To our friends in Europe I say this, try and stop what is happening. If you cannot then come here and help us defend America or go to England and help UKIP, because if we lose freedom here as the Danes, Swedes, Germans and others have the world will be lost.
Freedom of speech and women’s rights just took a major hit in Denmark earlier today when the public prosecutor found Lars Hedegaard, the President of the Danish (and International) Free Press Society, guilty of “hate speech” under section 266b of the Danish penal code.
Hedegaard’s crime was to note “the great number of family rapes in areas dominated by Muslim culture in Denmark.”
The prosecutor’s crime is far greater. Now, courtesy of this prosecution, it is officially “racist” to tell the truth about sexual violence against women in Denmark, at least when that violence is perpetrated by Muslim fathers, uncles, or cousins.
When feminists first brought rape and incest out of the closet, we were accused of being “strident man haters,” and “crazy” as well. We learned to say: Not all men rape but all rapists are men. To our horror, we eventually discovered that women sometimes rape or sexually abuse children. They rarely rape other adults or force unwanted sex on other women outside of a prison setting.
Islam is not a race. Muslims come in every conceivable color. The Danes, the Scandinavians, all Europe has critiqued and exposed the real and imaginary sins and crimes of both Judaism and Christianity. Now, suddenly, Islam alone is to be spared such treatment.
Hedegaard has just published a book, Muhammed’s Girls: Violence, Murder and Rape in the House of Islam. I was told that my work appears throughout. Will my work someday also be considered “hate speech” or “racism”?
I stand in solidarity with Hedegaard at this awful moment. If the Danes and the Europeans do not take some very radical measures, it will be just as Bat Ye-or predicted. Post-Enlightenment Europe will no longer exist; Eurabia will.
I am ready to talk to the prosecutor to condemn this utter insanity. And so should everyone else. The real racists, the infidel-haters, the Jew-haters, the woman-haters are not being condemned. Only those who expose them are.
I noticed this story while browsing. A teacher in Dallas sits there while students are attacked, and in another video he sits there while students make an arena with the chairs, two students casually strip to their shorts and fight while other students film it with a cell phone. The Teacher says that policy prevents him from doing anything, so he just sits there as “fight club” goes on in his class and apparently this is not uncommon.
WFAA has the story and Hotair.com has updates. Click the links to see the video and the story. So much for the effectiveness of the so called “zero tolerance policy”.
[Editor’s Note – The information and video of the “fight club” that went on in the class is at the WFAA link so be sure to watch it]
“Ever constant, never changing, ongoing harassment” is how the victim describes the situation. Of course what did the school do about this?
Now the victim is dropping out of school because he is convinced it is unsafe; which is not unusual for a state run union school and is in fact what they prefer because victims mean that there is trouble in their school that administrators do not want to admit to under their watch, so if the victim goes away, bureaucratically speaking, so does the crime.
The school is also going after the student who recorded it, after all we can’t have the outside world know what is going on in class can we?
Victims go ignored, some even kill themselves like Phoebe Prince and the story is always the same. The school claims ignorance when the kids and teachers say that everyone knew about it. District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel demonstrated that the administrators, from the Superintendent on down, were lying about not knowing, as Prince’s mother had multiple meetings with the schools administrators, which proved to be fruitless. Another reason that schools tend to side with the bullies, “Both Phoebe and Tyler were targeted by high-status kids who were well-liked in the community,” said Barbara Coloroso, a prominent anti-bullying consultant. By the way, Prince’s bullies were sentenced last week (expect a civil suit to follow).
MORE STUPIDITY – A public school in Maryland had a student dragged off in handcuffs and why? Because he had a two inch folding pocket toolkit that included a pen knife which he used to maintain and repair his Lacrosse stick. He had a lighter to burn off strings and frays. The school said that the folding took kit was a deadly weapon and that the lighter was an “explosive device”. Is being a moron a requirement to getting a school administrator position paying six figures? – LINK with video.
For those of you who wonder why so many women, Catholics and Hispanics voted with the TEA Party in 2010, this nonsense is one of the reasons.Democrats will not make priorities and the cuts we eed to keep the important programs going and pay the debt. The GOP will only do it if we keep their feet to the fire.
That’s the idea behind a $2 million project being unveiled Wednesday in the lunchroom of a San Antonio elementary school, where high-tech cameras installed in the cafeteria will begin photographing what foods children pile onto their trays — and later capture what they don’t finish eating.
Digital imaging analysis of the snapshots will then calculate how many calories each student scarfed down. Local health officials said the program, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, is the first of its kind in a U.S. school, and will be so precise that the technology can identify a half-eaten pear left on a lunch tray.
“This is very sophisticated,” said Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the San Antonio-based Social & Health Research Center, which will oversee the program.
The grant from the USDA will fund the study for four years. Trevino said the coming school year will be very experimental, with programmers fine-tuning the cameras and imaging software to accurately identify what’s a pear and what’s an apple. He expects the “prototype” to be in place by the second year.
