From the Boston Globe:

Fannie and Freddie were once the most powerful forces in the US housing industry. They pumped liquidity into the sector by buying up mortgages written by banks and mortgage companies. That kept the cost of capital low and increased the volume of mortgages. Government backing allowed the two to borrow money at lower rates than anyone else in the housing financing market.

While Fannie and Freddie operated under some form of congressional oversight, they ultimately answered to their stockholders. Their business was making money. They joined Wall Street firms in making record profits — and hauling in record bonuses — by buying, securitizing, and reselling subprime mortgages that never should have been written in the first place.

The housing market’s collapse sowed destruction and put the nation’s biggest banks on a government lifeline. No lifeline has been bigger than the rope the feds threw Fannie and Freddie, though. In September 2008, the two firms received a bottomless line of credit. So far, their tab stands around $148 billion — more than AIG, the company that insured all of Wall Street’s worst housing bets, is in hock for.

In January, the Congressional Budget Office said the total cost to taxpayers could reach $373 billion.

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In the fight to retain his Congressional House seat, North Carolina U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge (NC-2) emailed and mailed letters and newsletters from his House account last week. Observant voters noted that Etheridge used taxpayers dollars to underwrite the mailings, sending the pieces just ahead of the franking 90-day deadline before the election. Etheridge is the politician who pushed a student journalist when he was queried by the young man on a D.C. street.

Challenger Renee Ellmers, clinical director of a wound care center in Dunn, NC, is calling him on it. In an August 10th letter sent to Etheridge, Ellmers wrote:

“In every way these mailings resembled typical campaign ads, except they were paid for by taxpayers and not by your campaign.

In the text of one pamphlet you mailed you told voters you are “reducing the deficit and restoring budget discipline” in Washington. How much did this mailing (and your emailings) cost taxpayers? How many people received the mailings and emails? How can you explain writing taxpayers that you are “reducing the deficit” when you are wasting thousands of dollars of their money on political mailings to help you get reelected?”

Rep. Etheridge has more than a million dollars in his campaign account.

According to a poll of Second District voters done in June by Survey USA , 55% to 38% voting in Etheridge’s district disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Yet Etheridge voted with Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama 97% of the time, voting for every major item of the Obama agenda, including ObamaCare.

A majority of voters – 53% — in his district disapprove of the Healthcare reform legislation. Etheridge also voted for the Wall Street bailout, despite voter disapproval of 61%.

Etheridge supported Obama’s so called “stimulus” bill and trillion dollar deficit. The result: North Carolina’s employment figures are some of the bleakest in the country. Last February North Carolina’s unemployment hit a record high 11.2%, ranking 10th among States in unemployment.

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Congratulations, Tea Partiers!  You know you’ve become a genuine threat to the Progressive movement when they start making t-shirts about you.

The Agenda Project has launched “F*ck Tea”, an anti-Tea Party campaign that aims to “dismiss the tea party and promote the progressive cause.”  Check out their nifty little video promoting their positive cause:

As Agenda Project founder Erica Payne explained to Politico’s Ben Smith:

“We will be launching new products in the next several months to help people all over the country F*ck Tea.  Products like a Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy (Beck B Scrubbin) and others are perfect holiday gifts or just a great way to say, ‘I love you and our country’ to your spouse, friend or family.”

The website features a variety of t-shirts and mugs imprinted with the slogan “F*uck tea,” and Ms. Payne infers there will be more to come in the future.  It also splashes a host of unsourced “Tea Party Facts” across the left side of the page, in an attempt to demean and minimize those who belong to or support the Tea Party movement, and imply that those who don’t are somehow of superior intellect based solely upon said “facts.”  Meanwhile, the site dotingly highlights the word “progress” as “a movement toward a goal; advancement; growth; development; continuous improvement,” calling it “The Real American Party.”  Frankly, I see nothing “real” about this or about any of the progressive people involved in it.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m one conservative constitutionalist who embraces the “F” word as part of my regular vocabulary, as much of a shock as that may be to leftists who may have already stereotyped me otherwise.  But I was not aware that the word had become synonymous with positive development and improvement.  (What a relief!)  If brandishing the “F” word across my chest and gallivanting in public is a sign of intellect and the new symbol of the party of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, then I’m more than happy to save my $22.50, thanks.  (Besides, if one’s cause were so important that such a word absolutely had to be used, the Libertarian in me wonders, why not just spell it out?)  Also somewhat amusing about the entire venture  is that the very people railing against the tea parties and against capitalism are shelling out over $20 a shirt for someone’s concocted-idea-turned-business-venture.  It’s the very Capitalist tale that so many of the progressive left heartily opposes.

