Conservative Happenings: 2012-09-23

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Dems Try A New Tactic To Raise Campaign Cash: Shame…

Democrats today trotted out a new tactic for raising campaign cash: shame.

The email arrived this afternoon from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, with the subject, "Your support record," and the sender, "Democratic Headquarters." It aimed point out to supporters that they hadn't given campaign cash.

Take the one I received, for instance:

"We’re reviewing our Democratic supporter records in advance of tomorrow’s Federal Election Commission (FEC) deadline," read the email. "Your record is copied and pasted below:

Supporter record: 11919797
Name: Daniel Halper
2012 Online Support: Pending
Suggested support: $3.00

"Pending" apparently means that I have not given a dime. But that they are relying (and counting) on my support.

Then, the email shifts back to an old tactic: desperation.

"If you’re planning to contribute to our campaign to win a Democratic House for President Obama, it’s critical that you make your donation in the next 24 hours. Tomorrow is the last major FEC reporting deadline of the 2012 general election. We’re relying on your support: 80% of our contributions are $35 or less," read the email.

Read the whole thing here:

Via: Weekly Standard

White House Begs Defense Contractors Not To Issue Layoff Notices

The Obama administration issued new guidance intended for defense contractors Friday afternoon, reiterating the administration’s position that the companies should not be issuing layoff notices over sequestration.

The Labor Department issued guidance in July saying it would be “inappropriate” for contractors to issue notices of potential layoffs tied to sequestration cuts. But a few contractors, most notably Lockheed Martin, said they still were considering whether to issue the notices — which would be sent out just days before the November election.

But the Friday guidance from the Office of Management and Budget raised the stakes in the dispute, telling contractors that they would be compensated for legal costs if layoffs occur due to contract cancellations under sequestration — but only if the contractors follow the Labor guidance.

The guidance said that if plant closings or mass layoffs occur under sequestration, then “employee compensation costs for [Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification] WARN act liability as determined by a court” would be paid for covered by the contracting federal agency.

Senate Republicans, who accused the White House of trying to hide job losses after the first guidance, said Friday that the new OMB statement “puts politics ahead of American workers.”

“The Obama Administration is cynically trying to skirt the WARN Act to keep the American people in the dark about this looming national security and fiscal crisis,” Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said in a statement. “The president should insist that companies act in accordance with the clearly stated law and move forward with the layoff notices.

Via: The Hill

Ryan, others pound away at Obama at Derry gathering

DERRY — Touting Mitt Romney as the right choice for hard economic times, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan urged New Hampshire voters to get out the vote on Nov. 6.

Ryan spoke to a packed gymnasium of supporters at Pinkerton Academy on Saturday morning, hitting Barack Obama on the economy and delineating a clear choice between the Romney/Ryan ticket and the current administration.

“We have a choice to make, and Mitt Romney and I give you the choice,” said an upbeat and animated Ryan. “There is a very clear choice between two different futures. It's not too late to get it right and turn the economy around and secure the promise of America that our parents secured for us.”

Ryan hit on national defense and repealing Obamacare, but for the majority of his speech, the focus was on the economy and Romney's qualifications to turn the economy around.

The reelection of Obama would result in a continuing stagnant economy and foster dependency on the government. Ryan said the Republican ticket would work to get more people out of poverty and into the middle class.

Ryan contrasted Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts with that of Obama as President.

He noted that under Obama, average annual household income has a dropped by $4,000, while household income rose in Massachusetts by $5,000 while Romney was governor.

“He treated people respectfully and reached out across the aisle,” Ryan said. “He balanced the budget without raising taxes. That is the type of leadership we need.”

Via: Union Leader

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Report: One Million People In Ohio Have ‘Obama Phones’

A program that provides subsidized phone service to low-income individuals has nearly doubled in size in Ohio in the past year — now covering more than a million people. At the same time, federal officials say they’re reining in waste, fraud and abuse in the program.

The Federal Communications Commission announced recently that reforms have saved $43 million since January and are expected to save $200 million by year’s end. In Ohio, savings are expected to be $2.9 million a year.

