The Republican Governors Association (RGA) reported their fundraising numbers for 2011 today and it was a record. Raising $44.1 million in the year that just ended, the RGA most than doubled the Democratic Governors Association’s (DGA) total of $20 million.

Comparing the numbers from 2007, the last fundraising cycle before a Presidential election, the RGA is very happy, “more than doubling” that total. They carried over $26.6 million into 2012 giving them “more cash on hand than any other political party committee.”

The DGA, on the other hand, raised just over $20 million in 2011. That’s an improvement over their 2007 total of $12.7 million, but significantly less than the RGA’s total.

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About a month ago, MSNBC hack and noted anti-hispanic racist Donny Deutsch said what the Occupy Wall Street mutants (what I affectionately call them) needed is a “Kent State moment.” That is a reference to the shooting deaths of 4 Kent State students in Ohio at an anti-war riot by the National Guard on May 4th, 1970. The photo of a screaming woman standing over one of the bodies became one of the iconic moments of the time and helped turn public sentiment to the side of the protesters.

It led to a popular song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and all manner of public outrage.

These “Occupy” mutants would like nothing more than to repeat that, especially now that the liberal Public Policy Polling firm found their movement to be less popular than the body lice with which they are infested.

But in the age of the Internet and camera phones, that’s just not possible.

In 1970 there were just 3 television networks, filming events was rare, grainy and encumbered by bulky, expensive equipment. A photograph, like one iconic one from Kent State, had no context beyond what a writer gave it. That’s no longer the case.

Everyone has a camera, video is not in short supply, context can no longer be given extemporaneously. If and when violence breaks out from the “Occupiers,” who’ve pledged to shut down parts of major cities around the country tomorrow, they won’t be able to spin the context of their actions beyond what is already on the public record.

When a protester says “You’re going to see what a Molotov Cocktail can do to Macy’s” on camera, their intentions are clear. The continual flow of threats of violence, and acts of violence, from these mutants is well documented online. They’re proud of it. That wasn’t the case in 1970.

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I was in downtown Baltimore Monday morning taking care of some business, so I thought I’d stroll a block over and check out the “Occupy Baltimore” crowd. Well, the word “crowd” might  be an overstatement. There were about as many people as there would be homeless people on a normal day, only with tents and literature rather than Starbucks cups for holding spare change. And it’s the literature I found most interesting.

Among the literature I picked up off of their table was one titled “Security Statement.” What it said, and what it implied, was rather disturbing:

As the Security Committee of Occupy Baltimore, we release this statement to ensure the safety of our newly forming, delicate yet strong community.

Sexual abuse and assault are dehumanizing acts for the survivor as well as the abuser. It strips people of their right to safety, dignity, and respect, basic values which embody many of the intentions behind Occupy Baltimore. As a vibrant community, we recognize and give power to these values and the rights of survivors.

OK, saying you’re against “sexual abuse and assault” isn’t controversial, but do you really have to say it? Why isn’t it understood? As it turns out, that’s just the beginning of the weird. The entire “Security Statement” is about sexual assault and abuse.

Sexual abuse or assault at Occupy Baltimore is in violation of our values, and will not be tolerated. It is an explicit policy of Occupy Baltimore to prohibit abuse by any members of the community upon another person. Violation of this policy will result in the abuser no longer being welcome at the occupation.

So sexual abuse or assault are against “explicit policy” and will get you shunned? What about arrested? Those things are crimes, after all. Shouldn’t Occupy Baltimore, like every other group or individual, encourage people to contact the police to get these predators off the street? You’d think so, but you’d think wrong: (more…)

Who doesn’t love soap? Well, the obvious answer is the #OccupyWallStreet crowd, but put them aside for the moment. Everyone else loves soap. Or should. But not everyone does. It turns out that environmentalists don’t care much for soap either. Certain kinds of soap, anyway.

