$10B aimed at union retireesProvision called welfare by some, not enough by others
BY JUSTIN HYDE and TODD SPANGLERFREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
WASHINGTON -- Antilabor forces say it's welfare for the UAW and Democrats' union allies. Labor supporters say it falls short of what's needed as tens of thousands of union members are pushed into early retirement as employers cut back health care coverage.
They're both talking about a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW's retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.
It would see the government -- at least temporarily -- pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64.
Big businesses with union workers are twice as likely to offer retiree benefits as nonunion ones.
Greg Mourad of the National Right to Work Committee called it "a shameless case of political payback," saying Democrats and President Barack Obama are trying "to force the rest of us to pay billions to cover those unions' health care."
Labor advocates say even more funding may be needed.
"It is not enough money," said former U.S. Rep. David Bonior, a Mt. Clemens Democrat who chairs the board at Washington, D.C.-based American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy group. "That will have to be supplemented to fill the gap."
Without U.S. aid, union health plans could fail
The health care debate roiling the nation promises an even greater impact in Michigan: It could determine whether the UAW's gamble that it can insure 850,000 retirees from Detroit's automakers pays off or goes bust.
Thanks to Detroit's twin auto bankruptcies and other concessions, the UAW's voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA, had to take stock of unknown value for $24 billion in claims, while adding thousands of early retirees to its rolls.
Outside experts estimate the funds have about 30 cents in cash for every dollar of future claims, with no guarantee of what its stock assets will be worth. Lance Wallach, a New York-based VEBA expert, says if the funds "don't get something, they're out of business in 12 years."
That something may be national health care reform.
Key provisions in House and Senate proposals set aside $10 billion to pay some claims for early retirees covered by employers and VEBAs, before other cost-saving measures kick in. Critics call it a union giveaway, but the union says the money would keep companies from further slashing coverage.
"We want to see the whole reform package succeed," said Alan Reuther, the UAW's chief lobbyist. "There's substantial overall benefits to the American people and our members that includes benefits to retirees and VEBA."
Bridging a care gap
The $10 billion is aimed at a growing gap between the skyrocketing cost of care for early retirees -- ages 55 to 64, too young for Medicare -- and what President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats promise will be less-expensive coverage once, and if, the much-debated reform measures kick in several years from now.
Layoffs, buyouts and company cutbacks have contributed to force more people into early retirement at a time when only about one-third of U.S. firms with 200 or more workers even offer retiree benefits, compared with more than twice that percentage two decades ago. Of those that remain, companies with union employees are far more likely to offer benefits for early retirees.
That's enough to get the blogosphere ramped up with references to a so-called payoff for collective bargaining groups and whether, once turned on, the spigot of funding for claims can be turned off by Congress.
Money's running out
John Sheils, vice president of the Lewin Group, a health care research firm owned by a United Healthcare subsidiary, said the money likely will run out in less than two years. Then, like with the recent cash-for-clunkers clamor, Congress could feel obligated to add money to the program.
"From a political perspective, I think it's very, very difficult for the Congress to actually close down programs," Sheils said. "This is something people could get used to very quickly."
Labor unions, including the UAW -- which has taken on about $90 billion in health care liabilities for its retirees from the three metro Detroit automakers -- have fought hard for the so-called reinsurance provision that would cover 80% of early retirement claims between $15,000 and $90,000.
According to outside experts, the UAW's VEBAs have only about 30% of the cash needed to cover retirement health benefits for about 850,000 people -- making it the second biggest retiree insurance pool in the nation, with only California's pension plan larger. Shares in Chrysler Group, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. will add to the bottom line -- but it's impossible to say how much.
Were VEBAs a gamble?
The VEBAs will have the power to cut coverage and raise costs to make their money last, and have already warned retirees that cuts are likely next year. Wallach said the UAW VEBAs resemble the plans the UAW set up for workers at Detroit Diesel and Caterpillar in the 1990s -- both of which later ran short of money.
"I really think" the UAW "were gambling there would be some health care nationalization," he said.
Although she doesn't agree with Wallach that the UAW took such a risk, Kristin Dziczek, head of the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research's Labor and Industry Group, said getting help now with the expensive coverage required for pre-Medicare claims could help greatly in the short term. In the long term, any success in lowering health care costs could be a windfall for the VEBAs and help ensure their survival.
