If you think increasing spending on education is just “for the children,” you would be mistaken. No 
matter what the figure you see published about the spending per student is, you can add about $1000 to that, per student, if you include teachers pensions. Regardless of whether they are funded or unfunded. Can you say “transparency?”
And in the ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ department comes this from our Dept. of Labor.
Migrant and seasonal farmworkers experiencing chronic unemployment and underemployment will soon have opportunities to upgrade skills or prepare for new occupations.
By definition, if you’re a “seasonal” “farmworker,” doesn’t that make you gainfully employed? You know, the lie that they are doing work 
that Americans don’t want to do. What’s next, a living subsidy support program (with cell phone) for the non-growing season? After all, why should ‘migrant’ workers have to migrate somewhere where crops are growing? Targeting migrant workers, an entire class of people coming under the microscope in the big illegal immigration debate, looks an awful lot like $9.6 million dollars of street money, courtesy of the 50 percent that pay taxes, for some who aren’t even citizens.
From the DOL’s press release . . .
$9.6 million is available for grants to operate the program in central California, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey and Puerto Rico.
I know there are 8.5 million Americans who are out of work or underemployed. How about we concentrate our efforts there, growing the economy so they can get their job back?
Link: US Department of Labor announces grant competition to provide career training to farmworkers
That’s right. The man who has taken the oath twice to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States’ has been ruled to have violated it. Not because a president doesn’t have the power to make recess appointments, because he does. But the Senate first must be in recess. Which in this case last year, it wasn’t. The Senate was in pro-forma sessions, which means that it was not in recess. Democrats used the same pro-forma sessions in 2007 to prevent Bush (the guy who respects the Constitution) from making recess appointments.
Kudos to the Landmark Legal Foundation that spearheaded the case.
A three judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today adopted arguments advanced by Landmark Legal Foundation to overturn appointments made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Landmark argued in its amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief that the President’s use of the Constitution’s “recess appointments” clause violated the restrictions placed by the Constitution on that power.
Landmark Legal Foundation President Mark R. Levin said “This President doesn’t get to tear up and toss aside the Constitution just because he disagrees with the limitations it imposes on him.”
The contentious recess appointments were made to the National Labor Relations Board which at the time had three vacancies out of 5. The President appointed three pro labor union appointees, making the NLRB a Democrat and pro labor union majority.
If the ruling stands, it means that hundreds of decisions issued by the board over more than a year would be invalid. It also would leave the five-member labor board with just one validly appointed member, effectively shutting it down. The board is allowed to issue decisions only when it has at least three sitting members.
Oh this is rich. Teachers in Michigan are about to find out where their union’s priorities are. New right-to-work laws, which go into effect on
March 27, 2013, allow workers to opt out of union membership unless they have an existing contract with their employer. And if they decide to opt out of union membership and keep their hard-earned money, the union is threatening to sue them.
The law is what it is. Michigan is now a right-to-work state. All it means is that unions will now have to offer their members a reason, other than losing their job or being sued, to want to belong and pay dues.
It also shows that union intimidation is not just limited to employers.
Link: Pay Up or Get Sued
Update:
Union Bosses’ Bad Week: Number of Americans Union-Free Now Highest in 70 Years bit.ly/10QMfpG #RS #TCOT
— RedState (@RedState) January 25, 2013
It was much more than simply arrogance on display at today’s White House Press Conference. More lies and obfuscation and finger-pointing. More ducking responsibility for his own lack of leadership. Stunning, but not surprising.
Hard as he may try, and contrary to what he said, he does not have a mandate to increase the national debt and continue deficit spending year after year just because he was re-elected. The first time he was elected, he ran on decreasing the deficit by half by the end of his first term. It was $500 billion when he took over. The deficit isn’t $250 billion. It is 1.2 trillion, for four years in a row. The Republican majority House was also re-elected. And that’s where the spending is authorized. According to the Constitution. I know. He doesn’t like it, nor has he tried to protect and defend it. Remember, that is what he took an oath to do. And what he will do again next week. But that’s another story altogether. The people don’t want deficit spending. They want the debt to be paid down. Not added to.
At the presser, he said he cut the debt by $4 trillion dollars. Where? On Mars? He has added over a trillion dollars in deficit spending for each of the first four years of his administration. And, plans on adding another $4 trillion dollars over the next four years in his second term. Bringing the total national debt from the $10 trillion he inherited, to $16 trillion now, and to $20 trillion by the end of his second term. And he stands there with a straight face and chastises Republicans for being irresponsible for not wanting to pay our bills. And the press corp let him stand there and get away with it. Not one question challenging the truth and voracity of his claims.
On the contrary. He was irresponsible for not only maxing out the credit card, but for treating it like there is no maximum amount he can spend. He paints a picture of dire consequences if the U.S. doesn’t pay its bills. Like a child who misbehaves, he has to face the music. His actions have consequences. He is the one that overspent. Now, not only he, but all of us must pay the piper and face whatever dire consequences we have coming because we’re tearing up that credit card. Forget about raising the debt ceiling another dime. Deal with it. Only after that will this country be able to recover and get itself on the right track again.
He proved himself incapable of making the tough decisions needed to insure the sustainability of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That is the epitome of irresponsibility. Instead, he demagogues Republicans for wanting to cut it. The hard truth is, those programs can’t be saved without cutting them somewhere and somehow. They no longer fit the demographics for which they were designed. Period. And they cost many times more than they were anticipated to be in the first place. Sooner or later, interest rates will return to ‘normal’ levels. And by the time that happens, the interest on our debt will be equal to or greater than our GDP. By any definition, that’s broke. That’s irresponsible.
