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News & Cartoons for Our Subscribers, Viewers, Other Artists
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Wednesday, August 8, 2012
KIDS ARE SCREWED BY OBAMA POLICIES
Posted by WP
FREE ZONE MEDIA CENTER WFZR/TV
| Tuesday, 07 August 2012 | |
The kids are screwed. The unemployment rate among Americans aged 18-29 is 50 percent higher than the national average. More than 43 percent of recent college graduates who have jobs do work which does not require a college education. If the Obama administration policies which keep unemployment high are reversed, for most of us the recession will end. But the kids will still be screwed, because they don't know what they need to know to survive in the global economy. The key is STEM education -- Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. The US used to be the world's leader. Today, we're one of just 3 of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where the kids know no more about these subjects than their parents did. The kids don't know much of anything else, either. They've taken Sam Cooke's 1959 hit, Don't know much about history, don't know much about geography, to heart. More than half of high school seniors scored "below basic" in their knowledge of history, said the National Assessment of Education Progress in 2010. Half of Americans aged 18-24 in a National Geographic survey couldn't find New York state on a map. In Oklahoma, only 3 percent of high school students could pass the citizenship test foreigners must take to become Americans. Only a handful of the roughly 6,000 students who've passed through his classroom know how to form a sentence or write an intelligible paragraph, a retiring high school teacher told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Mark Morford. "Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, (the teacher) realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler." "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance," said Derek Bok, president of Harvard University from 1971 to 1990. Boy was he right! We spend, on average, $10, 615 per pupil in the public schools for monumental ignorance. That's almost 250 percent more, in real terms, than we spent in 1970, when students learned stuff. Kids today don't even know how little they know. "Many students tell me that they are the most well-informed generation in history," said George Mason University professor Rick Shenkman. The kids would learn more if we had more teachers, and paid them more, teacher unions say. Since 1970, the number of teachers and administrators in public schools has risen 11 times faster than enrollment. This has meant more union dues and more campaign contributions for Democrats. But students learn less. This isn't because teachers are underpaid. Their compensation is 150 percent more than for private sector workers with similar skills, according to a study last year by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. On an hourly basis, teachers earn more than most accountants, architects and nurses. By far the most important factor in determining how much students learn is the quality of the teacher. If we could get rid of the worst 7 percent of teachers, that alone would vault our schools back among the world's best, says the Hoover Institution's Eric Hanushek. But it's for that 7 percent teacher unions go to bat. About 30 percent of high school students studying math, and 60 percent studying the physical sciences, are taught by teachers who did not major in the subject in college, or are not certified to teach it. "How in the world can we expect our students to master science and technology when their teachers may not have mastered it?" asked U.S. News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman. The retired or laid-off professionals who could fill the gap are kept out of the classroom because they haven't taken the dreck education courses the cartel has made prerequisites. Schools of education are by no means the only reason why things are as bad -- or worse -- at the next level. Students are more likely to leave college with massive debt than with marketable skills. We rank near the bottom in the OECD in STEM degrees. For Democrats, support for "education" means giving teacher unions whatever they want. More Americans disagree. In Gallup's annual poll in June, only 29 percent of Americans expressed confidence in public schools, the lowest level ever recorded. That's down from 58 percent when Gallup first asked the question in 1973. Enrollment in public school districts in big cities is plunging as more parents find ways to help their children escape from schools where they are more likely to be shot or stabbed than prepared for college. The greed and corruption of the education establishment is made the more repugnant by arrogance, deceit and hypocrisy. "We're doing it for the children," they say as they feather their own nests. They're not doing it for the children, they're doing it to the children. Thanks chiefly to the teacher unions and the educrats, the only thing young people today will have more of than their parents or grandparents is debt. For many if not most, a well-paying job, a satisfying career, a home of their own are beyond their grasp. The ignorance of our youth has reached crisis proportions, endangering not only their futures and our prosperity, but also the viability of our democratic institutions. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," said Thomas Jefferson. "How much ignorance can a country stand?" Mr. Shenkman asked. "There have to be terrible consequences when it reaches a certain level." We'll find out what those consequences are real soon, Mr. Morford's teacher friend thinks. He is "very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years." Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. |
Shawn Hannity gets owned by Jesse Ventura on Shawn's own show.
Posted by BH
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8-7-12 Wayne Allyn Root on Hannity about OBAMA THE MYSTERIOUS ?
Posted by BH
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G-MEN TACKLE REAL IMPORTANT CRIME: BULLYING
Posted by WP
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G-Men Tackle Real Important Crime: Bullying
Apparently business is so slow at
the Department of Justice that it has decided to turn its attention away from
trivial matters such as running guns to Mexico and focus on combating
the effects of bullying.
Now before you liberals swell with righteous indignation, try for a moment
for some of that sensitivity for which you are supposed to be famous.You see, I was a Victim of Bullying.
I was short, skinny and wore glasses. I was bookish, awkward and my parents had even worse fashion sense than I did so I looked like a walking train wreck. And my father liked to give home haircuts and it should have been one of the last things he did with his spare time.
I was not good at sports, and so I got teased, and beaten up. I was called all sorts of horrible names, names that I cannot repeat here. I was dumped upside down in a trash can while half the school gathered around to laugh. I was called a f*g, slammed up against walls, hit, had things thrown at me, and on one memorable occasion I was punched in the throat in high school apparently because I was a “little white m***********”.
And all I was doing was trying to get to fifth period before the bell rang. What happened to my tormentors? Nothing. And according to Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West, I should be homeless, depressed and a menace to society:
"When kids who are the targets of bullies show up in school, not ready to learn because they’re too afraid...that’s not just a challenge for the victim or his or her family; that becomes an education challenge. And when those bullied children show up in doctor’s offices and clinics suffering from anxiety or depression or a whole host of other issues, that becomes a health care challenge. And when those bullied victims leave school and can’t find jobs because they don’t have the skills employers need because, as the research indicates, they’re more likely to miss, skip, or drop out of school, then that becomes a business community challenge.”
Apparently as Victim of Bullying, I didn’t get the memo that my life was
supposed to be a Lifetime Movie of the Week. I grew up, went to college, got a
job, was a firefighter, got married, joined the Masons, the Shriners, the Rotary
Club and the Chamber of Commerce.
I pay my taxes, donate to charities, went to Cambodia on an awareness mission
to stop human trafficking, and my local Shrine club is raising money for the
Shriners’ Hospitals for Children. I use my radio show to promote local groups
trying to make a positive difference in the community. I am not an “education
challenge” or a “healthcare challenge” or a “business challenge.” And thus I am
not a convenient statistic for government overreach.
I say that not because I want everyone to know what a great personification
of humanity I turned out to be, but to point out that I came of age in a time
when one did not let one’s negative experiences in life determine one’s
identity. I did not grow up in an age in which I was the center of the universe and entitled to anything I did not earn. I never got a ribbon for showing up, and no one stopped the world to adjust my self esteem. I also did not Tweet or post on Facebook or YouTube every little aspect of my life as if I were the center of the world, and I didn’t have movies, video games or music telling me that there were no strictures on my behavior and that I could rob, loot and shoot at my leisure. Life, I learned, is an inherently unfair proposition and sometimes the bad guys win, but it doesn’t have to color one’s entire existence.
Now we have Valerie Jarrrett talking about being cyber-bullied on Twitter. Well Valerie, you are a public figure making yourself available in a public venue. As a talk show host in a tiny town in Utah, nasty comments have been posted about me.
Do stay up at night bemoaning the fact that I am a victim of cyber-bullying? No, I don’t. It comes with the territory and I know that people who spend hours online scrawling obnoxious messages are crude under-socialized Neanderthals who have deluded themselves into thinking that the world gives a rat’s fat fandango what they think about anything as they sweat for their 15 minutes of fame.
It’s a fact of life: If you stick your head up, someone is going to take a
poke at you.
