Janet Allquist, 68, said she has always been faithful about voting but was never active in politics — until six months ago.  That’s when she had an epiphany and decided to leave John, her husband of 48 years, for life on the road as a political activist.

Luckily for John, a retired Marine Corps pilot, she didn’t go far.  Instead, she launched a one-woman protest campaign and became what she called “one voice against socialism” at the intersection of Highways K and N in her hometown of O’Fallon, Mo.

What motivated Allquist, a retired McDonnell-Douglas secretary, to become political?  She said it was, and still is, the future of her three children and 11 grandchildren — including one with Autism — whose photos appear like wallpaper on the doors of her side-by-side refrigerator.

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In part I of this article, I provided a little background on the history of the public option, including how John Edwards was actually the first to propose it during the Democratic primary campaign. I also demonstrated how the media has largely ignored the glaring inconsistencies between Edwards’ characterization of the public option during the campaign, and how Obama has promoted it to the public this year. Edwards quite openly acknowledged that a public option could result in the entire health system gravitating towards a government-run, single payer system. Obama, on the other hand, has flatly denied this is the case saying it’s all about “choice and competition”.

I also singled out Julie Rovner from NPR as an example of a media health policy expert who has failed to fully (and fairly) report on the public option. Including the fact that many of its original (and current) proponents believe it could ultimately lead to a single payer system. Instead, Rovner has been a consistent voice of support for the Administration’s assertion that this is only a “myth”. I asked Rovner to comment on this prior to publishing part I. Here is the relevant excerpt from her response (emphasis mine):

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There used to be a certain level of decorum incumbent upon the office of the President of the United States.  After all, the office is more than the man that occupies it.  It’s also more than his politics or platform.  In many ways the Presidency is the embodiment of America.  It’s the face we put forward to the world.  With the election of President Obama the presidency has also awakened dreams in many children who never believed the White House was attainable.

The mandates of the office dictate how those entrusted with its power should act.  The Obama White House has failed to maintain the high standards of this office.  Rather than operating in a dignified manner the staff has desecrated the office by resorting to old-school Chicago-style politics.  That is to say they’ve used the Presidency to reward their friends and single out and attack their enemies.

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Today, in 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty:

You know, back when we were hopeful about the future and welcomed immigrants…

In February of this year, I wrote a study (co-authored with Mike Flynn) about the lessons of the Japanese “Lost Decade.” At the end of the 1980s, Japan faced a very similar situation to ours: an asset bubble burst, the economy went into recession, and the financial sector stumbled. In that study we argued (as did others in separate publications) that if American didn’t properly learn the lessons of the Lost Decade, that we too would suffer a similar long night of economic malaise. Unfortunately, the warning has not been heeded.

Japan spent most of the 1990s screwing around with monetary policy, increasing taxes on its citizens, and spending trillions on stimulus projects. Sound familiar? The result was 10-years of stagnant economic growth, out of control unemployment, and national debt rising to double the rate of GDP, all while the rest of the world laughed at the nation that appeared to be returning to empire status. And that is where we are headed.

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From NowHampshire.com:

Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) is not one to keep silent about a major controversy.

Before she even ran for Congress Shea-Porter was removed by police officers from a George W. Bush town hall and frequently disrupted then-incumbent Jeb Bradley’s town halls.  She has called this year’s conservative town hall protesters “tea-baggers” and refused to apologize when informed about the deliberate sexual connotation of that term.  And she harshly criticized Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina when he called President Barack Obama a “liar” during a speech to a Joint Session of Congress a few weeks ago.

But Carol Shea-Porter is remaining silent about the increasingly bizarre behavior of her colleague Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida.

In fact, her most recent comments of record on Mr. Grayson are overwhelmingly positive.

“I love both of these men and I will tell you that they are both driven by a moral compass that is just wonderful to behold,” said Shea-Porter while appearing with Rep. Grayson on a panel at the Netroots Nation summit in August.  “And we share almost all the same kinds of goals and values and Alan and I do as well.”

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Medicaid paid for prescriptions written for 1,800 dead patients and 1,200 prescriptions “written” by dead physicians

Medicare paid up to $92 million for medical services ordered by dead doctors, some of whom had been dead for more than 10 years

Social Security Administration sent out $250 stimulus checks to 10,000 people who are deceased, some of which have been dead for several decades

U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion in federal farm aid to the estates or companies of deceased farmers

San Francisco receives federal funding for AIDS patients who died decades ago

Dallas Housing Authority spent federal funds to subsidize housing for 45 deceased clients

This is pretty pathetic. CNN commissions a poll to assist with a week’s worth of Senate hearings and one in the House all designed to breathe life into the Senate’s counter to Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy rationing legislation. The express point of that scheme is to raise energy prices, which outcome our president has boasted as being to cause electricity (actually, all) energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”, “bankrupt[ing]” many firms.

The poll, splashed with a pretty clear headline, ran to one question.  Er, wait. They’re only pushing one question and its answer. No drilling down provided, though it may have been pursued. The poll actually appears to be at least 16 questions long, though when linking to the pdf for the “full results”, you get one question and answer.

