Thursday, July 25, 2013

Current Events - July 25, 2013


 3 Whoppers from Obama's Big Economic Speech

President Obama sure was excited about his speech yesterday. He talked for more than an hour in sweeping, grandiose terms about everything that's happened since he became President, and everything that's still going to happen.

If only more of it were true.

Here are three major whoppers Obama tried to sell yesterday.

1. Obamacare is going great.

He's said this before, and each time, it's actually less true. To hear the President tell it, Obamacare is all about security, free things, and discounts.

But the daily march of Obamacare is bringing higher premiums, new taxes, and fewer choices. The Obama Administration has already delayed the employer mandate—only the latest in a string of delays and failures to implement the law.

In his speech yesterday, Obama said, "There are folks out there who are actively working to make this law fail." Nope, the law is failing just fine on its own. And that's why Congress should not fund it with taxpayer dollars.

2. I cut the deficit in half.

This was one of Obama's big first-term promises, so he would like to show that he's delivered on it. But this claim ignores the huge deficit he ran up during his first few years in office.

Congress had to pass Obamacare before we could see what was in it. Maybe Obama had to run up the deficit before he could cut it?

"Public debt doubled under his watch," says Romina Boccia, Heritage's Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs. "Deficits projected at $642 billion by the Congressional Budget Office for this year are 'low' only when compared to their trillion-dollar-plus levels over the past four years. The U.S. deficit and debt situation actually worsened since before the recession."

3. Middle-class income is stuck in the '70s.

The President paints himself as the savior of the middle class—and it's the nefarious 1 percent he's going to save us from, so he has to drive a wedge between the classes.

His claim: "The income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family's barely budged."

But in fact, incomes across the board have been rising. Heritage's David Azerrad dispatches Obama's falsehood:

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, after-tax income has risen for all Americans, albeit by very different margins, during this timeframe. For those in the middle three quintiles—i.e. the "typical families"—income has increased by almost 40 percent.

As Ron Hasking and Scott Winship of the Brookings Institution conclude: "There is no disappearing middle class in these data; nor can household income, even at the bottom, be characterized as stagnant, let alone declining."
American workers today are more productive and better compensated. Their problem is a lack of jobs. And for that, we have President Obama's policies to thank.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/25/morning-bell-3-whoppers-from-obamas-big-economic-speech/?roi=echo3-16363037528-13853011-35bbb766c56ca9a3d0e5fce1bb508f67&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell



President Alinsky Threatens Americans with Rising ‘Social Tensions’

You can take the community organizer out of the South Side, but you can’t take the community organizer out of the community organizer.

Today, America heard threats from the increasingly predictable President Alinsky.
“The position of the middle class will erode further,” Mr. Obama said. “Inequality will continue to increase, money’s power will distort our politics even more. Social tensions will rise, as various groups fight to hold on to what they have, start blaming somebody else for why their position isn’t improving. That’s not the America we know.”
This is standard-fare Das Kapital by Karl Marx.  Obama doesn’t even attempt to disguise it, leaving out only the original author’s name.  Obama merely adds the threat of social tensions.

For that, thank speech co-author Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky saw social tensions as a necessary circumstance to effective community organizing. Without anger, without the have-nots blaming the haves, it is harder to accumulate power.  Alinsky considered the creation of social tensions, or the exploitation of them, as essential to move wealth and power from those who have it to those who don’t.

Once “social tensions” are stoked, all that is left is the tactical organization.

Compare how conversant President Obama is in the ominous language of the economically illiterate left with President Reagan’s faith in the economic power of American freedom.  Obama’s economic worldview flows from Marx and Alinsky, when the free-market oxygen of Reagan is so badly needed.  Instead of uplifting Americans, Obama threatens them.

Republicans must match Obama’s dark vision with something equally aggressive and directly confrontational.  One idea? Defund Obamacare instead of another in a series of phony House votes to repeal it.

The Founders gave the House the power of the purse for times like these.  Defund Obamacare and watch the economy accelerate overnight.

Unfortunately for now, it seems some in the GOP don’t understand their opponent.  Speaker John Boehner gravely misunderstands the situation if he truly believes Obama’s address was devoid of content — a mere “Easter egg with no candy in it.”

There was plenty of content in that speech, if you know what to listen for.  Boehner’s response might have worked during more civil times.  But with soaring debt and a new muscular federal government, sweet quips don’t cut it.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/07/24/president-alinsky-threatens-americans-with-rising-social-tensions/

 The Inequality President

The rich have done fine under Obamanomics, not so the middle class.

President Obama made his fourth or fifth, or maybe it's the seventh or eighth, pivot to the economy on Wednesday, and a revealing speech it was. We counted four mentions of "growth" but "inequality" got five. This goes a long way to explaining why Mr. Obama is still bemoaning the state of the economy five years into his Presidency.

The President summed up his economic priorities close to the top of his hour-long address. "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics," he told his Galesburg, Illinois audience. "When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer customers. When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy. When the rungs on the ladder of opportunity grow farther apart, it undermines the very essence of this country."

