Monthly Archives: August 2011

Obama’s Jobs Program: Eliminate Private Union Jobs

Posted on by
6

As we head into America’s annual “Labor Day” holiday, it’s worth asking – all you organized labor members in the private sector, what on earth do you think the government is telling you?

This morning, the AFL-CIO released this statement to the press:

AT&T Will Return 5,000 Jobs to U.S. on Completion of AT&T/T-Mobile Merger 

Company Commits to No Job Losses for Call Center Workers at AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile 

Washington, D.C. — AT&T’s announcement that it will bring back a net 5,000 quality wireless jobs to the United States following the completion of its merger with T-Mobile USA is very good news.

“These jobs will provide quality wages and benefits and good working conditions for U.S. workers — exactly what’s needed to help turn around our struggling economy.  Instead of sitting on more than $2 trillion in assets and sending jobs overseas while millions of Americans are out of work, working people are looking for U.S. employers to follow AT&T’s lead.  If more employers took this kind of action, we could begin to move our economy forward and strengthen the middle class,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

AT&T’s commitment that the T-Mobile merger will not result in any job losses for current call center workers at AT&T Mobility or T-Mobile USA is more evidence of the kind of corporate responsibility we need here in the United States, Trumka said.

CWA President Larry Cohen pointed out that “cuts in wages, benefits, and jobs have become the new normal in America, so that when a company like AT&T takes action to bring back quality jobs, it’s big news.”

In addition to restoring a net 5,000 quality jobs and a commitment that no job losses will occur for U.S. call center workers at either company, the merger has additional positive gains for workers, consumers, communities and the industry.

  • It will accelerate the buildout of high-speed wireless broadband to 97 percent of the nation, enabling an additional 55 million people, especially in rural and underserved areas, to share in the benefits of Internet technology.
  • AT&T will develop T-Mobile’s assets and offer T-Mobile customers the latest in technology.
  • AT&T and T-Mobile utilize compatible technologies.
  • AT&T has a demonstrated commitment to workers’ rights, supporting management neutrality that enables workers to make a free and fair choice about union representation and bargaining rights.

That’s jobs, people!  Not just “living-wage” and “shovel-ready”, but good, solid, technical jobs with real skills and long-term potential – not the “shovel-ready” govenment make-work jobs the Administration and the public employee unions are babbling about.  The kind of jobs you can raise a family, build a career and support a community on!

And so what did the Administration do?

Joined up with Al Franken, and kicked you all, every one of you private-sector union employees, straight in the teeth:

The Department of Justice today filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc. The department said that the proposed $39 billion transaction would substantially lessen competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services across the United States, resulting in higher prices, poorer quality services, fewer choices and fewer innovative products for the millions of American consumers who rely on mobile wireless services in their everyday lives.

The department’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to prevent AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom AG.

“The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for mobile wireless services,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. “Consumers across the country, including those in rural areas and those with lower incomes, benefit from competition among the nation’s wireless carriers, particularly the four remaining national carriers. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that everyone can continue to receive the benefits of that competition.”

So there you go, unions; after you spent tens of millions of your dues on getting Obama and Franken elected, what do you get?  Screwed – in favor of a bunch of nutroots whose only agenda is controlling all alternative media!

So whatdya think about that?

Feeling – what’s the word I’m looking for…

…betrayed?

UPDATE:  The CWA is not amused.

The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to seek to block the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA is simply wrong.

In today’s sinking economy, where millions of Americans are looking for work, the DOJ has filed suit to block a merger that will create as many as 96,000 quality jobs. In the U.S., where too many Americans, especially in rural areas, don’t have access to the tools of Internet technology, the DOJ is looking to block a plan to build out high speed wireless access to 97 percent of the country.

In a nation where workers’ rights are routinely violated, as occurs everyday at T-Mobile, the DOJ apparently believes that workers should be on their own instead of having a fair choice about union representation.

The DOJ’s action would put good jobs and workers’ rights at the bottom of the government’s priorities. Just yesterday, AT&T announced that it would return a net 5,000 jobs to the U.S. on completion of the merger. That is the kind of corporate responsibility that more employers in the U.S. should demonstrate if we are ever to have an economic recovery.

