Democrat culture of corruption

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER RANGEL PROBE

Democrat culture of corruption

Monica Conyers pleads guilty to conspiracyShe faces up to 5 years in prison

By BEN SCHMITT, JOE SWICKARD, JIM SCHAEFER, DAVID ASHENFELTER, M.L. ELRICK and ZACHARY GORCHOWFree Press Staff Writers

Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers pleaded guilty this morning to conspiring to commit bribery and is free on personal bond.
U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said, "The defendant now stands convicted."
The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable by up to five years in prison.
No sentencing date has been set.
Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman U.S. Rep. John Conyers, appeared before Cohn to answer charges in connection with the wide-ranging probe of wrongdoing at Detroit city hall.
• PDF: Download the charging document and plea agreement
She has long been under suspicion in the Synagro Technologies bribery probe, not least because she had been a vocal opponent of the contract before suddenly switching her sentiments. She became the deciding voice in the city council’s 5-4 vote to approve the sludge-hauling deal in November 2007.
“This is not the beginning and it is certainly not the end, folks,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Andy Arena said at a news conference this morning.
Arena said the message to corrupt public officials is, “We’re coming after you.”
U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg said the city corruption probe continues, but this is the end of his office’s investigation “of Synagro-related conduct.”
It remains unclear if federal investigators are still considering Synagro charges against Sam Riddle, the ex-Conyers aide, who court documents suggest was with Conyers when she received at least one of the bribes.
The Free Press previously reported that Riddle is also under investigation for possible corruption in Southfield. In that instance, authorities are looking into whether a pawn shop in that city used undue influence to win quicker approval to move its store to another part of Southfield.
Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel, who testified before the grand jury in the case, hailed the clearing of other members.
"That is fabulous," she said. "That is very good news. That will help, I think, to dissipate the cloud."
Berg said the plea deal does not require Conyers to cooperate in the ongoing investigation of city corruption.
While Cohn pronounced Conyers convicted, Detroit attorney Bill Goodman said his understanding is that she is not convicted or compelled to leave office until she is sentenced.
Goodman, who represented the City Council in its fight to oust ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, said the city charter requires a council member to step down “the minute he or she is convicted of a felony. In federal court, that process is complete at the sentencing.”
No resignation letter has been submitted by Conyers to Detroit City Council as of this morning, according to the council clerk’s office, Council President Ken Cockrel Jr.’s office, and council’s legal office.
The federal plea document released today cites two instances in late 2007, in the days surrounding the approval of the now-infamous Synagro Technologies sludge-hauling contract, when Conyers accepted cash bribes from a Synagro consultant.
The document does not cite the specific amount of the bribes, but previous court documents have said that Conyers, identified by the feds as Council Member A, took at least two bribes of $3,000 each, among other bribes.
In both cases cited in the court documents today, Conyers was handed the cash in an envelope by a individual representing Rayford Jackson, a Detroit businessman doing work for Synagro who pleaded guilty to bribery earlier this month.
On one of those two occasions, Conyers was accompanied by an aide. Previous court documents indirectly identified former Conyers aide and political consultant Sam Riddle as having participated in the bribery scheme.
Rayford Jackson’s brother Lennie is believed to be the courier who met with Conyers.
Elizabeth Jacobs, Lennie Jackson’s attorney, declined to comment on Conyers’ plea or plea document.
“The thing speaks for itself,” Jacobs said today.
The charge reads: Monica Ann Conyers beginning on a date unknown and continuing until or about December 2007, did knowingly and voluntarily conspire and agree with an aide and others to corruptly solicit and demand for the benefit of herself and others and to accept and agree to accept things of value from persons while an agent of the City of Detroit, an entity that received more than $10,000 in federal funding during the calendar year of 2007, with intent that Conyers would be influenced and rewarded in connection with any business transaction or series of transactions of a value of $5,000 or more with the City of Detroit.
Overt acts: On Nov. 20, 2007, at approximately 3:15 p.m., Conyers met with an individual sent by Rayford Jackson in the parking lot at Butzel Family Center and received an envelope containing cash. On Dec. 4, 2007, at approximately 2:30 p.m., an individual sent by Rayford Jackson met Conyers and her aide in a McDonald's parking lot in Detroit at which time the individual delivered an envelope containing cash.
The two bribes admittedly accepted by Conyers – on Nov. 20 and Dec. 4 2007 – bookended the Synagro vote, which was on Nov. 28 of that year.