A Finnish priest prosecuted and accused of inciting religious hatred for using the word terrorist to describe the TERRORIST responsible for the Moscow Metro Bombing. He went to police to complain of the death threat by beheading and then …
The agent “touched my vagina four times”. The TSA representative told me “its better than being blown up”. So you don’t like your vagina being touched…here is a complaint card to fill out…
U.S. Sen. Scott Brown — an upstart Blue State Republican in the cross hairs of national Democrats — is lashing out at the party’s opposition researchers, accusing them of prying into his family’s private health insurance records, and demanding that they stop fighting dirty.
“It seems in bad form. Obviously, when it comes to information about my wife and daughters, it crosses the line. I find it offensive and so do they,” Brown told the Herald yesterday.
“They (Democrats) don’t have any business muddling in the private health records of my family,” said Brown, adding that his family is “disturbed” by the intrusion.
Officials from the Group Insurance Commission, the state’s health insurance provider, notified Brown on Tuesday that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked them “to provide insurance information,” according to a copy of the GIC letter obtained by the Herald.
The GIC, a quasi-independent state agency, administers health insurance for state employees and their families. Brown’s wife, Gail Huff, and two daughters, Ayla and Arianna, were also on his state insurance plan when he was a Wrentham state senator.
A copy of the DSCC request provided to the Herald asks for “all direct correspondence” between Brown and the GIC under the Massachusetts public records law.
Now this is rich….
A DSCC spokesman insisted the request was only for public information and never sought private medical information about the Brown family.
To provide insurance information, like what was paid out, claims made etc. It is pretty easy to reverse engineer a medical record from that information, but oh no, you don’t want medical information, WHICH IS WHY YOU SENT THE LETTER TO THE STATE MEDICAL INSURANCE COMMISSION….
Come on guys, if you are going to issue a denial, can you at least come up with one that is better than that? Remember this is the state with RomneyCare folks, they state will have those records and the Democrats want them.
The Democratic Party illegally obtained Michael Steele’s credit report and released it, Obama illegally obtained a copy of Jack Ryan’s sealed divorce papers to put the details of his sex life and such on the front page and the Democrats also put Congressman Allen West’s Social Security number and other person info in a mailer to 60,000 people.
Threats and boycott of small business by union leadership leads to 300% sales increase. Rank and file members of AFSCME stop by to apologize for their leadership’s idiocy:
UNION GROVE – Local union members apologized to business owners Thursday after hearing union leadership threatened to boycott businesses.
The stunning development happened late Thursday afternoon at Village Dollar, where members with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees showed their support to businesses that were targeted.
It all started after Dawn Bobo, owner of Village Dollar in Union Grove, refused to put up a sign supporting AFSCME.
The public union is against Governor Scott Walker’s plan to take away most collective bargaining rights for its members.
Bobo didn’t want to take sides, fearing she would offend customers.
“I have customers from all walks of life, “she said. “In a tough economy you need everyone here.”
But apparently that wasn’t good enough for AFSCME Union Rep. Jim Parrett, who sent her a letter that reads in part:
“We’d ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do a public boycott of your business.”
“It rubbed me the wrong way,” said customer John Charnon.
He and other customers drove out of their way to shop at Village Dollar Thursday. According to Bobo, business tripled because of it.
Even some local AFSCME union members called the threats “thuggish”.
“The statements and threats made by Jim Parrett do not represent everyone in the local, we didn’t support it,” said Paul Baumester, a member of AFSCME, Local 3777.
He and several other union members shook hands with Bobo Thursday afternoon and apologized to her and other businesses for the threats. They claim they were never consulted about the letters.
Baumester says he’s still against Governor Walker’s budget proposals, but he believes the threats are exactly the wrong thing to do.
“Right when we think we might be making some headway here, we lose ground in the public eye,” he said.
We made several attempts to contact Parrett by phone, but an operator said his voice mail box was full.
And now thanks to his letter, so is Bobo’s dollar store, which now has a sign of its own in the window. It reads, “We support Union Grove, not bully tactics.”
“I want them to have the rights they’re entitled to, but they are not entitled to take mine away,” said Bobo when talking about AFSCME.
Remember when we said that the Democrats are pushing for a government shut down, which is why they keep moving the goal posts in trying to boost deficit spending? Well here is the proof. It is called acting in bad faith folks.
How could anyone who wants fiscal responsibility ever vote for any of these people again. You heard me. If you take exception to that comment please try and justify what we have just seen in the comments below.
UPDATE: Rand Paul: What Schumer is doing to the country is extreme
Michelle Bachmann responds as well:
Mike Pence: If the Democrats want a shutdown so bad, do it and see what happens…
Boehner/Bachmann: Democrats rooting for a shutdown
Its true too. Every time the Republicans make a compromise the Democrats move the goal post. First it was move spending back to 2008 levels; then it was cut by $100 billion; then it was $61 billion’ then it was, 10.5 or 33 billion dollars depending on what Democrat you were talking to. How anyone, and I mean anyone who tells you that they are for fiscal responsibility and want to vote Democrat in 2012 is either duped or just lying to you.
Obama says that he will let the IG (Inspector general) investigate this, but as well all know Obama has been firing IG’s and replacing them with political cronies.