The savings were realized in part because the government gave out fewer cellphones to ineligible people and took steps to avoid issuing duplicate phones.

But the size of the program in the state — and profits to the increasing number of cellphone companies involved — has exploded in recent months, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of program data.

The program in Ohio cost $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2012, the most recent data available, versus $15.6 million in the same timeframe in 2011. Compared to the first quarter of 2011, the number of people in the program nearly doubled to more than a million.

Growth could cost everyone who owns a phone. The program is funded through the “Universal Service Fund” charge on phone bills — usually a dollar or two per bill — and the amount of the fee is determined by the cost of this and other programs.

A growth of $100 million in this program could result in an increased fee of a few cents on the average bill, according to officials from the agency that administers the program. The total cost of the program nationwide was $1.5 billion in 2011, up from $1.1 billion in 2010.

Via: Dayton Daily News

Have Polls Always Underestimated The GOP Vote?

Knowing that exit polling has historically overestimated the Democratic vote and knowing how much the final regular polling in the 1980 race understated Ronald Reagan’s support compared to Jimmy Carter, it is worth looking at what the final poll results said in other presidential election years.

The facts show a similar trend in a pro-Democratic direction almost uniformly. Historically speaking, pollsters have underestimated how many people would vote for the Republican presidential candidate:

Writing at National Review, reporter Jim Geraghty quotes an anonymous pollster who provides a helpful review of past polling data:

In 1992, Gallup’s final poll had Clinton winning by 12 percentage points, he won by 5.6 percentage points. In late October 1992, Pew had Clinton up 10.

In 1996, some reputable pollsters had Clinton winning by 18 percentage points late, and Pew had Clinton up by 19 in November; on Election Day, he won by 8.5 percentage points… In 2004, pollsters were spread out, but most underestimated Bush’s margin. (2000 may have been a unique set of circumstances with the last-minute DUI revelation dropping Bush’s performance lower than his standing in the final polls; alternatively, some may argue that the Osama bin Laden tape the Friday before the election in 2004 altered the dynamic in those final days.) In 2008, Marist had Obama up 9, as did CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News, while Reuters and Gallup both had Obama up 11.

Now, if this was just random chance of mistakes, you would see pollsters being wrong in both directions and by about the same margin in each direction at the same rate – sometimes overestimating how well the Democrats do some years, sometimes overestimating how well the Republicans do. But the problem seems pretty systemic – sometimes underestimating the GOP by a little, sometimes by a lot.

In 2004, the final telephone surveys mostly favored George W. Bush against John Kerry but the exit polls clearly did not. As usual, they overstated the Democrat vote (see our earlier report on reasons for this) which led many Democrats to expect that Kerry would win the popular vote and the presidency. When that did not happen, it triggered a widespread belief among hardcore Democrats that Republicans had somehow managed to “steal” the election in several different states, particularly in Ohio.

Via: Newsbusters

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The Sorry State Department

It should come as no surprise that the State Department has much to answer for in the abysmal manner in which it so disastrously allowed the horrific murder of the American Ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans by Muslims in Benghazi, Libya to occur. What took place was an act of barbarism deliberately planned and perpetrated on the very anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity by fellow Muslims against Americans upon American soil.

And who must bear full responsibility for not adequately protecting the hapless ambassador and his staff in Benghazi? Well, it has to be none other than Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, and appeaser to all and every tyrant and international thug in the world.

Her craven apologies to the ever hate filled and murderous Muslim world by blaming an amateurish video, purportedly the excuse for mass Islamic violence and killings, has been enough to make Neville Chamberlain look decidedly heroic and resolute. But then she takes her queue from her boss, the Appeaser and Apologist in Chief; Barack Hussein Obama.

We now know that the killings, using RPGs and incendiary devices, were a premeditated and well planned operation by Al Qaeda. Even the Libyan president has said so, yet Hillary Clinton and President Obama continue to falsely attribute the Arab bloodlust to the video. And the Secretary of State, a week before the atrocity took place, stated that the security measures in place at the Benghazi mission were “robust.”

