House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) let the effort to link the Democrats’ “Sequester Terror” narrative to… the Boston Marathon bombings. From Politico:
With the Boston Marathon bombings less than 24 hours old, some on Capitol Hill are beginning to say the attack shows why Congress should’ve stopped automatic spending cuts from taking hold in March.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, said the bombings are “clearly another place where it demonstrates why having the ability to address security concerns is important.”
Hoyer added: “I think there are multiple reasons for ensuring that we invest in our security both domestic and international security. That we invest in the education of our children, that we invest in growing jobs in America and don’t pursue any irrational policy of cutting the highest priorities and the lowest priorities by essentially the same percentage.”
Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that the first responders working Monday aren’t sheltered from cuts.
“We have to send you less money to help your first responders,” Becerra said.No one seems to have bothered quoting her in print, but I’ve also heard Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) echo these sentiments in a news radio broadcast.
A Fox News report quotes Hoyer speaking even more bluntly, as he actually blamed sequestration for the Boston attack, saying the bombings are “proof that those automatic spending changes negatively impacted the intelligence community.” No doubt Hoyer will receive the customary closing of ears and averting of eyes from the rest of the media, extended as a standard courtesy to Democrats who say unbelievably offensive things during moments of national grief.
And in case you think this is a rare lapse of decorum for Hoyer, the last time the media graciously ignored something stupid he said, it was this comment about Republican negotiating tactics concerning the national debt limit: “It’s somewhat like taking your child hostage and saying to somebody else, ‘I’m going to shoot my child if you don’t do what I want done.’ You don’t want to shoot your child. There’s no Republican leader that wants to default on our debt that I’ve talked to.” He said this a couple of weeks after the Newtown murders.
Not to be left out, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank – the man who nearly destroyed the financial system of the entire planet – contributed this incomprehensible lunacy, transcribed by the Daily Caller:
“Yes, exactly — I’m talking common sense,” Frank said. “I’m saying that if the sequester had gone through, as we had not had enough money, we couldn’t be able to do this. Yeah. I’m making an argument about reality. And I think that’s the only sensible response. We are spending a great deal of public money here. I am glad that we are.”
Frank called it a “teaching moment.”
“And yes, I do want maybe for this to have some people be less enthusiastic about reducing our ability to respond to a crisis like this. You’re asking me am I trying to make an argument to affect how people make decisions about public policy? Absolutely, I think this is an important teaching moment about what we need if we’re going to live the way we want to live.”If you can filter this down into something resembling conversational English, Frank is delivering the distilled version of the Democrats’ “Firemen First” strategy, in which trillions of dollars of government flab are hidden behind a thin line of first responders. Armies of bureaucrats rest safely, knowing that the first dollar of fiscal restraint will be taken from the hide of the nearest paramedic or police officer. That’s how the sequester money turned into the most magical penny in every government dollar – the miniscule fraction of Washington spending that somehow powers every vital service in the country.
Shameless. Despicable. Disgusting. Almost beyond belief. Almost. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seems to have gotten away with using dead Marines as sequester props, hasn’t he? Let me give you a heads-up: the Democrats are going to continue this tantrum right through the 2014 elections, at which point you can only shut them up by blowing them out of office in record numbers, leaving the survivors too terrified to contemplate another Sequester Terror. It should be obvious by now that fiscal sanity can only be achieved by defeating the Democrat Party.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/16/democrats-link-boston-bombing-to-sequestration/
CNN Guest: Boston Bomber Likely Not ‘Radical Right' - Target Wasn't Blacks, Jews, Gays or Muslims
If you’re looking for someone to come on your program and bash conservatives – especially in the wake of an incident such as Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing – the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok is your man.On CNN’s Piers Morgan Live Tuesday, Potok disgracefully said the perpetrator of Monday's attack likely wasn't a member of the "radical right" because the target wasn't "black people or Jewish people or gay people or Muslims"
PIERS MORGAN: Mark Potok, if it is a domestic terror attack, is it more likely from your experience to be a lone wolf or part of an existing group?
MARK POTOK, SENIOR FELLOW, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, I think in general, it's more likely to be a lone wolf, these kinds of things, at least in the radical right. The non-Islamic radical right, they don't tend to be carried out in groups at all.
I’ve got to say I think there's something to what was just said, that it may be, in fact, a home grown radical, but perhaps of the jihadist sort. And the reason I think about that in that way is think about who the targets were. You know, this was not a target that one would associate with a radical right-wing bomber. It was not a government building, it was not the IRS, although it was Tax Day on Monday. It was not a minority group. It wasn't black people or Jewish people or gay people or Muslims.
In fact, the only thing really that the victims, that the targets shared in common seems to me is they were Americans. So that does suggest a broader kind of attack and perhaps one that's not linked to the world that we cover.http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/04/17/cnn-guest-boston-bomber-likely-not-radical-right-target-wasnt-blacks#ixzz2QjtsAcND
CNN: Pressure Cooker Bomb 'Right-Wing' Signature
An article published on CNN's website makes an unproven claim that pressure cooker bombs like the ones used at the Boston Marathon terror attack are a "signature" of "right-wing extremists."The article says (emphasis added) :
A senior U.S. counterterrorism investigator told CNN that pressure cooker bombs have also been a signature of extreme right-wing individuals in the United States who he said tend to revel in building homemade bombs.
