The New Party's Offspring Political Party -- Alive and Well

Now that Obama's membership in the left-of-leftist New Party is no longer under question, I think it's an appropriate time to review some of the activities of the New Party's offspring, the Working Families Party, which is active in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Oregon. 

I can only guess what the Working Families Party is up to in other states, but here in New York State I've gotten campaign calls from them. Here even local political candidates apply to the Working Families Party for help--and get it--but only after making . . . promises. Here's a blog post on the topic (one of many) that I ran in September of 2009:

ACORN Has Own Political Party in NYC--And It's Winning Elections 

It isn't well known, but ACORN has its very own political party, which is winning races against progressive Democrats in New York and other states. The name of this enterprise is the Working Families Party (WFP). From Discover the Networks:

According to the party's website, WFP is a coalition founded jointly by ACORN, the Communications Workers of America, and the United Automobile Workers. However, ACORN clearly dominates the coalition. New York ACORN leader Steven Kest was the moving force in forming the party, and WFP headquarters are located at the same address as ACORN's national office, at 88 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

An outgrowth of the socialist New Party, WFP was created in 1998. According to a 2000 article by the Associated Press, its objective was (and still is) to "help push the Democratic Party toward the left." In pursuit of this goal, WFP runs radical candidates in state and local elections.

[snip]

The Working Families Party benefits from a quirk of New York State (and Connecticut) election law which allows parties to "cross-endorse" candidates of other parties. Thus when Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, she ran both on the Democratic Party ticket and on the Working Families Party ticket. Of the 3.4 million popular votes Ms. Clinton received from New Yorkers, the Working Families Party delivered 103,000.

"Candidates know that when they're on our line, they're committed to certain things," explains Bertha Lewis, who moonlights as WFP co-chair and New York ACORN Executive Director. Speaking days before Mrs. Clinton won her Senate seat in 2000, Lewis noted, "Hillary knows that if she wins, we're going to be knockin' on her door. She won't be able to hide."

[snip]

During the campaign, Mrs. Clinton spoke at numerous WFP events, most memorably at the party's debut convention, held March 26-27, 2000 at the Desmond Hotel in Albany -- an event which the Communist newspaper People's Weekly World approvingly called "a turning point in New York politics." After receiving WFP's endorsement, Clinton vowed to wage a "people's grassroots campaign." "[T]here have been few candidates in history more supportive of our issues than Al Gore and Hillary Clinton," proclaimed WFP campaign literature.

That was then.

Along came Barack Obama, one of ACORN's very own "community organizers" and lawyers, and Hillary slipped under the train, reduced to a babbling mouthpiece for Obama's unique Poke-An-Ally-In-The-Eye brand of socialist foreign policy.

Last Tuesday, on Sept. 15, candidates of the Working Families Party forced surprised Democrat incumbents into run-off elections in New York City:

Eric N. Gioia, a city councilman from Queens and a candidate for public advocate, was in a great mood Tuesday as he walked to his car after voting in the Democratic primary. Until he spotted a lone young man who stood on the sidewalk, holding a stack of fliers. “See him?” said Mr. Gioia, his face darkening. “He’s from the Working Families Party.” Much to the chagrin of candidates like Mr. Gioia, the still relatively little-known 10-year-old party had dispatched a small army in the weeks before the primary, selling voters on its candidates in the mayoral, City Council, public advocate and comptroller races. Organizers knocked on 227,928 doors and talked to 62,112 voters, a party official said. On Tuesday, more than 350 workers were stationed throughout the city, most working for a day rate of $100.

Their efforts resulted in the party’s best electoral showing yet. In the public advocate’s race, the Working Families endorsed Bill de Blasio, a city councilman from Brooklyn. Coming from behind, he forced Mark Green into a runoff on Sept. 29, even though Mr. Green was the presumed front-runner based on pre-election polls and had already held the position. In the comptroller’s race, the party backed John C. Liu, a councilman from Queens, who won 38 percent of the vote, more than any other candidate, and will face the second-place finisher, David Yassky, a Brooklyn councilman, in the runoff.

Of the four incumbent council members who were toppled, three faced challengers supported by the Working Families Party.

“To say that it has vastly exceeded expectations would be an understatement,” Dan Cantor, the party’s executive director, said of the primary results. “Nobody saw this coming.”

The party also supported Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. in the mayor’s race, though its endorsement did not make much difference since he had long been expected to win.

[snip]

And it is allied closely with powerful labor unions, whose members tend to be reliable voters, even in low-turnout primary elections like the one on Tuesday.

That has resulted in a history of success in local races, as in 2003 when its endorsement and field work helped Letitia James win a City Council seat. But it has never been so deeply involved in citywide races and has never had so much to show for its work.

The NY Times article, published as the ACORN scandal videos were hitting the blogosphere and Fox News, failed to mention ACORN's connection with the Working Families Party.
Interesting, especially considering that the NY Times endorsed seven of the Working Families Party candidates.

But the NY Times did mention that the Working Families Party had "drawn scrutiny" because it has a "for-profit arm, Data and Field Services, which provides staff members to knock on doors, call potential voters and hand out campaign flyers."