Via: Canada Free Press

Youth Unemployment Tops 20%

Raising minimum wage is sure bet to create more jobless young Americans

The unemployment rate for 16 to 19 year olds was an astonishingly high 23.8 percent last month. The United States is facing a youth employment crisis.

Young workers are finding it increasingly difficult to enter the labor market, get their first job and work their way up the career ladder. Yet, during this time of persistently high youth unemployment, there have been calls to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to as high as $10 per hour.

America's youth are having a hard time reaching the first rung on their career ladders. Now is a bad time to increase minimum wages and make that important step more difficult.

Higher minimum wages generate a tradeoff between higher wages for the employed and higher rates of unemployment. When minimum wages increase, many workers who earn less than the new higher minimum wage lose their jobs. Firms often decide that they can get by with fewer workers instead of paying higher wages.

As one might expect, David Neumark of the University of California's Irvinecampus and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board survey recent research on minimum wages and find that the least-skilled workers are hurt the most by minimum wages.

Minimum wages are particularly damaging for the future prospects of young workers as they typically earn the low wages that are impacted by the change in the minimum wage law.

In 2010, 50 percent of workers aged 25 and below, and 78 percent of teenagers earned less than $10 per hour. With youth unemployment topping 20 percent, it has become clear that employers are not willing to hire young workers at the current minimum wage, much less at an even higher one. It would damage the prospects of those willing but no longer able to work for wages below the minimum wage.

So in the short term, higher minimum wages make it difficult for young workers to find jobs. In the long term, higher minimum wages diminish the career prospects of young workers. Higher rates of unemployment mean that young workers do not have access to the resume-building activities associated with employment and do not gain the experience necessary to earn higher wages in the future.

Via: AEI

U.S. intelligence now says Benghazi attack "deliberate and organized"

(Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement on Friday declaring it now believed the September 11 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack."

The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the U.S. intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened. During the attack on two U.S. government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.

Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper's office, said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.

Turner said that as U.S. intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack, "we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."

He said it remained "unclear" if any individual or specific group commanded the attack. U.S. agencies nonetheless believe that some of the militants involved in the attack were "linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaida."

In an apparent reference to a series of contradictory statements by some top Obama administration officials, Turner said intelligence agencies' "initial assessment" had been passed on "to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available."

Via: Reuters

Slacker-In-Chief

NEW YORK — Concerning the fun parts of his job, Barack Obama resembles the Energizer Bunny. If there are crowds to wow, entertainers to schmooze or donors to pitch, Obama is Johnny on the spot.

Too bad Obama's sparks stop flying when it comes time for the serious, heavy lifting of the presidency.

This phenomenon's most chilling example involves Obama's national security-related presidential daily brief. As the conservative Government Accountability Institute calculated, and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen first reported Sept. 10, Obama attended only 43.8 percent of his daily briefings between Jan. 23, 2009, (three days after his inauguration) and May 31, 2012.

Available nearly every day, the briefing allows the commander-in-chief to hear directly from top intelligence professionals about the latest threats to U.S. safety. These experts are on hand to answer questions, hear suggestions and otherwise help Obama foil America's enemies.

But Obama has had higher priorities.

According to the institute's data culled from the official White House calendar and Politico.com's news coverage of that schedule, Obama chose to skip his daily briefings and, instead, simply read his briefing book.

This is a bit like studying one's chest X-rays at home while spurning a radiologist's offer to interpret them and answer pertinent questions.

In this sense, Obama quietly reviewed his national security X-rays alone during 56.2 percent of the time the institute analyzed. Obama missed 61.6 percent of these briefings in 2011.

Obama skipped his briefings between last Sept. 4 and 11, the entire week before the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, suffered an Islamic terror attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, technical officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

Who knows if a briefer's classified utterance, or a particularly astute question from Obama, might have triggered tighter security in Benghazi and perhaps prevented the murders of four Americans?