This specific claim that "pressure cooker bombs have also been a signature of extreme right-wing individuals in the United States" appears to be completely unsubstantiated. Not a single example is given even in the CNN story itself of anyone other than al-Quadea using a pressure cooker bomb.
The article goes on to discuss the Olympic Park bombing by anti-abortion terrorist Erich Rudolph but those bombings were done with pipe bombs, not pressure cooker bombs. As the article says:
For example, the devices planted by Erich Rudolph at an Atlanta park during the 1996 Olympic Games were pipe bombs filled with gunpowder and nails to increase their lethality; it also had an alarm clock as a timing mechanism. Like the bombings in Boston, those devices were concealed in a backpack, according to a Department of Homeland Security report detailing the 1996 attack.The claim in the previous paragraph was about pressure cooker bombs being a signature of right-wing extremists, not the use of pipe bombs or the more general use of a timer or a backpack.
As Breitbart News explained, instructions on how to make a pressure cooker bomb were provided in an issue of the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire. While it's certainly possible that anyone of any political belief could have made such a device, there is no available data to indicate that any "right-wing" group in the United States or elsewhere has ever done so.
There are, however, numerous examples world of the pressure cooker bombs being used by al-Qaeda groups. Just a few examples:
In 2010, militants in Pakistan attacked the office of Christian aid organization World Vision and killed six workers there, all Muslim. After shooting workers, the terrorists exploded a locally made pressure cooker bomb.
Also in 2010, Faizal Shahzad attempted a bombing near Times Square by leaving explosives, including a pressure cooker bomb, in car a near Times Square.
In 2011, police seized two pressure cooker bombs from the hotel room of Naser Abdo, who planned to use them to bomb Fort Hood in Texas.
Nor is there is a single reference to any "right-wing" use--American or otherwise--of pressure cooker bombs in recently overview articles written on the subject by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, the Huffington Post, or is such use mentioned once in a Department of Homeland Security report on pressure cooker bombs.
Not one solitary mention of American right-wing use of these devices--a very far cry from the claim by CNN that they are a "signature" device. Once again, the media count on their busy and too-trusting readership not taking the tine to research claims they make.
The point of focusing on the pressure-cooker bomb use is to try to get a sense of who might responsible for the horror in Boston. While it's certainly possible that anyone of any ideology could have used pressure-cooker method, for CNN to try to tie in the "right-wing" without any evidence and based on anonymous, unnamed sources without any independent factual attribution is shoddy, biased journalism intended to smear the vaguely defined "right-wing."
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/04/17/CNN-Smear-Pressure-Cooker-Bomb-Right-Wing-Signature
Actual Salon Headline: 'Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American'
We have seen some disgraceful reporting of the Boston Marathon bombing the past few days, but this headline at Salon Tuesday could be the worst.Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American
As you might imagine, the author, David Sirota, is a perilously liberal political commentator.Last month he participated in a CNN panel that compared supporters of traditional marriage to segregationists and slave owners.
During last year's summer Olympics, he said he had "pangs of discomfort" watching Americans cheer team USA.
Now, roughly 24 hours after our nation was once again hit with terrorism, Sirota wrote:
[W]hite non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.
“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”
America's Empty Slogan: "See Something, Say Something"
By Michelle MalkinIn brief remarks to the nation yesterday on the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama said that "we all have a part to play in alerting authorities. If you see something suspicious, speak up." In Washington, D.C., electronic signs urged commuters to be on guard. Law enforcement, big-city mayors and security experts all echoed that famous post-terrorism refrain: "If you see something, say something."
But who really means it?
In post-9/11 America, the truth is that our politically correct guardians only want you to see, say or do something if it can't be construed by grievance-mongers as racist, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic, nativist or any other "-ist" or "-ic."
Face it: We live in a self-defeating culture that pays lip service to heroic action in times of crisis, yet brutally punishes the very kind of snap judgments and instant security profiling that make such heroism possible in the first place.
Just take a look at some of the caustic reactions to citizens and watchdogs who stuck out their necks during and after the Boston Marathon bombings. A quick-thinking spectator at the race reportedly tackled a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian student visa holder he believed was acting suspiciously. The student is not considered a suspect at this point, but remains a "person of interest" in the case. The student's home was searched Monday night in Revere, Mass., by a phalanx of law enforcement agencies.
Time magazine correspondent Michael Crowley clucked: "It'll be a real shame if a Saudi guy was tackled and held simply for running in fright -- and for being an Arab." Music producer Sledgren took to Twitter to bemoan "prejudice America." Indian television anchor Gargi Rawat called the civilian's actions "sad." Gawker editor Max Read declared: "(T)his poor Saudi kid should sue the guy who tackled him."
For what? For taking all those "See Something, Say Something" ads seriously? Hang him!
If the Saudi student tries to sue, we already know who will provide legal aid and comfort. In 2007, when passengers reported concerns about a group of rowdy flying imams, the Council on American-Islamic Relations threatened to sue the unnamed "John Does" who went to authorities. Thankfully, Congress passed legislation protecting whistleblowers.
As GOP Rep. Bill Shuster said at the time: "No American should ever be sued because they tried to stop a terrorist act. No American should be forced to second-guess a decision to alert authorities that could save the lives of others."