I know bullying is serious, no one should ever have to endure being called
names, getting beaten up, or dumped into a trash can just because they don’t
act, look or dress like the rest of the crowd. I know that because it happened
to me. We should strive for civility, courtesy, decency and basic human respect. But I also know that this is an election year, and if the DOJ was as concerned about people as it is trying to appear in said election year, it would have done something about the bullying at the polls in the 2008 election. It would have never let Fast and Furious turn into such a debacle. It would be concerned about human trafficking coming across the borders.
And maybe the Administration would have had something to say about a Chicago city government and Boston civic leader trying to intimidate a business owner whose views go against the perceived mainstream. And it would not tell another business owner that he has to violate his religious beliefs to stay in business. But it is easier to encourage still more people and more voters to consider themselves victims in need of federal intervention in a problem that should be dealt with locally, thereby setting the stage for federal involvement in any issue that it decides to label as “bullying.”
So speaking as a Victim of Bullying, I would like to request that this
Administration do something constructive for a change, instead of finding yet
another way to poke its proboscis into venues that are clearly outside its job
description.
OBAMA'S WAR ON FAMILY BUISNESS
Posted by WP
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Obama’s War on Family Business
One of the aspects of President
Obama’s worldview that has drawn consistent fire is his evident hostility toward
business. His comments
in Roanoke, Virginia three weeks ago (“If you have a business, you didn’t build
that”) are just the most recent in a long history of shameful displays of
ignorance about the way a business is launched, how it is grown, and what makes
it successful.
In his speeches, Obama tends to praise businesses only as a lead-in to calling for higher taxes on them. The President likes to attach a taint to the word “business,” as if every enterprise were Enron and every founder was Scrooge McDuck, hording piles of gold in his basement. This convenient dodge feeds a vague but satisfying resentment in some of Obama’s core constituencies toward big, faceless, evil “multinational corporations,” which are easy to hate.
But the reality about business in America is quite different, and those who understand this most keenly are those who have started businesses – and the family members who have supported them. They know firsthand that Obama’s attacks on business in general translate to a war on family business in particular.
Few people realize just how predominant family business is in the United States. So some statistics (available from the Census and the U.S. Small Business Administration) are instructive.
First, most businesses in the U.S. are not large. Over 78% of all businesses (21M out of 27M) in the United States are “non-employer” firms, meaning that they report no payroll. In other words, they are either partnerships or sole proprietorships. In fact, the vast majority (it varies from year to year, but typically around 70%) of all businesses are run as sole proprietorships.
Of the remaining 6+ million “employer firms,” nearly 90% employ fewer than 20 people. 1.3 million of these companies gross less than $100,000 each year. 3.7 million have gross receipts of less than $500,000 a year. 4.6 million – or 76% - of all “employer firms” in the United States gross under a million dollars each year.
In other words, most business in the United States is small business.
It is important to consider these data when Obama calls for higher taxes on people making more than $250,000, lumping them with “millionaires and billionaires.” Since most small businesses operate as sole proprietorships, this means that the business doesn’t pay the taxes (as a corporation would); the individual owner pays all of the taxes on the business’ income. And while some might think that $250,000 would be a cushy salary for one person, a business generating $250,000 in gross receipts is a VERY small enterprise indeed. From this amount must come state and federal income taxes, property taxes, rent or mortgage payments, insurance, salaries, benefits, unemployment and workers compensation payments, and more.
Furthermore, 80 – 90% of all businesses in the U.S. are family-owned – including 35% of all Fortune 500 companies. Family-owned businesses are responsible for 50% of all GDP in the U.S., 60% of all U.S. employment, and 65% of all wages paid in the U.S.
Family-run businesses also have a more personal investment in their employees and in their communities. According to Anne Kincaid of Family Enterprise USA, family businesses have far less leadership turnover than shareholder-owned companies, and are less likely to let employees go, even in tough times.
One would think, therefore – particularly in a struggling economy – that the President of the United States would want to encourage the creation of businesses, laud those who take the personal financial risks to start them, and use power of the presidency to minimize the burdens government can impose.
To the contrary, the policies advocated by this president are crippling to business. Just a few examples:
In light of these events, it is not surprising that the Roanoke speech has become the negative tagline for the Obama presidency. Every family with an entrepreneur in it knows that the business founder didn’t do it on his or her own; spouses and children also make substantial sacrifices to help launch a business, grow it, make it successful and keep it that way. Families in business also know how difficult government makes it.
The Roanoke speech is also the gift that keeps on giving to Mitt Romney. The president’s antipathy to business is affecting his reelection campaign. Donors had already been fleeing Obama in droves – including Democrats who are now supporting Romney. The result is nearly unthinkable to Democrat strategists: Romney is actually outpacing Obama in fundraising, and by a substantial margin.
No wonder. While it might be understandable that those who don’t own a business might vote for Obama the second time around, it is inexplicable that anyone who does – or wants to -- would. And that is a lot of people.
In his speeches, Obama tends to praise businesses only as a lead-in to calling for higher taxes on them. The President likes to attach a taint to the word “business,” as if every enterprise were Enron and every founder was Scrooge McDuck, hording piles of gold in his basement. This convenient dodge feeds a vague but satisfying resentment in some of Obama’s core constituencies toward big, faceless, evil “multinational corporations,” which are easy to hate.
But the reality about business in America is quite different, and those who understand this most keenly are those who have started businesses – and the family members who have supported them. They know firsthand that Obama’s attacks on business in general translate to a war on family business in particular.
Few people realize just how predominant family business is in the United States. So some statistics (available from the Census and the U.S. Small Business Administration) are instructive.
First, most businesses in the U.S. are not large. Over 78% of all businesses (21M out of 27M) in the United States are “non-employer” firms, meaning that they report no payroll. In other words, they are either partnerships or sole proprietorships. In fact, the vast majority (it varies from year to year, but typically around 70%) of all businesses are run as sole proprietorships.
Of the remaining 6+ million “employer firms,” nearly 90% employ fewer than 20 people. 1.3 million of these companies gross less than $100,000 each year. 3.7 million have gross receipts of less than $500,000 a year. 4.6 million – or 76% - of all “employer firms” in the United States gross under a million dollars each year.
In other words, most business in the United States is small business.
It is important to consider these data when Obama calls for higher taxes on people making more than $250,000, lumping them with “millionaires and billionaires.” Since most small businesses operate as sole proprietorships, this means that the business doesn’t pay the taxes (as a corporation would); the individual owner pays all of the taxes on the business’ income. And while some might think that $250,000 would be a cushy salary for one person, a business generating $250,000 in gross receipts is a VERY small enterprise indeed. From this amount must come state and federal income taxes, property taxes, rent or mortgage payments, insurance, salaries, benefits, unemployment and workers compensation payments, and more.
Furthermore, 80 – 90% of all businesses in the U.S. are family-owned – including 35% of all Fortune 500 companies. Family-owned businesses are responsible for 50% of all GDP in the U.S., 60% of all U.S. employment, and 65% of all wages paid in the U.S.
Family-run businesses also have a more personal investment in their employees and in their communities. According to Anne Kincaid of Family Enterprise USA, family businesses have far less leadership turnover than shareholder-owned companies, and are less likely to let employees go, even in tough times.
One would think, therefore – particularly in a struggling economy – that the President of the United States would want to encourage the creation of businesses, laud those who take the personal financial risks to start them, and use power of the presidency to minimize the burdens government can impose.
To the contrary, the policies advocated by this president are crippling to business. Just a few examples:
1. Taxes. As noted above, taxing businesses grossing between $250,000 and $1 million a year hits a disproportionate number of the sole proprietorships and small family businesses we desperately need to expand and hire more people. It also discourages prospective entrepreneurs. Then there is his “Buffet rule” tax proposal and his insistence upon raising the capital gains rate. The former is just silly posturing. The latter will negatively affect investment – which, of course, will mean that small businesses have a harder time becoming larger ones.(Sidenote: since Obama is so keen to yank America toward European-style socialism, he might want to read The Economist’s story from last week, blaming European government policies for the dismal lack of entrepreneurship and economic growth there.)
