Tag Archives: current-events

2012 Primary, Budget, Dirty Tricks, Obama, Treason, True Talking Points

US Govt. Makes Deal With Mexican Government to Push Food Stamps on Mexicans…..

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Is this the change you voted for?

Daily Caller:

The Mexican government has been working with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.

USDA has an agreement with Mexico to promote American food assistance programs, including food stamps, among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.

“USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible Mexican nationals living in the United States about available nutrition assistance,” the USDA explains in a brief paragraph on their “Reaching Low-Income Hispanics With Nutrition Assistance” web page. “Mexico will help disseminate this information through its embassy and network of approximately 50 consular offices.”

The partnership — which was signed by former USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista in 2004 — sees to it that the Mexican Embassy and Mexican consulates in America provide USDA nutrition assistance program information to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals working in America and migrant communities in America. The information is specifically focused on eligibility criteria and access.

The goal, for USDA, is to get rid of what they see as enrollment obstacles and increase access among potentially eligible populations by working with arms of the Mexican government in America. Benefits are not guaranteed or provided under the program — the purpose is outreach and education.

Some of the materials the USDA encourages the Mexican government to use to educate and promote the benefit programs are available free online for order and download. A partial list of materials include English and Spanish brochures titled “Five Easy Steps To Snap Benefits,” “How To Get Food Help — A Consumer’s Guide to FNCS Programs,” “Ending Hunger Improving Nutrition Combating Obesity,” and posters with slogans like “Food Stamps Make America Stronger.”

When asked for details and to elaborate on the program, USDA stressed it was established in 2004 and not meant for illegal immigrants.

[Political Arena Editor Responds – That is what the Obama Administration said about Fast & Furious; the documentation revision for this program is dated Feb, 16, 2012.]

2012 Primary, Budget, Dirty Tricks, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

CIS: 57% of illegal immigrant households on welfare…

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Lets see there are about 20 million illegal aliens…..

Center for Immigration Studies:

Among the findings:

In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent for native households with children.

Immigrant households’ use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Their use of cash and housing programs tends to be similar to native households.

A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households with children is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants (no U.S.-born children) still had a welfare use rate of 56 percent in 2009.

Immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives, even before the current recession. In 2001, 50 percent of all immigrant households with children used at least one welfare program, compared to 32 percent for natives.

Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).

The states where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62 percent); Texas, California, and New York (61 percent); Pennsylvania (59 percent); Minnesota and Oregon (56 percent); and Colorado (55 percent).

We estimate that 52 percent of households with children headed by legal immigrants used at least one welfare program in 2009, compared to 71 percent for illegal immigrant households with children. Illegal immigrants generally receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children.

Illegal immigrant households with children primarily use food assistance and Medicaid, making almost no use of cash or housing assistance. In contrast, legal immigrant households tend to have relatively high use rates for every type of program.

High welfare use by immigrant-headed households with children is partly explained by the low education level of many immigrants. Of households headed by an immigrant who has not graduated high school, 80 percent access the welfare system, compared to 25 percent for those headed by an immigrant who has at least a bachelor’s degree.

An unwillingness to work is not the reason immigrant welfare use is high. The vast majority (95 percent) of immigrant households with children had at least one worker in 2009. But their low education levels mean that more than half of these working immigrant households with children still accessed the welfare system during 2009.

If we exclude the primary refugee-sending countries, the share of immigrant households with children using at least one welfare program is still 57 percent.

Welfare use tends to be high for both new arrivals and established residents. In 2009, 60 percent of households with children headed by an immigrant who arrived in 2000 or later used at least one welfare program; for households headed by immigrants who arrived before 2000 it was 55 percent.

For all households (those with and without children), the use rates were 37 percent for households headed by immigrants and 22 percent for those headed by natives.

Although most new legal immigrants are barred from using some welfare for the first five years, this provision has only a modest impact on household use rates because most immigrants have been in the United States for longer than five years; the ban only applies to some programs; some states provide welfare to new immigrants with their own money; by becoming citizens immigrants become eligible for all welfare programs; and perhaps most importantly, the U.S.-born children of immigrants (including those born to illegal immigrants) are automatically awarded American citizenship and are therefore eligible for all welfare programs at birth.

The eight major welfare programs examined in this report are SSI (Supplemental Security Income for low income elderly and disabled), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children food program), free/reduced school lunch, food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), Medicaid (health insurance for those with low incomes), public housing, and rent subsidies.

Judicial Watch is also reporting this.

2012 Primary, Communications Theory, Culture War

12 TOP REASONS WHY ALL USEFUL IDIOTS VOTED DEMOCRAT

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12 TOP REASONS WHY ALL USEFUL IDIOTS VOTED DEMOCRAT

1. I voted Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I’ve decided to marry my German Shepherd.

2. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies’ profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn’t.

3. I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

4. I voted Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

5. I voted Democrat because I’m way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

6. I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can’t tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don’t start driving a Prius.

7. I voted Democrat because I’m not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

8. I voted Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away the social security from those who paid into it.

9. I voted Democrat because I believe that businesses should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.

10. I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

11. I voted Democrat because I think that it’s better to pay billions for their oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher or fish.

12. I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my a** it’s unlikely that I’ll ever have another point of view.

Thank you: Andrea Plescia

Academic Misconduct, Culture War, Education, School Indoctrination, Stuck on Stupid, True Talking Points

Book: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture and Ushered In the Obamacrats

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Washington Free Beacon:

Prolific author David Gelernter has covered subjects ranging from technology to Judaism, but America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats) is his first unabashedly political book.

Gelernter opposes Barack Obama primarily because Obama is one of the “Airheads” produced by the U.S. educational system.

“Obama is an Airhead and no ordinary ideologue,” writes Gelernter in America-Lite, “but he is certainly a left-liberal; he repeats the doctrine he learned from left-liberal intellectuals.”

Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, said his teaching experience has contributed enormously to his pessimistic assessment of American culture. “Every year I see a new class of smart kids, motivated kids, who are just ignorant,” said Gelernter.

“We educators have a responsibility,” said Gelernter, “and we’re failing.”

America-Lite shows “how we lost control of our own culture,” and how the “sullen, seething contempt for Western culture” that characterizes many educators is producing generations of ignorant citizens (dubbed “Airheads” by Gelernter) who accept liberal ideology because it is all they’ve ever known.

Gelernter called out conservatives, saying Republicans are focusing on secondary issues and avoiding the “deeper problems” in American culture.

“Conservatives are letting the country down,” said Gelernter.

From the book description:

America-Lite (where we all live) is just like America, only turned into an amusement park or a video game or a supersized Pinkberry, where the past and future are blank and there is only a big NOW. How did we come to expect no virtue and so much cynicism from our culture, our leaders—and each other?