Then the heart of the matter: "That's why reversing these trends must be Washington's highest priority. It's certainly my highest priority."

Which is the problem. For four and a half years, Mr. Obama has focused his policies on reducing inequality rather than increasing growth. The predictable result has been more inequality and less growth. As even Mr. Obama conceded in his speech, the rich have done well in the last few years thanks to a rising stock market, but the middle class and poor have not. The President called his speech "A Better Bargain for the Middle Class," but no President has done worse by the middle class in modern times.

By now the lackluster growth figures are well known. The recovery that began four years ago has been one of the weakest on record, averaging a little more than 2%. And it has not gained speed. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 0.4%. It rose to a still anemic 1.8% in the first quarter but most economists are predicting even slower growth in the second quarter. 

We hope the predictions of a faster growth in the second half will be right, but the Obama Treasury and Federal Reserve have been predicting for four years that takeoff was just around the corner. Stocks are doing great, and housing prices are rising, but job growth remains lackluster. What has never arrived is the 3%-4% growth spurt during typical expansions.

The official excuse is that recoveries coming out of recessions caused by financial crises are always slow. But then why have we been told every few months for five years that faster growth would soon be coming? Perhaps readers recall former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's famous 2010 op-ed, "Welcome to the Recovery." Mr. Obama wants it both ways: Take credit for recovering from recession, but blame that recession ad infinitum for the slow pace of the recovery.
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What about the middle class that is the focus of Mr. Obama's rhetoric? Each month the consultants at Sentier Research crunch the numbers from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and estimate the trend in median annual household income adjusted for inflation. In its May 2013 report, Sentier put the figure at $51,500, essentially unchanged from $51,671 a year earlier. 

And that's the good news. The bad news is that median real household income is $2,718, or 5%, lower than the $54,218 median in June 2009 when the recession officially ended. Median incomes typically fall during recessions. But the striking fact of the Obama economy is that median real household income has fallen even during the recovery. 

While the declines have stabilized over the last two years, incomes are still far below the previous peak located by Sentier of $56,280 in January 2008. No wonder Mr. Obama is now turning once again to his familiar political narrative assailing inequality and blaming everyone else for it. He wants to change the subject from the results on his watch. 

The core problem has been Mr. Obama's focus on spreading the wealth rather than creating it. ObamaCare will soon hook more Americans on government subsidies, but its mandates and taxes have hurt job creation, especially at small businesses. Mr. Obama's record tax increases have grabbed a bigger chunk of affluent incomes, but they created uncertainty for business throughout 2012 and have dampened growth so far this year. 

The food stamp and disability rolls have exploded, which reduces inequality but also reduces the incentive to work and rise on the economic ladder. This has contributed to a plunge in the share of Americans who are working—the labor participation rate—to 63.5% in June from 65.7% in June 2009. And don't forget the Fed's extraordinary monetary policy, which has done well by the rich who have assets but left the thrifty middle class and retirees earning pennies on their savings.

Mr. Obama would have done far better by the poor, the middle class and the wealthy if he had focused on growing the economy first. The difference between the Obama 2% recovery and the Reagan-Clinton 3%-4% growth rates is rising incomes for nearly everybody. 

House Republicans have put a check on Mr. Obama's most destructive economic policies, but the President could do more to help growth if he crossed party lines to pass tax reform the way Reagan did in his second term, or to work out a budget deal as Bill Clinton did in his fifth year. 

Mr. Obama's only pro-growth proposal is immigration reform, and we're not sure he wants even that to pass. Judging by the partisan tenor of his Wednesday speech, he may be setting it up to use as a campaign wedge in 2014. If only Mr. Obama understood that before a government can redistribute wealth, the private economy has to create it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323610704578626142861572144.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Top 10 Signs Scandals Aren't 'Phony'

"But with this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball.  And I am here to say this needs to stop. (Applause.) This needs to stop." 
- President Barack Obama, Speech on the Economy and 'Phony Scandals,' Galesburg, IL, July 24, 2013
10. Someone pleads the Fifth. Lois Lerner, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during an oversight hearing. She was also suspended (with pay).

9. Documents go missing, officials fake e-mail addresses. Records of tax inquiries into Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell are gone; the former EPA chief made emails tough to find by using an alias.

8. You announce drastic policy shifts to minimize damage. When the Department of Justice was found to be snooping on the AP and Fox's James Rosen, Obama suddenly embraced a media shield law.

7. You make a show of "forcing" an official to resign. Obama theatrically announced the resignation of IRS chief Steven Miller; though his term was almost over, the gesture sent a clear signal of disapproval.

6. You try to arrest a low-level leaker. Though Obama himself minimizes the effort to catch Edward Snowden, the federal government is desperately trying to have him extradited for exposing NSA programs.

5. You assert dubious executive privilege to stop investigations. Obama exercised that option to protect Attorney General Eric Holder and the disastrous Operation Fast and Furious from scrutiny.