2. Obamacare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be ungodly expensive, and many small businesses – read family businesses – are not going to be able to afford to insure their current employees, much less hire new ones. Family Enterprise USA reports that 61% of the family firms they surveyed believe that the new law will make it harder, not easier, to pay for employee health care.
3. The HHS mandate. Having to provide what Obamacare considers to be appropriate insurance coverage is already burdensome. But the Obama administration has made this worse by insisting that all employers pay for sterilization and contraception – including abortifacient contraception. Catholic and other Christian universities and hospitals have filed lawsuits to contest the enforcement of this mandate, arguing that it compels them to violate the core teachings of their religious beliefs. But many family businesses are run by individuals who share those same beliefs, and they, too, are threatened by the HHS mandate. Already, at least one family business has sued – successfully. Others have followed. These are laudable developments. But most family businesses cannot afford the expense of a lawsuit in federal court.
4. The constant calls for reduction of the charitable deduction. President Obama has now tried five separate times to reduce the amount of the charitable deduction. This is inscrutable. The average family firm donates $50,000 to charities and philanthropic causes – most, locally for maximum impact. Larger companies donate much, much more.
In light of these events, it is not surprising that the Roanoke speech has become the negative tagline for the Obama presidency. Every family with an entrepreneur in it knows that the business founder didn’t do it on his or her own; spouses and children also make substantial sacrifices to help launch a business, grow it, make it successful and keep it that way. Families in business also know how difficult government makes it.
The Roanoke speech is also the gift that keeps on giving to Mitt Romney. The president’s antipathy to business is affecting his reelection campaign. Donors had already been fleeing Obama in droves – including Democrats who are now supporting Romney. The result is nearly unthinkable to Democrat strategists: Romney is actually outpacing Obama in fundraising, and by a substantial margin.
No wonder. While it might be understandable that those who don’t own a business might vote for Obama the second time around, it is inexplicable that anyone who does – or wants to -- would. And that is a lot of people.
IDEOLOGICAL TEST FOR GUN OWNERSHIP
Posted by WP
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An Ideological Test for Gun Ownership: The Next Logical Step in the Effort to Keep Dangerous People From Buying Firearms
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says Sunday's deadly
attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb, shows "our elected
officials" need to "do something." Slightly more specifically, the group says we
should "Demand Congress Stop Arming Dangerous People."
Wade M. Page, the Army veteran identified as the gunman who was shot to death by police after killing six people and injuring three at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, had documented ties to white supremacist groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremists, he was "a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band" called End Apathy.
"The music that comes from these bands is incredibly violent," Mark Potok, a senior fellow of the SPLC, told The New York Times. "It talks about murdering Jews, black people, gay people and a whole host of other enemies."
According to the SITE Monitoring Service, Page was a familiar presence on websites run by Stormfront, Hammerskin Nation and other white supremacist groups, where he "frequently included white supremacist symbolism" in his posts. In a 2010 interview with End Apathy's record company, Page said he aimed to cure "a sick society" and bemoaned "how the value of human life has been degraded by being submissive to tyranny and hypocrisy."
Once the database is created, it can be regularly updated with the names of people who express views like Page's -- who talk about tyranny, hypocrisy, or a "sick society," for instance, or who quote inflammatory proclamations like this one, frequently seen on the T-shirts and signs of right-wing lunatics: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants." I don't mean to imply that violent extremism is limited to the right; when you consider the ideas expressed by Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, it is clear that left-wing critiques of capitalism also lead to murderous violence.
I am not saying people do not have a right to express these alarming views -- just that if they do, they should not be surprised if they are turned away when they try to buy a gun. The Brady Campaign correctly says "it is time we acknowledged" that the Second Amendment "guarantees the right to keep and bear arms." But the Supreme Court has said that right is subject to reasonable regulations aimed at protecting public safety. What could be more reasonable than stopping dangerous people from buying dangerous weapons?
I did not realize there was a federal program that supplies mass murderers
with weapons. Obviously, this is a poor use of our tax dollars. Congress should
not only eliminate this program but it should also prevent dangerous people from
buying guns on their own.
But how do we know who is dangerous? The Brady Campaign mentions "convicted
felons," "convicted domestic abusers," "terrorists" and "people found to be
dangerously mentally ill." It omits a crucial category: people with dangerous
ideas.Wade M. Page, the Army veteran identified as the gunman who was shot to death by police after killing six people and injuring three at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, had documented ties to white supremacist groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremists, he was "a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band" called End Apathy.
"The music that comes from these bands is incredibly violent," Mark Potok, a senior fellow of the SPLC, told The New York Times. "It talks about murdering Jews, black people, gay people and a whole host of other enemies."
According to the SITE Monitoring Service, Page was a familiar presence on websites run by Stormfront, Hammerskin Nation and other white supremacist groups, where he "frequently included white supremacist symbolism" in his posts. In a 2010 interview with End Apathy's record company, Page said he aimed to cure "a sick society" and bemoaned "how the value of human life has been degraded by being submissive to tyranny and hypocrisy."
In other words, Page's scary views were well-known long before he bought the
9mm handgun he used in this week's attack. Yet he was still able to pass a
federal background check.
Federal law currently bans gun ownership by felons, illegal drug users,
people convicted of misdemeanors involving domestic violence and people
"committed to a mental institution" or "adjudicated as a mental defective."
Amazingly, there is no ideological test for gun ownership, even though someone
like Page, "who fed and was fueled by hate" (as the Times put it), is far more
dangerous than the average pot smoker or mental patient.
Private organizations such as the SPLC and government agencies such as the
FBI and the Department of Homeland Security already monitor the online
activities of violent extremists. How hard would it be to collect that
information in a database that could be used to check whether a would-be gun
buyer harbors views that make him prone to murder?Once the database is created, it can be regularly updated with the names of people who express views like Page's -- who talk about tyranny, hypocrisy, or a "sick society," for instance, or who quote inflammatory proclamations like this one, frequently seen on the T-shirts and signs of right-wing lunatics: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants." I don't mean to imply that violent extremism is limited to the right; when you consider the ideas expressed by Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, it is clear that left-wing critiques of capitalism also lead to murderous violence.
I am not saying people do not have a right to express these alarming views -- just that if they do, they should not be surprised if they are turned away when they try to buy a gun. The Brady Campaign correctly says "it is time we acknowledged" that the Second Amendment "guarantees the right to keep and bear arms." But the Supreme Court has said that right is subject to reasonable regulations aimed at protecting public safety. What could be more reasonable than stopping dangerous people from buying dangerous weapons?
54.5 MPG AND THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Posted by WP
FREE ZONE MEDIA CENTER WFZR/TV
54.5 MPG and The Law of Unintended Consequences
Legislators and regulators need to observe a fundamental Golden Rule: Do not
implement new laws if you have not considered or cannot control important
unintended consequences.
A perfect example is the Obama Administration’s plan to increase new car mileage standards, from the currently legislated requirement of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 to 54.5 mpg by 2025, as an average across each automaker’s complete line of cars and light trucks.
Carmakers reluctantly agreed to the new requirements, to avoid even more onerous standards, or different standards in different states. But the deal does nothing to alter the harsh realities of such a requirement.
First, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyses indicate that the mileage standards will add $3,000 to $4,800 to the average price of new vehicles for models from now until 2025. Moreover, this price increase does not include the $2,000 to $6,000 in total interest charges that many borrowers would have to pay over the life of a 36-60 month loan.
The consequence: 6 million to 11 million low-income drivers will be unable to afford new vehicles during this 13-year period, according to the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA). These drivers will essentially be eliminated from the new vehicle market, because they cannot afford even the least expensive new cars without a loan – and many cannot meet minimal lending standards to get that loan.
These drivers will be forced into the used car market. However, far fewer used cars are available today, because the $3-billion “cash for clunkers” program destroyed 690,000 perfectly drivable cars and trucks that otherwise would have ended up in used car lots. In addition, the poor economy is causing many families to hold onto their older cars longer than ever before.
Exacerbating the situation, the average price of used cars and trucks shot from $8,150 in December 2008 to $11,850 three years later, say the NADA and Wall Street Journal. With interest rates of 5-10% (depending on the bank, its lending standards and a borrower’s financial profile), even used cars are unaffordable for many poor families, if they can find one.
