Andrew Breitbart falls dead after midnight
What a huge loss for America and the cause of freedom. The world is less bright today. I feel so fortunate to have spoken with him a few times; a wonderful man to be sure.
Breitbart was walking near his home in Brentwood, Calif just after midnight Thursday when he collapsed according to his father-in-law Orson Bean. Someone saw Breitbart fall and called 911. Emergency crews tried to revive him and rushed him to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, Bean said. He is survived by his wife Susannah Bean Breitbart, 41, and four children.
Tucker Carlson remembers Andrew Breitbart (video) – LINK.
Matt Drudge comments:
DEAR READER: In the first decade of the DRUDGEREPORT Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment. We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what’s happening. I don’t think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with each other, or challenge each other. I still see him in my mind’s eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in his mid 20’s. It was all there. He had a wonderful, loving family and we all feel great sadness for them today… MDRUDGE
Michelle Malkin – LINK.
Steven Crowder (video) – LINK.
Rush Limbaugh – LINK.
Ron Paul dumped money for ads in Michigan to attack Santorum and Gingrich, but not Romney…
Leftist movie critics trash “Act of Valor” for daring to show the military in a positive light
The new film “Act of Valor” doesn’t accuse U.S. military members of war crimes, nor does it paint them as cold killing machines.
That simply won’t do for many film critics, who cling to the kind of anti-military movies which routinely flop at the box office. “Valor” uses amateur actors – active duty Navy SEALs – and certainly can be faulted for their flat line readings. And the episodic nature of the movie also invites fair critiques, even if it’s remarkable the cast routinely acted around live gunfire. But many critics went beyond the call of duty to smite a film that dared to show SEALs as heroes, and their efforts to stop terrorists a noble endeavor.
Time Out New York’s Joshua Rothkopf calls the film “scary,” with a “ridiculously limited view of American righteousness.”
Tampa Bay Times critic Steve Persall dubs “Valor” “a land mine movie for anyone to review who isn’t a military veteran, who hasn’t bought into the cult of warfare,” later adding “pacifists won’t be nearly as impressed.”
How ’bout audiences who realize terrorists are a legitimate threat, and that military intervention is often necessary to prevent them from wiping out hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents?
Philly.com’s David Hiltbrand seemed upset by sequences in which people responsible for the capture and torture of a CIA agent met their gruesome fate:
You watch as one of our snipers dispassionately and from a great distance lays out these scruffy untrained campesinos one after the other with graphic head shots.
So, as long as you’re a “scruffy, untrained campesino” we should give you a pass for torturing a woman. But Hiltbrand’s moral confusion intensified as the film wore on:
Near the end, the film degenerates into an extended, chaotic firefight. You know who you’re supposed to be rooting for because they’re the ones wearing uniforms, but it’s easy to lose touch with why.
Here’s a clue – the folks who want to commit terrorist acts are the bad guys and need to be stopped. The ones stopping them are the heroes. Now, how hard is that?
Read the rest HERE.
Mark Levin: I’m Scared To Death If Mitt Romney Gets The Republican Nomination
This is a must see video. Levin makes one crucial point after another:
Romney just got virtually tied in his home state of Michigan, by Rick Santorum who has little money and next to no organization to speak of.
What kind of Republican Party agrees to 20 debates and has most of the run by CNN and NBC, both of whom try to keep the debates focused on non-issues and quibbling?
I have more questions:
How can we nominate Mitt Romney when he cannot energize the base, he does not energize independents, and turnout in areas he wins end up being below 2008 levels when many conservatives had decided to stay home?
How can the GOP sit there and let Romney trash many of its best leaders with lies and half truths for not being perfectly conservative, when Romney cannot come close to meeting the same standards for conservative purity he holds other candidates too? Mitt Romney trashes Rick Santorum for supporting “No Child Left Behind”, yet Romney supported it; Romney trashed Rick Perry saying that one cannot be too against illegal immigration, yet just a couple of years ago Romney was talking Amnesty on Meet the Press; Mitt Romney trashes Rick Santorum for losing his Senate seat by 18 points in the ’06 Democrat landslide, yet when Romney ran for Senate he lost by 16 points and that was a year Republicans did well?
How can Mitt Romney challenge Obama on ObamaCare when Romney’s own staff helped Obama craft it and implement it? How can Romney challenge Obama on the failed stimulus when he was luke-warm on it in the hardcover version of his book? How can Romney challenge Obama on his assault on the Catholic Church when Romney did something similar in Massachusetts? How can Mitt Romney challenge Obama on class warfare when Romney is already praising the progressive income tax and saying that the 1% should pay more? How can Romney challenge Obama on flip-flopping?
This list goes on and on.
I am also concerned because I am watching David Axelrod, who is a trained propagandist hired gun not unlike myself, very closely and I see that he has Mitt Romney psychologically pegged. Have no doubt that Axelrod understands the book on Mitt Romney.
