How is the History Channel commemorating President’s Day?
Hopeless: Job Corps Slams Door on 30,000 Young Adults
President Barack Obama campaigned last week to promote his plans for job training and job creation that he claimed would expand the country's middle class, fully aware that the Job Corps program had suspended enrollment in January due to gross bureaucratic mismanagement of the country's largest job-training program for low-income youths, particularly African Americans.The freeze started in January and is expected to last until June 30. That did not stop Obama from making lofty promises in his State of the Union address last week about job creation.
The enrollment freeze could prevent as many as "30,000 young adults struggling in a troubled economy" from getting jobs and cost another 10,000 staff jobs.
Job Corps has been described as a "vanguard" of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s so-called war on poverty. Since opening its first center in 1965, the free program gave "young adults a chance to earn a high school diploma, receive vocational training or earn certifications in more than 100 specializations."
That was until 2011, when Job Corps faced a $30 million shortfall and had to temporarily implement a freeze for the first time in the program's history. Job Corps reportedly has a $61.5 million budget shortfall now, which led to an even more prolonged freeze.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) speculated whether the enrollment freeze was due to a "management failure" and has requested an audit of the budget. He intends to hold hearings within weeks in the Senate on the matter.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said the "timing of the freeze could not be worse," because "though our economy is adding jobs, the number of unemployed remains high."
The unemployment rate for young adults ages 16 to 24 was 17.4% in January; for African American young adults, a demographic that makes up nearly half of Job Corps students, the unemployment rate is a staggering 28%.
Labor Department spokesperson Carl A. Fillichio said the "decision to suspend the enrollment was not made lightly," and Job Corps would be conducting "an exhaustive review of its current operating costs."
The freeze has devastated young adults in Obama's backyard, who are now left without the hope Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012 promised them.
Teryn McRae, a 20-year-old Washington, D.C. resident who had been approved for Job Corps and was set to start his training on Feb. 5. told the Washington Post the enrollment freeze "crushed" him because "all my avenues are closed."
"I felt like all my windows and doors of opportunity closed," he said.
A Job Corps Center in Southwest Washington, D.C. was slated to have 317 new students. Those students will not be enrolled, and the center may shed 107 jobs.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/18/Hopeless-Job-Corps-Slams-Door-on-30-000-Young-Adults-Due-to-Bureaucratic-Mismanagement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T9ut7i1eD9I#!
American Women, not Koch Brothers, birthed the Tea Party Movement
When Professor Jacobson reported that cancer funding research had been used to smear the Tea Party, calling it a tool of a big tobacco and the Koch brothers based on plans hatched over a decade ago, I had one thought:
Anti-Tea Party advocates suffer from the single biggest case of projection in the history of humanity.
This week marks the fourth anniversary of the start of my citizen activism, and it is a good time to review what got me, as well as thousands of other Americans, involved in grassroots efforts at that time.
Most of the original “Tea Party” organizers joined the developing national-scale protest in 2009 because we were deeply concerned about our children’s futures. Between the enormous expenditures of the Toxic Asset Relief Program and the “Stimulus Package”, many of us were reeling over the fact our taxpayer concerns were being ignored, and the result would be making our children indentured servants of the state to pay off the enormous debt.
The Koch brothers did not enter into this calculation at all.
Dawn Wildman, the President of the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition and my fellow co-founder, responded to this assertion by the National Cancer Institute:
“I volunteered to hold the first Tea Party in San Diego, because I knew there had to be other people who were like me, frustrated with the spending we saw our Republican legislators advocating. I don’t know the Koch Brothers and I have never had anyone from their organizations even offer me money or advice on advocating for the American citizen. Now, other national groups cannot say the same. But the local organizers are all self funded, and we only take advice from each other — not some Beltway insiders, Big Tobacco, or the Koch Brothers.”Women, with an eye to the future and a hand on the checkbook, were the dominant force in the start of the efforts, and make up a majority of the local group coordinators and the membership. It was women, and not the Koch Brothers, who gave birth to the Tea Party movement.