In this refreshingly judgmental book, David Gelernter connects the historical dots to reveal a stealth revolution carried out by post-religious globalist intellectuals who, by and large, “can’t run their own universities or scholarly fields, but are very sure they can run you.” These imperial academics have deployed their students into the top echelon of professions once monopolized by staid and steady WASPs. In this simple way, they have installed themselves as the new designated drivers of American culture.

Imperial academics live in a world of theory; they preach disdain for mere facts and for old-fashioned fact-based judgments like true or false. Schoolchildren are routinely taught theories about history instead of actual history—they learn, for example, that all nations are equally nice except for America, which is nearly always nasty.

With academic experts to do our thinking for us, we’ve politely shut up and let second-raters take the wheel. In fact, we have handed the keys to the star pupil and teacher’s pet of the post-religious globalist intellectuals, whose election to the presidency of the United States constituted the ultimate global group hug.

How do we finally face the truth and get back into the driver’s seat? America-Lite ends with a one-point plan.

Academic Misconduct, Alarmism, Culture War, Education, School Indoctrination, True Talking Points

Penn State Administrators “forged an agreement to conceal Sandusky’s sexual attacks”. Pattern of Coverup.

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Before we get on to the child abuse scandal, this writer has been paying attention to what has been going on at Penn State for some time. The administration at Penn State has a long history of unethical, radical, and other bad behavior including coverups of other scandals. Here are some examples:

Penn State makes a video painting returning veterans as dumb, mentally unstable, and violent – LINK

Professor at Penn State explains how to teach anti-Israel propaganda to students (video) – LINK

Until the Sandusky Scandal, the most recent internationally covered scandal at Penn State was with their premier climate Scientist Michael Mann. Prof. Mann is one of the infamous “ClimateGate” scientists, who’s own emails revealed that Mann, along with other leftist climate scientists, manipulated data, destroyed data that concerned them, used ridicule and pressure tactics to manipulate the peer review process, etc all in an effort to push global warming alarmism. According to their own emails they had agreed that if ever caught they would destroy much of their raw data, which they did.

Understand that billions of dollars (including billions of your tax dollars) has been spent on the global warming question and as a result Prof. Mann brought in millions for himself and Penn State University. So when the emails were leaked and they were as caught as caught could be, and when other climate scientists started to back away from the claims of Dr. Mann and others at the IPCC, Penn State was pressured to have an investigation of Prof. Mann and their investigation said that Prof. Mann did nothing wrong and totally cleared him, even though the evidence was plain as could be and in the public domain – LINK –  LINK –  LINK.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has cataloged a list of cases of illegal censorship, retaliation, and discrimination at Penn State as long as your desk – LINK.

While such a child abuse scandal may be unusual on our college campuses, the pattern of abuse of power, illegal actions and the effort to cover them up is typical of university administrations and is a huge problem.

CNN:

State College, Pennsylvania (CNN) — The most powerful leaders at Penn State University showed “total and consistent disregard” for child sex abuse victims while covering up the attacks of a longtime sexual predator, according to an internal review into how the school handled a scandal involving its former assistant football coach.

Investigators conducted more than 400 interviews and found that several officials had “empowered” Jerry Sandusky to continue his abuse, while Joe Paterno, the school’s legendary head football coach, could have stopped the attacks had he done more, investigators said Thursday.

Read the report here (PDF)

In a scandal that has shaken Pennsylvania residents and gripped the nation, leading to Paterno’s dismissal and the ouster of longtime president Graham Spanier, Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who led the review, said top university officials forged an agreement to conceal Sandusky’s sexual attacks more than a decade ago.

“There are more red flags here than you can count,” said Freeh, emphasizing the abuse occurred just “steps away” from where Paterno worked in the university’s Lasch Building.

Freeh’s 267-page report is the product of a Penn State-funded investigation, which is separate from a government investigation into charges of perjury and failure to report abuse pinned against the school’s former Athletic Director Tim Curley and ex-Vice President Gary Schultz.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is investigating what Penn State knew about a 2001 incident of child sex abuse by Sandusky, reported by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary, and how it was handled.

Neither McQueary, Sandusky nor Paterno — who died in January — were interviewed by Freeh’s team and no trial date has been set for Curley and Schultz, though proceedings are expected to begin later in July.

The prosecution of Curley and Schultz comes on the heels of the widely watched Sandusky trial, in which the former defensive coordinator was convicted of sexually abusing young boys over 15 years.

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh wrote. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”

The Wall Street Journal also covered the Freeh Report on Penn State HERE.

Communications Theory, Editorial, Stuck on Stupid, True Talking Points

An example of how TEA Party people should NOT behave (VIDEO)

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The Congressman is right. Listen to what he said – he said that you have to have a plan to get back to it (constitutional limited government) and you just can’t say “I stand for the Constitution” and expect to win. He never said or implied, to set the Constitution aside like he was accused. Immediately the TEA Party activists took what he said and converted it into something he never came close to saying in the video.

The Congressman is right when he said half the people do not believe in the Constitution – largely because they are clueless to what it says. Just the other day I had to sit down and talk with a 59 year old women who was furious and decided that she would never vote again. Why? Because she had just heard about the Electoral College and so she thought that no ones vote counted any more.

I LOVE TEA Party people, but the kind of knee jerk over reaction to what he said, without actually LISTENING to what he said, is the kind of stupidity that will render them irrelevant. No one wants to talk to you when talking to you is like talking to a Klingon. Knee-jerk over reaction rampage is not how to win people to your side.

With that said there is a lot of truth to what the TEA Party activist at the end said about the erosion of the Bill of Rights.

No one is going to win an election by campaigning on going back to 1787 overnight. Campaigning on going back to 1787 is not electorally possible when half the people are more familiar with Justin Bieber’s love life than they are with Separation of Powers.

Much like the abortion battle, we are winning more and more people to the pro-life cause and there are fewer and fewer abortions because we are educating people and winning hearts and minds. This is why pro-life people did a whole lot more than block the doors to abortion mills.

The Founders repeatedly and ad nauseum went to King George and appealed to him and others and yes they even offered compromises, and while it did not influence the king it did influence others and brought allies to our cause when shots were fired.

If in 1743 When Sam Adams started bring people onto his “radical” cause had gone around saying “War with England tomorrow if we do not get all of our demands tonight” he would have gotten no where. It is the journey to get there that brought him allies that he could never had gotten if he tried to go from 1743 to 1787 overnight.

I am not saying that we should sell out, what I am saying is that getting back to limited government is a path that will take time, it is not just something one can do overnight.

I would like to remind our TEA Party friends of my initial point: the group of activists in that video basically applied a point of view to the Congressman that he never said or advocated in the video. They took what he said, converted it to something MUCH worse, and applied that to him. Those are the tactics of Saul Alinsky.

2012 Primary, Communications Theory, Culture War, Obama, True Talking Points

Forbes: Capitalists Need To Learn How To Use Words

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This is one of the most important columns you may ever see. Read every last word. It is good to see the message I have preached for years get some backup – Editor.

