Current Events - December 6, 2012

Florida seized disabled child from mother, child died hours later

This is an unbelievably horrific story, almost literally unbelievable.  Florida’s child-protection system seized a disabled child from her mother in defiance of a court order, and despite the mother’s pleas that the child would die without her supervision.  And sure enough, just hours later, 14-year-old Marie Freyre was dead.
Someone should be going to prison over this:

Even after Marie Freyre died alone in a nursing home 250 miles from the family in North Tampa that loved her, Marie’s mother had to fight to bring her home.
In March 2011, state child protection investigators took 14-year-old Marie from her mother, Doris Freyre, claiming Doris’ own disabilities made it almost impossible for her to care for Marie, who suffered from seizures and severe cerebral palsy. But a Tampa judge signed an order that Marie be returned to her mother, with in-home nursing care around the clock.
Florida health care administrators refused to pay for it, although in-home care can be demonstrably cheaper than care in an institution. Child welfare workers ignored the order completely.
Two months later, Marie was strapped into an ambulance for a five-hour trip to a Miami Gardens nursing home, as her mother begged futilely to go with her.
Marie died 12 hours after she arrived.

A month earlier, Judge Vivian Corvo ordered the state to provide an overnight nurse for the child.  Instead …

So, at 11:30 a.m. April 25, 2011, workers at Tampa General Hospital loaded the teen onto a stretcher in a private ambulance — as her mother and grandfather begged them to stop. Even as caseworkers were packing Marie’s belongings, her grandfather was frantically filing hand-written emergency motions in court to delay the trip, Brudny said.
Doris Freyre, case notes say, “stated that no one knows my child like me,” and that Marie’s dislocated hip would cause her great pain if she were strapped to a stretcher for hours. She added: “If something happens to my daughter I am holding all of you responsible for it.”
Freyre had no car — and the private ambulance refused to allow her to join Marie — so Marie made the trip to Miami-Dade County alone.
Records show the two ambulance workers refused to take Marie’s seizure drugs with them; under the company’s policy, they were not allowed to administer medications in any case. According to a report detailing Tampa General Hospital’s care of Marie, the hospital neglected to ensure she was properly hydrated before she left. During her five-hour ambulance ride, she was given no water or food. …
Marie arrived in Miami Gardens the way she left Tampa: screaming. AHCA records for the next 12 hours mention only four notations in the nursing home file, and two of them document Marie “screaming.”
By 5:40 a.m. April 27, 2011, Marie was described as having “labored” breathing. Five minutes later, she was unresponsive. The AHCA investigation concluded she had been given none of her life-sustaining anti-seizure drugs, required three times each day.
Marie was pronounced dead at 6:54 a.m. Cause of death: heart attack.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2012/12/06/florida-seizes-disabled-child-from-mother-child-dies-hours-later/

New York Times: Arms Shipments ‘Secretly’ Approved by Obama Admin. Ended Up in Hands of Islamic Militants

The Obama administration “secretly” approved arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, however, U.S. officials quickly became concerned as evidence suggested Qatar was handing the weapons over to Islamic militants, The New York Times reports, citing a number of United States officials and foreign diplomats.

There is no evidence available that suggests the U.S.-approved weapons were involved in the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, which left four Americans dead on Sept. 11. But the revelation is sure to ignite speculation.
More from The New York Times:

But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.

The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from other countries.

The Obama administration did not initially raise objections when Qatar began shipping arms to opposition groups in Syria, even if it did not offer encouragement, according to current and former administration officials. But they said the United States has growing concerns that, just as in Libya, the Qataris are equipping some of the wrong militants.

The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers on the ground in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar’s plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups. They were “more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam” than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official.

“To do this right, you have to have on-the-ground intelligence and you have to have experience…If you rely on a country that doesn’t have those things, you are really flying blind. When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now dean of Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

The startling revelations raise even more concerns regarding the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

The secret transactions began in the early months of the Libyan rebellion that ended in Qaddafi’s death. Various officials sought to assist the rebel forces trying to oust the Libyan dictator

It was a short time later that Mahmoud Jibril, then prime minister of the Libyan transitional government, voiced his concerns to administration officials that the U.S. government was allowing Qatar to arm Islamist militant groups that were against the new Libyan leadership, anonymous U.S. officials said.

The Obama White House has not learned where all the weapons, paid for by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, ended up in Libya, according to officials.