Keli (”Liberty Belle”) Carender became one of the founding mothers of the Tea Party Movement when she organized the Seattle protest against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. Porkulus. In a letter sent to Michelle Malkin she reminds us of what the first “tea party” was about back in 1773 and how Americans are suffering similar oppression under present day tyrants.Interestingly, Team Obama’s track record with women is less than stellar. It is well known that the pay for women on staff is substantially less than for men, and a female debate coach complained of a “hostile work environment” at the White House. Now, there is a petition drive calling Obama on the carpet for using women as rhetorical tools, instead of referring them as sentient voters: Stop using the “wives, mothers, & daughters” rhetorical frame that defines women by their relationships to other people. (hat-tip, Tammy Bruce)
Defining women by their relationships to other people is reductive, misogynist, and alienating to women who do not define ourselves exclusively by our relationships to others. Further, by referring to “our” wives et al, the President appears to be talking to The Men of America about Their Women, rather than talking to men AND women.Today, many of the women of the Tea Party have moved on from rallies into school boards and elective office.
Please embrace inclusive language, Mr. President.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/02/american-women-not-koch-brothers-birthed-the-tea-party-movement/
Obama lays framework for purge of online opponents
Under the guise of curbing the "radicalization" of U.S. citizens and identifying and purging potentially violent persons from the Internet, the White House has initiated the creation of a new interagency working group to address what it calls a growing problem.The White House issued a fact sheet delineating the broad objectives of the plan.
The interagency group will be headed by Quintan Wiktorowicz, the current White House senior director for community partnerships on the national security staff. The new group will be called The Interagency Working Group to Counter Online Radicalization and will be charged with the implementation of an Internet safety program to address online violent extremism.
Wiktorowiczs stated,
“Violent extremist groups ─ like Al Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents, violent supremacist groups, and violent “sovereign citizens” ─ are leveraging online tools and resources to propagate messages of violence and division. These groups use the Internet to disseminate propaganda, identify and groom potential recruits, and supplement their real-world recruitment efforts. Some members and supporters of these groups visit mainstream fora to see whether individuals might be recruited or encouraged to commit acts of violence, look for opportunities to draw targets into private exchanges, and exploit popular media like music videos and online video games. Although the Internet offers countless opportunities for Americans to connect, it has also provided violent extremists with access to new audiences and instruments for radicalization.”If Wiktorowics were referring exclusively to terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, then no red flags would be raised whatsoever concerning the new program. But he never specified nor defined terms such as "violent supremacist groups" or "violent sovereign citizens."
The Obama Administration has already caused the alarm bells to ring on several occasions as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released several internal memos referring to conservative Christians who believe the Bible, pro-life citizens who are against abortion, Tea Party activists, and political conservatives who believe in a strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution as "potential homegrown terrorists."
And in the current gun rights debate, sovereign citizens have gone on the record to oppose the Obama administration's all-out assault on the Second Amendment, vowing to disobey any law that would violate their unfettered rights to keep and bear firearms.
It would be difficult to imagine this administration, with its radical leftwing mindset and agenda, viewing such widespread displays of defiance as anything other than a direct threat to its power, and thus, a perfect motivation for declaring such citizens to be potentially "violent sovereign citizens."
Citizen militias that are formed to counter the administration's push to negate Second Amendment protections of unfettered gun rights would also potentially come under the umbrella of "violent extremist groups," given that these citizens have openly stated that while they would never start a civil war by opening fire on federal agents, they would, in fact, return fire if fired upon first by government forces or law enforcement.
Although the United States itself was born directly from armed and "violent" resistance to government tyranny as represented by the British empire at the time, in today's climate such ideas are viewed by elitist educators, historians, and politicians as dangerous extremism.
Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president, would more than likely be deemed a homegrown terrorist in modern America with his well-publicized view that the federal government needs to be purged every generation or so with an armed insurrection aimed at ridding the government of anyone who undermines individual liberty and the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
Modern patriots who adhere to the philosophy of Jefferson represent a clear, direct threat to many within government who view the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as irritating roadblocks to their plans for complete government power over every sector of life.
America, thus, enters into a very dangerous phase of our history as increasingly it is becoming clear that our own government has set its sights against its own citizens.
http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-lays-framework-for-purge-of-online-opponents?fb_action_ids=334717706628299%2C334222200011183%2C334219756678094&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%22334717706628299%22%3A
Report: The NY Fed Has Been Quietly Bailing Out Bank of America?
Remember back in 2008 when the U.S.
government decided unilaterally to bail out the “too big to fail” banks
with your tax dollars?
Remember how upset many were?
Well, it looks like they still have
cause to be angry: The New York Federal Reserve has been quietly
protecting Bank of America (BofA) from any liability while giving away billions in potential legal claims, according to a recent New York Times article.
