Live Within Your Means

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Union Leader on March 21st. 

‘Live within your means’ is message that Croydon sent

To the Editor: Ransom or budget? This was the question posed at the annual Croydon school board meeting. Would we pay the $1.7-plus million demanded by the school district, or would we give the district a budget and instruct them to work with it?

On March 12th, Croydon voters presented a true “live within your means” budget to the school. The 2022 Croydon School budget allocates $10,000 per student, or $800,000 total. Adjusted for inflation, this number exceeds per-pupil spending across the state for most of our history.

Meeting this budget may be challenging, but it represents an incredible opportunity.

Cutting waste on this scale cannot be accomplished through minor changes. Our district can and must reinvent itself to deliver quality education at a sensible cost. Today, countless private and charter schools are meeting this cost target. Not long ago, public schools did the same.

To longtime Croydon residents, shrieks of “impossible”, “can’t be done” and “people don’t want it” are nothing more than unimaginative déjà vu. We started down the path of school choice back in 2006 to this defeatist chorus, sung by many of the same actors.

Today, Croydon school choice is a reality. It is used by many residents, some of whom actively opposed this same choice program only a few years earlier. Croydon forever changed education for the better. We can do it again today.

JIM PESCHKE

Croydon

10 People Who must be voted out of Office

The following ten people must be voted out of office or removed from office as soon as possible. Will today's post result in a knock on my door in the future? The following piece appeared on Judicial Watch.org. Be sure to visit the Judicial Watch.org to see the links within the story.

It is every American's duty to preserve liberty, you must educate and wake up your friends and neighbors. Go to the Judicial Watch.org website, print off this sheet and share it with as many people as possible and share it with people on your email list.

Quote of the Day - "I cannot accept, your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." ~ Lord Acton

Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009

Contact Information:
Press Office 202-646-5172, ext 305

Washington, DC
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.

2. Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: "The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…" The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.

3. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank's intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.



4. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: "Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned 'full details' of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG." Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed "household help" ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the "Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington" list.

5. Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton's scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder's former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder's controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder's politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.

6. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named "Senate Candidate A" in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat. According to Reuters: "Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich -- later charged with trying to sell Obama's Senate seat -- at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor's aides about his desire to be appointed." Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.

7. President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration "lowlights" from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's scheme to sell the President's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President's bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control — through fiat and threats — large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: "The administration's central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption." Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors — this is Obama's "ethics" record — and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency.

8. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2009 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker's 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA's use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)

9. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks -- tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA's offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, "Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills." When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, "cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file." The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha's nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: "Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military."

10. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow "forgot" about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making "campaign contributions" to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: "The reigning member of Congress' top tax committee is apparently 'wrangling' other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles...Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him." Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That's why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional colleagues.

Why Do Al Gore and Barack Obama Continue to Push Global Warming?

There is 10 trillion dollars annually up for grabs. The following piece appeared on IBD editorials.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

The $10 Trillion Climate Fraud

Posted 04/28/2010 07:11 PM ET

Al Gore is co-founder of an investment management firm that is now the fifth-largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.

Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore's appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation's philanthropic leaders.

"Time's running out (on climate change)," Gore told them. "We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together."

Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.



The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide." Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn't that special?

Few Americans have heard of either entity. The Joyce Foundation was originally the financial nest egg of a widow whose family had made millions in the now out-of-favor lumber industry.

After her death, the foundation was run by philanthropists who increasingly dedicated their giving to liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.

Currently, CCX members agree to a voluntary but legally binding agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.

The CCX provides the mechanism in trading the very pollution permits and carbon offsets the administration's cap-and-trade proposals would impose by government mandate.

Thanks to Fox News' Glenn Beck, we have learned a lot about CCX, not the least of which is that its founder, Richard Sandor, says he knew Obama well back in the day when the Joyce Foundation awarded money to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where Sandor was a research professor.

Sandor estimates that climate trading could be "a $10 trillion dollar market." It could very well be, if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law, making energy prices skyrocket, and as companies buy and sell permits to emit those six "greenhouse" gases.

So lucrative does this market appear, it attracted the attention of London-based Generation Investment Management, which purchased a stake in CCX and is now the fifth-largest shareholder.

As we noted last year, Gore is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets of dubious value that let rich polluters continue to pollute with a clear conscience.

Other founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor bought a 10% stake on the prospect of making a great deal of money for itself. That investor was Goldman Sachs, now under the gun for selling financial instruments it knew were doomed to fail.

The actual mechanism for trading on the exchange was purchased and patented by none other than Franklin Raines, who was CEO of Fannie Mae at the time.

Raines profited handsomely to the tune of some $90 million by buying and bundling bad mortgages that led to the collapse of the American economy. His interest in climate trading is curious until one realizes cap-and-trade would make housing costlier as well.

Amazingly, none of these facts came up at Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs' activities, which may be nothing more than Ross Perot's famous "gorilla dust," meant to distract us from the real issues.

The climate trading scheme being stitched together here will do more damage than Goldman Sachs, AIG and Fannie Mae combined. But it will bring power and money to its architects.

It is our Duty to Preserve Liberty - Manchester Tax Day Tea Party

April 15, 2010 – MANCHESTER TAX DAY TEA PARTY
Save this date for a local event right in downtown Manchester in Victory Park from 5:30 PM to dusk.