How much editorializing/cheerleading does CNN do about this apparently selective snapshot? Well, the question-and-answer in their entirety total 68 words, which led to CNN providing, ah, context and texture to the public’s voice– to sell the question-and-answer to the public if not to add any meaning or context to the question itself for those responding to the poll — nearly six times as many (390 words plus headline).

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Most casual followers of politics did not pick up on the debate over healthcare reform until some time this past summer. They mostly ignored the umpteen news conferences held by the President since the spring, but they couldn’t miss the broader media coverage of town hall outrage. But for a small number of media experts on health policy, and an only slightly larger number of interested followers, the healthcare debate actually began much earlier. In fact, even prior to this year, when the initial policy formulation and political posturing took place during the Democratic primary campaign.

All three leading Democratic candidates for President – Obama, Clinton, and yes, John Edwards – proposed virtually identical plans for healthcare reform. The only real substantive difference being that the Clinton and Edwards plans included an individual mandate for insurance, whereas Obama’s plan did not. (Obama has since come around to supporting this mandate.) But importantly, all the Democratic plans included the creation of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers. What is now called, the “public option”.

Although he was destined to be a marginal candidate, Edwards played an important role in the healthcare debate. He was the first candidate to announce the details of his plan, and really put down a marker for liberal ambition on this issue leading into the election. Especially with the inclusion of the public option. And ultimately the other candidates largely followed his blueprint, even if they failed to credit him for his leadership on this issue.

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A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review.  Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and he concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, in which he takes on these environmental shibboleths in a more concerted fashion.  On American Public Radio’s Marketplace program yesterday, host Kai Ryssdal discussed the new book with Brand.  Asked what prompted him to write the book, Brand said that,

“My fellow environmentalists have been wrong about a couple of issues and were getting in the way of important things we should be doing, both with biotechnology and with nuclear technology, and in terms of how we think about cities, and in terms of how I know we’re going to think about geoengineering–that is, direct intervention in the climate.”

 

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During the Democratic primary, an arm of the powerful Service Employees International Union pressured Hillary Clinton’s campaign to fire its top strategist because he made a good living fighting unions and their policy priorities. So what will the union do now that a top Obama aid is married to a lawyer who’s tied to a firm advising clients on how to avoid unions?

Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director

The quick back story: In April 2008, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was forced to demote its top strategist in large part because he was advising a campaign to push a free trade agreement with Colombia and operates a firm that fights union campaigns — both taboo for Democrats’ biggest special interest, organized labor.

But check out this twist, courtesy of LaborUnionReport.com. President Obama’s White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn’s husband is partner in a law firm that advises the president and fights union drives:

Ms. Dunn, according to Politico and other web resources, is married to a man named Bob Bauer. Mr. Bauer is a partner and Chair of the Political Law Group of Perkins Coie LLP.

Interestingly, according to the bio on his law firm’s website, Mr. Bauer is Counsel to Obama for America and General Counsel to the Democratic National Committee, and he has been counsel for many years to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees. Mr. Bauer is also the President’s personal attorney.

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From today’s New York Post:

Pointing to a string of probes that ACORN is facing and news reports about the two groups sharing a Nevins Street address in Brooklyn, the suit seeks to flush out the overlap.

Critics of the two groups have long complained they work hand in glove — and have found compelling evidence in Brooklyn.

“Another organization that helped found and remains closely [allied] with the WFP is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN,” reads a petition filed in the case, charging that “ACORN not only shares office space with the WFP . . . but Bertha Lewis, the executive director of New York ACORN, is also a state co-chair of the WFP.”

We know why new investment in auto assembly in recent decades has not gone to Michigan but to, say, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky. In short and making no effort to put too a fine point on it, this is to avoid the crushing weight of the collective bargaining agreements that killed American auto manufacturing.

We also know why the unions push “green jobs” so aggressively, despite the overwhelming evidence that the schemes harm employment (that is, reduce the overall work force): as effectively federally mandated (but certainly “federally”– that is, taxpayer) — funded) jobs, they are uniformly de facto or de jure Davis-Bacon or otherwise union jobs.

Read the following excerpt from Sen. James Inhofe’s opening statement in a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing today on that body’s version of cap-and-trade energy rationing, Kerry-Boxer:

“Let me recount a telling moment in [a recent] hearing. Sen. Sessions asked the government witnesses-and they were CBO, EPA, EIA, and CRS-whether anyone disagreed with the finding that the net effect of cap-and-trade would be a reduction in jobs. None did.”

But at least these schemes increase the union labor force. And that’s really what’s important.

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 When you spend day after day examining the self-serving agenda of the nation’s two largest teachers unions, you develop a tendency to think badly of teachers.

That’s a mistake. We have to remember that there are millions of great teachers out there, doing their best to help our children develop on a dialy basis. We have to remember that many teachers do not subscribe to the left-wing political agendas of their unions, or approve of their tactics.

Larry Sand is a great example. This recently-retired educator from Los Angeles was a member of the NEA-affiliated California Teachers Assocation. To his credit, he’s also a major pain in the backside of the CTA.

