Under Obama, Air Force One cost per hour jumps 27% to $228,288

The president spent over $7.3 million on just three trips in 2013, including $2.1 million to appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in August, according to new flight documents provided by the Air Force to a public watchdog group.

Judicial Watch told Secrets that the sky-high jet travel costs for the first family's 2012-2013 Christmas vacation in Hawaii, their beach vacation on Martha's Vineyard last summer and President Obama's brief trip to California in August totalled $7,396,531.20.

The Air Force said it costs $228,288 an hour to fly Air Force One, a massive $48,535 jump from the last estimate of $179,750, or 27 percent.

The details according to documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act:

— The outbound flight to Honolulu for the Obama 2012-2013 Christmas vacation cost taxpayers $2,214,393.60. The return flight to Washington was $1,871,961.60. The total price for flight expenditures alone came to $4,086,355.20.

— The outbound flight to California in August 2013 for Obama to dine with fundraiser and DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and appear on the “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” cost taxpayers $1,209,926.40. The return flight to Washington was $935,980.80. The total price for flight expenditures alone came to $2,145,907.20.

— The outbound flight to Martha’s Vineyard for the Obama family August vacation cost taxpayers $890,323.20. The return flight to Washington was $273,945.60. The total price for flight expenditures alone came to $1,164,268.80.

Getting the documents was a score for Judicial Watch, which has also sought and received Obama administration vacation spending documents from the U.S. Secret Service. Typically, flight costs are not provided. It was also the first authoritative hourly cost provided for operating Air Force One.

“The Obamas are abusing the public trust and the taxpayers with unnecessary luxurious vacations and travel,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These staggering costs show why these documents were covered up and we had to sue in federal court to get them. Another transparency fail for the Obama gang.”

Via: Washington Examiner

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Another Funding Twist for the CA Bullet Train

LETS JUST DUMP MONEY INTO A WHOLE!!!

There’s been another funding twist for the California bullet-train project. The Federal Railroad Administration has agreed to delay the due date for $180 million in state matching funds for the project from April 1 to July 1,  according to a press release from Rep. Jeff Denham’s office.

This gives Gov. Jerry Brown and the California High-Speed Rail Authority breathing room to work with the Legislature and try to convince lawmakers to allocate $250 million in state cap-and-trade auction revenues for the rail project.

Denham, a Turlock Republican, considers the move risky.  This is from his Feb. 21 press release:

“The Federal Railroad Administration [FRA] is protecting the Authority yet again and putting California taxpayers at greater risk. It has long been clear that the Authority would be unable to provide the funds required in their grant agreement. In December 2012, the FRA changed their agreement to allow for a tapered match rather than the standard concurrent match. Now they’ve changed the agreement again. With billions in federal taxpayer dollars on the line, what changes are next from the FRA? The American people – and Californian taxpayers – deserve to see their money used responsibly.”

But there are also additional important changes in the federal funding agreement outlined in the letter that rail authority CEO Jeff Morales released Feb. 20. The new funding contribution plan shifts a large amount of funding responsibility in coming years to the federal government, with a significant decrease in California’s contribution compared with the original plan, according to bullet-train financial expert William Warren. (Along with William Grindley, Warren has co-authored numerous briefing papers regarding rail-authority data.)

U.S. taxpayers at risk for single-state project

These changes leave the U.S. taxpayers in all 50 states with more exposure while pushing a troubled, legally questionable California state project forward.

Via: California Political Review

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[CARTOON] Snowballing Voter Fury

Via: California Political Review

Former L.A. schools chief calls iPad program illegal

A former L.A. schools superintendent has stepped forward to criticize a $1 billion effort to provide every student, teacher and campus administrator with a tablet or laptop computer. William J. Johnston, 87, did not object to the goal, but focused instead on using school-construction bonds to fund the project, which, so far, has involved purchasing iPads.

“I  believe the current purchase of iPads from school bonds is illegal,” Johnston wrote in a Feb. 6 letter to the committee that oversees the spending of the voter-approved funding. The bonds are paid back through increases in property taxes.

The letter was included in materials for the committee's Thursday meeting. 

“iPads are known to last for approximatey three years,” Johnston wrote. “New developments and technology will make them obsolete, requiring replacements. School bonds are designed to buy property, build schools, equip schools with lasting equipment. School bonds are paid for over a 25-year period.”