The city’s Campaign Finance Board has warned the party that it would be watching its finances closely, prompted by critics who say that the service charges fees lower than such campaign services typically cost. The board also determined that the Working Families Party and Data and Field Services, which share an office and staff, are virtually indistinguishable.

[snip]

In June, three Working Families staff members started working for the de Blasio campaign, helping recruit volunteers and contact voters. Data and Field Services provided field managers, who organized the 200 people hired to canvass on primary day.

[snip]The three City Council candidates supported by the party were Jumaane Williams, a housing advocate from Brooklyn who beat Councilman Kendall Stewart; Daniel Dromm, a public school teacher who defeated Helen Sears in Queens; and Deborah Rose who defeated Kenneth C. Mitchell and could become the first black member of City Council from Staten Island. 

“Getting their endorsement was a tremendous help,” Mr. Dromm said, who won the party’s support months ago after a rigorous round of interviews by members of its Queens chapter and others at the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers. Mr. Dromm sat alone at a table in the middle of the room, he recalled, as his questioners formed a horseshoe around him.

[snip]

In the end, he said, the greatest service the party provided was “legitimacy.”
“They validate you as a candidate,” he said.

Legitimacy. Right.

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Iesu Me Ke Kanaka Waiwai -- Pekelo Cosma

English:

Let me walk though paradise with you, Lord.
Take my hand and lead me there.
All my earthly treasures,
I would gladly give.
Teach me how to love, how to share.

Greed and lust and vanity were mine Lord,
'Til I held your love divine.
Now on my knees I pray,
That I will find a way,
Let me walk through paradise with you.
Ya ho way

Oh my Lord, my saviour.
Lead me down that long and lonely road
Faith hope and trust and charity before me
Let me walk through paradise with You.
Ya ho way

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"Nanny Bloomberg": The NYTimes Centerfold

Not that New York City doesn't deserve him after extending the term limit for mayor especially so that they could enjoy life under Bloomberg for a third term, the mayor with nothing better to do is seeking a ban on the sale of sugary drinks in sizes larger than 16 ounces. As the folks at ConsumerFreedom.com wonder in this full-page ad they purchased in today's New York Times:

What's next? Limits on the width of a pizza slice, size of a hamburger, or amount of cream cheese on your bagel?

Go ahead, Dems. If you really want to see revolution, start messing around with our pizzas.

Note: I'm not a coffee-drinker, and even if I was I wouldn't be a Starbucks customer, so I had to look it up: At Starbucks, a venti is a drink size of 24 ounces, taken from the Italian word for twenty.

H/t: The Daily Caller.
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See How Your Congress Critter Voted on Prenatal Nondiscrimination

In India, they call it "female foeticide." What do they
call it in the US Congress?

Is your Congressional representative a candidate for the Wall of Fame or the Wall of Shame when it comes to standing up for the unborn? Find out here.

In my home state, New York, RINOs Richard Hanna of New York's 24th District and Nan Hayworth of New York's 19th District crossed the aisle to join New York Democrats in opposing HR:3541: the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2012 (PRENDA), which would make it illegal to discriminate against the unborn on the basis of race or sex.

I wouldn't count on interested voters having a short memory on this shameful vote.

House rules say that this failed vote, taken under a procedure called “suspension of the rules,” can be taken again. I hope that's the plan, and that we have plenty of time to contact the Congress Critters who think that the real discrimination is preventing discrimination against girl children and children of whatever race is considered "undesirable" at a given moment in time.

The good guys on this issue in New York State are Republicans Pete King (NY 3rd), Robert Turner (NY 9th), Michael Grimm (NY 13th), Chris Gibson (NY 20th), Ann Marie Buerkle (NY 25th), and Tom Reed (NY 29th).

They need our support.

Addendum:

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Poland During WWII: Not What Obama Thinks

It's another teachable moment for Obama's 14-year-old speechwriters and for the "smartest" speaker "in the room," who together managed to call a death camp designed, built, and staffed by German National Socialists in occupied Poland a "Polish" death camp.

As the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, correctly pointed out, "When someone says 'Polish death camps,' it is as if there were no Nazis, no German responsibility, as if there was no Hitler."

I will grant that someone in the White House may have picked up the information that 3 million Polish Jews had their lives barbarically stolen from them in Poland during World War II as part of the Nazi attempt to exterminate all Jews.

What seems to have entirely escaped the notice of the White House (and many others) is the fact that complete extermination of all Poles also was on the National Socialist to-do list.

Another fact missing from the White House history primer is the fact that the lives of 3 million non-Jewish Poles also had their lives barbarically stolen from them by Poland's Nazi occupiers.

Here's a quote from Heinrich Himmler, whom someone should inform the White House was the actual overseer (and not Poland) of the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads):

"All Poles will disappear from the world. [...] It is essential that the great German nation should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles." 

In 1939, Adolf Hitler authorized his military commanders to kill "without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language."

German execution of 51 Polish hostages in retaliation for an attack on a National Socialist (Nazi) police station.