Stephen Diamond, a professor at Santa Clara (Calif.) University and a VEBA expert, said the UAW helped get Obama elected; now the union owes its membership to make sure that whatever reform is crafted "protects the interests of their members and their retirees."
It's not just the UAW fighting for the funding. The provision has the backing of the United Steelworkers of America and the Communications Workers of America. The AFL-CIO also pushed for the program in congressional hearings.
Pre-Medicare vulnerability
Reuther said retirees too young for Medicare often face problems in getting or maintaining health insurance, since they're typically far more expensive to insure than younger workers. The reinsurance provision, he said, is needed to maintain coverage.
"We think it's important so that we keep the employer- and VEBA-sponsored coverage for these retirees," he said.
That's especially true of the number of retirees age 55 to 64 without employer- or union-based insurance coverage. People in that group are among the most expensive to cover with health insurance, face high premiums if forced to seek their own policies and often have preexisting conditions that can make finding coverage difficult.
Whatever happens, GM retiree Phil Cimino of Clarkston said he hopes health care reform can help a system that he says costs too much. Cimino, 61, is diabetic, and where he once paid nothing for health care, his premiums and prescriptions now run about $4,000 a year.
He worries it could be more.
"The retirees are getting hit big-time," he said. "I don't think there's enough money in the kitty. I think there's going to be a big problem down the road."
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
How to become a banana republic
Murray may shift on Kennedy Senate request
She is open to bid altering selection law
By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff August 25, 2009
Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, who had privately expressed opposition to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s plea for a temporary appointment to any US Senate vacancy, is now open to the idea, according to a colleague, who said she has given him the green light to round up the necessary votes.
State Senator Robert A. O’Leary, a Democrat from Barnstable, said Murray told him yesterday that she is listening carefully to the arguments for a change in a 2004 law that established a special election process to fill any vacant US Senate seats, but made no provisions for a temporary appointment during the five-month election process.
“She is listening to the members and keeping an open mind,’’ O’Leary said yesterday. “I am full steam ahead and she understands that and is fine with it.’’
In a letter to Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo last week, Kennedy - who is battling brain cancer - said that it was vital for Massachusetts to have two votes in the US Senate during an interim period. He asked them to approve a law swiftly giving the governor the power to appoint a temporary successor.
Murray, who has remained publicly silent on the issue, could not be reached for comment yesterday. But her apparent signal that she will not block any attempts to make the change - and could potentially support it - is significant, given that her opposition could defeat the effort.
Murray’s initial rejection of Kennedy’s request last week blocked Governor Deval Patrick and DeLeo from issuing statements on their positions. According to senior State House sources, they have expressed private support of Kennedy’s request but did not want to make their positions public until Murray was on board.
Kennedy has not been in Washington for several months, raising a potential problem for President Obama and Senate Democrats as they prepare for a potential showdown over health care legislation in coming weeks. The success of the legislation, which Kennedy has championed for decades, hinges on a few votes.
His letter, which reflected an extraordinary public recognition by him that his historic Senate career is coming to a close, created a political uproar, including a partisan backlash from Republicans and conservatives, both here and in Washington, who are accusing the senator and Democrats of trying to pull off a power grab.
Democrats had pushed through the 2004 law in order to deny Republican Mitt Romney, then the governor, the power of filling a vacancy if US Senator John F. Kerry won the presidential election that year. They also at the time rejected GOP attempts to provide for a temporary appointment.
But advocates said Massachusetts should have two votes in the US Senate at all times and that the state, which has always reelected Kennedy by wide margins, should have a say in the health care battle.
They also note that the Republicans had opposed the move to create a special election to fill the seat.
O’Leary, whose district includes Hyannis Port, Kennedy’s home, said that the initial reaction from his Senate colleagues has been cautious.
As of yesterday, three of his colleagues in the 40-member Senate had signed his letter calling for the change.
“It will be a bit of a sell,’’ he said. “I am willing to make a try but it has become more partisan than I anticipated.’’
O’Leary is asking senators to sign onto a bill, sponsored by state Representative Robert M. Koczera, a New Bedford Democrat, that provides a temporary appointment.
The person would be barred from running in the special election, a provision that Kennedy requested. It is not clear that such a prohibition could pass legal muster, although Arkansas has prohibited gubernatorial appointees from running for the office they temporarily hold.