Qatar is accused of shipping machine guns, automatic rifles and ammunition by air and sea. Some of the weapons have since ended up in the hands of militants with ties to al-Qaeda in Mali, where radical Islamists have implemented Shariah law in the northern part of the country, according to a former Defense Department official. Other small arms have gone to Syria several American and foreign officials and arms traders told the Times.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/new-york-times-arms-shipments-secretly-approved-by-obama-admin-ended-up-in-hands-of-islamic-militants/

ATF Fires Managers over Fast and Furious, Obama and Holder Get Off Scot-Free

Four senior managers who oversaw the ill-fated federal gun-tracking probe called “Fast and Furious” will be fired if recommendations from a disciplinary panel are accepted.

People familiar with the matter said the Professional Review Board of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent notices of its decision in recent days to bureau managers, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

In addition, two lower-level employees face disciplinary actions, short of firing.  The move from the ATF’s review board is the first step in what could be a months-long process, including appeals.

Operation Fast and Furious was a gun probe run by ATF agents in Phoenix in 2009 and 2010.  Agents allowed sales of about 2,000 guns, costing about $1.5 million, to suspected smugglers. The aim was to track the weapons across the Mexico border and prosecute top traffickers, but agents seized only about 100 of the firearms.

Many of the guns turned up at crimes scenes, including at the site where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010.

The recommendations come months after an Office of Inspector General Report cleared Attorney General Eric Holder while holding 14 individuals accountable for what the mainstream media has euphemistically labeled a "botched sting operation."  The OIG report faulted the ATF and U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona but specifically stated that Holder was not made aware of the program until February of 2012. 

The report singled out Holder's chief of staff, Gary Grindler, who announced his resignation this past Monday, days after the advisory board's recommendations.


Grindler was acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ when he was briefed in March 2010 regarding illegal straw purchases of Fast and Furious guns.  Despite the fact that the number-two at Justice was presented with a chart identifying the purchasers and the number of guns they acquired -- 1,026 -- Grindler later testified, "I am not sure at this point of my tenure that I knew exactly what this was in terms of significance." 

Also criticized for their roles in Fast and Furious in the  inspector general's report were Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Jason Weinstein, who resigned after the report's release; Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who remains at the Department of Justice; and Kenneth Melson, head of the ATF.  Melson was reassigned in August 2011 to the position of senior adviser on forensic science at the Justice Department's headquarters.


Now that the ATF board has sent out notices to bureau managers, recommending terminations and disciplinary actions for senior officials and lower-level agents, is it the end of the Fast and Furious story?  Maybe not. 

Dave Workman of Examiner.com writes:

Still very much in play is a legal action by Issa's committee to get its hands on thousands of documents currently protected by presidential privilege since Barack Obama took ownership of Fast and Furious in July, giving cover to Holder, who did not want to release the documents. The question remains, what's in there that Holder and the White House do not want the committee to see? 

What's in there, indeed?  Why did the president need to invoke executive privilege on an issue he and the attorney general knew nothing about?  If they're so innocent, they should pony up the documents.


The White House and DOJ have withheld evidence, stonewalled and covered up Fast and Furious from the very beginning.  Then they appointed an inspector general who works for Eric Holder to investigate Holder.  Is it any wonder that IG Michael Horowitz produced a highly biased sham report that protects those at the top of the food chain?


The Obama administration and its collaborators in the media will keep the truth from coming out no matter how many dead bodies pile up.  The latest flurry of activity from the ATF is just more of the same nauseating chum Holder and Obama have been throwing out for two years. 

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/atf_fires_managers_over_fast_and_furious_obama_and_holder_get_off_scot-free.html#ixzz2EITPuIoZ

 and
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/05/report-atf-review-board-recommends-firings-over-fast-furious/

House approves resolution to keep Internet control out of UN hands

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a Senate resolution introduced by Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that calls on the U.S. government to oppose United Nations control of the Internet.

The 397-0 vote is meant to send a signal to countries meeting at a U.N. conference on telecommunications this week. Participants are meeting to update an international telecom treaty, but critics warn that many countries’ proposals could allow U.N. regulation of the Internet.

"The 193 member countries of the United Nations are gathered to consider whether to apply to the Internet a regulatory regime that the International Telecommunications Union created in the 1980s for old-fashioned telephone service," Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said on the House floor.