He added: “Voters approved the school bonds because they needed schools built, schools repaired, school equipment updated. They did not vote for iPads, a three-year consumable product.”

Johnston, who served as superintendent from 1971 to 1981, is hardly alone in his concerns, which the district recently addressed publicly. Officials have maintained that state law, over time, has been clarified to affirm that bonds can be used for technology. And bond measures specifically list funding for technology.

A Los Angeles Unified School District legal opinion asserts further that portable computers that can be taken home are a logical, updated extension of technology, which used to be available to students only in computer labs with bolted-down desktop devices.

Via: LA Times

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Pelosi says she's not done yet

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants everyone to know she's not done yet. 

After a recent wave of retiring veteran Democrats, the former House speaker assertively said Thursday that's no indication she would soon follow in their footsteps. 

"When it is [time], you'll know," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol.

"They go at their pace, [and] I go at mine. We'll miss them — they're fabulous — but, again, it stirs the pot, and lots of people are very excited about the prospect of what comes next for them," said the Democratic leader. "It's a constantly reinvigorated body; that's what our founders intended."

Since January, a number of seasoned House Democrats, have announced that this year will be their last in Congress. The list includes many close Pelosi allies like Reps. George Miller (Calif.) and Henry Waxman (Calif.) and other longtime members such as Jim Moran (Va.), Rush Holt (N.J.) and John Dingell (Mich.), the longest serving member in the history of Congress.

While the number of retirements is not unusual and is so far less than in recent cycles, the veteran stature of the names and their relationships with Pelosi has only amplified the whispers that she, too, might be eyeing the door, particularly if the Democrats fail to take back the House in November.

Pelosi, for her part, has consistently dismissed such speculation, which has swirled ceaselessly since the Democrats lost control of the House in 2010's landslide elections.

She says her focus on passing Democratic bills and winning back the House — a tall order with the 17 seats her party needs to flip — doesn't allow the time to contemplate her longer-term plans. 

"I'm too busy," she said. "As long as there's 1-in-5 children in America who lives in poverty, what I do is get up every morning revved to the task."

Pelosi used the question about her future as an opportunity to attack a comprehensive tax reform bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the head of the Ways and Means Committee. 

Pelosi said the proposal would pile $2,000 in additional taxes on single moms making the minimum wage. 

"I have enough to invigorate me, and everybody's timetable around here isn't everybody else's timetable around here."

Via: The Hill

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McCain: Reid's Blowing Smoke in Denying Obamacare Horror Stories

Sen. John McCain doesn't understand how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can say that all of the horror stories about Obamacare aren't true.

“It's such a bizarre statement that you wonder — you know out in that part of the country there's been a lot of legalization of certain substances,” the Arizona Republican said, chuckling, in an exclusive interview on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV,

"I’m sure he hasn’t been" smoking pot, "but it’s impossible to explain away a statement like that," McCain said.

If Democrat Reid really believes the "thousand and thousands of stories" are untrue, he “is totally out of touch with reality and with the American people who overwhelmingly reject Obamacare and overwhelmingly want us to fix it." McCain said. "And that's what we Republicans are going to do if we get the majority, which I believe we have a chance of — a good chance of."

Via: Newsmax

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BILL DE BLASIO RESCINDS APPROVAL OF THREE CHARTER SCHOOLS

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a "moratorium" on charter schools almost as soon as he arrived in office, and now he is making good on his promise to limit parents' choice of schools. The New York Post reports that de Blasio is blocking the opening or expansion of three schools in the area, leaving some students in limbo.

The Post reports that the Success Academy Charter school group had received approval from Mayor Mike Bloomberg to operate rent-free in city buildings for the 2014-2015 school year, but de Blasio pushed for a review of that approval that caused the Department of Education to rescind it. While some were in separate buildings, other school expansions were approved in buildings that housed non-charter public schools; de Blasio is forbidding them all.

What this means for students is still not fully clear, though some of the expansions were granted to schools already having too many students for their buildings. One school, the Success Academy Middle School, is losing permission to use government buildings to teach students. The fifth and sixth graders attending the academy will have to find a different location to go to school or be reincorporated into the public school system.

The move has outraged parents and charter school activists. Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, is threatening to sue the city to get the space back for her students. Noting that she expects the announcement of permission for the schools to be rescinded, Moskowitz decried the move as "tragic, unfair, and, we believe, illegal." She noted that the organization plans to "take the appropriate legal action."