“When government surveillance and intimidation is called ‘freedom from terrorism’ or ‘liberation from crime’, freedom and liberty have become words without meanings. The rhetoric in Washington has done more to defeat liberty than all the armies and police forces in the world. This war all around us is being fought over the very meanings of words.” – Chad Dumier

Harry Binswanger at Forbes Magazine:

It’s the concepts, stupid.

A wag in my high school said “Words are the tools of the English language.”

It was supposed to be a parody of deep-sounding but vacuous pronouncements. But the joke turns out to be on him: since words *are* the tools of language, they are the tools of thought. That means you must resist unto death using the terminology of your enemy. The side that controls language controls thought.

Anti-capitalists are onto this fact. Pro-capitalists need to catch up–especially since the mainstream media are dominated by anti-capitalists, who insinuate their distorted terms into what would otherwise seem to be open debate.

Notice I said “anti-capitalists.” That’s a case in point. I did not say “progressives”–that’s how they wish to be known. But capitalism, not government dictation, is the system of progress, replacing primordial collectivism with the radical concept of individual rights, including property rights. And embracing technology not environmentalism is required of anyone who favors actual progress. The self-styled “progressives” are regressives.

“Liberal” is another word that is booby-trapped. Joe Lieberman is the last living liberal–a museum piece, really. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Krugman, and the rest are not liberals but Leftists, if you want a shorter term than “anti-capitalists.” Today’s Leftists have nothing of substance in common with those we used to know as “liberals”–JFK, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson.

The word “liberal” derives from “liberty.” Liberty is the last thing on the mind of today’s Leftists. They seek to stamp out not only economic freedom but freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Just make a visit to your local university. The term “liberal” should never be used for people whose driving ideology is, to use a proper term, statism.

Words matter because words stand for concepts–abstract ideas that join certain things and separate others. Your ideological enemy is your ideological enemy in part because he divides the world up differently from you. He works with different concepts, different classifications. Where you see the opposition of freedom vs. government force, he sees the opposition of “exploitation” vs. “equality.” Where you see earning vs. freeloading, he sees “luck” vs. “compassion.”

Even little, innocuous concepts are game-changers. Take “access.” Is there some national, collective problem in the fact that some people don’t have “access” to quality medical care? What if we rephrase the question to be: do some people have the right to force other people to pay for their medical care? Sounds a little different, doesn’t it? I don’t have “access” to your car, your home, and your bank account. That’s a disgrace!

Politicians know, or at least sense, the power of language. President Obama speaks of government “investment,” a term properly applied only to the private sector, not to the government’s expropriation of capital from the private sector to finance boondoggles that men’s free financial decisions would not allow.

The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department defines “monopoly” in terms of earned market-share–i.e., success in competition–which it proceeds to penalize. The term “monopoly” should be applied to coercively imposed barriers to competition, and coercion is what is wielded by the government, not by business.

You see the theme running throughout the ideological distortion of language: evading the fundamental distinction: freedom vs. force. The free market is the scene of voluntary, uncoerced cooperation. Government is the agency with the exclusive power to compel obedience by law–i.e., at gunpoint.

It’s the dollar or the gun. As a hero in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged puts it:

When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other.

There is no other choice regarding the concepts we use, either. Our concepts either recognize or obliterate the distinction between freedom and force.

Harry Binswanger is a member of the Ayn Rand Institute’s Board of Directors and has taught philosophy at Hunter College (City University of New York), The New School for Social Research, and the University of Texas, Austin. His forthcoming book is “How We Know”.

2012 Primary, Econ, Obama, True Talking Points

Indiana Small Businessman: I have to get political with customers because Democrats will destroy my business. I am desperate.

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Monica Boyer:

We went through 1000 “Say NO to Joe” Vote Richard Mourdock balloons at the Kos County fair already so I went to our local bulk candy store to get candy to pass out. When I told the guy who I was he stopped loading the candy and said, “Do you have stickers?” I was a bit confused. I said, Well, we have Mourdock and Pence stickers at our booth. He said. THATS WHAT I WANT. He then said, “I don’t have a choice.” I was confused and asked him to explain. He said, with a crack in his voice, For years, I have tried to keep my politics to myself because I want all business at this store, I don’t want to chase customers away.

He said, I don’t have a choice anymore. I am scared. I am going to lose my business, and I don’t care anymore if I turn customers away. He said, what else can I do? I am desperate. I walked away sad, angry and energized. People can feel it in the air. We are at a crossroads. They want to be on the right side of history.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Elite Media, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points, West

Allen West: Why I don’t care about my critics; real journalism is dead (video)

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“I don’t care about my critics, I understand that my country is at a very perilous situation and I’m going to use the type of words that are necessary to get the attention of the American people.”

“I want to make sure that the United States of America, that has been around for 236 years as the beacon of liberty, freedom and democracy, continues on for our subsequent generations. Our children and grandchildren. And I really don’t care about critics. I really don’t care about the liberal media”.

2012 Primary, Civility, Communications Theory, Culture War, Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, Obama, True Talking Points, Unhinged

Liberal Elite Media Group Calls Romney Too White…..

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This is the kind of race bating sleaze the leftists in the elite media are pushing. Wait until you see below who is behind this sleaze campaign. Remember when the left tried to make like they were the civility police? And some people wonder why the public does not trust the elite media….

Washington Examiner:

In advance of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s speech Wednesday to the NAACP, a liberal group headed by a former New York Times reporter and ex-Media Matters executive have produced a video “satire” that claims blacks don’t like Romney, who they dub so white he makes “Wonder Bread look like pumpernickel.”

The YouTube from “The Message,” an online “media hub,” is described as a satirical video of Romney getting advice on what to say to the civil rights group. Or, as they said in a release, the video “lacerates Romney and his advisors as they prepare for his speech to NAACP in Houston on Wednesday.”

The lead “advisor” in the video is described as the brainchild of the 1988 Willie Horton ads and the 2004 swift boat campaign. He states bluntly that “blacks don’t like us and we’re about to give a speech to a whole lot of them.”

He also says to the candidate, “you are so white, you are extremely white, you make Wonder Bread look like pumpernickel,” before advising the Romney actor never fully seen to “go on out there and get all Mormon, Martin Luther King on them, you’re going to be great.”

Now pay close attention:

The group is directed by Razor & Tie co-founder Cliff Chenfeld, former Media Matters for America president Eric Burns, former AOL chief creative officer and co-founder of theknot.com Michael Wolfson, and former New York Times journalist Andrew Zipern.

So much for objective credibility. These are the kinds of loons that get hired in elite media news rooms. If you don’t tow the line they get rid of you.