Instead of acting to block this merger, our government should be looking to support companies that create, keep and return good jobs to the United States.

They spent millions electing Democrats, and all they got was those lousy, usually awful-colored and ill-fitting, slogan t-shirts.

Dilatory

Posted on by
5

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes re Keith Ellison’s letter to Hamas:

What, already? It’s only been 5 years. What’s the rush, Congressman?

And why such forceful action? Co-signing a letter to Hamas Leader-For-Now Khaled Mashaal, coming without warning, without any preliminary negotiation or preconditions, joined only by 11 other headline-seekers . . . that seems preemptory and a unilateral. Where is the international support?

But perhaps this letter is a signal of some strongly held belief? An act of fierce moral urgency? What, exactly, do you mean when you say:

“”It just seemed like a humane, decent thing to do,” Ellison said of sending the letter. “I don’t think [Shalit’s captivity is] helping the Palestinian people get a state, which I earnestly pray that they get. I think it hardens Israeli hearts and makes it more difficult to move the ball.”

Frankly, Congressman Ellison, it doesn’t sound as if you condemn the tactic of attacking Jews or taking hostages in principal, only that you think the tactic didn’t work out as planned in this particular instance, so you urge a different strategy.

You’ve gotta wonder.

I’ve told this story before; a few years ago, I appeared as a panelist on an internet talk show; Ellison was a guest.

I asked him if he repudiated the bits and pieces of the Hamas charter that called for the extinction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews – and by asked, I mean “with almost obsequious politeness”.

His response?  “How many Palestinians do you know?”

I donate that insult to my intelligence to all of CD5’s voters with consciences.

Doakes:

I’m certain that’s a comfort to the people living in Israel to know that a junior Congressman from Minnesota signed a letter to the leader of an organization explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel, advising them to shift tactics to complete the Holocaust. Jews everywhere should sleep soundly tonight. The rest of us – especially those living in Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District – should hang our heads in shame.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Oh, I feel the shame.

But I’m not hanging my head.  I’m raising my (rhetorical) fist.

Ellison is an embarassment.

Attention Twin Cities Media

Posted on by
9

Operation Gun Runner (aka “Fast and Furious”) was not an operation done in good faith to “take down criminals” that “went wrong” that “left a mess at the ATF”, as you are all reporting today.

It was a politicized attempt to smear law-abiding gun dealers, law-abiding gun owners, and the Second Amendment movement, purely for the political benefit of the Obama Administration, and the Administration knew it.

Please

Under Rug Swept

Posted on by
2

Melson is out.  Melson Mini-Melson is in.

After overseeing “Operation Gunrunner” – an operation fully intended to frame the law-abiding gun dealer and gun-owner for crime in Mexico by sending straw buyers in to gun stores in the Southwest, and allowing the guns to drop straight into the Mexican drug cartels’ hands, purely to give the President political leverage on the gun issue, which went terribly awry, contributing to the deaths of many Mexicans and some Americans – Melson was thrown under the bus yesterday, and replaced by B. Todd Jones (“Can I call you B?”), who is…

…well…

 

According to Senator Charles Grassley’s June 15, 2011 congressional testimony attachment 4, the chair of AGAC (Jones) was a member of the Southwest Border Strategy Group and attended at least one briefing on Fast and Furious in October 2009.

He appears to be complicit in the coverup, just like Melson.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Look for a concerted media campaign to distance the Administration – which supported the scam, and was in on it, and had been setting the stage for using the fallout from the operation to benefit the Administration and attack the Second Amendment movement since the beginning – from the whooooole thing.

Common Sense

Posted on by
2

Yesterday, we reported that labor leaders in Wausau, Wisconsin had disinvited Republican politicians from participating in the Labor Day parade, because they’d sided with Scott Walker (and that a Minnesota politician had more or less joined in).

Today, Wausau’s mayor says if they wanna play, they gotta pay:.

“This is not a political rally, it’s a parade, for God’s sake,” [Wausau Mayor Jim] Tipple said, noting that taxpayer money is used by the city to pay for staging the event. Tipple’s office is nonpartisan, and he claims no affiliation with either political party.