All this forces many poor families to buy “hoopties,” pieces of junk that cost much more to operate than a decent low-mileage used car. These higher operating costs can cripple families in borderline poverty situations.
These vehicles – even with seatbelts, air bags and expensive vehicle modifications – will not be as safe as they would be if mileage weren’t a major consideration. They will have less “armor” to protect drivers and passengers, and less space between vehicle occupants and whatever car, truck, bus, wall, tree or embankment their car might hit.
The NHTSA, Brookings Institution, Harvard School of Public Health, National Academy of Sciences and USA Today discovered a shocking reality. Even past and current mileage standards have resulted in thousands of additional fatalities, and tens of thousands of serious injuries, every year – above what would have happened if the government had not imposed those standards.
They also learned that drivers in lightweight cars were up to twelve times more likely to die in a crash – and far more likely to suffer serious injury and permanent disabilities.
These affordability and safety problems may be unintended. However, no government officials – elected or unelected – can claim they are unaware of them.
A perfect example is the Obama Administration’s plan to increase new car mileage standards, from the currently legislated requirement of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 to 54.5 mpg by 2025, as an average across each automaker’s complete line of cars and light trucks.
Carmakers reluctantly agreed to the new requirements, to avoid even more onerous standards, or different standards in different states. But the deal does nothing to alter the harsh realities of such a requirement.
First, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) analyses indicate that the mileage standards will add $3,000 to $4,800 to the average price of new vehicles for models from now until 2025. Moreover, this price increase does not include the $2,000 to $6,000 in total interest charges that many borrowers would have to pay over the life of a 36-60 month loan.
The consequence: 6 million to 11 million low-income drivers will be unable to afford new vehicles during this 13-year period, according to the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA). These drivers will essentially be eliminated from the new vehicle market, because they cannot afford even the least expensive new cars without a loan – and many cannot meet minimal lending standards to get that loan.
These drivers will be forced into the used car market. However, far fewer used cars are available today, because the $3-billion “cash for clunkers” program destroyed 690,000 perfectly drivable cars and trucks that otherwise would have ended up in used car lots. In addition, the poor economy is causing many families to hold onto their older cars longer than ever before.
Exacerbating the situation, the average price of used cars and trucks shot from $8,150 in December 2008 to $11,850 three years later, say the NADA and Wall Street Journal. With interest rates of 5-10% (depending on the bank, its lending standards and a borrower’s financial profile), even used cars are unaffordable for many poor families, if they can find one.
All this forces many poor families to buy “hoopties,” pieces of junk that cost much more to operate than a decent low-mileage used car. These higher operating costs can cripple families in borderline poverty situations.
The compounded financial impact is a “regressive” tax and a war on the poor.
Another, far worse consequence of the skyrocketing mileage requirements is
that many cars will need to be made smaller, lighter, and with thinner metal and
more plastic, to achieve the new “corporate average fleet economy” (CAFÉ)
standards. These vehicles – even with seatbelts, air bags and expensive vehicle modifications – will not be as safe as they would be if mileage weren’t a major consideration. They will have less “armor” to protect drivers and passengers, and less space between vehicle occupants and whatever car, truck, bus, wall, tree or embankment their car might hit.
The NHTSA, Brookings Institution, Harvard School of Public Health, National Academy of Sciences and USA Today discovered a shocking reality. Even past and current mileage standards have resulted in thousands of additional fatalities, and tens of thousands of serious injuries, every year – above what would have happened if the government had not imposed those standards.
They also learned that drivers in lightweight cars were up to twelve times more likely to die in a crash – and far more likely to suffer serious injury and permanent disabilities.
Increasing mileage requirements by a whopping 19 mpg above current rules will
make nearly all cars even less safe than they are today.
For obvious reasons, most legislators, regulators and environmental activists
have not wanted to discuss these issues. But they need to do so, before existing
mileage requirements are made even more stringent. These affordability and safety problems may be unintended. However, no government officials – elected or unelected – can claim they are unaware of them.
Finally, the asserted goals of CAFÉ standards may once have been somewhat persuasive. The standards were necessary, it was argued, to preserve US oil reserves that were rapidly being depleted, reduce oil imports from unstable parts of the world, and prevent dangerous global warming. However, the rationales used to justify these onerous, unfair, injurious and lethal mileage standards are no longer persuasive.All of us should conserve energy and be responsible stewards of the Earth and its bounties, which God has given us. However, to ignore the unpleasant realities of existing and proposed mileage mandates is unethical, immoral and unjust.
New seismic, drilling and production technologies have dramatically increased our nation’s oil and natural gas reserves. Opening some of the publicly owned lands that are currently off limits would increase reserves even more. Using government and industry data, the Institute for Energy Research has calculated that the USA, Canada and Mexico alone have 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil reserves – enough to meet current US needs for another 250 years – and another 175 years of natural gas.
As to global warming, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now backing away from previous claims about alarming changes in global temperatures, sea levels, polar ice caps and major storms, due to greenhouse gas emissions.
We must not emphasize fuel savings at the cost of excluding poor families
from the automobile market – and putting people at greater risk of serious
injury or death.
OBAMA ADMIN HUNTS PHANTOM CLASSROOM RACISM
Posted by WP
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Obama Administration Hunts Phantom Classroom Racism
Editors' note: this piece has been adapted from the summer issue
of City Journal.
In March 2010, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that his
department was “going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement” in the nation’s
schools. What was the pervasive racial injustice that led Mr. Duncan to redouble
such efforts? Black elementary and high school students are three and a half
times more likely to get suspended or expelled than their white peers, according
to federal data.
