It’s already happening – the liberal dream of a perpetual social welfare state where deadbeat liberal constituencies feed off of the work of productive conservative citizens in perpetuity is dying.  There’s no doubt about that; the only question left is how long and hard the process will be as the hideous leviathan the utopian liberal establishment has created convulses and dies.

It’s going to die hard.  And ugly.

The collapse is well-underway in Europe – Greece has gone from the cradle of democracy to a cesspool of union-fueled mobs – but America faces the same trauma.  As the contradictions inherent in the vision of a societal plan based on the notion that an ever-expanding pool of Democratic-voting serfs sucking the wealth away from the mostly Republican-oriented producers who labored to create it become more apparent, the reactions and rear-guard efforts of the terminal liberal elite will grow more extreme.

We are already seeing the liberal elite lash out in anger and frustration at what is a perfect storm of failure.  Glenn Reynolds, the legendary Instapundit, chronicles the daily disintegration, while the brilliant Mark Steyn’s cheery new book, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, drops on August 8, 2011 – I’ll race you to Amazon to get a copy.

As the three components of the liberal establishment – the media, the unions and politicians – rage at the dying of the liberal light, the insanity meter will swing far into the red.  It’s already begun.  The Tea Party has dared to speak the truth, and the uncomfortable realities it has pointed out have destroyed the bogus consensus that has allowed the debt Titanic to sail giddily on toward the iceberg.  That’s why the establishment response is to demonize the popular movement.  We’re “terrorists” or “lunatics” or, bizarrely, “hobbits.”  Our crime is telling the truth.

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A New York Times Bits blog post has some parts of the technology world buzzing– and not exclusively in a good way.  In the post, entitled “A Call to Take Back the Internet From Corporations,” NYT author Jennifer 8. Lee profiles a speech by Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet scholar at the New America Foundation, urging Internet users to push back on Internet firms like the English pushed back on King John via the Magna Carta.

But the piece is not grabbing attention merely because it compares an urged expansion of government power to one of history’s leading efforts to constrain government.  In addition, the post just so happens to echo several grievances of Wikileaks, relating to Internet firms’ decisions to “constrain” (in Lee’s words) the organization:

Several companies constrained WikiLeaks, including Amazon, which kicked WikiLeaks off its servers after pressure from American lawmakers; PayPal, which suspended WikiLeaks’ account; and credit card companies, which refused to take donations for it.

Governments at this point rarely act directly to constrain the Internet; instead, their policies are mediated through privately owned and operated services, Ms. MacKinnon said.

Lee, it just so happens, has “been assisting” Wikileaks with their PR and social media strategy.  Last year, after some back-and-forth, she admitted to the Columbia Journalism Review that she had helped Wikileaks roll out video of a 2007 missile strike on a van in Baghdad.

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In 2008, long before a shooting in Tucson where six people died and 19 were injured, candidate Barack Obama did not shy away from violent imagery when explaining how he would counter Republican attacks during the 2008 presidential campaign. Chicago-style Obama warned: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

After Tucson, when it came time to assign blame for what amounted to an attempted political assassination, liberals did not squander the opportunity to blame the Sarah Palin PAC website’s depiction of cross-hairs for inciting the type of uncivil discourse that led to the  murders, and Obama didn’t stop them. In fact, the media all but laid the responsibility for Jared Lee Loughner shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)  in the head at Palin’s feet.

Liberal commentator Keith Olbermann even went so far as to say: “If Sarah Palin … does not repudiate her own part, however tangential, in amplifying violence and violent imagery in American politics, she must be dismissed from politics, she must be repudiated by the members of her party.”

Four short days after the shooting, Barack Obama used the opportunity to sell T-shirts, rebuke the gun lobby, and use the tragedy to partner with the media and call for “civility in public discourse.”  In other words, the memorial in Tucson became a platform for Obama to reprimand his critics and harness the First Amendment by condemning “point scoring and pettiness.”

