Labor unions are very powerful in Michigan, and the Michigan Education Association may be the strongest of them all.

That explains why the number of charter schools in Michigan has remained capped at a frustrating 150 for nearly two decades.

But that finally changed last week, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill that will increase the cap to 300 charter schools in 2012, 500 in 2014 and eliminate limits altogether starting in 2015. That means school choice is on the march in Michigan, and traditional public schools will face increased pressure to measure up or lose thousands of students and millions of dollars of state funding.

The new law is a major defeat for the MEA and many public school organizations, who bitterly opposed the idea of increased competition.

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“The very people who supported Obama in ’08 are the Occupy organizers,” David Goodner told The Los Angeles Times this week. “That same energy has shifted from the electoral arena to the streets.” Obama, says Goodner, gave birth to the Occupy movement when he “failed to deliver” on the promise of widening the tax base, securing Medicare and Social Security, abolishing “Wall Street greed” and limiting campaign spending.

So who is David Goodner?

He is a 30-year-old veteran Iowa protestor, who works with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund. He is frequently arrested and in controversy, so much so that the FBI infiltrated his organization because they were concerned he might be plotting to disrupt the 2008 RNC Convention.

Though no one will say it officially, Goodner, who vows to disrupt the Iowa caucus, is part of the reason the Iowa Republican party announced on Tuesday it was moving its voting tabulation to a secure location.

Last week he was escorted out of a security during a news conference headed by Newt Gingrich. The picture above really is worth a thousand words.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Already they have interrupted Michele Bachmannand drawn a withering putdown from Newt Gingrich as “all noise, no thought.”

Now, to the dismay of Iowa Republicans, Occupy activists in Des Moines are vowing to expand their protests as GOP presidential hopefuls converge on the state that speaks first in the race for the party’s presidential nomination.

“The 99 percent have woken up and we’re not going to take it anymore,” Occupy activist Stephen Toothman, of Des Moines, said as an advance guard met Tuesday to decide which candidates to target in the coming week.

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Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) may be a freshman member of Congress, but his recent introduction of the RESTRICT (Restoring Ethical Standards, Transparency, and Responsibility in Congressional Trading) Act (H.R. 3550) to end congressional insider trading reveals a degree of legislative sagacity well beyond his two years in Congress.

“If we’re really trying to clean it up, let’s go all the way,” said Rep. Duffy in an interview with Breitbart News.

The RESTRICT Act’s strength lies in its straightforward simplicity: members of Congress would be required to either place all their assets in a blind trust or submit full public disclosure of their investments within three days.

The RESTRICT Act contains important advantages not found in the other major bill seeking to ban congressional insider trading, the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act, says Rep. Duffy.  While he admires the diligence of those who have spent years touting the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act, Rep. Duffy believes the current version of the STOCK Act contains “significant, gaping holes.”

“The truth is, there are loopholes in that bill [the STOCK Act] you can drive a truck through,” said Rep. Duffy.

One of those loopholes involves the fact that the STOCK Act’s disclosure requirement is only triggered when a member of Congress makes a stock trade of $1,000 or more.

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During a trip to India a few years ago and after observing the New Delhi traffic, I devised a great idea for Tata, the Indian car maker: manufacture the cars so that once the car is started the horn turns on and stays on until the car is turned off.  I was sure the drivers in New Delhi would appreciate such a feature, seeing that they drive with the horn on most of the time anyway.

Kind of like the way that politicians of Indian descent are making their presence known in the American political scene, except maybe not as noisy.  While there are others, two prominent Indian-American politicians stand out: Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.

Following two terms in Congress representing Louisiana’s 1st congressional district in the House, and having been the Congress’ second Indian-American, Republican Bobby Jindal was first elected governor of Lousiana in 2007 and re-elected earlier this year in a landslide.  Throughout his term as governor he has become known as a fiscal conservative who refused to raise taxes.  After the BP Oil Spill of April-July, 2010, Jindal loudly criticized Obama administration’s response and eventually persuaded the administration into lifting a permit moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

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In a Christmas break message to his party, Communist Party USA vice chair Jarvis Tyner has confirmed the vital importance of the build up to the 2012 elections to “set the stage for a new progressive era and for a socialist transformation.”

Tyner draws clear right/left battle lines and the communist’s commitment to Party ‘friend’ President Barack Obama and to the Democratic Party cause;

2012 is a big election year and as we know the stakes are very high. The right-wing Republican opposition unashamedly defends the wealth and privilege of the 1% over the 99% that includes tens of millions who are struggling to survive. These self-proclaimed patriots are willing to wreck our country in order to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 elections. Our party and youth league are an active part of the great democratic mass that is standing against them.

Jarvis Tyner also makes it clear that a key part of the Communist Party/Democratic Party game plan, will be use of the “race card”.

