Abortion

Reader Tim forwarded this piece by Mike Adams on abortion........

Dear Keith:

Thanks for writing to share your concerns about your “pro-choice” sociology professor. Taking a sociology class is always tough – especially when the professor claims to be your moral superior while simultaneously advocating abortion. I would recommend that you temper your remarks in class whenever you feel you are on the verge of losing your composure. In fact, you should not make any remarks or statements at all. Instead, you should just ask questions. Here are some good ones I wish I had asked while in college:

1. Morally speaking, is having an abortion really just like picking a scab?

2. If abortion is not murder because the fetus is not a person then why make it “safe, legal, and rare”?

3. Do you have a similar desire to make scab-picking “safe, legal, and rare”?

You can read the rest of the questions here........

When it comes to abortion, we claim to not have a definition of when life begins. But we've always had a definition of when life ends..... ask anyone in a emergency room.

So in my mind, why wouldn't we at least use that definition (which I assume is when a heart starts beating) when it comes to a baby?

Most people do not realize that the Blackmun opinion in Roe v Wade (1973) ruled that abortion was constitutional up to the date the fetus became "viable". At that point, the baby had rights. Given that our medical technology has made fetuses viable at earlier and earlier stages of development, how is it that abortions are legal later and later in development? Who? What? What? When? or Where? did that happen?

I know of five women who have had abortions. Two of those women talk about it in terms of the greatest mistake they ever made in their lives. The other three don't talk about it at all, unless you consider their substance abuse issues as some sort of communication tool.

During my dating life, I believe I could tell the women who had abortions during their lives. Mainly, you could tell by their deeply emotional issues (baggage by Samsonite if you will). Now it is possible that I managed to select a few psychopaths, in general, to date, but I think you can tell when someone has serious issues brought on by an abortion in their past.

Years ago, when I was dating my fabulous liberal girlfriend, she indicated that she thought stripping and prostitution should be illegal because of the social and emotional issues these women would get from their profession. Yet when I asked her if we could prove that women who've had abortions have even greater emotional issues, you could hear the birds chirping a mile a way.

So I'll pose the question to those who want to protect women's health so vehemently; if abortions cause more women to have more substance abuse issues, suicide, depression, should that be a factor in whether we should abolish abortion? What about post abortion fertility issues?

If a woman tells you that they've had three abortions and going to have a fourth, do you look at her differently than a woman who's had four sinus infections?

There's been millions of abortions performed in this country and yet few are out their bragging about their "choice". I would be willing to make a wager that more women have regrets about aborting than women who choose life, whether they put the child up for adoption or not.

But it's like all those women want to ignore their own grief so they can share the misery with another generation of women.

If I were king, I'm not so sure that I'd make abortion illegal. But I think it's clear that the glorification of abortion as a "right" has done more to destroy women than to help them.

The senator seems like an appropriate nickname

Apparently, Squeeky Clean Jim Tressel isn't so squeeky now..........

Ohio State athletics officials are expected to respond today to allegations in a Yahoo Sports story that football coach Jim Tressel was told last spring that several of his players - including quarterback Terrelle Pryor - had sold personal memorabilia in violation of NCAA rules.

If the allegations are proved to be true, Tressel could be in serious trouble, and so could the football program.

SMU better look out, they're looking at another death penalty.

The press acts like the jilted girlfirend

I've always thought there was a certain irony of our national media being populated by lefties.

Afterall, when the commies take over the government, what's the first thing they do, well, after killing all their political opponents?

They take over the press.

So the world's smallest violin starts to play when the press gets upset for lack of access to The One.....

This whole thing about how the press loves President Obama? We would like to persuade you otherwise, but it's so hard to prove a negative. He disdains us, avoids us, acts like we are germy. Today he insulted the profession in front of his new bestie, the Australian prime minister!

The indignity!

So this is a recent turn for the prez, right?

Well here's something from last spring.........

You may recall that on Monday President Obama refused take any questions from the press (irony alert!) immediately after signing the "Press Freedom Act" in the Oval Office. The president, who hasn't held a prime time press conference since last July, said this was not a press conference and he would have something later in the week.

He was presumably referring to today's scheduled "Joint Press Conference" with Mexican President Calderon in the Rose Garden. But so-called "press conferences" with foreign leaders usually allow for only two questions from the White House press corps and two from foreign reporters.

In all fairness to King Obama, why should he take questions from a press who will ask the president a question the world's been waiting for. Will he intervene in the Charlie Sheen/CBS dispute?

Four more years of Bush

Barack Bush that is.............

President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military commission trials for detainees there.

The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay's continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Where's the outrage? It must be hiding where the $4/gal gas price outrage is.

More.......

What unions can do for you

There once was a time when Harry and Nancy Harrington — their teenage children in tow — walked the picket line outside the nursing home where she was a medical aide, protesting the lack of a pension plan for the unionized work force.

But those days of family solidarity are gone.

Harry now blames years of union demands for an exodus of manufacturing jobs from this blue-collar city on the shore of Lake Michigan. He praises new Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for attempting to strip public employee unions of nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. Protesters opposed to Walker's plan have held steady at the Wisconsin Capitol for nearly three weeks, though their overnight sit-ins ended Thursday with a judge's order.

"I'm sorry, but the unions want to yell, they want to intimidate," says Harry Harrington, 69, as he sets a coffee cup down next to another newspaper headline about the union demonstrations.

"They want to be heard," retorts Nancy Harrington, 66, who fears a weakened union would jeopardize the teaching career of their now 38-year-old daughter.