Barack recited Scripture, offered condolences, and eulogized all the victims before segueing into rhetoric that heaped guilt upon anyone on the right who might employ hyperbole in political discussion. Citing the gallant actions of those who saved lives in a Safeway parking lot, the President said heroism posed a “challenge to each of us,” and raised the question “going forward” of what “beyond the prayers and expressions of concern,” was  required of all Americans, including himself, to “honor the fallen” and “be true to their memory?”

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The Fourth of July weekend is a time when we Americans expect our 1400 newspapers to take a reprieve from their endless ridicules and criticisms to dutifully celebrate all that is good in our nation. We look forward those beautiful front page pictures and stories about patriotic parades down Main Street and glorious fireworks displays. We appreciates the Op Ed letters that express heart-felt thankfulness for the sacrifice of our troops serving in harm’s way; uplifting stories of the values that unite us as a beacon for freedom, and tales of rugged individualism that define our spirit. But there will always be one tabloid that will stand alone in failing to appreciate the true meaning of Fourth of July; the New York Times.

When the Times refers to itself as: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”; the paper expects all the unwashed proletariat must show subdued homage to the superior intellect. For this July Fourth weekend, they have achieved a new pinnacle of negativism and defeat. In contrast to joyous patriotic faire; the Times offers a despondent middle-aged woman bowing to a symbolically torn American flag forlornly fluttering in the total desolation of tornado-ravaged Joplin, Missouri.

Having established a morose mood; the Times stifles our spirit with Front Page headlines; American Folly”, “Declaration of Endurance, and “Fears of Declining”. Having sufficiently documented America as a despairing empire; Times Op Eds indict our moral decay with: “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt”, “It Gets Even Worse”, and “Corporate Cash Con”.

“The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” introduces us to the “absurdity” of U.S. military veterans who often suffer pangs of “survivor guilt” for leaving their combat units when they return home from war. The writer analyzes “just how irrational those feelings are” with the help of 19th Century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche; who is most famous for his belief in existential nihilism that confirms life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value; consequently God is Dead. Nietzsche describes such military self-doubt as due to a “bad conscience” for what “I ought not to have done.” Having thoroughly defamed our military; the Times offers no fair and balanced opposing writer to extol the virtues of our sons and daughters who risk the ultimate sacrifice to answer to the high moral callings of honor, duty, and valor.

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It seems hypocritical that MIT faculty member and recent Nobel Laureate, Peter Diamond, would lash out in a New York Times Op Ed titled: “When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough”, for not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve. It was only after twice failing to receive Senate support that the good professor miraculously received his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in October of 2010.

Nobel Prizes were once considered to be prestigious honors awarded by panels of impartial experts in recognition of lifetimes of cultural and scientific achievement in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. But with Peter Diamond in 2010 joining Barak Obama in 2009, Paul Krugman in 2008, and Al Gore in 2007; the Nobel has been reduced to just another example of a left wing political action committee bestowing faux credibility on fellow travellers to influence American political policy.

President Obama on April 29, 2010 nominated Janet Yellen, Sarah Bloom Raskin, and Peter Diamond to fill vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board. Ms. Yellen, a liberal, and Ms. Rasking, a moderate, were quickly confirmed based on their sterling intellectual credentials and known discipline in maintaining the type of confidential information necessary to lead America’s central bank. But the nomination of labor economist Diamond came as a stunning surprise to the financial community. Dr. Diamond had absolutely zero professional experience with Fed’s day to day regulation of banking, implementation of monetary policy, or setting of interest rates. The only relevant credentials Dr. Diamond could muster was his ardent “policy preferences” in favor President Obama’s $800 billion spending stimulus, big bank bail-out package, QE1 stimulus, QE2 stimulus, Obamacare, and demand for higher taxes.

Dr. Diamond was never shy about trumpeting his intention to use the clout he would gain as an unelected member of government to advance his Keynesian dreams of mandating that the banking system implement social policy initiatives.