Nobody knows what's going on behind closed doors as the current bombing investigation continues, yet media scribes, foreign journalists and social media sideliners are convinced: The tackler is racist. Anyone who mentions the nationality of the tackled student is racist. Forget terrorism. RAAAAAAACISM is the real homeland security threat to our nation.
The same unserious response greeted anyone who breathed public mention of the fact that the Boston Police Department issued a BOLO alert Monday afternoon for a suspicious individual. Investigators warned police officers to be on the lookout for a "darker-skinned or black male" with a "possible foreign accent."
Incredibly, BPD got blasted for issuing an alert that was both too broad and too specific. "That's all of Boston," one critic carped. Others protested disclosure of any descriptive details. A common retort: "Why?"
Why? Well, if we're all serious about bringing the killers and their conspirators to justice, it kinda helps to know what they might look like. Just saying.
The Shut Up Brigade struck again after a U.S. Airways plane at Boston's Logan Airport was evacuated Tuesday because of suspicions about two passengers seated apart and speaking Arabic. "Racist paranoia," blogger Shymala Dason decried. "Ugh," wrote Newsweek social media editor Brian Ries. "This is ridiculous," fumed Arabic language educator Jinanne Tabra.
Ridiculous? Tell that to shell-shocked marathon runners and their families traveling home after the Boston terror bombing. They were the ones on the plane, at the very airport where Arabic-speaking 9/11 jihadists hijacked two flights and brought down the Twin Towers. I won't second-guess any of them or the bystanders who tackled the Saudi student -- because I have not forgotten.
I still haven't forgotten the passengers and crewmembers who tackled al-Qaida shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.
I still haven't forgotten Brian Morgenstern, the teenage Circuit City worker who contacted authorities in 2007 when suspicious Middle Easterners brought in tapes of themselves shooting off guns and shouting "Allahu Akbar." The men were convicted of plotting to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix.
I still haven't forgotten the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a flight attendant that several Arab men sitting in the first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.
Hindsight hypocrites will only give you immunity from public excoriation if you can guarantee in advance that your fears or suspicions are 100 percent right. And no one can.
To hell with the "See Something, Do Nothing" cowards who sit on the sidelines wielding their "racism" and "Islamophobia" cards in the aftermath of every terrorist attack. I would rather be damned if I do than dead if I don't.
http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/04/17/americas-empty-slogan-see-something-say-something-n1569909/page/full/
Representative Jackson Lee: “Don’t Condemn The Gangbangers,” It’s The Guns’ Fault
Last week, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee spoke on the House floor in favor of more restrictions that prohibit law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves and their families from criminals. She pleaded with fellow lawmakers to run to the defense of the gangbangers, telling them that it’s not the criminals’ fault. It’s that we don’t have more laws restricting guns:
“Don’t condemn the gangbangers, they’ve
got guns that are trafficked — that are not enforced, that are straw
purchased and they come into places even that have strong gun laws. Why?
Because we don’t have sensible gun legislation. I’m going to agree with
my friends on the other side of the isle. Our Republican friends, let’s
enforce the gun laws that we have – - who would run away from that.
That’s a sensible proposition. Put a resolution on the floor of the
House – - let’s enforce gun laws that we have.”
Chicago’s murder rate is so high because they don’t have strict enough
gun control, and that neighboring states don’t impose the same
restrictions that Illinois does. So, don’t blame the criminals. It’s not
their fault. It’s that we don’t have universal gun control. If we
didn’t have any guns at all, these criminals wouldn’t be able to kill
each other. Poor gangbangers. They just need more rehabilitation.As for enforcing current laws, what pro-2nd Amendment people mean by that is that most violent criminals shouldn’t be on the streets at all, and so the point about whether or not they should be allowed to purchase a firearm is moot. If there is eyewitness testimony and evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is guilty of murder or rape, that person shouldn’t be given freedom. He shouldn’t even be in a position where he is trying to buy anything, let alone a gun. That is what is meant by “enforcing current laws.” It’s definitely not an endorsement of states’ various gun control laws.
If guns are taken away, violent crime will increase, as it has in the U.K. and Australia following national, mandatory gun buy-back programs.
But at least gun crimes might decrease. For now, they don’t care about violent crimes involving other tools. Even if newborn babies are being decapitated. But I’m sure if Gosnell used an “assault rifle” to kill the babies, then the media and politicians would pretend to care.
Campus Derangement Syndrome gets prof arrested
A faculty member at New York State's largest public university was arrested yesterday, espousing a very peculiar interpretation of the First Amendment. Laura E. Curry, an adjunct instructor of media studies, was incensed at a display erected by Students for Life in a space reserved for free speech. As first reported by Creative Minority Report:A University of Buffalo (SUNY) professor was arrested for screaming obscenities at an administration approved graphic pro-life display. While cursing profusely, she accused the pro-lifers of being "profane."
The video...shows the arrest along with the professor cursing and finally yelling out to surroundingstudents to tell her 1 p.m. class that she wouldn't be able to teach that day because she was being taken away in handcuffs.
This woman was so out of control that she forgot her obligation to students and couldn't rein in her anger and hatred. Here we have someone obviously sophisticated enough in the expressing of thoughts through the media to be given the high honor of teaching college students about media. So how could she think that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable, but so urgent that it outweighs the most basic professional responsibility, showing up to teach?