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One of the most popular and most talked about movies of 1993 was Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas, Barbara Hershey, and Robert Duval.

Douglas played William “D-FENS” Foster, an engineer at a defense contractor who has a really bad day.  Some described the movie as “an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.” Foster became an iconic anti-hero, symbolizing the people who (stealing Bill Clinton’s line)worked hard and played by the rules, yet found themselves at the bottom of the heap in the post-Cold War era of 1993.

Foster’s wife (Hershey) has left him.  He’s moved in with his mother. Making matters worse, Hershey’s obtained a court order barring Foster from visiting their young daughter, whom he loves more than life itself.

On the little girl’s birthday, everything falls apart.  Foster gets laid off from the defense contractor job.  The police remind him he’s not to go near his wife or daughter.  And in one memorable scene, a fast food chain’s rules interfere when Foster just wants breakfas:

When I read about Jetblue flight attendant, Steven Slater, Falling Down comes to mind.

And it’s not just me.

According to a new Wall Street Journal/MSNBC Poll, two-thirds of Americans believe the worst is yet to come for the economy.  Democrat pollster Peter Hart sees Steven Slater as metaphor for voter sentiment.

Mr. Hart said the 2010 contest is being pulled by the sentiment associated with the JetBlue flight attendant who fled his plane via the emergency chute after an altercation with a passenger. Calling it the “JetBlue election,” Mr. Hart said: “Everyone’s hurling invective and they’re all taking the emergency exit.”

Like William Foster, Steven Slater seems to symbolize—in exaggerated form—the mood of the American people.  We’re fed up with bureaucracy and petty rules, “minute and uniform,” as Tocqueville put it,  “. . . through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.”

Steven Slater broke through, alright.

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Another week, another new round of bad jobs’ data. For two years we’ve tried the Keynesian silliness and it hasn’t worked. We thought we had already learned this lesson. Can we finally put the ‘aggregate demand’ BS to rest?

As businesses along the Gulf Coast await the expiration of President Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium, they’re faced with a new hardship: Neither BP nor the Gulf Coast Claims Facility appear willing to pay for lost income resulting from the ban.

Last week BP announced it was deferring all moratorium-related claims to Ken Feinberg, the Obama-appointed administrator of the $20 billion claims fund. That news came as a surprise to Feinberg, however. He maintains the moratorium claims are BP’s responsibility.

“Those claims are not under Feinberg’s jurisdiction with the GCCF,” spokeswoman Amy Weiss told me. She referred questions to BP.

But a spokesman for BP said the company is planning to transfer all outstanding claims to Feinberg, including those from businesses that cite the drilling ban.

“There are claims in the system that are moratorium-related,” BP spokesman John Curry said. “The entire database will transition to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility when Feinberg gets it up and running.”

The uncertainty — and apparent unwillingness of either BP or Feinberg to take responsibility — leaves businesses in the dark about their moratorium-related claims. Those businesses could be mom-and-pop stores that rely on the steady flow of customers working on rigs or suppliers of oilfield equipment. Each is affected by the moratorium in its own unique way.

So far BP hasn’t rejected any claims, but many of the 147,194 remain unresolved. The company has made 116,063 payments, totaling more than $340 million. It does not have a breakdown of how many claims are related to the moratorium.

Obama’s drilling ban creates a tricky situation for BP and Feinberg. At the president’s request, BP pledged $100 million for oil rig workers affected by the moratorium. But those grants are limited to the estimated 9,000 people who worked on the 33 deep-water rigs when the federal moratorium began on May 6. Workers have a 30-day period to apply beginning on Sept. 1.