He said countries will also consider whether to "swallow the Internet's non-governmental organizational structure whole and make it part of the United Nations."

"Neither of these are acceptable outcomes and must be strongly opposed by our delegation," Walden added.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said both the White House and lawmakers were united against U.N. control of the Internet.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/271153-house-approves-resolution-to-keep-internet-control-out-of-un-hands

Obama Coaches MSNBC Air Staff On Fiscal Cliff


Imagine the cries of terror that would be coming from the left today if all the Fox News hosts went for a nice special visit at the White House to get some talking points from a Republican president. It would be deafening. So, what happened when MSNBC’s hosts attended a
production 
meeting with President Obama?

TheBlaze reports,”On Tuesday, four of MSNBC’s prime time TV hosts were spotted entering the West Wing of the White House for a special meeting with the president. These hosts included, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton and Lawrence O’Donnell. Interestingly, Chris Matthews, a notoriously enthusiastic Obama supporter, was not included on the guest list.”

“Can you imagine if Mitt Romney would have won and the Fox News lineup would have walked into the Oval Office to have a meeting about the fiscal cliff, can you imagine that?  Well, the MSNBC lineup walked in to discuss the fiscal cliff into the Oval Office yesterday and into the White House.  The NBC ‑‑ MSNBC lineup to discuss the fiscal cliff,” Glenn said. “ They hate America, as we understand it, as we always understand it.  They hate the founders, they hate the rich, even though many of them themselves are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.”

http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/12/05/obama-coaches-msnbc-air-staff-on-fiscal-cliff/

Cliff diving

By Governor Bobby Jindal 

As the nation eagerly awaits Washington’s solution to the so-called fiscal cliff, and as the negotiations continue back and forth in both the media and in reality, here are a few thoughts for consideration.

Today it’s the fiscal cliff, but that surely will not be the end of it; next year it will be the fiscal mountain, after that the fiscal black hole, and after that fiscal Armageddon. But the truth is Washington already drove us off the fiscal cliff while no one was looking. A nation that has a $16.3 trillion debt, a debt that is larger than our entire economy, has already driven through the guard rail and is in free fall with the cliff somewhere in the rear view mirror.

I had the honor of serving in Congress. Here’s what I learned – there will be no significant change without structural reforms. That’s the polite way of saying it. The less gentle version is that Congress and this administration are psychologically incapable of getting our fiscal house in order without laws that give them no other alternative.

It appears clear to me that with President Obama having created a brand new entitlement program and having won re-election, and with our hand of cards in the Senate being weaker not stronger, and with Secretary Geithner’s laughable public offering last week, whatever deal is reached is going to contain elements that are detrimental to our economy. Elections have consequences, and the country is going to feel those consequences soon.

But in the negotiations, Republicans certainly should fight to at least get something done that will matter. At present, any reading of the headlines over the past week indicates that Republicans are fighting to protect the rich and cut benefits for seniors. It may be possible to have worse political positioning than that, but I’m not sure how.

Here are a few structural reforms, any one of which would be worth fighting for in this fiscal cliff diving exercise:

• A federal balanced budget amendment. States have balanced budget laws, small businesses have to balance their budgets, and families have to do the same. This is an idea that is supported by virtually every American who does not live in the 202 area code. It’s common sense. It is also laughed at in Washington. When you mention the BBA as a solution, they roll their eyes and write you off as a non-serious person. But the American public is dead serious about it, and they should be.

• Place a cap on discretionary and mandatory federal spending by fixing a limit on it tied to a percentage of GDP. Eighteen percent is a reasonable number in my book, but almost any number would be a victory at this point. Require a super majority vote to over-ride this limit, which would allow for recourse in a time of war or other national emergency. Again, this solution makes far too much sense to be taken seriously in Washington, a sure sign that it’s a good idea. This president is rapidly making a permanently higher level of government spending the new normal.

• A super majority to increase taxes. Make it harder for the politicians in Washington to simply take more from Americans, thereby forcing them to stop growing government. Yes, Washington hates this idea, so it should be pursued with vigor.

• Term Limits. I know, I know, we can’t do that. But we should. And while we are at it, how about forbidding congressmen from lobbying for 5 years after they leave office.