2012 Primary, Border, Obama, True Talking Points

Arizona SB1070 Law Has Already Led to Thousands of Self-Deportations, Lower Crime Rates, 13 School Closings

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CNS News:

Arizona’s “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (SB 1070) was signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in April 2010. The U.S. Justice Department is challenging Arizona to try to stop the law, as are other groups. A federal judge of the Ninth District issued a temporary injunction against four parts (out of 10) of the law in July 2010, and the case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

At a press conference on Tuesday on Capitol Hill, former State Senator Russell Pearce said that the law has achieved several of its goals, including the voluntary departure of thousands of illegal aliens from Arizona, a reduction in crime and prison population, and a shrinking number of students in Mesa Public Schools that led to the closure of 13 elementary schools.

 

MORE:

Pearce said that statistics from the Department of Homeland Security and other groups  show that between 100,000 and 200,000 illegal aliens have voluntarily left the state since most of it went into effect in 2010.

“We have a violent crime rate drop by three times that of the national average,” Pearce said. “My school district – Mesa – the largest school in the state, can close 13 elementary schools because of the declining population in K-12, out of neighborhoods known for high concentrations of illegals.”

“Our prison population’s on the decline for the first time in the history of the state of Arizona,” Pearce said, adding that there are about 2,500 fewer inmates in Arizona prisons today than there were before the law went into effect.

 

 

 

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

16.8% of millenials are unemployed or have given up looking for work

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Via our pal Michelle Fields at The Daily Caller:

New jobs numbers for June released Friday show that Americans 18-29 years old continue to suffer under the Obama administration with a 12.8% unemployment rate.

The jobs report shows that there are now 1.735 million young Americans who are no longer counted as “employed” because they have given up looking for a job and have left the labor force all together.

Generation Opportunity — a conservative non-profit focused on young Americans — notes that if “the labor force participation rate were factored into the overall 18-29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18-29-unemployment rate would rise to 16.8 percent.”

2012 Primary, Gangsta Govt, Thugs, True Talking Points

Democrat staffers recording Republicans at their homes, while grocery shopping etc…

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The reason for this is clear, to pressure families of those considering running as Republicans to decide against it. What the elite media did to Sarah Palin and her children is the main reason why Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel’s family forbade him from running for higher office.

Politico:

While most serious campaigns on both sides use campaign trackers — staffers whose job is to record on video every public appearance and statement by an opponent — House Democrats are taking it to another level. They’re now recording video of the homes of GOP congressmen and candidates and posting the raw footage on the Internet for all to see.

That ratcheting up of the video surveillance game is unnerving Republicans who insist that even by political standards, it’s a gross invasion of privacy. Worse, they say, it creates a safety risk for members of Congress and their families at a time when they are already on edge after a deranged gunman shot former Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords 18 months ago.

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Reid Ribble, who said he’s also been followed by a cameraman when shopping for groceries, said the home videos cross a line.

“I feel it’s totally inappropriate,” said Ribble, a freshman facing a competitive race for reelection. “It was disturbing to me that they would put that online. I don’t understand any political benefit that can be achieved with that.”

In Ribble’s case, a clip of his northeastern Wisconsin home appeared online June 18. The soundless video — which lasts 38 seconds — is taken from a car sitting just outside the house. The shot pans across the large home, showing it from several different angles.

DeaNa Ribble, the congressman’s wife, said it is deeply unsettling.

“I’m more creeped out about this than Reid is, just because I’m home more,” she said. “If they so much as put a foot on private property, I will be the first person to call the police.”

2012 Primary, Gangsta Govt, Obama, True Talking Points

Is Ayn Rand’s “Ultimate Inversion” Prediction Coming True?

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In light of the fact that five pinheads on the Supreme Court has said that government can compel you to do or buy virtually anything and call it a tax and government is now shutting down kid’s lemonade stands and church picnics for not having “proper food licensing”;  this picture hits close to home.

Ayn Rand Ultimate Inversion

Communications Theory, Culture War, True Talking Points

Seven Truths About Politicians

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It is pieces like this that make me regret that I do not have much time to write original pieces anymore. In this piece John Hawkins gives us an all important reminder of what those of us who are politically aware often take for granted.

John Hawkins:

1) The first priority of a politician is always getting re-elected: As Thomas Sowell has noted,

“No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.”

Politicians may care about sticking to the Constitution, doing what’s right for the country, and keeping their promises, but all of those issues pale in importance to staying employed in their cushy jobs.

2) Most politicians care far more about the opinions of interest groups than their constituents: Because of gerrymandering and America’s partisan fault lines, even under the worst of circumstances, 75% of the politicians in Congress are in no danger of losing their seats to a candidate of the opposing party. Furthermore, because of their advantages in name recognition, fund raising, and the fealty of other local politicians to someone they view as a likely winner, most challengers from the same party have little hope of unseating an incumbent either.

The only way that changes is if an incumbent infuriates an interest group on his own side that has the money and influence to help a challenger mount a credible campaign against him. That’s why politicians in non-competitive districts are far more afraid of groups like Freedomworks or the SEIU than their own constituents. Incumbents can — and often do, crap all over their own constituents without fear of losing their jobs. However, if they infuriate an interest group, they may end up in the unemployment line.

3) You shouldn’t ever take a politician at his word: People say they want a politician who’ll tell the truth. Unfortunately, that’s not true. What people actually want is a politician who’ll tell them what they want to hear and call that the truth. [Emphasis ours – Political Arena Editor] Partisans on both sides of the aisle have very little tolerance for politicians who deviate from accepted ideology; so the politicians get around that by lying. Most (but of course, not all) of the politicians championed by the Tea Party? They think the Tea Partiers are riff-raff, but useful riff-raff; so they cater to us. It’s no different on the Left. Most of the politicians who talk up the Occupy Movement think they’re damn, dirty hippies. They’re just useful damn, dirty hippies. That doesn’t mean no politician is ever “one of us,” but they are few and far between.

4) Most members of Congress aren’t particularly competent: On average, the politicians in Congress are generally well meaning, a little smarter than average, a lot more connected, and wealthy — but also considerably less ethical. Beyond that, they’re mostly just like a random subsection of a population. If you had a hundred random Americans in a room, a senator probably wouldn’t be the smartest person there, the person you’d want in charge, or even necessarily one of the more useful people to have around. In many respects, politicians are FAR LESS COMPETENT than the average person because so many of them led pampered, sheltered lives before they got into Congress and then have had their behinds kissed incessantly from the moment they got into power.

5) Members of Congress are out of touch: First off, even if members of Congress care about what their constituents think, they spend most of their time in D.C., not back home. Meanwhile, the median net worth of members of Congress is about $913,000. On top of that, members of Congress have staffers who do everything for them and treat them like god-kings in the process. These aides schedule their lives, read everything for them and regurgitate back what they think they need, and incessantly tell them how wonderful they are. Most members of Congress have more in common with celebrities like Madonna or Barbra Streisand than they do with the teachers, factory workers, and small business owners who vote them into office.

