Conservative Happenings

Friday, February 28, 2014

ONLY IN CALIFORNIA: Infuriated Taxpayers Berate School Superintendent for ABSURD $663,365 Salary

Earlier this week, unfortunate residents of the Centinela Valley School District (amid the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles) absolutely reamed district superintendent Jose Fernandez for his laughably exorbitant, perk-filled salary package.

On the backs of local taxpayers, the paper-pushing boss “earns” an annual salary of $665,365, reports KTLA.

In addition to the lucrative paycheck, the school board has also provided a sweetheart mortgage deal to help Fernandez buy his suburban home.

This mortgage benefit – a $910,000 loan at just 2 percent interest – was especially helpful for Fernandez, given his financial troubles. Fernandez recently emerged from bankruptcy.

Local home owners, parents and taxpayers showed up at a district school board meeting on Tuesday to express their righteous indignation.

“You are a disgrace to this country and to the Hispanic community,” declared one angry man as Fernandez sat quietly.

“It makes me wonder what you guys are all getting paid up there,” said a woman in the crowd in a comment directed to the school board members. “Because if you were able to allow this, what are your perks?”

Via: Fox News

Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed

Hillary Clinton. Win McNamee/Getty Images.

If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front-runner in the next presidential race.

But in private, rumors persist that the former Secretary of State may not even be capable of making it to Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, these skeptics often say, will not run for president again because of health concerns.

These ubiquitous rumors of her health have been fueled in part by the supermarket tabloids. The National Enquirer wrote in 2012 that Clinton had brain cancer, something a spokesman dismissed then as “absolute nonsense.” In January of this year, the Globe claimed that Clinton secretly had a brain tumor.

Asked about her health on Thursday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to The Daily Caller: ”To your question, very caring of you to ask. She’s 100%.”

But the rumors suggesting otherwise date back to the end of 2012, when Clinton’s health made headlines as she finished her term as secretary of state: aides explained then that she developed a stomach virus, hit her head, suffered a concussion and subsequently developed a blood clot in her brain but was being medicated and was expected to recover. (TheDC TV: Could Clinton be hurting the Democratic Party?)

But skeptics say there is much more to the story of her health, which has recently been the subject of increased speculation in Washington.

Because of these rumors, some on the right have been convincing themselves that Hillary is sick and therefore won’t run — a bombshell that would upend the 2016 race.

Roger Stone, the GOP consultant, wrote on Twitter recently that Clinton is “not running for health reasons,” telling followers to “remember you heard it first” from him.

Via: Daily Caller

Common core math explains Obamacare results! Written by Allen West on February 27, 2014

$obama-math-bad-math-new-math-2+2-sad-hill-news$ This morning while sitting in the Palm Beach International Airport awaiting my flight, I had an interesting thought about how common core math explains Obamacare.

As I understand it, common core math is not based on a student getting a correct answer, but just showing how they got an answer. Remind me never to cross a bridge built by an engineer trained using common core math. With common core math, if you can show how you came up with 12×10=100 you can pass — of course you will have difficulty with simple fiscal tasks, but then again common core math is ready-made for liberal progressives.

And that leads me to the symbiotic relationship between common core math and Obamacare. Yesterday President Obama stood before his darling little angels of Organizing for America — after all they are doing god’s work, freaking unreal. Obama was just ecstatic telling the gathering of mindless lemmings that due to their efforts they have 4 million signed up for Obamacare.

Ok, here is where common core math steps in. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is on record stating that the goal for Obamacare signups by end of March was 7 million — oh yeah, she tried to say that number came from the Congressional Budget Office. I guess another part of common core is that lying equals the truth.

Of course, we have no way of knowing who has actually signed up or even paid — a minor detail indeed. But get this equation, the goal was 7 million, but due to the Obamacare rule, some 6 million Americans lost their healthcare insurance coverage as of October first as they were not compliant with the “law’s” standards. So actually, that put Obamacare in the hole for 13 million.

President Obama in one of his patented “I can change a law all by myself” moments, in December ruled that those previous “junk policies” were now ok and demanded they be restored. So how many of those 6 million have been restored Mr. President?

So for all your little cherubim in Organizing for America, that 4 million number is about as empty and worthless as the MP3 full of speeches you gave to Queen Elizabeth. That number is reflective of someone who achieved an “A” in common core math.

So back to my trip – I’m traveling to Georgia today to speak at two County GOP events in Lee and Muscogee. I am truly excited to be going back to South Georgia where I have so many fond memories as a kid.

After landing in Atlanta I will head down I-75 and will trek through Peach County (Ft. Valley) where my Mom grew up attended Ft. Valley State College (now University) and the resting place of my maternal Grandad. I am looking forward to getting some “real” pecan pie (pronounced PEE-can). Friday evening I will be over in Columbus Georgia — last time there I was blasting from C-130 aircraft as an Airborne and Jumpmaster School student at Ft. Benning back in 1984.

One good thing about being back down in South Georgia, they can sense bovine excrement, and the smell emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania is rather pungent.

Via: Allan B. West

[CARTOON] Obamacare Oscars

Via: California Political Review

Michelle Obama: America's Moms Are 'Confused and Bewildered,' 'Defeated' by Grocery Shopping

And you are confused if you think mothers are not smarter than you.

(CNSNews.com) - Apparently it's not the price of the groceries, but the nutrition labels on food packages that make grocery shopping such a difficult and trying experience for the moms of America.

In pitching new, improved nutrition labels at the White House on Thursday, first lady Michelle Obama tried to identify with women who do the grocery shopping for their families. Her message was aimed at mothers who want to buy healthy food and depend on labels to help them do that:

"So there you stood, alone in some aisle in a store, the clock ticking away at the precious little time remaining to complete your weekly grocery shopping, and all you could do was scratch your head, confused and bewildered, and wonder, is there too much sugar in this product? Is 50 percent of the daily allowance of riboflavin a good thing or a bad thing? And how on Earth could this teeny little package contain five whole servings?

Via: CNS News

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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

Thursday, February 27, 2014

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

[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

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

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

[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