She is open to bid altering selection law
By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff August 25, 2009
Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, who had privately expressed opposition to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s plea for a temporary appointment to any US Senate vacancy, is now open to the idea, according to a colleague, who said she has given him the green light to round up the necessary votes.
State Senator Robert A. O’Leary, a Democrat from Barnstable, said Murray told him yesterday that she is listening carefully to the arguments for a change in a 2004 law that established a special election process to fill any vacant US Senate seats, but made no provisions for a temporary appointment during the five-month election process.
“She is listening to the members and keeping an open mind,’’ O’Leary said yesterday. “I am full steam ahead and she understands that and is fine with it.’’
In a letter to Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo last week, Kennedy - who is battling brain cancer - said that it was vital for Massachusetts to have two votes in the US Senate during an interim period. He asked them to approve a law swiftly giving the governor the power to appoint a temporary successor.
Murray, who has remained publicly silent on the issue, could not be reached for comment yesterday. But her apparent signal that she will not block any attempts to make the change - and could potentially support it - is significant, given that her opposition could defeat the effort.
Murray’s initial rejection of Kennedy’s request last week blocked Governor Deval Patrick and DeLeo from issuing statements on their positions. According to senior State House sources, they have expressed private support of Kennedy’s request but did not want to make their positions public until Murray was on board.
Kennedy has not been in Washington for several months, raising a potential problem for President Obama and Senate Democrats as they prepare for a potential showdown over health care legislation in coming weeks. The success of the legislation, which Kennedy has championed for decades, hinges on a few votes.
His letter, which reflected an extraordinary public recognition by him that his historic Senate career is coming to a close, created a political uproar, including a partisan backlash from Republicans and conservatives, both here and in Washington, who are accusing the senator and Democrats of trying to pull off a power grab.
Democrats had pushed through the 2004 law in order to deny Republican Mitt Romney, then the governor, the power of filling a vacancy if US Senator John F. Kerry won the presidential election that year. They also at the time rejected GOP attempts to provide for a temporary appointment.
But advocates said Massachusetts should have two votes in the US Senate at all times and that the state, which has always reelected Kennedy by wide margins, should have a say in the health care battle.
They also note that the Republicans had opposed the move to create a special election to fill the seat.
O’Leary, whose district includes Hyannis Port, Kennedy’s home, said that the initial reaction from his Senate colleagues has been cautious.
As of yesterday, three of his colleagues in the 40-member Senate had signed his letter calling for the change.
“It will be a bit of a sell,’’ he said. “I am willing to make a try but it has become more partisan than I anticipated.’’
O’Leary is asking senators to sign onto a bill, sponsored by state Representative Robert M. Koczera, a New Bedford Democrat, that provides a temporary appointment.
The person would be barred from running in the special election, a provision that Kennedy requested. It is not clear that such a prohibition could pass legal muster, although Arkansas has prohibited gubernatorial appointees from running for the office they temporarily hold.
Read and understand why socialized medicine is a disaster
Foreign GPs who commute to Britain: £100-an-hour Poles and Lithuanians fly in for shifts our doctors won't doRead more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208663/Test-foreign-doctors-coming-practice-Britain-say-GP-leaders.html#ixzz0PDJ1yKQf
How Insensitive
Kenny MacAskill, the man who decided to release Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, says that the cold-blooded murderer of 270 people is insensitive:
Ah, strains of Jobim run through my head. How insensitive... Murder, apparently is excusable. Eight years in a British hell-hole intolerable, but insensitivity is a step too far!The man who took the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber from jail on compassionate grounds accused him yesterday of breaking an undertaking not to celebrate his release.
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, had shown “no sensitivity” to the families of those who died, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, told the Scottish Parliament. It was the first time that Scotland’s Nationalist administration has joined the condemnation of the triumphal scenes.
Detainees Abused with Chainsaws and Cattle Prods
William Jacobson exposes the abuses of detainees:
Widespread abuse has been alleged, including one incident when they threatened a detainee "with a chainsaw as his autistic daughter looked on," another where they used cattle prods on detainees' genitals, another where they put a gun against a detainee's head, another where they slammed a handcuffed detainee's face into the ground.
A system fostering a pervasive atmosphere of abuse "without fear of punishment." Over 10,000 complaints of abuse in just two years, but only 19 disciplinary actions. And the abuse was covered up at the highest level.