Moskowitz is also organizing a trip to Albany for supporters of charters schools from New York City. Charter School support groups are expecting to rally in the state capital in support of school choice, and parents of students in the charter school system are encouraged to attend, perhaps to increase the tension between Albany and New York City.

Mayor de Blasio has clashed with fellow progressives on his approach to education multiple times in his short tenure. Having promised as a candidate a program that would allow for universal access to pre-kindergarten education for New Yorkers paid for by a tax increase on wealthier residents, de Blasio refuses to give up on raising taxes, even when the proposition is glaringly obsolete; Governor Andrew Cuomo has offered to use state plans to implement the program and spare the city a tax increase, but de Blasio has not backed down.

De Blasio's move against charter schools today is a continuation of his approach to school choice since the beginning of his tenure. At the beginning of this month, de Blasio proposed charging charter schools rent to use public buildings they were already using to teach students. Charter schools have been sharing resources with public schools to keep the costs low for taxpayers; an elimination of school choice might result in the need for a tax increase to pay for all the new students being shuffled in from a defunct charter school.

Via: Breitbart

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[VIDEO] Liberal Prof.: Obama Has Brought Us To ‘Constitutional Tipping Point’

During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, liberal constitutional professor Jonathan Turley said that the growth of executive power is “accelerating” and that the growth of such power has brought us to a “constitutional tipping point”.

“I believe we are now at a constitutional tipping point in our system,” Turley, who teaches law at George Washington University, said. “It’s a dangerous point for our system to be in, and I believe that your response has to begin before this president leaves office. No one in our system goes it alone.”

Turley noted that while he agrees with the President on most of his policies, it still “does not alter the fact that I believe the means he is doing is wrong” and that the continued acceleration of executive power can be “a dangerous change in our system."

Via: WFB

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Study: Only 48% of Democrats Know Earth Revolves Around The Sun, 61% of Republicans Know It…

Note the smartest group is conservative Republicans. Wait, I thought we were supposed to be knuckle-dragging hicks?

Via Northwestern University study:

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Russian moves raise stakes in Ukraine conflict

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine, Ukraine (AP) - Masked gunmen stormed the parliament of Ukraine's strategic Crimea region as Russian fighter jets screamed above the border, while Ukraine's newly formed government pledged to prevent a national breakup with the strong backing of the West - the stirrings of a potentially dangerous confrontation reminiscent of Cold War brinksmanship.

Moscow reportedly granted shelter to Ukraine's fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was said to be holed up in a luxury government retreat and to have scheduled a news conference Friday near the Ukrainian border. As gunmen wearing unmarked camouflage uniforms erected a sign reading "Crimea is Russia" in the provincial capital, Ukraine's interim prime minister declared that the Black Sea territory "has been and will be a part of Ukraine."

The escalating conflict sent Ukraine's finances plummeting further, prompting Western leaders to prepare an emergency financial package.

Yanukovych, whose approach to Moscow set off three months of pro-Europe protests, finally fled by helicopter last weekend as his allies deserted him. The humiliating exit was a severe blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been celebrating his signature Olympics even as Ukraine's drama came to a head. The Russian leader has long dreamt of pulling Ukraine - a huge country of 46 million people considered the cradle of Russian civilization - closer into Moscow's orbit.

(AP) Pro-Russian demonstrators march with a huge Russian flag during a protest in front of a local... Full Image

For Ukraine's neighbors, the specter of Ukraine breaking up evoked memories of centuries of bloody conflict.

"Regional conflicts begin this way," said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, calling the confrontation "a very dangerous game."

Russia has pledged to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity. But the dispatch of Russian fighter jets Thursday to Ukraine's borders and drills by some 150,000 Russian soldiers - almost the entirety of its troop force in the western part of the country - signaled strong determination not to lose Ukraine to the West.

Via: My Way

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Revenge: Obama's Targeting of Standard and Poor's

The federal government’s lawsuit against ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has been hit by a potential bombshell. In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that Harold McGraw III, Chairman and CEO of S&P’s parent company, testified that after the agency downgraded the nation’s triple-A credit rating, he received a telephone call from then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner saying the ratings agency would be “looked at very carefully.”

On Monday, the Wall Street Journallearned that the call between Geithner and McGraw occurred only five minutes after Geithner met with President Obama in the Oval Office.