6) Few of them will do anything to limit their own power: It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about big government liberals or small government conservatives, very, very few politicians are interested in doing anything that will limit their own power. That’s why term limits for Congress have never passed. It’s why the ethics rules in the House and Senate are a bad joke. It’s also a big part of the reason why government gets bigger, more expensive, and more powerful no matter who’s in charge. If you expect to reduce the concentration of power in D.C. by electing different politicians, then ultimately you’re going to find that you’re barking up the wrong tree.

7) Most politicians only do the right thing because they’re forced to do it: As the late, great Milton Friedman once said,

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”

If you want to change how politicians behave, then you have to change public opinion, build structural limits into the system that force changes, or make politicians fear for their jobs. If people are hoping politicians will do the right thing, just because it is the right thing, then they’re hoping in vain.

Academic Misconduct, Culture War, School Indoctrination

Oregon Public Teacher: 4th of July “a propaganda campaign that hurts children”…

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We have said it time and time again and even though there are mountains of evidence most parents still do not understand; public education has been so radicalized that it has become subversive. Textbooks, many classes and teachers actively push a radical far left indoctrination on the kids and this teacher from Portland is no different. Would anyone like to bet that is is not an Obama voter?

Joe Newby at The Examiner:

According to Portland area teacher Bill Bigelow, July 4th fireworks shows need to be reconsidered, the Education Action Group reported Tuesday.

According to Bigelow, Independence Day “…provides cover for people to blow off fireworks that terrify young children and animals, and that turn the air thick with smoke and errant projectiles. Last year, the fire department here [Portland, OR] reported 172 fires sparked by toy missiles, defective firecrackers, and other items of explosive revelry.”

Bigelow was just getting warmed up.

“Apart from the noise pollution, air pollution, and flying debris pollution, there is something profoundly inappropriate about blowing off fireworks at a time when the United States is waging war with real fireworks around the world. To cite just one example, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London found recently that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan alone have killed more than 200 people, including at least 60 children. And, of course, the U.S. war in Afghanistan drags on and on. The pretend war of celebratory fireworks thus becomes part of a propaganda campaign that inures us—especially the children among us—to the real wars half a world away,” he added.

“Yes, to this ingenious teacher, fireworks promote war. In fact, he says fireworks are ‘pretend war,'” Kyle Olsen wrote.

Olsen reminded readers that the tradition of celebratory fireworks dates back to July 3, 1776, when John Adams suggested in a letter to his wife that the day “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

“Is there any vestige of original Americana that Marxist educators won’t seek to erase from our culture?” Olsen asked.

Bigelow, for example, cites a July 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass that decried Independence Day celebrations in a country that had the institution of slavery.

The Oregon teacher said Douglass gave his speech “four years after the United States finished its war against Mexico to steal land and spread slavery, five years before the vicious Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, and nine years before the country would explode into civil war.”

“His words call out through the generations to abandon the empty ‘shout of liberty and equality’ on July 4, and to put away the fireworks and flags,” Bigelow added.

Unfortunately, Bigelow failed to mention that slavery ended in the United States as a result of the conflict.

Olsen says that teachers like Bigelow “would rather make students feel guilty about being Americans than encourage them to appreciate the great things about their nation.”

“If they manage to win their internal war on America by brainwashing too many young minds, we will all be sorry in the very near future,” he concluded.

A Marist poll conducted last year showed that over a quarter of Americans do not know that the original colonies separated from Great Britain. According to the poll, some of the countries mentioned were China, France, Japan, Mexico and Spain.

2012 Primary, Amity Shlaes, Budget, Health Law, Stuck on Stupid, True Talking Points

Obama Denies Waiver for Innovative Cost Saving Indiana Medicaid Program

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I mean, we cant have incentives that are deigned to help people make smart health care choices and actually save money, not when we are trying to bankrupt the country…

I first reported on this story on my old college blog when our friend Amity Shleas wrote an article about Obama moving to kill the popular and budget saving program called HIP. Why? Well Mitch Daniels is our governor and the Obama Administration did not want such a successful program written by a popular Republican governor to get any publicity.

Indiana once again tried to save HIP by asking for a waiver and Obama once again is determined to kill the program.

Forbes:

 

Obama Administration Denies Waiver for Indiana’s Popular Medicaid Program

In 2007, under Gov. Mitch Daniels (R.), Indiana enacted the Healthy Indiana Plan, an expansion of Medicaid that used consumer-driven health plans to encourage low-income beneficiaries to take a more active role in their own care. Today, Healthy Indiana is the most innovative and successful reform of Medicaid in the history of the program. Today, we learn that the Obama Administration has rejected the state’s request to extend its federal waiver, which means that over 45,000 Indianans who get their insurance through the program are out of luck.

Medicaid, of course, is the nation’s government-run health insurance program for the poor. In theory, it’s jointly run by the federal government and the states, but in reality, any time a state wants to make the tiniest changes in its Medicaid program, it has to go hat-in-hand to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with a formal request for a waiver, and these waivers are usually denied.

Indiana succeeded in gaining a waiver in 2007 because it was seeking to expand Medicaid to a group of people who weren’t then eligible for the program, and because the state’s effort required no additional outlays from the federal government (the Medicaid expansion was paid for with a 44-cent increase in the state’s cigarette tax.)

Structure of Indiana’s consumer-driven Medicaid plan

Beneficiaries get a high-deductible health plan and a health savings account, called a POWER account, to which individuals must make a mandatory monthly contribution between 2 to 5 percent of income, up to $92 per month. Participants lose their coverage if they don’t make their contributions within 60 days of their due date. After making this contribution, beneficiaries have no other cost-sharing requirements (co-pays, deductibles, etc.) except for non-urgent use of emergency rooms. The state chips in $1,100, which corresponds to the size of the would-be deductible.

Those who have money remaining in their POWER accounts at the end of the year can apply the balance to the following year’s contribution requirements, if they have obtained a specified amount of preventive care: annual physical exams, pap smears and mammograms for women, cholesterol tests, flu shots, blood glucose screens, and tetanus-diphtheria screens.

“We did a lot of reading on criticism of health savings accounts,” says Seema Verma, who was the architect of the Indiana program. “One of the criticisms was that people didn’t have enough money to pay for preventive care. So we took preventive care out, made that first-dollar coverage. Also, people said that people didn’t have enough for the deductible, so we fully funded it. Then, you have to make your contribution every month, with a 60-day grace period. If you don’t make the contribution, you’re out of the program for 12 months. It’s a strong personal responsibility mechanism.”

Indiana’s Medicaid successes

The program has been, by many measures, a smashing success. “What we’re finding out is that, first of all, low-income people are just as capable as anybody else of making wise decisions when it’s their own money that they’re spending,” Mitch Daniels explains in a Heritage Foundation video. “And they’re also acting more like good consumers. They’re visiting emergency rooms less, they’re using more generic drugs, they’re asking for second opinions. And some real money is starting to accumulate in their [health savings] accounts.”