The Harringtons typify the new national reality for labor unions. Support is no longer a sure thing from the middle class_ not even in a city long considered a union stronghold in a state that gave birth to the nation's largest public employee union. National polls show that the portion of the public that views unions favorably has dropped to near historic lows in recent years, dipping below 50 percent by some accounts.

All I can say is that I grew up in a Teamster household. When those bastards pay my dad back the pension money they stole, I might be willing to support a union again.

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Choo Choo

I've always wondered why liberals have such a fascination with rail systems.

For years, I just thought it was some sort of homoerotic attraction to Alec Baldwin's narration of Thomas the Tank Engine.

But apparently, there's something more nefarious than that.

George Will on the "progressive" love affair with rail systems..........

Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line.

So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.

Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

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Shimkus Questions Sebelius on Budget Gimmicks in the Health Care Law

Why is Kirsten Powers liberal?

To her credit she calls out the lies on her side. In this case, the abortion lies perpetrated by Planned Parenthood...........

During the recent debate over whether to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood, the organization claimed that its contraceptive services prevent a half-million abortions a year. Without their services, the group’s officials insist, more women will get abortions.

I’ll admit I bought the argument—it makes intuitive sense—and initially opposed cutting off funding for precisely that reason.

Then I did a little research.

Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49 percent to 80 percent, the elective abortion rate more than doubled. This doesn’t mean that access to contraception causes more abortion—though some believe that—but that it doesn’t necessarily reduce it.

In the U.S., the story isn’t much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant. For the 46 percent who had not used contraception, 33 percent had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy; 32 percent had had concerns about contraceptive methods; 26 percent had had unexpected sex, and 1 percent had been forced to have sex. Not one fraction of 1 percent said they got pregnant because they lacked access to contraception. Some described having unexpected sex, but all that can be said about them is that they are irresponsible, not that they felt they lacked access to contraception.

Whenever I hear one of these Planned Parenthood types talk about lack of access to contraception I always ask myself Where do women have more access to contraception Muncie Indiana or New York City. Yet 40% of pregnancies in the Big Apple are aborted?

It doesn't pass the laugh test.

Read the rest.......

The Ohio public unions

Government Union Collective Bargaining 101

Are Teachers Overpaid?

A coincidence? The post I did earlier on a public school teacher and a private school teacher pay differential was almost exactly the same figures noted in this video.

Life in "Progress" City - New York edition

An MS -13 member whooped it up, shouting "The beast has eaten!" after murdering a Queens man he mistook for a rival Blood, a government witness testified Thursday.

Julio Chavez is charged with emptying his revolver into Maurice Parker on May 18, 2007, in Flushing.

Chavez then hopped into a SUV, flashed gang signs and yelled in Spanish, former MS-13 gang member Jose Molina said in Brooklyn Federal Court.

" 'Yeah, homie, that's how you're supposed to do it,'" Chavez said, according to Molina. "'You see the blood coming out of his head?'"

Molina said Chavez then uttered, "The beast has eaten!"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ali Kazemi asked the witness to translate the meaning of Chavez's rant.

"That he had just given a soul to the devil," Molina said.

Parker, 21, was not a Blood and was mistakenly targeted because he had on red sweatshirt.

More.....

Where wearing red is a health hazard...........

Now that's "progressive"!

Yet they'll keep teaching your children

But hey we need to protect these teachers "for the children."

Mark Gruntzel and Edmund Jones, both former Chicago Public Schools teachers, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to separate cases which targeted local public corruption.

Gruntzel, 43, of Chicago, was charged with theft of government property, official misconduct and money laundering last month, a release from the Cook County State's Attorney's office said.

Gruntzel was a teacher at Disney Magnet Elementary School, and he also served as the school's PTA president and was responsible for collecting payments from parents who enrolled their children in Disney's after-school programs.

According to prosecutors, Gruntzel manipulated the enrollment records of students, cashed the checks in the PTA account and took the money from the account for his personal use, the release said.

Jones, 29, of Aurora, was charged with theft of government property and official misconduct. Jones, a former teacher and history department chairman at Chicago's Marshall High School.

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Why people hate public employee unions

Have you ever try to get service from some union protected stooge at a government office?

When SB 5 comes to vote next November (after the union puts it to public referendum), I think it's going to be hilarious when that a-hole, who wouldn't help me get into that calculus class, is now asking for me to support their big ass pension. Or how about the woman at the permit center who closed her window because it was 4:01 and closing time is 4:00. Or the day before a three day weekend when the absentee rate for government employees is about 30%.

Good luck with that.

But we have more current examples like this...........

A dozen Town Hall clerical and custodial employees won the right to get coffee and milk paid for by taxpayers, and the town must reinstate dress-down Fridays, officials said this week.

Recently, the Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations sided with United Public Service Employees Union Local 424-Unit 21, saying the town violated the Municipal Employees Relations Act by retaliating against the union for attending and making certain comments at a Jan. 26, 2009, Board of Finance meeting.

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Nah.... shit like this won't impact the public's view of public unions.

Why my blood pressure med costs $100/month

Because of this type of government lunacy......

Can it get any worse than this? First you find out you have an incurable disease. Bad news. Then you find out there is a drug that may not cure you but at least keeps you alive. Great news. You take the drug and miraculously your disease is held in check. Miraculous news. Then the FDA tells you that despite your positive results, the drug does not work and they are pulling it off label. Nightmarish news.