Learning that the “occupiers” and environmentalists have a mutual dislike of certain kinds of soap comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever sat next to them on a subway, but the why is different for each group. Where the protesters, presumably, haven’t used soap in a month out of the necessity of circumstance, the environmentalists shower but want to take your choice of soap away from you.

I’ve written about this before, twice in fact, and while it’s not the most exciting topic on the planet (that honor goes to a tie between the start of NHL season and release of the new iPhone), it’s every bit an affront to liberty as banning incandescent light bulb was. Only with soap, there’s still time to act to stop it.

The offending ingredient in soap is called Triclosan, it’s what makes anti-bacterial soap anti-bacterial and stops you from getting sick an untold number of times every year. But to environmentalists, benefits to humans is of little concern, nor are facts, it’s the agenda of control über alles.

Zealots like Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) are pushing Congress to ban antibacterial soap under the time-tested Washington favorite motivation “just in case.” Just in case it’s dangerous, just in case it causes problems, just in case…

Under the “just in case” model there is much that wouldn’t be banned, or never have come into being in the first place. That’s why we have science and why science studies things such as this. And science has weighed in.

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To say environmentalists are immune to reality is an understatement. When anyone dare question their conclusions, their deeply held “religious” beliefs, they are immediately attacked as a heretic, or worse, a shill for whatever industry they are trying to destroy. The soundness of the science, and the lack of such on their part, is irrelevant, it’s agenda uber alles. They find someone involved in what goes against their view who they can play “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with and connect to whatever industry/organization they’re trying to destroy and claim that discredits everything contrary to their orthodoxy. But every once in a while something so beautifully karmic happens…That’s what this is about.

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a chemical used to harden plastic so it can be used in the countless ways it helps improve countless millions of lives. As it is a chemical, it was only a matter of time before the extremist environmentalists started talking of the “dangers” of it to human beings. Ironically, charges of this nature are always led by people who have no concern of human beings. They are the same type of people who effectively banned the mosquito killing agent DDT. That ban has led to millions of avoidable deaths around the world from malaria. While the banning of BPA wouldn’t lead to deaths, it’s banning wouldn’t save any lives either. But it would put a lot of people out of work.

But work, jobs, livelihoods of individuals has no place in the environmental extremist agenda. They’ve replaced what was known to kill malaria carrying mosquitos with nets to sleep under. So instead of eliminating the problem they’ve reduced the problem…during sleep hours. Malaria’s largest number of victims are infants and children who don’t have the wherewithal to swat mosquitos away when they land on them, and since no one can live their whole life in a net, their exposure risk is high.

The book from which the religion of modern environmentalism sprang is “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. In many ways it is the Bible of that movement. And even though it has been discredited, the “Silent Spring” model still serves as the modus operandi of the environmentalist cult. Ban first, ask questions later. That’s what they were trying to do with BPA.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Utopia…

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Circular firing squads are very helpful…when they’re done on the other side of the aisle. That is why Democrats are so happy lately, sitting back and watching all the Republican in-fighting over deft ceiling deals. Sadly, Republicans have been all too happy to oblige. It’s time for them to stop and shift the onus to Democrats in the Senate and the White House, where it belongs.

The normal way passing legislation works is the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill on the same subject, they come together in a conference committee to hammer out the differences to form one bill, then both chambers vote again on the finished product. The way this debt negotiations have been going is the House passes a bill, the Senate and the President say they don’t like it. The House passes another bill, the Senate and the President say they don’t like it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

While this kabuki dance goes on, Republicans keep offering more and more plans, fighting amongst themselves and the media reports it as if they are the ones being unreasonable. This needs to stop.

It’s too late to stop a vote on the latest plan introduced by Speaker Boehner, it’s out there and everyone is expecting a vote on it. But that should be the last vote the House takes on the issue until the Senate acts on something.

What good will that do?