Laura E. Curry may be unusual in her lack of self-control, but can one say that her hostility toward one side of an important national debate is unusual on campus? I fear that it is an example of the intolerance of many conservative views in academia, a product of the left's takeover, implementing Antonio Gramsci's strategy for peaceful revolution by infiltrating and seizing the commanding heights of the culture. Political correctness, defining viewpoints that cannot be expressed, is an expression of this takeover. If some views should not be expressed, then the logical conclusion is that harassing people who express them is an obligation.
This is an example of Campus Derangement Syndrome, as a culture seriously at odds with mainstream America has taken over higher education.
So what will happen to Ms. Curry? She is on one of the lower rungs of the academic hierarchy. No tenure there. CMR contacted John DellaContrada, Assistant Vice President for Media Relations who offe4red this:
Laura Curry was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
This was a display by a student club, the UB Students for Life. Student organizations are allowed to reserve space on campus for purposes of free expression.
The University at Buffalo strives to create an environment in which diverse opinions can be expressed and heard. As a public university, it is a fundamental value of UB that all members of the campus community and their invited guests have a right to peacefully express their views and opinions, regardless of whether others may disagree with those expressions. This includes the right of protesters to oppose the views or opinions of others, but not in such a way as to limit or prevent the speaker's freedom of expression or interfere with university operations.
It is a serious matter, the selection of people placed before college students as their teachers and role models. Taxpayers of New York have been chipping in for Laura E. Curry's salary. SUNY Buffalo has the largest endowment and reserach funding of any state university in New York, and is the largest public university in the Northeast United States.
Professor who Called Republicans “Racist” is Democratic Operative
A University of Southern California professor who told students that Republicans are “stupid and racist” is a longtime Democratic operative who critics say has a reputation as a political propagandist.Political Science professor Darry Sragow’s attacks on Republicans were secretly filmed by one of his students – a libertarian who had grown tired of the left-wing ranting of his professors. “They’re really stupid and racist,” Sragow said during one lecture. “They Republican Party is increasingly the last refuge of old, angry white people who don’t like what’s going on in this country.”
At one point Sragow’s teaching assistant advocated using the Black Panthers to intimidate Republican voters. “Yeah, yeah – you can do that,” the professor replied.
Darry Sragow is well-known across California – not for being a professor – but for being a Democratic operative.
Sragow is a partner in the Denton’s law firm. According to his online biography, he’s managed five statewide races and served for nearly 10 years as the chief campaign strategist for Democrats in the California State Assembly. Sragow also served as a senior staff member for U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh and the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.
“I am absolutely outraged,” said Mark Vafiades, chairman of the Los Angeles County Republican Party. “This guy is preaching, not teaching. He’s trying to convince college students that the Republican party is evil, that the Republican Party is bigoted.”
Vafiades accused the professor of bullying conservative students. “He should be fired,” he said. If this had been a Republican operative doing the same thing on behalf of the GOP, it would be top of the news. There would be calls for that person to be fired immediately.”
USC did not return calls seeking comment on the future of Sragow’s teaching career.
Tyler Talgo, the student who filmed Sragow’s outbursts, told Fox News he was aware of the professor’s background – but had hoped he would be objective in the classroom. “I don’t have a problem with him being a Democrat or his personal political views,” Talgo said. “The reason I did this is because I believe it’s unfair for a professor to push their political agenda on students in an academic environment without presenting the other side.”
Fox News contributor and former Democratic strategist Pat Caddell has known Sragow since the 1980s. He was shocked that a university would let him teach students. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Caddell said. “He’s a political hack. He’s a guy who would go out there and say anything for the party. What is he doing as a propagandist in a university – a world class university?”
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/professor-who-called-republicans-racist-is-democratic-operative.html
The Stock Act: A Look into Drive-by Lawmaking
Did you know that Congress and the President quietly repealed misguided aspects of the Stock Act a few days ago? I thought not.Late in 2011, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a sensational news story detailing allegations that lawmakers were profiting from investments spawned by non-public information. Harry Reid seized the moment, and in a highly political calculation, brought the STOCK Act (S. 2038) to the Senate floor. The bill banned lawmakers and some aides from buying or selling stocks and other securities based on confidential information. As a means of enforcement, the bill required those effected to report stock and bond transactions within 30 days of the transaction. The bill sailed through the Senate and passed 96-3 on February 2.
Not to be outdone in the game of political grandstanding, the House passed a similar bill under suspension 417-2, circumventing the entire committee process. Differences between the House and the Senate were resolved by unanimous consent and the bill was signed by the President in March.
So in a matter of two months, Congress voted to overcriminalize the undefined and ambiguous vice of insider trading. In their mind, corruption in the legislative process was over.
The reality is that Congress overlooked the real insider trading. The real problem with insider trading is not staffers getting wind of insider information affecting their personal investments. The problem is Congress not following the Constitution and granting special interest handouts to industries and big labor in return for helping them get reelected. The blatant incestuous relationship between big labor or K street and members of Congress is much more important than a questionable ability to affect their personal portfolios with prior knowledge of specific events affecting their investments.