Quote of the Day -


Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Sir Winston Churchill

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

It is our Duty to Preserve Liberty - Tea Party Express April 13th

Samuel Adams,
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."

TEA PARTY EXPRESS COMING TO CONCORD NH ON APRIL 13THShare
Yesterday at 22:58
The Tea Party Express III: Just Vote Them Out! Tour
The Tea Party Express Tour will visit Concord on April 13th!
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE

SPECIAL GUESTS
VICTORIA JACKSON, FORMERLY OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
JAMES LABRIOLA, FORMER CO-STAR OF HOME IMPROVEMENT

AND THE
ENTIRE TPX STARS INCLUDING
ANDY CRAMER, MARK WILLIAMS, LLOYD MARCUS AND MORE...!



AND
US SENATE CANDIDATES

REPUBLICAN US SENATE CANDIDATE KELLY AYOTTE * REPUBLICAN US SENATE CANDIDATE JIM BENDER
REPUBLICAN US SENATE CANDIDATE OVIDE LAMONTAGNE

WHERE: One Eagle Square, Main Street (across from the State House), Concord, NH
WHEN: Tuesday, April 13th at 4 PM
WHY: To Tell Congress and The White House: "Enough!"
RSVP to: David Tille at 603-369-0272, Tilleco@aol.com or Pam Smith at 603-661-0341, curranpam@hotmail.com
Join us for the biggest Tea Party Express national tour, www.TeaPartyExpress.Org to date. Starting March 27, 2010 with a Mega Rally in Searchlight, NV (hometown to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) we will take this message across the nation all the way to the White House in Washington, D.C. on April 15th:

“You, the politicians in Washington, have failed We The People with your bailouts, out-of-control deficit spending, government takeovers of sectors of the economy, Cap & Trade, government-run health care, and higher taxes! If you thought we were just going to quietly go away, or that this tea party movement would be just a passing fad, you were mistaken".

"The Tea Party Express is on it's way to New Hampshire! Join us in taking our country back!"


www.TeaPartyExpress.Org

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

It is our Duty to Preserve Liberty - Manchester Tax Day Tea Party

April 15, 2010 – MANCHESTER TAX DAY TEA PARTY
Save this date for a local event right in downtown Manchester in Victory Park from 5:30 PM to dusk.

Quote of the Day -

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Sir Winston Churchill

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

If it is not Good Enough for Them it is not Good Enough for Me

The following piece appeared in the Washington Times.

Liar, liar pants on fire.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.




EDITORIAL: No Obamacare for ObamaDemocrats exempt themselves from socialist medicine
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Obama declared that the new health care law "is going to be affecting every American family." Except his own, of course.

The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well. A weasel-worded definition of "staff" includes only the members' personal staff in the new system; the committee staff that drafted the legislation opted themselves out. Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole. Anyway, the law is intended to affect "ordinary Americans," according to Vice President Joe Biden (who - being a heartbeat away from the presidency - also is not covered), not Washington insiders.



Mr. Obama frequently tossed around the talking point that the new law gave people the same type of coverage as Congress enjoyed. In his March 20 health care pep talk to wavering Democrats on Capitol Hill, the president said one of the advantages of the health care legislation was that "people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition." At yesterday's signing ceremony, Mr. Obama said Americans will be "part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They'll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves." But the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.

Last year, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, spearheaded efforts to have all Americans included in the plan, but he ran into heavy opposition from unions representing federal workers - the same unions that were pro-Obamacare stalwarts. In September, the Senate approved a scaled-down amendment that covered members of Congress and their staff. When this provision later emerged from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office, the leadership and committee staff loophole had appeared. A move in December by Mr. Grassley and Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to close this loophole and to extend the law to senior members of the executive branch - including the president, vice president and Cabinet members - was blocked by Senate Democratic leaders.

Mr. Grassley has introduced an amendment to the Senate health care reconciliation bill that also will apply the law to the upper tier of the executive branch and all Capitol Hill staffers, but it remains to be seen whether Democrats will let this measure move forward.

The special exemptions slipped into the health care law are another example of how those statists who rule consider themselves a privileged class, imposing burdens on the country that they will not accept themselves. Candidates for office in 2010 should pledge to close these and other loopholes in the law that impose unequal burdens and create exclusive privileged classes in America. Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama's explanation why if his "historic" health care law is so great for America, it's not good enough for him and his family.

Is your Child Being Asked to be a Brown Shirt?

Is your Child Being Asked to be a Brown Shirt? Oops I mean is your child being recruited for Organizing for America for Obama at their public school?

The following piece appears at Atlas Shrugs. You must visit their website to see all the great links and the forms being handed out at school.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: OBAMA ORGANIZING IN HIGH SCHOOL

An Atlas reader has a student in the eleventh grade in an Ohio High School. Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America.

Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America is (and I quote) recruiting in our high schools to "build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda" ............of national socialism.



This is incredible. And evil. Suffer the little children -- enlisted like SS youth. This is no accident. Obama is poisoning our public school system. He acts as if it's his own private breeding farm. Once again academic learning and achievement is hopelessly abandoned, and supplanted by radical leftist activism by the leftwing Alinksy inculcators in the perverse public school system.

Remember the children singing heil Obama songs? The Obama youth regiment brigade.

How about being forced to listen to his creepy speech?

