Monday, April 30, 2012

The Last Thing Unions Are Concerned About Is Free Choice For Workers

From IBD

By THOMAS SOWELL Posted 06:28 PM ET













Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do.

Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric.
However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off."
That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous.

First there was the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" that the administration tried to push through Congress. What it would have destroyed was precisely what it claimed to be promoting — a free choice by workers as to whether or not they wanted to join a labor union.

Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, workers have been able to express their free choice of joining or not joining a union in a federally conducted election with a secret ballot.

As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.

Now that the administration has appointed a majority of the National Labor Relations Board members, the NLRB has imposed new requirements that employers give union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules.

In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union.

Among the consequences of not signing up is union reprisal on the job if the union wins the election. But physical threats and actions are by no means off the table, as many people who get in the way of unions have learned.

Workers who don't want to join a union will now have to decide how much harassment of themselves and their family they are going to put up with, if they don't knuckle under.

In the past, unions had to make the case to workers that it was in their best interests to join. Meanwhile, employers would make their case to the same workers that it was in their best interest to vote against joining.
When the unions began losing those elections, they decided to change the rules. And after Barack Obama was elected president, with large financial support from unions, the rules were in fact changed by Obama's NLRB.

As if to make the outcome of workers' "choices" more of a foregone conclusion, the time period between the announcement of an election and the election itself has been shortened by the NLRB. In other words, the union can spend months, or whatever amount of time it takes, for it to prepare and implement an organizing campaign — and then suddenly announce a deadline date for the decision on having or not having a union.
The union organizers can launch their full-court press before the employers have time to organize a comparable counterargument or the workers have time to weigh their decision, while being pressured.
The last thing this process is concerned about is a free choice for workers. The first thing it is concerned about is getting a captive group ofmembers, whose compulsory dues provide a large sum of money to be spent at the discretion of union bosses, to provide those bosses with both personal perks and political power to wield, on the basis of their ability to pick and choose where to make campaign contributions from the union members' dues.

Union elections don't recur like other elections. They are like some Third World elections: "One man, one vote — one time." And getting a recognized union unrecognized is an uphill struggle.
But so long as many people refuse to see the union for what it is, or the Obama administration for what it is, this cynical and corrupt process can continue.

Solyndra Leaves Behind Trail of Toxic Waste At Facility in California (Video)

From HotAirPundit

A trail of toxic waste from the company touted as a symbol of green technology. This is a must-see video report from CBS San Francisco. The reporters go to a building in Milpitas, CA that was leased by Solyndra where they performed final assembly of solar panels. At the site, they find discarded buckets that are half-filled with hazardous waste  and the place trashed


CBS San Francisco
MILPITAS — Three months ago, CBS 5 caught Solyndra tossing millions of dollars worth of brand new glass tubes used to make solar panels. Now the bankrupt solar firm, once touted as a symbol of green technology, may be trying to abandon toxic waste. 
It’s a tedious process. Slowly but surely, the shattered remains of brand new solar panel tubes head to a recycling plant in Hayward. Meanwhile the next phase of the company’s liquidation is under way. It involves getting rid of all the heavy metals left inside the building that were used to make the panels

The Fremont Fire Department’s Jay Swardenski oversees the cleanup. He said some materials, such as cadmium, are toxic, and hard to dispose of. “They don’t degrade at all, so we want to make sure we don’t allow these materials to get into the environment,” he said. It’s not just the leftover hazardous materials, but also the machinery used to apply them to the glass tubes
“Certainly those tools will need to be decontaminated, cleaned up, handled correctly as they are taken apart,” he said. Swardenski told CBS 5 the disposal process is going smoothly in Fremont, but what about nearby Milpitas?  
Solyndra leased a building on California Circle for the final assembly of its solar panels. But the cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay. CBS 5 found the building locked up, with no one around. At the back, a hazardous storage area was found. There were discarded buckets half filled with liquids and barrels labeled “hazardous waste.”


Obama’s New Slogan, “Forward”, Reveals His Inner Socialist

From Gateway Pundit

Posted by Andrea Ryan on Monday, April 30, 2012, 6:13 PM

 


By: Andrea Ryan
Obama released a video today unveiling his new campaign slogan, “Forward”…a very revealing choice, considering “Forward” was the slogan for several Communist movements and still is today.  National Review, the Daily Mail, and Breitbart all saw the true meaning in Obama’s new mantra.
Breitbart explains,
The Obama campaign’s new re-election slogan for 2012 is “Forward.” It’s related to MSNBC’s “Lean Forward,” and, of course, to Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward,” which had the opposite result.
The seven-minute video accompanying the release of the new slogan revisits the familiar argument that Barack Obama inherited a mess–and that he is responsible for signs of progress in the economy. We can go forward–or give up all of that progress (such as it is) by putting a Republican back in the White House. …
The communist themes of the “forward” slogan are not the first time a member of the Obama team has expressed admiration for Chairman Mao.  Former White House communications director Anita Dunn–who has continued to advise the White House after she left in 2009–famously listed Mao as one of her “favorite philosophers.”
The Daily Mail, also, points out,
Barack Obama did himself no favours today unveiling a new campaign slogan that critics say has unfortunate similarities to ones used by Chairman Mao and other Communists. …
‘Spring Forward’ was also a slogan used by Vladimir Lenin in Communist Russia.
From National Review,
Forward,” that is. I knew that sounded awfully familiar. From Wikipedia:
Vorwärts (“Forward”) was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 by decision of the party’s Halle Congress, as the successor of Berliner Volksblatt, founded in 1884.
Friedrich Engels and Kurt Tucholsky both wrote for Vorwärts. It backed the Russian Marxist economists and then, after the split in the Party, the Mensheviks. It published articles by Leon Trotsky, but would not publish any by Vladimir Lenin. . .
Vorwaerts lives on today as the house organ of Germany’s leftist SPD; you can read all about its illustrious history here (in German).
And if you think David Axelrod doesn’t know this, you really ought to think again.
Obama is hoping Americans are dumb enough to be distracted from his failed Socialist policies of the past with his new Communist mantra for the future.
Update:  It’s everywhere, now…the Socialist is revealed.  Mark Levin is on the air with it, and The Washington Times (via Drudge) has an excellent article.  Are they that bold?  Or, are they that incompetent?  Or both.

