Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is claiming that there will be no earmarks in the economic recovery bill that passes the House.
Well, she’s on record. Will she live up to the claim?
00Publius Contributor
Publius Podcast: Why I DON’T Want Rush Limbaugh as Our Voice
-By Warner Todd Huston
My Latest Podcast:
Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.
Yeah, Let’s Cap Salaries. Start With Harvard!
-By Warner Todd Huston
Since Barack “Giant Killer” Obama thinks it’s his business how much CEOs and captains of business should be paid predicated on receiving federal money one has to wonder why this principle is not being applied fairly across the board? If receipt of federal money is enough to constitute total government control over salaries, let’s apply it everywhere. We can start with the salaries of university presidents.
Back in 2005, Senator Charles Grassley (R, Iowa) wanted to launch an investigation of the president and board of trustees of American University in Washington because of a giant severance package of $1.3 million given outgoing President Benjamin Ladner who only had a base salary of $633,000 in 2003. The severance seemed excessive, to say the least.
In 2005 Bloomberg published a story investigating the salaries of a handful of the nation’s top paid university presidents. The numbers then all exceeded President Obama’s new $500,000 cap for the evil CEOs of 2009.
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Obama Gearing up for Union Payoffs
-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week, president Obama signed several executive orders that he claimed would “level the playing field” for the unions. By that he means, of course, that he expects to take away more power from business and the individual as a payoff to big unions.
As the AP reported, Obama signed three orders that materially affects the business sector.
Require federal contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
Reverse a Bush administration order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
Now, Obama claims this is going to “help” workers, right? So, how does removing information from workers “help” them? As the second order above indicates, Obama has helped union thugs hide the facts from workers so that workers are left in the dark about their rights.
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Washington Times Quotes Me
As I do sometimes when I find myself used as a source in a story in the media, I run back here and toot my own horn. Shamelessly focusing on me, me, me! No ego here, baby.
Anyhoo, Candace de Russy, writer for the National Review, had an Op Ed in the Washington Times this week in which I was prominently featured. Well, mentioned, anyway. A full paragraph quote of mine appeared, at least.
I will helpfully embolden where it’s all about me, me, me…. you know…. in case you need help finding it.
The MSM’s rapture with Obama
Love affair becomes torrid, embarrassing
-By Candace de Russy
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media,” Bernard Goldberg counts the embarrassing and treacherous ways in which the mainstream media (MSM) flaunted their infatuation with Obama throughout the presidential campaign – how it endlessly paid court to and suppressed entire swaths of negative information about, their Romeo.
But mere slobbering turned to rapture during inaugural week, with some major players in the MSM casting all pretense of journalistic objectivity to the winds and raising political hackdom and near-religious idolatry of Obama to new heights. Two examples stand out:
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Muslim Grannie: Jihadi By Day Rape Coordinator by Night
-By Warner Todd Huston
Folks, this is the kind of sickness we are facing with the world wide Jihadi assault on civilization. Here we have the heartwarming story of kindly grandma Um al-Mumenin. She’s just the local little old lady that all the kiddies love, that’s all. She bakes cookies, loves the kids and instructs all the local young ladies on the fine art of suicide bombing. Yep, she’s an all around community organizer, she is. But, before she takes up the important instruction of all those girls eager for martyrdom, she arranges to have them raped so that later when she recruits them they are mentally “prepared” to feel that suicide bombing is the only way to regain their lost “honor.”
Ain’t she just the cutest lil’ ol’ thing?
Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police last week and confessed her part in organizing the rapes of more than 80 young Iraqi women that would later be gathered up and encouraged to become suicide bombers to “escape the shame” of having been raped.
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Newspapers Launch PR Campaign Pleading for More Readers
-By Warner Todd Huston
A large grouping of newspaper publishers have joined together and launched a public relations campaign to inform readers that, yes, newspapers are still relevant — despite the financial hardships and layoffs of thousands of employees industry wide.
Unfortunately, the PR campaign does not seem to recognize that one of the main problems that newspapers are having is with their own content, not just the economy and the Internet.
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Why Inventories Matter
-By Thomas E. Brewton
The latest GDP figures showing a rise in 4th quarter inventories is not good news.
In the recently released estimates of 4th quarter Gross Domestic Production (GDP) numbers, the less-than-expected 3.8% drop is not evidence of business strength. In fact it’s the opposite.