The charging document reads: “The payments were made and received as part of an agreement and understanding between defendant and Rayford Jackson … to influence defendant to support the Synagro contract.”
She has been at the center of FBI questioning for months about the city’s sludge disposal contract with Synagro Technologies and her activities as a member of the city pension board.
Also attending the hearing was David Whitaker, director of research and analysis division of Detroit City Council, sitting in the back row with coworker Marcel Hurt. Whitaker said they are to report back what happened to city council today.
“What happens next depends on what the council wants us to do, and what the charter requires,” Whitaker said. He said if Conyers pleads and a change is required on council, JoAnn Watson becomes mayor pro tem.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Conyers could face 31 to 60 months in prison, depending on how much money the judge believes was involved in the scheme. Conyers’ lawyer and federal prosecutors disagree about the amount of money she received.
After pleading guilty, Conyers left the courtroom through a back door and got into a public elevator on the Fort Street side of the federal courthouse.
Conyers declined to comment on her plea, then refused to allow the doors to close until a Free Press reporter got out of the elevator, which was going up. She stepped out of the elevator and flagged a court employee to have the reporter removed.
“Can someone get her out of here?” Conyers asked after declining to comment on her plea.
The reporter voluntarily got out of the elevator, but Conyers and an unidentified man and woman with her got on another elevator instead.
Former Detroit Police whistle-blower Gary Brown, a city council candidate, said today he was relieved to hear of Conyers’ plea.
“I’m glad,” he said. “This has been anticipated for a long time. Detroiters have been on edge and with the election cycle coming around, if council members are involved in corruption, we need to get that exposed prior to the election. I hope any agreement requires her to forfeit her position immediately. Any other city employee charged criminally would be required to step down.”
Conyers’ husband, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, was not available for comment this morning. His office released the following statement:
“This has been a trying time for the Conyers family. With hope and prayer, they will make it through this as a family. Public officials must expect to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards. With this in mind, Mr. Conyers wants to work towards helping his family and the city recover from this serious matter.”
U.S. Attorney Berg told the Free Press today that other council members and John Conyers did nothing wrong.
"I want to state that this investigation has not uncovered evidence sufficient to support charging any other elected members of the Detroit City Council with taking bribes or engaging in acts of corruption relating to the Synagro contract," Berg said.
"I also want to make it equally clear that the evidence offered no suggestion that U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Mrs. Conyers' husband, had any knowledge or role in Mrs. Conyers' illegal conduct, nor did the congressman attempt to influence this investigation in any way."
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union – which bitterly opposed the Synagro deal – welcomed Conyers’ plea.
“She sold her vote to privatize part of the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department’s core operations, and eliminate over a hundred city worker jobs,”AFSCME Local 207 President John Riehl said in a news release today.
“We would hope that all those that violated the rights of the citizens and city workers in the Synagro case will be charged forthwith, including the top levels of the Synagro Corporation,” Riehl wrote. “All guilty public and private officials must resign and be jailed.”
Riehl added: “Let this be a hard lesson to elected officials and the public: privatization of public services, influence peddling and bribery go hand in hand. Keep the profit motive out of the public’s services!”
The Rev. Spencer Ellis, pastor at Citadel of Praise who says he’s a longtime friend and spiritual adviser to Monica Conyers, called today’s developments “a very unfortunate situation.”
“As a spiritual adviser we pray with her and for her during this difficult time,” Ellis said. “It’s not the end of the world. We look to her future and toward her restoration, mentally, spiritually and physically.”
Ellis says he has not spoken with Conyers, a member of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Detroit, in recent days, but expects he will soon. “I’m not sure about today. I know this is a very trying day.”
In January, James Rosendall, the Michigan-based Synagro vice president, pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge for his role in the Detroit Synagro contract and was fired by the company.
Rosendall, 44, of Grand Rapids admitted to plying Detroit officials with cash, contributions, chartered flights and a case of Cristal champagne -- which costs thousands of dollars -- to win approval of the $1.2-billion sludge disposal contract.
He is facing 11 months in prison and a fine of up to $200,000 for his role in the scheme, which began in 2001.
Synagro suspended him without pay last summer after the Free Press revealed that federal officials were probing a deal to build a sludge disposal facility in Detroit.