Not at Gitmo. Not at black sites. Not at Abu Ghraib or Bagram.
In Chicago. "Allegedly."
Monday, August 24, 2009
The New Luddites
The Eco-Loonies don't often state their real objectives as openly and honestly as this:
So let's see if I've got this right, he thinks a return to the world of 10,000 years ago, when local farming used orders of magnitude more land per person to provide bare sustenance levels of existence for a much tinier population is the only way we can reverse our current 'living hell'. And all that technology which extended lifespans by decades and managed to feed an enormously increased population, while simultaneously improving the quality of life for people everywhere should be reversed. He doesn't mention that doing so would require getting rid of about 90%+ of the current human population (some of the even more honest of the eco-nuts are more explicit about that wish as well).
We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we’ve ever faced. It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years—but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora’s Box tightly shut. We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.
....If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably. Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn’t good and we’d better think it through very carefully.
Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic. We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand.
...How do we survive in a world that will probably turn—is already turning, for many humans and non-humans alike—into a living hell? How do we even grow or gather food or find clean water or stay warm or cool while assaulted by biblical floods, storms, rising seas, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, and hail?
It is crystal clear that we cannot leave it to the technophiliacs. It is human technology coupled with our inability to comprehend, predict, and prevent unintended consequences that have brought us global catastrophe, culminating in climate disruption, in the first place. Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking—the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.
So let's see if I've got this right, he thinks a return to the world of 10,000 years ago, when local farming used orders of magnitude more land per person to provide bare sustenance levels of existence for a much tinier population is the only way we can reverse our current 'living hell'. And all that technology which extended lifespans by decades and managed to feed an enormously increased population, while simultaneously improving the quality of life for people everywhere should be reversed. He doesn't mention that doing so would require getting rid of about 90%+ of the current human population (some of the even more honest of the eco-nuts are more explicit about that wish as well).
Soros, the Democrat and evil madman
Brazil finds oil...
Soros buys a huge stake in PetroBras...
Obama approves $2 billion in drilling aid...
I thought Brazil was an alternative energy role model...
Why does Brazil, a leftist government at the moment though that may change in the next election, need money to drill for oil?
Disgraceful
Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases
Holder wants to investigate the people who protected us and won't do anything about the New Black Panthers voter intimidation scandal.
Holder wants to investigate the people who protected us and won't do anything about the New Black Panthers voter intimidation scandal.
Look at who is running the show
Obama's Plan to Desecrate 9/11
By Matthew Vadum on 8.24.09 @ 6:08AM
The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.
This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.
The administration's plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group's senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.
Yearwood, who uses the honorific "Reverend" before his name, has been in the news in recent years, usually for getting arrested. After Democrats took back Congress, the rowdy activist was handcuffed outside a congressional hearing in September 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus was to testify. Yearwood told the "Democracy Now" radio program that he wanted to attend the hearing to hear Petraeus give his report. "I knew that when officers lie, soldiers die," he said.
On the Aug. 11 call, Yearwood and other leaders kept saying repeatedly that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something "positive," "forward-leaning," and "productive," said a source with knowledge of the teleconference.
The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.
"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."
A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.
Color of Change is the extremist racial grievance group that isn't happy that TV's Glenn Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, the self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" who became the president's green jobs czar after jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. The White House may be behind a push to destroy Beck by convincing advertisers to stop buying time on his show. Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. The group has acknowledged that it dictated parts of the February stimulus bill to Congress.
With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.
"The organizing term is to 'go dark.' You don't tell the press, don't tell people you think will tell the press," said the source.
Of course, the annual commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks belongs to the entire nation, but President Obama and the activist left don't see it that way. They view the nationwide remembrance of the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamic totalitarians as an obstacle to winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.
"When you criticize them, they are prepared to say, 'Did you want 9/11 to be another day of selling mattresses, like Presidents Day?" the source said. "They are truly trying to change the American mindset."
They view Sept. 11 as a "Republican" day because it focuses the public on supposedly "Republican" issues like patriotism, national security, and terrorism. According to liberals, 9/11 was long ago hijacked by Republicans and their enablers and unfairly used to bludgeon helpless Democrats at election time.