Fact is, he is the irresponsible one. First by neglecting his duty to pass a budget and work by one for all of his first term. Having no budget to hold him back allowed him to run up the debt via CR’s (continuing resolutions) for every year of his administration. Paying off donors, unions, and bailing out his buddies created no jobs. It merely completed the quid pro quo. Wasting taxpayer dollars on one green energy bankruptcy after another. And enriching the bankruptcy lawyers in the process. It’s a win, win, lose. Green investors who are also donors and campaign bundlers win. The bankruptcy lawyers win for handling the bankruptcies with zero transparency. And the taxpayers lose all the way around.
One of the punch lines in this presser was his declaration that the government is part of the economy. As if that is a justification for the never-ending spending. He is right to the extent that the government is part of the economy. It is the overhead of the economy. It produces nothing. It only takes from the producers in taxes, and borrows and spends on growing the government even bigger. The cost of government used to be 18 percent of GDP. Then 20 percent under Bush 43. Now it is over 22 percent heading to 25 percent. The community organizer does not care that there isn’t enough money to sustain a government this big. Nor does he care that as government grows, the private sector gets smaller, along with our freedom and liberties.
That’s Obama’s vision of fundamental change in America. That’s what being irresponsible is. And there’s no way in hell he can embarrass me for not paying our bills by not raising the debt ceiling. It’s time for him to be spanked (figuratively of course), take the credit card away, and do what every other American has to do to survive within their means. Whatever happens is the result of his misbehavior. It won’t be the end of the world as we know it. It will mark the dawn of sanity in running the country.
With 27 percent of the votes counted, both FOX and CNN are projecting that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his Lt. Governor Kleefisch keep their jobs by a landslide margin with 60% of the votes to the challengers’ 40%. That 20 percent spread is a wider margin than elected Gov. Walker the last time. Twenty percent is way beyond the voter fraud margin.
Tough luck for the public sector labor unions. If they had any sense, they would see the need to be competitive in the labor market, because the taxpayers (at least in Wisconsin) are holding their feet to the fire. And if they had any sense, they would realize that it was the governor’s policies that the legislature put into law that enabled them all to keep their jobs while at the same time turning a budget deficit into a surplus.
Big Labor’s free ride on ‘the government’ (aka taxpayers) is over.
Reaction to a Walker victory from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D-Fl) was enormously downplayed . . .
She said the June 5 recall is a contest with no implications for national politics. “It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin,” she said.
The union’s know what it’s all about. As described by Patrick Martin.
[W]alker’s hard-line stance threatens their position as a secondary layer of management in controlling state employees.
The Walker victory today has the socialists calling for a split from the Democrat Party to form a third party.
The debacle in Wisconsin underscores the dimensions of the struggle now facing the working class. The defense of jobs, living standards and social services can go forward only through a mass rebellion against capitalism and the political domination of the financial aristocracy. This requires, first and foremost, a break with the Democratic Party and all its political apologists and defenders and the building of an independent party of the working class, fighting for a socialist program.
What a great idea. For them.
Update: Watching Gov. Walker’s victory speech live, thanking Wisconsins ?? on FOX. Checked to see what CNN was covering, and they’re re-playing the Queen’s Jubilee. “CNN, the most trusted name in news.” ROTFLMAO
There is a certain synergy between labor unions and the government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S844k_GigaQ
When you follow the money, that relationship is nearly incestuous. Some observers, like Rush, label it as a money laundering scheme. Your taxes go to Washington, to Big Labor, and back to Washington in the form of campaign contributions.
It’s a great system, for the public labor unions. Not so good for the taxpayers footing the bill.
It also explains why Big Labor is against voluntary membership and for mandatory dues payroll deductions. Both of which the Obama Administration support. Both of which, for example, is why Big Labor is spending millions of dollars trying to recall the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.
As the A.F.L.-C.I.O. prepares to endorse President
Obama on Tuesday, labor leaders say they will mount their biggest campaign effort, with far more union members than ever before — at least 400,000, they say — knocking on voters’ doors to counter the well-endowed “super PACs” backing Republicans. Trying to make Barack Obama America’s newest founding father.
Link: Labor Leaders Plan to Apply New Clout in Effort for Obama
Never missing an opportunity to prolong our dependence on foreign oil, and high gas prices, President Obama lobbied the Democrat controlled Senate to oppose a bill that would, if passed, be the start of the Keystone Pipeline project with our Canadian neighbors.
The message to the president was clear. There is majority bi-partisan support for the pipeline. The senate voted for it 56-42. But because the Senate rules required 60 votes for passage, it was defeated.
In all, 11 Democrats joined 45 Republicans to support the pipeline. Only the fact that 60 votes were needed for passage saved the White House from an embarrassing defeat.
How does a president justify turning down a project that would build a measure of energy independence and energy infrastructure and lower gas prices?
How does a president justify turning down a project that would create 20,000 jobs now, and over 140,000 jobs once complete? Union jobs in fact. (Big Labor supports the pipeline.)
Today it’s out. President Obama doesn’t want jobs if they have anything to do with the oil industry. He doesn’t want energy infrastructure improvements nor any oil from Canada to come to our refineries and our ports. He made that known today.
President Obama finally gave us his blueprint for the nation’s energy future, beginning today apparently. He told us that oil is the energy of the past.
Oh really? Here’s what the United States Energy Information Administration has to say about it.
EIA projects that most petroleum-based and non-petroleum based liquid fuels — including those derived from fuels such as coal, biomass, and natural gas — will continue to be used for transportation over the next two decades.
Who at the EIA is going to update President Obama on this?
Here is what AFL-CIO dues pay for. If you don’t know what the AFL-CIO is, you too could make $60. They’re hiring!
Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
Link: Big Government