Even worse, as Thiessen reports, Obama postponed and eventually skipped his briefing on the day after these planned and deliberate assassinations. This liberated Obama for a truly indispensable responsibility that day. As American embassies burned brightly throughout the Islamic world, Obama jetted off on Air Force One for a campaign fundraiser in America's least solemn city — Las Vegas.

Via:San Angelo Standard Times

Top Five Worst Obamacare Taxes Coming in 2013

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013.

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013:

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax – a $20 billion tax increase: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will increase the cost of your health care – making everything from pacemakers to prosthetics more expensive.

The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” – a $13 billion tax increase: The 30-35 million Americans who use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs will face a new government cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap).

There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are several million families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families.

The Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income – a $123 billion tax increase: This is a new, 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income:

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+ (current law)	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

The table above also incorporates the scheduled hike in the capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent, and the scheduled hike in dividends rate from 15 to 39.6 percent.

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013:

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+ (current law)	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

The table above also incorporates the scheduled hike in the capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent, and the scheduled hike in dividends rate from 15 to 39.6 percent.

Via: American for Tax Reform

Theodore Roosevelt: Progressive Crusader

Theodore Roosevelt, America’s 26th President, famously declared that the country ought to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Good advice, especially in light of recent events. However, “when it came to the decibel level, [TR] did not always follow his own advice,” quips Jean Yarbrough in the latest “Makers of American Political Thought” paper from The Heritage Foundation.

And the volume of his rhetoric wasn’t the only place TR stumbled. Yarbrough, a professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin College and the author of Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition, explains that TR was also the nation’s first “progressive” leader. “As President, he pushed executive powers to new limits, arguing that the rise of industrial capitalism had rendered limited government obsolete.”

For example, TR styled himself the “steward of the people.” This belief “unmoored presidential power from the Constitution and made it directly accountable to the people,” Yarbrough writes. “It is not uncommon today for progressives to give short shrift to constitutional questions or to cite phrases such as ‘We the people’ and ‘the general welfare’ rather than specific constitutional provisions to justify their proposals.”

Via: The Foundry

Carbon Tax: Won’t Reduce Deficit or Temperature

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report that should be a cause for concern to all who believe in limited government. In it, CRS argues that a new tax on carbon could cut the deficit in half.

There is nothing special about a carbon tax in terms of raising revenue. CRS could have written that significantly increasing the income tax or payroll tax could cut the deficit in half. They could’ve written the same thing about instituting a new value-added tax as well.

But cutting the deficit isn’t as simple as increasing taxes. Higher taxes hurt the economy. CRS failed to mention the devastating impact that higher taxes would have on the economy. The extra revenue that would result from a carbon tax would certainly be lower than CRS estimates after considering the economic slowdown that would no doubt result.

About 85 percent of America’s energy needs are met by fossil fuels. A carbon tax would directly raise the cost of electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, and home heating oil. This would disproportionately hurt lower-income families, who spend nearly a quarter of their budgets on energy.

But the economic pain for consumers doesn’t stop there. Businesses, faced with higher energy costs, would pass those costs on to consumers. Higher sticker prices for products lower consumer demand, and as a result, businesses must cut production and jobs.

Supposedly, the goal of a carbon tax is to reduce carbon emissions and do something about global warming, not to raise extra revenue. However, reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would yield negligible benefits in terms of temperature reduction.

Via: The Foundry]

It's Over

Give up -- Barack Obama has won. With the election only weeks away, it is clear from recent swing state polling that Mitt Romney has lost this election. According to the Quinnipiac numbers, in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, the president is ahead by 10%, 9% and 12%, respectively.

Romney can't win. Just ask any journalist or newscaster. He is toast -- stick a fork in him.

Bull...

If anything, the closer we get to Election Day, the more apparent it is that Obama is not only losing, but losing big. The Obama campaign, and by "campaign" I mean members of the media and polling organizations, is trying to convince prospective Romney voters to believe that all is lost -- in which case, they hope, we will stay home.