Barack Obama's Facebook Page

Link.

Another food myth shattered

Lard: The New Health Food?

Cap and Trade

So will Japan have to buy carbon credits to compensate for this?

Here's real political interference with science

EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study, CEI Says
By: Kevin MooneyCommentary Staff Writer06/24/09 6:29 PM EDT
Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge.
“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”
The agency has never made the study public or included it in official reference materials, according to CEI. As part of a recently concluded EPA public comment period on a proposed rule, CEI submitted a set four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, as evidence that the suppressed study included a critique of the agency’s global warming position.
CEI has asked EPA to make the study public and to allow public comments on it. CEI has also asked that EPA to prevent any reprisals against the study’s author who has been employed with the agency for 35 years.

When the government runs your life

US pensioners mentally '10 years younger' than those in England

Tells you a lot about Obamacare...all health care decisions will fit the rules or else

Jane Sturm told the story of her nearly 100-year-old mother, who was originally denied a pacemaker because of her age. She eventually got one, but only after seeking out another doctor.
"Outside the medical criteria," Sturm asked, "is there a consideration that can be given for a certain spirit ... and quality of life?"
"I don't think that we can make judgments based on peoples' spirit," Obama said. "That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people.
"We're not going to solve every single one of these very difficult decisions at end of life," he said. "Ultimately that's going to be between physicians and patients."

Obama cannot comprehend "spirit" in determining medical care for the elderly but wants a Supreme Court justice that will decide based on "empathy". Got it.

Federal thugs in action

In a just world the B of A shareholders would be able to sue the government for the loss of value.

Rep. Issa Says Fed ‘Engaged in a Cover-Up’ on Merrill-Bofa
By Alec McCabe
June 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa said the Federal Reserve “engaged in a cover-up” about details of Bank of America Corp.’s takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. The Fed “deliberately hid concerns and pertinent details” of the merger from other government agencies, Issa, a Republican from California, said in an e-mailed statement.

Strange

Girl who doesn't age baffles doctors


A 16-year-old girl who is the size of an infant and has the mental capacity of a toddler continues to baffle doctors in the US.

Medical experts believe Brooke Greenberg suffers from some kind of genetic mutation that shapes the way she ages, leaving her with the perpetual appearance of a baby.
The exact cause of the phenomenon has not been pinpointed.
Doctors say Brooke is not growing in a coordinated way, with her body parts out of synchronisation, as if each has a mind of its own.
"Why doesn't she age?" her father, Howard Greenberg, asked on US network ABC.
"Is she the fountain of youth?"
Brooke's mother Melanie Greenberg, 48, said she was so used to people asking how old her daughter is she did not even try to explain.
"My system always has been to turn years into months," Mrs Greenberg said.
"So if someone asked today, I might say she's 16 months old."
Brooke, who is 76cm tall and weighs 7kg, does not speak but has a distinctive laugh and clearly recognises people she knows.
She has three sisters aged between 13 and 22, all of who have developed normally and are used to their family getting unusual attention.
"She looks like a six-month-old, but she kind of has the personality of a 16-year-old," said sister Caitlin, 19.
Brooke has been plagued by medical problems since she was born, at one point diagnosed with a brain tumour that doctors thought would be terminal.
Her parents bought a casket in preparation, but new tests remarkably revealed there was no tumour.
Doctors say although there are other cases of people with abnormal development, Brooke seems to be unique.
"Many of the best-known names in medicine, in their experience ... had not seen anyone who matched up to Brooke," said pediatrician Lawrence Pakula from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
"She is always a surprise."
But doctors hope that Brooke may even be able to provide important clues as to how human beings age.
If the specific DNA behind the phenomenon can be isolated, they may even be able to learn how to slow the ageing process.
"Without being sensational, I'd say this is an opportunity for us to answer the question [of] why we're mortal, or at least to test it," said Dr Richard Walker from the University of South Florida College of Medicine.
"And if we're wrong, we can discard it. But if we're right, we've got the golden ring."