MSNBC's foremost left-wing bloviator, Keith Olbermann, summed up this ugly perspective the week after the Republican Party convention last year:
But 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo. "9/11 TM" has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without -- literally -- any visible means of support. "9/11 TM" has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation's history.
On Aug. 4, the White House offered a glimpse into its plans to desecrate 9/11 for political advantage. Jones appeared in a largely ignored 33-minute video posted on the official blog of the White House to discuss the administration's plan to flush 9/11 down the memory hole just as it has tried to do by rechristening the Global War on Terror the "Overseas Contingency Operations."
Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little except that it will be a great opportunity "for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America."
On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At it, Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be "the first milestone" of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.
"From policy creation to community implementation, the Green the Block campaign wants to see access and opportunity created for all Americans, to build prosperity and a healthier planet for future generations," Yearwood said.
At no time does anyone explain why this National Day of Service has to be held -- of all the 365 days in a year -- on Sept. 11.
Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy.
By Matthew Vadum on 8.24.09 @ 6:08AM
The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.
This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.
The administration's plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group's senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.
Yearwood, who uses the honorific "Reverend" before his name, has been in the news in recent years, usually for getting arrested. After Democrats took back Congress, the rowdy activist was handcuffed outside a congressional hearing in September 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus was to testify. Yearwood told the "Democracy Now" radio program that he wanted to attend the hearing to hear Petraeus give his report. "I knew that when officers lie, soldiers die," he said.
On the Aug. 11 call, Yearwood and other leaders kept saying repeatedly that they wanted 9/11 to be used for something "positive," "forward-leaning," and "productive," said a source with knowledge of the teleconference.
The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.
"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."
A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.
Color of Change is the extremist racial grievance group that isn't happy that TV's Glenn Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, the self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" who became the president's green jobs czar after jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. The White House may be behind a push to destroy Beck by convincing advertisers to stop buying time on his show. Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. The group has acknowledged that it dictated parts of the February stimulus bill to Congress.
With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.
"The organizing term is to 'go dark.' You don't tell the press, don't tell people you think will tell the press," said the source.
Of course, the annual commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks belongs to the entire nation, but President Obama and the activist left don't see it that way. They view the nationwide remembrance of the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamic totalitarians as an obstacle to winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.
"When you criticize them, they are prepared to say, 'Did you want 9/11 to be another day of selling mattresses, like Presidents Day?" the source said. "They are truly trying to change the American mindset."
They view Sept. 11 as a "Republican" day because it focuses the public on supposedly "Republican" issues like patriotism, national security, and terrorism. According to liberals, 9/11 was long ago hijacked by Republicans and their enablers and unfairly used to bludgeon helpless Democrats at election time.
MSNBC's foremost left-wing bloviator, Keith Olbermann, summed up this ugly perspective the week after the Republican Party convention last year:
But 9/11 has become a brand name. A Republican campaign slogan. Propaganda of the lowest form. 9/11 has become 9/11 with a trademark logo. "9/11 TM" has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional crooks in office without -- literally -- any visible means of support. "9/11 TM" has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation's history.
On Aug. 4, the White House offered a glimpse into its plans to desecrate 9/11 for political advantage. Jones appeared in a largely ignored 33-minute video posted on the official blog of the White House to discuss the administration's plan to flush 9/11 down the memory hole just as it has tried to do by rechristening the Global War on Terror the "Overseas Contingency Operations."
Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little except that it will be a great opportunity "for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America."
On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At it, Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be "the first milestone" of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.
"From policy creation to community implementation, the Green the Block campaign wants to see access and opportunity created for all Americans, to build prosperity and a healthier planet for future generations," Yearwood said.
At no time does anyone explain why this National Day of Service has to be held -- of all the 365 days in a year -- on Sept. 11.
Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy.
Think of it as a tax on your life and limb....
Government's first responsibility is to protect the citizenry from criminals. Ask yourself are the anarchists winning?
California jail release vote due By Rajesh Mirchandani BBC News, Los Angeles
California lawmakers are to vote on a plan to release 27,000 prisoners early.
The proposal is part of a solution to a $26bn dollar budget deficit and the problem of chronic prison overcrowding.
It comes soon after a prison riot in which hundreds of inmates were hurt. The prison was holding well over its official capacity.
A federal court recently ruled that conditions in California's prisons were appalling and ordered inmate numbers to be cut by 40,000.