S&P, which garnered the information by examining Geithner’s public schedule, included it as part of a filing in federal court in the Central District of California. They contended that the timing of the Obama-Geithner conference could support the idea that they were singled out for retaliation, rather than the government’s claim they are guilty of fraud. Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department is accusing the agency of a “fishing expedition” and is urging U.S. District Judge David Carter to deny them access to the records.

In the January affidavit, McGraw submitted a sworn statement to the court, describing an unsettling chain of events that began with S&P’s U.S. debt downgrade, issued on August 5, 2011. He contends that on August 8, he was informed by an official from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that Geithner “was very angry at S&P.” Geithner who had previously run the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, allegedly called McGraw. When McGraw returned the call, Geithner allegedly “expressed anger at the downgrade.” An argument ensued, with former Treasury Secretary contending that S&P had made an error in their assessment. McGraw countered that the agency had relied on official statistics provided by the Congressional Budget Office. According to the affidavit, Geithner continued to insist that S&P had made an error. “You are accountable for that,” he allegedly warned McGraw.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Obama's Minimum Wage Ruse

President Obama's newfound enthusiasm for the minimum wage is the political equivalent of a ruse of war.

With an eye on the approaching midterm elections, the Demagogue-in-Chief hopes to lure his Republican enemies into a discussion on his ideological home turf so he can pound away at them mercilessly and distract from his own political problems.

As his approval rating slides, Obama has heartily embraced the red herring as the cornerstone of his public relations strategy.  Bearing his by now familiar deer-in-the-headlights look, he officially knows next to nothing about what his administration is doing and is constantly on the lookout for scapegoats and other distractions.

Democrats, as well as those leftists not disillusioned with Obama, desperately want to recapture the House and hang onto the Senate in the hope of imposing even more destructive progressive policies on the populace before a new president takes over in January 2017.  The November congressional elections give these left-wingers their last kick at the legislative can during the Obama presidency.  It is Obama's final opportunity to drop-kick America over the cliff and into the bottomless socialist abyss.

Obama promises that 2014 will be "a year of action."  The president plans to keep the chattering classes busy blathering on endlessly about stuff that doesn't matter to normal people.  He knows dragging voters to the polls in an off-year election is hard, so he wants to excite his base.

Obama is pushing a minimum wage increase, an otherwise marginal issue voters place well down on the list of national priorities, because he needs to get left-wing voters emotional.  Even though under 3 percent of all workers in the nation (and an even lower percentage of full-time workers) earn the minimum wage, Obama knows that whipping up indignation over the issue gets voters to the polls.

Obama's former employer and legal client ACORN, the huge community organizing network that went bankrupt in 2010, viewed raising the minimum wage as an electoral crowd pleaser.

Via: American Thinker

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Obama strives to be 'my brother’s keeper' $200 Million more!!

President Obama on Thursday will establish a new interagency task force charged with promoting opportunities for young men of color through an examination of government policies and programs.

The program, dubbed “My Brother’s Keeper,” will ask businesses and foundations to fund programs across the country designed to keep young minority men employed or in school and out of jail.

“For decades, opportunity has lagged behind for boys and young men of color. But across the country, communities are adopting approaches to help put these boys and young men on the path to success,” a White House official said in a statement. “The president wants to build on that work.”

The president will announce that foundations supporting the initiative have pledged at least $200 million over the next five years to “find and rapidly spread solutions that have the highest potential for impact,” the White House said. 

Efforts receiving commitments will include those targeting early child development and school readiness, parenting and parent engagement, third grade literacy, and school discipline reform. 

Programs helping reduce minority interactions with the criminal justice system and improve health and economic opportunities will also be among those evaluated by the task force, which has three months to design an plan for coordinating the $200 million in commitments.

According to the White House, the panel will also work across the federal government to assess the impact of federal policies on boys of color, create an online portal of programs that have a proven record of success, and recommend ways the White House can continue to partner with the private sector on outreach efforts.

Obama will announce that the effort will be chaired by Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. 

Colin Powell, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NBA hall-of-famer Magic Johnson, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver are also expected to be in attendance, as will business leaders, faith leaders, state and local officials, and participants of a youth guidance program called “Becoming a Man” that targets boys on Chicago’s South Side. 

The president has met repeatedly with the group, and heralded it as an example of how small interventions can help keep young minorities out of trouble.

Also in attendance will be Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, according to the network’s media reporter,

Via: The Hill
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