During the election he had those freaky kids parades.

And video after video of kids singing brainwashed tunes of Obama praise here and here.

Atlas had The Obama Childrens Book -- illustrations show rainbows, sunbeams & an aura around Obama. Rainbows and moonbeams -- got that?

Then the goosestepping kids for Obama -- a school project. And now this, high school pods for O.

And what will these "interns" be force fed? The mother's milk of the left - anti-war agitation, anti-capitalism, Marx, Lenin, Ayers, Ellie Light activism, LGBT agenda promotion, global warming, pro-jihad, and illegal immigration. For starters.

This is about the Teachers Unions not about Education

The following piece appears on the American Thinker. I could not have said it better myself and agree with the sentiments.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


January 27, 2010
Obama's education increases to benefit teachers' unions
Ed Lasky

Barack Obama will propose major increases in funding for education in his State of The union speech tonight, according to reports. Federal education spending will be set to rise by at least 6.2 percent, with much of the funds flowing to elementary and secondary education but also will include boosts in higher-education grants and community funding. This is politically appealing (politicians use kids for their campaigns as companies use animals to sell products, or movie tickets). They are tools to promote an agenda-to reward and motivate a super-special Democratic interest group. Who can be against spending money to improve the future of our kids and country?



In reality, this spending will flow into the pockets of one of the most important special interest groups in the nation: teachers and their unions (led by the National Education Association that hides its union status by styling itself an "association" but also by the American Federation of Teachers that also camouflages its union status). Teachers are often the "free" labor that fuels campaigns: teachers man the phones, hand out the pamphlets, knock on doors, invest funds in campaigns, and serve as the all important delegates at Democratic nominating conventions One-tenth of all delegates to Democratic conventions are teachers' union members-including principals and administrators.

One of the many ways that Obama has helped unions is by killing the regulations that require unions to report on how their members' dues are spent. A fair speculation is that much of the spending will go towards electing their sugar daddies and not towards our children.

One of the prime sources of states fiscal collapse across the nation are the dollars flowing to teachers and the administrators who "supervise" and "manage" them. The golden pensions that have been bestowed on them by politicians have been time bombs that are beginning to explode and like a string of black cat firecrackers will continue to explode for years to come.
Teachers can often retire at a young age, with pensions artificially inflated by "spiking" their salaries upwards the last couple of years of their employment (pensions are often based on an average of the salaries of the last few years of service). They are guaranteed by law. Taxpayer dollars flowing to teachers are recycled into the pockets of campaigns run by politicians.

This is a waste of funds. The money has been shown to have very little if any correlation to educational achievement. Education spending per child in Washington, D.C, for just one example, are quite high and achievement is quite low. Of course, politicians could care less about such foreign concepts as return on investment. If they did, they would fund charter schools (that they have killed in Washington) and voucher programs. But it is more than merely a poor investment - it is a redundant one.

The so-called stimulus bill already has funneled $100 billion dollars into "education", supposedly meant to prevent layoffs (which it probably has - but how about teachers taking some pay cuts or trimming their pensions) and to spur reform. The best reform would be pay for performance, vouchers, and charter schools. We have seen precious little of that so far and it would be a fair bet we will see little of that going forward. But with Democrats facing political problems they have to ensure that one of their key political bases remains well-fed and in their corner - if not our kids' corners.

Schools Can Never Get Enough Money and Call it What it is Please.

When you pay your property taxes to the schools that is not the only place the money is coming from, it is also coming from your income taxes and your state taxes. But for the greedy people in the schools that is not enough they want more money. For example from corporations, schools plead to corporations that they don't have enough money. With that comes programs like the box top fund, Campbell soap labels and programs that WalMart and Target have which give schools even more funds. Anyone ever have to sell candy bars for your schools? Yep more money because they don't have enough (sarcasm). Then there are grants and lets call federal grants what they really are YOUR TAX DOLLARS.



School funds really need to be investigated to make sure they are being spent properly. Rich Conely did a great investigative report into the slush funds at my old high school. It turns out some of the money was used by some of the administrators for themselves.

The following piece appears in the Union Leader.




Quote of the Day -
"Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good, but if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell." -- Clint W. Murchison , Texas financier
My interpretation of this quote is that money should not be given to the government but should stay with the person that has earned the money. When you pile all the money in Washington DC or with government programs like public education it starts to stink.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


School district plans to apply for Race to Top funds
Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010



MANCHESTER – The school district is moving ahead with plans to apply for federal Race to the Top money.

School board members voted last night to take the next step in the application process, authorizing Mayor Ted Gatsas to sign a memorandum of understanding.

Superintendent Tom Brennan said he has been spending most of his working hours preparing the district's bid for the money, which is being made available by the Obama administration. The state is hoping to receive between $20 million and $75 million, and city officials have estimated Manchester's share could amount to between $3 million and $6 million.

The money would benefit five Manchester elementary schools: Beech Street, Parker-Varney, Henry Wilson, Gossler Park and Bakersville.

Your Govenment Hacks Pensions our safe but is your IRA or 401Ksafe?

NOPE! How is that for Hope and Change? The following piece appears on the WND website.

Quote of the Day - "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have," Gerald R. Ford in an address to a joint session of Congress on August 12, 1974

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Now Obama wants your IRA


The Democrat version of Hope and Change is very simple: You get the hope, we keep the change.