Laura Ingraham with Senator Chuck Grassley:
You heard it right, legal and licence gun sellers were telling the ATF about what was going on and the ATF told them it was OK. ATF employees went to superiors and told them what was going and on that it was illegal, those employees were threatened with termination and told that they would end up as jailers in some county somewhere if they didn’t be quiet.
This is a pattern with this administration. The Voting Rights Act doesn’t apply to white victims, laws against economic terrorism do not apply to the radical left etc. .
The viral video sensation showing a bullying incident at an Australian school has brought the issue of bullying back into the spotlight. Here in the United States, the Obama administration has made school bullying a federal issue. Last week, President Barack Obama addressed an anti-bullying conference with First Lady Michelle Obama at his side. The administration’s anti-bullying campaign has been ongoing since the beginning of Mr. Obama’s term. The Department of Justice announced in December 2010 its intention to hold liable school districts that fail to protect students that are bullied.
The Civil Rights Division and the entire Justice Department are committed to ending bullying and harassment in schools, and the video highlights the Department’s authority to enforce federal laws that protect students from discrimination and harassment at school because of their race, national origin, disability, religion, and sex, including harassment based on nonconformity with gender stereotypes.
The statement later says:
The enforcement of the Equal Protection Clause, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in school districts is a top priority of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Additional information is available at the Civil Rights Division’s Educational Opportunities Section website at http://www.justice.gov/crt/edo/.
Here is the catch. DOJ will only investigate bullying cases if the victim is considered protected under the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. In essence, only discrimination against a victim’s race, sex, national origin, disability, or religion will be considered by DOJ. The overweight straight white male who is verbally and/or physically harassed because of his size can consider himself invisible to the Justice Department.
Apparently, the Justice Department is going by George Orwell’s famous Animal Farm ending: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
“We can only take action where we have legal authority,” wrote DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa in a December 2010 e-mail to The Washington Times Water Cooler. She continues:
“As stated in the website below, we are statutorily authorized to initiate suits under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, and under Title III of the American with Disabilities Act. More information on the Civil Rights Act, Equal Educational Opportunities Act, and the ADA can be found here:
The Justice Department’s anti-bullying initiative is tantamount to bringing hate crime legislation to the public school system. Obviously, not only is the heterosexual white male student out of luck but inner city minority students lose out in this deal too.
If a schoolyard bully is a straight black male and his target is another straight black male where does that leave the victim in the eyes of Attorney General Eric Holder? What about two female students of the same sexual orientation and race? Is the victim in the latter situation considered to be less equal in the eyes of Obama’s Justice Department than a minority student who is picked on by a heterosexual white male student with no disabilities?
Unfortunately, the Justice Department is politicizing its priorities yet again. One must wonder why the administration believes it should be micro managing local school districts’ bullying problems. When the Justice Department is more interested in making ideological statements through seemingly sugar coated campaigns, no one should feel protected.
Your tax dollars at work…
The EPA is now paying the American Lung Association to attack Republicans:
[Editor’s Note – This is a billboard just a few miles north of where I live attacking Fred Upton. In a crazy ruling by the court, they handed the EPA the power to regulate CO2 as if it were a pollutant. The Constitution says that all lawmaking power rests with the Congress. It is with this “authority” under color of law (fake law) that Obama has instructed the EPA to create a Cap & Trade scheme against the will of Congress and the American people. This is profoundly and expressly unconstitutional and a complete violation of Separation of Powers.
So the Republicans are moving to take this power away. This billboard is Obama’s response. The dishonest narrative is “Republicans want to poison the air and kill this child “. CO2 is what we breath out and what trees and plants breath in, without it we would all starve. Almost any economic activity creates some CO2 so this is an “excuse” to regulate anything and everything by using unelected bureaucrats and ignoring Congress altogether.
This is abuse of power on its face, Democrats know this but just don’t care, and some Republicans are afraid of being accused of wanting to poison the girl on the billboard. The only way to put an end to this is to vote for bold conservative candidates overwhelmingly.]
The ALA put up four billboards like this one near Rep. Fred Upton’s office in Michigan. Upton is the House Energy and Commerce Chairman. (PlowShareGroup)
The Environmental Protection Agency is paying the American Lung Association to run attack ads against Republican members of Congress.
“The American Lung Association has targeted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton for his efforts to stop U.S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions by placing billboards within sight of his district offices linking climate change with increased childhood asthma,” reports E&E News PM.
But as we reported last week in “EPA owns the American Lung Association,” the EPA has paid the American Lung Association over $20 million in the last ten years, and has paid the ALA many more millions in a symbiotic relationship going back to at least 1990.
The EPA-ALA relationship works something like this: EPA pays the ALA and, in return, the ALA agitates for more stringent EPA air quality regulation, including by lawsuit. Now it’s billboards.
In addition to defunding National Public Radio, the House GOP should look at the EPA’s funding of American Lung Association.
It doesn’t matter that the EPA policies will cause your
This has been going on repeatedly in this administration. To see the complete story and back ground, be sure to check out this great piece by Michelle Malkin.
The IUSB Vision Weblog 