Exposing real racism

Vicious Academic LiberalsWalter E. Williams

Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, has an article, "Study, Study, Study -- A Bad Career Move" in the June 2, 2009 edition of Minding the Campus (www.mindingthecampus.com) that should raise any decent American's level of disgust for what's routinely practiced at most of our universities. Mr. Connerly tells of a conversation he had with a high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that the administrator was developing to increase campus diversity. Connerly asked the administrator why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. His response was that that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, the University of California campuses would be dominated by Asians. When Connerly asked, "What would be wrong with that?", the UC administrator told him that Asians are "too dull -- they study, study, study." Then he said to Connerly, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it." Connerly did not reveal the administrator's name. It would not have done any good because it's part of a diversity vision shared by most college administrators.

With the enactment of California's Proposition 209 in 1996, outlawing racial discrimination in college admissions, Asian enrollment at UC campuses has skyrocketed. UC Berkeley student body is 42 percent Asian students; UC Irvine 55 percent; UC Riverside 43 percent; and UCLA 38 percent. Asian student enrollment on all nine UC campuses is over 40 percent. That's in a state where the Asian population is about 13 percent. When there are policies that emphasize and reward academic achievement, Asians excel. College officials and others who are proponents of "diversity" and equal representation find that outcome offensive.
To deal with the Asian "menace," the UC Regents have proposed, starting in 2010, that no longer will the top 12.5 percent of students based on statewide performance be automatically admitted. Students won't have to take SAT subject matter tests. Grades and test scores will no longer weigh so heavily in admission decisions. This is simply gross racial discrimination against those "dull" Asian students who "study, study, study" in favor of "interesting" black, white and Hispanic students who don't "study, study, study."
This is truly evil and would be readily condemned as such if applied to other areas lacking in diversity. With blacks making up about 80 percent of professional basketball players, there is little or no diversity in professional basketball. Even at college-level basketball, it is not at all unusual to watch two teams playing and there not being a single white player on the court, much less a Chinese or Japanese player. I can think of several rule changes that might increase racial diversity in professional and college basketball. How about eliminating slam dunks and disallowing three-point shots? Restrict dribbling? Lower the basket's height? These and other rule changes would take away the "unfair" advantage that black players appear to have and create greater basketball diversity. But wouldn't diversity so achieved be despicable? If you answer yes, why would it be any less so when it's used to fulfill somebody's vision of college diversity?
Ward Connerly ends his article saying, "There is one truth that is universally applicable in the era of 'diversity,' especially in American universities: an absolute unwillingness to accept the verdict of colorblind policies." Hypocrisy is part and parcel of the liberal academic elite. But the American people, who fund universities either as parents, donors or taxpayers, should not accept this evilness and there's a good way to stop it -- cut off the funding to racially discriminating colleges and universities.

Let me get this straight...

Union workers because they receive more generous health benefits then regular employees will not have to pay tax on health benefits while the poor schlub gets less and pays more, right?

Is this a backdoor way of pumping up union membership?

Progressives/Democrats cannot abide individuality everybody has to be forced into a group so the government can more easily control you.

Union workers would be exempt from Dem health care tax
By: Susan FerrechioChief Congressional Correspondent06/22/09 7:53 PM EDT

The best chance for compromise legislation on health care may be a plan under construction in the Senate Finance Committee that would pay for a public plan in part by taxing some worker health benefits.
But the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax.
With cost estimates already as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed paying for the bill in part by taxing health care benefits for workers who earn more than $100,000, or $200,000 for married couples, according to those familiar with the discussions.
Baucus is also weighing a tax based on the value of health care benefits that exceed a yet-to-be determined cap. A tax on benefits that exceed the cap by a mere $3,000 could amount to $750 in taxes annually for a worker who earns as little as $34,000, say experts.
But those union members serving under collective bargaining agreements would not be subjected to the tax, according to proposals under discussion.
Union workers enjoy some of the most extensive and costliest health benefits, and union officials complained their members would be unfairly burdened by a health care tax because their contracts cannot be changed quickly enough to avoid it.
Union members also represent one of the biggest and most powerful Democratic constituencies and their support of any health care reform proposal is viewed as essential to getting a bill passed in Congress.
Baucus has proposed the tax threshold on health care benefits be set higher than the cost of policies available to federal employees and he has proposed exempting until 2013 those plans negotiated as part of union contracts.
“It’s a means of making sure that unions are foursquare behind any reform bill that comes out,” said Henry Aaron, a health care policy expert at Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Critics of the Baucus proposal to exempt unions from a health care benefits tax said the exclusion could be used to lure into unions employees who are anxious to avoid the benefits tax.
Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate with the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute, said excluding union benefits is also practical.
“The reality is, unions are in the position where they are going to get hit the hardest on that tax, and they just can’t change it on a dime like everyone else,” Fronstin said.
Baucus is said to be considering a delay for everyone, not just unions.
“And there is precedent for that,” Fronstin said. “When the Clinton health plan was put on the table in 1993, the effective date was 1998. It was giving the industry time to implement whatever adjustments they needed to make.”