Hawkins: Five Things Children Know That Liberals Have Forgotten
1) Life’s not fair. There’s probably not a kid in this country who hasn’t said, “That’s not fair,” and has heard a “Life’s not fair” in return. You could actually go farther than that. Not only is life not fair, the word “fair” is completely arbitrary and primarily dependent on whose goose is getting gored.
If you’re paying 35% of your income in taxes and are being told that it’s not “fair” you’re only paying that much when almost half the country isn’t paying any income tax at all, you probably disagree in the strongest of terms. On the other hand, someone making $10,000 a year might not think it’s “fair” for someone else to make so much more money than he does after taxes. If you’re a black, Harvard educated business owner with 10 million dollars in the bank, you may think it’s perfectly fair that your son gets into a college over a more qualified son of a white garbage collector because of Affirmative Action, but it’s pretty easy to see how the person being discriminated against because of his race wouldn’t feel the same way.
In other words, one person’s “fair” is another’s person’s “unfair” which can become a huge problem when the government starts defining what’s “fair” and putting the force of law behind it. Yes, some of that has to happen in order to have an orderly and law abiding society, but increasingly, what’s “fair” is becoming little more than an overbearing government and tyrannical judges abusing the law to do favors for the politically well-connected and voting blocks they think will help “their side.” No matter what they do, life will never be “fair” and trying to make it so is an inherently “unfair” exercise in utopianism that has proven to lead to considerably more misery than simply accepting that “Life isn’t fair” in the first place.
2) You can’t have everything you want. This is something most kids learn when they don’t get a pony at Christmas or when their parents take them into a dollar store and tell them they can have “two things.”
This is not a lesson liberals seem to have ever learned because their thinking is, “If it’s a ‘good idea,’ then it should be funded, regardless of what it costs, regardless of whether it’s worth the money.” It’s like liberals start with the assumption that we have infinite money and if anyone opposes spending for any reason, it must be because he’s “mean.” Did you know we actually have a higher debt load per person than Greece ($44,215 vs. $39,000), a nation that’s only being saved from default because richer countries are paying its bills? So what happens when we run out of money, go into a depression, taxes explode, and the checks from the government slow down and stop? Judging by what’s happening in Greece, liberals will start throwing Molotov cocktails in the street and blame everyone but themselves for spending the country into oblivion.
To see the other three continue reading HERE.
Obama Administration to Congress: We’re not interested in lowering gas prices – UPDATED
Secretary Chu: The Energy Department is not working to get gas prices down.
It is amazing when they let the truth out. President Obama’s Energy Secretary Stephen Chu gave an honest answer when he gave a direct answer to a direct question in testimony to Congress:
Chu specifically cited a reported breakthrough announced Monday by Envia Systems, which received funding from DOE’s ARPA-E, that could help slash the price of electric vehicle batteries.
He also touted natural gas as “great” and said DOE is researching how to reduce the cost of compressed natural gas tanks for vehicles.
High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.
“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.
“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”
Mark Levin plays some more of Secretary Chu’s testimony where he makes it clear that the Obama Administration intends to drive up prices by limiting future supply:
6th Circuit Court of Appeals Sides with Christian Grad Student
This is where it gets interesting, according to the evidence, the textbooks the EMU used said that councilors cannot be value neutral and that values are essential to the healing process:
Defendant Ametrano, Chair of the formal review committee that dismissed Ms. Ward from the program, assigned a book as required reading in a required course Ms. Ward took from Defendant Ametrano, which states that “[i]t is now generally recognized that the therapeutic endeavor is a value-laden process and that all counselors, to some degree, communicate their values to clients,” and that “the assumption that counseling is value-neutral is no longer tenable.”
(Ex. 8 at 73.) A true and accurate copy of excerpts from this book, Becoming a Helper by Marianne Schneider Corey and Gerald Corey and published in 2007, is attached as Exhibit 8.
This book also explains that “because the values [counselors] hold cannot be kept out of their work, they should not refuse to discuss their core values.” (Id.)
Regarding values, the book further states: “In our view it is neither possible nor desirable for helpers to remain neutral or to keep their values separate from their professional relationships. Because values have a significant impact on the helping process, it is important to express them openly when doing so is appropriate.” (Id. at 73.)
As taught by the EMU counseling department in required courses, the counseling profession understands that personal values impact a counselor’s practice, and that exposing a client to your values can be an appropriate course of action in a counseling relationship.
The other textbooks used in EMU’s own courses said that referring a client is the appropriate action when a values conflict may become an issue in the client/therapist relationship. EMU could demonstrate no rule or reason to ban or prevent Ms. Ward from asking for the referral. To be clear, in multiple instances EMU violated standard counselling practices and procedures in order to persecute Julea Ward for holding Christian beliefs.
CBN:
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a Christian graduate student expelled from Eastern Michigan University’s counseling program after refusing to provide services to a gay client.