From the NYT:
That the New York Fed would shower favors on a big financial institution may not surprise. It has long shielded large banks from assertive regulation and increased capital requirements.Still, last week’s details of the undisclosed settlement between the New York Fed and Bank of America are remarkable. Not only do the filings show the New York Fed helping to thwart another institution’s fraud case against the bank, they also reveal that the New York Fed agreed to give away what may be billions of dollars in potential legal claims.
The article goes on to explain how the
New York Fed has protected BofA from claims brought against it by people
affected by the back’s toxic mortgage holdings.
“The New York Fed, which oversaw a
company called Maiden Lane II, which had the right to sue Bank of
America over those holdings, could have reaped billions of dollars for
taxpayers in claims. Instead they let them off the hook for almost
nothing,” Gawker’s Max Rivlin-Nadler notes.
Basically, the New York Fed has
absolved BofA of its role in the financial crisis, shooing away anyone
trying to recoup their losses from the 2008 meltdown.
The Fed’s action “underscores that the
more we learn about these bailouts, gifts and advantages that Wall
Street gets, the clearer it becomes that one set of rules applies to the
largest megabanks and another set of rules to the smaller financial
institutions and the rest of the country,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)
told the NYT.
So, yeah, as Rivlin-Nadler notes, the bank bailouts never stopped. They’re just not voted on anymore.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/18/report-the-ny-fed-has-been-quietly-bailing-out-bank-of-america/
Missouri Dems: Let’s Just Force Gun Owners to Surrender, Destroy Their Weapons
Why wait for the supply to dry up over time when you could just force gun owners to surrender or destroy their weapons immediately? Missouri Democrats think it’s a good idea:Democrats in the state House have proposed a bill that would force gun owners to either surrender or destroy weapons including semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines and semi-automatic pistols with a fixed magazine that can shoot more than 10 rounds before being reloaded.While it’s highly unlikely the bill will pass in the Republican-controlled House, it is another example of Democrats’ extreme anti-gun agenda, which is being played out not just at the federal level but in state legislatures across the nation as well.
Ammunition-feeding devices that can hold more than 10 rounds also would be banned. Owners also could send their weapons to another state instead of surrendering or destroying them and would have 90 days after the bill’s passage to make a decision.
Forcing gun owners to surrender or destroy such weapons is tantamount to confiscation—so in this sense, these Dems have learned a thing or two from the Justice Department’s internal memos:
What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do progressives not understand?
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2013/02/18/missouri-dems-lets-just-force-gun-owners-to-surrender-destroy-their-weapons-n1514789
We’re History
“….the Roman government appeared everyday less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects. The taxes were multiplied with the public distress; economy was neglected in proportion as it became necessary…. If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.” — Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
In New York City and Philadelphia “flashmobs” rob and vandalize newsstands and stores. This is a national phenomenon. In Chicago, the police department now won’t immediately respond to 911 calls if they involve post-burglaries, petty, or non-violent crimes. They’re too busy dealing with the daily carnage that is the nation’s highest murder rate, one that bested the number of military fatalities recorded in Afghanistan in 2012. When crazy people shoot up movie theaters and elementary school classrooms, we’re told it’s the gun’s fault. On a lighter note, the Wall Street Journal recently informed us that the demands of hip-hop fashion dictates that boys insist — despite the protestations of Mom, Dad, and school administrators — on wearing shorts to school in bitter winter weather. The girls prefer flip flops as their toes turn blue while waiting for the school bus. “Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” (William Butler Yeats).
The schools are an administrative and intellectual wreck, and kids not knowing how to even dress themselves is a good metaphor for their current state. Those students, especially those of college age, are subject to that ironclad liberal orthodoxy of cultural Marxism commonly called political correctness, with resulting hate speech codes, the gist of which is that the kids are taught to despise America’s institutions, civic traditions, and the very constitutional sinews of free speech and opinion. Anyway, the latter is a moot point: because they learn so little history, soon their ignorance of the important aspects of the American experience will be total. College campuses are hideous islands of totalitarianism on a national landscape that is more and more reflecting their toxic example. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats again).
We’re obsessed with protecting women from “domestic violence.” The U.S. Senate has passed the “Violence Against Women Act” and sent it to the House of Representatives. The media bludgeons us with related stories, and multiple government programs function to assist such unfortunate souls. This is driven by modern feminism, which also favors women serving on the frontlines in the boiling cauldron of war, where, according to a feature story in Rolling Stone magazine lately, the military suffers a raging epidemic of sexual assault. “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men” (George Orwell).