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In the year that has passed since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, the liberal elites have waged a war against the First Amendment.  Liberal politicians including President Barack Obama and Senator Harry Reid, liberal media corporations like the New York Times, and labor unions have joined together to support restrictions on speech and liberty.

Their proposals for “reform” have fallen flat, in large part because they have been exposed as efforts to chill the Freedom of Speech.  These attacks on the First Amendment have used populist rhetoric in an attempt to silence corporate speech.  These efforts to silence corporations are difficult to reconcile when one sees that the New York Times, a media corporation, published a new proposal for “reform” authored by the founder of a non-profit corporation, aimed at silencing speakers that do not support their liberal world view.

In the April 4, 2011 edition of the New York Times, David Callahan launched an ideological attack on the boogeymen de jour, Charles and David Koch.  Callahan sets the tone of his article by attacking the Koch brothers for “conceal[ing] the recipients of their largess.”  In order to prevent this from occurring, Callahan would “require all nonprofit organizations that engage in political advocacy to reveal their donors.”

While Mr. Callahan alleges the current system can be utilized by the left and the right, he seems particularly offended by David Koch’s support of “ideologically driven organizations like the Cato Institute.”  Callahan argues that such groups should be treated differently from other not-for-profit organizations.

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The New Black Panther fix came in just as we suspected.  Yesterday the Department of Justice completed its 19 month internal investigation into whether Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King, the political appointee attorneys who ordered the dismissal of the voter intimidation case, acted unethically.  No surprise, DOJ found that DOJ acted ethically.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have heard about the conclusion.  The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report was the narrower of the two DOJ investigations of the matter, and Congress will be sure to conduct a far broader, and more competent, inquiry.

Of course the American people will be the judge of the black panther dismissal, not the DOJ OPR.  Anyone with eyes can see what happened.  Americans have a right to vote without armed racist jackbooted thugs lurking at the entrance to their polling place with a weapon.  That offends nearly every American, but not the lawyers at Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

The fix was in early in the DOJ investigation.  Holder appointed Robin Ashton, the head of OPR, last Christmas Eve.  She worked for Senator Patrick Leahy and was known for rifling through coworker’s desks according to a well sourced National Review article. A week after she was appointed, Attorney General Holder told the New York Times that there was “no there, there” and the black panther scandal was “made up.”  Even former Attorney General Michael Mukasey was shocked at the comments of his successor.  So was the conclusion of the OPR report newsworthy?

Apparently to the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and Associated Press it was.  For the first time ever, all four outlets had stories about the black panther scandal on the same day.  Naturally the fact the report defended Eric Holder caused the sudden synchronicity of interest in the long ignored story.

It is no accident that Loretta King, one of the central figures in the black panther dismissal, is also behind other nutty DOJ policies, including forcing the Dayton, Ohio police to hire cops that failed the test as well as signing a complaint to sue a school district for refusing to give 19 days of leave to go to Mecca.  King emerges as the engineer who regularly sends Holder’s Civil Rights Division off the rails.

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The reality doesn’t match up to the Governor Parnell’s claims. The number of oil companies filing with the Alaska Department of Revenue has doubled indicating that competition has indeed increased. Alaska has the second most business friendly tax set-up — up two spots since the passage of ACES. Additionally, a report from Governor Parnell’s Department of Revenue indicated that 2009 yielded a record high in oil jobs. Even more recently, the newest employment numbers from Alaska show that oil job numbers were higher in January 2011 than in January 2010, indicating that jobs are growing at the seasonal level. Parnell argues that state revenues are in jeopardy, but it is estimated that his proposal would reduce revenues by $100-200 million. Governor Parnell is right on other issues, but the numbers tell a different story than he asserts when it comes to ACES. (more…)

Sometimes it’s the questions you don’t ask that are telling. Case in point: the New York Times account of our event with Governor Palin last night.