Now that I’ve offended everyone in Washington, a few final thoughts – our debt is strangling us. It seems to be a given that we will once again raise the debt ceiling. So the one thing that all involved agree must happen, may in fact be the single worst thing we can do – unless it is one-time, limited, and accompanied by structural reform to make sure we don’t repeat this nightmare.

Additionally, amidst all the talk of increasing taxes and cutting entitlements, something more important than either of these has been lost – economic growth. America is forever young because America is forever growing, leading the world and showing the way forward. All actions taken by Washington should be seen through this simple prism – will this help grow our economy? If not, maybe we shouldn’t do it.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=959D0018-9CAB-40C0-864C-519FAB1D903A

Obama's Ruinous Course

 By Daniel Henninger

Last time I looked, the progressive movement still hadn't turned Washington, D.C., into the only political jurisdiction of consequence in the United States. The message of the 2010 election, for Republicans anyway, was unambiguous: Slow down the runaway public-spending train, the spending train that caused the nation's voters to torch and punish Republicans in the 2006 midterms.

On the available evidence, a Republican who forgets those recent elections is headed for retirement. So naturally Barack Obama wants John Boehner and the Republicans in control of the House to forget those elections.

Bear in mind as we spend the holidays on this precipice, that the "fiscal cliff" wasn't born yesterday. It crawled out of its crypt in late 2011, after the Republican leadership and Mr. Obama—the deficit-reduction "super committee"—failed to negotiate essentially the same deal they are failing to get done now.
The inability of this Congress and this president to compromise on anything, now or at any time in the past four years, is itself a problem worthy of some thought.

Here's one thought: The main reason there isn't, and may never be, a solution on the fiscal cliff is that Barack Obama doesn't know how to do a political compromise. Where in his career did Barack Obama ever learn the art of the political deal? Nowhere.

Recall the famous Blair House summit he called early in 2010 amid the legislating over ObamaCare. Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn, Paul Ryan and other Republicans talked about wonkish compromises. All of it, every single idea, blew right by the president. Naturally the legislation got zero GOP votes. A kid running for high-school president could have gotten more opposition votes than that.

Presidents, kings, queens, generals all have accomplished a modus vivendi with their opponents and mortal enemies. Until now. What deal of Clintonesque majesty has Barack Obama ever pulled off?

The fiscal-cliff negotiation is a train driven by an engineer who doesn't know how to use the brake, doesn't know where the brake is and doesn't care. His idea of politics is giving campaign speeches outside Washington to assemble a Sandy of public sentiment that will blow congressional Republicans off the cliff. 

Politics ain't beanbag, but it also isn't just about politics. While Barack Obama may think his election mandate includes the ruin of the Republican Party, Republicans seeking a strategy of self-preservation should assert their refusal to participate in the ruin of the nation. As it is, the fiscal cliff has degenerated into a familiar Beltway melodrama in which the media reduce the whole thing to which party gets shafted. As to the health of the gasping American economy, well, whatever.

Conventional wisdom holds that the sequester is a mindless anti-spending Godzilla. But the sequester, because it is set in legislative stone, possesses what Washington today lacks with the public: credibility. 

The only issue on the cliff negotiation table held true by every serious person is that the entitlement crisis is going to crush the country. But nothing is dearer to this president than higher taxes on people defined by him as the wealthiest. If the president's DNA prevents him from a compromise that also includes a sequester-strength commitment to disarming the entitlement bombs, much less discretionary spending, take the sequester. Better the fiscal cliff than pitching the American people over the bottomless entitlement cliff.

Liberal commentators like to cite Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill as a case study in political compromise. Barack Obama has become a case study of a president unable to compromise—with John Boehner or anyone else. The sense here is that as the cliff approaches, more people are beginning to understand this grim reality.

Somewhere, there’s a whiplash lawyer who runs his law office out of a van down by the river who watches the congressional Republicans attempt to negotiate the fiscal cliff crisis and has to turn his head away. John Boehner and his inept coterie of GOP establishment cronies have made every mistake in the book. It’s professionally embarrassing.

A Lawyer’s Tips on Negotiating for Dummies and Congressional Republicans

Frankly, if these hacks were my associates, they’d be on a street corner with signs reading “Will litigate for food.”


Congress is famously full of lawyers, but what people don’t understand is that it is really full of bad lawyers. Good lawyers tend not to want to take the pay cut. And the current crop of Republican leaders negotiate like bad lawyers do, which is great for President Obama. He’s giddy, and I know the feeling. When I face opponents like Boehner’s bunch at a mediation, I start checking out new 6-series convertibles on my iPhone.