'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

From MSNBC


Jacques Demarthon/ AFP/Getty Images
British environmental guru James Lovelock, seen on March 17, 2009 in Paris, admits he was "alarmist" about climate change in the past.
James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far."
The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works, “Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,” and “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.”
The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Climate's 'usual tricks'
It will also reflect his new opinion that global warming has not occurred as he had expected.
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.

In 2007, Time magazine named Lovelock as one of 13 leaders and visionaries in an article on “Heroes of the Environment,” which also included Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev and Robert Redford.
“Jim Lovelock has no university, no research institute, no students. His almost unparalleled influence in environmental science is based instead on a particular way of seeing things,” Oliver Morton, of the journal Nature wrote in Time. “Humble, stubborn, charming, visionary, proud and generous, his ideas about Gaia have started a change in the conception of biology that may serve as a vital complement to the revolution that brought us the structures of DNA and proteins and the genetic code.”

Lovelock also won the U.K.’s Geological Society’s Wollaston Medal in 2006. In a posting on its website, the society said it was “rare to be able to say that the recipient has opened up a whole new field of Earth science study” – referring to the Gaia theory of the planet as single complex system.

However Lovelock, who works alone at his home in Devon, England, has fallen out with the green movement in the past, particularly after saying countries should build nuclear power stations to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by coal and oil.

Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”

He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.

“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.
He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.

“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

'I made a mistake'
As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.
Lovelock -- who has previously worked with NASA and discovered the presence of harmful chemicals (CFCs) in the atmosphere but not their effect on the ozone layer -- stressed that humanity should still “do our best to cut back on fossil fuel burning” and try to adapt to the coming changes.

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K.’s respected Met Office Hadley Centre, agreed Lovelock had been too alarmist with claims about people having to live in the Arctic by 2100.

And he also agreed with Lovelock that the rate of warming in recent years had been less than expected by the climate models.

However, Stott said this was a short-term trend that could be within the natural range of variation and it would need to continue for another 10 years or so before it could be considered evidence that something was missing from climate models.

Stott said temperature records and other observations were “broadly speaking continuing to pan out” with what was expected.

He said there did need to be greater understanding of the effect of the oceans on the climate and added that air particles caused by pollution – which cool the Earth by reflecting the sun’s heat -- from rapidly developing countries like China could be having an effect.

On Lovelock, Stott said he had “a lot of respect” for him, saying “he’s had a lot of good ideas and interesting thoughts.”

“I like the fact he’s provocative and provokes people to think about these things,” Stott said.
Keya Chatterjee, international climate policy director of environmental campaign group WWF-US, said in a statement that it was "hard not to get overwhelmed and be defeatist" about the challenges facing the planet, but suggested alarmist talk did not help persuade people to act to reduce climate change.

"While the problem is becoming increasingly urgent, we’ve found that focusing on the most dire predictions does not resonate with the public, governments, or business. People tend to shut off when a problem does not seem solvable," she said.

"And that’s not the case with climate change because we can still avoid its worst impacts. We know that we already have all of the technologies needed to slow climate change down.  We only lack the political will to go up against vested interests," she added.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading body on the subject, the world’s average temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. By 2100, it predicts it will rise by another 2 to 11.5 degrees, depending upon the levels of greenhouse gases emitted.
Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and seas “continue to show that the average global surface temperature is rising.”

The statement said “the impacts of a changing climate” were already being felt around the globe, with “more frequent extreme weather events of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in precipitation patterns … longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage.”

NOAA reports its data in monthly U.S. and global climate reports and annual State of the Climate reports.

Its annual climate summary for 2011 said that the combined land and ocean surface temperature for the world was 0.92 degrees above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees, making it the 35th consecutive year since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above average.

“All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011,” it said.

In the interview, Lovelock said he would not take back a word of his seminal work “Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth,” published in 1979.

But of “Revenge of Gaia,” published in 2006, he said he had gone too far in describing what the warming Earth would see over the next century.

“I would be a little more cautious -- but then that would have spoilt the book,” he quipped.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Egypt's 'plans for farewell intercourse law so husbands can have sex with DEAD wives' branded a 'complete nonsense'

From The UK Daily Mail

By Daily Mail Reporter

Alleged proposals to allow Egyptian husbands to legally have sex with their dead wives for up to six hours after their death have been branded a 'complete nonsense'.
The controversial new 'farewell intercourse' law was claimed, in Arab media, to be part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.
They reported it would also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.