However, as the drug is available for other diseases, you can still get the drug off label. Good news. But the drug costs between $56,000 and $96,000 per annum, and Medicare and private insurance companies often deny coverage for off-label prescription. Tough news. Maybe the drug company will make the drug available for free on a compassionate use basis. Hopeful news. But they can’t because they are afraid of corporate and personal liability. Sad news.

Then the drug company applies to the FDA for a hearing to review their earlier decision. Positive news. The FDA announces that a hearing will be held June 28–29 in Washington, D.C., at the FDA headquarters. Encouraging news. But no patients will be allowed to speak. Insulting news.

Such is the rollercoaster ride that the FDA has inflicted upon women with incurable metastatic breast cancer who are taking the drug Avastin. These extremely brave but desperately ill women fight from week to week to stay alive. But insensitive FDA bureaucrats have continued to torment these women with their endless vacillations as they try to defend the indefensible.

Read the rest...........

They're conservative until it hits their wallets

I rarely listen to Bill Cunningham, alleged conservative talk show host on WLW. But I do catch the beginning of his show when I forget to turn to another station after Doc Thompson's show is over.

For the past few days, Cunningham has been bitching about SB 5 and how it's a bad bill. I have asked myself the question, why would Cunningham object to state budget reforms?

Of course, like most questions in life, when you answer money, you'll be right 90% of the time.

And it would be no different for Cunningham. His wife is a state judge and subject to the reforms of state pensions. Of course he wouldn't want to change those pensions, it means more money for he and the missus. When they retire, they'll be residing in Florida while the remaining state citizens will be bailing out these absurd pensions.

But I guess I can't blame him. He needs more money to support his derelict son.

It's so easy to be a conservative when it's money out of someone else's pocket. But when it comes to your own............

Delay of WI Bill Planned by Madison Mayor and Unions

When there's a strike and no one cares

Often it seems that what the media is reporting on and what the general population is discussing is parted by a chasm the width of the Grand Canyon.

Take the NFL strike/lockout. All day today, the national sports press has been all over "the story". Maybe someone can explain to me how a sport that won't even have preseason for another 5 months is news today?

Seriously, who gives a crap? I haven't heard one person in the past week bring up a pending labor stoppage between millionaires and billionaires.

But hey, that didn't stop our president from making a statement on the issue.

You may have a hard time remembering this president, given that Dog The Bounty Hunter couldn't seem to locate him while the Middle East was exploding.

None the less, he's always ready to take a firm public stand when it comes to a cop busting a potential burglar, he's giving his NCAA picks, or has a comment on the NFL strike.

Maybe that's why it's news.

Question of the day

Yesterday I did a tax return for a young couple (same age) who both work in the education business.

In this case, one works for a suburban public school and the other for a catholic school.

Anyone want to take a guess on what the income disparity is?

Who do you think cares for kids more, the one who gets paid more or the lesser earning one?

Really Rich Michael Moore Says All Wealthy Americans' Money is Not Their...

Isn't it odd that one of the shareholders in Koch Industries companies is the Wisconsin pensions fund.

From the party of civil discourse

Tom Blumer from Bizzyblog forwarded these pictures from the Statehouse protest today in Columbus.

Seriously, when one of our state legislators is attacked (notice I don't use "if" in this context), will the media talk about the liberal vitriol being spewed by the unions and democrats (is that redundant?).

More John Galt

Did you ever wonder how we ran into this "jobless recovery"? If you don't understand how that can happen read this.........

George Buckley, the boss at manufacturing conglomerate 3M, apparently didn’t get the memo about Obama 3.0 (vs. Campaign Obama and New New Deal Obama) being a “pro-business” president.

This new incarnation, the White House tell us, is evidenced by a) the hiring of lobbyist/rainmaker Bill Daley as Obama’s chief of staff, b) bringing in GE boss Jeff Immelt to run his new competitiveness council, and c) temporarily abandoning plans to raise income taxes on small business and entrepreneurs.

But Buckley is having none of it, telling the Financial Times that “we know what [Obama’s} instincts are — they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business. … Politicians forget that business has choice. We’re not indentured servants and we will do business where it’s good and friendly. If it’s hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico — which tend to be pro-business — or America.”

Buckley has good reason to wonder aloud about Obama’s pre-election year conversion from nemesis to friend of Corporate America. He surely sees Team Obama failing to make obvious moves to boost U.S. global economic competitiveness. The president still supports the new healthcare and financial reform laws. The president still wants to raise taxes. And the president gave the stiff-arm to his own debt panel. So there you have it, the axis of economic evil – taxes, regulation and government spending.

Now America’s best days may lie ahead, as Warren Buffett suggests in his latest letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. But the United States is becoming a less attractive place for multinationals, like 3M, to do business.

So here is how it goes.

The Obamunist don't like those stinky, ugly, polluting spewing production plants in this country.

Unfortunately, the American public wants the goods produced by those stinky, ugly, polluting spewing production plants.

So the free market systems says. Hey we can provide the American public with what it wants and we can move those stinky, ugly, polluting spewing production plants to another country that wants them.

Unfortunately, those stinky, ugly, polluting spewing production plants provide high quality jobs to a segment of our society that needs those jobs.

Instead, that segment of society gets to man the Walmarts, Best Buys around the country. Unfortunately, those jobs don't pay as well as the jobs a 3M plant would provide.

Now that you've had a taste of Econ 101 let me ask you the question. Obama's assault on business has hurt the following profession(s) the most......

1) Neurosurgery
2) Truck Driver
3) Attorneys
4) Accountants
5) Corporate CEO's

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Who would have thunk it?