Changes are afoot for your IRA, SEP or 401(k). The Democrats have emptied the public piggy bank, petitioned the Federal Reserve for zero-interest loans, and now they're coming for what's left of your retirement.

Of course, their motive is compassion. You listened to the evil Wall Street stockbrokers and investment bankers (you know, the ones that donate so heavily to Democratic candidates), and now your retirement fund has plummeted in value, while your home is worth less than you owe. But fear not! We have a plan.



It's really very simple. Just give us the money. In return, we will give you our best promise to pay. (That would be Treasury IOUs. You know – the same ones they've already "invested" your Social Security payments in while they've spent them as general revenue, and which now have to be repaid by ordinary taxpayers – which would be you.)

Now, why would big ol' Uncle Sam want my poor little IRA? Could it be that somebody in Washington, D.C., knows the market is not going to let them borrow enough money – at an interest rate they can afford – to fulfill their grandiose plans for Utopia on the Potomac?

Could it be that China has already told Obama, "Thanks, but no thanks. We already own enough Treasuries. You can't afford what you want, and we're not going to pay for it."

Could it be that government prognosticators have looked at the soggy green tea leaves in Obama's cup and concluded that Jimmy Carter's 17.5 percent home mortgages are already "in the pipeline"? (That is what I paid on my first condominium mortgage. "Welcome back from overseas, soldier. And thank you for your service. Care for a peanut?")

To read the rest of the story go to the WND website.

You be the Judge. Liar or not a liar?

"I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." Barack Obama Liar, Liar Pants on Fire.


Last year you as a taxpayer had an additional standard deduction, up to $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples, for state and local property taxes (section 63) (Personal Tax Incentives), this year this deduction no longer exists.




In my book that is a tax increase how about yours? Don't forget Newport and the SAU want to raise the Croydon school budget 29% over last year. Do you have the money to pay these extra taxes?

To read about other tax increases go to the Heritage Foundation's website.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Healthcare Bills Unconstitutional

I will remind my readers that although this site primarily deals with education reform and school taxes the assault to our freedom and the tax impact of the current Administration's policies can not be ignored.

The healthcare Bills are unconstitutional. Please take the time out of your day and call your representatives and senators and tell them to vote no on this healthcare legislation. Real reform involves opening up individuals to by insurance from any company not just a few and torte reform. Real reform will revolve around a reduction of mandates not more mandates.

The following piece appears in the Wall Street Journal.


Quote of the Day - "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." --James Madison


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional

If the government can mandate the purchase of insurance, it can do anything.

By ORRIN G. HATCH, J. KENNETH BLACKWELL AND KENNETH A. KLUKOWSKI

President Obama's health-care bill is now moving toward final passage. The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional. Legally speaking, this legislation creates a target-rich environment. We will focus on three of its more glaring constitutional defects.

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress's powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.




Congress has many times stretched this power to the breaking point, exceeding even the expanded version of the commerce power established by the Supreme Court since the Great Depression. It is one thing, however, for Congress to regulate economic activity in which individuals choose to engage; it is another to require that individuals engage in such activity. That is not a difference in degree, but instead a difference in kind. It is a line that Congress has never crossed and the courts have never sanctioned.

In fact, the Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez (1995) rejected a version of the commerce power so expansive that it would leave virtually no activities by individuals that Congress could not regulate. By requiring Americans to use their own money to purchase a particular good or service, Congress would be doing exactly what the court said it could not do.

Some have argued that Congress may pass any legislation that it believes will serve the "general welfare." Those words appear in Article I of the Constitution, but they do not create a free-floating power for Congress simply to go forth and legislate well. Rather, the general welfare clause identifies the purpose for which Congress may spend money. The individual mandate tells Americans how they must spend the money Congress has not taken from them and has nothing to do with congressional spending.

A second constitutional defect of the Reid bill passed in the Senate involves the deals he cut to secure the votes of individual senators. Some of those deals do involve spending programs because they waive certain states' obligation to contribute to the Medicaid program. This selective spending targeted at certain states runs afoul of the general welfare clause. The welfare it serves is instead very specific and has been dubbed "cash for cloture" because it secured the 60 votes the majority needed to end debate and pass this legislation.

A third constitutional defect in this ObamaCare legislation is its command that states establish such things as benefit exchanges, which will require state legislation and regulations. This is not a condition for receiving federal funds, which would still leave some kind of choice to the states. No, this legislation requires states to establish these exchanges or says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services will step in and do it for them. It renders states little more than subdivisions of the federal government.

This violates the letter, the spirit, and the interpretation of our federal-state form of government. Some may have come to consider federalism an archaic annoyance, perhaps an amusing topic for law-school seminars but certainly not a substantive rule for structuring government. But in New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997), the Supreme Court struck down two laws on the grounds that the Constitution forbids the federal government from commandeering any branch of state government to administer a federal program. That is, by drafting and by deliberate design, exactly what this legislation would do.

The federal government may exercise only the powers granted to it or denied to the states. The states may do everything else. This is why, for example, states may have authority to require individuals to purchase health insurance but the federal government does not. It is also the reason states may require that individuals purchase car insurance before choosing to drive a car, but the federal government may not require all individuals to purchase health insurance.