The U.S. Post Office recently announced that it is abolishing first class delivery on Saturdays beginning in August. The USPO seems to be taking a cue from the newspaper and network news business model of telling the public that it is essential to the public good, while at the same time skipping publication days, cutting back on home delivery, and shrinking its staffs as circulation, ad revenues, and ratings sink. A digitally-distracted America less and less buys the product (from both post office and media), especially the kids (see schools exegesis above). And the media-driven Obama cult-of-personality doesn’t sit well with half the body politic. Of course, the emperor’s cheerleader-eunuchs in the nation’s newsrooms don’t see it that way; marketing has never been a journalistic forte. Well, as for the post office, it won’t be losing our mail on Saturdays.
No matter. Cursive writing is leaving the classroom and those kids in short pants won’t be sending handwritten love letters to their “partners” and “significant androgynous others,” etc., anyway. If they do they’ll have to hire the equivalent of literate medieval monks to do it. Orwell wrote 65 years ago that “Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse.” What would he think today? As usual, Rome is the primary example. It progressed from Virgil, Horace, and Cicero to — over 300 years later — a very minor poet named Ausonius (the Richard Blanco of Late Antiquity), illiterate barbarian emperors and, well, darkness. Ask Ed Gibbon.
And, of course, literary culture erodes. Most new works of “literary fiction” aren’t worth reading because they are written by academics for academics. Most contemporary poetry is unfathomable or juvenile in its design. E.L. James’ wildly popular Fifty Shades of Grey series main motif is sadomasochism. And Philip Roth has “retired” after six decades of writing. Imagine that. Maybe our most respected living writer — albeit one pushing 80 — has turned his back on his work. Maybe he has nothing more to say. He once famously said that as a novelist his imagination couldn’t compete with the strange world he encountered on the front page of his daily New York Times, and that was long before the Times became the official newsletter of the Democratic Party. Hemingway blew his brains out. Roth, lacking Papa’s late-stage mental deterioration, is sanely content to watch the New York Mets, read, play with his new iPhone, and entertain friends. Good for him. Legions of readers who enjoyed his work wish him well, and he’ll be reread. But he is among the last of American writers who came of age and began their careers in the mid-20th century, a simpler time full of promise, and rewards for serious work
.
H.L. Mencken said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” The 2012 Election makes the Sage of Baltimore’s quip ring true. All the bizarre political, sociological and economic theories that we have heard from the left for years are now being put into practice (in fact, President Obama showcased it in his Second Inaugural and State of the Union speeches). The result is a germinating dystopia sprouting from an executive branch contemptuous of the legislative and judicial branches of national government. Barack Obama is the embodiment of a country in willful decline in both domestic and foreign affairs, and he seems to relish his role. The president is a political Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisting our slow, national suicide.
Maybe some future Gibbon will contemplate the wreckage.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/18/were-history
Obama’s Presidential Blame-Game
Presidents’ Day is today. I teach and write about presidents, and thus Presidents’ Day always prompts me to strange musings concerning our past chief executives. This year is no exception, as I’m thinking about six particular presidents: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, FDR, Herbert Hoover, Bill Clinton, and Harry Truman. How could I possibly connect these six? What might they have in common? Bear with me — I’ll start and end with Obama.
Barack Obama, and particularly his re-election campaign, has achieved something quite dubious of a sitting president, and which his liberal supporters don’t mind at all. Namely, he has done a thoroughly reprehensible job of blaming every woe over the last four years — with more to come — on his predecessor. Never mind that every single economic indicator under Obama is not only worse than under George W. Bush, but far worse. Obama has presided over a steadily worsening economic disaster, one that is stacking up as one of the most dreadful economic records of any president in history. And yet, as he does, he shamelessly passes the buck to his predecessor, blaming George W. Bush.
Not only is this a very low-character thing for an American president to do — unbecoming, un-presidential, and unlike a genuine leader — but it’s precisely what Americans presidents don’t do; they don’t treat each other like this, having much more respect for the job and those who have held it. There is a long-time gentlemen’s understanding, honored by nearly every president, that you don’t blame your predecessor for your problems.