He said the annual cost of the parade, including insurance, setting up and taking down a stage, and police personnel, runs anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 each year.

The Republican-backed collective bargaining limits made Wisconsin the center of a battle over union power this year.

I’m not sure if the various public employee unions responded “What?  We spend taxpayer money on our own interests all the time!”, but I’m sure it came up…

Time For Change

Posted on by
12

With the news that organizers of a “Labor Day” parade have disinvited Republican elected officials in Wisconsin….:

Organizers of the Labor Day parade in Wausau say Republican lawmakers aren’t welcome in this year’s event…Council president Randy Radtke says they choose not to invite elected officials who have “openly attacked worker’s rights”…Republican Rep. Sean Duffy’s office received notice from parade organizers this week that no Republicans would be invited to walk in the parade. Duffy’s chief of staff, Brandon Moody, tells WAOW-TV the congressman was hoping differences could be set aside for the family-friendly event.

…I have to wonder – is this the left’s latest Borg-hive meme?  That Labor Day is for people who suck up to “Labor?”

Could be – the meme is popping up in Minnesota, too.  Yesterday, Representative Carly Melin – a former Hamline U law student whom the DFL quickly transplanted from St. Paul to Tony Sertich’s old district up on the Range at the last possible second to run as the DFL’s anointed candidate, but don’t you dare call her a carpetbagger – wrote on Twitter yesterday…:

Will #mnleg GOP members who attacked collective bargaining rights all session be celebrating Labor Day? Do they know the history? #unions

Hm.  So “Labor Day” is not so much for union people, but for people who are compliant with Big Labor’s political agenda?

Perhaps it’s time to abolish the Labor Day holiday.  Stop me if I’m wrong, but national holidays are for the nation – everyone – and not just the glorification of special interest groups.

 

 

Look – unlike most DFLers, I’ve been a union member.  And unlike most of them, I know the history of the holiday; Labor Day was passed by Grover Cleveland and Congress in 1894 to assuage unionist anger after a series of violent strikes, at a time when they served a very legitimate purpose in the market – to see that workers were paid, and could work without getting killed or maimed on the job.

Today, organized labor largely exists to inveigle government to keep feeding an undisturbed stream of entitlements to generally well-to-do government employees.

Or if we don’t abolish the holiday, maybe we should change the name.  Call it “You Shall Work ‘Til You’re 70 So We Can Retire At 55” Day.  Or, less pointedly, “Back To School Day”, or “Beginning of Football Season Day”, or maybe a fall equinox party with people dancing around an aluminum pole for all I care.  The point being if the Wisconsin unions and Carly Melin want to use a federal and state holiday to enforce compliance with the unions’ demands, then maybe it shouldn’t be a federal and state holiday at all .

I’d say call it “Entrepreneur Day”, but nobody would get the day off…

Bradley Versus Prosser

Posted on by
2

Ann Althouse notes that it looks like Bradley was trying to be “first to the Courthouse” in her physical and then legal scuffle with David Prosser:

 Who gets to frame the story of the workplace bully? A person who fears accusation as the aggressor might opt for a preemptive strike, and that could have been the case here. During the incident, Justice Roggensack pulled Bradley away from Prosser and said, more than once, “This is not like you.” Bradley describes herself becoming very emotional. Perhaps she was shocked by her own behavior and self-defensively saw it as in her interest to portray Prosser as the aggressor

Read, naturally, the whole thing.

Hammers Get The Nod

Posted on by
12

Frank Fleming asks “who’d be a better president – Obama or a sack of hammers?”, and reaches a conclusion…

Overall

Taking all these areas into consideration, it’s pretty easy to see that a sack of hammers would be a much better president than Obama. This isn’t to say that Obama is dumber than a sack of hammers — a ridiculous assertion — it’s just to say that he’s much worse at being a president than one.

…that would surprise nobody that is really paying attention.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, as you’ll never find a sack of hammers with the fire in the belly necessary to both run for president and win. Perhaps that’s a problem in our system of democracy that someone like a sack of hammers, who would be an above average to great president, could never be elected.