This hardly exhausts the list of constitutional problems with this legislation, which would take the federal government into uncharted political and legal territory. Analysts, scholars and litigators are just beginning to examine the issues we have raised and other issues that may well lead to future litigation.

America's founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi legislation to take control of the American health-care system is the most sweeping and intrusive federal program ever devised. If the federal government can do this, then it can do anything, and the limits on government power that our liberty requires will be more myth than reality.

Mr. Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah, is a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Blackwell is a senior fellow with the Family Research Council and a professor at Liberty University School of Law. Mr. Klukowski is a fellow and senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.

Look for Fees and Taxes to go up in Your City

According to the American City & County website city budgets will be in trouble through 2010. Well that is a big no duh! Will they cut spending? Heck no! Expect more fees and property taxes to go. God forbid the public sector oligarchies across the Country give a little.

Pretty soon the government is going to put us in money machines with the money we earn throughout the year. What you can grab you keep, what you can't grab the government keeps.



I am grateful that we live in a town where the selectmen are serious about controlling spending. Now only if we had a school district that would do the same.

Cathy Peschke
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Quote of the Day - A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? ~ Marcus Tillius Cicero

NLC survey: Cities' financial distress will continue beyond 2010
Sep 3, 2009 1:40 PM

The effects of the recession will continue to drag down city budgets beyond 2010, according to a survey by the Washington-based National League of Cities (NLC). The situation reflects the typical 18-month time lag seen in the effects that economic shifts have on city budgets that results from the collection of tax revenues only at certain times of the year, according to NLC.



The report, "City Fiscal Conditions in 2009," found that cities face significant budget gaps this year because of a 1.3 percent decline of income tax and a 3.8 percent decrease in sales tax collections. Those taxes are typically the earliest source of city revenue to decline as job losses increase and consumer purchases decrease, according to NLC. Property taxes, which make up the bulk of city revenue nationwide, are beginning to slow, growing only 1.6 percent as real property assessments are adjusted to reflect declining housing values.

To read the rest of the story go to the American City & County website.

Where is the Porkulous Being Spent in New Hampshire?

Read it and weep. Look how your tax dollars are being spent. Who will pay it off? Your children, your grandchildren and/or your great grand children?

$340,920 for research to answer the question "How does changing seasonality affect the capacity of Arctic streams networks to influence nutrient fluxes from the landscape to the ocean?"

$772,709 to examine the "use of genome enabled tools to understand symbiosis?"

The state received $39 million in regular educational funding, $31 million in stimulus Title I funds and $51 million for special ed and 3 to 5 year old program, $3.2 million in educational technology, etc., etc.

To top it off Newport and the SAU want to increase the amount Croydon residents pay by 29%. Does the greed of educrats ever end?

The following piece appears in the Union Leader.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Quote of the Day - "A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." - George Santayana

The follow piece appeared on the Union Leader.


Stimulus proves to be a windfall for schools

By JOHN DISTASO
Senior Political Reporter
Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009



CONCORD – First of two parts

Ten months after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was enacted, where is the stimulus money going?

In New Hampshire, much has gone to projects you might have expected -- road paving and repair, for example, and extra unemployment benefits.

Some is going to college students and local school districts in big aid programs -- recipients you might think worthy but might not equate with emergency spending to spur the economy out of a deep recession.



And significant millions of your tax dollars are going for things you might not have expected to be part of a stimulus plan at all.

Did you think, for instance, that $340,920 in stimulus funds would go to research aimed at answering the question "How does changing seasonality affect the capacity of Arctic streams networks to influence nutrient fluxes from the landscape to the ocean?"


Or that $772,709 would examine the "use of genome enabled tools to understand symbiosis?"

Or that $693 in economic stimulus money would buy a hot-food counter at the Lamprey River Elementary School in Raymond?

The federal government says it paid out more than $414 million in stimulus money to public and private entities in New Hampshire as of Dec. 1 and that an announced total of $1.4 billion will be available to those entities by the time the program ends in mid-July 2011.

According to the state Office of Economic Stimulus, the stimulus program has provided nearly $140 million for roads and other transportation-related items and more than $120 million for energy- and environment-related projects, with the biggest chunk of the stimulus-fund pie -- more than $160 million -- going to education.

Public schools

In addition to $39 million in regular funding, according to the state Department of Education, scores of New Hampshire school districts have received a combined total of nearly $31 million in stimulus money through the federal Title I program. According to the federal Department of Education, the additional funding "provides financial assistance to (local education agencies) and schools with high numbers of poor children."

More than $51 million in stimulus money is targeted to supplement about the same amount of existing federal funding for special education, according to the state Department of Education. The federal government says that money is to ensure that "children with disabilities, including children ages 3 through 5, have access to a free appropriate public education to meet each child's unique needs and prepare him or her for further education, employment and independent living."

Additionally, the federal Department of Education has sent New Hampshire $3.2 million in education technology grants, $1.9 million for vocational rehabilitation, $323,000 in independent-living grants, and $190,000 to assist school districts in helping homeless children get to and from school and perform well.

Kathleen Murphy, director of instruction for the state education department, said these millions are worthy expenditures of taxpayer money.

She said all Title I and IDEA grants require applications that meet "the specific criteria they are targeted to help, and, when they get it, the school districts must focus it on students who are low-income."

Manchester, for instance, received $5.9 million in Title I and $4.4 million in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding as of Dec. 1, according to the state stimulus office.