In 2009, EMU student Julea Ward was assigned a client seeking help with a homosexual relationship.
Believing that taking on such a case would violate her Christian convictions, Ward asked the clinic to reassign the client to another counselor — a move in keeping with the school’s counseling code of ethics.
“I explained that I was a Christian and that I could not [endorse] homosexual behavior,” Ward said.
Following a formal review hearing, EMU sent Ward a letter dismissing her from the school’s graduate program.
“Rather than allow Julea to refer a potential client to another qualified counselor — a common, professional practice to best serve clients — EMU attacked and questioned Julea’s religious beliefs and ultimately expelled her from the program because of them,” said Alliance Defense Fund Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco, who argued Ward’s case last October.
Click here to read Ward’s complaint against EMU.
The 6th Circuit sided with Ward in a sternly-worded decision being hailed by Christian groups as a victory for free speech and religious freedom.
“A reasonable jury could conclude that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith,” the appellate court wrote in its opinion Friday.
“A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems… as the price for obtaining a degree,” the 6th Circuit wrote. “Tolerance is a two-way street.”
The court did not mince words in the ruling:
Here too, what did Ward do wrong? Ward was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school’s affirmation directives in doing so. That is why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices. What more could the rule require? Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion (1) does not require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct if the conversation takes a turn in that direction and (2) does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faithbased issues. Tolerance is a two-way street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.
Alinsky-tied group awarded $56 million federal loan…
…to start a non-profit health insurance company, but the group is has no experience in the insurance industry. What the group does have experience in is far left radical activism. Saul Alinsky was a 1960’s revolutionary communist activist.
More Obama pals get your money.
Like many of the “green jobs” projects that the Obama Administration has given huge loans to, this is yet another big taxpayer investment that will likely never be paid back and is instead taxpayer dollars used for Democrats political activism. Many “green jobs” government loan recipients went out of business soon after receiving the loans, but the CEO’s of the companies were large political contributors who paid themselves large salaries and bonuses before ceasing operations.
A Saul Alinsky-tied group has been awarded a $56 million federal loan to start up a nonprofit health insurance company — one of several organizations across the country this week tapped to launch a new network of insurers under the sponsorship of the federal health care overhaul.
The Wisconsin group, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, was awarded the funding on Tuesday. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the group is expected to provide coverage statewide within five years after starting on a smaller scale in early 2014.
But Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson questioned the group’s credentials — given its affiliation and lack of experience in the insurance field.
“The indisputable fact is that Common Ground was an outgrowth of the Alinsky operation in Chicago,” Wilson said. “We’re not giving money to a group with experience in health care issues or in setting up exchanges. … We’re handing the money to people who have been trained by arguably the single most expert individual on community organizing in the last 100 years.”
Common Ground, a Milwaukee group that dates back to 2004, is an affiliate of the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation.
Santorum, Reagan, Obama and Satan…
Rick Santorum was attacked for saying that Satan has targeted America. Rick Santorum isn’t alone.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s mentor Saul Alinsky dedicated his book, “Rules for Radicals” to Satan:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: From all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
As Reagan himself put it, “We know that living in this world means dealing with what philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the doctrine of sin.” Reagan dared to use the “J” word, inserting a distinctly Christian claim: “There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.”
Reagan’s speech came at 3:04 p.m. on March 8, 1983 in the Citrus Crown Ballroom at the Orlando Sheraton Twin Towers Hotel. The audience was the National Association of Evangelicals. He began by thanking all those present for their prayers, saying that their intercession had “made all the difference” in his life. He cited his favorite quote from Lincoln, about being driven to his knees by the conviction he had nowhere else to go. He then commended the role of religious faith in American democracy. “[F]reedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted,” Reagan maintained. “The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight.” He said the discovery of that insight was the “great triumph” of the Founders. Indeed it was.
Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.
Mitt Romney – Do you support state funding of Abortion? Answer: YES
April 9th 2002 Planned Parenthood Survey. Being pro-abortion is one thing; being for taxpayer funding of abortion is another.
Romney ads blast Santorum for supporting “No Child Left Behind”, but Romney supported it too (video)
The “No Child Left Behind Act” has been a colossal failure. While the testing in the act did indeed give is a better idea of just how bad public schools are failing our children, it made the problem worse because school districts and teachers started teaching the test, and thus weren’t truly educating. This is something I have seen first hand.
Teaching is a missionary vocation. When the federal government and/or a bureaucratic and/or a union mentality is introduced that kills the missionary attitude and spirit. This is why our current public school model is failing more than it is succeeding.
New Ad: Obama is a “Con-Artist”
Obama to cut healthcare benefits for active duty and retired US military, no cuts for government unions
Obama’s new proposed budget, which has no chance of passing, not only proposed giving $800 million to the Muslim Brotherhood, he wants to slash medical benefits for retired and active duty military. The military likely will not vote for Obama and the government unions will; it is just that simple.