Newspaper or propaganda outlet?

New York Times Poll Showing 72% Support for Obama's Health Care Plan Was Stacked With Obama Supporters

Obama and the Cloward-Piven Strategy

James Simpson on the Democratic Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Follow the link to read it all.

Steyn on America

Mark Steyn:

A mere year ago the notion that the government would take over General Motors would have seemed incredible. Yet here we are, with the president of the United States firing the CEO and personally calling the mayor of Detroit to assure him he has no plans to move the head office out of the city. Not literally, not yet. But in any practical sense it’s now headquartered in Washington. In another twelve months, I wonder what currently unthinkable scenarios will have become faits accomplis.

For those of us who have lived under jurisdictions where the government builds your car, the Obama presidency is already a kind of epic tragedy — 1970s Britain but on a Heaven’s Gate budget. Not just grey, humdrum, second-tier industrial decline — the kind that made Dundee, Scotland, just a plausible stand-in for Brezhnev-era Moscow when the BBC came to make a film on the Soviet retirement of the traitor Guy Burgess. No, this is a fabulous money-no-object plummet on caviar-greased skids. Millions and billions and trillions are shoveled into the hole, and leave no trace.

President Obama, in that rhetorical tic that’s already become a bit of a bore, likes to position himself as a man who won’t duck the tough decisions. So, faced with a U.S. automobile industry that so overcompensates its workers it can’t make a car for a price anybody’s willing to pay for it, the president handed over control to the very unions whose demands are principally responsible for that irreconcilable arithmetic. Presented with a similar situation 30 years ago, Mrs. Thatcher took on the unions and, eventually, destroyed their power. That was a tough decision. Telling your political allies they can now go on overpaying themselves in perpetuity is a piece of cake.

When the going gets tough, the tough get bailed out. Your car business operates on a failed business model? Don’t worry, the taxpayers will prop that failed business model up forever. You went bananas on your credit card and can’t pay it back? Don’t worry, we’ll pass a law to make it the bank’s fault. Your once golden state has decayed into such a corrupt racket of government cronyism that the remaining revenue generators are fleeing your borders faster than you can raise taxes on them? Relax, we’re lining up a federal bailout for you, too. Your unreadable newspaper has just woken up from its 96-page Obama Full Color Inaugural Souvenir bender to discover that its advertising revenue has collapsed with the real-estate market and GM dealerships? Hey, lighten up, Senator Kerry’s already been pleading your case in the Senate. Is it really so hard to picture President Obama calling the mayor next spring to assure him he has no plans to move the New York Times out of New York?

This is now a land that rewards failure — at the personal, corporate, and state level. And, as conservatives well know, if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. If you reward it as lavishly as the Obama administration’s doing it, you’ll get the Radio City Christmas Spectacular of Failure, on ice and with full supporting orchestra.

There is a phrase you hear a lot in Canada, Britain, and Europe to describe the collection of positive “rights” (to “free” health care, unemployment benefits, subsidized public transit) to which the citizens of Western democracies have become addicted: the “social safety net.” It always struck me as an odd term: Obviously, it derives from the circus. But life isn’t really a high-wire act, is it? Or at least it didn’t use to be. If you put the average chap — or even Barack Obama or Barney Frank — in spangled leotard and tights and on a unicycle and shove him out across the wire, he’s likely to fall off. But put the average chap in spangled leotard and tights out into the world and tell him to get a job, find accommodation, raise a family, take responsibility, and he can do it. Or he used to be able to, until the government decided he needed a “safety net.”