Because the Gulf Coast states are so reliant on the energy industry, the moratorium is having a widespread impact beyond the 33 rigs that were idled when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar first instituted the drilling ban. Two of those rigs have already left the Gulf for Egypt and Congo.

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As we all know, the result of the left’s takeover of our media and universities has been a vast ignorance among the young about America’s history, philosophy and institutions. That’s the disease but – huzzah! – PJTV’s Klavan on the Culture is the cure.

Here in just around four minutes is a complete refresher course on the history, meaning and importance of the United States Constitution for all you young dudes and dudettes. All right, it’s complete nonsense. Still, when you man and woman the barricades, at least now you’ll know what you’re fighting for! Sort of.

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A good looking, fun loving guy sits down and writes a few blog posts about how to ensure the Republican Party wins both houses in a 2010 landslide, and beat Obama’s ass in 2012… he figures his job is done.

Sure, York at the Examiner will pick it up… but apparently, on this Internet thing, you might have to say things twice to actually get a Minority Leader to read the script.  Something about, “going virus.”  So uncover your mouths, I’m going to sneeze.

There is no reason to get trapped in a vote-losing song and dance about, “What will Republicans cut,” when asked for specifics on Sunday Morning shows.  (Side Note: Amanpour curdles the soul.  George Will sitting next to her during this toxic experiment will be doing god’s work.)

Ok, you are covered in pancake makeup sitting under a 500W Grow Light, and then sure enough, here it comes: “What will you cut?”

Throw back your head, laugh maniacally, and cackle, “Public Employees!”

Er, no, instead say, “We certainly are not going to cut any public services; for the amount of money they pay, the taxpayers shouldn’t have to give up a single damn thing.  But when Republicans take over Congress, we’re going to run government like a business. And the way we see it, the shareholders are the voters, elected officials are the management, and the Public Employees are overpaid.

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Certainly the philosophy of the Triple Bottom Line (“3BL” or “TBL”) is unconventional when compared with accepted business practices which are based upon the typical single bottom line of profit. We know that profit is essential to business survival, but we should ask how this expanded 3BL business model gained traction. For an answer, we need to look at the history of 3BL, and that history shows us that environmental and social idealism have been closely linked since the modern global environmental movement began in 1972.

In 1972, Maurice Strong, a patriarch of the global environmental movement who now sits on the board of directors for the Chicago Climate Exchange, led the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which met in Stockholm and released a declaration linking the human exerience to nature. It acknowledged that “man is both creature and moulder of his environment” and has advanced to the point where he has the power to significantly affect nature and, by extension, his own intellectual, moral, social and spiritual growth. The global social ramifications of man’s environmental stewardship are thus clearly stated in the Stockholm declaration:

The protection and improvement of the human environment is a major issue which affects the wellbeing of peoples and economic development throughout the world; it is the urgent desire of the peoples of the whole world and the duty of all Governments.

The UN felt the environment and social well being were so linked that the declaration’s first Principle focused on it:

Man has the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations. In this respect, policies promoting or perpetuating apartheid, racial segregation, discrimination, colonial and other forms of oppression and foreign domination stand condemned and must be eliminated.

Without question, the UN has made a particular commitment to social and environmental ideology since the very beginning of the green movement, and in the Stockholm declaration we can see much of the framework for global socio-environmental ideology already in place.

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From the Associated Press:

The employment picture is looking bleaker as applications for jobless benefits rose last week to the highest level in almost six months.

It’s a sign that hiring is weak and employers are still cutting their staffs.

First-time claims for jobless benefits edged up by 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 484,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts had expected a drop. That’s the highest total since February.

Initial claims have now risen in three of the last four weeks and are close to their high point for the year of 490,000, reached in late January. The four-week average, which smooths volatility, soared by 14,250 to 473,500, also the highest since late February.

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Abbot Justin Brown and his fellow monks are being threatened with crippling fines and even jail time.  Their crime?  Selling caskets.

Today, they are fighting back in a big way.

In 1889, a group of monks from Indiana fulfilled their dream of establishing a monastery in the Gulf South.  The monastic lifestyle they embody is simple and contemplative.  Their creation, the Saint Joseph Abbey, has had a powerful and positive impact in Louisiana.