The program has been overwhelmingly popular in Indiana. There’s a large waiting list—in the tens of thousands—to enroll in Healthy Indiana; enrollment was capped in order to ensure that the program’s costs remain predictable. 90 percent of enrollees are making their required monthly contributions. “The program’s level of satisfaction is at an unheard-of 98 percent approval rating,” Verma told Kenneth Artz. Employers didn’t dump their workers onto the program, crowding others out, because you needed to be uninsured for six months in order to be eligible for it.

A 2010 study by Mathematica Policy Research found that the program dramatically increased the percentage of beneficiaries who obtained preventive care, from 39 percent in the first six months of enrollment to 59 percent after one year. Of the members who had money left in the POWER accounts at the end of the year, 71 percent met the preventive care requirement and were able to roll the balances over to the following year. (The remaining 29 percent could roll over their personal contributions, but not the state contributions to their POWER accounts.)

This is an astounding achievement, given that the biggest problem with Medicaid is the way that it ghettoizes its participants, preventing them from gaining access to routine medical and dental care. This lack of physician access is the biggest reason why health outcomes for Medicaid patients lag far behind those of individuals with private insurance, and even behind those with no insurance at all. Healthy Indiana has completely reversed this trend, achieving preventive care participation rates that are higher than the privately-insured population.

Health Law, Obama, True Talking Points

Why Are Health Insurance Premiums Increasing Faster After ObamaCare Passed?

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This is one of those MUST read posts that must be read from beginning to end to have the necessary impact. Read every last word. Normally we try to excerpt posts, but this information is SO important that as many people as possible must fully understand the information here.

C. Steven Tucker in the Health Insurance Tips & Advice Blog (add it to your blogroll):

Since NO ONE seems willing to discuss the REAL reason that health insurance premiums are increasing dramatically. Let me break down the 4 primary reasons. They are as follows:

1.) My Blue Cross Group clients are receiving policy renewal rate increases this year of up to 46% for THE FIRST TIME in 15 years. See just a few of them here. Their prior premium increases were NO WHERE NEAR this amount. This is not isolated to Blue Cross either. These premium increases are happening in many markets across the United States in both the Individual AND Group health insurance markets. I’m simply using Blue Cross as an example since the name is most widely recognized.

These increases are due in large part to the fact that MULTIPLE new “Preventative Care” mandates were imposed upon all “non-grandfathered” health insurance plans as of 9/23/2010 under the PPACA (Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act). A “Non-grandfathered” health insurance plan is a plan that was purchased after the PPACA (a.k.a “Obamacare”) was signed in to law on March 23, 2010. Keep in mind, these were ALL mandated to be covered no later than 1/1/2011 WITHOUT a co pay or a DEDUCTIBLE (a.k.a. “FREE”). The entire list is as follows:

Covered Preventive Services for Adults

  • Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm one-time screening for men of specified ages who have ever smoked
  • Alcohol Misuse screening and counseling
  • Aspirin use for men and women of certain ages
  • Blood Pressure screening for all adults
  • Cholesterol screening for adults of certain ages or at higher risk
  • Colorectal Cancer screening for adults over 50
  • Depression screening for adults
  • Type 2 Diabetes screening for adults with high blood pressure
  • Diet counseling for adults at higher risk for chronic disease
  • HIV screening for all adults at higher risk
  • Immunizationvaccines for adults–doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary:
    • Hepatitis A
    • Hepatitis B
    • Herpes Zoster
    • Human Papillomavirus
    • Influenza
    • Measles, Mumps, Rubella
    • Meningococcal
    • Pneumococcal
    • Tetanus, Diphtheria, Pertussis
    • Varicella
  • Obesity screening and counseling for all adults
  • Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling for adults at higher risk
  • Tobacco Use screening for all adults and cessation interventions for tobacco users
  • Syphilis screening for all adults at higher risk

Covered Preventive Services for Women, Including Pregnant Women

  • Anemia screening on a routine basis for pregnant women
  • BRCA counseling about genetic testing for women at higher risk
  • Breast Cancer Mammography screenings every 1 to 2 years for women over 40
  • Breast Cancer Chemoprevention counseling for women at higher risk
  • Breast Feeding interventions to support and promote breast feeding
  • Cervical Cancer screening for sexually active women
  • Chlamydia Infection screening for younger women and other women at higher risk
  • Contraceptive Methods and Counseling including morning after abortion pill (added 8/1/11)
  • Folic Acid supplements for women who may become pregnant
  • Gonorrhea screening for all women at higher risk
  • Hepatitis B screening for pregnant women at their first prenatal visit
  • Osteoporosis screening for women over age 60 depending on risk factors
  • Rh Incompatibility screening for all pregnant women and follow-up testing for women at higher risk
  • Tobacco Use screening and interventions for all women, and expanded counseling for pregnant tobacco users
  • Syphilis screening for all pregnant women or other women at increased risk

Covered Preventive Services for Children

  • Alcohol and Drug Use assessments for adolescents
  • Autism screening for children at 18 and 24 months
  • Behavioral assessments for children of all ages
  • Cervical Dysplasia screening for sexually active females
  • Congenital Hypothyroidism screening for newborns
  • Developmental screening for children under age 3, and surveillance throughout childhood
  • Dyslipidemia screening for children at higher risk of lipid disorders
  • Fluoride Chemoprevention supplements for children without fluoride in their water source
  • Gonorrhea preventive medication for the eyes of all newborns
  • Hearing screening for all newborns
  • Height, Weight and Body Mass Index measurements for children
  • Hematocrit or Hemoglobin screening for children
  • Hemoglobinopathies or sickle cell screening for newborns
  • HIV screening for adolescents at higher risk
  • Immunizationvaccines for children from birth to age 18 —doses, recommended ages, and recommended populations vary:
    • Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis
    • Haemophilus influenzae type b
    • Hepatitis A
    • Hepatitis B
    • Human Papillomavirus
    • Inactivated Poliovirus
    • Influenza
    • Measles, Mumps, Rubella
    • Meningococcal
    • Pneumococcal
    • Rotavirus
    • Varicella
  • Iron supplements for children ages 6 to 12 months at risk for anemia
  • Lead screening for children at risk of exposure
  • Medical History for all children throughout development
  • Obesity screening and counseling
  • Oral Health risk assessment for young children
  • Phenylketonuria (PKU) screening for this genetic disorder in newborns
  • Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention counseling for adolescents at higher risk
  • Tuberculin testing for children at higher risk of tuberculosis
  • Visionscreening for all children
    Source:     http://www.healthcare.gov/law/about/provisions/services/lists.html
  • UPDATE: On August 1, 2011 the Obama Administration mandated even more Preventative Care benefits on to every major medical health insurance plan in the nation. These mandates will drive up health insurance premiums even higher. See the new mandates here.