Controversial: The 'farewell intercourse' law is 'a complete nonsense', according to sources
Controversial: The 'farewell intercourse' law is 'a complete nonsense', according to sources

But sources inside the Egyptian Embassy in London have said the claims were 'completely false', 'forbidden in Islam' and 'could never imagine it happening'.
The source said the proposal, if it even existed, had not reached the parliament - although it was also admitted it could be the work of an extremist politician.
Although not officially rebutted, the claims that someone inside Egypt could introduce such a law provoked widespread scepticism.


The initial report, published on reputable English language website alarabiya.net, claimed Egypt's National Council for Women was reportedly campaigning against the changes.
It said the group said that 'marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country's human development'.
Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.
Outrage: The 'proposals' could have seen Egyptian husbands allowed to have sex with their dead wives (file picture)
Outrage: The 'proposals' could have seen Egyptian husbands allowed to have sex with their dead wives (file picture)
Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under 'alleged religious interpretations'.
The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.
He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband.
TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty slammed the notion of letting a husband have sex with his wife after her death under the so-called 'Farewell Intercourse' draft law.
He said: 'This is very serious. Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues? Did Abdul Samea see by his own eyes the text of the message sent by Talawi to Katatni?
'This is unbelievable. It is a catastrophe to give the husband such a right! Has the Islamic trend reached that far? Is there really a draft law in this regard? Are there people thinking in this manner?'

GOP ignores White House veto threat, House OKs bill keeping student loan rates from doubling

From The Washington Post


WASHINGTON — Republicans defied a veto threat and the House voted Friday to prevent federal loan costs from doubling for millions of college students. The vote gave the GOP a momentary election-year triumph on a bill that has become enmeshed in partisan battles over the economy, women’s issues and President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
The measure’s 215-195 passage was largely symbolic because the package is going nowhere in the Democratic-dominated Senate. Both parties agree students’ interest costs should not rise, but they are clashing along a familiar fault line over how to cover the $6 billion tab: Republicans want spending cuts and Democrats want higher revenues.

Friday’s vote underscored how with Election Day just over six months away, much of Congress’ work and passion can be aimed as much at political positioning as it is at writing law. Both parties want to show they are trying to help college students and their families cope in today’s unforgiving economy and, when possible, force their opponents to cast votes that might create fodder for TV attack ads.

The GOP bill would keep interest rates for subsidized Stafford loans at 3.4 percent for another year, rather than automatically growing to 6.8 percent on July 1 as they would under a law enacted five years ago by a Democratic Congress. The increase would affect 7.4 million students and, the Obama administration says, cost each an average $1,000 over the life of their loans.

Democrats trained their fire on the Republican plan to pay for the bill by abolishing a preventive health fund created by Obama’s 2010 revamping of the health care system. Democrats said that program especially helped women by allocating money for cancer screening and other initiatives and that eliminating it was only the latest GOP blow against women — a charge Republicans hotly contested.
“Give me a break,” roared House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to rousing cheers from Republican lawmakers. “This is the latest plank in the so-called war on women, entirely created by my colleagues across the aisle for political gain.”

Democrats voted solidly earlier this year to take money from the preventive health fund to help keep doctors’ Medicare reimbursements from dropping. Obama’s own budget in February proposed cutting $4 billion from the same fund to pay for some of his priorities.

Since the early days of this year’s GOP presidential contest, Democrats have been accusing Republicans of targeting women by advocating curbs on contraceptives and other policies. Polls show women leaning heavily toward Obama and Democrats would like to stoke that margin.
In its veto message, the White House argued that “women in particular” would be helped by the prevention fund and added, “This is a politically motivated proposal and not the serious response that the problem facing America’s college students deserves.”
House GOP leaders abruptly scheduled Friday’s vote after Obama barnstormed around the country in recent days to accuse them of ignoring students’ needs. Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney began the week by saying he, too, wanted current interest rates extended temporarily, heaping further pressure on congressional Republicans to act.

Since the early days of this year’s GOP presidential contest, Democrats have been accusing Republicans of targeting women by advocating curbs on contraceptives and other policies. Polls show women leaning heavily toward Obama and Democrats would like to stoke that margin.

In its veto message, the White House argued that “women in particular” would be helped by the prevention fund and added, “This is a politically motivated proposal and not the serious response that the problem facing America’s college students deserves.”

House GOP leaders abruptly scheduled Friday’s vote after Obama barnstormed around the country in recent days to accuse them of ignoring students’ needs. Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney began the week by saying he, too, wanted current interest rates extended temporarily, heaping further pressure on congressional Republicans to act.

Republicans said they were working methodically on the problem and accused Democrats of inventing a controversy to stir up their voters.
“People want to politicize this because it is an election year. But my God, do we have to fight about everything?” said Boehner.

 
 
Democrats broke 165-13 against the bill, with some of their members reluctant to vote against keeping students’ costs down, despite the accompanying health care cuts.
Democrats wrote a version of the bill, paid for by ending subsidies for oil and gas companies. It never had a chance of moving through the GOP-led House.
Senate Democrats plan a vote next month on their own legislation extending today’s interest rates for a year and paid for by making it harder for high-earning owners of many privately owned corporations to shield some of their income from Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. That vote will also be little more than political posturing because Senate Republicans are certain to derail the measure.
House Republicans prevailed Friday only after staunching a brewing rebellion among their own conservatives, many of whom are skeptical about whether the government should subsidize student loans at all.
A lobbying campaign by outside conservative groups like Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America pressured GOP lawmakers to vote “no.” But an 11th-hour effort by GOP leaders to keep their rank-and-file onboard prevailed and Republicans ended up backing the legislation 202-30 — with half the opposition coming from the feisty, largely conservative GOP class of freshmen.