The early release of thousands of prisoners could save California more than a billion dollars as well as easing overcrowding.
Opponents of the idea say it will put dangerous criminals back on the streets.
Thanks to tough laws the state has nearly 170,000 people in prisons that were designed for far fewer.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks releasing low-level offenders - like those near the end of their sentences - would be a better use of scarce resources.
However, no politician here wants to be seen as soft on crime. So, lawmakers are divided but they must reach agreement.
Just two weeks ago, prisoners rioted at a facility near Los Angeles, setting fire to cell blocks. More than 100 were injured at the California Institution for Men in the southern town of Chino. Racial tensions were blamed.
Go figure
SEX-STUDY 'STIMULUS'
By GEOFF EARLE
WASHINGTON - The stimulus package is living up to its provocative name by funding a bacchanalia of behavioral sex research, a Post analysis reveals.
The next fiscal year is set to be one of the friskiest ever in the nation's science labs, as researchers probe the ins and outs of sex patterns among humans and even some of our four-legged friends.
Among the most titillating grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health are studies that would:
* Examine "barriers to correct condom use" at Indiana University, at a cost of $221,000.
* Study "hookups" among adolescents at Syracuse University. Study's cost: $219,000.
* Evaluate "drug use as a sex enhancer" in an analysis of "high-risk community sex networks" at the University of Illinois, Chicago. That study will cost $123,000.
* Study how methamphetamine, thought to produce an "insatiable need" for sex among users, "enhances the motivation for female rat sexual behavior." Some $28,000 has been awarded for the University of Maryland at Baltimore study.
By GEOFF EARLE
WASHINGTON - The stimulus package is living up to its provocative name by funding a bacchanalia of behavioral sex research, a Post analysis reveals.
The next fiscal year is set to be one of the friskiest ever in the nation's science labs, as researchers probe the ins and outs of sex patterns among humans and even some of our four-legged friends.
Among the most titillating grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health are studies that would:
* Examine "barriers to correct condom use" at Indiana University, at a cost of $221,000.
* Study "hookups" among adolescents at Syracuse University. Study's cost: $219,000.
* Evaluate "drug use as a sex enhancer" in an analysis of "high-risk community sex networks" at the University of Illinois, Chicago. That study will cost $123,000.
* Study how methamphetamine, thought to produce an "insatiable need" for sex among users, "enhances the motivation for female rat sexual behavior." Some $28,000 has been awarded for the University of Maryland at Baltimore study.
Greenpeace: yes, we lie but it's for your own good.
Greenpeace Likes to Lie Emotionalize the Issues
[Edward John Craig]
Via the Not Evil, Just Wrong Facebook page (i.e. Phelim McAleer & Anne McElhinney):
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization's recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was "a mistake."
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. . . . That may have been a mistake," he said.
Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "misleading information" and using "exaggeration and alarmism."
Leipold's admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
"We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. . . . The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model," Leipold said. "If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary."
(Watch the full BBC interview with Leipold here.)
[Edward John Craig]
Via the Not Evil, Just Wrong Facebook page (i.e. Phelim McAleer & Anne McElhinney):
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization's recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was "a mistake."
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. . . . That may have been a mistake," he said.
Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "misleading information" and using "exaggeration and alarmism."
Leipold's admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
"We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. . . . The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model," Leipold said. "If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary."
(Watch the full BBC interview with Leipold here.)
Sucker!
Ever checked that box on your drivers license renewal to donate to some worthy cause?
When Ohio motorists renew licenses, they're asked if they'd like to donate to groups like the Save Our Sight Fund, which works to prevent blindness in children; and the Second Chance Trust Fund, which promotes organ donations. Big-hearted Ohioans recently kicked in more than $2 million to the charities.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that the givers were played for suckers.
State government took from funds to prevent blindness and promote organ donations... to help close a $1.9 billion shortfall in the two-year budget.
Did the politicians tell the givers that they were “reassigning” their gifts? No. Donors were:
....blindsided by a June 9 raid on $2.7 million they had voluntarily paid to thwart blindness in children and help solve the critical shortage of organ donations...
Aren't the taxes we pay enough? Government has to raid charities too?
After they were caught, Gov. Ted Strickland promised that the money would be returned.