Higher inventories ordinarily result from production increases, which add to GDP. In a contracting economy, inventories rise because production already in the pipeline can’t be sold.
In an ideal economy funded by increases in personal and business savings, demand at all levels will tend to grow at the rate of increase in savings. To meet growing demand, businesses increase production, which initially appears as increased inventories held for sale. Payments to workers and materials suppliers to produce that inventory add to personal and business savings, which support new growth.
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NRCC Updates Its Website
-By Warner Todd Huston
The National Republican Congressional Committee has upgraded its website and unveiled it today at nrcc.org. The catch phrase they wish us to take away from the new site is: Regaining America’s Trust Begins in the House.
I hate to say it, but that seems a bit defeatist and gives the impression of the beaten dog. Though, perhaps a little beat down is deserved, eh? Anyway, I just wish it was a bit more of a positive message. Of COURSE we have to admit as a party that we screwed the pooch, but do we have to make that our advertisement theme, too?
It almost seems to scream “We Effed up, but we’ll be better, I SWEAR TO GOD!” It is a bit unsatisfying as a rallying cry, I have to say. After all, “regaining” trust implies we lost it in the first place. Wile true, do we have to prostrate ourselves even in a rallying slogan?
It just reminds me of the skinny kid yelling “don’t hit me!” And we all remember that yelling that invites double the smacks.
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Crossactionnews Podcast for Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
-By Warner Todd Huston
Here’s the latest Crossactionnews.com Podcast :
Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.
Obama’s Terrorist Renewal Act
-By Warner Todd Huston
Release Them and They Will Come… Right Back to al Qaeda. Now Even MORE Proof of Obama’s folly!
Obama has long said he wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He even made a play that he will do so by signing an executive order that says he will close the facility in one year’s time… or in one year he will address the closing of the place, which ever you believe he actually said in that order.
But even during the same week that the president has made this big show of fulfilling the campaign promise of closing Guantanamo, though he has not yet actually done so, we have seen several recently released terrorists that have appeared on videos admitting that they are back inside al Qaeda and ready to attack the west all over again.
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The Growing Privacy-Publicacy Fault-line — The Tension Underneath World Data Privacy Day
-By Scott Cleland
Given that January 28 was World Data Privacy Day, its instructive to examine why there is such increasing tension underneath the surface of the Internet over the issue of privacy. I believe there is a growing “fault line” between two opposing tectonic forces — one that believes in online privacy and the other which believes in the opposite — online publicacy.
I coined the term “publicacy” in my July 2008 House testimony on online privacy because Internet technology has created the need for an antonym to describe the opposite of privacy. Many in the Web 2.0 community believe in the “publicacy ethos” where if technology innovation can make information public, it should be public and that there should be no permission or payment required to access, use or remix this new “public”‘ information.
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Obama Porn Arrives on Ebay
-By Warner Todd Huston
**Images Unsuitable for Front Page Below the Fold** (Warning, not safe for work.)
It’s art, man. And it’s for sale. A naked Obama with a unicorn smearing suntan lotion on his back. An explicit “Madonna.” Another Naked Obama on a unicorn as a giant, bloated — and naked, of course — Rush Limbaugh floats by like a blimp tethered by a microphone cord. And they can ALL be yours if you are the highest bidder on the ebay auction site.
Is it a comment on the absurdity of this insipid Obama worship? Is it merely a way to cash in on a few current themes? And why is everyone always naked with Dan Lacey’s work, anyway? Is it porn? Is it just distasteful? All good questions. But, there is another one. Is ebay comfortable selling this Obama porn?
Here are three of Lacey’s latest…uh… artworks.
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To Commemorate the Day the Music Died
– By Warner Todd Huston
Today is the 50th anniversary of the terrible plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Jiles “The Big Bopper” Richardson. There is quite an interesting story about The Big Bopper’s son that I discuss in today’s podcast.
Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.
Chi.Trib: Labeling One Group ‘Conservative’ But Not IDing the Liberal One
-By Warner Todd Huston
We have here a classic case of liberal bias in the Old Media. It isn’t as dramatic as may others that we have seen since The One came onto the national scene, but it is the sort of bias that has been endemic in the Old Media for a very long time. In a February 1 story in the Chicago Tribune, we find the old trick of naming a think tank as a source, but not mentioning that it is a liberal think tank, yet also citing a second group that is, however, labeled as a “conservative” think tank.