Check out the reasoning that led to the conclusion.

Democrats Know Who The Real Criminals Are

Posted on by
3

Under North Carolina law, all carry permits are null and void the moment a governor declares a state of emergency:

Thanks to a brain-dead state law foisted upon us by a Democratic state legislature (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.7), every time the governor—in this instance, Democrat Beverly Perdue—declares a state of emergency, it is illegal from that moment onward to carry a concealed weapon until the state of emergency has been declared over.

Yep – tha’ts what the law itself says:

14-288.7. (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, it is unlawful for any person to transport or possess off his own premises any dangerous weapon or substance in any area:

(1) In which a declared state of emergency exists; or

(2) Within the immediate vicinity of which a riot is occurring.

It’s a Class 1 Misdemeanor.

The state of emergency issued by the governor, Beverly Purdue, covers the part of the state east of I95:

Governor Purdue made this declaration while the state was at work, meaning everyone who has a carry permit and lives east of Interstate 95 who was away from home instantly became a criminal by proclamation.

And geography aside, remember – it’s a law that only attacks the law-abiding!  Criminals aren’t putting their guns away, declaration or no!

It’s the sort of deeply, intensively stupid law that is the DFL’s stock in trade that Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill was, at least in part, intended to prevent.

All you gun-clinging Jebus freaks out there – next session, we need to hold the Legislature’s feet in the fire for this one.

Apropos Not Much

Posted on by
15

I’m kind of a nut, sometimes.

I mean that in a benign way.  My occasional little bout of unusualness usually expresses itself in very, very benign ways.  I sing in the car.  I make up languages, and then talk to myself in them (don’t judge).

And I sometimes decide, out of the clear, blue sky, to focus on subjects that one might not expect a guy to focus on for any rational reason.

A good example – I once spent three months reading about the German invasion of Poland – from large-scale histories down to very micro-level accounts by Polish soldiers and civilians.  This in the days before the Internet, mind you.  Another week back in high school, it was learning how to improvise explosives (Note to Janet Napolitano:  It was entirely academic).  In my mid-twenties, it was Asian cooking. And it’s covered many other topics, too – as you may be able to tell from this blog’s rather peripatetic range of subjects.

Anyway.

I sat bolt updright in bed the other day, and thought “wouldn’t it be fun to explain Minnesota law as regards defamation?”

Seriously – that’s the only reason I’m doing this – pure unvarnished serendipity!

It didn’t take much digging to get down to the crux of the gist; defamation (traditionally broken into “Libel”, or written/printed defamation, and “slander”, or spoken defamation, although those categories are largely vestigial holdovers from English common law, where the printing press and the spoken word were pretty much the extent of mass communication, although the lines are blurring rapidly today) is when someone says, writes, or otherwise transmits…:

  • …something that is defamatory – in other words, that has a reasonable chance of damaging the subject’s livelihood or reputation (where “reasonable” means “would convince a jury”)…
  • …to one or more third parties – meaning that someone besides the target has to hear it.  The communication in question must be…
  • …untrue, as in “there is no truth to it”.
  • And if the target of the statement is a “public figure”, the target needs to prove the person making the statement acted out of malice.

Seems pretty clear-cut, right?  I mean, here’s Minnesota’s “Criminal Defamation” statute, which covers most of the same sorts of things.

Well, no.  It’s not.  There is all sorts of case law on the subject – all the little crossed fingers behind the metaphorical back that the legal system churns out to make sure only lawyers can really follow the law without some major effort.

And some of those crossed fingers are a good thing.  Otherwise, you could have a situation like in the UK, where defamation is frightfully easy to prove, to the point where it genuinely chills freedom of speech, and always has – which is one major reason why American jurisprudence has legitimately tried to make proving defamation a much harder hill to climb.

So over the course of this week, we’ll look at some of the wrinkles to defamation law.

Apropos, again, nothing but my own schizoid whim.