“The government doesn’t belong in that business,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Abrams and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

EPA administrator on how he deals with oil and gas companies: ‘Crucify them!’

From The Right Scoop

This video was actually found by Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.) who is doing an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency. Here is the meat of what the administrator, Al Armendariz, says (via Free Beacon):
I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement,” Armendariz said during a meeting in 2010. “It’s kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean: They’d go into little Turkish towns somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they’d run into, and they’d crucify them and then, you know, that town was really easy to manage over the next few years.
It’s one thing to try and bring business into compliance. It’s another thing to ‘crucify them’ to the point that it’s oppressive over these burdensome requirements. But this just goes to show you how anti-oil/gas this administration really is. The EPA has far too much authority and needs to be brought down to size.

Govt backs off new limits on child labor on farms

From The Associated Press



WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under heavy pressure from farm groups, the Obama administration said Thursday it would drop an unpopular plan to prevent children from doing hazardous work on farms owned by anyone other than their parents.
The Labor Department said it is withdrawing proposed rules that would ban children younger than 16 from using most power-driven farm equipment, including tractors. The rules also would prevent those younger than 18 from working in feed lots, grain bins and stockyards.

While labor officials said their goal was to reduce the fatality rate for child farm workers, the proposal had become a popular political target for Republicans who called it an impractical, heavy-handed regulation that ignored the reality of small farms.

"It's good the Labor Department rethought the ridiculous regulations it was going to stick on farmers and their families," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "To even propose such regulations defies common sense, and shows a real lack of understanding as to how the family farm works."

The surprise move comes just two months after the Labor Department modified the rule in a bid to satisfy opponents. The agency made it clear it would exempt children who worked on farms owned or operated by their parents, even if the ownership was part of a complex partnership or corporate agreement.

That didn't appease farm groups that complained it would upset traditions in which many children work on farms owned by uncles, grandparents and other relatives to reduce costs and learn how a farm operates. The Labor Department said Thursday it was responding to thousands of comments that expressed concern about the impact of the changes on small family-owned farms.

"The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations," the agency said in a statement.

Instead, the agency said it would work with rural stakeholders, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Farmers Union and 4-H to develop an educational program to reduce accidents to young workers.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a grain farmer known to till his fields on weekends away from Washington, had come out strongly against the proposed rule. The Democrat continued to criticize the Obama administration rule even after it was tempered earlier this year, saying the Labor Department "clearly didn't get the whole message" from Montana's farmers and ranchers.

Tester, who is in a tough race for re-election, on Thursday praised the decision to withdraw the rule and said he would fight "any measure that threatens that heritage and our rural way of life."
---
Associated Press writer Matt Gouras in Helena, Mont., contributed to this report.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

As senator, Obama missed votes on student loan bill he now wants to extend

From Politico

In 2007, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama missed two votes on the student loan interest bill that he now wants Congress to extend.

Obama twice skipped the Senate vote on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act when the bill came to the Senate floor first in July and again in September of 2007, according to public records.

The bill, introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and signed into law by President George W. Bush, first cleared the Senate in July on a 78 to 18 vote, with Obama as one of only four senators who didn't cast a ballot. Obama did not cast a vote again in September, after the House and Senate had ironed out different versions of the bill. He was on the conference committee assigned to merge the House and Senate versions of the bill.
He issued a statement when the bill was signed by President Bush, saying, "by investing in education we are restoring America's competitiveness in the world, and today is an important step forward."
Obama has made keeping student loan interest rates low a new priority for his administration — but as a senator, he neither voted for Miller's bill nor signed on as a cosponsor.

A White House official on Monday insisted he was deeply involved in the legislation, voting on amendments and sitting on the conference committee. The White House also pointed out his vote was not needed for passage.

“President Obama was directly involved in crafting this legislation to provide American families a fair shot at an affordable college education when it first passed in 2007, and now he’s calling on Congress to prevent interest rates from doubling on July 1 for more than 7.4 million students who will rack up, on average, an additional $1,000 unless Congress acts,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said.

"The facts are very, very simple.  This passed in 2007 with broad bipartisan support.  It was signed by a Republican president," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told reporters last week.

Obama is set to depart Tuesday on a three-state swing to put pressure on Congress to extend the 2007 law that lowered interest rates on Federal Family Education Loan and Direct Loan programs from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. Those lower rates are set to expire in July — an outcome that the Obama administration estimated will cost the average loan holder more than $1,000 extra dollars if loan rates double — and will affect up to 7 million families.

Obama was embroiled in a tough primary campaign in 2007 and was on the road for big chunks of time. His missed vote rate in the Senate soared to over 80 percent towards the end of the campaign.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Great California Exodus

A leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat' talks about what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State.