This sort of bias is very common in the Old Media. How it works is that the liberal think tank is cited as a source for some statistic or claim but that think tank is not labeled as a liberal group. This way the reader sees the liberal group’s advice or stats as unbiased or straight. Then the media will give a counter claim by the conservative think tank. But the conservative group is labeled as a conservative think tank so that the reader is led to be wary of that group’s stats or advice because they are biased.
In this way, the Old Media outlet in question can claim they’ve been “balanced” and were giving “both sides” of the story while still leaning the story to the left and attempting to discredit the right. It’s a typical smoke screen of leftward bias that is an old stand by for the liberal media establishment.
Continue reading “Chi.Trib: Labeling One Group ‘Conservative’ But Not IDing the Liberal One”
Paper Editor Alters Column To Say Writer is ‘Bitter Conservative’ That ‘Can’t Wish US Well’
-By Warner Todd Huston
This is why newspapers deserve to be buried in the dust bin of history, at least unless they clean up their act. For well over 20 years a southwest suburban Chicago newspaper called The Reporter has employed a columnist named Michael M. Bates. He has been the local conservative columnist for many years until, that is, his latest column on Barack Obama was altered to add malicious content aimed at the columnist by the paper’s editor.
Bates was one of those conservatives (like myself) that wrote that he hoped that Obama would not succeed as president IF success meant that all sorts of socialist, unAmerican policies would be implemented. Bates was not wishing the president to fail except in implementing policies that Bates felt would be bad for America and even more to the point Bates was not saying he wised the U.S. as a whole ill. But it seems that “nuance” is not something that Bates’ editor understands because the editor decided to add some things to Bates’ column that Bates did not say.
Bigot, Marxist, Tenured Professor
-By John Armor
A movement has begun among American college professors to boycott Israeli universities and professors and Israeli culture, over the “oppression” of Palestinians by Israelis. I read some of the press accounts of this academic movement, and decided to investigate its leader.
David Lloyd, Professor of English at the University of Southern California, is the leader of this US effort. Anti-Semitism is commonplace in Europe, where such boycotts are old news. The background of Dr. Lloyd doesn’t look that bad on first glance.
On his Biographical Sketch, there are only a few hints that the man is off-balance. Half of his writing about literature is dedicated to the Irish. As a fellow Irishman, I consider all the Irish potentially dubious.
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Petition drive launched for civil rights in education
-By Israel Teitelbaum
Parents representing a cross section of society have launched a petition drive on behalf of proposed federal legislation dubbed the Civil Rights Act for Equal Educational Opportunity (CRA for EEO). The text of the petition reads as follows:
“ ‘…The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness…And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.’ President Barack Obama (January 20, 2009)
“Although America has long recognized that a nation, founded on individual liberty, requires equal opportunity in housing, employment and public accommodations, state governments and the District of Columbia financially coerce parents to send their children to government run schools. This is the greatest government-sanctioned violation of civil rights in today’s America.
“The Civil Rights Act for Equal Educational Opportunity will mandate equitable funding for children in non-public schools, while respecting the liberty of schools in hiring and provision of services. In accordance with the 10th Amendment, academic standards and means of funding would be left to the states.
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NBC: Obama Calls Singer Jessica Simpson Fat
-By Warner Todd Huston
**Video Below the Fold**
Apparently, President Barack Obama thought that Jessica Simpson’s weight was something he needed to make fun of during his pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer on NBC Sunday. Seriously. Obama called Jessica Simpson a fatty on national TV.
Lauer displayed for the audience the cover of a recent issue of the tabloid entertainment magazine US Weekly that featured the President’s wife and daughters and also had an insert photo pushing a story about singer Simpson.
As he viewed the cover, Obama decided to smack the singer down for being “in a weight battle.”
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It’s About The Change Yet Lobbyists and Tax Cheats Abound in New Administration
-By Warner Todd Huston
From the early days of his campaign, Obama made with the flourish that, should he be elected, lobbyists would not be welcome in his new tone Washington, his Washington of change and hope. Soon after the election, Obama’s spokesman John Podesta made a great show of announcing that Obama was insisting on the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to his ongoing choices for members of his administration and his transition team.