In fact, the idea that 28,000 top executive and legislative branch staffers (those earning more than $120,000) would have to post all of their financial information online was inane and dangerous to begin with. And after a National Academy of Public Administration study was published last month showing how dangerous such a requirement would be, Congress repealed this part of the Stock Act by unanimous consent last week.
Think about it this way. You could have two potential staffers working on the Hill. One is a 60-year-old with a wealth of experience and talent form the private sector. That individual supports the free market and would advocate that his boss vote down any special interest bill. Yet, with his years’ of success in the private sector, he has a substantial portfolio. That individual would have been forced to disclose all his finances. Hence, he would never step foot on the Hill.
On the other hand, you could have a 25-year-old politico with not much of a portfolio, but a penchant to engage in pay-for-play with big labor and K Street. He has no investment portfolio to speak of, and would have been in good shape under the Stock Act. He could then go on to work for a special interest lobbying shop the very next year, after helping secure favors for that industry. This description essentially sums up the lives of thousands of staffers who would never have been affected by the Stock Act. The average age of a staffer is already not much older than a college dorm. This provision of the Stock Act would have dissuaded the few older, more experienced, individuals from ever working on the Hill.
But the broader point is how can Congress go from passing something with unanimous consent one year and repealing it through unanimous consent the following year – without any mea culpa? Yet they refuse to learn their lesson from passing bad bills outside of regular order.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing they repealed this. They should do things like this more often. They should repeal the ethanol mandate – a true “insider trade” – by unanimous consent as well. There are hundreds of other bills that should follow the same fate. But don’t expect Congress to learn its lesson of due diligence any time soon.
http://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2013/04/17/the-stock-act-a-look-into-drive-by-lawmaking/
Illicit Lobbying
Report: Local health departments illegally used federal stimulus money to lobby
At least seven local health departments illegally used stimulus grant funds to lobby for greater taxes and restrictions on tobacco and unhealthy foods, according to a report released Tuesday by a nonprofit watchdog group.
The stimulus-funded Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program disbursed about $373 million intended to educate the public about tobacco use and obesity. Federal law prohibits grantees from using the funds for lobbying activities.
According to the group Cause of Action, local health departments from Alabama to California used the funds to devise or promote legislation designed to curb tobacco use or combat obesity.
The report detailing the allegations is the product of a 19-month investigation into the CPPW program.
“[Cause of Action’s] investigation revealed that CPPW money went to support lobbyists and public relations companies who used taxpayer dollars to push laws and agendas that would lead to tax increases on tobacco and high calorie products,” the report said.
The report said illicit uses of CPPW grant funds “essentially transform[ed] the CPPW program into a conduit for lobbying for higher taxes and bans on otherwise legal consumer products.”
Federal law prohibits grant recipients from using federal grant funds to influence “an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose, by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation.”
Internal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which administers the CPPW program, clarifies that the law applies “specifically to lobbying related to any proposed, pending, or future federal, state, or local tax increase, or any proposed, pending, or future requirement or restriction on any legal consumer product.”
Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein criticized the CDC for faulty oversight in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. He also said specific CPPW grantees may have “committed not just violations [of lobbying prohibitions], but fraud.”
According to internal communications from South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) obtained by Cause of Action through public records requests, DHEC officials altered meeting minutes in order to hide the involvement of officials involved in grant fund disbursements after CDC expressed concerns about the use of grant funds for lobbying activities.
“The DHEC stated outright that the purpose of altering the minutes was to hide the fact that its CPPW program coordinator had directed illegal lobbying in the pursuit of smoke-free ordinances,” according to the Cause of Action report.
The DHEC did not return a request for comment.
DHEC grant activities, like those of other state health agencies examined in the report, were explicitly geared toward specific legislative goals. Its application for CPPW funding said it would use taxpayer funds to “increase the support for and adoption of comprehensive smoke-free laws.”
While that proposal and similar ones from other states appeared to violate laws governing the use of federal grant funds, Epstein says the CDC has made no effort to effectively oversee the CPPW program.
“It’s not just a sign of misuse of taxpayer dollars,” Epstein said. “In fact, there’s some indication that the CDC encouraged this to occur.”
Previous investigations of the CPPW program have produced similar findings.
According to the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), CDC’s parent agency, federal guidelines for CPPW grant recipients “appear to authorize, or even encourage, grantees to use funds for impermissible lobbying.”
Members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce cited that report and apparent violations of the lobbying prohibitions in multiple communications with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius regarding the CPPW program. The committee’s investigative panel examined the program during a 2012 hearing.
Annual CPPW disbursements are scheduled to grow to about $2 billion in 2015. When expenditures increase six-fold, Epstein said “we’re in a serious situation, because we’re going to undoubtedly see six times the fraud.”
Florida’s Miami-Dade County Health Department, one of the agencies singled out in Cause of Action’s report, denied any wrongdoing in a statement emailed to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Department “did not utilize any of the CPPW funding for lobbying activities, nor does the Department have any reason to believe that any of its contracted providers did so either,” said spokeswoman Olga Connor. “The Department of Health’s contracts specifically bar any provider from utilizing the CPPW funds for any type of lobbying activities.”
The CDC did not return request for comment. Miami-Dade County was the only local government highlighted by Cause of Action to return a request for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/illicit-lobbying/
1984 + 29
As Orwell knew, taking over the culture starts with corrupting the language.