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Saying Mitch McConnell is a weak leader is like saying the sun is hot, there’s little point in stating the obvious. The earmark-loving leader of the Senate Republicans leader has a plan to avert the debt ceiling “crisis” – punt. The possible deal being reported is that Congress will give the President increases in the debt ceiling unless, basically, a veto-proof majority rejects it. It’s more involved than that, but that’s the gist of it.

Senator McConnell announced last week a contingency plan. The plan basically would give the President $2.4 trillion in debt limit authority in three tranches (Washington word for stacks of your money) and the President would be empowered to marry cuts to these increases in debt limit authority. The Congress would be empowered by a 2/3rds vote to legislatively veto any proposed cuts by the Administration, as a package deal, with these three increases in debt limit authority.

For example, the first batch of $750 billion in new borrowing authority might be conditioned by the President on massively cutting defense spending. Then Congress would have to vote, in both chambers by a 2/3rds vote, to stop these cuts. This seems at first glace to be a ill conceived and desperate idea out of the Republican “Leadership” to save face. It also may be unconstitutional, in that the legislature can’t delegate this type of authority under the Constitution.

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The definition of the word corruption, according to Merriam-Webster, is an “impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.” No, this isn’t a post about WeinerGate, that corruption is being exposed elsewhere…so to speak. This is about two stories of corruption that aren’t getting as much attention as they deserve but have real-world implications for the lives of Americans.

We’ve all heard the saying “The fox guarding the hen house,” right? It essentially means  putting someone with their own agenda in charge of making sure something contrary to their interest doesn’t happen. What’s happening at the Department of Education (DoE) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are similar stories of inappropriate interactions between bureaucrats creating policy and the appearance of partnerships with outsiders with their own agendas. It’s not the fox guarding the hen house, it’s closer to the fox designing the security system for the hen house.

Over at the DoE, they’ve been working with Wall Street short-sellers to push regulations that would all but destroy the for-profit education system. Short-sellers, who stand to make a fortune once that regulation is fully implemented and have zero expertise in education policy, have been intimately involved in the drafting “Gainful-Employment” rules that essentially mean a certain percentage of graduates have to get jobs related to their field of study in order for a for-profit institution’s students to qualify for financial aid.

Forget the fact that in this economy, state-run schools would have difficulty in meeting that criteria. Focus on the clear conflict of interest in having people who stand to personally benefit financially helping create rules to increase the chances of that happening and you begin to see why the Inspector General of the DoE opened an investigation into this.

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Under normal circumstances, when a process is found to be corrupt, any outcome or recommendation from that chain of events is either cancelled or put on hold until the full extent of the corruption can be uncovered. Essentially, good practice dictates that you start from scratch, to ensure that there is no undue influence.

But that’s not how the Obama Administration works when the final outcome is something they want. Displaying the “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” attitude they’ve come to be known for on everything from health care and spending to cap & trade and net neutrality, the Obama administration is on the verge of adopting rules governing for-profit educational institutions, even though they have emerged from a wholly corrupt process that, to paraphrase Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), may end up with people going to prison.

It all started last summer when Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, held a hearing on whether or not students attending for-profit colleges should be allowed to receive federal financial aid. Harkin strongly supports a proposed Department of Education (DoE) rule, known as Gainful Employment, which would severely damage those institutions and kill higher education opportunities for thousands of Americans.

It was odd that one of the witnesses Senator Harkin chose as an “expert” on for-profit colleges had no expertise in the industry whatsoever. Steve Eisman is a Wall Street short-seller with no background or expertise on education policy. But with the stock prices of private-sector colleges and the companies that run them risking collapse, he does have a lot to gain by ensuring that happens.

This was just the first of what would be many curious developments in the Progressives’ crusade against for-profit education.

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The crusade against for-profit colleges has been raging for the better part of a year with Congressional hearings and the potential for new regulations making financial aid for students attending those school impossible to get. Democrats have declared for-profit schools unworthy of educating students in need of financial aid, which would disproportionally harm lower income and minority students, who make up a large percentage of their student body. But while these for-profit school have be fighting for their lives, others, with the apparent help of regulators from the Department of Education, have been fighting “for profits” of their own, and this starting to catch the eye of elected officials in Washington.