The Obama administration’s proposed defense budget calls for military families and retirees to pay sharply more for their healthcare, while leaving unionized civilian defense workers’ benefits untouched. The proposal is causing a major rift within the Pentagon, according to U.S. officials. Several congressional aides suggested the move is designed to increase the enrollment in Obamacare’s state-run insurance exchanges.
The disparity in treatment between civilian and uniformed personnel is causing a backlash within the military that could undermine recruitment and retention.
The proposed increases in health care payments by service members, which must be approved by Congress, are part of the Pentagon’s $487 billion cut in spending. It seeks to save $1.8 billion from the Tricare medical system in the fiscal 2013 budget, and $12.9 billion by 2017.
Many in Congress are opposing the proposed changes, which would require the passage of new legislation before being put in place.
“We shouldn’t ask our military to pay our bills when we aren’t willing to impose a similar hardship on the rest of the population,” Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a Republican from California, said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “We can’t keep asking those who have given so much to give that much more.”
Administration officials told Congress that one goal of the increased fees is to force military retirees to reduce their involvement in Tricare and eventually opt out of the program in favor of alternatives established by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
Hill Poll: Likely voters prefer lower individual, business tax rates
Three-quarters of likely voters believe the nation’s top earners should pay lower, not higher, tax rates, according to a new poll for The Hill.
The big majority opted for a lower tax bill when asked to choose specific rates; precisely 75 percent said the right level for top earners was 30 percent or below.
The current rate for top earners is 35 percent. Only 4 percent thought it was appropriate to take 40 percent, which is approximately the level that President Obama is seeking from January 2013 onward.
The Hill Poll also found that 73 percent of likely voters believe corporations should pay a lower rate than the current 35 percent, as both the White House and Republicans push plans to lower rates.
The new data seem to run counter to several polls that have found support for raising taxes on high-income earners. In an Associated Press-GfK poll released Friday, 65 percent said they favored President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” that millionaires should pay at least 30 percent of their income. And a Pew poll conducted in June found 66 percent of adults favored raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 as a way to tackle the deficit.
But The Hill poll found that a dramatically different picture emerges when voters are asked to specify the “most appropriate” rates.
IBD: Obama’s Double Talk on Sky-High Gas Prices
Related: IBD: Five Biggest Whoppers In Obama’s Energy Speech – UPDATED!
IBD:
When gas prices hit $4 a gallon in 2008, candidate Barack Obama said it was due to previous failed energy policies. Now that prices are heading still higher, President Obama calls it progress.
Already, pump prices are higher than they’ve been in previous years, suggesting they will top $4 soon and possibly reach an unprecedented $5 this summer.
President Obama is starting to notice the political implications. So he sent Robert Gibbs — now a top campaign adviser — out to tell the public not to worry.
“Just on Friday, the Department of the Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic,” Gibbs said Sunday. “Our domestic oil production is at an eight-year high, and our use of foreign oil is at a 16-year low. So we’re making progress.”
“Progress” isn’t exactly how Obama described the country’s energy picture in 2008, when gas prices were closing in on $4 a gallon. Then, it was a clear sign of “Washington’s failure to lead on energy,” which was “turning the middle-class squeeze into a devastating vise-grip for millions of Americans.”
Read more HERE.
Gallup: Unemployment 9%, Not 8.3%
Yup, it’s like that….
When the administration knew that the 8.3% number was a blip from people leaving the workforce they kept saying 8.3% and still are.
Unemployment in the U.S. rose to nine percent in mid-February, up from 8.3 percent a month earlier, according to a new Gallup survey. The polling company said this suggests that it is “premature” to assume the economy will not feature prominently in the 2012 election season.
Gallup figures typically provide an indication of what the government will report at the end of the month.
“The U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 9.0% in mid-February,” Gallup said in its mid-month unemployment survey, released on February 17. “The mid-month reading normally reflects what the U.S. government reports for the entire month, and is up from 8.3% in mid-January.”
Britain passes 50% tax rate for the evil rich, and loses $807.53 million in tax revenue in three months…
If you tax the productive, the productive produce less, pay less in tax, pay people off and it ripples through the economy; or as my teenage daughter might say “duh!”. Those stuck in such a bracket rearrange their affairs to avoid the tax. They invest in China, expatriate, buy gold or other hard assets or just stop moving their money; they stop taking as much risk.
The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million [that is$807.53 American] compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.
Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.
The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1billion.
A Treasury source said the relatively poor revenues from self-assessment returns was partly down to highly-paid individuals arranging their affairs to avoid paying the 50p rate.
“It’s true that SA revenues are a bit disappointing — it’s still early, but it looks like there’s been quite a lot of forestalling and other manoeuvring to avoid the top rate,” said the source.