4. You intimidate whistleblowers. Hillary Clinton's State Department intimidated officials who knew the truth of what happened in Benghazi--and others who knew about gross misconduct in the agency.

3. Your Department of Justice opens criminal investigations. Theoretically, anyway, Attorney General Holder is seeing to it that the IRS's conduct is being scrutinized for alleged federal crimes.

2. You yourself have condemned the misconduct. Whether calling the IRS's behavior "inexcusable," or condemning civil liberties violations before 2008, Obama set the standard by which he is being judged. 

1. Even the friendly media have run out of patience. When even journalists who made sure Obama was elected--twice--begin to feel threatened and irritated by the administration, there is no denying reality.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/07/24/Top-10-Signs-Your-Scandals-Aren-t-Phony

Key Benghazi witness found

Testifying to Congress today behind closed doors

A highly sought witness in the Benghazi investigation is scheduled to testify this morning behind closed doors in Congress, WND has learned

Marine Col. George Bristol is considered a key witness because he may be able to shed light on why no U.S. military help was sent when the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack on Sept. 11, 2012.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died in the attack.

Congressional investigators have been trying to locate Bristol for months. As commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, he knew what military options the U.S. had when the compound in Benghazi came under attack.

Bristol is scheduled to testify this morning before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee.
Investigators could not find him because Defense Department officials told members of Congress he had retired in March and could not be forced to testify.

However, about a week ago, the Marine Corps Times discovered Bristol had not retired .

The paper quoted Marine spokeswoman Maj. Shawn Haney as saying Bristol would be on active duty through the end of July.

That contradicted statements Pentagon officials had issued to both Congress and the media.

A member of Congress told WND it was imperative to find Bristol before he retires at the end of the month, in case the colonel is forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon leaving active duty.

WND located Bristol and passed his contact information on to Congress.

It is not known if Congress used the information to track down Bristol or if investigators found him independently.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/key-benghazi-witness-found/ 

Darrell Issa: Energy Department Whistleblowers Gagged

Whistleblowers warned against cooperating with congressional investigators

 Energy Department officials prohibited subordinates from speaking with congressional investigators about their probe into illicit hiring practices and related whistleblower retaliation allegations, according to the lead investigator.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that the deputy secretary of energy issued the gag order following a scathing inspector general report last week.

The report revealed that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a division of the Department of Energy (DOE), had violated DOE hiring guidelines in ways that disadvantaged military veterans.

BPA employees who cooperated with the IG’s investigation, the report found, were fired, suspended, or otherwise sanctioned.

Issa revealed in a Wednesday, July 17, letter that Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman “verbally instructed Elliot Mainzer, the individual [Poneman] chose to serve as acting administrator of BPA, that no BPA employees were to talk with anyone regarding these allegations, including congressional investigators.”
Issa suggested that such a gag order could be illegal.

“Obstructing a congressional investigation is a crime,” he noted. “Additionally, denying or interfering with employees’ rights to furnish information to Congress is against the law.”

Transparency advocates raised similar concerns.

“Any attempt to ‘gag’ employees from communicating with Congress would be a gross violation of law,” said Stephen M. Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, in an email.

“It is highly illegal for any federal agency to attempt to prevent employees or contractors from communicating whistleblower concerns with Members of Congress or an Inspector General,” Kohn said. “If true, this conduct by government officials would be intolerable.”

Oversight Committee spokesman Ali Ahmad told the Oregonian that a senior BPA official had informed the committee of Poneman’s gag order.

Issa requested a response from Poneman by noon on Wednesday. The committee could not confirm whether it had received a response by press time.

“BPA employees have the right to talk with Congress and to provide Congress information free from interference by the Department of Energy,” he wrote. “These employees also have a right to be free from fear of retaliation for sharing information with Congress.”

A BPA spokesman referred questions to DOE’s press office, which did not respond to a request for comment.

http://freebeacon.com/darrell-issa-energy-department-whistleblowers-gagged/

Obama Admin Colludes with Sierra Club to Make Arizona Energy Prices Skyrocket, Against DoE’s Own Science

During his big economics speech today, President Barack Obama declared that America is open for business. Laying aside the fact that the president stole that line from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, even as he made the statement he was surely aware that it is not true. The Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama continues to scuttle through political procrastination, springs to mind. ObamaCare’s devastating impact on unemployment wins the argument.

The fact is, the Obama administration is colluding with environmental lobby Sierra Club on a closed-door deal that will drive energy prices in Arizona skyward for the sake, supposedly, of improving visibility at the Grand Canyon. The proposed new EPA rule on the Navajo Generating Station would double or triple water rates, cause electric rates to skyrocket and partially shut down a vital energy plant – despite a federal study that says the rule won’t do anything to help the environment. Jim Thompson, writing in Coal & Energy Price Report, says the EPA-Sierra secret deal is “imminent.” Thompson also names names:
Discussions of this “deal” have been taking place behind closed doors with the federal government, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, Salt River Project, the Central Arizona Water Conservation District, and select tribes since March – without allowing all Arizonans to participate.
The Department of Energy conducted a study that shows that the stunt that the EPA and activists are pulling in Arizona won’t do what they claim that they intend for it to do.  So what’s really going on: They’re enacting Obama’s war on coal behind closed doors. Arizonans get to foot the bill through sharply higher rates on their utilities, without being heard on the EPA’s new rule. Obama’s EPA and the lobbying groups have shut citizens out of their talks, despite the fact that the Clean Air Act mandates open processes and dialogue when the EPA considers new rules.