In furtherance of this goal, people of Polish descent were shot, hung, burned alive, worked to death in German mines and factories, relocated, starved to death, etc., etc. Before using Zyklon-B to gas Polish Jews, Germans  first tested it on the Polish gentiles and Soviet POWs who were the first prisoners held by Nazis in their concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Elimination of education in Poland and persecution of the Catholic Church there were big parts of the National Socialist agenda. Himmler's long-term plan included leaving Poland only four grade schools, "in which counting would be taught only till 500 [and] writing one's name." No need for any Poles to learn how to read.

To these ends, Germans destroyed 80% of all the school libraries and 75% of all the scientific libraries in Poland and forbade all education above the elementary level. The Nazis closed all Catholic schools. In Western Poland, the Nazis closed all elementary schools where the Polish language was used. 

Maksymilan Binkiewicz,
one of the 108 blessed martyrs

The National Socialists closed not only schools run by Catholics but also Catholic seminaries, monastaries, and  convents and then rounded up the priests, monks, and nuns to shoot or imprison in Nazi concentration camps:

In Pomerania, all but 20 of the 650 priests were shot or sent to concentration camps. Between 1939 and 1945, 2,935 members of the Polish clergy (18%) were killed in concentration camps. In the city of Wroclaw (Breslau), 49% of its Catholic priests were killed; in Chelmno, 48%. One hundred and eight of them are regarded as blessed martyrs. 

An estimated 200,000 Polish children under the age of 10 that Germans thought had German ancestry were stolen from their parents for "Germanization" and adoption by childless German couples. Many more children who didn't quite make the "racially valuable" grade in their captors' twisted minds were killed by phenol injection, by suffocation with carbon monoxide, and by entirely draining their blood for use in transfusions for wounded German troops. Many children, after being abducted from their parents (who were beaten or murdered), died of thirst or cold during transport in cattle cars. The horror stories go on and on.

Forced expulsion of Poles from a village in the Zamość region of western Poland, where over 110,000 people from about 300 villages were expelled to make room for German settlers, and where almost 30,000 children were kidnapped for potential Germanization. Because of heavy resistance by Poles and their Soviet partisans hiding in the region's forests, only about 10,000 Germans were able to settle in the region before the advancing Red army forced them to abandon their effort

The enormity of the Nazi's crime of genocide committed against Europe's Jews does not obliterate from history the atrocities committed against Poland's non-Jewish citizenry by Nazi occupiers. If the Nazis had not been stopped, their attempted genocide of Europe's Poles would have had even more gruesome and deadly success.

The importance of understanding such uncomfortable facts as these is the job of American-taxpayer-supported specialists in European history and diplomacy whose services are available--at any time--to the White House. If only this administration bothered to make use of them . . . .


Source: Nazi Crimes Against Ethnic Poles

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Flip-Flop Flashback: Obama Wants War Vets to Pay for Their Own Prosthetic Limbs

The Obamas attending a Medal of Honor ceremony
for U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Jared C. Monti, who was
killed in Afghanistan in June 2006. Mrs. Obama
wears a party dress, green shoes, and chandelier earrings.

It's an election year, so Obama has suddenly recalled "that the nation needs to honor veterans, including those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, by ensuring that they have access to jobs, health care, and higher education."

I guess the president's golf caddies have informed him that he might lose more than a few votes if the public was aware that one of his first actions as president was an attempt to force combat-injured veterans (or their wives) to pay for combat-injury-related health care, including buying their own prosthetic limbs.

Back in March of 2009,  Investor's Business Daily was aware of the travesty and, in a editorial scathingly critical of Obama's health care plan for wounded warriors, quoted:

a "furious Commander David K. Rehbein of the American Legion," who, together with representatives of 11 veterans groups, met with Barack Obama on Monday [March 17, 2009]:

[The President] refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by [the plan].

According to CNN, at that meeting, Barack Obama challenged those veterans "to come up with an alternative way to raise revenues."

Just 6 weeks after taking office, Commander-in-Chief Obama petulantly argued that, if American veterans want medical treatment for their combat injuries, it's up to them to figure out where the money should come from.
  
Interestingly, only a month before his election, Obama was promising to "restore our sacred trust with our nation's veterans" and "was committed to creating a 21st Century Department of Veterans' Affairs that provides the care and benefits our nation's veterans deserve [italics mine].

This is the man whom many Americans still trust with their own health care.

Think about it, civilians. If a president who doesn't think a combat-injured veteran deserves having his health care paid for by U.S. taxpayers, what makes you think he genuinely believes that you deserve health care?

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Battle Hymn of the Republic -- Mormon Tabernacle Choir

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There Oughta Be a Law...Oh, Wait...There Is a Law

Cornell Law Library

Deserving of much reposting, this heads-up from The PJ Tatler about a lil' ol' section of the U.S. Code, namely:  Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 13 › § 241:

The story about the SWATTING and intimidation is shocking.  It might also be illegal.

18 USC 241 prohibits intimidation against Americans for exercising free speech rights.  The statute says:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

And there's more, way more, to be learned about "18 USC § 241 - Conspiracy against rights" at the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell University Law School.