A good negotiator, first and foremost, understands his client’s goals. This seems pretty basic – you want to know what the people you represent want to achieve by negotiating. However, this concept seems lost on the GOP.


Their clients – the voters who elected them – were pretty clear. No tax increases. Period. After all, not one Republican congressman was elected on a platform promising “I will raise taxes in order to help Obama morph America into Greece.” Well, maybe some of the ones from New England did, but that’s beside the point.


The client doesn’t want tax increases. This implies that the GOP should – wait for it – not support tax increases.


Naturally, the first thing the GOP does is roll over. Then to compound it, Lindsay and Saxby smarm up the Sunday morning talk shows with sanctimonious talk about how they are so patriotic that they are compelled to break their solemn pledge to their constituents never to raise taxes.


So, having not just discarded the client’s intent, the congressional GOP then rubbed its clients’ collective nose in it. There’s nothing that sets you up for failure like setting your sights on a goal that, to your client, constitutes failure.


Besides knowing what the client wants – and not utterly ignoring it – the skilled negotiator next figures out what the other side wants. Negotiations are rarely just about the putative subject. In a lawsuit, sure there’s money, but there is also often emotions – anger, pride, and so forth. All of these play a role. And sometimes, there is another objective entirely.


Here, it’s pretty clear that Barack Obama is not merely trying to get the Republicans to raise taxes. Additional fuel for the bonfire consuming America’s culture of self-sufficiency is a sweet bonus, but he has his sights on something more.


Obama is trying to get the GOP to commit suicide so that it will be unable to oppose him. And the GOP is responding to this attempt to disembowel it by handing its enemy the figurative samurai sword.


Obama sees that the kind of betrayal the GOP Establishment is dying to pull off will split the party and ignite an internal struggle that would make the post-1968 Democratic convention convulsions seem like a group hug. He’s not negotiating to get something. He’s negotiating to do something, and we conservatives are the ones Obama wants it done to. Moreover, he wants the GOP Establishment to do it for him.


Now, when you understand what your client wants and what your opponent wants, you are ready to form your negotiating strategy. What the GOP Establishment fails to understand is that reacting is not a strategy. Whining that the liberal media is going to be mean to you if you stay true to your principles and to your word is not a strategy. Cursing Grover Norquist for allowing you to make a promise to your constituents about never raising taxes, which helped you get elected, is not a strategy either.


A strategy focuses you on your goal, which means the congressional Republicans have no strategy because they have no goal other than to make the hurting stop.


Yet the GOP actually has several aces in the hole – the only reason they are taking the submissive role in the Fifty Shades of the Fiscal Cliff playing out before us is that they chose to assume it. Maybe Obama has a mandate, but so do they. They should be exercising it.


Their first step is to stop showing fear and to start counter-attacking. So America falls off the fiscal cliff? Who cares? Hell, a substantial number of the rich and sorta-rich are Democratic voters in blue states anyway. Let them put their money where their progressivism is. And if there’s another recession, awesome. We call that a teachable moment for America about what happens when its president is a spendaholic who would rather campaign than lead.


What about those cuts to defense? Okay. We’ll live having only exponentially more military power than our nearest competitors. And if all else fails and the bad guys invade, as Red Dawn teaches, we’ll just open up our gun safes and go all Wolverines on them.


Sound a bit, well, crazy? Unreasonable? Even scary? Good, because a skilled lawyer understands the awesome power of being the craziest, most unreasonable and scariest guy at the table. Obama is hanging tough only because he thinks – he knows – the congressional Republicans are dying to fold well before he pays any kind of price.


But what if the GOP’s offer was a two-word response beginning with the letter “F” – and what if they meant it? After all, the secret of being the unreasonable negotiator is that you can’t be bluffing, that you have to be ready to pull the pin and take the whole table out with you. In other words, the Republicans ought to be telling the President “Hey, I’ll be Thelma and you can be Louise, and we’re pedal to the metal.”


The GOP knows the worst case scenario – rates on everyone go up and sequestration. All they have to do is be willing to take the hit for longer than Obama. The GOP has an advantage – the liberal media will screw them no matter what they do. This gives them incredible freedom.