The first red-flag in the crusade against for-profit colleges came when Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) held a hearing where Steven Eisman, a noted Wall Street short-seller, was called to testify against for-profit colleges, something about which he had zero expertise. Then the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) discovered the possible explanation as to why Mr. Eisman was so interested in an issue in which he had no expertise. From documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, CREW discovered that, as the Daily Caller described it, “…Eisman and other short sellers may have been given advanced notice of key regulatory moves by the agency, which would have allowed them to position themselves early in the market, and profit handsomely.”

This used to be called “insider trading,” a term from the 80s that seems to have gone out of vogue, but is still illegal.

CREW sent a letter to Robert Khuzami, Director of the Division of Enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, informing him of their findings and calling for an investigation into possible illegal activities by Eisman and several people inside the Department of Education who, as the emails and documents they obtained suggest, may have fed Eisman and his colleagues the information.

A further investigation by the Daily Caller found that, in addition to Eisman, another short-seller, Manuel Asensio, a man “securities regulators debarred…from employment as an investment banker for the rest of his life for refusing to answer questions and provide documents about his investment practices,” is now lobbying against for-profit colleges.

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After seeing the tactics of the left-wing and their Siamese twin union leaders in Wisconsin on full display over the prospect of still getting a better retirement deal than we taxpayers do, I call for a National Strike Day for every single non-public sector union member. They seem to think we can’t live without them, and they refuse to work without getting more of our money, so let’s deny them our labor for a day or two and see who can’t really live without whom. (NOTE: Every negative reference here to public sector unions does not include police, firefighters and emergency personnel who do some of the most important jobs around, jobs most of us couldn’t do.)

Just think of it, every shop, restaurant, office, factory, gas station, EVERYTHING closed for a day or more. If the government won’t listen to us, won’t instill a minimum amount of fiscal sanity, let’s shut it down.

Government acts as though they own us and the fruits of our labor, more than that, they’ve spending the wealth of generations yet to be born in a never ending quest to…well, who knows? It’s almost as though they’re trying to plug a black hole with money. Well, a black hole can’t be plugged, it will just consume mass for eternity, much like the government, which, urged on by public sector parasites, is incapable of getting enough of our money, so let’s deny it to them.

This is, of course, impossible to make happen. Not only is it impractical, but those of us without the protection of tenure face real world consequences for our actions and would be fired for refusing to work, even for a day, without a valid excuse. We can’t all have doctors standing by to write us “get out of violating your contract free” notes. Non-liberals simply don’t act that way.

But think of the concept.

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President Obama’s budget hit Capitol Hill with all the enthusiasm a close talker with bad breath receives when getting on an elevator.  Republicans rushed to news cameras with vigor usually only seen from Senator Chuck Schumer to rightly denounce it and Democrats released written statements with tepid “good starting point” type phrases in it. While Republicans have offered varying degrees of good ideas for places to cut the budget, few have dared to touch the Defense Department. This is a fool’s game. National defense is the first priority of the federal government, or should be, but to assume there aren’t cuts and savings that could be found in a department with a nearly $700 billion budget is as crazy as it is dishonest.

Medicare and Social Security should, no, HAVE to be on the table. Reforming those and getting their long-term costs under control are as important to our nation’s future as is winning the War on Terror is. If our elected officials continue to refuse to address the coming crush of these programs Al Qaeda doesn’t have to fire another shot or do anything but wait us out in caves until we collapse under their unsustainable weight to win. Unfortunately “progressives” have, for years, refused to even acknowledge they are facing any problems, let alone that they’re potentially a cancer that can bring this country down.