However, another Treasury source added that the tax deadline had been extended by two days because of industrial action at HM Revenue and Customs. Therefore, it was too early to begin assessing the revenues raised from the 50p rate of tax because about 20 per cent of self-assessment tax is paid in the hours before the deadline.
Francesca Lagerberg, head of tax at Grant Thornton, an accountancy firm, said: “My guess is that because the 50 per cent rate was flagged up in advance many taxpayers, particularly those with their own businesses, decided to extract dividends ahead of the change. It highlights the fact that high tax rates don’t always deliver high tax revenues.”
AEI Study: Elite Media Spins Economic News Positive when Democrats in Power, Negative When Republicans in Power
[Editor’s Note – We have been reporting incidents of this so this seemed like a good time to bring out this study, which I had posted on my old college blog, once again which confirms what so many who are paying close attention have observed.]
According to the elite media “most economists” were surprised by month after month after month of unexpected, unexpected, unexpected, unexpected bad economic news. Of course to those who were paying attention the news wasn’t unexpected at all.
AEI:
https://www.aei.org/publication/partisan-bias-in-newspapers/
Newspaper headlines reporting on unemployment, gross domestic product, retail sales, and durable goods tended to be negative when a Republican is in the White House.
Economists have been puzzled this year by the persistence with which perceptions about the economy have lagged behind the economic data. For the most recent 12-month period for which we have data, for example, the economy grew almost exactly as fast as it did during the best 12-month period during President Clinton’s two terms. But the economic mood of the country has been much different.
It isn’t just the economy that influences people’s perceptions. In research we just released, we find that media coverage is also an important determinant. We found that newspaper headlines reporting economic news on unemployment, gross domestic product (GDP), retail sales, and durable goods tended to be much more frequently negative when a Republican was in the White House. And this was true even after accounting for the economic numbers on which the stories were based and how those numbers were changing over time.
We also found that positive headlines explained whether people thought that the economy was getting better more than the economic variables themselves. Newspapers are indeed important.
There have, of course, been numerous anecdotal claims of media bias. What has been lacking has been a rigorous scientific study of media bias, and our new paper is an attempt to provide just that.
If we limit ourselves to news coverage of economic data, it is possible to get an objective measure of the news behind the stories. Our research team first collected a list of days that important economic news was released for most papers since 1991 and for four major papers and the Associated Press since 1985. We then used Nexis, a computer database of news stories that contains information on 389 newspapers, to gather all of the 12,620 headlines that ran in America’s newspapers covering economic news stories. We excluded follow-up and feature stories because we wanted to be able to link the headlines directly with the numbers on which they were based.
Headlines are relatively easy to classify since they say things are getting better, worse or mixed. For example, on Jan. 31, the government reported that the real GDP had grown 4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003. The New York Times covered this, appropriately, as good news, writing the headline, “Economy remained strong in 4th quarter, U.S. reports.” At the same time, the Chicago Tribune wrote that “GDP growth disappoints; job worries linger.” Headlines are so divergent, it’s sometimes hard to believe they are referring to the same event.
Actual economic data explains much about the headlines–but far from everything. We found that the incidence of positive coverage during Republican presidencies was fairly steady–but economic news under President Clinton received by far the most positive coverage. This partisan gap or bias (the difference in positive headlines between Republicans and Democrats for the same underlying economic news) consistently implied that Democrats got between 10 and 20 percentage points more positive headlines.
We also examined individual newspapers. Among the top 10 papers, we found strong evidence that the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and the Washington Postwere much more likely to have positive headlines for Democrats even with the same economic news. The New York Post showed no statistically significant difference. The Los Angeles Times did not tend to treat Republicans and Democrats significantly differently.
Even including the Los Angeles Times, Ronald Reagan, a president who presided over one of the most vigorous economies in our history, still received seven percent fewer positive news stories than Clinton after accounting for the different economic conditions.
What motivates newspapers and their copy editors to pick the headlines that they do is not a question we tried to answer. Whether these motivations are conscious or not, a partisan gap exists, and it helps explain one of this year’s biggest economic puzzles. Unfortunately, the recent charges of political bias at CBS may only be a small part of the problem with the news.
Mitch Daniels Sets the Record Straight On High Gas Prices
U.S. per capita government debt worse than Greece
Via the Washington Examiner:
According to a new analysis by the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, the United States has a higher per capita debt burden than any European country, including riot-ridden Greece.
Using the most recent data available from the International Monetary Fund, the Senate Budget Committee found that U.S. federal government debt per capita is nearly $45,000. That is almost 15 percent higher than the per capita debt burden of Greece ($38,937).
The Senate Budget Committee also notes that our debt per capita would rise to $75,000 by 2020 if President Obama’s budget became law.
Earlier last month, the U.S. government’s total out standing debt, $15,419,800,222,325, surpassed the nation’s gross domestic product ($15,294,300,000,000).