The DoE study is here, and the relevant part begins on page 5. The DoE found that the “body of research to date…is inconclusive as to whether removing approximately two-thirds of the current NOx emissions from Navajo GS would lead to any perceptible improvement in visibility at the Grand Canyon and other areas of concern.”

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/24/obama-admin-colludes-with-sierra-club-to-make-arizona-energy-prices-skyrocket-against-does-own-science/

RICO: The real way to hold the IRS accountable

If you are looking for a political-judicial solution, such as congress, impeachment, or a special prosecutor to hold accountable the unlawful acts coming out of the Obama administration, beginning with the Internal Revenue Service’s abuse and targeting of conservatives, Tea Party groups, and Christians, you are looking in the wrong place. What the IRS did tilted President Barack Obama’s re-election in his favor.

The IRS targeting reportedly began as early as 2010. Three years later, no one has been held accountable and the facts continue to drip out in slow motion.

Last week, for instance, as the Daily Caller reported, retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull testified before California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and implicated Obama appointee, IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkin, in addition to the Washington-based head of the IRS’s exempt organizations office, Lois Lerner, in the IRS targeting scandal. Lerner already has pled the Fifth. Hull made it clear that the targeting of conservatives and Tea Party groups started in Washington.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department declined to prosecute a government employee who apparently knowingly improperly accessed former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell tax records.  Does anyone really believe they will see justice from the Obama administration in these cases?

The bottom line is this. You can’t get justice within the political system in America anymore because the politicians own it. What ultimately stopped the mafia? The Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). What can stop the Obama administration, starting with holding corruption at the IRS accountable? RICO.

For years, as documented in The Whistleblower: How the Clinton White House Stayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House & World StageWashington’s ruling elite have comprised a protected class, with rules that don’t apply to everyday Americans. If you or I lied before Congress or to federal investigators we would have been charged with perjury long ago.

In Washington, Attorney General Holder and National Security Director James Clapper can lie to Congress and hold onto their powerful positions without consequence.

People forget how the Office of Independent Counsel Special Prosecutor Robert Ray used his prosecutorial discretion when he declined in the 1990’s to charge Hillary Clinton with perjury and obstruction of justice. Others might not know that additional potential crimes were not included in the articles of impeachment during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings which might have prevented the Clintons and the Clintonistas from re-emerging in the Obama administration and on the world stage. People have failed to recall how the Bush administration declined to prosecute quid-pro Pardongate in which Eric Holder was knee deep in.

Aside from the occasional PR-savvy fall-guy resignations the federal justice system has been dead for decades.

This is why RICO — the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act is the solution for Americans to use to see some long overdue justice in Washington. RICO provides a peaceful way to hold corruption accountable.

Successful cases against organized crime have been built around RICO, which was enacted in 1970 to target the mafia. What is needed is to use RICO to specifically hold corrupt politicians and federal officials accountable.

RICO has already held corrupt politicians like former mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick, and his childhood friend Bobby Ferguson, accountable. Under the RICO statute, they were convicted on March 11, 2013 of using Kilpatrick’s office to run a criminal organization to extort bribes in exchange for city contracts. It can be done.

According to 18 USC § 1961, crimes under RICO include everything from extortion, obstruction of justice, obstruction of a criminal investigation, and witness tampering, to kidnapping, gambling, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, dealing in obscene matter and financial institution fraud. RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of an enterprise to file a civil suit, and if successful, to collect treble damages (damages in triple the amount of actual/compensatory damages).

In the U.S. the act of engaging in criminal activity as a structured group is referred to as “racketeering.” In short, RICO requires at least two acts of racketeering activity, establishing a pattern which occurred within ten years after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity. It’s clear based on the number of conservatives and Tea Party groups that were targeted by the IRS that a pattern exists. It’s also clear from the testimony before Congress and in the Inspector General report that a number of officials were involved who were following orders from above. The evidence of a pattern and conspiracy already has been established. It’s time to use it.

Americans who have been targeted by the IRS or deprived of their rights by other government agencies should consider filing civil RICO suit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 – Civil Remedy for Deprivation of Rights and RICO: Civil Remedies for Conspiracies to Deprive Rights. Civil RICO does not rely on the politicized criminal justice system to work. This is especially critical considering those politics appear to have corrupted justice within AG Holder’s own department.

This American University Law Review report called, Using the Master’s Tools: Fighting Persistent Police Misconduct with Civil RICO, by Steven P. Ragland, could serve as a blueprint. This case shows how civil RICO was successfully used to root out corrupt policemen in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and can be applied to corrupt officials at the IRS and other agencies where corruption exists. Substitute the bad cops with the individual corrupt government workers, LAPD with the government agency in question and off you go.