And so the Departments of Education and Justice have launched a campaign against disproportionate minority discipline rates, which show up in virtually every school district with significant numbers of black and Hispanic students. The possibility that students’ behavior drives those rates lies outside the Obama administration’s conceptual universe. The theory behind this school discipline push is what Obama officials and civil rights advocates call the “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to this conceit, harsh discipline practices—above all, suspensions— strip minority students of classroom time, causing them to learn less, drop out of school, and eventually land in prison. The feds have reached their conclusions, however, without answering the obvious question: Are black students suspended more often because they misbehave more? Arne Duncan, of all people, should be aware of inner-city students’ self-discipline problems, having headed the Chicago school system before becoming secretary of education. Chicago’s minority youth murder one another with abandon. Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city, mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic. Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well. Like school districts across the county, the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school system has been on a mission to lower the black suspension rate, following complaints by local activists and black parents. The district has sent its staff to $350,000 worth of “cultural-proficiency” training, where they learned to “examine the presence and role of Whiteness.” The system spent another $2 million or so to implement an anti-suspension behavioral-modification program embraced by the Obama administration. Aaron Benner, a fifth-grade teacher in St. Paul, scoffs at the notion that minority students are being unfairly targeted for discipline. “Anyone in his right mind knows that these [disciplined] students are extremely disruptive,” he says. He overheard a fifth-grade boy use extremely foul language to threaten a girl. (“I wanted to throw him against the locker,” Mr. Benner recalls.) The boy’s teacher told him that she felt powerless to punish the misbehavior. “This will be one of my black men who ends up in prison after raping a woman,” he observes. Racist? Many would so characterize the comment. But Mr. Benner is black himself—and fed up with the excuses for black misbehavior. “They’re trying to pull one over on us. Black folks are drinking the Kool-Aid; this ‘let-them-clown’ philosophy could have been devised by the KKK.” The research base for the Obama administration’s claim that minority students receive harsher punishment than whites for “the same or similar infractions” is laughably weak. None of the studies alleging disproportionate discipline actually observed students’ behavior or examined students’ full disciplinary histories, including classroom interactions and warnings, teacher and counselor observations, and efforts at informal resolution that preceded more formal measures. A principal might have had two dozen conversations with a student before deciding to suspend him; none of those conversations would have been included in the researchers’ models. Disproportionate rates of minority discipline were already ending school officials’ careers before the feds stepped in. Now that Washington has entered the fray, the pressure to bring those rates into alignment has grown even more intense. In Christina, Delaware, one of the districts under Education Department investigation, a six-year-old white boy faced expulsion in 2009 for bringing to school a Cub Scout tool (“a combination of folding fork, knife, and spoon,” reported a local TV station) with which to eat his pudding. After public outcry, the district removed kindergarten and first-grade students from its zero-tolerance policy for weapons. Also in 2009, however, the Christina school district expelled an 11-year-old black girl after a box-cutter fell out of her jacket pocket. The girl said that she had no idea how the box cutter had got there, according to Wilmington’s News Journal. The U.S. Department of Education presumably chose Christina to investigate because it agrees with the girl’s mother, who brought a complaint to the Delaware Human Relations Commission, that only racism can explain why a school would distinguish a six-year-old’s possession of an improvised pudding spoon from an 11-year-old’s possession of a box cutter. Might the school officials know something that federal bureaucrats do not regarding the girl’s previous run-ins with authority and the likelihood that she had no knowledge of the box cutter? Not in the eyes of a Washington paper-pusher, who takes his own omniscience as a given. “Teachers are petrified to discipline students,” says a high school science teacher in Queens, New York, who blogs under the name “Chaz.” Students will tell a teacher to shut up or curse him when asked to open their notebooks, but the teacher’s supervisors will look the other way. The amount of insubordination now tolerated in New York schools is destroying them, says a former head of discipline for the city’s school system. Yet in June of this year, the schools chancellor proposed to officially ban suspensions for all but the most extreme infractions. Teachers would no longer be allowed to remove from class students who disrupted their fellow students’ ability to learn, engaged in obscene behavior, or were insubordinate. Advocates and the city council speaker, who is the leading mayoral candidate, complained that the changes did not go far enough. The clear losers in all of this are children. Protecting well-behaved students’ ability to learn is a school’s highest obligation, and it is violated when teachers lose the option of removing chronically disruptive students from class. Nor does keeping those unruly students in class do them any favors. School is the last chance to socialize a student who repeatedly curses his teacher, say, since his parent is obviously failing at the job. Eliminate serious consequences for bad behavior, and you are sending a child into the world who has learned precisely the opposite of what he needs to know about life. Though Barack Obama broached the taboo topic of personal responsibility on the 2008 campaign trail, now that he’s in the White House, he and his underlings have maintained a resolute silence on the behavioral components of inequality. Mr. Duncan’s public pronouncements have avoided any mention of what students and parents can do for themselves, such as paying attention in class, respecting your teacher, and studying, or monitoring your child’s attendance, homework, and comportment. Such an exclusive emphasis on victimhood plays well with Mr. Obama’s base, but it seriously distorts reality.
And so the Departments of Education and Justice have launched a campaign against disproportionate minority discipline rates, which show up in virtually every school district with significant numbers of black and Hispanic students. The possibility that students’ behavior drives those rates lies outside the Obama administration’s conceptual universe. The theory behind this school discipline push is what Obama officials and civil rights advocates call the “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to this conceit, harsh discipline practices—above all, suspensions— strip minority students of classroom time, causing them to learn less, drop out of school, and eventually land in prison. The feds have reached their conclusions, however, without answering the obvious question: Are black students suspended more often because they misbehave more? Arne Duncan, of all people, should be aware of inner-city students’ self-discipline problems, having headed the Chicago school system before becoming secretary of education. Chicago’s minority youth murder one another with abandon. Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city, mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic. Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well. Like school districts across the county, the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school system has been on a mission to lower the black suspension rate, following complaints by local activists and black parents. The district has sent its staff to $350,000 worth of “cultural-proficiency” training, where they learned to “examine the presence and role of Whiteness.” The system spent another $2 million or so to implement an anti-suspension behavioral-modification program embraced by the Obama administration. Aaron Benner, a fifth-grade teacher in St. Paul, scoffs at the notion that minority students are being unfairly targeted for discipline. “Anyone in his right mind knows that these [disciplined] students are extremely disruptive,” he says. He overheard a fifth-grade boy use extremely foul language to threaten a girl. (“I wanted to throw him against the locker,” Mr. Benner recalls.) The boy’s teacher told him that she felt powerless to punish the misbehavior. “This will be one of my black men who ends up in prison after raping a woman,” he observes. Racist? Many would so characterize the comment. But Mr. Benner is black himself—and fed up with the excuses for black misbehavior. “They’re trying to pull one over on us. Black folks are drinking the Kool-Aid; this ‘let-them-clown’ philosophy could have been devised by the KKK.” The research base for the Obama administration’s claim that minority students receive harsher punishment than whites for “the same or similar infractions” is laughably weak. None of the studies alleging disproportionate discipline actually observed students’ behavior or examined students’ full disciplinary histories, including classroom interactions and warnings, teacher and counselor observations, and efforts at informal resolution that preceded more formal measures. A principal might have had two dozen conversations with a student before deciding to suspend him; none of those conversations would have been included in the researchers’ models. Disproportionate rates of minority discipline were already ending school officials’ careers before the feds stepped in. Now that Washington has entered the fray, the pressure to bring those rates into alignment has grown even more intense. In Christina, Delaware, one of the districts under Education Department investigation, a six-year-old white boy faced expulsion in 2009 for bringing to school a Cub Scout tool (“a combination of folding fork, knife, and spoon,” reported a local TV station) with which to eat his pudding. After public outcry, the district removed kindergarten and first-grade students from its zero-tolerance policy for weapons. Also in 2009, however, the Christina school district expelled an 11-year-old black girl after a box-cutter fell out of her jacket pocket. The girl said that she had no idea how the box cutter had got there, according to Wilmington’s News Journal. The U.S. Department of Education presumably chose Christina to investigate because it agrees with the girl’s mother, who brought a complaint to the Delaware Human Relations Commission, that only racism can explain why a school would distinguish a six-year-old’s possession of an improvised pudding spoon from an 11-year-old’s possession of a box cutter. Might the school officials know something that federal bureaucrats do not regarding the girl’s previous run-ins with authority and the likelihood that she had no knowledge of the box cutter? Not in the eyes of a Washington paper-pusher, who takes his own omniscience as a given. “Teachers are petrified to discipline students,” says a high school science teacher in Queens, New York, who blogs under the name “Chaz.” Students will tell a teacher to shut up or curse him when asked to open their notebooks, but the teacher’s supervisors will look the other way. The amount of insubordination now tolerated in New York schools is destroying them, says a former head of discipline for the city’s school system. Yet in June of this year, the schools chancellor proposed to officially ban suspensions for all but the most extreme infractions. Teachers would no longer be allowed to remove from class students who disrupted their fellow students’ ability to learn, engaged in obscene behavior, or were insubordinate. Advocates and the city council speaker, who is the leading mayoral candidate, complained that the changes did not go far enough. The clear losers in all of this are children. Protecting well-behaved students’ ability to learn is a school’s highest obligation, and it is violated when teachers lose the option of removing chronically disruptive students from class. Nor does keeping those unruly students in class do them any favors. School is the last chance to socialize a student who repeatedly curses his teacher, say, since his parent is obviously failing at the job. Eliminate serious consequences for bad behavior, and you are sending a child into the world who has learned precisely the opposite of what he needs to know about life. Though Barack Obama broached the taboo topic of personal responsibility on the 2008 campaign trail, now that he’s in the White House, he and his underlings have maintained a resolute silence on the behavioral components of inequality. Mr. Duncan’s public pronouncements have avoided any mention of what students and parents can do for themselves, such as paying attention in class, respecting your teacher, and studying, or monitoring your child’s attendance, homework, and comportment. Such an exclusive emphasis on victimhood plays well with Mr. Obama’s base, but it seriously distorts reality.
THE MEDIA BUILT THAT FOR OBAMA
Posted by WP
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The Media Built That for Obama
On Aug. 5, Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post announced he was playing
with a "somewhat controversial idea" that Mitt Romney should be the favorite to
win the presidential election. Debatable, maybe. But controversial? Well, yes.