But just because they say so, that doesn't make it true.

Everyone knew from the outset that Obama, with his sad record of continuous failure on almost every front, was going to air out his inner bitterness and envy, and campaign negatively. But did anyone suspect that his sole hope for victory would rest on trying to suppress the vote of his opponent with naked media bias and polling -- most of which assumes a higher Democrat turnout than in 2008, when the electorate, many Republicans included, swallowed whole Obama's vision of "hope and change"?

Via: American Thinker

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Friday, September 28, 2012

U.S. Move to Give Egypt $450 Million in Aid Meets Resistance

The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The aid is part of the $1 billion in assistance that the Obama administration has pledged to Egypt to bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. Its fate, however, was clouded by concerns over the new government’s policies and, more recently, the protests that damaged the American Embassy in Cairo.

The United States Agency for International Development notified Congress of the cash infusion on Friday morning during the pre-election recess, promptly igniting a smoldering debate over foreign aid and the administration’s handling of crises in the Islamic world.

An influential Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, immediately announced that she would use her position as chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign aid to block the distribution of the money. She said the American relationship with Egypt “has never been under more scrutiny” than it is in the wake of the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I am not convinced of the urgent need for this assistance and I cannot support it at this time,” Ms. Granger said in a statement that her office issued even before the administration announced the package.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at a meeting of the Group of 8 nations in New York, said on Friday that the world needed to do more to support the governments that have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings, including those in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

Via: NYT

Obama Campaign Greeting Card: ‘Mom…Can I Borrow $18,000 For Birth Control?’

The Obama campaign has launched a series of electronic greeting cards for women to use to promote the campaign’s message, and one has conservatives rolling their eyes because of its absurdity.

“President Obama summed up the Republican Party’s approach to women’s health when he said ‘they want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century,’” the Obama campaign web page claims. “Send an eCard to say you won’t go back.”

One of the greeting cards attacks Romney for wanting to overturn Obamacare, claiming it will force women to find alternative sources of funds to pay for birth control, instead of getting it free from government handouts.

“Dear Mom,” the card reads. “Mitt Romney says he would repeal the Affordable Care Act. So here’s a quick question: Can I borrow $18,000 to help pay for my birth control? Thanks!”

The number, supposedly based on the lifetime costs of the typical woman who uses birth control regularly during her lifetime, is astronomical — especially considering the fact women and purchase a package of birth control pills for as little as $9 at a local drug store.

The other two e-cards in the series are meant to continue stirring up the so-called War on Women.

Meanwhile, it appears the Obama campaign just borrowed from Planned Parenthood’s talking pointsfor the e-card.

Via: Life News

41 MILLION TEA PARTY SUPPORTERS SET TO VOTE

The Tea Party is regularly ridiculed and declared "dead" by the mainstream press and their elitist allies in Washington and Hollywood. Not surprisingly, when Tea Partiers show up and rally by the thousands, they get all but ignored, while 30 Occupy Wall Street crazies in masks will always get wall-to-wall coverage and admiration. TV shows and movies take cheap shots at Tea Party conservatives, often linking them to murder-of-the-week cases on insipid crime procedurals or dismissing them as “birthers.” But a new Associated Press poll shows tea party supporters may have the last laugh in November.

The AP/GFK poll shows that 31% of likely voters consider themselves Tea Party supporters. With 131 million votes cast in the 2008 elections, that translates into an incredible voting bloc of 41 million Tea Party supporters waiting to cast ballots. These voters have already made their voices heard in Wisconsin earlier this year, as well as in Republican primaries in Texas and Nebraska.

That 31% of likely voters figure is greater than the 19% who described themselves as either strongly or somewhat liberal. Surprisingly, liberals have escaped media characterization as being a small, fringe-like group with little power or influence. At 19% of likely voters, self-described liberals would have a turnout of 25 million voters, some 16 million fewer voters than the Tea Party.