The city's superintendent of schools, Thomas Brennan, said the money allowed "some personnel hires," including 20 kindergarten teachers, seven high school and middle school assistant principals, and seven elementary school principals, "all working with specialized students under IDEA."

Brennan said the district hired three transition counselors at the high school level, also under IDEA, to support "specifically identified students."

He said the district also used stimulus money for "additional training for teachers in the development of individual education plans."

Murphy said she understands that the stimulus program is controversial, but said, "It is unprecedented for us to do the kind of work for the kids in New Hampshire that we've been able to do. It is terrific."

Broad definition

But these are not the types of programs that the most Americans expected stimulus funds to be used for, said David Williams, vice president of the national watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste.

"When people think of stimulus, they think of jobs being created quickly," Williams said. "Fifty people out there pouring cement -- that's what people originally think of a stimulus bill trying to do."

Little known to the average taxpayer is that, according to the federal government, the stimulus has a dual purpose: "To stimulate the economy in the short term and invest in education and other essential public services to ensure the long-term economic health of our nation."

The broad heading "invest in education" has resulted in some intriguing uses.

According to public state documents:

-- $68,590 was awarded to the Henniker Youth Theatre group, more than twice the amount it usually raises privately.

"We had a great time with it," said director Thomas Dunn, who said the program was able to double its summer minimum-wage counseling staff from four to eight 18- to 24-year-old actors/singers and expand into Hillsborough. He said the stimulus money headed off a planned hike in fees for participants.

"It was just wonderful," he said, looking forward to applying for more stimulus money next year.

-- In Manchester, besides the millions used for Title I and IDEA, there was $35,008 for a pot washer and $9,375 for a freezer at the Beech Street School.

-- In Rumney, $1,949 was awarded for a hot-food table and shelf at the Russell Elementary School.

-- Peterborough collected $539 in stimulus funds for a heater and $949 for a freezer at the South Meadow School.

Murphy said such funding, under the federal school lunch equipment assistance program, gives districts "a chance to replace equipment that is sometimes ancient and can be costly."

And in Manchester, superintendent Brennan said the Beech Street School's walk-in freezer, for instance, was necessary to replace an older piece of equipment.

.

Tomorrow: Much of federal stimulus money targeted for education has gone to public elementary, middle and secondary schools, but large grants also are going to the state's universities -- public and private -- and to their students.

The Greatest Country in the World does not have Enough Skilled Workers

How is it that the greatest Country in the world does not have enough skilled workers to meet the needs of employers? We spend between 90,000 to 168,000 tax dollars to educate one child in the K-12 system. How is this not enough money to adequately prepare a child for college so he can get a degree to prepare him for a skilled job in America? Perhaps this is a key to the answer.

The following piece appears on foxnews.com.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Even as Layoffs Persist, Some Good Jobs Hard to Fill
Associated Press
Sunday, October 04, 2009

In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits.

Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs.



Ask Steve Jones, a hospital recruiter in Indianapolis who's struggling to find qualified nurses, pharmacists and MRI technicians. Or Ed Baker, who's looking to hire at a U.S. Energy Department research lab in Richland, Wash., for $60,000 each.

Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering.

Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.


The mismatch between job opening and job seeker is likely to persist even as the economy strengthens and begins to add jobs. It also will make it harder for the unemployment rate, now at 9.8 percent, to drop down to a healthier level.

"Workers are going to have to find not just a new company, but a new industry," said Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director of Moody's Economy.com. "A fifty-year-old guy who has been screwing bolts into the side of a car panel is not going to be able to become a health care administrator overnight."

It's become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training — like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms — struggle even more to fill jobs.

The trend has been intensified by the speed of the job market decline, Koropeckyj said. The nation has lost a net 7.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Yet it can take a year or more for a laid-off worker to gain the training and education to switch industries. That means health care jobs are going unfilled even as laid-off workers in the auto, construction or financial services industries seek work.

"So we have this army of the unemployed" without the necessary skills, Koropeckyj said.

Sitting in his office overlooking the Clarian Health complex, Jones leafed through some of the applications he's received. One came from a hotel worker who listed his experience as, "Cleaning rooms; make beds, clean tubes, vacuum." Another was from a fitness instructor whose past duties included signing up gym members.

Many of the jobless seem to be applying for any opening they see, Jones said.

"You just don't have the supply to fill those particular positions," he said of the more than 200 "critical" jobs he needs to fill at Clarian, including nurses, pharmacists, MRI technicians and ultrasound technologists.

Contributing to the problem is that in a tough economy, employers take longer to assess applicants and make a hiring decision. By contrast, "in a healthier economy, you don't wait around for the perfect person," said Lawrence Katz, a professor of labor economics at Harvard.

To be sure, employers in most sectors of the economy are having no trouble filling jobs — especially those, like receptionists, hotel managers or retail clerks, that don't require specialized skills.

But as more jobs vanish for good, the gap between the unemployed and the requirements of today's job openings is widening. Throughout the economy, an average of six people now compete for each job opening — the highest ratio on government records dating to 2000.

Sifting through applications for jobs at the U.S. Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state, Baker said he sees "people that have worked in other areas, and now they're trying to apply that skill set to the energy arena."

"Unfortunately, that's not the skill set we need."