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Streisand on $$$ She Gave "Speedway Bomber": "No Comment"

Watching the numbers, FrontPageMag.com, in an excellent article, published this bit of information about some of the financial backers of a tax-exempt organization directed by Brett Kimberlin, the convicted "Speedway Bomber":

The mission of the other Kimberlin-created group, the Justice Through Music Project, is to somehow pound political enlightenment into the skulls of young people through music. The group has received at least $70,000 in grants from the Tides Foundation since 2006. Barbra Streisand has given JTMP at least $10,000 through her foundation since 2006. Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), is CEO of the Heinz Family Foundation. That charity has given JTMP at least $20,000 since 2006.

From American Thinker: 

The Justice Through Music Project has collected $1.8 million from the usual suspects on the political left over the last eight years, including these grants. 

2005
Farview Foundation ..................................... $9,000

2006
Tides Foundation ........................................ $60,000
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift ......... $45,000
HKH Foundation ...................................... $20,000
Heinz Family Foundation ......................... $20,000
Olive Branch Foundation ......................... $15,000
Farview Foundation ................................. $10,000
Barbra Streisand Foundation .....................$5,000

2007
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift ......... $19,000

2008
Threshold Foundation ............................ $20,000
Tides Foundation .................................... $10,000
Nathan Cummings Foundation ............... $10,000
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift ......... $20,000
Fred Gellert Family Foundation ................ $5,000
Silicon Valley Community Foundation ..... $5,000
Barbra Streisand Foundation .................... $5,000

2009
Schwab Charitable Fund ............................ $10,000
Silicon Valley Community Foundation .... $10,000
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift ......... $6,000

TOTAL (2005-2009) ..................................$304,000

[That's leaves $1.5 million of donations unaccounted for. I wonder who gave Brett Kimberlin's organization that dough?]

Breitbart.com investigated:

A spokesperson for Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift, which is listed by JTMP over several years, explained to Breitbart News that the fund is donor-advised, meaning that it does not have discretion over donations made by individuals or organizations with accounts at the fund. Donors merely park their funds at Fidelity to receive an immediate charitable tax deduction, and direct those funds over time, as they wish, to any 501(c)3. 

Schwab Charitable Fund had this to say:

National donor advised funds like Schwab Charitable Fund are cause-neutral, and exist to facilitate the charitable giving of their clients.  Grants do not in any way reflect the views or perspectives of Schwab, Schwab Charitable or the management of either organization.   

Oh, and the response from the Barbra Streisand Foundation, which does have discretion over where they give money?

"No comment."

No surprise there.  Is there a PR guy in the house?

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ObamaCare Victory: 1st Catholic University Drops Student Health Insurance

If Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio did not drop its $600 per year student health insurance plan when it expires this coming August, they would have to double the cost of the policy to $1,200 next year, and triple it to $1,800 the year after that.

Thank you, Mr. Obama. "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." Isn't that what you promised?

And thank you to Ms. Sebelius, Ms. Fluke, and the Bradley University student who told Mitt Romney, "You're all for like 'yay freedom and all this stuff and yay pursuit of happiness.' You know what would make me happy? Free birth control."

Franciscan University leaders point out that to mandate that their students pay exorbitant health insurance costs would be immoral in itself, not to mention the immorality of teaching one thing in the classroom (the sacredness of life) and doing another (purchasing contraception and abortion-inducing drugs for students).

Obviously, as Investors Business Daily reminds us:

It's the first shoe to drop in what will be a cascade of such decisions. Franciscan University was able to drop its coverage, but as the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops has warned, other institutions and charities may be forced to close, sell off their assets or turn them over to secular operators in the wake of ObamaCare's unacceptable mandates and costs.

Teresa, a Franciscan University alum, published the University's new policy:

Campus Health Insurance Policy

The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover “women’s health services” including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.

Additionally, the PPACA increased the mandated maximum coverage amount for student policies to $100,000 for the 2012-13 school year, which would effectively double your premium cost for the policy in fall 2012, with the expectation of further increases in the future.

Due to these changes in regulation by the federal government, beginning with the 2012-13 school year, the University 1) will no longer require that all full-time undergraduate students carry health insurance, 2) will no longer offer a student health insurance plan, and 3) will no longer bill those not covered under a parent/guardian plan or personal plan for student health insurance. The current student health insurance plan will expire on August 15, 2012.

We encourage you to decide how you are going to provide for accidents or illnesses requiring visits to physicians, health clinics, or the hospital emergency room while you are a student here. As always, our Health Center on campus will be staffed by a certified nurse practitioner Monday – Friday during normal business hours. No insurance is necessary to receive basic health-related services at the Health Center, and the visits cost only $5 at the time of service. However, if you are referred off campus for further lab testing, physician specialists, X-rays, etc., you will be responsible to pay for those services.

As Theresa points out, the idea is to force everyone into more Gov't "care."

Yeah, and we all feel so cared for. Particularly those of us who don't subscribe to Obama's version of "freedom." 
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Liberals Are Suckers: Obama Campaign Edition

 

Thank you, Stilton Jarlsberg.