Go off the edge and then, after the mainstream media panics and David Brooks wets himself, pass a bill dropping all the rates back and send it over to Harry Reid. Now it’s the Democrat’s problem. Thirty-three senators have to run in 2014, around 20 of them Democrats. How many are going to want to vote “No” on dropping the rates back? As the election cycle begins, I estimate the number will shrink to roughly zero.
In other words, turn the tables on the Democrats. Split them. They have the most to lose, not the GOP. If the congressional GOP loses this fight, that’s just a dog biting a man. But if Obama loses it, that’s a man biting a dog.


This is the final lesson. A sharp lawyer takes a tough situation and turns it to his advantage, while a hack takes an advantage and turns it into a tough situation. With a little skill, the GOP could not only get what it wants tax-wise but also turn the tables, setting the Democrats at each others’ wattled throats and neutering Obama.


After all, isn’t crushing progressive dreams really what the GOP should be all about?


All it takes is a little guts and some wiles. Come on congressional GOP – make that whiplash lawyer proud.
http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2012/12/06/a_lawyers_tips_on_negotiating_for_dummies_and_congressional_republicans/page/full/

California Teachers Union Video Depicts Rich People Urinating on the Poor

 What you're about to see is eight minutes of pure propaganda, produced by the people whom taxpayers pay to educate their kids, and narrated by millionaire actor Ed Asner.  It's unpleasant to watch, but it's worth it -- if only to see what proud, demagogic ignorance looks like:




Two possible responses: Laugh it off as run-of-the-mill lefty idiocy, and simply present it as the conservative outrage du jour, or explore in depth why this video is so insidious, false and ironic. Against my better judgment, I'll select the latter option. Let's begin with the ironies:  

(1) The clip has garnered most of its negative attention because of its unclever and gross "golden shower" imagery.  Though I find the whole thing offensive on many levels, I can't get too worked up about the urine thing, even though it's puerile and disgusting.  But facing criticism over the video's scatalogical element, a spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers has been reduced to arguing that the cartoon -- which is written in the style of a children's storybook and produced on behalf of a group that educates children -- is not intended for children.

(2) Another dark irony is that the video was released after passage of California's Prop 30, which hikes taxes on "the rich" by $6 Billion per year.  Yet the state's debt still stands at an atmospheric $200-300 billion, according to various estimates.  As soon as the targeted tax increases passed public muster, California's Treasurer was bombarded with gimme requests from countless interest groups.  He immediately became the bearer of bad news:
 

The election wasn’t even over Tuesday when state Treasurer Bill Lockyer’s phone started ringing. Activists of all stripes had the same message for him: With voters apparently poised to approve billions of dollars in tax hikes, it was time to spend more money. “They had to be reminded the money has already been spent,” Lockyer said.  

So the windfall from California's latest soak-the-rich gambit has already been gobbled up by its rapacious politicians' collective appetite for spending.  Perhaps it will go to help fund the state's infamous (not so) high speed rail boondoggle, which is little more than a hugely over-budget, deadline-missing train to nowhere.  Democrats now control a super-majority in California's legislature, so Republicans lack the power to put the brakes on any of this madness.  And unions like the California Federation of Teachers are among elected Democrats' top benefactors and (coincidentally) beneficiaries.  This goes unmentioned when the cartoon accuses "the rich" of buying politicians.  

Up next, the misleading impressions and flat falsehoods: (3) The whole piece is premised on a caricature of wealthy Americans as selfish, greedy, and even criminal.  The rich are presumed to have attained their wealth through sinister means; their all-encompassing avarice leading them to treat others with inhumane contempt.  Liberals always adamantly deny that their "tax the rich" rhetoric is "class warfare."  How else could one possibly describe this cartoon?  It is a blatant and unfair attempt to 'otherize' an entire group of people, employing envy-mongering from start to finish.  And I quote: Rich people "love their money more than anything in the whole world."

(4) The piece states that only in the good old days did "the rich" pay "more than the others" in taxes.  Today, nearly 50 percent of US households pay zero in federal income tax, while the top one percent is responsible for paying roughly 37 percent of that pie.  The upper twenty percent of American wage-earners pay 70 percent of all federal taxes.

(5) CFT's video falsely implies that rich people, and rich people alone, commit the crime of tax evasion.  Throughout the presentation, we're also informed that "the rich" pump money into overseas sweatshops, buy elections, suppress votes, and brainwash people through (ahem) the media.  Private schools and other private industries are demonized for undermining underperforming State-run monopolies.
 