Just Keep Repeating To Yourself…

Posted on by
24

…that “we have the best election system in the country“:

Six people have recently been charged in St. Louis County with a felony crime that is rarely seen on a Northeastern Minnesota court docket: “Voting while ineligible.”Its a felony punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, but a conviction most likely will result in a probationary sentence.Under Minnesota law, a person is ineligible to vote if his or her civil rights had not been restored after being convicted of treason, or any felony, or while under a guardianship in which a court order revoked the wards right to vote, or if found by a court of law to be legally incompetent.All six of the people charged – four at the St. Louis County District Court in Duluth and two at the St. Louis County District Court in Hibbing – are accused of being convicted felons when they allegedly voted in the November 2008 general election.”We discovered these cases left over from the previous administration,” St. Louis County Attorney Mark Rubin said. “Weve tried to address the backlog. We reviewed them all and charged those that were deemed to have probable cause to charge.”

And somehow, a Richfield man allegedly wound up voting up there:

Antonio Vassel Brown, 48, is being transported from the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Lino Lakes, where hes serving a 24-month sentence for the sale of crack, to make his initial appearance on the ineligible voter charge in Duluth on Aug. 30.

Best voting system in the country.  Best voting system in the country.  Best voting system in the country.  Best voting system in the country.  Best voting system in the country.

And remember – the only reason not to chant “Best voting system in the country” is that you’re a racist!

Progressive Racism

Posted on by
9

Unions in Milwaukee protest “Scott Walker”…

…and, at least as much, the presence of a “Choice School” – a school that accepts refugees from Milwaukee’s dysfunctional school system.  The unions have determined that these schools are a threat – sort of like cancer considers chemotherapy a “threat”.

And the protests? Well, here  you go.

Compare the behavior of the protesters with that of the students and the school staff.  I love the guy with the moldy red beard at about 1:48 and again at 2:40 – “why are you in our neighborhood?”

The only logical conclusion?  Looking at the overwhelmingly black students, and the almost-completely middle-class white protesters, it’s clear that the only reason to oppose “Choice Schools” is racism.

Friends In High Places

Posted on by
9

Last week’s armed Federal commando raid on Gibson Guitars, over imported rosewood, left a couple of intersting questions (with emphasis bolded):

The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

So the Feds are now in the business of enforcing a law that India barely enforces?

No, really:

The Gibson facility wasn’t raided over allegations of tax evasion, charges of embezzlement, or even something as drab as child labor. Not even close. It was raided over what the DOJ deems an inability to follow a vague domestic trade law in India (one that apparently the Indian government didn’t seem too concerned about enforcing) regarding a specific type of wood. Not illegal wood, just wood with obscenely specific procedural guidelines.

So why would the government do this?

Putting aside the presumably misguided motivation to enforce another sovereign nation’s laws, why would a homegrown American company be the target of the Department of Justice in the first place?

It’s worth pointing out that Henry E. Juszkiewicz, Gibson’s Chief Executive Officer, is a donor to a couple of Republican politicians. According to the Open Secrets database, Juszkiewicz donated $2000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN07) last year, as well as $1500 each to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Juszkiewicz also has donated $10,000 to the Consumer Electronics Association, a PAC that contributed $92.5k to Republican candidates last year, as opposed to $72k to Democrats. (The CEA did, however, contribute more to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle.)

Hm.

I am a guitar player – and I know that Gibson is hardly the only company to build guitars out of Indian rosewood.  Indeed, it’s prized throughout the business.

Could the reason be…politics?

One of Gibson’s leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Company. The C.E.O., Chris Martin IV, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the DNC over the past couple of election cycles. According to C.F. Martin’s catalog, several of their guitars contain “East Indian Rosewood.” In case you were wondering, that is the exact same wood in at least ten of Gibson’s guitars.

So there you go.

Stand with Gibson: They have the Law on their side, just not the government.

I’m a life-long Fender guy – but I’m going to save up for a Gibson next.  And I’m going to make sure a picture of me buying it goes to Barack Freaking Obama.

 

Fair-Free!

Posted on by
3

There’ll be no Northern Alliance broadcast at the fair today.  Ed and I are taking a much-deserved day off from our grueling one-day-a-week schedule.

See you on…Thursday!