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THE STORY ANN COULTER SAID SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR EVERY BUREAUCRAT IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

Many of the people mentioned still work at the Department of Defense. They are civil service employees who are almost impossible to fire, demote, or shift to other jobs. In my book, SPEECH-LESS: Tales of a White House Survivor, I show how nameless big government bureaucracies can treat America’s heroes.

The Pentagon’s press operation was run by a very large staff of civil servants and military personnel.  Maybe twenty or thirty public affairs specialists sat among a maze of carrels while the director of the room sat in a glass cage and watched over them.  It was reminiscent of a secretarial pool from the 1950s or ‘60s, without the Smith-Corona typewriters. I sometimes expected to see Lucille Ball walk in with a steno pad looking for Mr. Mooney. 

Most of the press officers were probably Democrats, but the problem was not that they were partisans. The problem was that those who wanted to help were given no direction and the rest were mostly inert. Many would come in around 8:30 or 9 and breeze out by 4:59 pm.  Nothing would prevent their on-time departure – not some major crisis abroad, not even a war.  At night, that giant room was so deserted that tumbleweeds blew by desks. A sizable number of them lacked any sense of urgency or interest in what the administration was doing.  One Pentagon reporter compared prying information from them to going on an Easter egg hunt..  Sometimes you’d want to put a mirror under their noses to see if they were breathing.

Forget about their being proactive.  They rarely, if ever, came up with an interesting new story to pitch to a reporter.  Their job was to wait for the phone to ring and hold morale-building events.  There was almost always a party going on with cakes and cookies and people telling jokes and giving each other awards.  There was an annual chili cook-off. If ever you needed a sugar fix, you could find something almost any day in the press room….

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From the Associated Press:

Circulation at newspapers shrank at an accelerated pace in the past six months, driven in part by stiff price increases imposed by publishers scrambling to offset rapidly eroding advertising sales.

Average daily circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers plunged 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month stretch last year, according to figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

It’s the largest drop recorded so far during the past decade’s steady decline in paid readership — a span that has coincided with an explosion of online news sources that don’t charge readers for access. Many newspapers also have been reducing delivery to far-flung locales and increasing prices to get more money out of their remaining sales.

The latest decline outstripped a 7.1 percent decrease in the October 2008-March 2009 period and a 4.6 percent decline in last year’s April-September window.

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What would be the result if someone walked into a psychiatrist’s office and disclosed their belief that the weather is out to get them? Should the doctor be compelled by the state to initiate a competency hearing, or would a prescription for a fist-full of Prozac do?

What if the patient were a cop? Should they lose their badge?

What if the patient were a teacher? Should they lose their classroom?

What if the patient were an entire political movement? Should they lose their credibility and status as an authority on any and all subjects, at least those related to the weather?

At first glance, this 2007 report pulled from the internet archives of the Tides Foundation would appear to be making the claim described above; however, the cause is not so much driven by delusion as it is pathologically fraudulent.

The basic thrust of the publication (a conversation between the Tides Foundation’s Catherine Lerza and Redefining Progress’ Michel Gelobter) is that the effects of “global warming” are disproportionately felt by disadvantaged minorities.

[Catherine]Lerza: The impacts of global warming highlight social and racial inequalities around the world. It certainly affects poor communities differently. We saw that clearly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Could you talk about these different impacts of climate change depending on geography, race, and class?

[Michel]Gelobter: Communities of color and low income communities in this country clearly feel the impact of climate change and have been feeling that impact for over 20 years.

My organization, Redefining Progress, has conducted a number of studies on Latinos and climate change and African-Americans and climate change. Different communities bear quite a different vulnerability to the risks of global warming. Six years ago, we already had figured out that the greatest victims of climate change were the lower-income communities and communities of color. You can see it in the disparity in heat deaths in St. Louis. You can see there’s an impact on agricultural communities and on border communities and indigenous communities, particularly in the Arctic.

We have to address issues of justice: people have a right to health and to a secure place to live. They have this right whether they’re black, or white, or whatever.

This excerpt clears up at least one major misconception: that the devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina was the result of nature mixed with systemic governmental failure at all levels.

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Today, in 1964, Ronald Reagan’s “A Time For Choosing” speech in support of Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was broadcast on the nation’s airwaves. Just 16 years later, Reagan righted our listing ship. Enjoy…

New Jersey spending federal stimulus funds to keep an eye out for graffiti

National Science Foundation researchers study the cure for low approval ratings of members of Congress

“The groundbreaking study … found that online deliberative forums are likely to sway swing voters in favor of the lawmaker holding the online forum,” says taxpayer funded study

Taxpayer funded study claims online town hall meetings increase constituents’ approval of politicians and likelihood of voting to re-elect a politician to Congress

Department of Energy will spend $151 million for “radical” research projects, “most of which will probably fail”

Congressman supported at least $44 million in earmarks for companies that did not operate in his home state, nearly all of which donated to his campaign just before or soon after receiving the promise of federal money

House subcommittee plans Honolulu junket to check on stimulus spending

Vinegar producer in Nebraska gets start up funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture

Boyz Nite Out: Cover band concert underwritten with federal stimulus funds

Indiana city spending $625,000 in federal transportation funds to place 40 decorative street lights