It violates the pro-Obama mandate of our national press corps.
The usual political measures look terrible for Obama, he noted. "The unemployment rate has been over 8 percent for 42 straight months, a streak unparalleled in American history." Obama must win despite the crippled economy -- the most important issue for the voters.
The numbers are political red alerts. The Post's polling in July showed 44 percent approved of how Obama was dealing with the economy, while 54 percent disapproved, and 41 strongly disapproved of the job he is doing on the economy, while only 21 percent strongly approved. Six in 10 said the economy was getting worse, not better, in a Gallup poll.
And now the unthinkable: His campaign is being outmuscled financially. Obama's team has spent more than $400 million already on his re-election effort, The New York Times estimates, and Team Obama is deeply worried he will be outspent by Mitt Romney and GOP-favoring super PACs in the fall.
So where can Obama find optimism? Cillizza cited the "narrative." "From the debate over when Romney totally cut ties to Bain Capital, to the (ongoing) debate over whether he should release more of his tax returns, to the negative press surrounding Romney's trip to Britain, Israel and Poland last week, the narrative of the campaign over the past month has worked heavily in Obama's favor."
Curiously, Cillizza omits the fact that the dominant narrative writers of the campaign are the national media, our "news" purveyors, and they are working overtime on Obama's behalf. Reporters pin down the candidate, slap his face and steal his lunch money, and then they go on camera and say it's sad the candidate had another bad day with his narrative. When crowds in Berlin hailed Barack Obama in 2008, the media were thrilled. When Romney traveled to Europe and Israel in 2012, 86 percent of the network news stories were negative, dwelling on supposed gaffes, "diplomatic dust-ups" and foreign "missteps."
In nearly every interview, reporters are pressing Romney about his tax returns, rolling out the red carpet for anyone who will demand he release them immediately. Can you imagine reporters in 2008 asking Obama repeatedly for his college grades or about his cocaine use or Rev. Jeremiah Wright in interview after interview?
Obama granted five interviews to "60 Minutes" before that election and was never asked about his record in Illinois or any of his scandalous associations, from Rev. Wright to Bill Ayers to Tony Rezko (now in prison), who helped him buy his house. Instead, Steve Kroft asked in his first interview, "Do you think the country is ready for a black president?" Kroft was still curious in his fifth interview, as they sat down in apparently racism-wracked Nevada: "I know, for a fact, that there are a lot of people out there, there are a lot of people right here in Elko, who won't vote for you because you're black. I mean, there's not much you can do. But how do you deal with it?"
Ultimately, Barack Obama will never be outspent -- if you were to calculate the price of the promotional airtime provided by the pro-Obama media, and in this cycle, their relentless Romney-bashing. While the networks manufacture gaffes overseas with Romney, real Obama gaffes -- "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" -- are called Republican smears, quotes out of "context."
In an online analysis, ABC claimed Republicans were basically lying: "Republicans have seized on the line 'you didn't build that' to falsely claim that Obama was speaking directly to business owners about their businesses." On CBS, morning anchor Charlie Rose complained about Obama being taken out of context, and the network's political analyst John Dickerson agreed that Obama needed to be defended: "Exactly, and what the president was saying, is it takes a village, essentially."
When Obama said, "Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own," he knew whereof he spoke. Everything he's gained in politics has been granted to him by an adoring news media. Look no further than Steve Kroft beginning his first Obama interview in 2007 by seriously comparing Obama with Abraham Lincoln.
It's no surprise that many voters have a serious feeling of buyer's remorse. But our shameless media have no remorse at all for foisting this man on the country and no capacity for embarrassment that they put him on Mount Rushmore without an accomplishment to his name. It's too bad America can't vote to send the media packing. But they can and should turn off the nightly narratives lamely called a "newscast."
by wp: The best way to get the media back to honesty is to stop watching any of the news programs that blatently are being dishonest about Obama and the tyrant government. STOP PATRONIZING THE SPONSORS AND STOP BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS. THE BUCK TALKS.
The usual political measures look terrible for Obama, he noted. "The unemployment rate has been over 8 percent for 42 straight months, a streak unparalleled in American history." Obama must win despite the crippled economy -- the most important issue for the voters.
The numbers are political red alerts. The Post's polling in July showed 44 percent approved of how Obama was dealing with the economy, while 54 percent disapproved, and 41 strongly disapproved of the job he is doing on the economy, while only 21 percent strongly approved. Six in 10 said the economy was getting worse, not better, in a Gallup poll.
And now the unthinkable: His campaign is being outmuscled financially. Obama's team has spent more than $400 million already on his re-election effort, The New York Times estimates, and Team Obama is deeply worried he will be outspent by Mitt Romney and GOP-favoring super PACs in the fall.
So where can Obama find optimism? Cillizza cited the "narrative." "From the debate over when Romney totally cut ties to Bain Capital, to the (ongoing) debate over whether he should release more of his tax returns, to the negative press surrounding Romney's trip to Britain, Israel and Poland last week, the narrative of the campaign over the past month has worked heavily in Obama's favor."
Curiously, Cillizza omits the fact that the dominant narrative writers of the campaign are the national media, our "news" purveyors, and they are working overtime on Obama's behalf. Reporters pin down the candidate, slap his face and steal his lunch money, and then they go on camera and say it's sad the candidate had another bad day with his narrative. When crowds in Berlin hailed Barack Obama in 2008, the media were thrilled. When Romney traveled to Europe and Israel in 2012, 86 percent of the network news stories were negative, dwelling on supposed gaffes, "diplomatic dust-ups" and foreign "missteps."
In nearly every interview, reporters are pressing Romney about his tax returns, rolling out the red carpet for anyone who will demand he release them immediately. Can you imagine reporters in 2008 asking Obama repeatedly for his college grades or about his cocaine use or Rev. Jeremiah Wright in interview after interview?
Obama granted five interviews to "60 Minutes" before that election and was never asked about his record in Illinois or any of his scandalous associations, from Rev. Wright to Bill Ayers to Tony Rezko (now in prison), who helped him buy his house. Instead, Steve Kroft asked in his first interview, "Do you think the country is ready for a black president?" Kroft was still curious in his fifth interview, as they sat down in apparently racism-wracked Nevada: "I know, for a fact, that there are a lot of people out there, there are a lot of people right here in Elko, who won't vote for you because you're black. I mean, there's not much you can do. But how do you deal with it?"
Ultimately, Barack Obama will never be outspent -- if you were to calculate the price of the promotional airtime provided by the pro-Obama media, and in this cycle, their relentless Romney-bashing. While the networks manufacture gaffes overseas with Romney, real Obama gaffes -- "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" -- are called Republican smears, quotes out of "context."
In an online analysis, ABC claimed Republicans were basically lying: "Republicans have seized on the line 'you didn't build that' to falsely claim that Obama was speaking directly to business owners about their businesses." On CBS, morning anchor Charlie Rose complained about Obama being taken out of context, and the network's political analyst John Dickerson agreed that Obama needed to be defended: "Exactly, and what the president was saying, is it takes a village, essentially."
When Obama said, "Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own," he knew whereof he spoke. Everything he's gained in politics has been granted to him by an adoring news media. Look no further than Steve Kroft beginning his first Obama interview in 2007 by seriously comparing Obama with Abraham Lincoln.
It's no surprise that many voters have a serious feeling of buyer's remorse. But our shameless media have no remorse at all for foisting this man on the country and no capacity for embarrassment that they put him on Mount Rushmore without an accomplishment to his name. It's too bad America can't vote to send the media packing. But they can and should turn off the nightly narratives lamely called a "newscast."
by wp: The best way to get the media back to honesty is to stop watching any of the news programs that blatently are being dishonest about Obama and the tyrant government. STOP PATRONIZING THE SPONSORS AND STOP BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS. THE BUCK TALKS.
LIBERALS, PROGRESSIVES AND SOCIALIST /COMMUNISTS
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Liberals, Progressives and Socialists
In Europe, especially in Germany, hoisting a swastika-emblazoned
Nazi flag is a crime. For decades after World War II, people have hunted down
and sought punishment for Nazi murderers, who were responsible for the deaths of
more than 20 million people.