The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.

These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

A report from the nonpartisan GAO, to be released Tuesday, compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who pushed for the report, estimated it identifies between $100 billion and $200 billion in duplicative spending. The GAO didn't put a specific figure on the spending overlap.

The GAO examined numerous federal agencies, including the departments of defense, agriculture and housing and urban development, and pointed to instances where different arms of the government should be coordinating or consolidating efforts to save taxpayers' money.

The agency found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality; 80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation; 47 for job training and employment; and 56 to help people understand finances, according to a draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Instances of ineffective and unfocused federal programs can lead to a mishmash of occasionally arbitrary policies and rules, the report said. It recommends merging or consolidating a number of programs to both save money and make the government more efficient.

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Protecting illegals

Here's liberalism in action..........

After 16-year-old Ashton Cline-McMurray was brutally murdered, his mother took some comfort in hearing that at least some of her son's killers would never walk American streets again.

It's the reason why Sandra Hutchinson agreed with letting the purported gang members, several of them illegal immigrants, plead guilty to lesser charges. She says the prosecutor reassured her that, after their criminal sentences were finished, those in the country illegally would be deported.

"They said that they would never set foot, basically on American soil again. In other words, they'd be like in jail until they got sent back," Hutchinson said.

It's no wonder Hutchinson wanted her son's killers gone. Her son was disabled with cerebral palsy when he was attacked while walking home from a football game in Revere.

"They stabbed him. They beat him. They beat him with rungs out of stairs. They beat him with a golf club," Hutchinson said. "They stabbed him through his heart a couple of times. And through his lung. They stabbed him in his abdomen. He didn't have a chance, really."

The four purported gang members who killed her son pleaded guilty to lesser charges, from manslaughter to second degree murder, meaning they didn't serve the mandatory life sentence without parole that comes with a murder conviction.

That allowed one of the defendants, Loeun Heng, to be released by the Massachusetts Parole Board last March. The illegal immigrant was immediately taken into custody by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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Obama's greatest hits

Riddle me this Batman. Who could have predicted the country would be in this bad shape?

Oh wait, we could have watched these videos and we would have known..............

Tell me what's fair

I just finished a tax return for a client who made $400,000 in W-2 earnings last year.

Now I think we can all agree that when you make $400k, you are doing well if not, rich.

I hear lot's of liberals who parrot the tripe that the rich don't pay enough tax like they're a character out of Rainman or Forrest Gump. But you know what I never hear one of these dumb asses say? What actually is fair.

Now surely if you have a functioning brain and you have some concept of what's not fair, surely you can throw me a number that is fair. Right?

So if you are of the ilk to pipe out the harmonic tone of "the rich don't pay enough" At least have the balls to tell the taxmanblog audience what actually is fair for a married father of three making $400k to pay.

Just note it in the comment section.

Consumer Reports reviews GM's coal power car

Consumer Reports offered a harsh initial review of the Chevrolet Volt, questioning whether General Motors Co.'s flagship vehicle makes economic "sense."The extended-range plug-in electric vehicle is on the cover of the April issue — the influential magazine's annual survey of vehicles — but the GM vehicle comes in for criticism.

"When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn't particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it's not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy," said David Champion, the senior director of Consumer Reports auto testing center at a meeting with reporters here. "This is going to be a tough sell to the average consumer."

"Doesn't make a lot of sense." That means it's the perfect car for your average liberal.

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Life in "Progress" City - San Francisco edition

San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.

Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.

Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite - better known as bleach - to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city's treated water before it's dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.

That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year.

Not everybody thinks it's a good idea.

A Don't Bleach Our Bay alert has just gone out from eco-blogger Adam Lowry who argues the city would be much better off using a disinfectant like hydrogen peroxide - or better yet, a solution that would naturally break down the bacteria.

Or they could have used the conservative old school solution........"more water".

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Barack Obama on Gas Prices, in Indianapolis

John Galt sends the warning shots to Obama

The head of one of the US’s biggest industrial groups has launched a scathing attack on Barack Obama’s attempts to repair relations with companies, dubbing him “anti-business”.

Manufacturers could shift production out of the US to Canada or Mexico as a result, warned George Buckley, chief executive and chairman of 3M.

“I judge people by their feet, not their mouth,” he told the Financial Times. “We know what his instincts are – they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business.”

The Obama administration has struck a more conciliatory tone towards business since the Democratic defeat in November’s midterm elections.

Last month, the president created a jobs and competitiveness council, chaired by Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of GE, and including chief executives such as American Express’s Kenneth Chenault, DuPont’s Ellen Kullman, Antonio Perez of Kodak and Southwest Airlines’ Gary Kelly. Mr Obama also convened a meeting this month with technology chief executives, including Steve Jobs of Apple, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Mr Buckley, who has run the diversified manufacturer since 2005, said: “There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It is about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington, attitudes towards science.”

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The truth from where I sit

There's been plenty of chatter about the Wisconsin and Ohio labor issues before their respective legislatures.

Let me offer up some information from where I sit.

I have a number of recently retired Ohio teachers as clients. I looked at the average pensions of those teachers and it comes to roughly $45,000.

To be fair, these teachers get no social security (unless they had a spouse who kicked into social security). However, I also have a number of retired Ford and GM rank and file employees. Their pensions average roughly $20,000 plus social security benefits of about $22,000.

Not too much of a difference, right? Except that the UAW employees have probably the best pensions in the private sector. In addition, those employees kicked in to that social security for their entire lives; something not done by your average school teacher. Oh and it's because of those healthy pensions that the big three find themselves getting buried by foreign competition.

Here's another big time benefit of your average public sector worker.

They get 10 sick days a year, which they get to carry forward. Do you know anyone in the private sector who gets that kind of benefit? Think about how many sick days you've taken in your life and calculate how many carryover days you'd have in the bank today.

Now it would be one thing if those days were just paid out at the end of the year. But a teacher gets to wait on payment until their salary is 2-3 times the value from when those days are accrued. In addition, the pension benefits are calculated based on the last 3 years of salary. So many teachers stock pile those days until retirement. If you've been a teacher for twenty years you effectively doubled up that last year of wages, thereby ballooning your benefit.

No one in the private sector has that kind of freedom with their private pensions.

Now how about those fat cat pension? I have several retired executives and all of one has a pension amounting to $50,000 a year. But I also have a retired school superintendent who pockets a cool $74,000 a year pension while his wife gets her $33,000 from her teacher pension.

$107,000 a year? Now most couples could retire very comfortably on that.

The fact is, the average pensioner in my practice gets about $10,000 a year in pension benefits. Many of those pensions have no cost of living adjustments so these folks are hit very hard by inflation.

Now whether these folks want to admit it or not. They're breaking the backs of the people who have to work to fund these pensions.

That's the truth from where I sit.

Later, the joke of prevailing wage.

Ouch

This guy slices up the Obama foreign policy with laser like precision...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MoveOn.org Protester to Black Tea Partier: "You're On Koch's Plantation"

Rally Footage

Hideaway in Rockford!

Maybe Bartman can hide there and see Cheap Trick for the 5th consecutive decade.

Sen. Rand Paul - The Tea Party Goes to Washington *Interview (Feb.24/11)

Now that's "progressive"!

Spending $228,055 for a job........

The jobs created and saved by the economic stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed on Feb. 17, 2009 cost at a minimum an average of $228,055 each, according to data released yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

In a report released Wednesday—“Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from October Through December 2010”—the CBO said it now estimates the stimulus law cost a total of $821 billion, up from CBO’s original estimate that the stimulus would cost $787 billion.

In the same report, the CBO estimated that in the fourth quarter of 2010 there were somewhere between 1.3 million and 3.5 million people who were then employed who would not have been had the stimulus not been enacted. “CBO estimates,” says the report, “that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2010: … Increased the number of people employed by between 1.3 million and 3.5 million.”

This estimate seeks to state the net impact the stimulus had on the number of people employed in the United States as a result of the stimulus, taking into account not only the new jobs believed to be created and the existing jobs believed to be killed by the stimulus, but also the existing jobs that were saved that otherwise would have been lost.

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Isn't that the point?

Singer John Legend was in Washington to sing at the White House on Thursday but he had a few choice words for the politicians in town, too.

Legend told reporters before an evening concert celebrating Motown's music that too often the arts are the first thing to go when budgets need to be cut.

"People fought to give me _ a millionaire _ a tax cut this year," he said. "I didn't need it. And all the other millionaires didn't need it either."

The singer said he'd benefited from cultural organizations such as community choirs and arts councils in earlier years, which often suffer when budgets get trimmed.

Here's a novel idea John. You feel passionate about the arts? Give your damn tax cuts to the arts and fund them yourself. Apparently, while you were getting all that benefit from those "cultural organizations", someone neglected to provide you with an economics and math lesson or two, or three..............

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From the party of civil discourse

Start watching at about the 7:00 mark

Things you won't hear on the evening news

Like how the Obamunists are responsible for the escalating gasoline prices..........

This week the media’s attention is finally focused on oil prices. After two years of continually rising consumer gas prices in America, the oil futures market has captivated the Mideast storyline. And attention is much needed. December 2010 saw the highest gas prices for the month of December in our nation’s history. This month, we’re setting similar records with the national average of $3.14/gallon–fifty cents higher than it was a year ago. If this trend continues, the summer of 2011 will hit consumers much harder than in the summer of 2008 when prices soared above $4/gallon.

But if you only read, hear or see this week’s news reports, you would think that oil and gas prices were doing just fine until the historic events in Egypt, Libya and across the Middle East unfolded this past month and caused spikes in the futures market. Unfortunately, that is not the case. President Obama has been unilaterally taking steps to increase the cost of gasoline for two years. Here are ten things you need to know about gas prices that you may not hear reported elsewhere:

Read the ten here..........

thanks reader Jeremy for the link.

How about abstinence

Remember the good old days when Ayds was a dietary candy, milk was sold in glass bottles and how we were told that oral sex wasn't really sex and was really the ultimate safe sex.

OOOPS!

What's the leading cause of oral cancer? Smoking? Heavy drinking?

Actually, it's oral sex.

Scientists say that 64 percent of cancers of the oral cavity, head, and neck in the U.S. are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which is commonly spread via oral sex, NPR reported. The more oral sex you have - and the more oral sex partners you have - the greater the risk of developing these potentially deadly cancers.

"An individual who has six or more lifetime partners - on whom they've performed oral sex - has an eightfold increase in risk compared to someone who has never performed oral sex, Ohio University's Dr. Maura Gillison, said at a recent scientific meeting, according to NPR.

It's news that might alarm some parents, who worry about adolescents' appetite for oral sex.

"Today's teens consider oral sex to be casual, socially acceptable, inconsequential, and significantly less risky to their health than 'real' sex," Dr. Gillison and colleagues said in a written statement released in conjunction with the meeting.

Now ask yourself this question. If the only health risk to smoking was the potential to get HPV in your mouth do you think we would encourage kids to abstain from smoking?

Does that mean that some kids will smoke despite our teaching?

Why do we continue to believe in this fable that if we teach kids to have sex but to just do it "safely" that somehow that minimizes the public health risk.

Yesterday, I was in a convenience store listening to this teenager bitch about her baby daddy's lack of parental skills. She went on and on about what a dead beat he was.

The whole time I kept thinking "do you think it might have been a good idea to assess this character before you screwed him and made a baby with him".

But the fact is there is no shame in being a dumbass in this world anymore. Having a child out of wedlock is not only no longer a big deal but is financially profitable.

There are numerous public health risks associated with multiple partners and yet our response is to make sure kids carry condoms with them.

That's not education........ it's a loading a gun and handing it to a kid.

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Just play a gay character

Apparently, some folks have their panties in a bunch because there's not enough black actors nominated for the Oscars...........

Whoopi Goldberg said Wednesday that the lack of black nominees in major categories of this year's Academy Awards doesn't reflect a trend in the film industry.

Speaking after hosting the opening of an exhibit of Oscar statues inside New York's Grand Central Terminal, Goldberg underscored that five black actors have won Academy Awards since 2002.

"I don't know how it gets better," she said after posing for pictures. "I think we're all right."

Goldberg recently said on her show "The View" that she was upset about an article in The New York Times citing the lack of black nominees this year because it didn't mention her supporting actress Oscar for 1990's "Ghost."

The Times said she misread the story and that it was not meant to be a comprehensive list of all actors who had won Oscars. Goldberg later apologized for calling the reporting sloppy.

She tried to clarify her comments about the story Wednesday, saying it was inaccurate to think there's "something wrong" with the way blacks are represented at the Oscars. She said strides have been made since 1939 when Hattie McDaniel won for best supporting actress, becoming the first black awarded an Oscar.

Hey, just follow my advice. Here's how you get an Oscar nomination. Play a biographical character. Nelson Mandela, Idi Amin, Ray Charles, Mohammed Ali, Malcolm X characters have all been nominated.

Play a sadistic madman. Worked for Heath Ledger and Anthony Hopkins.

Play a character with obvious mental/physical handicaps. Worked for Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and the dude from Shine.

Or play a gay man. That's always a sure fire way to be nominated. I've got to think that a b Black gay character is a slam dunk.

SEIU Protester to Black Tea Partyer: Do You Have Any Children That You C...

Clements: Why Do I Have to Ask to Go Back to Work

Life in "Progress City - Detroit edition

Maybe, just maybe, Scott Walker is trying to make the changes necessary to keep his schools from looking like these quality schools in the "progressive" utopia of Detroit........

State education officials have ordered Robert Bobb to immediately implement a financial restructuring plan that balances the district's books by closing half of its schools, swelling high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidating operations.

This week, Bobb, the district's emergency financial manager, said he is meeting with Detroit city officials and will set up a meeting with Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency to discuss consolidation opportunities in areas such as finance, public safety, transportation and other areas.

Bobb also is preparing a list of recommended school closures and Friday said layoff discussions are under way and would be announced closer to April, when notices would be issued. "We are moving forward with the plan," he said "Right now my focus is on my transition plan and the DEP (deficit elimination plan)."

Bobb's last day with DPS is June 30. After that, the state plans to install another financial manager who must continue to implement Bobb's plan, according to a Feb. 8 letter from Mike Flanagan, the state superintendent of public instruction.

In the letter, Flanagan said the Michigan Department of Education gave preliminary approval to Bobb's plan to bring the 74,000-student district out of its financial emergency. As a condition of approval, Flanagan said Bobb cannot declare the district in bankruptcy during the remainder of his contract.

Bobb, appointed emergency financial manager in March 2009, filed his deficit elimination plan with the state in January, saying it would wipe out the district's $327 million deficit by 2014. On Feb. 9, he told state lawmakers the plan is the only way DPS "can cut its way out" of its legacy deficit.

Out of curiosity, I wonder if all these teachers soon to be laid off would have been receptive to eliminating their unions if they had had the chance?

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Obama Leads SEIU Chant After Vowing to Pa...

No more solar power gimmes

Ohio's solar subsidies have bitten the proverbial dust............

Whitemyer is one of 204 Ohio businesses and homeowners who filed grant requests before Nov. 5 only to learn that they won't get money this year - if ever.

Money for the grants came from a 9-cent monthly fee tacked on to most Ohioans' electricity bills. The fee expired Dec. 31, after state lawmakers didn't reauthorize it.

Chad Smith, interim energy resources director for the Department of Development, said he's aware people are upset about the fund's cutoff and demise, but he said the state can't give money it doesn't have.

"The (grants) were structured on a first-come, first served basis," Smith said. "From July to November, we did more projects than we ever did in any fiscal year."

Before it ran out of money, records show, the program awarded $15.6 million worth of grants for 161 solar-panel and wind-turbine projects from July to November.

The program began in 1999 when the legislature first enacted the fee, initially offering low-interest loans to homeowners and businesses. It has given out a total of

$49.3 million since it was transformed into a grant program in July 2006.

The 204 grant applications filed in 2010 asked for $20.8million from the state. Five years earlier, the fund provided $2 million for 67 projects.

Why such an increase in demand?

The price of solar panels has dropped substantially in recent years, said Geoff Greenfield, co-owner of Third Sun Solar, a company based in Athens that installs alternative-energy systems.

A 10-kilowatt solar-panel system that cost $80,000 in 2005 now sells for $50,000, he said. With the help of state grants and federal tax credits, the electricity generated would help a home system pay for itself in about eight years.

Here's my take away from this article.

Basically, the working poor have been paying a higher utility rates so some rich dude in Dublin can subsidize his solar roof.

Even after the subsidies (which account for more than half the price) it still takes 8 years to recover costs. That sounds amazingly inefficient to me.

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Winning The Future

Or is it back to the future.

Here comes 1979 all over again........

A number of economic indicators have been hitting their best levels since before the financial crisis of late, but you have to go way back to January 2004 for the last time the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s monthly manufacturing gauge was as strong as the reading issued Thursday.

The Philly Fed came in at 35.9 for February, way above estimates and the 19 seen in January. That encouraging signal came with the morning’s second hint of inflation though, as the prices paid index of the report jumped to 67.2, from 54.3 in January, while prices received increased at at a slower pace — to 21 from 17.1.

Thursday morning’s report came after the Labor Department’s consumer price index showed inflation on the consumer level accelerated somewhat in January, rising 0.4% and 0.2% on a core basis when stripping out food and energy. Earlier this week the producer price index was up 0.8% (0.5% core). (See “Consumers Get A Whiff Of Inflation.”)

Taken together, the reports indicate that businesses face challenges in passing along the well-documented rising prices of commodities like oil and other raw materials to consumers. Companies are likely to take additional steps to that end though. J.M. Smuckers said in its earnings release Thursday morning that it will hike prices to combat higher costs, while beverage maker Dr. Pepper Snapple echoed recent statements from rivals Coca-Cola and PepsiCo acknowledging the challenge of offsetting growing costs with higher prices.

So class let's go back to how this mess started. The Obamunist and their Central Committee decided that using oil was bad. So they quit allowing American companies to drill for it.

Since there is less supply, the price goes up.

But don't worry. Because the Obamunist Central Committee thought that it would be a good idea to pay farmers to grow corn; not for food.........but for fuel.

As a result, we're drilling less oil which means higher fuel prices and everything else that fuel supports in our economy. But we're also reducing the amount of food in the market place which results in higher food prices.

Now class, let me ask you a question.......... who does inflation hurt more. Rank them accordingly.

1) A pediatric radiologist?
2) A Wall Street investment banker?
3) The poor working shlub?
4) A starving Somalian?

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O'Reilly

Wisconsin Teacher Shrieks: "THI$ I$ FOR THE KID$!!!"

She must mean the poor children who didn't get their free breakfast and lunch because the schools were closed while teachers pursued what was in their best interest.

Twitter Users Wish Death on Scott Walker

Blue City Exodus - Chicago

Had I known, when I left the city in 2000 to move my family to the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, that 200,000 of my fellow Chicagoans would follow clumping after us, fleeing en masse to the surrounding region, according to the United States Census, well, I might have given it a second thought.

OK, that’s not true. It wasn’t my fault. People left Chicago over the past decade for a variety of reasons — some were public housing residents who had their homes demolished out from under them. Some lost their jobs in the Great Recession and had to seek work elsewhere. And yes some — 20,000? 40,000? the number is unknowable — were middle class wage slaves like myself (OK, lower upper middle class wage slaves, to borrow George Orwell’s term) who couldn’t bring themselves to fling their darling children into the stormy chop of the Chicago public school system and couldn’t make the nut at a private school that might not deign to accept them anyway, whatever the price.

And yes, there are good Chicago public schools, and yes, it is possible to get one’s children into them, or so I’m told. But the question was: Is this a risk you’re willing to take?

We weren’t.

Sure, there were other factors. Our boys rode their Big Wheels around and around the dining room table, because it was too much of a hassle for them to find an adult to escort them down the flight of stairs, out the three, count ’em, three locked doors, to finally the busy street and tiny, dog-piss murdered patch of blasted grass, with its anemic locust tree, that served as their playground. A backyard was a plus, or would have been, had they ever put their video games down. But it was there.

This is not to criticize the city — Geez, hold your fire. People seem to have this bellyful of vindictiveness, boiling in their guts, and are scanning the horizon, desperate to find somebody, anybody, for them to spew it onto. Look! A guy who fled to the suburbs! The treachery of betrayal! He’s dissing our city! Get him!

Chicago’s population loss is ominous — first, because a city needs people. Detroit had a population of 2 million in 1950; it has 800,000; just 40 percent of that, now, and it’ll be interesting to see whether our elephant step in Detroit’s direction over the past 10 years will tarnish Mayor Daley’s legacy, the central leg of which is that we didn’t become Detroit under his watch. It isn’t the same if you tack “yet” at the end, “We didn’t become Detroit yet.”

Yes “we.” Because the concerns of Chicago are the concerns of Northern Illinois, which rises or falls with it, and while the bowl haircuts Downstate would like to cut off the city, out of prejudice and parochialism, and the city would like to disown suburbanites like me, out of pure spite, the truth is we are all bound together, sink or swim.

Frankly, I’m not expecting a lot of attention to the population loss story. Like global warming, it’s just too grim for many people to accept or think about. Population loss is connected to every urban problem. How to get those people back? Well, fix the schools, cut crime, create jobs, lower taxes. That’s a start.

Yeah, Ask Scott Walker how easy that is.

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How a Tea Party rally starts

What the Wisconsin strikes mean

For a while, I've been trying to figure out the best metaphor for what's been going on with the union protests in Wisconsin.

To me it's like the guy who I pay to do my lawn work. He asks me for a raise to which I tell him I can't afford to pay him more.

So even though he doesn't get a raise, he still has enough money to take time off of work and buy a picket sign so he can stand in front of my house telling my neighbors what a cheapskate I am.

The fact is. As much as I thought John Edwards was a big time creep yet he was right about the two Americas. We are in a culture war between contributors and consumers.

The contributors are ones who pay the bills and the consumers are the ungrateful assholes who do nothing but whine for more all while the contributors are reaching the tapped out point.

The Tea Parties are nothing more than the contributors making a statement......

"how about getting out of the wagon and helping us pull the damn thing for a change".

Democrats and union.......compassionate?.....not

So what we have going on in Wisconsin and Ohio and New Jersey are republican governors trying to prevent a public employee pension from outright collapsing from the weight of it's obligations that quite frankly cannot be sustained even by "taxing the rich".

So how would the democrats and unions handle the same issue. They wouldn't and the tale is that these pensions would collapse and leave seniors in abject poverty. Remember, these people don't get social security.

Also remember, this is no tale. We have a true, honest to God, example of what happens when you do nothing. Talk to the retirees of Prichard Alabama, where they didn't have the benefit of a few republicans cleaning up a generational pension mess when the time came.........

The city of Prichard filed for bankruptcy Tuesday in an attempt to cope with the debt created by fighting lawsuits and addressing the demands of unpaid and agitated retired city employees.

The Chapter 9 filing marks the second time in a decade that the city declared it was out of money. Mayor Ron Davis, who just two years ago helped the city pay off its creditors from the 1999 bankruptcy, blamed the latest financial crisis in part on a flawed municipal pension plan. The filing came a day before Davis and the city Finance Director Rex Williams were slated to be deposed by attorneys representing the pensioners in a lawsuit filed in August.

With the filing, that testimony will be put on hold, along with any other litigation pending against the city.

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Now I did this post in November, 2009. How are things working today? Let's go to our liberal tomb of the NY Times to tell us............

This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.

Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.

Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.

Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”

Yet the media will continue to portray Scott Walker as some sort of union buster with the compassion of a viper.

But you tell me. What's so compassionate about the scenario above?

Read the rest.......

From the party of diversity

As long as you keep your ass on the plantation...........

A Broadview Heights woman is accusing state Rep. Robert F. Hagan of using a term that some believe has a racist connotation on a social networking site.

Hagan, D-60th, of Youngstown, used the term “buckwheat” in a Facebook posting Saturday.

He said the posting wasn’t racist, and the attack on him is the tea party’s attempt to make him look bad.

“I have a history of supporting equal rights and civil rights,” Hagan said.

The Facebook discussion started between Hagan and Maggi Cook, of Southwest Ohio, regarding Wisconsin Senate Democrats not showing up at their Statehouse because of their governor’s attempts to remove collective bargaining rights and cut benefits for public workers.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has proposed similar cuts.

Hagan opposes the cuts.

Rachel Mullen Manias, a GOP activist from Broadview Heights, outside Cleveland; a man named Kevin Crowther and others joined the discussion.

The discussion continues, with Manias, Cook and Crowther, who is black, arguing for the need for cuts and Hagan against what’s bee n proposed.

Manias then wrote, “I’m guessing your (sic) from an entrenched area ripe with corruption. I don’t recognize your name as a Cuyahoga County resident, but I’m guessing you’re from the land of Traficant...”

Hagan responds that she’s not making sense. Two others comment and then Crowther returns to the discussion of public unions.

Then Hagan writes, “I ran against Traficant buckwheat ... so take your personal shots, and shove them where the sun don’t shine.”

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Herman Cain rallies tea party in Madison

Inhofe Takes on Global Warming Alarmist Attempted Ambush

Life in "Progress" State - California edition

So you already pay some of the highest taxes in the country but your government can't even provide the basic municipal service.........police protection............

Residents in a Modesto neighborhood are so concerned about crime they may bring in armed security guards.

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Why I'm a conservative #199

Because last night I was in a local convenience store buying some milk and I had to wait while the guy in front of me buy a bunch of junk food on his food stamp card, then paid for his cigarettes with cash. As we walked out the door, he got into a Ford 500 (probably about five years old) while I got into my 2004 Pontiac Vibe (for the record, I would never buy a GM product. It was my wife's car before we married).

As I drove away I couldn't help but wonder what the hell's wrong with this picture. Then I read this piece of some more people I get to support while driving my piece of shit.

New data from the Ohio Department of Education show the proportion of students getting free and reduced-price school lunches through a federal program has reached a record high.

The proportion of students who get the tax-funded benefit has risen nearly 50 percent in the past five years, and four of every 10 Ohio students are now part of the lunch program for low-income children, The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday.

Students can qualify for free lunches if their household income is under 130 percent of the 2009 federal poverty level, which means a top income of about $28,600 for a family of four. Families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty level can get reduced prices for student lunches.

Here's a novel idea, you breed 'em you feed 'em.

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Stuff liberals run - Universities

The University of Cincinnati is looking for people of color.

Squaring diversity goals with higher academic aspirations is among the biggest challenges for the University of Cincinnati.

A first draft of UC's latest diversity report, delivered to President Greg Williams late Wednesday, calls for more scholarships and developmental education programs to help close persistent gaps recruiting and keeping minority students.

It also suggests bigger budgets to help recruit professors of color.

It's about time we get a little red into our schools.

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