The most interesting part of the story is this: One of the three groups eligible to get voluntary contributions did not have its funds pilfered by the state. That group:
....provides about $100,000 annually for the operating accounts of the Ohio Republican and Democratic parties. No money was taken from the political parties' funds.
Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, I'm shocked, shocked
When Ohio motorists renew licenses, they're asked if they'd like to donate to groups like the Save Our Sight Fund, which works to prevent blindness in children; and the Second Chance Trust Fund, which promotes organ donations. Big-hearted Ohioans recently kicked in more than $2 million to the charities.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that the givers were played for suckers.
State government took from funds to prevent blindness and promote organ donations... to help close a $1.9 billion shortfall in the two-year budget.
Did the politicians tell the givers that they were “reassigning” their gifts? No. Donors were:
....blindsided by a June 9 raid on $2.7 million they had voluntarily paid to thwart blindness in children and help solve the critical shortage of organ donations...
Aren't the taxes we pay enough? Government has to raid charities too?
After they were caught, Gov. Ted Strickland promised that the money would be returned.
The most interesting part of the story is this: One of the three groups eligible to get voluntary contributions did not have its funds pilfered by the state. That group:
....provides about $100,000 annually for the operating accounts of the Ohio Republican and Democratic parties. No money was taken from the political parties' funds.
Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, I'm shocked, shocked
Obama's Statism
George Will on the statist ratchet.
Continue reading here.WASHINGTON -- As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs bleached by sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in November 1968 as a retrospective justification for the Soviet-led invasion of Prague the previous August by Warsaw Pact forces to halt Czechoslovakia's liberalization. The doctrine was supposed to guarantee that history would be directional, controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet. It asserted a Soviet right to intervene to protect socialism wherever it was imposed.
We are already testing whether President Obama and other statists who have given his administration and this Congress their ideological cast have a doctrine analogous to Brezhnev's. Having aggressively, even promiscuously, blurred the distinction between public and private sectors with improvised and largely unauthorized interventions in the economy, will they ever countenance a retreat of the state? Or do they have an aspiration that they dare not speak? Do they hope state capitalism will be irreversible -- that wherever government has asserted the primacy of politics, the primacy will be permanent?
They say not, but they say many things they probably do not believe. (That a government-run "public option" health insurance would not extinguish or even harm private insurance; that cap-and-trade carbon regulations will raise energy costs without injuring the economy; that taxing Peter to subsidize Paul's purchase of a new car is a sound basis for economic growth; that a 85 percent unspent stimulus has routed the recession, etc.) Two legislative proposals are revealing the administration's real intentions regarding government ownership of companies.
The "Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act" drafted by Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, would have required the Treasury Department to distribute to individual taxpayers -- evenly, to the approximately 120 million who filed 2008 returns -- all the stock the government holds in General Motors (61 percent) and Chrysler (8 percent). The legislation also would have prohibited using any more TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) funds for GM or Chrysler. And the legislation would have prevented government from influencing corporate decisions for social, energy or environmental policy purposes.
Last month the Senate rejected this legislation 59-38. Only one Democrat voted for it.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Mark Steyn on the 'stimulus':
Continue reading here.The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several "stimulus" projects – every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said "PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK" with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a "PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT." There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned scarified pavement, followed by an "END OF ROAD WORKS" sign, until the next "stimulus" project a couple of bends down a quiet rural blacktop.
I don't know why one of the least fiscally debauched states in the Union needs funds from "the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" to repair random stretches of highway, especially stretches that were perfectly fine until someone came along to dig them up in order to access "stimulus" funding. I would have asked one of those men with a shovel, as depicted on the sign. But there were none to be found. Usually in New Hampshire, they dig up the road, regrade or repave it, while the flagmen stand guard until it's all done. But here a certain federal torpor seemed to hang in the eerie silence.
Still, what do I know? Evidently, it's stimulated the sign-making industry, putting America back to work by putting up "PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK" signs every 200 yards across the land. And at 300 bucks a pop the signage alone should be enough to launch an era of unparalleled prosperity, assuming America's gilded sign magnates don't spend their newfound wealth on Bahamian vacations and European imports. Perhaps if the president were to have his All-Seeing O logo lovingly hand-painted onto each sign, it would stimulate the economy even more, if only when they were taken down and auctioned on eBay.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, India, China, Japan and much of Continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn't afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world's biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can't compete with Obama's $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
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