For several centuries, monks have supported themselves financially by excelling at common trades such as farming and brewing beer.  The monks at Saint Joseph Abbey have been able to preserve and maintain their quiet lifestyle through farming and harvesting timber.

The monks make simple wooden caskets in which to bury themselves. In the early 1990s, Bishops began requesting the caskets, which led to inquiries from other interested people.  The demand continued to build:   People were eager to share in the monks’ view of the simplicity and unity of life and death through burial in a simple monastic casket.

As Abbot Justin Brown puts it:

The monks of Saint Joseph Abbey have been making caskets for over a hundred years.  People who ask for them want to share in that noble simplicity that our coffins express. We’re not a wealthy monastery and we need the income that Saint Joseph Woodworks could generate for the health care and the education of our own monks.

On November 1, 2007, the monks opened their Saint Joseph Woodworks.  But before they could sell even one casket, they were threatened with crippling fines, jail time and even a lawsuit.

Why?

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The Democracy Alliance is alive and well, and its Vice-Chair is about to be born again.

Today, the “Queen of Labor”, SEIU Secretary-Treasurer and Chair of the Change to Win labor federation, Anna Burger, announced her retirement.

Anna Burger was defeated by current SEIU President Mary Kay Henry when she ran against Henry for the spot vacated by outgoing President Andy Stern.  Despite that loss, Burger had insisted that she’d be staying on as Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU.  Instead, she will be replaced as the head of Change to Win by United Food and Commercial Workers president, Joe Hansen.  Henry is likely to appoint one of her own insiders as SEIU Secretary-Treasurer, a practice that was already causing tension between Burger and the new guard of SEIU (even though both guards are not all that different from one another).

Burger’s departure marks not just the end of an era for SEIU, but more importantly it’s indicative of a new era for the Progressive movement.

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Just when you thought it was safe to accept a White House Job offer, the Joe Sestak Job scandal has reared its ugly head once again. Silent through the mess, former President Bill Clinton has finally spoken and denied the White House explanation that he met with Joe Sestak to offer him an administration job to drop out of the Democratic Primary against soon to be former Senator Specter.

WBRE-TV in Pennsylvania has reported that former President Bill Clinton denied any involvement in trying to maneuver Sestak out of the race. (Source: House oversight committee, personally confirmed with the evening assignment manager of WBRE via phone call on 8/11):

“Clinton denied it to EyeWitness news, saying he never tried to get Sestak out of the race and has never been accused of it.”-WBRE-TV, 8/10/10

[Update: A reporter caught up with Clinton at a recent event and asked him directly:]

Now compare the above to what Sestack and the White House said in late May when Bill Clinton’s role in the Sestak affair was announced, first by the administration, then by the Pennsylvanian Congressman:

“Last summer, I received a phone call from President Clinton. During the course of the conversation, he expressed concern over my prospects if I were to enter the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and the value of having me stay in the House of Representatives because of my military background. He said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had spoken with him about my being on a Presidential Board while remaining in the House of Representatives.

The letter issued by the White House Attorney Robert Bauer at the end of May when President Clinton’s involvement was announced said in part:

“We found that, as the Congressman has publicly and accurately stated, options for Executive Branch service were raised with him. Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board, which would avoid a divisive Senate primary, allow him to retain his seat in the House, and provide him with an opportunity for additional service to the public in a high-level advisory capacity for which he was highly qualified. The advisory positions discussed with Congressman Sestak, while important to the work of the Administration, would have been uncompensated.”

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A year ago, in a blogpost entitled The Great Awakening, I argued that conservatives “should be grateful to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel.” After all, I wrote, they had unmasked “the Democratic Party as a conspiracy on the part of a would-be aristocracy of do-gooders hostile to the very idea of self-government in the United States,” and they had done so by making “the tyrannical propensities inherent within the progressive impulse visible to anyone who cares to take notice.” This is a theme to which I have returned repeatedly in a series of posts – some of them linked here, others archived here and here, and the most recent found here – arguing that, with the proper leadership, the Republican Party could seize this occasion and effect a political realignment.