Young America’s Foundation hosted Governor Sarah Palin for the keynote address at the opening banquet of our Reagan 100 weekend. This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Celebrations are taking place across the country, but this is a particularly significant weekend for our organization—since the spring of 1998 we’ve been preserving Ronald Reagan’s beloved Ranch home in the mountains north of Santa Barbara, Rancho del Cielo. Today Ronald Reagan’s Western White House is a place where young people come to be inspired by the life, the ideas, the character of Ronald Reagan.

Photo credit: (c) Jensen Sutta

And Governor Palin visited the Ranch for exactly the same reason.

The Governor gave a powerful speech at our banquet last night, before an enthusiastic overflow audience. She eloquently and gracefully paid tribute to one of the most significant speeches in American history, Ronald Reagan’s “Time for Choosing” address—while at the same time outlining a vision for America that builds upon President Reagan’s.

The speech was universally well received by our audience of all ages. But the New York Times chose to focus on some of the logistics of the event in their account:

Presidential contenders, regardless of their celebrity, are put through a gauntlet of rituals that require a delicate air of patience as they deal with their admirers. Prospective candidates, particularly if they are courting supporters, routinely sit through dinners and mingle with guests. But in her case, Ms. Palin entered the room only for her speech and left immediately after.

The appearance here was marked by tight security and rigid rules, with guests admonished to stay in their seats when she arrived. (“We’d all like to jump up and give her a high-five, but please stay at your tables,” Kate Obenshain, vice president of the foundation, announced from the dais. “There will be no book signings or autographs.”)

Governor Palin has a remarkable effect on people. For many conservatives, she’s a rock star. When the Governor walks into a room, normally even-keeled and good-natured people tend to forget their surroundings and rush towards her—to give her hug, to tell her how grateful they are for her courage, to tell her specifically how she has touched their lives. Event planning requires adherence to a basic schedule. At a minimum, you have to make it possible for your speaker to take the stage, in the “friendly confines” of tightly-packed and small room. Not an easy task with a superstar like Sarah Palin but our team sought to make the event run smoothly. (more…)

As he sits behind bars awaiting trial, Jared Loughner is undoubtedly relishing every moment of the ruckus that he managed to stir up with his deadly rampage in Tucson.  In addition to murdering six innocent human beings and wounding more than a dozen others in an act of sheer evil, the deranged gunman has set off a media and political frenzy that refuses to abate.

By various accounts, this is precisely what Loughner was hoping for. As his close friend Bryce Tierney told Mother Jones, “I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what’s happening.” Ironically enough, then, many of those now engaged in the shameless finger-pointing are inadvertently advancing the goals of the madman, by fulfilling his desire to create an environment of mayhem in society.

Deploying the most acerbic members of its verbal firing squads, the left has launched volley after volley of vitriol in recent days in an effort to score some political points and paint conservatives as extremists.  But in so doing, they are merely extending the damage inflicted by Loughner into the sphere of public discourse, thereby undermining the very same foundations of civilization that the gunman himself was targeting. (more…)

George Will in today’s Washington Post:

Now we have explainers. They came into vogue with the murder of President Kennedy. They explained why the “real” culprit was not a self-described Marxist who had moved to Moscow, then returned to support Castro. No, the culprit was a “climate of hate” in conservative Dallas, the “paranoid style” of American (conservative) politics, or some other national sickness resulting from insufficient liberalism.

Last year, New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained that “the optics must be irritating” to conservatives: Barack Obama is black, Nancy Pelosi is female, Rep. Barney Frank is gay, Rep. Anthony Weiner (an unimportant Democrat, listed to serve Blow’s purposes) is Jewish. “It’s enough,” Blow said, “to make a good old boy go crazy.” The Times, which after the Tucson shooting said that “many on the right” are guilty of “demonizing” people and of exploiting “arguments of division,” apparently was comfortable with Blow’s insinuation that conservatives are misogynistic, homophobic, racist anti-Semites.