Every attempt to reform these entitlements in the past has been met with indignation, denial and demonization, and they were successful in blocking them. But times have changed, the old playbook is as useful as the Statue of Liberty play in football – it might work every once in a while, but it’s no longer something for which people are unprepared.  The mood in the country is different. All the old talk of the sky falling if these sacred cows are touched has been drowned out by the fact that these sacred cows are going to crush us long before the sky gets its chance. If we don’t address the crisis with these programs it will be like getting hit by a train and blaming the conductor. We were on the tracks, we saw the light and we knew it wasn’t going to swerve. Not getting off the tracks is our fault, not the train’s.

Republicans know this and will use it to their advantage when it comes time to make the tough choices they were elected to make.  Hopefully…

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There is no proof yet that Christianne Amanpour is a child molester. Let that sink in for a second. Outrageous, right? Especially when simply said out of the blue like that. Yet that is how the media is treating the insanity of the left-wing progressive charge that conservatives, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party are somehow responsible for the actions of a man who had been obsessed with his target since 2007, more than two years before the Tea Party was in existence.

Amanpour, on her low-rated “This Week” program on ABC, said the following in her report of the tragic act of insanity in Arizona when a disturbed gunman open fire, killed six and wounded more than a dozen, including Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. “…But in fact the suspect in custody, 22 year old Jared Loughner, has no known ties to the tea party or any conservative group.”

It was an unprovoked, out of context slam at a group of people who had nothing to do with anything involving this act of barbarism. But it was exactly what most progressive leftists want the story to be – “forget the tragedy, forget the victims, we have to try to use this to our political advantage and blame conservatives.” After all, never let a crisis go to waste, right?

Most old media left-wing attack dog types are only implying it, but some are flat-out saying it. For example, Paul Krugman, about whom there is also no evidence of child molestation yet, blogged that while there wasn’t “yet” any proof, “…it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.” Implicitly this means that the Democrat party is free to not take a stand against anyone using any inflammatory rhetoric because they don’t do that. Makes you wonder if Mr. Krugman has ever heard of Alan Grayson, MSNBC or many of President Obama’s own remarks.

Media Matters for America Senior Fellow (in what can only be described as watching television and complaining about it) Eric Boehlert, about whom there is ten times the evidence of being a child molester than conservatives are responsible for the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords (in case Eric can’t do math, when you multiply by zero you get zero) could not resist the urge to run to Twitter to blame the right, even though his employer managed to. (As of 3:00 am Media Matters website had no mention of the tragedy.) He took the opportunity to attack Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin, falling in line with all the other progressive bomb-throwers who seemingly received “Tweeting points” from a central command.  In his rage, which is pretty much a typical day for Mr. Boehlert, he forgot to do one things…condemn the act or offer any condolences or prayers for the victims whatsoever. In fact, he only wrote one tweet with the name Giffords in it, the others that mention her were retweets.

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After what seems like a decade’s worth of commercials, more talking head blather than should be allowed under the Geneva Conventions and spin enough to make even the most rabid rollercoaster fan nauseous, election 2010 is upon us. Any reading of the news would lead you to believe that Republicans will have a good night tomorrow and Democrats will learn nothing, unless your news source is MSNBC, in which case reread the “Democrats will learn nothing” part of this sentence. The disservice outlets like MSNBC and Huffington Post have done liberals is a column for another day, this one is about the election and what you should look for as results roll in tomorrow.

The Guessing Game

Just how many House seats Republicans win tomorrow is irrelevant, the only number that matters is 39. If Republicans win 39 more seats than they have today they will take control of the House and Nancy Pelosi returns to being as insignificant a factor in your life as the kid who sat next to you in 3^rd period French class your senior year in high school. You shared some times and even wrote “Keep in touch” in his yearbook, but you didn’t include your phone number so he actually could, and now he’s gone.

As soon as those 39 seats flip Nancy returns to being Minority Leader, a fate former Speakers of the House resign from faster than a call girl cancels a date on Charlie Sheen. But I digress.