Here's my question: Why are the horrors of Nazism so well-known and widely
condemned but not those of socialism and communism? What goes untaught -- and
possibly is covered up -- is that socialist and communist ideas have produced
the greatest evil in mankind's history. You say, "Williams, what in the world
are you talking about? Socialists, communists and their fellow travelers, such
as the Wall Street occupiers supported by our president, care about the little
guy in his struggle for a fair shake! They're trying to promote social justice."
Let's look at some of the history of socialism and communism.
What's not appreciated is that Nazism is a form of socialism. In fact, the term Nazi stands for the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The unspeakable acts of Adolf Hitler's Nazis pale in comparison to the horrors committed by the communists in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China. Between 1917 and 1987, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and their successors murdered and were otherwise responsible for the deaths of 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, China's communists, led by Mao Zedong and his successors, murdered and were otherwise responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese. The most authoritative tally of history's most murderous regimes is documented on University of Hawaii Professor Rudolph J. Rummel's website here, and in his book "Death by Government."
How much hunting down and punishment have there been for these communist murderers? To the contrary, it's acceptable both in Europe and in the U.S. to hoist and march under the former USSR's red flag emblazoned with a hammer and sickle. Mao Zedong has long been admired by academics and leftists across our country, as they often marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving his little red book, "Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung." President Barack Obama's communications director, Anita Dunn, in her June 2009 commencement address to St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral, said Mao was one of her heroes.
If you don't believe it, just ask yourself: Which way are we headed tiny steps at a time -- toward greater liberty or toward more government control over our lives?
What's not appreciated is that Nazism is a form of socialism. In fact, the term Nazi stands for the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The unspeakable acts of Adolf Hitler's Nazis pale in comparison to the horrors committed by the communists in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China. Between 1917 and 1987, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and their successors murdered and were otherwise responsible for the deaths of 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, China's communists, led by Mao Zedong and his successors, murdered and were otherwise responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese. The most authoritative tally of history's most murderous regimes is documented on University of Hawaii Professor Rudolph J. Rummel's website here, and in his book "Death by Government."
How much hunting down and punishment have there been for these communist murderers? To the contrary, it's acceptable both in Europe and in the U.S. to hoist and march under the former USSR's red flag emblazoned with a hammer and sickle. Mao Zedong has long been admired by academics and leftists across our country, as they often marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving his little red book, "Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung." President Barack Obama's communications director, Anita Dunn, in her June 2009 commencement address to St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral, said Mao was one of her heroes.
Whether it's the academic community, the media elite, stalwarts of the
Democratic Party or organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La
Raza, Green for All, the Sierra Club and the Children's Defense Fund, there is a
great tolerance for the ideas of socialism -- a system that has caused more
deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.
Today's leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion
that their agenda differs little from those of Nazi, Soviet and Maoist mass
murderers. One does not have to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest
to be a tyrant. The only requirement is that one has to believe in the primacy
of the state over individual rights.
The unspeakable horrors of Nazism didn't happen overnight. They were simply
the end result of a long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in
central government in the quest for "social justice." It was decent but
misguided earlier generations of Germans -- who would have cringed at the
thought of genocide -- who created the Trojan horse for Hitler's ascendancy.
Today's Americans are similarly accepting the massive consolidation of power in
Washington in the name of social justice.If you don't believe it, just ask yourself: Which way are we headed tiny steps at a time -- toward greater liberty or toward more government control over our lives?
Perhaps we think that we are better human beings than the German people who
created the conditions that brought Hitler to power. I say, don't count on
it.
MEET THE REAL WORKERS OBAMA SCREWED OVER
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Meet the Real Workers Obama Screwed Over
Chutzpah overload in full effect: President Obama's sleazy super-PAC, run by
his former White House spokesman Bill Burton, just released an ad accusing GOP
presidential candidate Mitt Romney of causing the cancer death of a
steelworker's wife.
It's not just a slanderous and false attack. It's a foolish attempt to camouflage the administration's massive jobs death toll, politicized pension plundering and Big Labor bailout cronyism. And it will backfire big time because the thousands and thousands of true victims of Obama's economic wreckage are speaking up and fighting back.
Let's dispense with the "Romney = murderer" meme first. The warped Priorities USA ad features the claims of one Joe Soptic, a former employee at the Kansas City-based GST Steel plant. The plant went bankrupt years after Bain Capital acquired it. Soptic blames Romney for the loss of his job and health insurance -- and for the subsequent death of his wife a "short time after" the plant's closure.
But Romney stopped working for Bain in 1999. The plant closed in 2001. And Soptic's wife died in 2006. Oh, and Soptic admitted to CNN on Tuesday afternoon that the family in fact had health insurance at the time of Soptic's wife's death. But it's still all-powerful, time-traveling, omnipresent Darth Romney's fault.
Obama flack turned super-PAC slime-master Burton shrugged off the facts and doubled down on the campaign's class-warfare bloviation. "Families and individuals had to find new jobs, new sources of health insurance and a way to make up for the pensions they lost," he told Politico. "Mitt Romney has had an enduring impact on the lives of thousands of men and women, and for many of them, that impact has been devastating."
Yet, the Soptic story is the best they could scrape together? Stamp this one "EPIC FAIL."
While Team Obama promotes fables to indict Romney, the incontrovertible stories of the current administration's economic malpractice are finally getting out. In 2010, I first reported on how Obama's UAW bailout threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus. It's the ongoing horror story of some 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago.
As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer "rescue" funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team and the Treasury Department schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members' costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts.
"I'm one of the Delphi Salaried Retirees that lost the health care, life insurance and 67 percent of the pension I was promised in retirement after working hard for 40 years," Charles Stone of Michigan e-mailed. "Words cannot describe the frustration and let down these events have thrust on my family's lives, and to have GM's rescue all sugar-coated in the current political environment is like putting lipstick on a pig. ... We will continue to fight to right this grievous wrong."
Tom Rose of Ohio added: "I am one of the 20,000 salaried retirees that lost all of my health care and -- in my case -- a 40 percent pension cut. So I am now paying increased health care costs with fewer pension dollars and contributing what is left to our lawsuit to correct this injustice. Meanwhile, the politically connected union has their full pension and 90-plus percent of their health care. You have hit upon the key question: How can our own federal government pick winners and losers amongst its own citizens?"
Through two costly years of litigation and investigation, the Delphi workers have exposed how the stacked White House Auto Task Force schemed with union bosses to "cherry pick" (one Obama official's own words) which financial obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their political expedience. Obama's own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his recent memoir that "attacking the union's sacred cow" could "jeopardize" the auto bailout deal.
In June, 20 months after a federal judge first ordered the government to cooperate, the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association broke through the administration's information stonewall and dislodged 62,000 pages of documents in their lawsuit to right the administration's wrongs. As The Daily Caller reported on Tuesday, the documents included "internal government emails (that contradicted) sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts ... and that administration figures violated federal law."
Meanwhile, the Delphi workers who got shafted are getting in the faces of the administration and the public with a new web ad produced by conservative advocacy group Let Freedom Ring. They are asking, "Why, Mr. President? Why?" They -- and America -- deserve answers and justice, not more Bizarro World smears and fantastical bedtime stories.
by wp: EVERY DAY WE FIND MORE EVIDENCE OF THE LIES, THEFT, EMBEZZLEMENT AND FRAUD COMMITTED BY THIS GOVERNMENT AND THE TREASON THEY COMMIT. HOW MUCH MORE WILL WE TAKE BEFORE WE DEAL WITH THIS PROBLEM???
It's not just a slanderous and false attack. It's a foolish attempt to camouflage the administration's massive jobs death toll, politicized pension plundering and Big Labor bailout cronyism. And it will backfire big time because the thousands and thousands of true victims of Obama's economic wreckage are speaking up and fighting back.