'California is God's best moment," says Joel Kotkin. "It's the best place in the world to live." Or at least it used to be.
Mr. Kotkin, one of the nation's premier demographers, left his native New York City in 1971 to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley. The state was a far-out paradise for hipsters who had grown up listening to the Mamas & the Papas' iconic "California Dreamin'" and the Beach Boys' "California Girls." But it also attracted young, ambitious people "who had a lot of dreams, wanted to build big companies." Think Intel, Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
Now, however, the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.
Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.
The scruffy-looking urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has been studying and writing on demographic and geographic trends for 30 years. Part of California's dysfunction, he says, stems from state and local government restrictions on development. These policies have artificially limited housing supply and put a premium on real estate in coastal regions.
"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.
While many middle-class families have moved inland, those regions don't have the same allure or amenities as the coast. People might as well move to Nevada or Texas, where housing and everything else is cheaper and there's no income tax.
And things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans to cram the proletariat into high-density housing. "What I find reprehensible beyond belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s," Mr. Kotkin declares.
"The new regime"—his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government—"wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles."
Housing is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
Oh, and don't forget the $100 billion bullet train. Mr. Kotkin calls the runaway-cost train "classic California." "Where [Brown] with the state going bankrupt is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension. When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We're still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we've got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?"
Mr. Kotkin describes himself as an old-fashioned Truman Democrat. In fact, he voted for Mr. Brown—who previously served as governor, secretary of state and attorney general—because he believed Mr. Brown "was interesting and thought outside the box."
But "Jerry's been a big disappointment," Mr. Kotkin says. "I've known Jerry for 35 years, and he's smart, but he just can't seem to be a paradigm breaker. And of course, it's because he really believes in this green stuff."
In the governor's dreams, green jobs will replace all of the "tangible jobs" that the state's losing in agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing and construction. But "green energy doesn't create enough energy!" Mr. Kotkin exclaims. "And it drives up the price of energy, which then drives out other things." Notwithstanding all of the subsidies the state lavishes on renewables, green jobs only make up about 2% of California's private-sector work force—no more than they do in Texas.
Of course, there are plenty of jobs to be had in energy, just not the type the new California regime wants. An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. "You see the great tragedy of California is that we have all this oil and gas, we won't use it," Mr. Kotkin says. "We have the richest farm land in the world, and we're trying to strangle it." He's referring to how water restrictions aimed at protecting the delta smelt fish are endangering Central Valley farmers.
Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. Its income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers—those who earn more than $48,000—pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states.
And Democrats want to raise taxes even more. Mind you, the November ballot initiative that Mr. Brown is spearheading would primarily hit those whom Democrats call "millionaires" (i.e., people who make more than $250,000 a year). Some Republicans have warned that it will cause a millionaire march out of the state, but Mr. Kotkin says that "people who are at the very high end of the food chain, they're still going to be in Napa. They're still going to be in Silicon Valley. They're still going to be in West L.A."
That said, "It's really going to hit the small business owners and the young family that's trying to accumulate enough to raise a family, maybe send their kids to private school. It'll kick them in the teeth."
A worker in Wichita might not consider those earning $250,000 a year middle class, but "if you're a guy working for a Silicon Valley company and you're married and you're thinking about having your first kid, and your family makes 250-k a year, you can't buy a closet in the Bay Area," Mr. Kotkin says. "But for 250-k a year, you can live pretty damn well in Salt Lake City. And you might be able to send your kids to public schools and own a three-bedroom, four-bath house."
According to Mr. Kotkin, these upwardly mobile families are fleeing in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the "entrenched incumbents" who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money. Then there's a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don't pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid.
It's "a very scary political dynamic," he says. "One day somebody's going to put on the ballot, let's take every penny over $100,000 a year, and you'll get it through because there's no real restraint. What you've done by exempting people from paying taxes is that they feel no responsibility. That's certainly a big part of it.
And the welfare recipients, he emphasizes, "aren't leaving. Why would they? They get much better benefits in California or New York than if they go to Texas. In Texas the expectation is that people work."
California used to be more like Texas—a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.
Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."
So if California's no longer the Golden land of opportunity for middle-class dreamers, what is?
Mr. Kotkin lists four "growth corridors": the Gulf Coast, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, and the Southeast. All of these regions have lower costs of living, lower taxes, relatively relaxed regulatory environments, and critical natural resources such as oil and natural gas.
Take Salt Lake City. "Almost all of the major tech companies have moved stuff to Salt Lake City." That includes Twitter, Adobe, eBay and Oracle.
Then there's Texas, which is on a mission to steal California's tech hegemony. Apple just announced that it's building a $304 million campus and adding 3,600 jobs in Austin. Facebook established operations there last year, and eBay plans to add 1,000 new jobs there too.
Even Hollywood is doing more of its filming on the Gulf Coast. "New Orleans is supposedly going to pass New York as the second-largest film center. They have great incentives, and New Orleans is the best bargain for urban living in the United States. It's got great food, great music, and it's inexpensive."
What about the Midwest and the Rust Belt? Can they recover from their manufacturing losses?
"What those areas have is they've got a good work ethic," Mr. Kotkin says. "There's an established skill base for industry. They're very affordable, and they've got some nice places to live. Indianapolis has become a very nice city." He concedes that such places will have a hard time eclipsing California or Texas because they're not as well endowed by nature. But as the Golden State is proving, natural endowments do not guarantee permanent prosperity.
Ms. Finley is the assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com and a Journal editorial page writer.
A version of this article appeared April 21, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Great California Exodus.
 