That camaraderie is detailed by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, two Time magazine veterans, in their excellent 2012 book The Presidents Club. As Gibbs and Duffy note, presidents share a patriotic, dutiful attitude of country-first/office-first — the chief, abiding rule of their “club” code. It is the common bond among club members, a code that (they all agree) must transcend party politics. “The club serves to protect the office,” write Gibbs and Duffy. Thus, former presidents should not openly criticize the current occupant, and vice versa — a code that most have followed, with rare exceptions.
One such exception is Barack Obama, whose go-to scapegoat for everything is George W. Bush.
Yet, there was another exception: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR, like Obama, needed to conjure up various demons to advance his “progressive” agenda, with the vile rich atop his enemies list. But FDR also dumped on his Republican predecessor. He blamed everything on Herbert Hoover.
For the record, this really upset Hoover. Hoover was hurt deeply by FDR constantly trashing him, his record, his policies, his character. FDR did not treat Hoover the way we Americans hope and expect our presidents to treat one another. Their relationship became toxic. FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, took notice. “Roosevelt couldn’t stand him,” said Truman of Hoover, “and he [Hoover] hated Roosevelt.”
Even sadder, and quite stunning, is the awful fact that both FDR and Obama got away with this blame-game. FDR was able to successfully blame everything on Hoover in successful re-election upon re-election. Liberal historians have since done likewise, picking up Roosevelt’s torch, exempting the New Dealer from any culpability for the dismal economy he presided over throughout his tenure. Obama is likewise succeeding with his campaign against George W. Bush. A literal majority (60%, according to one exit poll) of those who voted for Obama in 2012 swallowed Obama’s Bush blame-game hook, line, and sinker, and they surely always will.
How do Harry Truman and Bill Clinton relate to this?
Truman and Clinton, like Obama and FDR, were, of course, both Democrats. Truman, however, was willing to put party aside in order to do what was right. He had character by the boatload. He saw how troubled Hoover was by FDR’s mistreatment. Thus, Truman, a good man, did what he could to remedy the situation. He reached out to Hoover after World War II and sought to use the maligned ex-president in several very significant projects, including post-war reconstruction for Europe.
“I knew what I had to do,” said Truman of the huge challenge he faced in Europe, “and I knew just the man I wanted to help me.” And so, Truman employed Hoover’s considerable managerial talents. He enlisted Hoover in an intense effort (pre-Marshall Plan) to feed a Europe threatened by starvation and Soviet communism.
It was a very gracious gesture, and pure Truman. Truman saw a wrong by his fellow Democrat, FDR, and strived to correct it, regardless of his party loyalties.
Bill Clinton, unfortunately, is the anti-Truman. When Clinton, who is very friendly with both George W. Bush and his father, learned of Obama’s campaign to blame Bush for every ill in America, including those that Obama has not merely created but mushroomed to unprecedentedly destructive levels, what did Clinton do? Did he telephone Obama and say, “Hey, back off, that isn’t right and you know it. We presidents don’t treat ex-presidents that way.”
No, that’s what Harry Truman would have done, but Truman had integrity. What did Bill Clinton do? He joined the Obama campaign against Bush. The most notorious display was Clinton’s Democratic National Convention speech, where he turned up the smirk and oily charm and prattled on and on about how not even he — the Great Wizard of Smart — could have turned around the permanently disfigured economy that Barack Obama inherited from the malevolent Bush. No, no way, just impossible. Bush destroyed us, irreparably, intractably. As Clinton kept it up, the Obama faithful soaked it up, leaping up and down and practically chanting in mindless cadence: “It’s Bush’s fault. It’s Bush’s fault. It’s Bush’s fault. It’s Bush’s fault. It’s Bush’s fault.”
Bill Clinton had done what he did best. As fellow Democrat Bob Kerrey once put it, Clinton is an “unusually good liar.” Like the tawdry personal behavior he exhibited throughout his time in the Oval Office, Clinton had again showed himself as the anti-Truman.
And no doubt, when the 2012 campaign was all over, and Clinton, who perhaps even privately voted for Mitt Romney (it wouldn’t surprise me), surely flew to Texas and (Joe Biden-like) grinned and back-slapped George W. Bush and said, “Hey, no hard feelings, pal!”
And George W. Bush, no doubt, did what he always did, stoically turning the other cheek, forgiving Clinton, and gently suffering the insults in silence — and again helping to make possible another Obama term.
Happy Presidents’ Day, America.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/18/obamas-presidential-blame-game
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