Remember, the beauty of RICO is it can begin at the local and state level, and be brought as a civil RICO action first that doesn’t require the federal government to participate. It “provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.” That means state and local lawyers, sheriffs, attorney generals, and prosecutors can bypass the corrupted Federal justice system. From there, as these civil RICO suits evolve and new potential criminal information is brought to light through the discovery process, these suits can merge and potentially become criminal actions that can be brought before a grand jury and spread to D.C. But victims of IRS targeting can and should start throwing down the gauntlet now.

PK'S NOTE: Because there's nothing bigger to worry about in the country, right.

Legislation Extending Federal Protection for Cross-Dressers Heads to Full Senate

The full Senate will consider a bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that would add “actual or perceived sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the list of federally protected traits, which currently include race, religion, age, gender and disability.

The Family Research Council describes The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (S. 815) as “giving special rights and protections to people based solely on their sexual behavior,” warning that ENDA “is to the office what the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was to the military.” (S.815.pdf)

ENDA cleared the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee July 10th on a 15-7 vote, with Republicans Mark Kirk (Ill.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voting with the committee’s Democratic majority.

“The term “perceived gender identity” means if a confused man claims he feels like a woman, he must be allowed access to the ladies bathroom (at all public restaurants, shopping malls, and your office at work), or employers will be sued for “segregation,” explained former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt of The Pray in Jesus Name Project.

“They don’t actually need a sex-change operation to sue you, they just need to claim someday they may desire a sex-change, and YOU must protect your male employee’s right to dress like a woman, and have full access to the women’s bathroom, or be sued. The religious exemptions in this bill do not protect for-profit Christian business owners, such as Bible publishers, Christian retail stores, or public restaurants.”

In a statement after the vote, the White House praised HELP Committee members for sending ENDA to the full Senate for the first time since it was introduced back in 1994.

“[The President]  thanks Committee Chairman [Tom] Harkin, Senator Merkley, and Senator Kirk for their leadership on this important issue.  The President has long supported an inclusive ENDA, which would enshrine into law strong, lasting and comprehensive protections against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. “

The bill imposes penalties under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Employee Rights Act of 1991 on private employers who discriminate against individuals on the basis of their “gender identity,” which the legislation describes as “the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.”

Under the bill, state and local officials, including those who work for local school districts, are not immune, and can also be sued in federal court for employment discrimination.

“Unlike past bills, Sen. Merkley's version doesn't include an exemption for bathrooms, which means that employers at daycares, public schools, and Christian businesses would all have to change their restroom and shower policies to accommodate men who dress like women and vice-versa.,” FRC president Tony Perkins noted. 

 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/legislation-extending-federal-protection-cross-dressers-heads-full-senate#sthash.DWCNksTC.dpuf

$299K Grant To Help Pacific Islanders Understand Their Own Language

A team from the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC) will spend nearly $300,000 of U.S. taxpayer money to study a rare language spoken by just 45,000 people in the Mariana Islands, which include the North Mariana Islands in Micronesia, a United States commonwealth, and Guam, a U.S. territory located in the northwestern Pacific.

"Chamorro is spoken by 45,000 people in the Mariana Islands, which are part of the U.S. and its possessions. It is currently in the early stages of language endangerment," according to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) grant abstract.

Chamorro is considered a language of the Austronesian people, the term given for a broader family of languages and peoples on islands all throughout Oceania and Eastern Asia. Researchers say "the experimental protocols developed can be extended to research on other languages not spoken in highly industrialized societies."

“Past studies of language comprehension have been limited to 'major' world languages (English, other European languages, Chinese, Japanese) and college-age students. This severely underrepresents the diversity of the world's languages and populations, and could potentially lead to scientific conclusions that are distorted or incomplete,” according to the abstract.

The research team, led by Dr. Matthew Wagers, a pyscholinguist at UCSC, "will undertake experimental studies that build on special linguistic features of Chamorro to uncover how Chamorro speakers comprehend their language in real time."

According to the abstract, residents of three of the islands of all ages and levels of education will be recruited for the study. That translates to about $6.65 per person in grant money to train "several young Chamorros" in the "goals and methods of the research." They will also "help administer the studies."

The abstract cites unique facts about Chamorro, such as the fact that the verb comes before the subject in their sentences; "verb agreement differentiates questions from non-questions; and sentence structure is affected by animacy (whether a noun is alive, dead, or a non-living entity)."

The research will also expose Pacific Islanders to “scientific research, and in so doing, will affirm the unique contributions that a language can make to the scientific understanding of human cognition."

Awarded on February 5, the $299,231 grant is slated to run through September 2016.

An NSF spokeswoman said that there has not been any feedback from the project since it was only awarded in April, but described the work of the NSF's Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences division on the whole as having "led to discoveries that have both enhanced fundamental knowledge and provided value to the American people.”