Food stamp rolls have increased 260% in 11 years, spending up 400%

From The Right Scoop

Since the year 2000, the number of Americans on food stamps has almost tripled from 17.2M to 44.7M, while the spending has nearly quadrupled from around $20 billion to $78 billion. But that’s just one piece of our welfare system. There are 79 total welfare programs that cost the taxpayer almost one trillion last year. And the big concern? These programs are only expect to continue to grow over the next few years:
HERITAGE – The number of Americans on food stamps (or, as it is now called, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is higher than ever before, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report. Since 2007, rolls have grown by 70 percent. And participation rates are expected to increase over the next two years.
While some of the growth can be attributed to the recession, participation rates were steadily climbing prior to the recession. Since 2000, the number of Americans on food stamps has jumped by roughly 260 percent, from 17.2 million to 44.7 million in 2011.
Naturally, government spending on food stamps has also jumped, from approximately $20 billion in 2000 to a whopping $78 billion last year, a nearly 400 percent increase.
The growth in participation rates seems to be part of the federal government’s goal, as a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture released just this month explains.
The food stamps program is just one part of an ever-expanding government welfare system that includes not only 12 food assistance welfare programs but a total of 79 federal welfare programs. These programs provide not only food assistance but cash, housing, energy and utility assistance, education services, child care, medical care, and so forth.
The total cost of these programs reached $927 billion last year. Welfare is now the fastest growing part of government spending, and despite welfare costs increasing 16-fold since the War on Poverty began in the 1960s—and total spending on cash, food, and housing assistance now twice the amount necessary to pull all Americans out of povertyPresident Obama wants to spend more. Aggregate welfare costs are projected to reach over $1.5 trillion in 2022.
KEEP READING >>>

Friday, April 20, 2012

5.4 Million Americans Join Disability Rolls Under Obama

From GatewayPundit



Investor’s Business Daily reported:
A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program.
This is straining already-stretched government finances while posing a long-term economic threat by creating an ever-growing pool of permanently dependent working-age Americans.
Since the recession ended in June 2009, the number of people who’ve signed up for disability benefits is twice the job growth figure. (See nearby chart.) In just the first four months of this year, 539,000 joined the disability rolls and more than 725,000 put in applications.
As a result, by April there were 10.8 million people on disability, according to Social Security Administration data released this week. Even after accounting for all those who’ve left the program — mainly because they hit retirement age or died — that’s up 53% from a decade ago.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The $5 Trillion Man: Debt Has Increased Under Obama by $5,027,761,476,484.56

President Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner
President Obama shakes hands with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the State of the Union Address, Jan. 25, 2012. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com)- In the 39 months since Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States, the federal government’s debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56.
Although he has served less than a term, Obama is now the first American president to see the federal government's debt increase by more than $5 trillion during his time in office.
During the full eight years that George W. Bush served as president, the federal government's debt increased by $4,899,100,310,608.44. (Rising from $5,727,776,738,304.64 to $10,626,877,048,913.08.)
The $5,027,761,476,484.56 that the debt has increased during Obama's presidency equals $16,043.39 for every one of the 313,385,295 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.
At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, the federal government’s debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08, according to the U.S. Treasury. By the close of business on April 16, 2012—as many Americans were working to finalize their 2011 tax returns to meet an April 17 filing deadline—the debt had reached $15,654,638,525,397.64.
The $5,027,761,476,484.56 in additional debt that the U.S. government has taken on during the 39 months that Obama has been president is more debt than the federal government accumulated in the first 219 years of the Republic.
The total federal debt did not exceed $5,027,761,476,484.56 until March 14, 1996, when President Bill Clinton was in the last year of his first term in office. On that day, the national debt rose from $5,025,887,531,178.79 to 5,035,165,720,616.33.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

IRS: 235,413 million-dollar earners

From Politico

A fan of one hunderd dollar bills is seen. |Reuters

Only 8,274 returns were filed by people making $10 million or more. | Reuters
President Barack Obama and many Democrats are talking about raising taxes on the wealthy, and data released this week by the Internal Revenue Service offers new details about the number of Americans who fit that bill.

People and households earning $1 million or more annually made up just 0.1 percent, or just over 235,000, of the 140 million tax returns filed in 2009, and just 8,274 returns were filed by people making $10 million or more.

Though the tax rate for Americans earning a gross adjusted income of $1 million or more averaged 24.4 percent, up from 23.1 percent in 2008, that’s still lower than the 28.5 percent rate they paid in 2002 when President George W. Bush was in office. 

And, the data show, the 235,413 taxpayers who reported earning seven digits or more in 2009 took in a total of $726.9 billion — yet 1,470 paid not a penny of income taxes. In 2007, 959 Americans earning $1 million or more paid no income taxes.

The returns filed in 2009 reflect income from 2008, the depths of the recession and financial crisis, and, under that backdrop, incomes fell sharply.

The vast majority of tax return filers — more than 97 percent — reported incomes of less than $200,000. The average income was $54,283, a drop of more than $3,500, or 6 percent, from 2008. That put the average income at its lowest level since 1997.