Pundits are predicting historic numbers, up to 100 seats are in play, they say. Maybe they are, but it doesn’t matter, all that matters is 39. Predictions of 50 to 75 have not been uncommon in the last few weeks; if Republicans surpass those numbers the predictors will claim the “wave” was so big no one could have foreseen it, if they are close they will claim a clairvoyance not seen since the glory days of Miss Cleo. If they fall short, the story they will tell is one of a rejection of the Tea Party, of limited government, of Americans “coming to their senses,” a near-literal smearing of lamb’s blood on the door posts of Congress to ward off the 10^th plague of the 10^th Amendment. Don’t listen to them either way. All that matters is 39.

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Talking heads, pundits and bloggers have been buzzing for months now at the prospect of Republicans in Congress releasing a new version of the Contract with America, the set of legislative proposals Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders cobbled together in the lead up to the 1994 election. While that election saw Republicans sweep into control of the House for the first time in 40 years, and take the Senate, 2010 is not 1994. Nationalizing that election made sense, nationalizing this one reeks of opportunism and a desperation for the Washington establishment to claim relevance.

In 1994, everyone knew Republicans were going to do well, but they didn’t know how well. The battle with President Clinton and liberals over Hillarycare, Congressional corruption and other issues soured a large portion of the nation on Democrats. It was a harmonic convergence of events that set the ball on a tee for Republicans. No one can say whether or not the Contract was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it is given so much credit that logic dictates that at least some of it is undeserved.

While the ideas in the original Contract were put on paper by people from inside Washington, they had been outsiders their whole careers. None in the House had ever served in a Republican majority. Those drafting the new “Contract” have, and lost it by becoming what they ran opposing. It hasn’t been released yet, but the rumors are circulating about its content and release date, possibly as soon as this Thursday. Regardless of what it says, the message it will send, and the trouble for campaigns, campaigns doing quite well without it, is that it this election is about Washington. It could be the unforced fumble as the clock is running out of the 2010 campaign.

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Are you opposed to Obamacare or illegal immgration? You’re a racist. Are you opposed to gay marriage? You’re a homophobe. Did you oppose Elana Kagan’s appointment to the Supreme Court? You’re a sexist. After less than two years of complete Democrat control of government, there aren’t many Americas progressives haven’t accused of some sort of bigotry for simply having an opinion different from theirs. The politics of “hope” and “change” have devolved into exactly what those espousing them claimed they would end. Is this really Democrat’s plan to win votes in November?

Barack Obama campaigned under the banner of unity and ending the “politics of division.” But that banner was swiftly furled and the true banner of progressive politics began flying over our country. Progressivism leaves no room for debate or disagreement. To paraphrase former President Bush, to progressives you’re either with them or you’re with the enemy.

During the Obamacare debate, opponents were compared to opponents of civil rights legislation. The ethically challenged Congressman from New York, Charlie Rangel, said “The group that were in Washington fighting against the health bill and fighting against the President, [they] looked just like and sounded just like those groups that attacked the civil rights movement in the South.” Left-wing blogs ran with this mantra and agenda-driven media outlets like MSNBC dutifully followed. They still advance the lie that African-American Members of Congress were pelted with racial slurs as they walked to cast their vote, something even the New York Times has acknowledged there is zero evidence of.

The ends justify the means, no matter how sickening and divisive the means.

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There is very little that can bring Republicans and Democrats together these days, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the natural inclination of both over the last few years has been to spend money like it’s an Olympic event and they’re going for the gold. But every once in a while the two parties experience a sort of harmonic convergence and come together to do something that is actually based upon long-term thinking, not electoral advantage or political gamesmanship. Such is the case with the F-35 Strike Force Fighter, America’s next generation of fighter plane. But this wouldn’t be Washington, DC, were there not fight to be had somewhere, and in this case how best save money – in the short-term or the long-term. Therein lies where we join our story…

Normally the idea of Republican Leader John Boehner and liberal stalwart Dennis Kucinich agreeing on something would mean it would have to be about what time it is or from which direction the sun rises, but only sometimes. To say those two, and similarly aligned Members of Congress, regularly agree would be akin to saying the Washington Nationals have some room for improvement as a baseball team. But on this issue they are simpatico. Why?