I remember when a local Democrat ran for office citing as important experience having slipped out of the middle class into poverty.  Liberals elected that politician to handle their money. With predictable results.

And then they blamed Conservatives for those results.

Yep. Liberals prefer leaders who have no experience in creating wealth. They have enormous tolerance, however, for politicians who pick their pockets.

Suckers.
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Liberals are Suckers: Notre Dame Edition

In May of 2009, the decision makers of the Catholic University of Notre Dame went out of their way to award an honorary law degree President Barack Obama. This action, the University explained, was a "good thing for the president and for the causes we care about."

Suckers.

Before Notre Dame knew what hit them, said Honoree, who, not-so-incidentally, is an outspoken advocate of abortion and infanticide, a Democrat, and a socialist, determined that Notre Dame pick up the tab for the "abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures" that he advocates.

Only Liberal academics wouldn't have seen that coming.

Next comes a legal battle featuring The Fighting Irish vs. Harvard.

And only a Liberal White House wouldn't have seen that coming.
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He's Still Working Miracles -- Sensational Nightingales

Regular readers of this blog know that I like to put first things first on the first day of the week. Yesterday, life being what it is, I missed my regular Sunday post.

Playing catch-up now. Enjoy!

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This Is "Science"?

Don't you love it when Big Nanny uses the latest technology and hired brains to tell you why you should be emptying your wallet to save the world? From Watts Up With That:

Its always important to remember what has been predicted by the elders of science, and to review those predictions when the time is right. In four months, just 132 days from now at the end of summer on the Autumnal Equinox September 22nd 2012, the Arctic will be “nearly ice free” according to a prominent NASA scientist in a National Geographic article on December 12, 2007.

Ahem:

Arctic Sea Ice Comparison, Then and Now: 5/12/07 to 5/12/12
Credit: Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois

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My Mother's Faith -- Cynthia Clawson

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Question of the Day

As posed by iOwnTheWorld:

Why Is Gay Marriage a State’s Right Issue But Abortion is a Federal One?

And that goes for Health Care and Health Care Reform, too.
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About That Doctored Obama/Situation Room Photo

Read about it at American Thinker.
H/t: About.com

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Obama's War on WV Mountain Mamas Hits Progressive Paradise

It's not just Mama Grizzlies that Obama has it out for.

As William Jacobson pointed out today, "Obama already had it out for West Virginia" well before  Democrats in at least 10 West Virginia counties demonstrated that, given their druthers, they'd prefer Keith Judd (aka federal prison inmate Number 11593-051) as their 2012 presidential candidate to that other guy. Way back in January of 2011, as part of Obama's Cap and Trade "investment," the EPA moved

to revoke the long-standing permits for a mammoth coal mine in West Virginia send[ing] a strong signal that President Obama plans to implement key parts of his agenda . . . .

I have to hand it to West Virginia's Democrats for their clear appreciation of the disastrous effects that Obama's goal to bankrupt clean-coal power plants is having on their lives.

I wish the same were true here in Progressive Paradise, where Obama's war on clean coal recently shut down our local clean-coal power plant, AES Cayuga (formerly Milliken Station). This power supplier used to consume 80 to 100 railroad carloads of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania coal several times a week, back before Obama waged war on clean coal, clean-coal technologies, and the people whose livelihoods and energy use depend on it.

One of America's newly idle power stations. Brownouts, anyone?

AES Cayuga has not produced power since early March because it cannot compete with power plants using lower cost natural gas. . . . The company has sustained losses of tens of millions of dollars since 2010.

Way to go, Progressive Democrats.

But oops, what's this?

AES Cayuga [had] not only been the largest single entity tax payer for the Town of Lansing and the Lansing Central School District, but in better times they had also subsidized local charities, organizations, and facilities such as the YMCA.

Observed one county legislator here in Progressive Paradise:

AES Cayuga has been a major source of tax revenue for the past 50 years, and its downturn has had a major negative effect on Tompkins County and the Town of Lansing in particular.

In the twisty-turny landscape of Progressive Paradise, one of New York State's lonely Republicans has taken it upon himself to save the anti-coal, anti-fracking, anti-Constitution (i.e., pro-Obama) Democrats of Progressive Paradise from themselves.

Sen. Michael Nozzolio, a Republican state senator from a neighboring county, has proposed legislation to aid the plant. Which means, in layman's terms, a quick role reversal: Instead of profits from the power plant keeping local schools and charities running, New York State's Obama-lovin' Progressive moms will be emptying their "hope 'n change" purses to keep the power plant running. At Obama-inflated prices.

Pretty slick, eh?

Naturally, local Democrats are grateful: "Sen. Nozzolio learned of the difficulties facing AES in the fall of 2011 and has worked toward a positive outcome for all involved. We truly appreciate all of his efforts."

I won't count on that gratitude turning into votes on the Republican ticket come November.

I will count it as another opportunity for local Progressive Democrats to deny responsibility for the financial disasters caused by their own policies.
 