On Sunday, the Times explained Tucson: “It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But . . .” The “directly” is priceless.

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Via an op-ed in the New York Times, Congressional Quarterly staff writer, Brian Friel, offers the incoming GOP-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee some suggestions as to what they perhaps should and should not consider investigating next year.

What’s unclear is how Friel determined that two registered lobbyists who lobby the Oversight committee and an unpaid White House adviser should, without full disclosure, be portrayed as 3 of “14 good-government watchdogs — veterans of the oversight process, former public officials, and academics” for purposes of his presumably objective op-ed.

Brian Friel is a staff writer at Congressional Quarterly. The oversight experts consulted were: Joel Aberbach, Steven Aftergood, Ryan Alexander, Danielle Brian, Dan Donovan, Linda L. Fowler, Philip G. Joyce, Donald F. Kettl, David Marin, Conrad Martin, Patricia G. Mcginnis, David Osborne, Andrew Rudalevige, Gerry Sikorski.

David Marin and Gerry Sikorski, are registered lobbyists who actually lobby the Oversight Committee on behalf of their clients. Marin works at the lobbying firm the Podesta Group, which lobbies the Oversight Committee on behalf of General Motors. Sikorski works for the lobbying firm Holland & Knight, which has also lobbied the Oversight Committee. Their clients include the American Arbitration Association and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee and Minnesota.

Interestingly enough, neither the bailout of the automotive industry, nor the implementation of ObamaCare made the list of oversight priorities assembled by these “14 good-government watchdogs.” Given that lobbyists are already seen as a big enough problem in Washington, it’s unclear to me as to why they should now perhaps seem to be lobbying from the editorial pages of the New York Times, especially while being portrayed as good government watchdogs, not the lobbyists they appear to be.

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With most of the media focusing their 2010 election coverage on whether or not Republicans will reclaim one or both houses of Congress, the 37 states that are about to elect (or re-elect) a governor get lost in the shuffle.

If Republicans do as well as projected, most observers expect gridlock to descend upon Washington D.C.  That means the real action and drama will be at the state level, where newly-elected governors will have to deal with high unemployment, shrinking budgets and public employee unions that will fight as if very existence is at stake (which it is).

Here’s a brief overview of what’s at stake for the governors of three states.

Michigan: The Wolverine State’s manufacturing-based economy has been ravaged by free trade agreements and obstinate unions.  Since 2000, Michigan has lost over 900,000 jobs.  The current unemployment rate is 13 percent, and unlikely to drop below double digits any time soon.

The state’s public employee pension funds are awash in red ink.  The Mackinac Center reports that the state has underfunded pension plans by almost $12 billion.  The state’s next governor will almost surely be Michigan businessman Rick Snyder who ran under the slogan, “One tough nerd.”  Come November 3, Mr. Snyder will face one tough job.

Ohio: Like its neighbor to the north, the Buckeye State is barely hanging on.  The unemployment rate is 10 percent, which only exacerbates the state’s “structural budget shortfall” that could reach $8 billion by 2012.  On top of that, the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) has $40 billion in unfunded liabilities.

On the bright side, Ohio was recently awarded $400 million in federal funds from the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” initiative. The bad news: after four years, that money will dry up.  Since Ohio spends “49 percent more on district-level bureaucracy than the national average,” there will have to be some big changes to the public education system.

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The Education Action Group believes that the New York City teachers union’s impending lawsuit over the release of teacher ratings exposes its true motivation to protect sub-par teachers and preserve the failing system.

New York education officials’ made the bold move to release rankings of 12,000 fourth through eighth-grade teachers recently to inject more accountability into an education system plagued by huge union-related costs, terrible graduation rates, and thousands of teachers that simply collect checks to do nothing.

The financial and other abuses the teachers unions perpetuate on public schools is a national problem that can only be corrected when citizens have unfettered access to all information available to make informed decisions. Transparency is critically important to ensure that all students receive the best education possible.