She also said that all NSF proposals are subject to "the same gold standard, merit review process to review all proposals submitted to the agency."

"This method ensures that all proposals submitted are reviewed in a fair, competitive, transparent, and in-depth manner by a peer-review panel of scientific experts in the relevant field(s). Every proposal is reviewed against two merit review criteria:  the intellectual merit of the proposal and the broader impacts of the project."

 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/299k-grant-help-pacific-islanders-understand-their-own-language#sthash.pqhCEaef.dpuf


IG: FEMA Spending $76M More on Trailers That Disaster Victims Don’t Want  

Changes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) made to its temporary housing program last year “will increase program costs by an estimated $76 million and place a greater burden on future displaced survivors,” according to a June 2013 report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. (See FEMA IG report.pdf)

FEMA has discontinued using smaller “park model” units designed as temporary accommodations. The park model trailers are just 33 feet wide and 12 feet long. 

But disaster victims told FEMA staff that they prefer the smaller shelters because they allow them to remain on their own property near jobs, schools and familiar surroundings as their damaged homes are being repaired or rebuilt.

Another advantage is that the smaller park models cost taxpayers about $24,000 each, half the amount FEMA is spending on 64-foot long, 14-feet wide manufactured housing units the agency is now using exclusively to house disaster victims.

The larger trailers often must be located in inconvenient commercial or FEMA-developed sites that, due to zoning regulations, are located far from where they are needed.

According to the IG’s report, “the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the cost of placing units at group sites (including site improvements) ranged from $69,000 to exceeding $220,000 per unit. In contrast, GAO reported that the cost of placing a unit at a private site was about $30,000.”

 The much higher cost is not the only problem. The IG report points out that it also takes longer to get the larger trailers to the scene of man-made or natural disasters.

“Unless FEMA takes actions to ensure that it maintains the ability to use temporary housing units similar in size to the park model, this decision will increase program costs by tens of millions of dollars annually, and may hinder FEMA’s ability to provide shelter to disaster survivors quickly,” the IG noted.

One advantage of the larger trailers is that they are certified by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to have safe levels of formaldehyde.

Last September, more than six years after Hurricane Katrina, a federal judge in New Orleans approved a $42.6 million settlement stemming from a class-action lawsuit that claimed some 55,000 Gulf Coast residents who were housed in travel trailers FEMA brought in from around the county were exposed to levels of formaldehyde comparable to those experienced by professional embalmers.

But FEMA has since encouraged manufacturers to develop park model units that actually have lower formaldehyde levels than the HUD-certified trailers, the IG report noted.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ig-fema-spending-76m-more-trailers-disaster-victims-don-t-want#sthash.w1iyItZ8.dpuf


Gov't Spending $544,188 to Promote HPV Vaccine


The National Institutes of Health has awarded $544,188 to the University of California this year for a study on how to boost the number of young girls getting Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccinations in Los Angeles County.

Although the federal Centers for Disease Control says the benefits of the Gardasil vaccine outweigh the risk, it counts 772 serious adverse side effects, including 32 deaths, among the millions of doses administered to young girls between June 2006 and December 2008.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is assisting in the study, titled, “Increasing HPV Vaccine Uptake in a Low Income Ethnic Minority Population,” by giving callers information on HPV clinics when they call the department for information or services.

According to the grant description, the "intervention" -- which takes place by telephone -- is directed at mothers of age-eligible girls (11-18 years old). These mothers will be given basic information about the vaccine, "individually tailored messages to address callers' barriers to HPV vaccination," and referral to a clinic offering low cost/free vaccines.

Project Leader Dr. Roshan Bastani told CNSNews.com that Los Angeles County wants age-eligible girls in their area to get the HPV vaccine. "You can’t directly do this for minors, so when the mothers call in, we ask the women who call in if they have an age-eligible daughter, and if they do, then they go into giving them the information on why it’s (HPV vaccine) important.”

“When they call in, not only do we tell them about the HPV, we also make a specific referral close to the girl’s school, the mom’s work, wherever, where they can take the daughter to get the free vaccine,” Bastani added.

The interventions are performed in six languages: English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Armenian.

“It’s a randomized design. It’s every other week, so women calling on the 'intervention weeks' will get the intervention, women calling on the control weeks will not, Bastani said.

“The vaccine is in three doses. We make a first call giving them enough time to see if they got the first dose, then we call back later to see if they completed the three-dose vaccine.”

Bastani tells CNSNews.com that the goal of study is simple: “Its to see if a simple intervention delivered through an existing county service can substancialy increase HPV vaccine uptake among low-income girls in Los Angeles County.”

The HPV vaccine protects against four different types of the virus, which are sexually transmitted and can cause various forms of cervical, anal, penile, and throat cancers.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it continues to recommend HPV vaccination -- "based on information available today."

Along with the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC examined adverse effects from the Gardasil HPV vaccine from June 2006 through December 2008.

Of the 23 million doses administered during that period, it counted 12,424 adverse events, 776 of which it described as "serious," including 32 deaths.