In the early November news conference, Podesta proudly proclaimed that Obama was so interested in distancing himself from the old, business-as-usual Washington that they didn’t care if they were excluding people of long Washington experience with their supposed strict ethics rules. Podesta sternly told reporters, “I’ve heard the complaint that we’re leaving all these extra people on the side, that we’re leaving all the people that know everything out in the cold. So be it. That’s a commitment that is one the American people expect and one the President-elect made.”
Yet within weeks it became clear that this new ethical standard was merely so much window dressing. Now, lobbyists abound in Obama’s administration and have since day one. Not only that, but tax cheats seem to be particularly drawn to the new president.
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CNN Sells Obama T-Shirts, Propagandizing for The One
-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember the days when news agencies claimed they were the fourth estate? Remember when they claimed to be “objective” and pretended at being separate from the controlling power in Washington D.C.? Apparently that whole claim has proven somewhat chimeric if the several stories we’ve detailed this week are any indication. And now, to add to the gathering evidence that the Old Media are actively joining Team Obama and the political left, comes CNN to hawk a new line of Obama T-Shirts. So much for being objective. So much for staying above joining a political campaign.
Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press was alerted by one of her readers to CNN’s participation in Barack Obama’s permanent political campaign with its new capitalist venture. CNN’s headline shirts, where CNN fans can pick from various CNN headlines and have them emblazoned on a T-Shirt for their wearing pleasure, have been around for a little while, of course. But never before has the TV Cable Newser dedicated an entire series of such shirts to celebrate a single politician… until The One descended upon Washington.
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WTH on Right Balance Radio in 2008
Here is one I did in early 2008 with the Right Balance Radio show on the accent radio network.
Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.
Why I Quit The Reporter
-By Michael M. Bates
The Reporter, a suburban Chicago newspaper, included on its commentary page last week this editorial announcement:
“The Reporter newspaper regrets to inform our loyal readers that columnist Michael Bates has chosen to discontinue his services after nearly 20 years writing for our commentary page.
“Mr. Bates is a polarizing commentator beloved by some readers and detested by others. . . We know some readers won’t be upset by his departure, but we also understand those members of the unofficial Michael Bates fan club will be extremely disappointed. One or two readers have actually told us over the years that Mr. Bates’ column is the reason they read The Reporter.” The notice went on to say something complimentary about my writing and to wish my family and me well.
The statement was wrong about how long I’ve taken up space in The Reporter. It’s been well over 20 years. Then again, since the editor was in elementary school when I began cranking – the emphasis here is on crank – out a weekly column, his error is understandable.
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50 Years After His Death, The Boy Finally Meets his Father
-By Warner Todd Huston
The boy that was born two months after his famous father died in a tragic accident saw his father’s face for the first time fifty years after the fatal day that stole the elder from our world.
How is that, you ask? Well, it may seem like one of those riddles or some exercise in logic but, no, I assure you it’s quite true. And the truth of the matter makes for a fascinating story.
Jay Perry Richardson was born the same year that his father died in a horrible plane accident. In fact, Jay was still peacefully floating in the womb when that fatal day in 1959 came to take the life of his vital and well-known father. Young Jay never laughed with his father, never touched his face, never was taught to ride a bike by his dad and were it not for the heavily thumbed and faded photographs that his family so cherished of the man lost to time, young Jay wouldn’t even know what his father looked like.
Unless… unless he looked in the mirror. Ah, that face he wore, he has been told, is the spitting image of his father’s. That thought likely always warmed young Jay’s heart.
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Another Obama Foreign Policy Failure… Or Is It?
-By Warner Todd Huston
During the campaign, Barack Obama maintained that he would focus on intervening between Pakistan and India over their disputed Kashmir region. Obama repeatedly claimed that settling the Kashmir question was a “critical task” for the next administration and floated a lot of conjecture about how his administration would step in to solve the situation. But, despite all the claims that Obama made about how important Kashmir was to his developing India/Pakistan policy, the Obama administration has just trimmed any focus on Kashmir from envoy Richard C. Holbrooke’s responsibilities.
India is ecstatic over this move and has claimed a diplomatic victory over the Obama administration on the matter. No word yet from the Pakistanis over this loss of focus on a pet issue that they felt Obama had promised to help them with.