(6) Hello, tired "widening wealth gap" arguments. 

(7) We're told that because rich people are supposedly hoarding all of their money and withholding their "fair shares," schools are terribly under-funded and the nation's roads and bridges have fallen into disrepair.  In reality, US spending on education has tripled since the 1970s, even as student outcomes have flat-lined.  And why are our roads in bad shape?  Didn't Uncle Sam just spend $825 Billion in borrowed money on "shovel-ready" projects?  We were assured that those endeavors would give average folks jobs and fix our infrastructure problems.  I guess we just need more government.  Time to call China again.

(8) Much of the overall message is constructed upon the asinine premise that rich people almost single-handedly caused the economic crash.  While some on Wall Street made terribly irresponsible bets that dangerously inflated the problem, the core issue -- the explosion of subprime mortgages -- was explicitly mandated by the federal government.  After the crash, some of the most culpable actors (both on Wall Street and in the halls of Fannie, Freddie and Congress) skated away with no accountability.  Also, the notion that the bailouts didn't help any "ordinary people" is simply wrong.  States used bailout money to keep the public employee gravy train chugging just a little bit longer, and the auto bailouts violated bankruptcy laws by prioritizing unions over creditors.

(9) The clip stupidly asserts that millionaires spent tons of cash to elect manipulative politicians who somehow managed to trick people into blaming the financial crash on teachers and firefighters.  Strawmen galore.  No one is suggesting that.  But the crash did expose the absolutely unsustainable state of our public obligations.  Unfunded pensions and other liabilities are squeezing the life out of states like California and Illinois; deep blue states where rich people have curiously failed to elect many slippery plutocrats (read: Republicans), and where groups like the California Federation of Teachers have extraordinary clout.  California, strangely, has the worst credit rating of any state in the union, even though Democrats reign supreme.  How would our cartoon explain that?

(10) The visual near the end of "ordinary people" holding a sign that reads, "Tax corporations!" is especially sad.  Our corporate tax rate is already the highest in the industrialized world.  Some big companies -- some of which happen to donate heavily to the unions' preferred political party -- exploit numerous tax loopholes to lower or even eliminate their tax liabilities (see: GE), while evil Republicans are fighting to simplify the tax code and close those loopholes.  The film simultaneously (a) advocates for more burdensome taxation on businesses, and (b) complains about companies moving jobs overseas, as if the two are totally unconnected.  Sheer economic illiteracy.
  
(11) The bit concludes with the promise of a cheerful ending, wherein "the 99 percent" force politicians to punish the rich, and everyone lives "happily ever after."  The union bravely refuses to allow realities like this stand in the way of its compelling fairy tale fiction:
 

When the accrued expenses of the government's entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the annual cash deficit. Nothing like that $8 trillion amount is available for the IRS to target. According to the most recent tax data, all individuals filing tax returns in America and earning more than $66,193 per year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1 trillion. In 2006, when corporate taxable income peaked before the recession, all corporations in the U.S. had total income for tax purposes of $1.6 trillion. That comes to $6.7 trillion available to tax from these individuals and corporations under existing tax laws. In short, if the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of these American taxpayers, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities.  

Finally, on the insidious nature of this cartoon: (12) Its content either betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of our nation's challenges, or reveals a deliberate attempt to distort reality for political purposes.  Neither choice is especially heartening, considering that it was produced by people who are employed by taxpayers (including, disproportionately, the very people who were endlessly vilified in the film) to inform and educate the children of California -- the country's largest state.  That is scary.

(13) Even though the clip is self-consciously dramatic and over-the-top, it actually serves as a fairly useful distillation of the attitudes that animate a sizeable portion of our populace, particularly the professional Left.  The fact that this agitprop was released after passage of a major tax increase in a state that is already dominated by public sector unions goes to show that class warfare will be used as a bottomless well for years to come.  The rich will never pay a fair enough share.  Untenable fiscal realities will always be one more tax increase on the rich away from being "fixed."  Whether they intended to or not, the CFT just served notice that the Left's class warfare demagoguery is only just beginning.  Brace yourselves, and hold on to your wallets.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/12/06/california_teachers_union_video_depicts_rich_people_urinating_on_the_poor