Oh, Yeah

Posted on by
9

Remember last spring, when the Dems lept up and down like organ-grinder monkeys on espresso, claiming that Supreme Court of Wisconsin (SCOW) Justice David Prosser had “choked” fellow SCOW justice Ann Walsh Bradley?

Leftybloggers will no doubt hope you don’t.  I’ll refresh everyone’s memory here and here.

Was it 1000% bullcrap?  Hey, it was a liberal meme; I’d only be amazed if it wasn’t.

Because it was.

Neither Supreme Court Justice David Prosser nor fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will face criminal charges for a June altercation that broke out as the judges were considering Gov. Scott Walker’s union bargaining law, a special prosecutor has determined.

In an interview, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett steered resolutely clear of specifics about the reasons for her decision.

“The totality of the facts and the circumstances and all of the evidence that I reviewed did not support my filing criminal charges,” Barrett said Thursday.

Which is, I suspect, lawyer-talk for “there was no there, there, but I’ll be damned if I”m going to piss off a SCOW justice”.

So there you go, lefties.  On to your next facile group slander!

Too Much Of Everything

Posted on by
15

What are the big lessons of this story?

The Department of Justice is under fire for taking the bold step of sending armed agents into the factories of Gibson Guitar in Nashville and Memphis to seize what it believes to be illegal wood.

Via press release from Gibson: “The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.”

The story – by Ben Howe at RedState – notes that this isn’t the first time Gibson has been raided by “federal agents with automatic weapons” over abstruse definitions of what wood is legal.

Bear in mind that the wood in question in both raids was certified legal by an industry self-regulation group. No matter; in come the automatic weapons and the pencil-necked Assistant US Attorneys.

So the lessons are what?

  1. We Have Too Many Regulations: Our bureaucracy has metastasized far beyond any level needed to ensure health and safety and adherence to rational laws.  It exists, like most Campaign Finance Boards and gun laws, to create criminals where there were none before.   This seems to be the case here; the Feds haven’t proved their case from the last raid, a few years back, whose results are still being knocked around in federal court.  This raid seems, to Howe, to be a way of stalling a defeat in the first case.
  2. We Have Too Many Regulators: They have to justify their existence somehow. More than that, they need to guard their turf; the wood industry, especially as re the music industry, has been regulating itself; how many customer bases are as PC as musicians (outside country-western, anyway)?
  3. The Feds Have Too Many Gun and SWAT Teams:  They sent a SWAT team to raid a guitar factory.  Not a crack house.  Not a Zeta stronghold in the Arizona mountains (perish the freaking though).  This is not a surprise, really; ever since the Clinton Administration, the federal government has been arming the bureaucracy; where once the Feds would depend on local SWAT teams to provide the armed muscle for the rare events it was needed, today that Feds have thousands of armed agents outside the FBI and the Marshalls, to say nothing of the military.  Where once the FBI might have something akin to a SWAT team, today the Department of Customs, the Marshalls, even the Department of Education have their own heavily-armed paramilitary units.   I would joke that the National Endowment for the Humanities has a SWAT team – but I’m afraid that someone would chime in with a link to a story about NEH commandos fast-roping in from a helicopter to serve a no-knock summons.
Cutting regulations?  Hell – it’s time to start disarming government.

Opportunity Wipes

Posted on by
2

A New Hampshire man allegedly faked a brain injury to get women to change his diapers:

Hooksett police said Thursday that Eric Carrier is facing

charges of indecent exposure and lewdness.

 

The 23-year-old is accused of pretending to have a brain injury to lure the woman to his home, claiming he needed help changing his adult diaper… Police say Carrier placed an ad on Craigslist seeking home health care. Investigators say nurses would change his diaper, not knowing he was scamming them.

No word on whether the Minnesota Second District DFL has approached the man to see if he’ll run against John Kline.

Glenn Beck Drives The Democrat Agenda

Posted on by
11

Well, he does for one Democrat, anyway.  Democrat Kate Marshall is a Democrat running in a special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District.

And she released a lit piece pointing out her really double-dog sincere support of Israel:

“I am proud to consider Israel a friend and I reiterate my unwavering support for its fundamental right to exist and the absolute necessity for Israel to secure its people from outside threats. I stand ready and willing to assist Israel in defending itself against all acts of terrorism,” the statement reads.