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Today, in 1846, Iowa is admitted as the 29th state. Next week, it assumes an out-sized role in picking a Presidential nominee.

My paternal grandfather’s cousin, Yechezkel Pulerevitch, was imprisoned in a Soviet concentration camp for seventeen years for the “crime” of being a Zionist.

After his release, he was eventually alloweed to emigrate to Israel, where he organized former Soviet prisoners to oppose the communist regime and, specifically, its treatment of Jews. That helped create a broader human rights movement that eventually posed a serious threat to the Soviet system.

Yechezkel Pulerevitch (Source: Jerusalem Post)

In 1973, he came to Washington to meet Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) and advocate for the passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment–which former dissident Natan Sharansky has called the “first nail in the coffin of the Soviet dictatorship.”

In 1974, Pulerevitch published a memoir of his experiences in the Gulag, entitled Short Stories of the Long Death. The foreword was written by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and the book appeared in several languages.

One story in particular recalls a Hanukkah celebrated in the concentration camp, in the most difficult of circumstances. Its message of resistance is appropriate to the themes of the holiday–now on its eighth and final night–and for a generation that has yet to understand the folly of socialism or to memorialize the horrors of the communist system.

***

A Hanukkah Candle in the Concentration Camp

by

Yechezkel Pulerevitch

Where have I seen that face? – I wondered, staring at the old man opposite me, a prisoner with gaunt features and blue-green eyes with a dreamy faraway expression. All around us – Russian prisoners in tattered clothing, bickering at the top of their voices and swearing a blue streak. The old man’s clothing was also in rags. But the face, the face… (more…)

On October 24, 2011, Michael Osborne, an independent legislative candidate, filed a lawsuit against the Virginia Republican Party alleging unfair ballot treatment. Osborne argued that if independent candidate petitions must be checked, so too must the primary petitions be checked for signatures. The Bristol County Circuit Court said the case was filed too close to the November 2011 election in which Obsborne was running to make a judgment. Osborne vowed to pursue the matter after the election.

At issue is this: the statutes provide for different treatments for different types of petitions. Obsborne contended that this was unconstitutional. He demanded that the voter registrar certify his opponent’s, Israel O’Quinn’s signatures.

“It’s the principle of the issue. I want to draw attention to the fact that there is an unlevel playing field, that the deck is stacked in favor of a party candidate as opposed to an independent candidate,” Osborne said. “Nobody knows whether he’s actually qualified to be a candidate or not. That should bother people that we can just wink and nod at the party candidate and say that’s OK.”

Virginia, you will recall, has a very complicated process for determining ballot access, in part thanks to Osborne’s petition. No other state requires more than 5,000 signatures to be put on the presidential primary ballot.

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They touch our lives in so many ways, and Reason.tv kicks off awards season by acknowledging those who have devoted their lives to minding other people’s business.

Live (to tape) from the fourth floor of the Sepulveda Center in Los Angeles, it’s the third annual 2011 Nanny of the Year Awards!

These United States have produced many worthy nominees in 2011. Who could forget the city planner who threatened a woman with 93 days behind bars for growing vegetables or the state senator who did his best to outlaw crossing the street while listening to an iPod (shortly before pleading guilty to federal corruption charges).

But this year the golden Nanny goes to the Wolverine state pol who’s bent on making most any kind of teacher-student sex–not just a fireable offense, but a felony, even if the student is older than age 18 or even if teacher and student are middle-aged. (And, in an apparent attempt to secure nanny gold, our winner is also fighting to force school kids to recite the pledge in front of genuine made-in-America flags.)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Starting in 2012, the government will charge a new fee to your health insurance plan for research to find out which drugs, medical procedures, tests and treatments work best. But what will Americans do with the answers?

The goal of the research, part of a little-known provision of President Barack Obama’s health care law, is to answer such basic questions as whether that new prescription drug advertised on TV really works better than an old generic costing much less.

But in the politically charged environment surrounding health care, the idea of medical effectiveness research is eyed with suspicion. The insurance fee could be branded a tax and drawn into the vortex of election-year politics.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute – a quasi-governmental agency created by Congress to carry out the research – has yet to commission a single head-to-head comparison, although its director is anxious to begin. (more…)

In a report today on the growing wealth gap between members of Congress and the constituents they represent, the New York Times credited Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer as being partly responsible for having ignited “renewed attention” to banning elected officials from enriching themselves by using material, nonpublic information when making private investments.

From The Times:

While concerns go back decades about lawmakers trading on confidential information, the issue drew renewed attention with a new book on the topic, “Throw Them All Out” by Peter Schweizer, and a “60 Minutes” report in November. Both linked high-level briefings that Congressional leaders received on the 2008 financial crisis and on health care to their purchase and sale of certain stocks.

Members insisted that they never traded on information that was not public, and some Congressional leaders pointed out that their investments were in blind trusts managed by professional advisers. Nonetheless, the publicity led some 90 members of Congress to call anew for a ban on insider trading.