The jobs opened up after the lab received federal stimulus money to research energy-efficient buildings. Baker needs employees with backgrounds in city management and a grasp of the building codes needed to design energy-efficient buildings. Yet even a salary of $140,000 for senior researchers isn't drawing enough qualified applicants.

Baker said he's getting resumes from well-educated people, including some from information technology workers who want to enter the green-energy field. But he said it could take a year to get an unqualified employee up to speed on all the building codes they need to know.

"We're running out of people to train" new employees, he said. "We simply cannot attract enough (qualified) people."

The lab has hired a recruiter for the first time to fill dozens of positions. Rob Dromgoole, the recruiter, is going so far as to make cold calls to college professors. He's also visiting academic conferences to pitch jobs.

The trend has left jobseekers like Joe Sladek anxious and frustrated. Sladek's 23 years in the auto industry haven't helped his efforts to land a job in alternative energy since he was laid off a year ago.

As a quality control engineer for auto supplier Dura Automotive Systems Inc. in Mancelona, Mich., he made about $75,000. Sladek would review technical reports to make sure the factory's auto parts matched the specifications of clients like General Motors and Toyota.

He hoped to parlay that experience into a similar job at a factory making windmill blades or solar panels. Several factories were hiring, and Sladek landed a few interviews. But he never heard back.

At PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago, there's a shortage of qualified applicants for management jobs in tax services, auditing and consulting. Rod Adams, the company's recruiting leader, said huge pay packages on Wall Street siphoned off lots of business school graduates earlier this decade.

"That made our pipeline more scarce," he said.

Some of the openings at PricewaterhouseCoopers pay around $100,000 and don't even require graduate degrees — just specialized accounting certifications or other credentials.

Formerly successful bankers or hedge fund managers don't necessarily qualify.

"We've gotten a lot more resumes, but they haven't been the right people," Adams said.

Something to Ponder - If it Walks Like a Duck

I have never been a good writer. I always thought someday I would like to write a book, but the fact is I am a crappy writer. I went to public schools and yes people in public schools do learn to write but I never was required to write much in public school or when I went to college or grad school. But I digress, the piece below is not only well written but well thought out. The following piece appears on the American Thinker. I of course agree with the sentiments of the writer.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Sympathy for the Devil
By Robin of Berkeley
October 01, 2009

How concerned should we be about Obama? Is he a potential dictator with a weird cult following who could destroy this country?

To put it more bluntly, does Obama have the potential for inflicting evil on us? Or, if he's a puppet, are the ones holding the strings malevolent?

These may be the most crucial and urgent questions of our times. Is Obamaphobia a legitimate reaction to an angry president with a vendetta, surrounded by psycho czars? Or is the imagination running amok?

Given that I have a stack of books on my desk about evil, let's take a look at how the experts define it.

Dante: Evil is the "sins of the wolf;" an inner black hole so vast that nothing will fill it.



Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: "Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, and destroy innocent others -- or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behavior."

Philosopher Hannah Arendt: She coined the term the "banality of evil," after Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann was pronounced normal by psychiatrists.

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: "Evil people are chronic scapegoaters."

St. Augustine: Evil is "an essential nothingness."

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "An absence of light; shade; no essence."

Goethe: Evil is "to render invisible another human consciousness."

Baudelaire: "The Devil's cleverest wile is to convince us he doesn't exist."

John Milton: "A tortured soul who makes others dance to the music of his own despair."

But to discern evil, we need to go beyond the guidance of the experts. We must decide with our own eyes, ears, and nose, whether a person passes the "stink test."

Humans possess an extraordinary sixth sense -- our intuition. St. Jerome called intuition, "synderesis:" an infallible God-given ability to distinguish between good and evil.

Yet, we're told not to trust our gut because it's not nice to be judgmental. In these politically correct days, where everybody is good, even terrorists, we're supposed to dismiss our intuition, shove it underground, lest we offend anyone.

Thus, if Obamaphobia gives us insomnia, headaches, or the heebie jeebies, it's all in our heads. We're being paranoid.

But isn't this how the Soviets dealt with dissidents? The leaders labeled them paranoid, and then had their fiendish psychiatrists forcibly drug, shock, and hospitalize them.

As the expression goes: you're not paranoid if someone is following you.

Criminologist Gavin De Becker, in his seminal work, The Gift of Fear, urges us to never ignore our intuition. Most of the time, victims sense that their attacker is a threat but ignore this inner knowing.

De Becker's wise words:

Can you imagine an animal reacting to the gift of fear the way some people do, with annoyance and disdain instead of attention? No animal in the wild, suddenly overcome with fear, would expend any of its mental energy thinking, "It's probably nothing." . . . We, in contrast to every other creature in nature, choose not to explore -- and even ignore -- survival signals.

I think that deep down most of us know who is good and who is evil -- who will bring joy and who will usher in disaster.

Because many of us have been touched by evil at some point in our lives. And it changes you; it pierces your soul. Because you behold something so startling it leaves you breathless: that there are people, sometimes in your own family, who wish you harm.

People ask me how I could go from Left to Right so quickly, and I've written about the main factors. But, now that I contemplate evil, I realize I left out the pivotal reason.

It's because I saw evil up close and personal starting from a young age. And when you're exposed to danger when you're little, and you don't push it away or blame yourself, something essential in you is altered; you're able to see what many others conceal.