Update: For more on this issue, see South of 5 and 20 and One of Nine.
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Bwah ha ha: WH Warns Socialist Hollande Not to Raise Taxes or Spending

As usual, the Obama administration runs on the motto, "Do as I say, not as I do."

Today's belly laugh via The Washington Examiner:

President Obama's spokesman warned the new socialist president-elect of France not to implement his campaign agenda of ending austerity measures, indicating that such a reversal could damage the world economy.

Ya think?

"A balanced approach . . . Both fiscal consolidation and efforts to boost the recovery is the right approach for Europe," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters today. "That's an approach that he [Obama] thinks ensures that the recovery continues while putting our fiscal house in order."

Hollande campaigned on a no-austerity-for-Europe platform built with planks such as a 75% tax on incomes of the wealthy, lowering of manual worker retirement age from 62 to 60, raising of the minimum wage, and the hiring of 60,000 new teachers--all in a country burdened with 10% unemployment and a public debt equal to 86% of GDP.

It makes one wonder what Obama could possibly dislike about Hollande's plans, but a glance at the fine print reveals that Hollande intends to start his presidency with "a few quick symbolic measures" such as freezing the cost of fuel for three months and cutting his own presidential salary by 30%.

Oh.
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Tonight: There's a Super Moon on the Rise

Tonight's full moon will appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than usual. Although the moon reached fullness last night, tonight (weather permitting) we have the opportunity to see it rise above the horizon, when the moon appears largest to the naked eye.

You can find the moonrise time for your location here. In the USA, moonrise will be sometime between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., depending on altitude.

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I am the Vine -- Daniel Markoya

(From John 15:5)

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May Day: Occupy Cleveland Nuts Try to Blow Up Bridge (UPDATED)

Occupy Cleveland protester and alleged bomber
wanna-be, Brandon Baxter, reportedly
had been "living on the streets."
He turned 20 years old on Friday.
Photo credit: FBI.

Blogger Adrienne, an advocate of civilized discourse and behavior, remembers celebrations of May Day involving baskets of flowers and children's flights around a Maypole.

With a darker view of society, Occupy Whatever members view May Day as a worker rights holiday featuring celebrations of anarchy and revolution (livestream via Adrienne's Corner and here).

Today, Cleveland area FBI agents observed May Day by escorting to court a trio of Occupy-connected, self-proclaimed anarchists who attempted to blow up a bridge on state Route 82 in Cuyahoga Valley National Park:


Arrested yesterday in connection with the bomb plot were Brandon L. Baxter, 20, Connor C. Stevens, 20, Joshua S. Stafford, 23, Douglas L. Wright, 26, and Anthony Hayne, 35. Three of these men, Baxter, Wright, and Hayne "are being charged with conspiracy and attempted use of explosive materials to damage physical property affecting interstate commerce."

Occupy Cleveland organizer Anthony Hayne. 
Photo credit: Cory Shaffer

Charges against Stevens and Stafford are pending.

Not being held accountable are the Occupiers and Occupier fans who glamorize socialism, communism, anarchy, street violence, and revolution.

Update: 5/2/12:

Via CBS Chicago, the Occupy Cleveland anarchists who planned to blow up a Cleveland area bridge "also talked about plotting acts of terror in Chicago during the NATO summit":

Douglas Wright, age 26

Wright said it would be “crazy” in Cleveland after the group blew up the bridge, but “crazier in Chicago with people coming from everywhere to Chicago to protest the NATO summit. Wright also “predicted a ‘s**t load’ of people going to Chicago to protest the summit would first come to Cleveland, presumably drawn by the destruction of the bridge.

He predicted that anarchists ultimately headed to Chicago would riot in Cleveland for a week, “then everyone will leave and downtown Cleveland will ‘be a pile of rubble and ashes,’ as anarchists in every major city in the country will ultimately be ‘rioting and destroying each city,’” the criminal complaint said.

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How Great Thou Art -- Susan Boyle

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Happy Birthday, Israel

Today is Independence Day in Israel.

Yom Ha'atzmaut is celebrated on the 5th day of Iyar (ה' באייר) in the Hebrew calendar, the anniversary of the day in which Israel independence was proclaimed, when David Ben-Gurion publicly read the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The corresponding Gregorian date was 14 May 1948.

   

    

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Al Gore Effect Visits Earth Day in Progressive Paradise

Photo by Rachel Burkholder

I did feel sorry for the bundled-up-against-the-cold-wind-and-rain folks celebrating Earth Day yesterday here in Progressive Paradise, where one group gamely set about making smoothies with a bicycle-powered blender.

Despite hope for change (as long as the change is not a warmer globe), Progressive Paradise did not turn into a tropical paradise where heating is unnecessary, air conditioning is undesirable, and raw materials for smoothies are available for plucking off the nearest tree.

Mother Earth, a realist if ever there was one, offered her wanna-be protectors a lesson in reality when the wet chill she supplied for the Earth's Day celebration deteriorated into a late-night snow and ice storm that bent trees to the ground, closed area schools, and left about 4,000 (so far) local people without power. 