Unfortunately, nobody copy-edited the piece – so it went out with one of Marshall’s strategists’ internal comments still in the text:

“Background: Israel has been in the news lately, and will be even more in the news with [Glenn] Beck’s ‘Rally to Restore Courage’ in Jerusalem. In an R district, it will be useful to express support for Israel and demonstrate some foreign policy prowess while it is a timely topic — especially for people who are likely paying attention to Beck’s event.”

To be fair, the Dems have had their agenda driven by much worse…

The Money Pit

Posted on by
5

George Will notes what many upper-Midwest conservatives have been saying since February; the left went all-in on Wisconsin because if they can lose there, they can lose any and everywhere.

I’ll start with Will’s conclusion:

As the moonless night of fa$ci$m descends on America’s dairyland, sidewalk graffiti next to the statehouse-square drinking fountain darkly warns: “Free water . . . for now.” There, succinctly, is liberalism’s credo: If everything isn’t “free,” meaning paid for by someone else, nothing will be safe.

That’s the crux of it all, really – but it wasn’t what the Wisconsin flap was about.

In fact, you could be forgiven for watching the American left this past seven months and having no idea what it was all about:

During the recall tumult, unions barely mentioned either their supposed grievance about collective bargaining, or their real fears, which concern money, particularly political money. Teachers unions can no longer bargain to require school districts to purchase teachers’ health insurance from the union’s preferred provider, which is especially expensive. This is saving millions of dollars and reducing teacher layoffs. Also, unions must hold annual recertification votes.

And teachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members’ paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.

Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.

Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.

Will – or the copy editor that wrote his headline, anyway – uses the “Waterloo” metaphor; a defeat that makes further victories impossible (until some sort of radical game-changer):

Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible. Progressives, eager to discern a victory hidden in their recent failures, suggest that a chastened Walker will not risk further conservatism. Actually, however, his agenda includes another clash with teachers unions over accountability and school choice, and combat over tort reform with another cohort parasitic off bad public policies — trial lawyers.

I can hardly wait for the next session – on both sides of the Saint Croix.

Madame Obantoinette

Posted on by
16

Michelle Obama seems to be a bit of a vacation junkie, and we – according to this story from the London Daily Mail, sourced from the Enquirer – are paying for it:

White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.

The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.

‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’

Now, it’s a fact that travelling for the First Family, with all its security, is not going to be cheap under any circumstances. Still – taking separate goverment jets to Martha’s Vineyard? Really?

Of course, Atomizer will perk up at this reference:

The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

I’ll paraphrase him; “there’s no such thing as a vodka martini”. There.  (And I wanna try a “sparking wine”. Just saying).  Don’t say I never did anything for ya, Atom.

And I had to mention this; it’s a photo from Mrs. Obama’s trip earlier this year to Spain:

Can there be anything in the world more awkward than a Secret Service agent trying to look “casual?”  And the guy to the immediate left of Mrs.Obama (her right) – when did Peter Garrett join the White House staff?

How Libs Think

Posted on by
20

A Pennsylvania school district opted to save $15,000 a year via some fairly ingenious thinking:

In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, [cuts to the education budget] meant putting an end to traditional means of cutting grass at two local schools. Instead of lawnmowers, the schools are using sheep:

Rather than spend money on cutting grass, the Carlisle School District has brought in 7 Romney sheep to tend the fields. “They’ve done a good job so far,” says Superintendent John Friend.

The sheep come free of charge, since they belong to the principal of the middle school. Friend estimates that they will save the district about $15,000 this year in mowing costs.

Speaking as a metro resident, this seems like a great idea.  Think of how much money and time metro park and rec districts and public works departments we could save by importing sheep to mow parks, roadsites and other areas we currently have to pay to mow!

Silly?  Maybe.

What’s not so silly is the response:

While the $15,000 saved will barely make a dent in Carlisle’s $2 million budget gap, Pennsylvania could render the draconian education cuts unnecessary if it ended special interest tax breaks benefiting corporations and natural gas companies.

In other words, “don’t bother thinking and getting creative – just raise taxes”.