Neverthelss, the CDC concluded that the vaccine's benefits continue to outweigh the risks at the present time.

CDC says it continues to "closely monitor" the vaccine's safety and will take additional action, if warranted, to protect the public.

There has been much debate about the role the government has played in advocating the HPV vaccine to minors.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/govt-spending-544188-promote-hpv-vaccine#sthash.ujec9MPl.dpuf


Our Iraqi al-Qaeda Enemy Springs Our Syrian al-Qaeda Ally from Prison


The Guardian reports that al-Qaeda has just carried out bombing raids at two Iraqi prisons, freeing hundreds of prisoners, many of them jihadist fighters affiliated with the terror network.
Hakim al-Zamili, a member of the security and defense committee in Iraq’s parliament concedes that “the number of escaped inmates has reached 500. Most of them were convicted senior members of al-Qaeda and had received death sentences.”

With U.S. combat forces having evacuated — and after American taxpayers expended tens of billions of dollars on our government’s dream of erecting an “Islamic democracy” that would be a reliable American counterterrorism ally — Iraq is sliding into full-blown civil war. That is the default condition between the majority Shiite and minority Sunni populations absent a credible military force that keeps them from savaging one another. Just this month, the Guardian report notes, “nearly 600 people have been killed in militant attacks across Iraq.” And with Americans having been smeared by Islamic supremacists as being “at war with Islam,” it is worth noting that these attacks, carried out during Ramadan, prominently target mosques.

It is also worth noting that many of the Sunni terrorists who have been broken out of prison were captured by U.S. forces, particularly during the troop surge that was sold to Americans as necessary to avoid a humiliating al Qaeda victory in Iraq. Now those al-Qaeda enemies of ours are free once more to continue their Iraqi civil war in what they call the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” But observe that if these same jihadists manage to cross the border into Syria — which is also part of their Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — they somehow transmogrify into “rebels,” our noble allies in the Syrian civil war against Assad.

There’s a coherent, carefully thought out policy, no?

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/07/24/our-iraqi-al-qaeda-enemy-springs-our-syrian-al-qaeda-ally-from-prison/

Liberal media love new Jesus book 'Zealot', fail to mention author is Muslim

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list.

Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim.

His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio.
“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years.
Aslan is not a trained historian. Like tens of thousands of us he has been formally educated in theology and New Testament Greek.

He is a bright man with every right to hold his own opinion about Jesus—and to proselytize his opinion.
As a sincere man, Aslan’s Muslim beliefs affect his entire life, including his conclusions about Jesus. But this is not being disclosed. “Zealot” is being presented as objective and scholarly history, not as it actually is—an educated Muslim’s opinions about Jesus and the ancient Near East.

“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years. Its conclusions are long-held Islamic claims—namely, that Jesus was a zealous prophet type who didn’t claim to be God, that Christians have misunderstood him, and that the Christian Gospels are not the actual words or life of Jesus but “myth.”

These claims are not new or unique. They are hundreds of years old among Muslims. Sadly, readers who have listened to interviews on NPR, "The Daily Show," Huffington Post or MSNBC may pick up the book expecting an unbiased and historic report on Jesus and first century Jewish culture. (I will let my Jewish friends address Aslan’s statement on MSNBC that, “there were certainly a lot of Jewish terrorists in first century Palestine.”)

As a journalist and author who is Christian I cannot imagine penning a so-called objective biography of Muhammad and then concealing my conflict of interest in national media interviews.

In world history there are no religions more violently and anciently opposed than the crusading, fighting, at times blood-shedding rivals of historic Islam and historic Christianity. Even non-violent Muslims and Christians, like Aslan and myself, understand that we hold aggressively oppositional views—particularly about Jesus. National news coverage of “Zealot” has ignored this conflict of interest.

“Zealot” is written with the self-assumed authority of groundbreaking revelation from a historian. In reality, it is a religious person’s opinion about Jesus—from an adherent to the religion that has been in violent opposition to Christ for 1,400 years. 

Aslan informs us that we cannot trust the Gospel of Mark--because it was written 40 years after Jesus’ death. He then chides us to trust his new book, written almost 2,000 years later.

I believe in Aslan’s right to hold and propagate any opinion. It’s a right that, ironically, Christians do not have in many Muslim countries. 

My concern is that national media coverage be smart and forthright about this conflict of interest, just as it would be if I—a Christian author and pastor—wrote a book about Muhammad.

Pouring praise onto “Zealot” as new information about Jesus, without explaining its author’s devotion to a combatting religion, is blatant bias. This same bias would be unthinkable if the Christian and Muslim roles were reversed.

With its riveting demolition of Jesus, “Zealot” will continue to attract interviews—some from reporters who want to see Jesus deconstructed. Many more interviews will come from reporters who simply don’t understand that Reza Aslan has a horse in this race. He is not an objective observer, but, to use his own word, a zealot, with religious motivation to destroy what Western culture has believed about its central figure for hundreds of years. In many ways, this conflict is larger than Christianity and Islam. It is a conflict of Western and Middle Eastern foundations. These are great and important debates that we should welcome, but let’s be honest about our motivations, positions and conflicts of interest as we dialogue.