In other words, Earth Day celebrants got their wish, sort of. Right on cue, school buses stopped guzzling gas, as did the automobiles of parents who otherwise would have driven to gainful employment or on errands utilizing the services goods provided by the gainfully employed.

Bike paths were uncongested, leaving home-bound Earth Day celebrants who happen to own a bicycle-powered blender with an available bicycle with which to churn up tasty smoothies, provided that they are able bodied and had on hand fruits and vegetables grown in a more southern clime and transported north to their local health-food store, presumably by bicycle cart. Unless, of course, they still had in storage in their not-yet bicycle-powered home freezer some of the home-grown fruits and vegetables they harvested about eight months ago.

Like most days when Mother Nature's personal calendar reads: "snow day in Progressive Paradise," today plenty of burning logs in fireplaces and wood stoves (a favorite heating source of Earth Day celebrants) are pumping quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere at rates far surpassing other fuels, particularly the natural gas that Earth Day groups urged others to refrain from using (except when home-canning local foods with that bicycle-powered pressure canner manufactured from metal ores hand-shoveled from the Earth, refined by bicycle power, and manufactured in a garage somewhere in California).

I know, I know, it's science in its infancy. Well, maybe toddlerhood. Here's a design that was used in 1881, before the development of 58 ferad ultracapacitors and 1000 watt power inverters:

I think we should send one to BO to operate in the White House garden. Pending approval by PETA and the Department of Energy.

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Standing on the Promises of God -- The Sensational Nightingales

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Friday Flashback: Saul Alinsky & Al Capone's Mob

Mobster Frank Nitti's boys took
Saul Alinsky "everywhere."

The other day Glenn Beck mentioned that, early on, Saul Alinsky studied organization by befriending and socializing with Al Capone's mob of hit men. I'd not heard that before, so I looked it up.

Sure enough, Alinsky himself credited the mob with teaching him quite a bit: "I learned a hell of a lot about the uses and abuses of power from the mob, lessons that stood me in good stead later on, when I was organizing," he said. Also, "I was a nonparticipating observer in their professional activities, although I joined their social life of food, drink and women: Boy, I sure participated in that side of things -- it was heaven."

Alinsky's lessons from the mob didn't stop there. According to his  fellow Chicago radical, student, employee, best man, biographer, and all-around close friend, Nicholas von Hoffman:

Saul knew the mob very, very well, and he had studied them when he was a post graduate student at the University of Chicago, and he later got to know them again when he was the criminologist at Stateville, the Illinois penitentiary, and then, of course, in the course of much of what we were doing, we ran into the mob and had dealings with the mob one way or another, but he was never "mobbed up"; he never took a bad dime.

In a 1972 interview by Playboy Magazine, Alinsky had this to say:

ALINSKY: . . . I was awarded the graduate Social Science Fellowship in criminology, the top one in that field, which took care of my tuition and room and board -- I still don't know why they gave it to me -- maybe because I hadn't taken a criminology course in my life and didn't know one goddamn thing about the subject -- But this was the Depression and I felt like someone had tossed me a life preserver -- Hell, if it had been in shirt cleaning, I would have taken it. Anyway, I found out that criminology was just as removed from actual crime and criminals as sociology was from society, so I decided to make my doctoral dissertation a study of the Al Capone mob -- an inside study.

PLAYBOY: What did Capone have to say about that?

ALINSKY: Well, my reception was pretty chilly at first -- I went over to the old Lexington Hotel, which was the gang's headquarters, and I hung around the lobby and the restaurant. I'd spot one of the mobsters whose picture I'd seen in the papers and go up to him and say, "I'm Saul Alinsky, I'm studying criminology, do you mind if I hang around with you?" And he'd look me over and say, "Get lost, punk." This happened again and again, and I began to feel I'd never get anywhere. Then one night I was sitting in the restaurant and at the next table was Big Ed Stash, a professional assassin who was the Capone mob's top executioner. He was drinking with a bunch of his pals and he was saying, "Hey, you guys, did I ever tell you about the time I picked up that redhead in Detroit?" and he was cut off by a chorus of moans. "My God," one guy said, "do we have to hear that one again?" I saw Big Ed's face fall; mobsters are very sensitive, you know, very thin-skinned. And I reached over and plucked his sleeve. "Mr. Stash," I said, "I'd love to hear that story." His face lit up. "You would, kid?" He slapped me on the shoulder. "Here, pull up a chair. Now, this broad, see . . ." And that's how it started.

Big Ed had an attentive audience and we became buddies. He introduced me to Frank Nitti, known as the Enforcer, Capone's number-two man, and actually in de facto control of the mob because of Al's income-tax rap. Nitti took me under his wing. I called him the Professor and I became his student. Nitti's boys took me everywhere, showed me all the mob's operations, from gin mills and whorehouses and bookie joints to the legitimate businesses they were beginning to take over. Within a few months, I got to know the workings of the Capone mob inside out.

PLAYBOY: Why would professional criminals confide their secrets to an outsider?