The heart of the matter is simple. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt falsely claimed in 1936 is now demonstrably true: “A small group” of individuals – lead by our current President, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate – really is intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.” If they wish to effect a realignment, all that the Republicans have to do is to complete the task of unmasking begun by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Emanuel and make it clear that they really do intend to repeal Obamacare, to balance the federal budget without enacting permanent tax increases, to roll back the scope and size of the administrative state, and to restore within these United States limited, constitutional government.

They face two great obstacles. First, as I argued last year in my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, the administrative state has been growing for almost a century now, and it has become entrenched. Moreover, its growth has been fueled not only by the ambitions of a self-styled progressive elite proclaiming its expertise and its desire to manage our lives for us. It has also been supported by the political psychology to which – the baron de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Alexis de Tocqueville contended – commercial, liberal, democratic societies, such as our own, generally give rise. Put simply, men in liberal democracies tend to fall prey to what these thinkers call inquiétude, and under the influence of this uneasiness – this vague, unfocused fear lacking a defined object – they are apt, especially in times of economic distress, to be willing to trade independence for a promise of security. The Americans whom Tocqueville met in the early 1830s had the resources, institutional and moral, with which to resist this propensity. But we can no longer boast that, in the United States, local self-government is vigorous, private associations do much of what was allocated to government in Europe, the Christian religion provides us with a moral anchor, and marital fidelity and family solidarity afford us a haven from the upheavals that typify life in a dynamic, commercial society.

Second, no one really trusts the Republicans in Congress.

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Today, in 1981, IBM released the first personal computer. Never has there been a more accomplished 29 year old.

On Monday, Google and Verizon—two of the nation’s biggest companies operating in the tech space—announced a compromise joint proposal on Internet regulation that has tech policy observers buzzing.

The proposal, discussed during a conference call featuring Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, represents a substantial softening of Google’s position on controversial net neutrality proposals, say several tech policy observers.

Notably, while enshrining non-discrimination rules with regard to what is often referred to as “traditional Internet broadband service,” the proposal also allows broadband providers to offer what are known as “differentiated services,” such as Verizon’s FiOS service, which need not be neutral.  This is being interpreted in some quarters as a major shift on Google’s part.

The company took fire yesterday from Free Press, a pro-net neutrality group that some tech policy experts have speculated for years took money from Google to finance its advocacy efforts, which helped promote an approach that observers say could, if adopted and enforced, have benefited the corporation substantially.  In a statement, Free Press adviser Joel Kelsey remarked that “If codified, this arrangement will lead to toll booths on the information superhighway.”

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Democrat priorities.  As if the last 20 months haven’t been enough for the American people, this is just more incentive in November to vote the Democrats out.  Because Medicare has been looted for decades, Democrats must now turn to the food stamp program for funds, while touting that this unpopular teacher bailout will not add to the deficit.

Via Fox:

Some House Democrats and advocacy groups are getting squeamish about the move to fund the $26 billion state aid bill by making cuts to food stamps, a federal assistance program currently depended on by nearly 41 million Americans.

[snip]

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, the number of people on the food stamp rolls has been growing to record levels for 18 straight months. Nearly $5.5 billion in aid went out to beneficiaries in May alone. The number of May recipients marked a 19 percent increase from a year ago and the USDA projects that next year’s enrollment will reach about 43.4 million.

The Obama administration has pushed hard for the $26 billion bill. The White House argued that it is essential to protecting 300,000 teachers and other nonfederal government workers from election-year layoffs and will not add to the national deficit.

[snip]

“This proposal is fully paid for, in part by closing loopholes that encourage corporations that ships American jobs overseas. So it will not add to our deficit,” he said. “And the money will only go toward saving the jobs of teachers and other essential professionals…I urge members of both parties to come together and get this done, so that I can sign this bill into law.”  emphasis mine

Same old rhetoric from Obama–punishing businesses–so it’s all ok.  States wouldn’t want to follow New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s lead, would they?  If the states could find the cuts, they wouldn’t need to pillage the American taxpayer, and then they wouldn’t need a bailout.  California is broke, yet their teachers are the highest paid in the nation.  So, private sector greed is bad, but public sector (taxpayer funded–as in, you are taking your neighbor’s hard-earned money) greed is good?