Let’s hope reporters in future interviews will, being informed, mention the glaring conflict of interest in this Islamic opinion of Jesus. It is no more objective than my educated views about Muhammad, as a Christian. 
“Zealot” is not new work from a historian. It is a sophisticated presentation of views that Muslims have held about Jesus for more than 1,000 years.

You Might Be at a Liberal College If ...

As students go back to school this month, some will be facing a completely new environment: a college campus. For freshmen, the adjustment is huge: being away from home, fending for yourself when it comes to meals and doing laundry, and balancing the late hours of studying and writing papers with an exploding social life.

Then there’s the actual classroom environment. College is a laboratory of ideas, where countless viewpoints are argued, discussed and evaluated. Conservatives, however, often find themselves in an environment hostile to their opinions. From the things they are learning in class, to who they are learning from, to the groups they join, to the speakers who come to campus, it’s a seemingly never-ending barrage of liberal tripe.

Parents are extremely invested in their children’s education, often emotionally and financially. Yet conservative parents can likely expect three things for their child in those four years: one, people that don’t share their beliefs, whether peers or professors; two, a school administration not terribly concerned with fostering debate; and three, classes that waste their kids’ time and their parents’ money on topics that range from the harebrained to the openly hostile.

COURSES
Just a cursory look at course listings at the top 50 private, public and Ivy League schools, according to U.S. News and World Report, will find countless examples of classes that will make parents ask why they’re sending a child to that school. Take, for instance, a class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill titled “Paying for Green Government: Financing and Implementing Sustainability Initiative.” The course description says the class is “designed to provide an in-depth introduction to planning and funding greener government operations.” It gets better:

“The Environmental Finance Center will lead a participatory workshop that focuses on the finance and policy challenges that arise when local governments consider implementing energy efficiency, green building, fuel efficiency, waste reduction, alternative energy projects, and other sustainability initiatives. Participants will learn how to select green projects for their community; what basic finance tools are available for green projects; how to leverage third-party equity to take advantage of tax credits; and how to apply for guaranteed energy savings contracts. The course will also cover relevant information on how to apply federal stimulus money to greener government.” Solyndra, anyone?

That’s only the start. At Georgetown University, a class in its Women and Gender Studies program titled, “The Breast: Image, Myth and Legend,” is where students will analyze how the breast has been depicted in Western art and culture. If that’s not something your son or daughter should be “exposed” to, maybe show them what’s going on over at Dartmouth College, where they can take a class called “Queer Marriage, Hate Crimes, and Will and Grace: Contemporary Issues in LBGTQ Studies.” In this course, a student will examine, among other things, “how pop culture movies like Basic Instinct, Scary Movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and television’s Will and Grace and Six Feet Under both reflect and shape popular opinion.”
Young America’s Foundation’s study, “The Dirty Dozen,” provides a collection of the worst classes offered by Ivy League, public and private schools. At Harvard University, students can take a course called “Inequality and American Democracy.” The course description talks about how inequalities of wealth and income have grown since the 1970s, and it asks how changing social and economic inequalities influence American democracy.

Conversely, Stanford University took a bold step forward with their “Moral Foundations of Capitalism” course, but it didn’t last long. In that case, the popular class was discontinued because, as the school claimed, they wanted to refocus resources elsewhere. However, the Stanford Review reported Brown University invited the course’s professor to give the same class at their school.

PROFFESSORS
If the courses are skewing Left, the professors are the driving force. Granted, not all professors push their own ideological slant into their curriculum, but recent research backs up the claim that students are dealing with a decidedly liberal plethora of teachers.

In 2007, political scientists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons wrote a paper titled “Social and Political Views of American Professors” that found 34 percent of the professors polled self-identified as liberals, while only 8 percent identified themselves as conservative. An even more recent poll by Young America’s Foundation looked at 284 professors nationwide, and the results mimicked the work by Gross and Simmons: 57 percent of professors identified themselves as liberal and 16 percent as conservative.

One can also look at money given to presidential candidates as a fairly easy indicator of ideology among those in higher education. In the 2012 presidential race, the company with the most employees, employee’s families or company PACs contributing to President Barack Obama was the University of California school system. The massive system’s employees contributed more than $1 million. And it wasn’t the only school on this list. Either the employees, their families, the organization PACs or some combination thereof at Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago all came in the top 20, contributing a combined $3.5 million to President Obama.

Critics will say that contributions and courses being offered are not indicative of how a professor will teach in the classroom or what materials he or she will use to educate the students, but that is hard to defend when liberal professors admit to bias against conservative colleagues. A September 2012 study published in the Perspectives on Psychological Science journal found that, when polling academics and scholars in social psychology, more than a third of the individuals polled would not hire someone who was a conservative.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/elisabethmeinecke/2013/07/24/you-might-be-at-a-liberal-college-if-n1641886

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