At the same time, the average tax rate declined from 12.5 percent in 2008 to 11.4 percent in 2009.
The amount of unemployment benefits claimed on tax returns nearly doubled 2008-09, the IRS found.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Mark Steyn: Buying ‘Buffett Rule' makes you a fool

From the Orange County Register


By MARK  STEYN
By MARK STEYN

Syndicated columnist
In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the "war on women," the Republican theocrats' confiscation of your contraceptives, or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. This week's bit of ham-handed misdirection was "the Buffett Rule," a not-so-disguised capital-gains tax hike designed to ensure that Warren Buffett pays as much tax as his secretary. If the alleged Sage of Omaha is as exercised about this as his public effusions would suggest, I'd be in favor of repealing the prohibition on Bills of Attainder, and the old boy could sleep easy at night. But instead every other American "millionaire" will be subject to the new rule – because, as President Obama said this week, it "will help us close our deficit."
Wow! Who knew it was that easy?
Article Tab: President Barack Obama speaks about the Buffett Rule, Wednesday, April 11, 2012, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington.
President Barack Obama speaks about the Buffett Rule, Wednesday, April 11, 2012, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington.
SUSAN WALSH, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A-hem. According to the Congressional Budget Office (the same nonpartisan bean counters who project that on Obama's current spending proposals the entire U.S. economy will cease to exist in 2027) Obama's Buffett Rule will raise – stand well back – $3.2 billion per year. Or what the United States government currently borrows every 17 hours. So in 514 years it will have raised enough additional revenue to pay off the 2011 federal budget deficit. If you want to mark it on your calendar, 514 years is the year 2526. There's a sporting chance Joe Biden will have retired from public life by then, but other than that I'm not making any bets.

Let's go back to that presidential sound bite:
"It will help us close our deficit."

I'm beginning to suspect that the Oval Office teleprompter may be malfunctioning, or that perhaps that NBC News producer who "accidentally" edited George Zimmerman into sounding like a racist has now edited the smartest president of all time into sounding like an idiot. Either way, it appears the last seven words fell off the end of the sentence. What the president meant to say was: "It will help us close our deficit ... for 2011 ... within a mere half-millennium!" [Pause for deafening cheers and standing ovation.]

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama's current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden? As the Great Magician would say, pick a number, any number. Sorry, you're wrong. Whatever you're willing to bear, he's got more lined up for you.

Even if you're absolved from federal income tax, you, too, require enough people willing to keep the racket going, and America is already pushing forward into territory the rest of the developed world is steering well clear of. On April Fools' Day, Japan and the United Kingdom both cut their corporate tax rates, leaving the United States even more of an outlier, with the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world: The top rate of federal corporate tax in the US is 35 percent. It's 15 percent in Canada. Which is next door.

Well, who cares about corporations? Only out-of-touch dilettante playboys like Mitt Romney who – hmm, let's see what I can produce from the bottom of the top hat – put his dog on the roof of his car as recently as 1984! That's where your gran'ma will be under the Republicans' plan, while your contraceptiveless teenage daughter is giving birth on the hood. "Corporations are people, my friend," said Mitt, in what's generally regarded as a damaging sound bite by all the smart people who think Obama's plan to use the Buffett Rule to "close the deficit" this side of the fourth millennium is a stroke of genius.

But Mitt's not wrong. In the end, a corporation doesn't pay tax. The marble atrium of Global MegaCorp's corporate HQ is indifferent to the tax rate; the Articles of Incorporation in the bottom drawer of the chairman's desk couldn't care less. Every dollar of "corporate" tax has to be fished out the pocket of a real flesh-and-blood human being, whether shareholder, employee or customer.

And that's the problem. For what Obama's spending, there aren't enough of them, or us, or "the rich" – and there never will be. There is only one Warren Buffett. He is the third-wealthiest person on the planet. The first is a Mexican, and beyond the reach of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Buffett is worth $44 billion. If he donated the entire lot to the Government of the United States, they would blow through it within four-and-a-half days. OK, so who's the fourth-richest guy? He's French. And the fifth guy's a Spaniard. No. 6 six is Larry Ellison. He's American, but that loser is only worth $36 billion. So he and Buffett between them could keep the United States Government going for a week. The next-richest American is Christy Walton of Wal-Mart, and she's barely a semi-Buffett. So her $25 billion will see you through a couple of days of the second week. There aren't a lot of other semi-Buffetts, but, if you scrounge around, you can rustle up some hemi-demi-semi-Buffetts: If you confiscate the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it comes to $1.5 trillion, which is just a little less than the Obama budget deficit for year.

But there are a lot of "millionaires," depending on how you define it. Jerry Brown, California's reborn Gov. Moonbeam, defines his "millionaire's tax" as applying to anybody who earns more than $250,000 a year. "Anybody who makes $250,000 becomes a millionaire very quickly," he explained. "You just need four years." This may be the simplest wealth creation advice since Bob Hope was asked to respond back in 1967 to reports that he was worth half-a-billion dollars. "Anyone can do it," said Hope. "All you have to do is save a million dollars a year for 500 years."

It's that easy, folks! Like President Obama says, all you have to do to pay off his 2011 deficit is save $3.2 billion a year for 500 years.

He thinks you're stupid. Warren Buffett thinks you're stupid. Maybe you are. But not everyone is. And America's foreign debtors understand that "the Buffett Rule" is just another pathetic sleight of hand en route to the collapse of the U.S. dollar, and of American society shortly thereafter.

When he's not talking up his buddy Warren, the Half-Millennium Man has been staggering around demonizing Paul Ryan's plan, which would lead, he says, to the end of the weather service, air traffic control, national parks, law enforcement, and drinkable water. Given what's at stake, you might think then that the president would have an alternative plan. But he has none, save for his proposal to pay off the 2011 federal deficit by the year 2526. The Obama No-Plan plan means the end of everything. That really ought to be the only slogan the Republicans need this fall:

What's your plan?
And all you hear are crickets chirping.