Forbes: Government Education Spending Up 7 Times & Nothing To Show For It
Solyndra’s in the classroom.
Accordingly, the “investment in education” that Obama wants more (and more, and more) of is actually “federal-government-directed investment in education”. When considering whether we really want more of this, it is important to remember that it was “federal-government-directed investment in energy” that gave us Solyndra, Ener1, and Beacon Power, and that it was “federal-government-directed investment in housing” that has cost taxpayers more than $150 billion in losses (thus far) at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
So, how would we know if increased government “investment” in education was producing a return? We would see a steady rise in the ratio of GDP to “nonresidential produced assets” over time. Our GDP is produced by a combination of physical capital and human capital. Accordingly, if the economic value of our human capital were rising, the impact would show up in the numbers as increasing productivity of physical capital.
Now, here is the bad news. While total real ($2010) government spending on education increased almost 13-fold from 1951 to 2009, the measured GDP return on physical capital actually declined slightly, from 47.7% to 44.1%. This could not have happened if we were getting an appreciable economic return on our huge “investment” in education.
What follows is a “first approximation analysis”. The numbers could be done with more precision, but they are good enough to give us an idea of what the nation has been getting (actually, not getting) for its massive “investments” in education.
Assuming that about 25% of our total population is in school at any one time, average real (2010 dollars) government spending per student rose from $1,763 in 1951 to $12,209 in 2009. This is an increase of about 7 times. Assuming an average of 13 years of education per student (some go to college, some drop out of high school), this means that during this 58-year time period, we increased our real “investment” in the human capital represented by each student from $22,913 to $158,717.
More:
Also, imagine if, instead of being given a 2009 education for $158,717, an average student were given a 1967-style education for about $58,000, and $100,000 in capital with which to start his working life. This would be sufficient to start any number of small businesses. Alternatively, if put in an IRA earning a real return of 6%, the $100,000 would grow to about $1.8 million over 50 years.
The huge government “investments” made in education over the past 50 years have produced little more than “Solyndras in the classroom”. They have enriched teachers unions and other rent-seekers, but have added little or nothing to the economic prospects of students. America does not need more such “investment”.
Read more HERE.
IBD: Five Biggest Whoppers In Obama’s Energy Speech – UPDATED!
Who did not see this piece coming form a mile away:
IBD:
Energy: The White House billed President Obama’s energy policy speech as a response to mounting criticism of record high gas prices. What he delivered was a grab bag of excuses and outright falsehoods.
Obama’s main message to struggling motorists was: It’s not my fault, so stop whining. The speech only got worse from there, recycling excuses and myths that Obama’s peddled for years. But there were some standout whoppers that deserve debunking. The five biggest:
“We’re focused on production.”
Fact: While production is up under Obama, this has nothing to do with his policies, but is the result of permits and private industry efforts that began long before Obama occupied the White House.
Obama has chosen almost always to limit production. He canceled leases on federal lands in Utah, suspended them in Montana, delayed them in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast.
His administration also has been slow-walking permits in the Gulf of Mexico, approving far fewer while stretching out review times, according to the Greater New Orleans Gulf Permit Index. The Energy Dept. says Gulf oil output will be down 17% by the end of 2013, compared with the start of 2011. Swift Energy President Bruce Vincent is right to say Obama has “done nothing but restrict access and delay permitting.”
“The U.S. consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves.”
Fact: Obama constantly refers to this statistic to buttress his claim that “we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices.” The argument goes that since the U.S. supply is limited, it won’t ever make a difference to world prices.
It’s bogus. New exploration and drilling technologies have uncovered vast amounts of recoverable oil.
In fact, the U.S. has a mind-boggling 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to “fuel the present needs in the U.S. for around 250 years,” according to the Institute for Energy Research. The problem is the government has put most of this supply off limits.
“Because of the investments we’ve made, the use of clean, renewable energy in this country has nearly doubled.”
Fact: Production of renewable energy — biomass, wind, solar and the like — climbed just 12% between 2008 and 2011, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
“We need to double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising.”
Fact: Renewable energy simply won’t play an important role in the country’s energy picture anytime soon, accounting for just 13% of U.S. energy production by 2035, according to the EIA.
“There are no short-term silver bullets when it comes to gas prices.”
Fact: Obama could drive down oil prices right now simply by announcing a more aggressive effort to boost domestic supplies. When President Bush lifted a moratorium in 2008, oil prices immediately fell $9 a barrel.
Obama said in his speech that Americans aren’t stupid. He’s right about that, which is why most are giving his energy policy a thumbs down.