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California’s once-and-perhaps-future governor, Jerry Brown, is widely viewed as the most ambidextrous of politicians – a man of the Left who nonetheless tacks Right as often as necessary to assure his continued political future. Political junkies still marvel at how then-Governor Brown, an ardent foe of property-tax-limiting Proposition 13, instantly embraced the measure after its 1978 passage, or how, since being mayor of Oakland, he copped a law-and-order image that just happened to coincide with his ambition to be the state’s top cop.

Most recently, we’ve watched as Attorney General Brown – the man who signed the 1977 law that gave public-sector unions the right to collective bargaining and thus paved the way for the massive looting of treasuries by public employees – has taken a high-profile position with regards to the city of Bell. “The California attorney general’s office announced Monday that it had issued a new round of subpoenas to force nine current and former Bell officials to give depositions and to turn over federal and state income tax returns,” according to a Los Angeles Times report. “Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown is also demanding personal records relating to pay and pension benefits, gifts the officials have received, and documents pertaining to bank accounts and business interests.”

This is Brown to a tee – despite his history as a virtual subsidiary of Government Union Inc., and his reliance on union independent expenditures to win him the governorship in November, he is able to use his political powers to catch the populist backlash against the increasingly publicized instances of public-sector plundering. This no doubt is giving fits to the at-times hapless GOP nominee, former eBay executive and billionaire Meg Whitman. Whitman had been calling for pension reform, but has been so careful in her proposals – i.e., exempting public safety officials from reform, and thereby putting the bulk of the problem off the table – that she allowed Brown to essentially outflank her on the Right. Even some ardent pension reformers wonder whether Brown might be able to achieve more than Whitman on the pension reform front given his ideological flexibility and Whitman’s risk-averse behavior.

Now Whitman is wisely countering with radio spots and a mailer pointing to Brown’s own pay and perk scandal under his watch in Oakland, and fortunately she has the cash to respond quickly to Brown’s taxpayer-funded bully pulpit at the Department of Justice. The Whitman campaign quotes from writer Heather MacDonald: “Despite repeated promises to keep salaries of top city employees under control, the number of city employees earning more than $100,000 has risen 47.5 percent in the past two years. Perhaps more startling is the astronomical increase – 740 percent – between 2003-04 and 2005-06 in the number of city employees earning more than $200,000.” This is a good rebuttal, but Brown has essentially muted his weakness on this issue by going after the loathsome Bell ex-city manager, Robert Rizzo, and the city’s cast of alleged crooks and miscreants. Even I’m glad to see him take on the scoundrels, regardless of the political shamelessness of his quest.

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Congress has passed a $26 billion aid package that is intended to save the jobs of thousands of teachers, nurses, and other public-sector employees. To critics who call the measure a “special interest” bill, President Barack Obama says , “I suppose if America’s children and the safety of our communities are your special interest, then it is a special interest bill.”

In politics everyone claims to be on the side of the children, but who really is? Pat DeLorenzo is a parent whose daughter suffers from epilepsy. Like roughly 10,000 other epileptic schoolchildren in California, eight-year-old Gianna suffers from the type of prolonged seizures that, without immediate attention, can result in brain damage or death. After witnessing the response of teachers and school nurses to one of his daughter’s life-threatening seizures, Pat DeLorenzo now believes that teachers and nurses care more about protecting union jobs than saving epileptic children.

DeLorenzo feared the worst when he receive a call from his daughter’s school, informing him that she had suffered a seizure. Gianna survived that day, but DeLorenzo was outraged that school administrators had not given his daughter Diastat, a drug that stops seizures before they do permanent harm and is FDA-approved for use by laypeople. Today many schoolchildren must wait until an ambulance brings them to a hospital before they receive Diastat. That’s much too long, says DeLorenzo who supports, SB 1051, a California bill that would allow trained non-medical volunteers to administer Diastat at schools.

Epilepsy advocates like the Epilepsy Foundation and physicians groups like the California Medical Association have lined up to support the bill. Unions representing teachers, nurses, and other public employees have lined up in opposition, claiming the bill would put children in danger. Their solution: hire more school nurses.

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