When did human life become impossible without a “safety net”? My neighbor’s family came to my corner of New Hampshire in the winter of 1767–68 when her great-great-great-whatever dragged his huge millstones up the frozen river from Connecticut to build the first gristmill on a swift-running brook in the middle of uncleared forest in a four-year-old township comprising a dozen families. And he did it without first applying for a federal business development grant. No big deal. Her family’s nothing special, my town’s nothing special: That’s the point. It was routine — in a pre–“safety net” society.

In his new book, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, Paul Rahe writes, “Human dignity is bound up with taking responsibility for conducting one’s own affairs.” But today the state cocoons “one’s own affairs” so thoroughly as to remove almost all responsibility from modern life, and much of human dignity with it. And, if personal consequences have been all but abolished, societal consequences are harder to dodge. Sometimes great powers decline slowly, almost imperceptibly, as Britain did for much of the 20th century. Sometimes it’s more sudden and convulsive. Obama is attempting Euro-statism, but, unlike Europe, without the counterweight of America to preserve some approximate relationship to reality. Which is to say I do not think this decline will be genteel, for America or the world.

Everyone else can suffer so the union thugs do not have to...

Dan Walters: Pension hike of a decade ago backfires
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published Monday, Jun. 22, 2009
A milestone on California's meandering journey toward fiscal insolvency occurred exactly a decade ago when the Legislature enacted a massive increase in state employee pensions on the expedient assumption that it would cost taxpayers nothing.
Although the new pensions would generate almost countless billions of dollars in extra income for retirees in the years ahead, the CalPERS board, dominated by union representatives, told legislators that taxpayers wouldn't have to bear the load because investment income, which was flowing into the pension trust fund from high-tech stocks, would continue indefinitely.
"They (CalPERS) anticipate that the state's contribution to CalPERS will remain below the 1998-99 fiscal year for at least the next decade," said a final Senate analysis of the 1999 legislation that expanded state pensions, allowing Highway Patrol officers, prison guards and other "safety" workers in some cases to get more than 100 percent of their salaries.
Wrong.
Within a few years, the dot-com bubble had burst, CalPERS had suffered major losses and the state's burden for pensions had pushed into the multibillion-dollar range, not counting the heavy impact on local governments that had cavalierly followed the state's lead on boosting pension benefits.
The situation was ripe for a backlash, such as an initiative measure that would rein in public pensions, but union-controlled CalPERS lowered the political heat by offering employers a "smoothing" policy that would protect them against immediate jolts, spreading out the increases over a number of years.
By and by, the economy improved, albeit through an unsustainable explosion in real estate development, and the pension issue dropped from the political radar screen. But now we're mired in the worst recession since the Great Depression, CalPERS' investments have dropped by nearly a third and the state is paying more than $3 billion a year into the pension fund, nearly 10 times what it paid a decade ago when CalPERS made its bogus assertion to lawmakers.
CalPERS is poised to hit the state for nearly another billion dollars a year in 2010-11 to cover its investment losses and the payout to baby boomer retirees who are enjoying the enhanced benefits enacted a decade ago, but is offering state and local governments another, more aggressive "smoothing" scheme to sharply reduce the immediate hit and spread out the investment losses over many years.
Last week, its board adopted the plan for local governments but after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger criticized it, postponed any action on the state's contribution. "By deferring pension contributions, CalPERS would not only be gambling that its investment earnings in this economy will grow faster than its pension obligations but would also be using our kids' money to do so because they will be the ones stuck footing the bill," said Schwarzenegger, who wants to overhaul pensions and medical care for retirees.
Here we go again.

It worked so well in the auto industry didn't it?

Tenure and Academic Freedom
College campuses display a striking uniformity of thought.