Citing an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, the report notes that from 2004 to 2010, the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent, even as the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained virtually unchanged. Median net worth for all Americans fared far worse, dropping 8 percent. And between 1984 and 2009, the median wealth of House members grew two and a half times (in inflation-adjusted dollars), whereas the average American family’s fell slightly.

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The Federal Register is the daily depository of all proposed and final rules and regulations, as well as presidential documents, executive orders, agency internal directives and other notices.

This morning’s edition topped out at a rather incredible 81,245 pages for the year, with three days left for Uncle Sam to rack up still more mandates in 2011.

This is notable, because nominally, tomorrow’s Federal Register stands to surpass last year’s all-time high of 81,405. Each year I assemble such facts and figures about the regulatory state in Ten Thousand Commandments, and nothing is improving, at a time in our economic history when things need badly to improve.

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From Politico:

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska will announce today that he is retiring after two terms, a serious blow to Democratic efforts to hold on to their majority in the chamber next November.

Nelson is scheduled to hold a press conference back home in Nebraska as early as today to make his decision official, said several Democratic insiders close to the leadership.

The 70-year-old Nelson was considered one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents this cycle. GOP-affiliated outside groups have already dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into TV ads bashing Nelson, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent over $1 million on its own ad blitz to bolster his image.

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The Boston Globe has joined the growing chorus of voices calling for a ban on congressional insider trading.

From the Boston Globe:

WHEN CONGRESS returns to Washington after New Year’s, a bipartisan proposal to ban insider trading by lawmakers should be one of the first items on its agenda. The bill enjoyed a brief spurt of momentum last month after a book accused legislators of using information gleaned from government service to make profits on Wall Street. But the legislation, whose sponsors include Senator Scott Brown, has since stalled amid opposition from some House Republicans. Passing it quickly in the new year would be a important step toward restoring public confidence.

The Globe credited Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s book, Throw Them All Out, as the catalyst for the reform movement.

However, in a show of possible hometown favoritism, the article criticized Schweizer’s revelations involving Sen. John Kerry’s millions of dollars of curiously timed trades as being “far less compelling.”

The accusations of insider trading leveled against Senator John F. Kerry, however, seem far less compelling. According to Schweizer, a trust belonging to Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, traded medical company stocks affected by legislation that the senator was working on. In 2007, for instance, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s trusts sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of Amgen stock a week before the government publicly announced it would limit the amount Medicare reimbursed patients for taking a drug made by the company. But those trades were arranged by independent trustees, not Kerry.

The Globe’s position on Sen. Kerry’s investments still leaves the door open for a sort of double-standard not applied to CEOs and corporate executives who make expertly-timed trades that trigger investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whether those trades were made by so-called “independent trustees” or not.

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From AFP:

The wealth gap between members of Congress and ordinary Americans is growing larger, with nearly half of all lawmakers now worth more than one million dollars, according to US media reports Tuesday.

US lawmakers are increasingly likely to be multimillionaires and are on average nine times richer than the other Americans, according to data made available to the New York Times and Washington Post.

The papers reported figures from the Center for Responsive Politics that showed the median net worth of a member of Congress stood at $913,000 and is climbing, compared to $100,000 and falling for the rest of the population.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Earlier this year Florida lawmakers voted to put a proposal on the statewide ballot which, if approved by voters, would clear the way for state money to be used for student tuition at religious schools.

The same lawmakers also expect the teachers’ union to launch a legal challenge to their proposal. So they passed another law, allowing the state attorney general to restructure and salvage ballot proposals that are tossed out by the courts before voters have a chance to consider them.

As it turns out, application of that law was necessary this week to sidestep a court ruling that temporarily threw the lawmakers’ proposal off the ballot, according to a story posted on Jacksonville.com.

As it stands now, Florida voters will once again get to decide whether public school students can use public money to attend religious schools.

That’s a huge victory for those who believe the people, rather than the courts, should dictate state policy. And it’s a huge defeat for the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, which is fighting to maintain a guaranteed clientele of geographically-trapped students for its members. (more…)

From AFP:

The US government will hit its debt limit in the first week of January, the Treasury Department said on Tuesday, as it pointed to an imminent request for $1.2 trillion increase.

The government is expected to come within $100 billion of the current $15.2 trillion ceiling by the end of the year, Treasury Department officials said.

That effectively puts lawmakers on notice that they will have until mid-January to oppose a fresh increase.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich once praised the health care law enacted in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney.

In an April 2006 memo, the former House speaker called it “the most exciting development of the past few weeks.” Gingrich also said the law has “tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system.”

The memo from Gingrich’s Atlanta-based Center for Health Transformation came to light Tuesday as the GOP candidate set out on a 22-stop bus tour of Iowa in the run-up to the state’s Jan. 3 caucuses.

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