The New York City teacher rankings would, like recently released Los Angeles teacher ratings, lay the groundwork for a more transparent, effective public education system.

Unfortunately, the NYC teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, has vowed to take the issue to the State Supreme Court in Manhattan today because UFT President Michael Mulgrew contends that the system is “unreliable and in a developmental stage,” the New York Times reports.

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The New York Times has just published another in a series of establishment press missives seeking to marginalize — from the perspective of establishment press-types — tea party activists and politicians who embrace or are embraced by them.

This latest entry is an embarrassment, if a rather typical one as I detail on Chapter 1 of Red Hot Lies, “Media on a Mission.” Here are some problems with the article:

“Climate change is real, and man is causing it,” [Dem. Congressman and pro-cap-and-trade voter Baron] Hill said, echoing most climate scientists.

The author does not point to any survey of “most climate scientists,” challenge or even inquire about the source for or other evidence to support that claim. That is because there is no such survey or collective assertion by the critical masses of “climate scientists.” Period. It’s a talking point. But he’s a reporter. If he wanted to be straight about the issue he would at the very least turn to the very inconvenient statement by the Association of State Climatologists. But, again, it’s inconvenient.

When pressed, those who scribble or utter this shibboleth generally expand the universe of “climate scientist” to include anyone who is willing to go on record agreeing in return for being called one of the world’s leading climate scientists. Even if they are anthropology teaching assistants. Read on.

That is, they revert to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of (as its name indicates) representatives appointed by governments, which itself appoints anthropology TAs, instructors in “the human dimension of environmental change” (bring own incense, please) and transport policy instructors, for example, to achieve great if still exaggerated (why is that necessary?) numbers of supporters who supposedly (but didn’t) write its proclamations? The IPCC’s “chief climate scientist” and chief “climatologist,” according to outlets like the New York Times and USA Today is, just for the record, actually a… railway engineer.

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The mainstream media–a group of people far to the left of the American public–are deeply concerned that the extremist tea party–a group of people whose ideals represent the American mainstream–are threatening the careers of centrist Democrats… who are extremists.

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“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.”

I’m actually pleased that Obama has gone after the Chamber of Commerce for allegedly funding Republican ads with foreign donations. Set aside that there’s no evidence whatever for it, as even the New York Times and CBS’s Bob Schieffer acknowledge. There’s much more potent ammunition here.

In the Chamber of Commerce, one couldn’t find a more homespun, middle-of-the-road group of Republicans to attack. Going after them shows just how desperate Obama and his henchmen have become in the face of worsening election prospects.

Trying to make Boehner the face of the enemy failed. The “Party of No” meme fell flat, as has every gambit intended to make Republicans look like the reason things are not getting better. Those efforts had to, given the GOP’s minority status (not to mention their leaders’ string-like spines). Republicans in Congress have clearly been able to block nothing the past 20 months.

So, being left with attacking private citizens — and not your typical “Wall Street fat cats” at that — amounts to digging that trench ever deeper. Not only will Obama not crawl out of it by November 2, it could keep him clambering for a foothold long afterward.

Better still, the harder he presses this the more he’ll alienate the middle. That’s a surefire losing tactic. There’s no better way to make the Republican majority even larger than it’s going to be than to press arbitrary charges against millions of small businessmen.

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In a very predictable editorial yesterday, the New York Times pontificated in favor of higher taxes. Compared to Paul Krugman’s rant earlier in the week, which featured the laughable assertion that letting people keep more of the money they earn is akin to sending them a check from the government, the piece seemed rational. But that is damning with faint praise. There are several points in the editorial that deserve some unfriendly commentary.

First, let’s give the editors credit for being somewhat honest about their bad intentions. Unlike other statists, they openly admit that they want higher taxes on the middle class, stating that “more Americans — and not just the rich — are going to have to pay more taxes.” This is a noteworthy admission, though it doesn’t reveal the real strategy on the left.