Imagine if, during the campaign of 2008, someone had written the following: “If Barack Obama is elected president, then each year from now on the federal budget will be a trillion dollars in the red. He will pile up in two terms more debt than all previous presidents combined. Interest rates will stay at near zero; 7.6 percent unemployment will be proof of progress in creating jobs. Record use of food stamps, unemployment, and disability insurance will be hallmarks of recovery. The government will take over health care, and the costs will skyrocket. During Obama’s second term, ammunition will vanish from America’s store shelves in panic buying. Gay marriage will become uncontroversial. Women will be eligible for infantry combat. The only question about amnesty for illegal aliens will be when, not if, it is enacted. States will begin legalizing marijuana.” Obviously, such a conspiracist would have been dismissed as an unhinged nut.
You may object that Obama himself has hardly been responsible for all these radical transformations. True, but he helped to create, in brilliant fashion, a “hope and change,” quasi-revolutionary climate — the political cover, if you will, for the media, the universities, federal judges, state legislatures, and Congress to reinvent American popular culture and tradition in a manner rarely if ever seen in the past.
How, then, did the Obama team do that?
LANGUAGE
First were the necessary changes in language. In the Obama age, as in Orwell’s 1984, the natural meanings of words had to change. See the third book of Thucydides’ history for the details.
Running up serial trillion-dollar deficits was not profligacy, but rather making “investments” for “the children.” Irresponsible borrowing became “stimulus.” Indeed, “trillion” — not a frequently used part of most people’s vocabulary before 2009 — suddenly replaced “billion” as a familiar fiscal numerical adjective. A takeover of health care that would spike premiums and ration services, devices, and procedures was aptly named the “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
“Assault weapons” superseded “semi-automatic rifles,” even as “semi-automatic” and “automatic” were no longer distinct adjectives. The obvious purpose of rapid-fire weapons was to kill innocent children, not to protect your household from intruders, to shoot fast-moving game, or to practice a sport at a shooting range, much less to remind the government, in Second Amendment fashion, that the populace was autonomous and vigilant.
“Illegal alien” disappeared in favor of the inexact “undocumented immigrant” or “undocumented worker,” even though most illegal aliens never had proper documents of any sort, and sizable minorities of them were not working. The key was to convince the American public that millions of people had inadvertently wandered over the poorly demarcated border, all in search of work. They sort of lost track of both their bearings and their legal documents in the process. “Comprehensive immigration reform” superseded “amnesty,” as if the new proposed reforms focused mostly on hordes of brilliant Ph.D.s from the Czech Republic, queuing up to acquire legal authorization to work in Silicon Valley — rather than some 11 million or so Latin Americans who entered the country unlawfully, mostly without capital, English, or a high-school diploma.
“Homosexual” became a derogatory substitute for the proper term “gay,” and male homosexuality was redefined almost as an asexual act — a fun or “gay” Platonic experience rather than one connected with any particular sort of sexual congress.
“Global warming” begat “climate change,” which eventually begat “climate chaos,” once tornadoes, hurricanes, and tsunamis had to be enlisted in the good fight — given that there was no proof of rising temperatures in the last decade, and even the specter of melting polar ice caps, rising seas, and drowning polar bears had not proved enough to scare the public into banning coal and enacting cap-and-trade.
OBFUSCATION
After the language changed, obfuscation followed, designed to wear down the opposition through a bewildering array of incomprehensible regulations that led to an attention overload and confusion of theories with facts. Nancy Pelosi astutely gauged the pulse of an exhausted public that wanted the drawn-out debate over Obamacare just to be done with and go away, when she promised that we could find out what was in the vast, 2,400-page Obamacare bill as soon as it was made law. Likewise, the new “comprehensive immigration reform” bill is reputed to be over 1,500 pages. As many will read that monstrosity as have read the Obamacare document. The “hockey stick” and tree rings from “11,000 years ago” proved global warming in a way that no one could quite fathom until private correspondence was leaked to the public giving the proper academic context. No one quite knows what the advent of gay marriage will entail, once the idea of marriage as the exclusivity of a single man, joined with a single woman, to promote procreation has ended. But the theoretical possibilities of bold new unions, both sincere and cynical, are now as endless as they are taboo to discuss publicly.
SILENCING DEBATE
After language changed and facts were buried beneath bureaucratic avalanches, debate became almost un-American, either silenced or relegated to caricature. Legitimate worries about rising health-insurance premiums and restricted care translated into being against the “young” and “vulnerable.” Object to infringements on the Second Amendment, and Vice President Joe Biden (who, as so often in the mudslinging, was wheeled out to demonize opponents) will charge that one must suffer from some near-sexual fetish to want an “assault weapon” in one’s hands, a thrill like “driving a Ferrari.” (Most Americans, apparently unlike Biden, have no idea of what driving a Ferrari is like.) Biden instead advised the illegal act of blasting a shotgun into the air to scare off intruders. Concerns about the dangers of a nationwide gun registry were tantamount to membership in “the black-helicopter crowd.”