2.) But WAIT! Those are only the Preventative Care mandates. There’s more! Now for the policy “design”
Mandates. Blue Cross outlines ALL of THOSE here:
http://www.resourcebrokerage.com/BCBSupdates22510B/PPACAILInsuredNotification.pdf

3.) Now we come to reason number three. The ONEROUS new Medical Loss Ratios or “MLR’s”. This is why health insurance premiums are increasing on “Non-Grand-Fathered” health insurance plans as well. For full details on these I refer you to the following link from the Heritage Institute. Please READ the TRUTH there: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/01/Squeezing-out-Private-Health-Plans

4.) The rapid implementation of the new Medical Loss Ratios have led to more than 20 health insurance carriers closing their doors or refusing to sell health insurance again. This has left millions of American’s either uninsured or without the plan they had prior to the passage of the PPACA. This is exactly the opposite of what President Obama promised when he said in his speech to the AMA on June 15, 2009 “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” Find out the names of the carriers that have left the industry since the passage of the PPACA as well as all the other damage done to the health insurance industry since the passage of the PPACA by reading the new study completed by the Galen Institute on December 1, 2011 entitled “A Radical Restructuring of Health Insurance.”

Tell me WHO in their RIGHT MIND thinks forcing all the aforementioned NEW MANDATES on to every health insurance policy in the country would actually “bend the cost curve DOWN”? In fact, mandates are a major reason why health insurance premiums have been increasing exponentially over the last few decades. In 1979 there were 252 mandates in force in health care, by 2007 there were nearly 1900. With the implementation of the PPACA  we have tipped the scales at nearly 2000 mandates. Keep piling them on and costs will continue to rise.

There ARE ways to bend the cost curve down. For those visit: http://csteventucker.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/intelligent-health-insurance-reform-using-free-market-principles-and-limited-government/

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Health Law, Obama, True Talking Points

The Truth About Pre-Existing Conditions Will Surprise You.

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Health Insurance Tips & Advice Blog:

I have been a multi-state licensed health and life insurance Broker for more than 15 years now. I have also served as a Subject Matter Expert on Health Insurance for multiple business journals around our great country. One of the biggest challenges I’ve had to deal with  throughout the years has been trying to secure coverage for people with pre-existing conditions who obtain their health insurance on the Individual market. They represent 10% of the American Insured.

I’ve never had to worry about pre-existing conditions with the other 90% of American Insured’s who get their health insurance through an Employer Sponsored Group Plan. Why? Because A Federal law called HIPAA has protected them against being denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions for more than 14 years now.

Because Government legislators did NOT apply this law to Individual health insurance policies, you can be labeled as “uninsurable” when you apply for an individual health insurance policy if you have one or more pre-existing conditions. That being said, who should we TRULY blame for the fact that you can be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition? Is it the Insurance Company’s fault? Or are they simply following a law that was written by Government Law Makers who did not include HIPAA portability protection for the MILLIONS of American’s who purchase Health Insurance on their own in the Individual Market?

Read the details about what to do if you have pre-existing conditions, what is wrong with the current system, and how to fix it HERE.

Who are the Uninsured? Did you know almost half make over $50,000 a year? Did you know that a third of the uninsured qualify for low cost insurance programs and simply refuse to enroll?

It was government law that created the pre-existing condition problem for 10% of the population:

In the video above where the speaker talks about how Obama lied about a man who had a pre-existing condition Factcheck.org verified it HERE.

2012 Primary, Lies, Mitt Romney, Obama, True Talking Points

Huffington Post Blasts Obama for Misleading Statements

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You read that headline correctly.

Here are a few excerpts…

Huffington Post:

#6. “When Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts was No. 1 in state debt. $18 billion in debt. More debt per person than any other state in the country.” — from an attack ad titled “Number One” that was posted June 12, 2012 on the Obama campaign’s official YouTube page

While this statement is factually accurate, it leaves out a big part of the picture.

Massachusetts owed a notoriously large state debt for a long time, certainly before Romney ever set foot in the governor’s office. Part of the reason the Bay State’s debt is so high, as PolitiFact points out, is because many projects that in other states would be funded by counties are funded by the state in Massachusetts.

Secondly, as anyone who’s ever lived in Massachusetts will tell you, “the Big Dig” — a highway and tunnel construction project that was started in the 1980s and has cost over $20 billion — has been a budgetary nightmare for decades. The Boston Globe estimates the project won’t be paid off until 2038 at the earliest. No matter who’s governor of Massachusetts, the Big Dig is still an incredibly expensive project, with the interest alone costing the state billions….

#3. “[Under Romney] Massachusetts plunged to 47th in job creation.” — David Axelrod, Obama campaign senior advisor, on CBS’s ‘Face The Nation,’ June 3, 2012

Romney’s been pummeled with this statistic, first during the Republican primaries and now by the Obama campaign (see here, here and here). Factually, it’s accurate to say that Massachusetts was 47th out of 50 states for job growth from December 2002 through December 2006 — PolitiFact verified the statement using Bureau of Labor Statistics. But there are different ways of looking at the numbers, and, as noted above, Romney inherited a state that was already in deep economic trouble.

While the rate of job growth in Massachusetts was lower than the rate for the country as a whole during that time, the number of jobs in the state did increase under Romney’s tenure.

The poor state of the Massachusetts economy at the time was a major concern in the gubernatorial debates between Romney and his opponent, Shannon O’Brien. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Massachusetts had the second-worst increase in unemployment the year before Romney took office. In fact, it placed at No. 50, so saying it “plunged” to No. 47 in job creation is a little misleading. The data also show that unemployment in Massachusetts bottomed-out a few months after Romney was sworn in, and employment began a slow climb upwards from that point until the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

#2. “Our businesses have created almost 4.3 million new jobs over the last 27 months.” — Obama during a presidential address in Golden Valley, Minn. (June 2, 2012)

Obama has made this claim many times recently (see here, here and here, and see Sarah Jessica Parker say it here), but again, he isn’t giving the whole picture. We called Josh Bivens, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, to see what the missing context was. Bivens told us that Obama neglected to mention the 500,000 jobs that were lost in the public sector over the same time period.

Obama also started counting from a low point when the private sector job numbers bottomed out — a more useful statistic would be the number of jobs created in the past two years, or perhaps since he took office. And don’t forget, as The New York Times points out, the country still needs to add more jobs to reach the level of employment when Obama was elected.

2012 Primary, Elite Media, Obama, True Talking Points

Protestors Againts Karl Rove End Up Having No Idea Who He Is (Rent-A-Mob)

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Via The Blaze:

Organized protesters set out to counter the issue of money in politics while marching over a mile through Washington DC last week.  The heat index was a blistering 90 degrees, which seemed to add to the marchers’ aggression for their target, former Bush Administration Senior Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.  While Rove has been out of the White House for over five years, he has remained active in fundraising for and promotion of conservative causes, particularly through his non-profit, Crossroads GPS.