Safe to say they didn’t lose a bet.  The real reason is quite simple – long-term savings potential.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that if what Boehner, Kucinich and ideological brethren voted for were to become law, the F-35 project could see savings of up to 12 percent in the long-term.  While 12 percent may not be enough to get you off the couch for a TV priced at $500, we’re talking about significant savings when dealing with billions of dollars.

So what is this project? It is the decision of who is going to make the next generation engine for the F-35. While this doesn’t seem like it should be an issue inspiring any sort of controversy, it wouldn’t be Washington if it didn’t.

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Profit used to be a good thing; it allowed companies to reinvest in their businesses, to lower prices and bring new products to market, to employ people, and enable those people to live comfortable lives.  In the last few years, however, the word “profit” has taken a negative turn.  It has gone from that which affords companies their ability to continue to operate to an affront to consumers, the result of greed. So it is not surprising that the mentality that profit is bad has crept into the realm of for-profit higher education.

Education is rarely thought of as a business. With so many universities operating with tax dollars subsidizing their every move and reports of large endowments in the news, it’s no wonder the concept of for-profit college is foreign to many.  But there are many for-profit universities operating and educating people on campuses and in the privacy of the student’s homes across the country, and these institutions have recently become targets for criticism.

Why attack? The ostensible reason is concern over quality.  In the past most for-profit higher learning institutions were Internet based and unaccredited. Neither of these facts are unknown to their students when they enroll, and neither are of any concern to anyone other than the students themselves.

Accreditation is a certification by one of many regional boards that makes transferring from one accredited university to another much easier by allowing for credits earned at one to count towards a degree at another. This system saves student’s money by assuring the classes they took at, say, a community or two-year college will count towards their degree should they transfer to a four-year school.  Accreditation is like the popular club colleges and universities seek to join to be part of the “in” crowd, even though it’s not necessary in order to operate.

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Are you going to Washington, DC to partake in the Tax Day Tea Party Rally this Thursday?  If you are and you will be arriving on Wednesday, Big Government has a party for you!

Wednesday night starting at 6:00 pm, Big Government is co-sponsoring a happy hour for tea party activists who are coming to town for the rally.  Along with other co-hosts, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, The Daily Caller, Freedomworks and my group, First Friday, Big Government will be gathering at Lounge 201 on Capitol Hill near the Senate offices in Washington.

Lounge 201 is located at 201 Massachusetts Ave, NE, and the drink specials run all night.  So if you’re in town, thinking about coming to town, or plan to be around, make sure you swing by the happy hour for your chance to meet and network with like-minded, freedom loving individuals for a night of relaxation before the big day.

The drinks will be cheap, the conversation will be interesting and many political celebrities and elected officials have been invited to stop by, so this could be your best shot to have a private conversation with them. And don’t miss your chance to mix and mingle with some of your favorite Big Government contributors and staff!

See you there!

“Education is a right!” That was the mantra of the “progressives” marching a few weeks ago against proposed tuition increases for college students.  Implicit in that chant is the thought that college should be free for everyone, after all you can’t charge for a “right.” While I’d love to retroactively wash my hands of my student loan payments, this “belief” doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because it exposes the blatant hypocrisy of those chanting it.

No responsibility at all.

To understand this you must first understand what is, in fact, a right. Many wrongly think the Constitution grants us our rights as Americans, that the right to free speech is our “First Amendment Right.”  Nothing could be more wrong.  The First Amendment does not grant you a right to free speech, it says you are born with it and the government cannot infringe upon it. (Read this for an explanation of this point.)

So, if education is a right along the lines of speech, the government has no business being involved in it in the first place. Yet those seeking a “free” education for everyone do not seek a government-free education, they seek a government monopoly of it.  Since education is a human right, the involvement of government can, logically, only serve to infringe upon that right.  But that’s not what these people are really about.

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