In the debate over illegal immigration, one paradigm was the DREAM Act. The new gospel was that 11 million illegal aliens were denied their futures as neurosurgeons and aeronautical engineers simply by lack of access to the appropriate university. No one was allowed to talk of an “un-DREAM Act” — to point out that for all the hard-working, crime-free, and long-residing illegal aliens, there must be at least some who were on public assistance, had criminal records, and or entered the country only recently in hopes of receiving amnesty. All illegal aliens were desirable newcomers; none were undesirable. Breaking the law, and cutting in front of others who did not, was noble, whereas drawing attention to those who did was ignoble. The illegal-alien debate was framed as involving those who wished to allow José López to finish his M.D., against racists who could not tolerate the idea that people from south of the border were outpacing them to the pinnacles of American success.
To ponder whether females could meet, without adjustments, the brutal physical requirements of Special Forces training was tantamount to being anti-woman. There could be no real debate over gay marriage. America was instead to have happily evolved from the Neanderthal 1990s, when homophobia had made such moral improvement impossible. That earlier public had been obsessed with illegitimate and improper concerns that particular types of sexual congress might lead to new worries over the spread of HIV or the recent transformation of hepatitis into a common sexually transmitted disease.
Anecdote, the age-old enemy of logic, now reigns supreme and trumps induction — as if the exception is always proof of the rule, as if the public will always forsake reason for emotion. Forget the statistics on Obamacare — my Uncle Joe was denied coverage after he lost his job. The economy is getting better, because my friend Will was offered a job today. Why enforce federal immigration law, when there is no nicer window washer than Herlinda, who comes to my house every Tuesday? It hailed in June here; therefore the world must be experiencing climate change. I would never shoot an AR-15, and therefore there is no need for anyone else to. My nephew is gay, and he’s a great guy; therefore gay marriage is great too. Sally yesterday lifted heavier weights than did three guys in the gym: Presto, female soldiers can do anything that male soldiers can.
DEMONIZATION
Finally, to make the once controversial the new convention, demonization and character assassination were essential. Opposing trillion-dollar deficits meant that you were a fat cat who didn’t build your own business and didn’t know when you had made enough money, a suspect 1-percenter who did not pay “your fair share,” and who junketed to Las Vegas or lopped off patients’ limbs for profit. To oppose Obamacare meant that you wished the vulnerable like Sandra Fluke to have to choose between eating and having access to exorbitantly priced condoms. Or perhaps you wished those with lymphoma to go without medical treatment.
Wariness about Congress’s rush-to-judgment haste to infringe on the Second Amendment was proof that you were callous toward the parents of the Sandy Hook victims, with veritable blood on your hands in a repeat of the Gabby Giffords tragedy. Gun owners were now to be divided into the good Joe Biden and John Kerry types who, outfitted in proper L. L. Bean attire, each year ceremoniously fired off a few rounds at skeet from their Italian shotguns — and the overweight and sunburned clingers who, in places like southern Illinois and rural Pennsylvania, slaughtered deer for the hell of it with sinister black machine guns, when they weren’t indulging in militia play-acting in bandoliers and camouflage.
America may have had the most liberal immigration policy, both legal and illegal, in the world, which inordinately favored illegal entrants from Latin America. But nonetheless the desire to enforce federal legislation was tantamount to being a “nativist” and “racist” who, as “an old angry white guy” could not “get over” “the new demography” — incorrect behavior by “enemies” that warranted a vow from the president to “punish” them. Those who opposed gay marriage but were willing to accept civil unions were “homophobes” who had set out to demonize the children and grandchildren of us all.
* * *
What are we to make of this creeping brave new world?The scary part, at least for now, is not the ends so much as the means used to achieve them. The reason that Orwell, a man of the Left, made his farm animals and lost urban souls the victims of tyrannical left-wing megalomaniacs was his sense that the far Left, much more so than the far Right, could insidiously distort reality and destroy free expression. The right-wing dictator is typically an identifiable thug who transparently stifles free speech to benefit a small coterie of aristocrats and insiders. In contrast, the left-wing dictator is always a misunderstood reformer who was forced by counterrevolutionaries to break a few eggs in order to make the collective omelet. Think of the reaction to drones, renditions, and Guantanamo under Bush compared to that under Obama. After all, there are no Pinochet T-shirts on campus to rival the romantic depiction of Che — a psychopath in service to a Cuban autocracy that came to power killing far more than did Pinochet in Chile. We are long conditioned to airbrush the word “socialism” out of Hitler’s “National Socialism” and must only with care remark that the collectivist Mao was the greatest mass murderer in the history of civilization. Our popular culture is currently engaged in canonizing bombers and murderers from the 1960s campuses, but not the equally violent anti-abortion activists who likewise sometimes took the law into their own hands in service to their own purported sense of the greater good.