I saw this darkness first in the devilish laughter of my brother when he realized we were alone in the house and he could terrorize me.

And I saw it again in my middle school, where the liberal experiment of forced busing unleashed a torrent of hate and mayhem. When roars of "f---cking white bitch," and assaults and fondling were as commonplace as English class.

And after I moved to squalid New York City in the late 70's, and lived through the reign of Mayor Dinkins, I saw it in the uncontrolled assaults on the citizen's bodies and souls.

I saw it on the streets of Berkeley when, on a perfect, blue sky day, a man smiled that same devilish grin before he mugged me, breaking my nose and blackening my eyes.

And when a friend glossed over my mugging because the assailant was black ("He's a victim too,"), I saw evil there.

I've seen it professionally in the face of the man who molested all five of his children; and in the visage of his wife, who chose to stay with him and was pregnant once again.

And now that I'm writing for American Thinker, I see it in some of the trolls, although not all of them. Some are just jerky people who write drivel like, "I just wasted five minutes of my life," and "You're a fake."

No, I'm talking about the people who post comments aimed not at disagreeing or offering an alternative viewpoint. They're designed to destroy my humanity.

They can't defend Obama, so they go after me. They call me paranoid or narcissist. They accuse me of throwing my dead parents under the bus. Or of betraying my Jewish ancestors by embracing other religions, like Christianity.

Or this bile: the person who wrote that she/he's glad I'm writing because it's therapeutic, since obviously I'm psychologically disturbed and could be a danger to society.

Fortunately I'm a therapist so I know who these people are. I can diagnose them a mile away. I've worked with them before, although each time, they chill me to the bone.

Having some hate spewed in my direction, I think of Sarah Palin and the wilding she endured.

And I think she resigned because, when her church was torched, her body ogled and threatened, and her children debased, she looked into the face of evil.

She saw something so dark and blood curdling that she did what any God fearing, God loving person would do: she put up her hands, yelled "Stop," and got out of there as fast as she could.

Because evil is the most dangerous of the toxins. It can harden, and infect, and change a person before he or she knows it. Evil desecrates the places inside that are holy and sacred.

More and more, each day, I smell the stench of wickedness. It's omnipresent in our government, and it's spreading like wildfire throughout the land, threatening everyone in its path.

M. Scott Peck so eloquently captures the consequences of evil in high places: "The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society."

We have a man who has been privileged with the greatest honor, the Presidency, and what does he do? Does he demonstrate an ounce of gratitude or humility?

No, he betrays us in the most profound way possible: by not protecting and defending us.

Obama is doing to the American people just what his caregivers did to him when they dragged him around like a rag doll, and exposed him to a pervert like Frank Marshall Davis. Now Obama's a rage doll who's throwing us to the wolves.

People claim Obama isn't a serious threat because his personality is not like Mussolini or Che. He doesn't have the fire in his belly to be a true dictator.

But I will share with you a surprising truth I learned after working in the child abuse field: severe neglect is even more traumatic than serious physical abuse (not sexual abuse, though). People can be mortally wounded by crimes of omission.

Abuse is terrible but at least the abuser cares enough to pay attention, to know the child is alive. With neglect, the people who should care, don't give a damn; leaving the child abandoned and unguarded in a perilous world.

What worries me the most about Obama is this: the part of him that should want to shield us from harm seems chillingly absent.

The economy is tanking -- Obama laughs. We are accumulating crippling debt -- he and the other Democrats go on a spending spree.

Millions take to the street for a peaceful 9/12 march. He doesn't notice. We oppose the government controlling our lives, especially health care, but he rams legislation down our throats anyway.

Our allies have started to realize that Obama doesn't care about them either. He snubs Gordon Brown, returns a statue of Winston Churchill (how disturbing is this?), and insults the Brits with DVDs and iPods. He betrays the Poles and the Czechs, and leaves Israel hanging from a limb.

Obama does have sympathy for the devils, though, the Chavez's and Castro's of the world. Maybe he views them as brothers, fellow victims of the monstrous United States. Perhaps Obama is all Vive le Revolucion.

There are endless red flags, aren't there? The covert government of antisocial Czars; the cozy ties to Bill Ayers, maybe George Soros. And who knows what else, because Obama's private world has been hermetically sealed.

So is this what am I saying: that President Bare Heart is at the helm, with a bunch of loose cannons possibly running the show? That he's giving a wink-wink to miscreants both here and abroad?

That the New Weird Order is starting to unhinge the already unbalanced, and bring new, vulnerable people, into its fold?

That Obamaphobia is real, and we ignore it at our peril?

Yes.

But don't listen to me. Don't listen to anyone: not the mental midgets who call you "racist;" not your brother in law who says you're nuts; not the Talking Heads who paint you as stupid trash.

Pay attention to no one, to nothing, except the light of truth revealing itself to you.

"Truth crushed to the earth will rise again:" William Cullen Bryant

A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.

Why?

Question: Why would any parent oppose school choice and educational freedom?

Big Government

Today's post is dedicated to Big Government.com. As my readers know I am a news and politics junkie. Big Government.com is a new news source dedicated to investigating Big Government. You will find stories here that you will not see in the main stream media. Big Government.com is on my daily reading list sometimes I visit the site a couple times a day.


Quote of the Day - "All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals." John Quincy Adams

Cathy
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