But don't worry, they're federally funded crickets, chirping at a research facility in North Carolina investigating whether there's any correlation between chirping crickets and the inability of America's political institutions to effect meaningful course correction.
Hey, relax. The Buffett Rule will pick up the tab.
©MARK STEYN

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Allen West: I’ve “Heard” 80 Democrats Are Members of the Communist Party (Actually the Number is 70, Not Counting Obama)

From Gateway Pundit

Allen West told an audience of mostly supporters this week that he heard that 80 democrats are members of the Communist Party.
The Huffington Post reported, via HotAir:




Actually, there’s 70, and they’re socialists, not exactly communists but you really can’t be sure.
The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus.
This admission was recently posted on Scribd.com:
American Socialist Voter–
Q: How many members of the U.S. Congress are also members of the DSA?
A: Seventy
Q: How many of the DSA members sit on the Judiciary Committee?
A: Eleven: John Conyers [Chairman of the Judiciary Committee], Tammy Baldwin, Jerrold Nadler, Luis Gutierrez,
Melvin Watt, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen, Barbara Lee, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez [there are 23 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee of which eleven, almost half, are now members of the DSA].
Q: Who are these members of 111th Congress?
A: See the listing below
Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)
Vice Chairs
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)
Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)
House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)
And, of course, Barack Obama was not listed but he got his start in politics with the New Party socialist group.

California and the Subversive Teaching Radicals

From New Zeal Blog

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
If the red shoe fits… The masks are dropping altogether in the Universities and the schools that teach our future, our children. Zombie last week attended a lecture: “Teaching as a Subversive Activity — Revisited.” The title is self-explanatory unfortunately. You should read Zombie’s entire post – it is enlightening and terrifying to say the least.
The lecture was for education insiders only – so any pretense of not being radical was dropped. The University of California it would seem has gone pretty much over to the dark side and is embracing progressive Marxism.
In Zombie’s post, you will get to hear the audio of this lecture. Don’t let the boring banality of the professor fool you, this is a life and death issue that all parents and Americans better take note of. You see, this isn’t new… These tactics have been implanted and activated over a long period of time. Step by step, inch by inch, until the education we knew is no more and the education of Marxism is all and total.
Zombie:
Professor Brown’s talk focuses specifically on this problem: His basic thesis is that it is no longer sufficient to simply tell students to think for themselves, because then we lose the ability to influence them, and there’s no guarantee that the students will then develop progressive worldviews. The “Revisited” part of the lecture’s title means that these days, we must be more blunt and to the point: Since the good guys are now in charge, let’s just dispense with all the experimentation and instead directly indoctrinate the students in leftist thought and ideals.
The normalcy of radicalism, as Zombie puts it, is the order of the day in universities across America, not just California. California is just very blatant about it. They have basically become a communist state and hope to swing the nation that way as well. If we don’t get Obama out of office, they may get their darkest wish. Here are the titles of the clips you’ll hear over at Zombie’s post:
  • Clip 1: “Agents for Change.”
  • Clip 2: “A Two-Edged Sword”
  • Clip 3: “Refrain From Revealing Your Own Beliefs”
  • Clip 4: “Just a Complete Wacko”
  • Clip 5: “I wish that people didn’t have that freedom”
  • Clip 6: “If You Were a Republican You Had to Really Hide It”
They are going for it folks. The Progressives feel their time is now and they want to take your children into Marxist hell with them. Here are some code phrases that you should listen for:
Code Phrases Alluding to Indoctrination
If you hear or read academics using any of these tell-tale terms, they are actually discussing how to indoctrinate students:
• Critical pedagogy
• Agent for change
• Moral imperative
• “Critical” anything
• Subversive
• Mandate
You can read all of Zombie’s post here. These professors and teachers – these radicals – are dangerous and need to be weeded out. Our country and our children depend on it.

Astronauts condemn NASA’s global warming endorsement

From The Examiner

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, left , and Walt Cunningham, Apollo 7 astronaut, in front of the Apollo 14 capsule at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Cunningham has signed a letter demanding that NASA stop endorsing global warming. (Photo by Matt Stroshane/Getty Images)

In an unprecedented slap at NASA’s endorsement of global warming science, nearly 50 former astronauts and scientists--including the ex-boss of the Johnson Space Center--claim the agency is on the wrong side of science and must change course or ruin the reputation of the world’s top space agency.

Challenging statements from NASA that man is causing climate change, the former NASA executives demanded in a letter to Administrator Charles Bolden that he and the agency “refrain from including unproven remarks” supporting global warming in the media.

“We feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate,” they wrote. “At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.”

The letter was signed by seven Apollo astronauts, a deputy associate administrator, several scientists, and even the deputy director of the space shuttle program.

NASA had no immediate comment.

In their letter, the group said that thousands of years of data challenge modern-day claims that man-made carbon dioxide is causing climate change. “With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from (NASA’s) Goddard Institute for Space Studies leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled,” they wrote.

NASA’s website is filled with stories about the impact of climate change on the earth, animals, and ecosystems. Most administration officials agree with the position NASA has taken.

“The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decision or public statements,” the critics added.
Their letter was heralded by outspoken global warming critic and author Leighton Steward who said, “These American heroes, the astronauts that took to space and the scientists and engineers that put them there, are right to criticize NASA’s advocacy of an extreme and unsubstantiated position.”