This is a turn around by Obama and a failure to live up to his campaign rhetoric. By trimming Kashmir from Holbrooke’s duties, Obama is casting aside one of the few specific foreign policy aims he claimed was so important during the campaign.
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US Professors Attacking Israel and YOUR Tax $$ Fund It
-By Warner Todd Huston
Sadly, we are used to the anti-Semitism of Europe. After all, that is where anti-Semitism has historically thrived in a most virulent form and does still today. We are also used to the Jew hatred of the illiterati of Europe’s universities having seen so often the petitions they’ve raised to denounce Israel and give succor to Hamas and Fatah — and any other terrorist group that comes down the pike, for that matter. Of course, this infection of hate, racism and self-destructive terror worship is increasingly appearing at our own universities in the U.S. Nothing is more representative of that than the example of the “U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel” recently emanating out of several California Universities.
Sponsored by several radical Muslimists that claim at being professors in a handful of California universities, this petition is one of the first of it’s kind here in the U.S. A disgusting milestone on the road to the Islamization of our tax payer funded institutions of higher learning. It is also an effort that pushes an extreme anti-intellectualism in our schools.
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Unions Gain Heavy Among Government Workers
-By Warner Todd Huston
As we reported a few days ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported its newest stats on union membership for 2008. These stats show that union membership has increased for the second straight year. But where it has increased is of key importance.
The report shows a gain of 428,000 members, the largest in the last 25 years and since such statistics have been gathered. Alarmingly, a rising number of union workers are employed by government.
The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.6 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.2 percent. This group includes many workers in several heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters. Private sector industries with high unionization rates include transportation and utilities (22.2 per-cent), telecommunications (19.3 percent), and construction (15.6 per-cent). In 2008, unionization rates were relatively low in financial activities (1.8 percent) and professional and business services (2.1 percent).
This was a rise from numbers seen in 2007 and previous, as well. State and local government worker unions are steadily on the rise and therein lies the danger to good government. The singular problem with unions and government is that unions do not make for good government.
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Pittsburgh Schools: Superbowl More Important Than Teaching
-By Warner Todd Huston
Adding yet another chapter in that ever growing book The Decline and Fall of American Education now being written by our teacher’s unions and failed administrations nation wide, Pittsburgh Public Schools will be delayed two hours this Monday. It is assumed, it appears, that teachers will be too tired to make it in on time because of partying for the Superbowl the night before. It is also obviously assumed that parents will be irresponsible enough to allow their kids to stay up past bedtime for a mere football game.
Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt has announced the 2 hour delay noting that it is being implemented as a “safety precaution,” whatever that is supposed to mean? For its part, the teachers union said that these delays in the past, usually initiated because of foul weather, have only applied to students and not teachers. This time, though, it applies to the teachers and staff, too. Why? Well, it’s a union payback for that one day they all came to school even though foul weather made the administration cancel school that day, of course.
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Letting the Evidence Speak for Itself
-By Nancy Salvato
In a letter recently submitted to Education Week CITATION Ste09 \l 1033 (Stephen Krashen, 2009) Stephen Krashen, Professor Emeritus, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, draws attention to the Reading First final impact study which showed that children following an intensive decoding-based curriculum do well on tests of decoding but not on measures of reading comprehension when compared with regular students. He reminds readers that the National Reading Panel, the foundation for Reading First, came up with similar results.
From these two studies, Dr. Krashen draws the following conclusion. A high level of proficiency in decoding is not necessary in order to learn to read. Yet, he has employed fallacious reasoning to confirm his obvious bias against Reading First.
What these studies actually confirm is precisely what the authors of Reading First already understood; Phonics is not an end in itself. Phonics is a critical step in supporting reading development. With this in mind, The National Reading Panel recommended explicit and systematic phonics instruction. By this, it is meant that teachers should be provided precise directions for modeling and for leading students through the process of using letter-sound relationships to read words; letter sound relationships should be taught in a clearly defined sequence; and students should be provided extensive practice in reading stories with many different words to decode. Phonics is most effective when introduced in Kindergarten and first grade.
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40% Increase in Brit Gun Crime… SINCE Gun Ban
Gun banner’s failure is murdering Brits by the thousands per year.