Let's dispense with the "Romney = murderer" meme first. The warped Priorities USA ad features the claims of one Joe Soptic, a former employee at the Kansas City-based GST Steel plant. The plant went bankrupt years after Bain Capital acquired it. Soptic blames Romney for the loss of his job and health insurance -- and for the subsequent death of his wife a "short time after" the plant's closure.
But Romney stopped working for Bain in 1999. The plant closed in 2001. And Soptic's wife died in 2006. Oh, and Soptic admitted to CNN on Tuesday afternoon that the family in fact had health insurance at the time of Soptic's wife's death. But it's still all-powerful, time-traveling, omnipresent Darth Romney's fault.
Obama flack turned super-PAC slime-master Burton shrugged off the facts and doubled down on the campaign's class-warfare bloviation. "Families and individuals had to find new jobs, new sources of health insurance and a way to make up for the pensions they lost," he told Politico. "Mitt Romney has had an enduring impact on the lives of thousands of men and women, and for many of them, that impact has been devastating."
Yet, the Soptic story is the best they could scrape together? Stamp this one "EPIC FAIL."
While Team Obama promotes fables to indict Romney, the incontrovertible stories of the current administration's economic malpractice are finally getting out. In 2010, I first reported on how Obama's UAW bailout threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus. It's the ongoing horror story of some 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago.
As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer "rescue" funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team and the Treasury Department schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members' costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts.
In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life
insurance benefits. The abused workers -- most from hard-hit northeast Ohio,
Michigan and neighboring states -- had devoted decades of their lives as
secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some
workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish.
"I worked for 34 years at GM/Delphi Corp. When Delphi went bankrupt, we lost
everything," Dana Strickland of Michigan wrote me. "Because I was salaried
(middle management), we lost our pension and health insurance. I did not belong
to the union, so GM/Delphi could have cared less. I have never felt so betrayed.
We never hear this brought to the public's attention. People need to know how we
were screwed, while the Obama administration kissed up to the union." "I'm one of the Delphi Salaried Retirees that lost the health care, life insurance and 67 percent of the pension I was promised in retirement after working hard for 40 years," Charles Stone of Michigan e-mailed. "Words cannot describe the frustration and let down these events have thrust on my family's lives, and to have GM's rescue all sugar-coated in the current political environment is like putting lipstick on a pig. ... We will continue to fight to right this grievous wrong."
Tom Rose of Ohio added: "I am one of the 20,000 salaried retirees that lost all of my health care and -- in my case -- a 40 percent pension cut. So I am now paying increased health care costs with fewer pension dollars and contributing what is left to our lawsuit to correct this injustice. Meanwhile, the politically connected union has their full pension and 90-plus percent of their health care. You have hit upon the key question: How can our own federal government pick winners and losers amongst its own citizens?"
Through two costly years of litigation and investigation, the Delphi workers have exposed how the stacked White House Auto Task Force schemed with union bosses to "cherry pick" (one Obama official's own words) which financial obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their political expedience. Obama's own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his recent memoir that "attacking the union's sacred cow" could "jeopardize" the auto bailout deal.
In June, 20 months after a federal judge first ordered the government to cooperate, the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association broke through the administration's information stonewall and dislodged 62,000 pages of documents in their lawsuit to right the administration's wrongs. As The Daily Caller reported on Tuesday, the documents included "internal government emails (that contradicted) sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts ... and that administration figures violated federal law."
Meanwhile, the Delphi workers who got shafted are getting in the faces of the administration and the public with a new web ad produced by conservative advocacy group Let Freedom Ring. They are asking, "Why, Mr. President? Why?" They -- and America -- deserve answers and justice, not more Bizarro World smears and fantastical bedtime stories.
by wp: EVERY DAY WE FIND MORE EVIDENCE OF THE LIES, THEFT, EMBEZZLEMENT AND FRAUD COMMITTED BY THIS GOVERNMENT AND THE TREASON THEY COMMIT. HOW MUCH MORE WILL WE TAKE BEFORE WE DEAL WITH THIS PROBLEM???
LOLO JONES IN TEARS OVER AMERICAN MEDIAS ATTACKS
Posted by WP
FREE ZONE MEDIA CENTER WFZR/TV
FOX Sports Exclusive
Lolo Jones: Critics 'ripped me to shreds'
Lolo Jones reacts after finishing fourth in the women's
100-meter hurdles.
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The subject of her ire: A piece in The New York Times last weekend that questioned whether Jones was more marketing sensation than gifted athlete. The article pointedly compared her to Anna Kournikova, the former tennis professional who capitalized on her stunning looks while competing for more than a decade, peaking at No. 8 in the world in 2000 but never winning a WTA title.
“I think it was crazy just because it was two days before I competed, and then the fact that it was from a U.S. media,’’ Jones told Savannah Guthrie during a Wednesday appearance on The Today Show, fighting tears before letting her emotions flow.
“They should be supporting our U.S. Olympic athletes and instead they just ripped me to shreds. I just thought that that was crazy because I worked six days a week, every day, for four years for a 12-second race and the fact that they just tore me apart, which is heartbreaking.
“They didn’t even do their research, calling me the Anna Kournikova of track. I have the American record. I am the American record holder indoors, I have two world indoor titles. Just because I don’t boast about these things, I don’t think I should be ripped apart by media. I laid it out there, fought hard for my country and it’s just a shame that I have to deal with so much backlash when I’m already so brokenhearted as it is.”
Tuesday night, Jones tweeted that she had a “broken heart’' after failing to win a medal in her second Olympics, missing the medals stand by one-tenth of a second. The performance in London was intended to erase the disappointment of her 2008 Olympics’ stumble in Beijing, when she was leading in the final – only to clip the ninth hurdle. Jones finished eighth.
Tuesday’s 100-meter hurdles final was the fastest in Olympic history. Australia’s Sally Pearson won the gold with an Olympic-record 12.35 seconds, barely edging American Dawn Harper by two-hundredths of a second at the finish. But Jones took little solace in that.
“Definitely, I was crushed afterwards,’’ Jones said Wednesday. “I know I had the best race of my season. Not the best race of my life, but I had the best race of my year, so I just try to look at that. It doesn’t take away from the pain that I was close to once again having a medal and not getting it.”
Jones has been a lightning rod for attention and criticism because of her sex
appeal and openness regarding with her person life.
She has candidly discussed her virginity and difficulty finding a boyfriend
who appreciates her chastity at age 30. Noting that, The Times article
questioned her sincerity by discussing Jones’ provocative pose for the ESPN The
Magazine's Body Issue as well as her cover for Outside magazine, where the
self-proclaimed Christian was photographed "seeming to wear a bathing suit made
of nothing but strategically placed ribbon."Jones also has battled serious injuries and setbacks the past year, so merely reaching the final has helped her appreciate that accomplishment as she moves forward.
“I think it’s disappointing in one extreme as in I didn’t get the medal, but in another extreme, a year ago I was having spinal cord surgery,’’ Jones said. “I mean if I look at that, spinal cord surgery, two hamstring injuries and you fought through all of that, so I take time to focus on that and not the negativity I’ve received.”
Ultimately, Jones says she hopes her struggles and accomplishments will inspire others.
“Putting your heart out there, obviously it opens you up to a lot of negativity, but at the same time if I could just reach somebody out there,’’ she said. “Maybe there’s a little girl who thinks she can be an Olympic athlete and she sees all the things I struggled through to get here. Yeah, I didn’t walk away with a medal or run away with a medal, but I think there’s lessons to be learned when you win and lessons to be learned when you lose.’’
by wp: It comes as no shock that America's Media is so critical of American atheletes. The media has proven time after time that they are not Americans. The main stream medias have sold their souls and honor to the progressives who want a one world government and for them there is no turning back. They have chosen "hell" and that is what they will get. While they are waiting for the judgement that is coming they are working to destroy everything they hate that shows them for what they are. We can not expect goodness and compassion from those who no longer have it or believe in it so their criticisms are not a shock. WE MUST JUST IGNORE THEIR LIES AND DISTRACTIONS AS THE DRIVEL IT IS.
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