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY

All over the country, colleges and universities are feeling the financial crunch: Endowments are down, students can't afford to pay tuition, and some state legislatures are even trimming higher-education budgets. Unfortunately, thanks to the recent ruling of a judge in Colorado, some college administrators have just lost one way to keep their costs under control.
In 2003, the board of trustees of the Metropolitan College of Denver -- a public school in Colorado -- changed the school's handbook to make it easier to lay off tenured faculty in case of financial exigency. Under the current system at Metro College and elsewhere, some professors who have been at an institution for a period of about seven years are eligible for a job for life. They can technically be fired for gross misbehavior or incompetence. But once they've been granted tenure, a university is generally stuck with these teachers. And paying the salaries of tenured professors can add up, especially when a professor may no longer be teaching many classes either because of laziness or lack of student interest in his or her field.
In response to the handbook change, five Metro College professors sued. They claimed that the terms of their employment had been significantly altered. The state district court ruled in favor of the trustees. That decision was appealed -- with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) filing an amicus brief -- and in 2007 a state appeals court ordered a new trial. In its brief, the AAUP argued that "depriving the tenured faculty of a preference in retention places the tenured faculty at greater risk of being singled out" because of an administrator's or trustee's dislike for his teaching or research, or for positions taken on public issues.
The results of that new trial came down earlier this month. Rather than simply deciding that the change in the handbook altered what was a "vested right" of the professors, Denver District Judge Norman D. Haglund ruled that "the public interest is advanced more by tenure systems that favor academic freedom over tenure systems that favor flexibility in hiring or firing." He also noted that "by its very nature, tenure promotes a system in which academic freedom is protected."
Talk about judicial overreach. But does tenure, as the judge argues, actually protect academic freedom?
In the AAUP's 1915 Declaration of Principles, progressive educator John Dewey wrote that "if education is the cornerstone of the structure of society and progress in scientific knowledge is essential to civilization, few things can be more important than to enhance the dignity of the scholar's profession." That dignity, Dewey explained, was to be enhanced by tenure. To protect academics from arbitrary dismissal, as well as to attract smart people to the profession, schools offered a certain amount of job security.
But higher education has changed a lot in the past hundred years. And while there is no doubt that schools like Metro College serve a useful function -- teaching vocational skills and offering remedial classes to students who have failed to get a decent K-12 education -- its faculty is not exactly in the business of passing on knowledge essential to civilization. Some of the courses taught this year by the professors who sued include American Baseball History and Business Statistics. The school even offers a nutrition major. These are all fields of study that have fairly definitive answers. Faculty members don't really need the freedom to ask controversial questions in discussing them.
But what about those teachers who are pursuing higher truths? Has tenure really protected their ability to question and research freely? For the most part, no.
The truth is that tenure has served as an instrument of conformity since tenure votes are often glorified popularity contests. The fact that university professors donated to President Obama's campaign over John McCain's by a margin of eight to one is only the tip of the iceberg. Those professors who want tenure and disagree with the prevailing trends in their field -- or the political fashions outside of it -- know that they must keep their mouths shut for at least the first seven years of their careers.
Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield once famously advised a conservative colleague to wait until he had tenure and only then to "hoist the Jolly Roger." But few professors are getting around to hoisting the Jolly Roger at all. Either they don't have a viewpoint that is different from their colleagues, or they've decided that if they are going to remain at one place for several decades, they'd rather just get along.
Is tenure to blame for the unanimity of thinking in American universities? It's hard to tell. But shouldn't the burden of proof be on the people who want jobs for life?
Ms. Riley is the Journal's deputy Taste editor. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A13