Tapper: Why Is Obama Asking “Indignant” About Higher Gas Prices When He Campaigned On It
Obama statements from 2008:
[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3d_CJoO0OA]
[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPyFbNWffHE]
Barack Obama 2008 ad on Gas Prices [Editor’s Note – and yes he did take money from oil companies, specifically BP… the oil spill company who got all those safety waivers]
Obama saying he wants $4.00 a gallon gas
Obama In 2008 Supported a Gas Pipeline From Canada
Mitt Lied: Romney did require Catholic hospitals to provide morning-after pills
Via Pundit and Pundette [Great work in finding this evidence P & P – Editor]:
The Boston Catholic Insider provides a detailed timeline that refutes Romney’s assertions about a Massachusetts morning-after pill mandate:
No, absolutely not. Of course not.
There was no requirement in Massachusetts for the Catholic Church to provide morning-after pills to rape victims. That was entirely voluntary on their part. There was no such requirement.BCI finds the opposite to be true. Their synopsis:
In 2005 Romney vetoed a bill to provide access to the so-called “morning-after-pill,” knowing his veto would be overridden, but months later, he decided Catholic hospitals did have to give the morning-after pill to rape victims. Key points to note:
- Romney had publicly claimed the bill did not apply to private religious hospitals
- He reversed his own July 2005 veto against abortifacients by signing an October bill seeking a federal waiver to expand distribution of Plan B abortifacients.
- On December 7, 2005, Romney’s Department of Public Health said that Catholic and other privately-run hospitals could opt out of giving the morning-after pill to rape victims because of religious or moral objections
- On December 8, 2005 Romney reversed the legal opinion of his own State Department of Public Health, instructing all Catholic hospitals and others to provide the chemical Plan B “morning after pill” to rape victims. He was quoted as saying, ““I think, in my personal view, it’s the right thing for hospitals to provide information and access to emergency contraception to anyone who is a victim of rape.”
Please note the principled leadership shown by Romney here. For it, against it, rinse, repeat.
BCI’s conclusion:
When Romney was asked in the debate if he had required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims and had infringed on Catholics’ rights, he responded, “No, absolutely not. Of course not.” That was untrue.
When Romney said “for the Catholic Church to provide morning-after pills to rape victims…was entirely voluntary on their part”, that was also untrue.
For him to suggest to the citizens of the United States on national television that Cardinal O’Malley and the Catholic Church would “voluntarily” provide morning-after pills is an egregious misrepresentation of Catholic Church teachings and an egregious misrepresentation of what actually happened in this situation.
BCI hopes that the media and other candidates call him out on this.
It’s a matter of public record. Not only did Romney destroy conscience protections, a la the Obama administration, but he lied outright about it as recently as two days ago. This should disqualify him as a serious candidate.
Newt Gingrich Highlights from CNN Debate in Arizona
Anti-conservatism is anti-intellectualism
A good friend of mine sent me a link to a piece that contained every bigoted false claim in the book that progressive secular leftists use to smear traditionalists, Jews and Christians. Of course, only those who aren’t aware of history and the use of such smears, which are nothing more than discredited cliches, actually believe such nonsense. My friend asked me, “Does part of conservatism stand against reason in the sense of being simply anti-intellectual?”.
To answer my friend’s question I said, “Let me be clear; anti-conservatism is anti-intellectualism”. Why?
American Conservatism demands that we look at our history and traditions to use them as a guide. To ascertain works and what doesn’t in order to have the happiest and healthiest society we can while recognizing that man’s nature is flawed and that society will never be perfect.
Leftists, by and large, believe that rationality must be imposed from above. They believe in a rule of the elite (oligarchy) over the “ignorant masses”. The believe that freedom leaves too much to chance. This kind of thinking is what our Founders, Alexis de Tocqueville and traditional American conservatives would call out as tyrannical. The progressive secular left believes that our traditions, Biblical codes, and history are merely mysticism (anti-intellectualism); thus they believe that 6,000 years of human experience means nothing now that they are here to enlighten us.
The left even rejects Aristotle’s Law of Identity, they believe that truth is fungible, relative to ones own ideology, and that there are no truths that are self evident.
The left pushes for top down government and central planning for our economy and society, a plan and philosophy that has failed every time it has been tried; often with massive bloodshed to boot. Even in cases where there was not much bloodshed there was still a large amount of human suffering. We see this in Western Europe even now, and we see more suffering here at home as a result of our own dabbling in leftism.
We have seen study after study show that people are more free and have more wealth when they live in a society with the the Judea/Christian ethic.
Those who push Marxism/Leftism/Utopianism/Socialism/Communism/Progressivism or whatever one may wish to call it are selling a defective product and use deceptive advertising to sell it.
Muslim Brotherhood Decides What FBI Agents Get To Learn About Islam
President Obama recently proposed $800 million in aid for the Muslim Brotherhood (LINK). Now we learn this:
National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy:
While we’re on the subject of the Muslim Brotherhood, this February 16 report from Steve Emerson at the Investigative Project on Terrorism will be an eye-opener. As I mentioned in my column over the weekend, the FBI — following the administration’s lead — is purging its training materials of publications that are deemed offensive to Muslims (you know, crazy stuff like claims that passages in the Koran and Hadith promote violent jihad, Islamic supremacism, killing of apostates, oppression of women, etc.). So what are the criteria the Bureau uses to figure out what materials are offensive? And who decides?