The good news for Mitt Romney and other Republican hopefuls is that the Tea Party supporters also appear ready to turn out in much higher numbers than all other voters. For instance, while they only made up 23% of the initial polling sample, which was a sample of all adults, their numbers improve as unlikely voters were removed by the AP from the data. When unregistered and unlikely voters were taken out of the poll, their share of the vote increased by 35%, to nearly one-third of the voting population.

Meanwhile, self-described liberals fell 11% from the initial sample to the likely voter sample, while moderates increased by 3% and conservatives increased by 8%. This enthusiasm gap could make the difference in November. Once unregistered and unlikely voters were removed from the AP poll sample, Obama’s share of the vote plummeted by 10%, while Romney’s share of the vote increased by 28%. That support is driven, of course, by a supposedly dead movement. Overall, the poll shows a statistical tie with Obama at 47%, and Romney at 46%.

Via: Breitbart

Obamanomics: Chicago PMI Shows Sharp Contraction In Economy, Back To Recession Levels…

Business activity in the U.S. Midwest contracted this month for the first time since September 2009, as new orders sank, a report showed on Friday.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago business barometer fell to 49.7 from 53.0 in August. Economists had forecast an unchanged reading of 53.

A reading below 50 indicates contraction in the regional economy.

The forward-looking new orders index plummeted to 47.4, from 54.8. while the gauge of employment sank to 52.0 from 57.1 last month.

Following the report, stocks added to their losses on the final trading day of the third quarter and amid uncertainty ahead of the result of stress tests on Spanish banks.

Via:CNBC

Crowder: A Selfish Millennial's Guide To The 2012 Election

Yes, I am a Millennial. Unfortunately I’m a part of the “self-esteem” era, where people my age tend to be very selfish. Not only that, but I’ve been raised with a generation of people who’ve often never been taught the constitutional parameters of government nor it’s originally intended role in American society.

Certainly not in school anyway.

So when it comes to the United States government, it’s only natural for young people to want more free crap. We’ve seen this simple ideal spur an entire movement of fickle young people through the recent Occupy protests.

Enter President Obama, the king of promising #MoreFreeCrap! So it makes sense that most young people voted for him in 2008 and that many plan to do so again this November.

Listen, I love free stuff. I’m a buffet’s worst nightmare. My picture is still on the wall at the Bellagio. I don’t, however, believe that we should vote based on the ideal of #MoreFreeCrap.

Via: Fox News

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Union Contract: Teachers Can Be Caught In School Drunk Five Times and On Drugs Three Times Before Being Fired

Forget zero tolerance. Bay City Public School teachers for years could be caught repeatedly under the influence of illegal drugs or alcohol without being fired.

Teachers in possession or under the influence of illegal drugs could be caught three times before they lost their job, and they got five strikes if they were drunk on school grounds before being fired. A school district official said the language in the union contract that protects teachers for those instances "was incorporated into the teacher Master Agreement in 1997."

Those protections also were included in the Bay City Education Association teacher’s contract that was agreed to in January in section 16.1300 "Controlled Substances" on page 92. That contract expired June 30 and negotiations on a new contract are ongoing.

Students weren’t given as many chances. The code of conduct for middle school and high school students states that if they are found to be under the influence or in possession of illegal drugs, they get a 5-day suspension or a 3-day suspension with counseling on the first offense.

A teacher caught selling drugs in class would get a 3-day suspension without pay with mandatory counseling, but wouldn’t be fired unless the teacher did it a second time.

"They must have had been high to approve that contract because no sober person would agree to that kind of policy," said Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance. "The role models are held to a lower standard than the students. That just sends a horrible message. If anything is indicative of how far school boards are willing to bend to kiss the rings of union leaders, this is it.

"That is an absolute disgrace," he said.

The provision of the teachers' contract that allowed up to five strikes for being under the influence of alcohol and three strikes for being under the influence of illegal drugs before being fired was ruled as unenforceable by Public Act 103 in July 2011. However, the union contract states that if Public Act 103 is struck down, the policy goes back into effect for teachers.

Via:Michigan Capitol Confidential

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Friday, September 28, 2012

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