Many of the protesters took issue with the success of Rove’s 501c4, stating it should be “illegal” even though they were themselves proud representatives of 501c4s.  This conflation begs the question: Do these organized protesters even know why they are marching? Or do they even know who they are marching against?

The Blaze set out to uncover this mystery by asking the proud marchers one simple question: “Who is Karl Rove?” You may or not be shocked by their answers.

See the video HERE.

 

And Rush Limbaugh has a ball with this video:

2012 Primary, Communications Theory, Culture War, Education, School Indoctrination, True Talking Points

Minorities Outraged Over Univ. of Minnisota’s Racist “White Priviledge” Ad Make Counter Video

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Minorities, this is what the “enlightened academic left” thinks of you. And this is not just a few radicalized pinheads in Minnesota, this type of senseless race bating, victimology, and stereotyping is typical of “black studies” and other neo-Marxist grievance studies programs in public school and universities in almost every state.

The left needs racial division and must pit one group against another for people to buy their ideology. This goes double for leftist academics who get millions of dollars spent of grievance studies programs, various grievance studies centers, publications etc.

The Blaze:

Remember the Un-Fair Campaign, that august collection of enlightened and thoroughly non-racist individuals who believe that whites have an irrevocable privilege that gives them an advantage in society (and that, by extensions minorities will always need special favors to get a leg up)? Well, if you don’t, for the purposes of this story, it may be advisable to rewatch this ad of theirs:

As you can see, the Un-Fair Campaign is aptly named. Their perspective on race is deeply unfair. Fortunately, at least one group has set out to make a video that rebuts the above, and shows how the perspective involved is unfair not just to whites, but to minorities as well. The resulting effort may cause you to spontaneously break out into applause:

What with the refusal of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, one of the Un-Fair Campaign’s biggest institutional sponsors, to defund the organization, this variety of outraged mockery is perhaps the best response.

My friend Scott Ott and his friends at Trifecta had the most thoughtful response to this issue we have yet seen:

2012 Primary, Health Law, Obama, True Talking Points

Priceless: Pro-Socialized Health Care Supporter Runs Into America’s Foremost Expert On Obamacare (video)

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Our friends at iowntheworld.com have a delicious post with (full disclosure) my good friend Steven Tucker affording the most awesome schooling to a rather surprisingly open minded young leftist on ObamaCare.

Tucker is one of America’s foremost experts on health insurance law and this poor bloke just happened to run across him with a camera in his hand in Chicago. [Full disclosure: this very writer went to insurance school and passed the state exam for a state Life & Health insurance license. I have written dozens of articles on ObamaCare and Tucker knows it even better than I do.]

2012 Primary, Education, Elite Media, School Indoctrination, True Talking Points

College Republican Takes Pinhead MSNBC Host to School (video)

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Via Independent Journal:

In this video, Touré, the one-named host of MSNBC’s The Cycle, attempts to humiliate Alex Schriver for being Republican. He suggests that something happened to him that has forced him into being Republican before Schriver confidently fires back against the MSNBC host for his ignorant and degrading comments.

The 23-year-old Schriver not only speaks intelligently beyond his years, but politely makes Madonna Seal Prince Touré look silly and unknowledgeable about the state of politics.

Schriver, a native of Tennessee and a graduate of Auburn University, is the National Chairman for the College Republican National Committee. Click on the link to check out their great organization that works to promote conservative ideals to college age Americans.

Health Law, Stuck on Stupid

Mom given bill to clean street after son killed by illegal immigrant driving drunk…

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You just can’t make this stuff up folks. Government is too often so incompetent. Is this who you want running healthcare?

Fox News:

GREENVILLE, SC –  A grieving mother told a South Carolina court she was slapped with several bills, including one to clean the street after her son was killed by a drunken driver last year.

Loretta Robinson spoke on June 19 of the emotional and financial toll her son Justin Walker’s death had on her as the driver Anna Gonzales, who is an illegal immigrant, pleaded guilty in the case.

Robinson told the judge she has been unable to work due to the emotional impact of her son’s death, and can’t pay the bills she keeps receiving from the accident even though her son was not at fault, WYFF reports.

“I had to pay to have the vehicle towed,” she said according to WYFF. “I had to pay for the vehicle removed and to clean up the street from Justin’s blood on the ground.”

Robinson said the $50 bill to clean the street stung the most.

Read more HERE.
Culture War, Education, School Indoctrination, True Talking Points

Texas A&M faces lawsuit it has no chance to win after denying conservative student group student funds.

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The law and the case law on this issue is as clear as clear can be. Student groups at public universities may not be discriminated against on the basis of viewpoint.

There are no exceptions to this rule within the law, yet over and over censor happy leftists at public universities break the law and do just that. They discriminate against Christian clubs, Jewish clubs, conservative and libertarian clubs. They often get away with it because either the students involved do not know their rights, or they are unwilling to take the fight to the courts.

But make no mistake, plenty of these cases go to the courts even when the university knows it has no chance of victory. The administrators are spending taxpayer dollars and will spend taxpayer dollars when they lose. It is no skin off their shoes. YOU pay.

Such is the case at Texas A&M University. Universities and clubs on campus bring in leftist speakers to talk to the students every year, and when a club attempts to bring in a conservative speaker the university administrators dig in their heals to try and stop or censor the event.

World on Campus:

The Texas Aggie Conservatives needed $6,800 to host a February speaking engagement featuring black social conservative Star Parker. The group’s leaders requested $2,500 from Student Organization Funding to offset the cost. Officially recognized student organizations have access to the account for special events and general budget funding.

But according to Texas Aggie Conservatives and their attorneys, the school limits access to the money based on indefensible restrictions. All recognized organizations are eligible for the funds as long as they’re not formed for religious, social or political purposes. Sports clubs and groups tied to the student center and health science center also are barred from requesting funds.

David Hacker, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which represents the Texas Aggie Conservatives, questioned the limitations of the funding, saying the school “has to provide those funds on a viewpoint-natural basis.”

The ADF filed a lawsuit June 19 against Texas A & M University (TAMU), challenging the funding restrictions as a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.

TAMU spokesman Lane Stevenson could not discuss the issue, saying only that the university refrains from commenting on pending legal matters. Texas Aggie Conservative leaders referred all questions to their attorney.

Hacker said the university’s policy was not only unconstitutional but inconsistently applied. Other student organizations, including the NAACP, the Muslim Student Association, the Black Student Alliance, and TAMU V-Day, which hosts “The Vagina Monologues,” a racy stage play, all received money from the fund.

Hacker said the students with Texas Aggie Conservatives discovered the discrepancies. They also discovered the school had denied funding to Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi.