What The People Who Designed It Say About Common Core

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about Common Core. It seems that despite the talk about the need for rigorous academic standards that Common Core supposedly will provide, Common Core is not really about academic standards.

The article states:

In an interview with the Washington Post that summarizes how Bill Gates pulled off the very “swift Common Core revolution,” the Microsoft founder stated, “The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get… and that is a huge challenge.”

Gates’s statement underscores further the notion that the Common Core standards initiative is a social engineering project that places education standards ahead of parental and family influences as the major cause of poor student performance in low-income and minority communities.

Regardless of the push by various Gates-funded organizations to boast the Common Core standards’ “rigor,” the real motivation to correct what is viewed as societal injustices was underscored even by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who said last November that it was “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is coming from “white suburban moms who – all of a sudden – their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

Anyone who has worked in public education knows that two major reasons for poor student achievement are parental involvement and culture. If a student belongs to an ethnic group where academic achievement is frowned upon, that student is not going to achieve. If the parents of a student do not value education, the student will not value education. If the peer group of the student does not value education, the student will not value education. Common Core does not either take either one of those factors into consideration.

The article further explains:

Despite the lack of validity of the Common Core standards, the Post reports that after Gene Wilhoit, director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and a former Kentucky education commissioner, and Common Core “architect” David Coleman met with Gates about funding the development of the standards, Gates’s foundation gave over $5 million to the University of North Carolina-affiliated Hunt Institute, led by former Gov. Jim Hunt (D). The Hunt Institute then coordinated more than a dozen organizations, including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council of La Raza, Achieve, Inc., the two national teachers’ unions, and the two groups that are the copyright owners of the Common Core standards – CCSSO and the National Governors Association (NGA).

Talking points about the standards were then developed by GMMB, a communications firm owned by Jim Margolis, a top Democrat strategist and veteran of both of Obama’s presidential campaigns.

Public relations firms, big corporations, and unions are not the answer to America‘s education problems. One of the differences in education in the past fifty years is the change in parental attitudes. Back in the age of dinosaurs when I was in school, if you got in trouble (or got bad grades) in school, you were also in trouble at home. Somehow in the past fifty years the equation has changed in many families–if you are in trouble at school, it’s the teacher’s fault. Teachers are afraid not to send children on to the next grade due to pressure from parents and often, pressure from school administrators.

The problem in our schools is not in the curriculum or standards–it is in requiring students to meet a standard.

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Exactly Why Is The Law There?

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Representative John Conyers would be on the election ballot in Michigan. Representative Conyers was originally taken off the ballot by election officials because he had failed to secure enough valid petition signatures. Some of the people who collected signatures were not registered voters, something that is required by Michigan law.

The article reports:

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Leitman issued an injunction ordering Conyers back on the ballot just hours after state elections officials upheld an earlier ruling that had kept him off for failing to secure enough valid petition signatures. At issue was the question of whether a law requiring signature gatherers to be registered voters is constitutional.

Leitman said he was not issuing an opinion on that question Friday. But because the plaintiffs challenging the law “have shown a substantial likelihood of success” and “because time is of the essence,” he said he opted to order that Conyers be put back on the ballot.

Leitman’s order came the same day the Michigan secretary of state‘s office upheld a decision handed down May 13 by Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett. Garrett’s office said Conyers submitted far fewer than the 1,000 valid signatures required to appear on the ballot. Leitman’s decision puts him beyond the threshold.

There is a problem with the logic here–there is a law in place that governs the collection of signatures. If voters or state legislators are unhappy with that law, they need to change it. This is an example of a judge saying he didn’t want that law to apply, so he overruled it. Would the judge have made the same decision for another candidate? Do voting laws apply equally to all candidates? According to the U.S. Constiution and most of the state constitutions, laws are made by legislative bodies–not by judges.

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A Scandal Under The Radar

John Hinderaker at Power Line has posted a number of articles about the use of the Washington Post by the Democrat party to attack the Koch brothers about the Keystone Pipeline. Never mind that the Koch brothers have no connection to the Pipeline or that building it would not help their business, the Washington Post still reported supposed connections as fact. I haven’t written about the scandal because it is complicated and hard to detail in a concise manner. However, John Hinderaker appeared on Fox News and explained it beautifully.

The video is posted on YouTube:

This is an example of why many Americans, including myself, do not trust the mainstream media.

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Once The Camel’s Nose Is Under The Tent

On Monday, Byron York posted an article at the Washington Examiner about the problems involved in getting rid of ObamaCare as it becomes entrenched in American medicine.

The article reports:

What is different about Republican calls for repeal today — as opposed to calls for repeal from 2010 to the end of 2013 — is that Obamacare is now in place. It exists. Exchanges are running — many of them badly, but running. Subsidies are being paid. Insurance companies have changed the way they do business. Medicaid has been expanded. Special taxes are being collected.

Even though the system is new, millions of Americans have gone to a lot of trouble to adjust to it, and it would be disruptive to them to just stop cold. Halt subsidies? Undo Medicaid expansion? Just as last fall, when millions of Americans received coverage cancellation notices, millions more would face new burdens under the repeal of Obamacare.

This is not good news for the American healthcare system, but it is not unexpected news. Just as ObamaCare was extremely disruptive to the system in place, repealing ObamaCare is going to be disruptive to what has been put in place since the law was passed.

Meanwhile, in an effort to avoid a stunning defeat in the mid-term elections, the rules of ObamaCare have been changed again.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

The Obama administration has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline.

Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension.

Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth.

The rules, which will apply to the federal exchanges operating in three dozen states, will essentially create a large loophole even as White House officials have repeatedly said that the March 31 deadline was firm. The extra time will not technically alter the deadline but will create a broad new category of people eligible for what’s known as a special enrollment period.

This is another example of the Obama Administration moving the goal posts when it is to their political advantage to do so. It would be nice if someone in Congress had the backbone to stand up for the Constitution.

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The Mainstream Media Continues Its Demonization Of The Koch Brothers

The Koch Brothers seem to be the target of the day for the mainstream media (and Senator Harry Reid). They have been singled out as the poster child for big money flowing into politics. Opensecrets.org, a website that tracks political donations shows the Koch Brothers as number 59 on their list of biggest political donors? When was the last time number 59 got any kind of publicity?

The latest attack on the Koch Brothers is an article in the Washington Post which lists them as a major lease holder in Canadian Oil Sands. John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday which shows that supposed fact to be a total lie.

The story at Power Line points out:

So the fundamental point of the Post story, which relied uncritically on a goofball far-left report, is dead wrong. Moreover, the Post story itself acknowledges that the tar sands encompass 35 million acres, so Koch’s 1.1 million comprise less than 3% of the total. The whole point of this exercise is to make the Keystone Pipeline all about Koch, and that premise is implausible from the start.

Somehow the story in the Washington Post neglects to mention who profits by the Keystone Pipeline NOT being built. On February 12, I posted that story (rightwinggranny.com).

As previously posted from another Power Line article:

If the Obama administration holds firm on blocking Keystone, the big loser will be TransCanada Corporation. But who will the big winners be? American railroads:

And of them, the biggest winner might just be the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Obama supporter and Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett. In December, the CEO of BNSF, Matthew Rose, said that his railroad was shipping about 500,000 barrels of oil per day out of the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and that it was seeking a permit to send “crude by rail to the Pacific Northwest.” He also said the railroad expects to “eventually” be shipping 1 million barrels of oil per day.

The article at rightwinggranny.com also lists some other interests connected to legislators that will profit if the Keystone Pipeline is not built.

As usual, follow the money–even when the mainstream media totally misreports whose money is involved.

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Who Is Actually Running Things?

Last Monday, Heritage.org posted an article about Congress. It wasn’t the usual article blaming Congress for the various ills of the country–it was an article noting the declining power of Congress–they’re giving their power away!

The article cites a number of examples:

Consider several of the items Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus listed in a recent column headlined, “Losing the art of legislating as John Dingell retires”:

This is not how our government is supposed to work–it is rule by agencies in the executive branch–not three branches of government balancing each other.

 

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Are They Being Denied Asylum Because They Might Vote Republican?

PLEASE SEE THE UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS STORY!!!!!

America has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to stay in this country. The Obama Administration has made it easy for children who were brought here to get tuition breaks, temporary visas, and many things to allow them to remain in America. However, one family seeking asylum because they fear having their children taken away from them has been denied asylum by the Obama Administration. The family was originally granted asylum, but the Obama Administration then denied that asylum, and the family began a court battle to remain in America. The odd thing here is that the Obama Administration has spent a lot of resources fighting the original asylum decision, while at the same time loosening immigration laws for thousands of other people. It makes no sense. However, here is the story.

The Washington Post reported the story yesterday:

The Supreme Court on Monday (March 3) declined to hear an appeal from a family seeking asylum in the United States because home schooling is not allowed in their native Germany.

HSLDA helped the Romeikes leave Germany in 2008 after they were threatened with jail time and losing custody of their children. The Romeikes are evangelical Christians, and say they should be allowed to keep their children home to teach them Christian values.

An immigration judge in Tennessee granted the Romeikes’ bid in 2010, but the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the ruling in 2012, arguing that religious home-schoolers don’t face any special threats.

The family lost their appeal in federal court in May 2013. The U.S. grants safe haven to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, but not necessarily to those under governments with laws that differ from those in the U.S., Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the court’s decision.

“The German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution,” Sutton wrote.

We need to remember that parents should have the last word in the education of their children.

From the Home School Legal Defense Association Facebook (HSLDA)  page:

Today, a Supervisor with the Department of Homeland Security called a member of our legal team to inform us that the Romeike family has been granted “indefinite deferred status”. This means that the Romeikes can stay in the United States permanently (unless they are convicted of a crime, etc.)

This is an incredible victory that can only be credited to our Almighty God.

We also want to thank those of who spoke up on this issue–including that long ago White House petition. We believe that the public outcry made this possible while God delivered the victory.

This is an amazing turnaround in 24 hours. Praise the Lord.

Proverbs 21: 1 “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord, He guides it wherever He pleases.”
~~Michael Farris

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Pictures vs. Words

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article quoting a leak to the Washington Post on President Obama’s proposed budget. The Washington Post reported: “With 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to era of austerity:”

It has always been my belief that a picture is worth a thousand words. From Yahoo.com:

federalspending

Where is the austerity?

However, there is more to the problem.

John Hinderaker reminds us:

But wait! Democrats and Republicans agreed on discretionary spending levels that supposedly were binding for a decade to come in the Budget Control Act, which included the sequester. Just a few months ago, the Ryan-Murray compromise modified the sequester and increased discretionary spending. That bipartisan agreement was supposed to put spending debates to rest for at least the next couple of years. Now, apparently, the Obama administration intends to throw all prior agreements into the trash can, and demand still higher spending.

This illustrates a point that I have made over and over: all budget agreements that purport to achieve savings over a long period of time, usually a decade, are a farce. The savings always come in the “out years,” but the out years never arrive. Once you get past the current fiscal year, budget agreements are not worth the paper they are printed on. For Republicans to agree to more spending today in exchange for hypothetical cuts in later years is folly–those cuts will never come.

Leadership in both political parties do not desire to cut federal spending. Their debate is only over which party will control the massive spending. That is why it is imperative that we change the establishment leadership of the Republican party. The Republicans used to be the party of small government, there is hope that they can be again. The Democrats have always supported big government. The only solution to this problem is new leadership in the Republican party.

 

 

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I Think Someone Moved The Goalposts

Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that as the latest talks with Iran began yesterday Iran pledged to never dismantle any equipment or facilities other countries believe could be used for the manufacture of atomic weapons. I may have missed something, but I thought the sanctions were lifted because Iran said it would discontinue its nuclear program.

On February 14th, the Washington Times reported that Iran was going to receive more than $20 billion in sanctions relief under the agreement reached. What in the world did Iran agree to do in return? Has Iran still agreed to it? It really doesn’t sound as if we got anything in return for lifting the sanctions.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted a story today about the negotiations. He comments:

The latest round of negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program began yesterday. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated what has always been clear: “Dismantling [the] nuclear program is not on the agenda.”

What, then, is? As the Washington Post reports, the West seeks only “to prevent Iran from quickly converting its nuclear program to weapons production or from hiding a parallel program.” (emphasis added) This probably means “a demand that advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium be destroyed or mothballed, and that Iran make changes to a nuclear facility under construction so it cannot produce plutonium.”

Will Iran agree to this limited package? Not likely. As the Washington Post puts it, “Iran has signaled that it would oppose any such curbs.” And a senior U.S. official acknowledged that “we have a very long way to go.”

At some point, the Obama Administration is going to have to realize that the only way Iran will ever give up its nuclear ambitions is if the west imposes crippling sanctions. Even if that were to happen, I doubt that Russia and China would honor those sanctions, so we would be right back where we started. However, the sanctions that were just lifted in the first round of negotiations were what brought Iran to the bargaining table. We need to put them back in place until the negotiations are done.

Negotiating with Iran does not make the world safer–it makes the world more dangerous. The Iranians are simply stalling for time as their nuclear program progresses. It will be necessary at some point before Iran goes nuclear for someone to take out its nuclear facilities. America will probably not do that–Israel will probably do it without asking America. That will result in mass destruction in the Middle East. Iran needs to be stopped before it goes nuclear–that will help preserve peace in the Middle East if peace is at all possible.

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When Government Works

Yes, government can actually work. You haven’t heard about this one example because it really does not illustrate what the media wants illustrated, but government can work.

Yesterday The Blaze reported on some comments made by Rush Limbaugh about what is happening in Wisconsin. You haven’t heard much about this, but the state has done an amazing turn around.

The story reports:

The state of Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is “rapidly falling” and the government’s budget ended the year with a $912 million surplus, Limbaugh explained. He says the dramatic turnaround is due in large part to the conservative policies of Gov. Scott Walker.

What’s even more amazing, he continued, is the fact that Walker is going to “rebate the money in the form of tax cuts to the people, who he said own the money.” Limbaugh says the news is “earth-shattering” because, in one of the bluest states, Walker was targeted for removal twice but continued to implement conservative policies that he was confident would help his state — and his strategy appears to be working.

If you think back a little bit, you remember what Governor Walker went through to implement his plans for the state. He had protestors trashing the capitol, he survived recall elections, and personal attacks, but he just kept on moving forward.

The article reminds us:

“He’s going to cut income taxes and property taxes, and he made the point that it’s not just a gimmick of budgeting or accounting. It’s the result of serious, significant policy changes,” Limbaugh argued.

“Now, folks, what I just told you was not reported once anywhere in what you would consider mainstream media. It was not reported on one cable network, much less all of them. It was not reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the LA Times,” he added. “It was reported in Wisconsin. There was an AP story on it, maybe some local papers picked it up, but just as a filler.”

“And to me, for us as conservatives, Wisconsin and Governor Walker, I mean, everything that we want to happen, happened there,” the radio host concluded.

When government is done right, unemployment goes down, taxes go down, and everyone gains. When government is done wrong, unemployment goes up, taxes go up, the number of people receiving food stamps goes up, and everyone loses.

It is, in the long run, up to the voters to decide what they want.

“He’s going to cut income taxes and property taxes, and he made the point that it’s not just a gimmick of budgeting or accounting. It’s the result of serious, significant policy changes,” Limbaugh argued.

“Now, folks, what I just told you was not reported once anywhere in what you would consider mainstream media. It was not reported on one cable network, much less all of them. It was not reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the LA Times,” he added. “It was reported in Wisconsin. There was an AP story on it, maybe some local papers picked it up, but just as a filler.”

“And to me, for us as conservatives, Wisconsin and Governor Walker, I mean, everything that we want to happen, happened there,” the radio host concluded.

Listen to the segment via the Daily Rushbo:

Walker is proposing a $504 million property and income tax cut plan as a means to return some of the surplus money to the people of Wisconsin. Some Democrats and Republicans are already criticizing the plan and are calling for changes.

“The budget surplus is really your money,” Walker recently said at a meeting of the Wisconsin Grocers Association. “You earned it.”

However, some lawmakers are concerned that Walker’s tax cut plan would increase the state’s projected budget shortfall from $700 million to $800,000 million. The Republican governor argues the estimates don’t take into account any revenue growth, which he says will cover the difference.

The unemployment rate in Wisconsin dropped to 6.2 percent in December and has been dropping steadily since 2011.

Featured Comments

  • Shreknangst

    A $912 million surplus, turns into a projected $700-$800 million deficit … a $1.6 Trillion negative shift.
    Somehow that sounds like Reagan era traditional GOP math and economics … Where are the Tea Party and their idea of cutting deficits? This guy seems to be creating a massive one, and, naturally, Rush doesn’t see it.
    A 6.2% unemployment rate doesn’t leave much room for growth in the economy. To wipe out that $1.6 Trillion negative shift, the state would need to get to nearly zero unemployment.

    Shreknangst

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It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…

I love the Peanuts cartoon. If you read the cartoon, you know that Snoopy is perpetually writing a novel. Many of his novels begin with “It was a dark and stormy night…” That is what the latest episode of the ObamaCare saga reminds me of.

National Review is reporting today that over the weekend, without telling anyone, in the dark of night, the Obama Administration has moved the deadline to sign up for ObamaCare.

The article cites a Washington Post story as its source:

Sources told the Post that the 24-hour extension has been built into the online system and is intended as a precaution in the event that the the problem-plagued website sees a surge of traffic from individuals looking to sign up at the last minute, and buckles under the weight.

The extension, said the sources, cannot be overridden by insurance companies if they object to it. It is the latest of several last-minute, ad hoc rule changes issued by the administration, including last week’s announcement that individuals whose insurance plans were canceled may receive an exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate

Please note that none of these changes are being sent through Congress and they are simply decided on by the Obama Administration. What happened to the legal process of passing and amending a law? Where is the Constitution in this? Why isn’t Congress complaining about being left out of a large part of the implementation of this law?

Have we entered a period in our history when laws are changed in the dead of night without anyone other than the Administration having any input?

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What Difference Does It Make?

Yesterday the Washington Post posted an article with the title, “White House delayed enacting rules ahead of 2012 election to avoid controversy.” No kidding. I hate to be cynical about this article, but I am. Let’s back up and take a look at the article and the significance of posting it now.

The article reports:

The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials.

Some agency officials were instructed to hold off submitting proposals to the White House for up to a year to ensure that they would not be issued before voters went to the polls, the current and former officials said.

…The Obama administration has repeatedly said that any delays until after the election were coincidental and that such decisions were made without regard to politics. But seven current and former administration officials told The Washington Post that the motives behind many of the delays were clearly political, as Obama’s top aides focused on avoiding controversy before his reelection.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Any politician worth his salt would have done the same thing. It’s common sense–don’t stir the pot before the election–particularly if the polls show that we are winning.

So why did the Washington Post post this article now, and what is the significance of it? First of all, if these regulations had been passed, would the mainstream media bothered to report them? If the alternative media had reported them, would the information have gotten to the low-information voter? How many voters have we heard say that if they had understood exactly what ObamaCare would mean for them, they wouldn’t have voted for President Obama? The problem here is not that the Obama Administration postponed the regulations–the problem here is that American voters for the most part have no idea what is going on with their government.

A few years ago, I taught a short class on how the American government works. It was attended by people ranging in age from 25 to about 60. There were not a lot of people there–it was sort of a public service night put on by a church–and I was amazed at how much people don’t know. Civics is no longer taught in our schools, and those of us who are old enough to have taken it probably don’t remember what we learned. Until the American voter understands the basics of what the U.S. Constitution says and is paying attention to what is going on around him, there really isn’t much hope that America will survive as a free country.

 

 

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Crime Really Doesn’t Pay

Today’s Washington Post posted a follow-up on the story of the theft in Mexico of a truckload of radioactive material used for the treatment of diseases. The truck has been found, and the radioactive material has been found.

The article reports:

The prospect that material that could be used in a radioactive dirty bomb had gone missing sparked an urgent two-day hunt that concluded when the material, cobalt-60, used in hospital radiotherapy machines, was found Wednesday afternoon along with the stolen Volkswagen truck. Mexican officials said no public health risk remained.

It is quite likely that the thieves had no idea what they were stealing. The article also reports that the material was removed from its protective casing, and it is quite likely that the thieves will die fairly quickly because of their exposure to the radiation. It will not be a pleasant death, and it actually seems as if their death will be a rather harsh penalty for stealing a truck.

This event brings up some interesting questions. Now that this story has been made public and it is known that the truck did not have a GPS tracking device and that it was relatively easy to hijack the truck, what happens next? Any fairly intelligent terrorist could easily duplicate the actions of these thieves (leaving the radioactive material in its casing, of course) and get it across America’s porous southern border. Not all the people coming into America across our southern border are South Americans looking for work (see rightwinggranny.com).

If America does not secure its southern border, we can expect a dirty bomb attack in one of our major cities based on things terrorists will be able to learn from this event. Let’s hope and pray that they are not paying attention.

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It Never Really Was About The Environment

Global warming is not proven science. There are actually a very few things that are proven science. Almost every time one man declares that something is proven science, another man comes along with a different theory that also works. About the only thing we can actually count on as proven science is gravity. After that it gets a little sketchy.

On Wednesday the Daily Caller posted an article about the current United Nations climate talks.

The article reports:

The G77 and China bloc led 132 poor countries in a walk out during talks about “loss and damage” compensation for the consequences of global warming that countries cannot adapt to, like Typhoon Haiyan. The countries that left claim to have the support of other coalitions of poor nations, including the Least Developed Countries, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Africa Group.

We need to remember that poor nations are not poor because of global warming. When you look at the profiles of poor nations and rich nations, generally speaking richer nations embrace such things are private property rights, free enterprise, and a tax system that allows individuals to prosper. Many of the poorer countries that are demanding money in this deal are dictatorships where the money will simply line the pockets and improve the lifestyles of the leaders, but will never reach the people of the country.

Blackmailing successful countries in no way helps the average citizens of poorer countries–it only increases the power and wealth of their tyrannical leaders.

The article further reports:

“The carbon tax is bad for the economy and it doesn’t do any good for the environment,” (Australian) Prime Minister Tony Abbott told The Washington Post. “Despite a carbon tax of $37 a ton by 2020, Australia’s domestic emissions were going up, not down. The carbon tax was basically socialism masquerading as environmentalism, and that’s why it’s going to get abolished.”

Making richer countries poorer does not make poorer countries richer–it just empowers people who do not promote freedom.

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Changing Alliances In The Middle East

Please excuse the short history lesson, but it is needed to put current events in perspective. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the first President of Turkey. When the modern state of Turkey was established after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Ataturk wanted to abolish the caliphate and create a secular country. (In response to the idea of Turkey becoming a secular country, Hassan al Banna founded the Ikhwan al-Muslimin, the Society of Muslim Brothers or the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt in 1928.) The efforts of Ataturk were successful until the election of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2003. Erdogan is very quietly moving the country toward an Islamic state. Logically, as Turkey moves toward becoming an Islamic state, relations between Israel and Turkey are becoming strained.

On Thursday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Turkey has been charged with leaking the identities of Israeli agents to Iran.

The article reports:

Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) allegedly revealed the identities of as many as 10 Iranians who were meeting covertly with Israeli spies in Turkey, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported Wednesday. Israeli and Turkish intelligence have had a close collaboration for decades.

U.S. officials declined to protest the leak directly to Turkey after it was discovered, according to the Post. President Obama also pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to a detente with Erdogan in March after several years of strained relations stemming from the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid.

“That Obama didn’t condemn the leak really is as great a scandal as Turkey betraying the secrets in the first place, especially given how the United States benefits so directly from Israel’s intelligence gathering,” said Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Michael Rubin also stated that President Obama should suspend sharing intelligence information with Turkey.

A U.K. Telegraph article posted on Thursday added more information:

There was no immediate comment from Israel’s government, but one former intelligence chief suggested that the leak might have led to the men’s executions. Israeli media pointed out that the report fitted with Iran’s declaration in April last year that it had uncovered a network of 15 Mossad agents.

Turkey, a Nato member, has long been Israel’s key security ally in the region, but that changed gradually after Mr Erdogan, a “soft Islamist”, was elected prime minister and became more expressly vocal in support of the Palestinian cause.

At some point, we are going to have to examine Turkey’s membership in NATO.

The article in the U.K Telegraph points out:

However, the response inside Israel was bitter. Danny Yatom, a former head of Mossad, described the alleged incident as a “great betrayal”.

“It’s against all the rules which have existed for many years, the unwritten rules concerning cooperation between intelligence organisations that reveal sensitive information to one another and trust one another not to use that information to harm whoever gave it to them,” he told Israeli radio.

The alliances in the Middle East are changing; the Obama Administration needs to acknowledge that fact and act accordingly.

 

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One Reason Government Spending Is Out Of Control

On Saturday the Washington Post posted an article about some of the end-of-the-year spending done by government agencies. The spending is a result of one of the side effects of baseline budgeting, which is something our government needs to get rid of. Baseline budgeting is the concept that a department’s budget is based on how much money they spent in the previous year. If they spend 90 thousand dollars and their budget was 100 thousand dollars, the department budget will be 90 thousand dollars in the following year. If they don’t spend all of the money in their budget, their budget is cut. This creates a mad rush to spend their entire budget by September 30, the end of the fiscal year. If they spend the full amount and ask for a 10 percent increase and get a 5 percent increase, that is considered a 5 percent budget cut. That is how Congress can claim they are cutting the budget while the spending continues to increase. These two concepts explain some of the rather interesting end-of-the-year spending done in the past few weeks by the government. As you read this, remember that this is under sequestration when Democrats are complaining that there is no money.

The article posts some examples of spending in recent weeks:

On Monday, VA paid $27,000 for an order of photographs showing sunsets, mountain peaks and country roads. They would go into a new center serving homeless veterans in Los Angeles; a spokeswoman described the art as “motivational and calming, professionally designed to enhance clinical operations.”

On Tuesday, the USDA bought $127,000 worth of toner cartridges (“end of year,” the order explained). VA spent another $220,000 on artwork for its hospitals.

On Wednesday, the Coast Guard paid $178,000 for cubicle furniture, replacing high-walled cubes with low-walled ones to improve the air flow in a large office area.

“Other higher-priority projects were not able to be executed, so they moved [money] to this lower-priority project” before the year’s end, said Coast Guard spokesman Carlos Diaz. “The money was going to be spent anyway.”

On Thursday, VA was buying art again. It spent $216,000 on artwork for a facility in Florida. In all, preliminary data showed that the agency made at least 18 percent of all its art purchases for the year in this one week. One-sixth of the buying in one-52nd of the year.

This is not a reasonable system. There is a spreadsheet at adelphi.edu that shows the federal deficit over the years. When President Obama took office, the deficit was approximately 12 million dollars. The deficit is now approaching 17 million dollars. That’s a pretty hefty increase in five years. However, the really interesting part of the spreadsheet is the relationship between the deficit and which party controls the House of Representatives. Remember, the House controls the spending. Please follow the link to the spreadsheet and take a look at the history of the federal deficit.

At any rate–baseline budgeting needs to go.

 

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Four Pinocchios From The Washington Post

On Wednesday, President Obama made a speech to the Business Roundtable. Yesterday the Washington Post awarded the speech four pinocchios. So what did the President say that wasn’t true?

The President stated:

“You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing to do with the debt.”

So what are the facts? The article cites some examples of exactly what the President claims never happened:

In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, Democrats in the Senate, including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.), sought to attach a campaign finance reform bill to the debt ceiling after the Watergate-era revelations about Nixon’s fundraising during the 1972 election.

…In 1982, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker unleashed a free-for-all by allowing 1,400 nongermane amendments to the debt ceiling legislation, which resulted in five weeks of raucous debate that mostly focused on limiting federal court jurisdiction over school payer and busing. The debt limit only passed after lawmakers decided to strip all of the amendments from the bill.

…One of the most striking examples of a president being forced to accept unrelated legislation on a debt-ceiling bill took place in 1980. The House and Senate repealed a central part of President Jimmy Carter’s energy policy — an oil import fee that was expected to raise the cost of gasoline by 10 cents a gallon. Carter vetoed the bill, even though the United States was close to default, and then the House and Senate overrode his veto by overwhelming numbers (335-34 in the House; 68-10 in the Senate).

Please see the article at the Washington Post for more examples. I understand that politicians on both sides of the aisle have been known to stretch the truth for their own purposes, but we are at a critical point right now where spending cuts are necessary for the economic survival of our country. ObamaCare represents a very large increase in government spending. We simply cannot afford it right now.

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Having A Valid Motive Does Not Ensure A Positive Outcome

On Thursday the Washington Post posted an article by Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. The article was entitled, “A war the Pentagon doesn’t want.” General Scales‘ rank and the title of the article should cause all of us to read it carefully and consider what he has to say.

The General gives his impression of our professional military’s reaction to the current debate on whether or not to take military action in Syria. He points out some basic trends:

They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.

…Prospective U.S. action in Syria is not about threats to American security. The U.S. military’s civilian masters privately are proud that they are motivated by guilt over slaughters in Rwanda, Sudan and Kosovo and not by any systemic threat to our country.

They are outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red lines.”

If the Obama Administration is truly concerned about the slaughter of innocents in the Middle East, why have they not come to the aid of the Coptic Christians in Egypt? The Coptic Christians have been under attack since the fall of Mubarak–their churches have been burned, their daughters kidnapped, and their pastors killed. America has remained silent.

What has happened in Syria is horrible, but it is folly to get involved in anyone’s civil war. We see the results of toppling a ruthless dictator as we watch the carnage in Egypt. Unless we are willing to make a long term, expensive commitment to establish a better government in Syria, we need to stay out of their civil war. Even if we were willing to pay the price to establish a democracy, it is very possible that other countries in the area would do everything in their power to undermine that effort. Bombing Syria will accomplish nothing, and it will not do anything to deter Iran’s nuclear program (as President Obama recently claimed).

The article in the Washington Post reminds us:

Civilian control of the armed services doesn’t mean that civilians shouldn’t listen to those who have seen war. Our most respected soldier president, Dwight Eisenhower, possessed the gravitas and courage to say no to war eight times during his presidency. He ended the Korean War and refused to aid the French in Indochina; he said no to his former wartime friends Britain and France when they demanded U.S. participation in the capture of the Suez Canal. And he resisted liberal democrats who wanted to aid the newly formed nation of South Vietnam. We all know what happened after his successor ignored Eisenhower’s advice. My generation got to go to war.

One of the problems with the President’s desire to go to war in Syria is the way that the Democrat party handled the war in Iraq. Democrats in Congress voted to approve the war, then did everything they could to use the war as a political issue against George Bush. The rules of engagement were set up in such a way that our military was not allowed to fight the war to win. The American people and the military don’t want to see our men and women put in harm’s way and not allowed to defend themselves. Our servicemen and servicewomen volunteered to defend America, they did not sign up to cover for an unfortunate slip of the tongue by America’s President.

 

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One Possible Explanation For Recent Foreign Policy Missteps

President Obama’s foreign policy has been a disaster. President Bush’s foreign policy was slightly better, but was not successful in promoting democracy, freedom, and American interests around the world. President Bush attempted to promote democracy, but any gains were lost when President Obama pulled the troops out of Iraq. Generally speaking, in recent years, when given a choice, America has made the wrong decision.

On Monday, the Middle East Forum posted an article entitled, “Gulliver Tied Down by Lilliputians.” The article details some of the reasons for America’s recent lack of success in dealing with the Middle East.

The article reports:

One in five applicants for jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency have ties to Muslim terrorist organizations, according to the latest round of Snowden leaks. And Israel is a major target of American counterintelligence. Washington is insane.

Three years ago, the Washington Post sketched the elephantiasis in the U.S. intelligence establishment without, of course, access to the detailed numbers leaked by Edward Snowden last week. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend if you can’t hire people you can trust. If you spend $52 billion in the “black budget,” you create so many conflicting bureaucratic interest groups as to cancel out any possible signal with a wave of noise.

I have very mixed emotions about Edward Snowden and what he has done, but this is information that should be made public. Obviously common sense has departed from the CIA hiring process.

The article at Middle East Forum contrasts the fact that America intelligence services cannot find Arab translators and are forced to hire people whose backgrounds they cannot  verify with the fact that Israel routinely teaches Arab languages in high school and thus has more translators than they can use. Admittedly, Israel is in the midst of the danger, but we can still learn a lesson from them.

The article concludes:

The U.S. has relied extensively on friendly Arab intelligence services, above all the Egyptians, to fill the gap — except that the Obama administration did its best to bring down the Egyptian military in 2011 and install the Muslim Brotherhood. The Israelis have plenty to tell, but little that Washington wants to hear: Israel never fell victim to the mass delusion about the so-called Arab Spring, and has warned throughout (along with Saudi Arabia) that Iran’s nuclear ambitions must be crushed. Israel therefore is treated as an intelligence target rather than as a collaborator, while the Arab intelligence services who most might help us — Egyptian and Saudi — must regard us with skepticism in the best of cases and hostility in the worst.

America is flying blind into a hurricane. Americans who write about the Middle East now depend on what other countries choose to leak to us. Washington isn’t in the loop any longer.

Whether we are willing to admit it or not, America is involved in a war for her survival and for the survival of western civilization. Our enemies will fight this war whether we choose to fight it or not. It’s time to wake up and defend our freedom.

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A Press Conference To Remember

This is part of the transcript of today’s Presidential Press Conference posted at the Washington Post today:

With respect to health care, I didn’t simply choose to delay this on my own. This was in consultation with businesses all across the country, many of whom are supportive of the Affordable Care Act, but — and who — many of whom, by the way, are already providing health insurance to their employees but were concerned about the operational details of changing their HR operations if they’ve got a lot of employees, which could be costly for them, and them suggesting that there may be easier ways to do this.

Now what’s true, Ed, is that in a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what? This is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. It has to do with, for example, are we able to simplify the attestation of employers as to whether they’re already providing health insurance or not. It looks like there may be some better ways to do this. Let’s make a technical change of the law.

That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote- unquote, “Obamacare.”

We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so. But this doesn’t go to the core of implementation.

Let me tell you what is the core of implementation that’s already taken place. As we speak, right now, for the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they are benefiting from being able to keep their kid on their — on their plan if their kid is 26 or younger. That’s benefiting millions of young people around the country, which is why lack of insurance among young people has actually gone down. That’s in large part attributable to the steps that we’ve taken. You’ve got millions of people who’ve received rebates because part of the Affordable Care Act was to say that if an insurance company isn’t spending 80 percent of your premium on your health care, you get some money back. And lo and behold, people have been getting their money back. It means that folks who’ve been bumping up with lifetime limits on their insurance that leaves them vulnerable — that doesn’t exist. Seniors have been getting discounts on their prescription drugs. That’s happening right now. Free preventive care, mammograms, contraception — that’s happening right now.

I met a young man today on a bill signing I was doing with the student loan bill who came up to me and said, thank you — he was — he couldn’t have been more than 25, 26 years old — thank you; I have cancer; thanks to the Affordable Care Act, working with the California program, I was able to get health care, and I’m now in remission. And so right now people are already benefiting.

Now, what happens on October 1st, in 53 days, is for the remaining 15 percent of the population that doesn’t have health insurance, they’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable, quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market.

And if, even with lower premiums, they still can’t afford it, we’re going to be able to provide them with a tax credit to help them buy it. And between October 1st, end of March, there will be an open enrollment period in which millions of Americans for the first time are going to be able to get affordable health care.

Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail. Their number-one priority. The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care; and presumably, repealing all those benefits I just mentioned — kids staying on their parents’ plan, seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs, I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance, people with pre-existing conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance.

That’s hard to understand as a — an agenda that is going to strengthen our middle class. At least they used to say, well, we’re going to replace it with something better. There’s not even a pretense now that they’re going to replace it with something better.

This is such total garbage I don’t know where to start. ObamaCare is not going to strengthen the Middle Class in America. It may well destroy it. Employers are increasing the number of part-time employees in order to avoid the mandate that says they must provide insurance for full-time employees.

On July 1, Forbes Magazine reported:

Three months from today—October 1, 2013—is X-Day, the day that Obamacare’s subsidized health insurance exchanges are supposed to become fully operational. And today brings more news of “rate shock,” the phemonenon by which Obamacare dramatically increases the underlying cost of health insurance for people who buy it on their own. Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal looked at insurance rates in eight states, and found that while some sicker people will get a better deal, “healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage.”

The President neglected to mention that one way that the government is attempting to save money on healthcare is to decrease the amount of money it pays to hospitals and doctors for providing care. The result of that is that some doctors and hospitals will stop taking Medicare patients and other patients covered by government health care. Every American may have a card saying that they have health insurance, but they will have a hard time finding a medical facility that will accept that card.

The President is lying to us. ObamaCare is a bad deal for all Americans. As all of us begin the experience its ‘benefits,’ I hope we will remember to vote out every member of Congress who voted for it. We also need to remember that, thanks to the President, Congress is exempt from ObamaCare. That should tell us all we need to know.

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The Story Behind The Story

NBC Washington reports that even though the D.C. Council has passed a law that will not allow Walmart to locate there unless it pays an ‘living wage‘ of $12.50 per hour, the D. C. government pays its employees less than that.

The battle over Walmart has less to do with wages than it does with unions. On Friday, NewsBusters posted an article explaining exactly what is going on.

NewsBusters reports:

On Thursday, my colleague Jeffrey Meyer noted how the Washington Post‘s Mike DeBonis failed to explain to readers how unionized retail outlets would benefit from an exemption in the cynically-titled Large Retailer Accountability Act, the D.C. Council bill that would require large retail chains like Walmart to pay employees at least $12.50/hour.

Notice the union exemption. So what does that mean? An employee in a union store makes less than what Walmart is required to pay and is required to pay union dues out of the smaller salary he receives. In what universe does that make sense?

NewsBusters reports:

So it’s fine and dandy to labor union activists and liberal Democratic councilmen for a retail employee in Washington, D.C., to get paid less than $12.50/hour “living wage” under the bill, just so long as it’s through a union labor-derived collective bargaining agreement, which naturally means joining a union and paying dues to the same.

The law in question expressly forbids and declares null and void any personal arrangements and negotiations an employee could arrive at with his employer. The rights of contract of both the worker and the employer are infringed by the law, but the Post fails to see how the little guy can be a victim in all this.

If the voters in Washington D.C. re-elect the Council members who came up with this law, they deserve what they get. Walmart is not a perfect retailer, but it brings jobs and lower priced goods into an area, increasing the tax base, lowering the unemployment level, and increasing the spending power of the residents of that area. To pass a law specifically aimed at one company because they are not unionized will hurt the residents of the area–not help them.

 

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A Major Part Of Any War (Particularly In The Middle East) Is The Propaganda

The Muslim Brotherhood is not going to to quietly. They will use any and every weapon they have to get power back in Egypt. Their goal is a worldwide caliphate. They work on a military level and a political level. In America, we have the exhibits from the Holy Land Foundation Trial that reveal their plan to infiltrate the American government and use our legal system and political system against us (if you have not read the exhibits, look them up). CAIR was established to use the American legal system to introduce Sharia Law, and the infiltration of Muslim Brotherhood members into some of our highest political circles is an ongoing thing. The Center for Security Policy details this in their series “The Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

So a story in yesterday’s Washington Post is no surprise–but it is almost humorous in its content. The headline in the Washington Post reads, “Muslim Brotherhood site says Egypt’s new president is secretly Jewish.” In America that probably wouldn’t really mean much–Joe Lieberman ran for Vice-President, and no one really cared that he was Jewish–but to a devout Muslim, it is a serious charge.

In January of this year, The Blaze posted an article about Mohammed Morsi‘s comments that the Jewish people as “descendants of apes and pigs.” President Morsi has said this numerous times over the years.

According to the article in The Blaze, this is the context of those remarks:

Found within the Quran itself are numerous verses citing Allah’s hex on the Jewish people and their subsequent damnation to live as the aforementioned swine, and primates. Quran verse 5:60 is the key to the kingdom in this regard and serves as the basis for all modern-day iterations. The Hilali-Khan Quranic translation of this verse reads as follows:

Say (O Muhammad SAW to the people of the Scripture): “Shall I inform you of something worse than that, regarding the recompense from Allah: those (Jews) who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshipped Taghut (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in the Hellfire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world).”

This is the context of the charge that Adly Mansour, the interim President of Egypt is Jewish. In the eyes of the radical Muslims who make up the Muslim Brotherhood, he is a descendent of apes and pigs.

It is interesting to note that the article, posted at IkhwanOnline, the official Web site of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, has since been taken offline. It must not have gotten the desired results.

According to the Washington Post, the article at IkhwanOnline also explained the world-wide conspiracy behind the removal of President Morsi:

The article goes on to connect Mansour’s appointment as president to a global conspiracy involving the United States, Israel and Mohamed ElBaradei. According to a translation by the site MBInEnglish, which is run by Cairo-based journalists and dedicated to translating Brotherhood-penned articles into English, the article claimed that ElBaradei had refused to participate in a conference that denied the Holocaust. This, it says, was “a token gesture offered to the Jews by ElBaradei so that he can become President of the Republic in the fake elections that the military will guard and whose results they will falsify in their interests. All with the approval of America, Israel and the Arabs, of course.”

It’s always a good idea when reading news reports from the Middle East to consider the fact that propaganda plays a large role in events in that part of the world. It took more than ten years for the true story of Muhammad al-Dura, the Palestinian child who appeared to have been gruesomely killed at his father’s feet in Gaza on September 30, 2000, to come out (see rightwinggranny.com). Whatever is reported by the press about events in Egypt should be viewed cautiously.

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Why We Shouldn’t Get Involved In Syria

On Tuesday, the Washington Post posted an article about the Syrian rebels. It seems that the rebels, which we are considering sending aid to, executed a fourteen-year-old boy because he insulted the Prophet Mohammed.

The article reports:

When a 14-year-old boy from the Syrian city of Aleppo named Mohammad Qatta was asked to bring one of his customers some coffee, he reportedly refused, saying, “Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t.”

According to a story reported by two grassroots Syrian opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center, Qatta’s words got him killed. A group of Islamist rebels, driving by in a black car, reportedly heard the exchange. They stopped the car, grabbed the boy and took him away.

The boy was later brought back to the place where he was grabbed, and shot to death in front of his family.

The article concludes:

The influx of avowed jihadists and extremists is bad news for Syrians, and not just because those under rebel rule have to worry about sharing Qatta’s fate if they are perceived as insufficiently pious. The growth of these groups seems bound to exacerbate tensions between rebel factions, easing Assad’s military path to victory, and scaring off the Western powers that might otherwise be persuaded to lend the rebels greater support. Lots of people in and outside of Syria could get behind the idea of ousting a cruel and unpopular dictator and replacing him with something more democratic. But few things are more universally loathed than an al-Qaeda-allied group that executes children.

Unfortunately, there is no one we should support in the Syrian civil war. It is unfortunate that civilians are the victims in this struggle, but this is a struggle that will not have a happy ending–neither side supports any sort of freedom for the people of Syria. To further complicate things, Russia and Iran are working very hard to keep the current regime in place. Our involvement in the Syrian civil war would essentially put us in a proxy war with Russia and Iran. We have been in a proxy war with Iran for years, but I really don’t think it would be wise to add Russia to the mix.

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About That Transparency Thing…

Today’s Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the Department of Justice’s handling of Freedom of Information Act requests. The article points out that the Department of Justice has not challenged a single instance of a federal agency withholding records from Freedom of Information (FOIA) requesters since 2009.

The article reports:

The audit (a government-wide audit performed by the National Security Archive in December) prompted a letter to the justice Department from Issa and Cummings.

“Given OIP’s role in in implementing compliance with FOIA, the committee seeks information about a number of issues including what many term as outdated FOIA regulations, exorbitant and possibly illegal fee assessments, FOIA backlogs, the excessive use and abuse of exemptions, and dispute resolution services,” Issa and Cummings wrote in February.

The Justice Department did not respond to oversight’s letter for four months.

The National Security Archive sought the information through a FOIA request in March, but the Justice Department told the NSA the records were exempt from disclosure.

“The fact that this document was blocked from release using a b(5) exemption is a good example of why the DOJ isn’t meeting the president’s instruction on FOIA,” National Security Archive FOIA coordinator Nate Jones told the Free Beacon.

Issa and Cummings wrote to the department again on Monday, saying Justice’s failure to respond “extremely disappointing.”

The Washington Free Beacon has previously reported that the number of FOIA requests has greatly increased during the Obama Administration.

The article further reports:

An August 2012 Washington Post analysis found that early freedom of information progress by the Obama administration “stalled and, in the case of most departments, reversed in direction.”

The number of FOIA requests denied in full due to exemptions rose more than 10 percent last year, to 25,636 from 22,834 the previous year, according to the Post’s analysis.

This really does not sound like transparency to me.

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Mark Sanford Has Won The South Carolina Special Election

Tonight the Washington Post is reporting that former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has been elected to the House of Representatives.

The article reports:

Mitt Romney won this district by 18 points last fall, but Sanford’s personal history made the seat competitive. Democrats poured money into the race while national Republicans abandoned their candidate, giving Colbert Busch a 5-to-1 advantage in outside spending.

If the American people can forgive Bill Clinton for his indiscretions, I guess they can forgive Mark Sanford for his. There are two things in this election that bode well for the Republicans in 2014–the amount of money poured into the coffers of Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch did not make a difference, and a seriously flawed candidate whose positions on issues are in line with the voters can win an election despite his flaws.

As the House of Representatives considers the immigration bill that the Senate will hand them in the near future, they would do well to keep this election in mind–issues won–money did not.

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