You’ll never guess. Steve, who has been talking to some mighty outraged law-enforcement officials, writes:
It was just revealed two days ago that FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various Islamist and militant Arabic groups who in the past have defended Hamas and Hizballah and have also issued blatantly anti-Semitic statements. At this meeting, the FBI revealed that it had removed more than 1000 presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that was deemed “offensive.” The FBI did not reveal what criteria was used to determine why material was considered “offensive” but knowledgeable law enforcement sources have told the IPT that it was these radical groups who made that determination. Moreover, numerous FBI agents have confirmed that from now on, FBI headquarters has banned all FBI offices from inviting any counter-terrorist specialists who are considered “anti-Islam” by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.
The February 8 FBI meeting was the culmination of a series of unpublicized directives issued in the last three months by top FBI officials to all its field offices to immediately recall and withdraw any presentation or curricula on Islam throughout the entire FBI. In fact, according to informed sources and undisclosed documents, the FBI directive was instigated by radical Muslim groups in the US who had repeatedly met with top officials of the Obama Administration to complain, among other things, that the mere usage of the term of “radical Islam” in FBI curricula was “offensive” and ‘racist.” And thus, directives went out by Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Mueller to censor all such material. Included in the material destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were powerpoints and articles that defined jihad as “holy war” or presentations that portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization bent on taking over the world—a major tenet that the Muslim Brotherhood has publicly stated for decades.
Feel safer now?
Flashback: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Rails Against High Gas Prices Under Bush
America is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation
AMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.
But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.
Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end “too big to fail” by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long. Just one bit, the “Volcker rule”, which aims to curb risky proprietary trading by banks, includes 383 questions that break down into 1,420 subquestions.
Hardly anyone has actually read Dodd-Frank, besides the Chinese government and our correspondent in New York (see article). Those who have struggle to make sense of it, not least because so much detail has yet to be filled in: of the 400 rules it mandates, only 93 have been finalised. So financial firms in America must prepare to comply with a law that is partly unintelligible and partly unknowable.
Read more HERE.
Jeff Bell: Social Conservatism Wins Elections in Key States
Who is Jeff Bell?
Mr. Bell, 68, is an unlikely tribune for social conservatism. His main interest has always been economics. He was “an early supply-sider” who worked on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns of 1976 and 1980 and Jack Kemp’s in 1988. In 1978 he ran an anti-tax campaign for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey, defeating Republican incumbent Clifford Case in the primary but losing to Democrat Bill Bradley.
Even now his day job is to advocate for the gold standard at the American Principles Project. But he’s been interested in social issues since the 1980s, when “it became increasingly clear to me . . . that social issues were beginning to be very important in comparison to economic issues,” in part because “Reaganomics worked so well that the Democrats . . . kind of retired the economic issues.”
Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, “The Case for Polarized Politics,” has a winning track record for the GOP. “Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964,” he observes. “The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period. . . . When social issues came into the mix—I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections.”
The Democrats who won, including even Barack Obama in 2008, did not play up social liberalism in their campaigns. In 1992 Bill Clinton was a death-penalty advocate who promised to “end welfare as we know it” and make abortion “safe, legal and rare.” Social issues have come to the fore on the GOP side in two of the past six presidential elections—in 1988 (prison furloughs, the Pledge of Allegiance, the ACLU) and 2004 (same-sex marriage). “Those are the only two elections since Reagan where the Republican Party has won a popular majority,” Mr. Bell says. “It isn’t coincidental.”
Even without immediate gains among minority voters, Mr. Bell sees social issues as the path to a GOP majority in 2012. They account for the George W. Bush-era red-blue divide, which Mr. Bell says endures—and, he adds, red has the advantage: “There was one state in 2000 that Bush carried that I would say was socially left of center, and that was New Hampshire,” the only state that flipped to John Kerry four years later. “By 2004, every state—all 31 states that Bush carried—were socially conservative states.” Those states now have 292 electoral votes, with 270 sufficient for a majority.
By contrast, not all the Kerry states are socially liberal. “The swing vote in the Midwest is socially conservative and less conservative economically,” Mr. Bell says, so that “social conservatism is more likely to be helpful than economic conservatism.”
The roots of social conservatism, he maintains, lie in the American Revolution. “Nature’s God is the only authority cited in the Declaration of Independence. . . . The usual [assumption] is, the U.S. has social conservatism because it’s more religious. . . . My feeling is that the very founding of the country is the natural law, which is God-given, but it isn’t particular to any one religion. . . . If you believe that rights are unalienable and that they come from God, the odds are that you’re a social conservative.”
Read more HERE.
Political Arena 