Most advocates of big government understand that it will be impossible to turn America into a European-style welfare state without a value-added tax, but they don’t want to publicly associate themselves with that view until the political environment is more conducive to success. Most important, they realize that it will be very difficult to impose a VAT without seducing some gullible Republicans into giving them political cover. And one way of getting GOPers to sign up for a VAT is by convincing them that they have to choose a VAT if they don’t want a return to the confiscatory 70 percent tax rates of the 1960s and 1970s. Any moves in that direction, such as raising the top tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent next January, are part of this long-term strategy to pressure Republicans (as well as naive members of the business community) into a VAT trap.

Shifting to other assertions, the editorial claims that “more revenue will be needed in years to come to keep rebuilding the economy.”  That’s obviously a novel assertion, and the editors never bother to explain how and why more tax revenue will lead to a stronger economy. Are the folks at the New York Times not aware that both economic growth and living standards are lower in European nations that have imposed higher tax burdens? Heck, even the Keynesians agree (albeit for flawed reasons) that higher taxes stunt growth.

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Here’s a story problem to get kids ready for the new school year:

If Congress borrows $10 billion to bail out the public schools, and if toilet paper costs fifty cents a roll, how many rolls of toilet paper will each of the nation’s 132,000 K-12 public schools receive?

The answer:  Zero. Zip. Zilch.

The average American can be forgiven for thinking that the $10 billion “edujobs” bill signed into law last week by President Obama would directly benefit the nation’s school children.  That’s certainly how the National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel spun it:  “As a result of this vote, we expect to see less crowded classrooms, reinstated bus routes and restored education programs and services,” Van Roekel said.

What a windfall for the kids, right?  But how to make sense of this headline in The New York Times:  “Back to School? Bring Your Own Toilet Paper.”  Just five days after the $10 billion bailout became law, the Times reports that schools all across the country are sending out shopping lists to parents and students, requiring them to help stock the janitorial closets that have been stripped bare by shrinking school budgets.  Wasn’t that money supposed to prevent this kind of thing?

It’s a fact that school districts all across the country have smaller budgets to work with, due to the aftermath of “The Great Recession.”  It’s also a fact that unlike most American workers who have had to take less pay and fewer benefits to keep their jobs, many teacher unions all across the country have refused to make any concessions (i.e. accepting a freeze in pay or contributing to their health insurance costs).   Left with no other options to balance their budgets, school districts were forced to cut teaching jobs.  This resulted in a “crisis” and led to Congress’ $10 billion bailout.

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From Prager’s column today:

The title of this column seems unbelievable, but it is in fact what happened in America this past week. And almost no one has noticed.

After 50 years of being inundated with stories of white racism, and being taught in college that in this white-dominated society, only a white can be a racist, the American public has been properly brainwashed into accepting the otherwise incredible: A black man murdered eight white people at his place of work because they were white, and the media story is about the murderer’s alleged experiences of racism.

Here’s the Associated Press Report from Aug. 7, four days after the murders. It was reprinted in The Washington Post and throughout America:

To those closest to him, Omar Thornton was caring, quiet and soft-spoken … But underneath, Thornton seethed with a sense of racial injustice for years that culminated in a shooting rampage Tuesday in which the Connecticut man killed eight and wounded two others at his job at Hartford Distributors in Manchester before killing himself.

‘I know what pushed him over the edge was all the racial stuff that was happening at work,’ said his girlfriend, Kristi Hannah.

‘He always felt like he was being discriminated (against) because he was black,’ said Jessica Anne Brocuglio, his former girlfriend. ‘Basically they wouldn’t give him pay raises. He never felt like they accepted him as a hard working person.’

‘Thornton changed jobs a few times because he was not getting raises, Brocuglio said.

The New York Times Aug. 3 headline read: “Troubles Preceded Connecticut Workplace Killing,” and in the second paragraph, the Times reported: (more…)