It's unpopular speech that needs protecting not thought police

THE SPIRIT BEHIND HATE CRIMES LAWS

The speed of socialism

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing
By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 22, 5:20 pm ET
NEW YORK – Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.
Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.
The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.
"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."
Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.
Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.
"It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.
City officials said that they make teachers report to a rubber room instead of sending they home because the union contract requires that they be allowed to continue in their jobs in some fashion while their cases are being heard. The contract does not permit them to be given other work.
Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said the union and the Department of Education reached an agreement last year to try to reduce the amount of time educators spend in reassignment centers, but progress has been slow.
"No one wants teachers who don't belong in the classroom. However, we cannot neglect the teachers' rights to due process," Davis said. The union represents more than 228,000 employees, including nearly 90,000 teachers.
Many teachers say they are being punished because they ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores.
"The principal wants you out, you're gone," said Michael Thomas, a high school math teacher who has been in a reassignment center for 14 months after accusing an assistant principal of tinkering with test results.
City education officials deny teachers are unfairly targeted but say there has been an effort under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to get incompetents out of the classroom. "There's been a push to report anything that you see wrong," Forte said.
Some other school systems likewise pay teachers to do nothing.
The Los Angeles district, the nation's second-largest school system with 620,000 students, behind New York's 1.1 million, said it has 178 teachers and other staff members who are being "housed" while they wait for misconduct charges to be resolved.
Similarly, Mimi Shapiro, who is now retired, said she was assigned to sit in what Philadelphia calls a "cluster office." "They just sit you in a room in a hard chair," she said, "and you just sit."
Teacher advocates say New York's rubber rooms are more extensive than anything that exists elsewhere.
Teachers awaiting disciplinary hearings around the nation typically are sent home, with or without pay, Karen Horwitz, a former Chicago-area teacher who founded the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse. Some districts find non-classroom work — office duties, for example — for teachers accused of misconduct.
New York City's reassignment centers have existed since the late 1990s, Forte said. But the number of employees assigned to them has ballooned since Bloomberg won more control over the schools in 2002. Most of those sent to rubber rooms are teachers; others are assistant principals, social workers, psychologists and secretaries.
Once their hearings are over, they are either sent back to the classroom or fired. But because their cases are heard by 23 arbitrators who work only five days a month, stints of two or three years in a rubber room are common, and some teachers have been there for five or six.
The nickname refers to the padded cells of old insane asylums. Some teachers say that is fitting, since some of the inhabitants are unstable and don't belong in the classroom. They add that being in a rubber room itself is bad for your mental health.
"Most people in that room are depressed," said Jennifer Saunders, a high school teacher who was in a reassignment center from 2005 to 2008. Saunders said she was charged with petty infractions in an effort to get rid of her: "I was charged with having a student sit in my class with a hat on, singing."
The rubber rooms are monitored, some more strictly than others, teachers said.
"There was a bar across the street," Saunders said. "Teachers would sneak out and hang out there for hours."
Judith Cohen, an art teacher who has been in a rubber room near Madison Square Garden for three years, said she passes the time by painting watercolors of her fellow detainees.
"The day just seemed to crawl by until I started painting," Cohen said, adding that others read, play dominoes or sleep. Cohen said she was charged with using abusive language when a girl cut her with scissors.
Some sell real estate, earn graduate degrees or teach each other yoga and tai chi.
David Suker, who has been in a Brooklyn reassignment center for three months, said he has used the time to plan summer trips to Alaska, Cape Cod and Costa Rica. Suker said he was falsely accused of throwing a girl's test sign-up form in the garbage during an argument.
"It's sort of peaceful knowing that you're going to work to do nothing," he said.
Philip Nobile is a journalist who has written for New York Magazine and the Village Voice and is known for his scathing criticism of public figures. A teacher at Brooklyn's Cobble Hill School of American Studies, Nobile was assigned to a rubber room in 2007, "supposedly for pushing a boy while I was breaking up a fight." He contends the school system is retaliating against him for exposing wrongdoing.
He is spending his time working on his case and writing magazine articles and a novel.
"This is what happens to political prisoners throughout history," he said, alluding to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "They put us in prison and we write our `Letter From the Birmingham Jail.'"

As I recall Matthews wasn't for liberating Iraq either.

Matthews Mocks GOP Candidate for Upholding 2nd Amendment Principles

By Geoffrey Dickens

Chris Matthews, on Monday's "Hardball," mocked Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio for pondering, on his Twitter page, that the "situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd Amendment like ours." Matthews, completely missing the point that our Founding Fathers understood that it is much harder to repress a free people that is armed, derided Rubio in the "Sideshow" portion of his June 22 show:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Next up, a reminder to think before you hit the "send" button. You've all seen what's happening in the streets of Tehran. How people are getting beaten, getting hit with tear gas, getting shot. Take a look at what Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio of Florida posted on his Twitter page after watching those scenes that we've been watching. Quote: "I have a feeling the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd Amendment like ours." Wow! Things would be different if the protestors had the Constitutional right to bear arms?! To fight back against the Iranian Guard? I hadn't thought of that. Then again it wouldn't really be a non-violent protest, would it Mr. Rubio, if the non-violent protestors were walking around with guns!