ALINSKY: Why not? What harm could I do them? Even if I told what I'd learned, nobody would listen. They had Chicago tied up tight as a drum; they owned the city, from the cop on the beat right up to the mayor. Forget all that Eliot Ness shit; the only real opposition to the mob came from other gangsters, like Bugs Moran or Roger Touhy. The Federal Government could try to nail 'em on an occasional income tax rap, but inside Chicago they couldn't touch their power. Capone was the establishment. When one of his boys got knocked off, there wasn't any city court in session, because most of the judges were at the funeral and some of them were pallbearers. So they sure as hell weren't afraid of some college kid they'd adopted as a mascot causing them any trouble. They never bothered to hide anything from me; I was their one-man student body and they were anxious to teach me. It probably appealed to their egos.

Once, when I was looking over their records, I noticed an item listing a $7500 payment for an out-of-town killer. I called Nitti over and I said, "Look, Mr. Nitti, I don't understand this. You've got at least 20 killers on your payroll. Why waste that much money to bring somebody in from St. Louis?" Frank was really shocked at my ignorance. "Look, kid," he said patiently, "sometimes our guys might know the guy they're hitting, they may have been to his house for dinner, taken his kids to the ball game, been the best man at his wedding, gotten drunk together. But you call in a guy from out of town, all you've got to do is tell him, 'Look, there's this guy in a dark coat on State and Randolph; our boy in the car will point him out; just go up and give him three in the belly and fade into the crowd.' So that's a job and he's a professional, he does it. But one of our boys goes up, the guy turns to face him and it's a friend, right away he knows that when he pulls that trigger there's gonna be a widow, kids without a father, funerals, weeping -- Christ, it'd be murder." I think Frank was a little disappointed by my even questioning the practice; he must have thought I was a bit callous.

PLAYBOY: Didn't you have any compunction about consorting with -- if not actually assisting -- murderers?

ALINSKY: None at all, since there was nothing I could do to stop them from murdering, practically all of which was done inside the family. I was a nonparticipating observer in their professional activities, although I joined their social life of food, drink and women: Boy, I sure participated in that side of things -- it was heaven. And let me tell you something, I learned a hell of a lot about the uses and abuses of power from the mob, lessons that stood me in good stead later on, when I was organizing.

Another thing you've got to remember about Capone is that he didn't spring out of a vacuum. The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded. The man in the street wanted girls: Capone gave him girls. He wanted booze during Prohibition: Capone gave him booze. He wanted to bet on a horse: Capone let him bet. It all operated according to the old laws of supply and demand, and if there weren't people who wanted the services provided by the gangsters, the gangsters wouldn't be in business. Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day and 8000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, "Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al." Capone didn't create the corruption, he just grew fat on it, as did the political parties, the police and the overall municipal economy.

Alinsky indirectly transmitted his life lessons to government, where every schoolchild gets to live with them:

His most enduring influence may have been to inspire the National Education Association to become a political powerhouse. Sam Lambert, the executive secretary of the NEA in 1967, when it hired Alinsky as a political trainer, boasted that it would “become a political power second to no other special interest.” The NEA delivered on that promise. Between 1963 and 1993, the number of teachers belonging to unions grew to 3.1 million, up from only 963,720.

Alinsky also transmitted his life lessons to government directly, through his students and his students' students. Alinsky thought enough of Hilary Clinton to offer her a job, and Alinsky's son David thought enough of Barack Obama to write (in the Boston Globe in 2008) that "Obama learned his (Alinsky's) lesson well.

A study of the Alinsky/Chicago Politics legacy led John Fund, author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens our Democracy, to issue a warning to American conservatives as the 2012 election approaches:

You can expect that the Obama 2012 campaign and allied groups will be filled with people deeply steeped in Rules for Radicals. That is good reason for conservatives to spend time studying Saul Alinsky. It also explains why liberals are so anxious to sugarcoat Alinsky and soft-pedal his influence on Team Obama.

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Where the Soul of Man Never Dies -- Johnny Cash

A little something Johnny Cash learned from his sharecropper mother, who used to play it on her old Sears-Roebuck guitar:

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Taxman -- The Beatles (Updated)

Americans will spend more in taxes in 2012 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.

Just thought you might like to know that.

Four more years of a president who spends more on luxury vacations than on taxes?

I don't think so.
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Obama's War on Women: 18% Paycheck Discrimination at White House

But paychecks are soooo yesterday.

From The Washington Free Beacon, via The Right Scoop:

Female employees in the Obama White House make considerably less than their male colleagues, records show.

According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18 percent less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000).

Calculating the median salary for each gender required some assumptions to be made based on the employee names. When unclear, every effort was taken to determine the appropriate gender.

The Obama campaign on Wednesday lashed out at presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney for his failure to immediately endorse the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, a controversial law enacted in 2009 that made it easier to file discrimination lawsuits.

President Obama has frequently criticized the gender pay gap, such as the one that exists in White House.

“Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income,” he said in a July 2010 statement. “And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole.”

It is not known whether any female employees at the White House have filed lawsuits under the Ledbetter Act.

The president and his Democratic allies have accused Republicans of waging a “war on women,” and have touted themselves as champions of female equality. Obama’s rhetoric, however, has not always been supported by his actions.

Read the rest here.
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