We are in revolutionary times, but of the French rather than the American sort. The popular effort is not to preserve liberty from an all-encompassing government, but rather to have an all-powerful state impose an egalitarianism of result — and increasingly by any means necessary.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/345662/i1984i-29-victor-davis-hanson
The Engineer and the Harlot
Imagine a horrendously overloaded locomotive slowly climbing a steep mountain grade. The engine has been called upon to perform a task that it was never designed to accomplish; and as a result, it is overheating and manifesting symptoms that augur an imminent breakdown or failure. The passengers inside who sip coffee while reading their books and chatting amongst themselves are not privy to what the Engineer knows: that behind the passengers are twenty cars filled to the rafters with cement. Furthermore, upon reaching the apex of this brutal grade, the "dead weight" being hauled will create an inexorable inertia that will send the locomotive and its occupants down to their most certain doom. The haughty Engineer and his Conductor who have abused it so are in an untenable position where they will not stop their advance and are instead content to whistle a half-hearted tune and order a last round of drinks for the unwitting passengers as they approach the inevitable. Indeed, in his arrogant madness, the Engineer and his men have set their jaws and will stay the course; all the while maintaining that glib smile of faux-authority and competence: hoping against all earthly reason that somehow magically, they can deliver the goods.Such parables are instructive only if they are rooted in truth and experience, and this one is no exception. The passengers in the cars -- you and I -- while not as fully informed of the circumstances as we would like to be, are nevertheless able to inductively piece two and two together to diagnose what is occurring economically. Despite the virtual lockdown in the Main Stream Media on truth, the average sober citizen who travels to his office or to the market for a can of coffee knows instinctively that something bad is brewing for America.
These same citizens know from the cost of beans and everything else in their shopping carts that prices have skyrocketed upwards, even if the concept of hyperinflation and its causal tie to the government's printing of currency through political fiat is an intellectually opaque concept. They see taxes, special fees, and the quantity of government jobs growing inexorably; yet they do not see a reduction in our collective debt or a qualitative increase in goods and services as a result of that added revenue. They can sense that Leviathan is waxing more robust and brazen in its movements and impinging upon their freedom of action; but they do not necessarily believe this anymore to be such a salutary thing. Even the most dense and credulous in regards to the ideological beneficence of state intervention in their lives are now calling those articles of faith into question; even as constitutional restraints are unabashedly being reviled by politicos who have become accustomed to the free rein of unmixed power over their "little people."
Indeed, despite the State-Approved Media parroting State-manipulated statistics, these average people have grown quite cognizant of the businesses in their communities going dark. I am not referring to fly-by-night affairs, but shops and chains that have existed since beyond memory boarding shut their doors forever. We see our friends and neighbors being pink-slipped from jobs they have held nearly all of their adult lives or having their hours cut back as the first turn of an irresistible death spiral. Moreover, the stigma of purchasing our goods at flea-markets or at the Dollar Tree has disappeared as the necessity of survival has hit home. Generic brands are now a mainstay as we can no longer afford the items the television would have us purchase. Standing at the check-out, we spy from the corner of our eye the familiar debit card being used by needy families for their sustenance. The unemployment rate, we are told, has sunk below 8% for a long succession of months; but our gut tells us that the truth is otherwise. In our heart of hearts, we know that rate to be much, much higher and we can smell in the air that the great machine is sputtering and winding down as 90 million people are no longer even looking for employment.
But despite the stench of putrefaction in our lungs that comes from a colossal body in its terminal arc, the Great Media Harlot, our gold-plated looking glass to the world, sees, hears and speaks no evil of those she calls her own. Having in her youth been renowned for her virtue, her fading modesty drew attention as she was found consorting in the company of riff-raff in indecent circumstances and at odd hours. But now that the bloom is off the rose, her wantonness for her favorites is for all to see as she cocks her heels behind her ears to her own shame without bothering any longer to pull the drapes. While still of a mind to scream at the top of her lungs at every misstep committed by her ideological rivals, her utility now lies in her affectation of silence as hard and ancient structures lie crumbling about her feet. Any duty she once felt to justice has been supplanted by reckless love: not the love that comes from contemplating the beautiful and the just, but the helpless debased sort that older women feel: having thrown their evaporating charms at young rogues leading ultimately to no happy end.
Despite what we can discern happening about us vibrating in the marrow of our bones, those on the receiving end of our Great Knave's material largesse have taken up the Media Harlot's carefully groomed mantra: a subtle variation of Emile Coue's psychological auto-suggestion that: "Everyday and in every way, things are getting better and better." Having imbibed these imbecilic political "Laws of Attraction," the faithful have learned that every negative thought can be checked and countered by a smiling and trim happy-go-lucky young face on the tube selling us on the lie that the American Dream is alive and well under Obama.
Furthermore, as long as we think and vote in fidelity to "The One," grandmother will never have to resort to eating food reserved for Fifi's dish. Treacherous wraiths have calculated that as long as the checks keep rolling in and the clodhoppers' gaze can be redirected to the government's noble advocacy for the helpless children, the remaining scraps of our American liberties can be bartered away under the aegis that a hip black President identifies and cares for the little guy -- despite an asteroid-sized quantity of evidence amassing to the contrary.
The Engineer of this great locomotive indeed seems to believe that his historical mandate of America's transformation will be the grand legacy liberalism will bequeath to the earth. In hoarding powers and prerogatives to himself that no president has ever wielded so capriciously without regard to sacred Constitutional limits, Obama is taking us down the garden path to a place of his own choosing: a utopia that more closely resembles Golgotha. When the massive wheels come off this train -- and they will do so most certainly -- he will cast the onus on those American people who fought him "tooth and claw" and on the previous engineer, because that is just the sort of shallow creature he is.
From the security of their well-heeled digs, the Engineer and the Harlot will share amongst themselves a bottle of the finest. And high above the smoking ruins of America, they will gaze lovingly in each other's eyes while clinking their glasses as they toast: "Everyday and in every way......
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