In a repudiation of the Bush administration's now-defunct terrorist surveillance effort, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that government investigators illegally wiretapped the phone conversations of an Islamic charity and two American lawyers without a search warrant.I know it's too late for a perp walk.
By starting to run TV ads 48 days before the primary, Onorato is taking advantage of a significant fundraising edge over his Democratic opponents; with well over $6 million in the bank, he has more than the three other candidates in the race put together.I'll just add that I'm sure Lil Mayor Luke is thrilled that Danny Boy takes sole credit for all things good in this area. Also, Onorato apparently single-handedly created our Eds & Meds economy.
The campaign is expected to stay on the air with TV ads from now until primary day, a dynamic that will almost certainly lead to a significant jump in name recognition for the Allegheny County Executive, who has been holding narrow leads in what most polls have shown to be a wide open race.
It was six years ago that the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy created what it called "the Benchmark City," an amalgamation of four "regional hub cities" of varying populations and geographic locations. The purpose was to gauge how Pittsburgh competed.Any time the Trib publishes something (anything) from the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy we should all remember that the institute is more or less bought and paid for by Richard Mellon Scaife.
But an updated version of that effort isn't very encouraging.
In 2004 the Allegheny Institute undertook a benchmarking project in order to gauge the performance of the City of Pittsburgh on its spending and taxes. Four regional hub cities of varying population and geographic location (Salt Lake City, UT; Columbus, OH; Omaha, NE; Charlotte, NC) were selected. Their statistics were amalgamated into what is termed the Benchmark City. By expanding what we examined to not only include the city government’s practices but also other financial indicators related to debt, authorities, schools, and pensions, we aimed to present a broad and deep view of local government in other places and to see just how well Pittsburgh was able to compete.Unless I am missing something, they don't really explain why they selected those four cities. Was it random? Once you take a look at the electoral history of those cities' states, it seems to me that there's the possibility that the "benchmark" data might be skewed right.
Nine members of the Christian militia group Hutaree have been indicted on multiple charges involving an alleged plot to attack police, including seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. Attorney in Michigan announced this morning.If TPM is not your thing, then there's this from the AP:
A ninth alleged member of a Christian militia group that prepared to battle the Antichrist and the U.S. government was arrested after the FBI played recorded messages from family and friends, who urged the man to give himself up, over loudspeakers outside a home in rural Michigan.Out of fairness (and we are nothing if not fair) we should point out that this is NOT the Michigan Militia and in fact:
Joshua Matthew Stone peacefully surrendered to heavily armed authorities Monday night. His father and seven others believed to be part of the Michigan-based Hutaree appeared in court earlier on charges they plotted to kill a police officer and slaughter scores more by bombing the funeral — all in hopes of touching off an uprising against the government.
Heidi Beirich, research director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said her group learned about Hutaree last year while compiling its annual list of "patriot groups."They're still religious fanatics and they're still terrorists and they're still Americans.
"Their Christian apocalyptic vision is quite different from most other militias," Beirich said. "Most don't put their religion first — they're more concerned with out-of-control federal government."
A 38-year-old Philadelphia man was charged today with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a profanity-strewn Youtube video that has since been pulled down.Yea, when you call someone's kids "Lucifer's abominations" you're a religious zealot. And when you make threats based on that zealotry, you're a terrorist.
In the video, Norman Leboon says Cantor will "receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations.
Emboldened by its success at ramming through nationalized health care, Obama & Co., once Congress left town for its Easter break, installed organized labor extremist Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.It's obvious they definitely do not approve of the use of "recess appointments."
The administration couldn't get Mr. Becker confirmed the normal way; a bipartisan group of senators blocked his nomination last month. So, President Obama installed Becker through a "recess appointment," giving him a seat on the NLRB through 2011.
(By the way, The New York Times called this action a "display of authority." Had it been a Republican doing the same thing, The Times would have called it an "abuse of power.")
What's needed at the U.N., of course, is a fella who represents the best interests of the United States and takes no guff. Democrats are upset that Bolton won't sing "Kumbaya" with the One Worlders, the crowd only too happy to take American money then use it against America.
Valuable time was wasted in the three-month pillorying of a good man. That's why President Bush should, upon congressional recess next week, use the recess power vested in him by Article I, Section 2 (Paragraph 3) of the Constitution to get Bolton on the job until the 110th Congress convenes in January 2007. (sic)
This kind of recess appointment, by the way, is court-tested all the way back to the 1820s. [emphasis added, though hardly necessary]
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joe Hoeffel today castigated Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett for “acting against the best interests of Pennsylvanians” by joining fellow right-wing attorneys general in a lawsuit against the new federal health care law.You can read the entire release here.
At a press conference in the rotunda of the State Capitol, Hoeffel said that Corbett “is acting in collusion with a bloc of right-wing state attorneys general to advance an extremist agenda.”
Hoeffel went on to say that this is the fourth time Corbett has joined with his fellow conservative attorneys general to oppose legislation that would protect Pennsylvanians. Passing out a fact sheet detailing his charges, Hoeffel pointed out that on at least three other occasions Corbett has joined with the same 10 AGs to twice oppose protecting the safety of their citizens, protecting consumer rights, and, now, opposing critically needed health care reforms.
[snip]
The fact sheet distributed by the Hoeffel campaign showed that:In 2008, Corbett joined attorneys general in supporting another lawsuit, supporting the effort to overturn the rights of citizens of Washington, DC, to protect themselves through enacting sensible gun safety legislation. Of the thirteen Attorneys General who filed the frivolous lawsuit against health care reform, eleven -- including Corbett -- opposed protecting the safety of citizens in their states. In 2009, twenty-four attorneys general urged Senate and Congressional leaders to create a federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency -- an agency directly supporting the core role of state attorneys general. Again, of the thirteen Attorneys General who filed the frivolous lawsuit against health care reform, those same eleven --- including Corbett -- declined to sign this letter to protect the rights of consumers in their states. And late last year, thirty-eight Attorneys General again supported the effort to overturn the rights of citizens to protect themselves through enacting sensible gun safety legislation, this time in Chicago. The bloc of eleven -- including Corbett -- united in opposition to protecting the safety of their citizens yet again.
While he did not directly mention the scandal involving sexual abuse of children by priests, parts of his sermon could be applicable to the crisis.Pathetic.
The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”
Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.So that would be:
When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.
Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”
“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said. [emphasis added.]
Ms. Reimer often wells up talking about her work. “I’m respected,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t know why. I don’t know what is so special. But I’m willing to do it.”Here's a little thought experiment. What do you think the tea partiers would say if they learned that, oh I dunno, some moveon.org community organizer was on some sort of guv'ment benefits like unemployment or Social Security or Medicare?
She and others who receive government benefits like Medicare and Social Security said they paid into those programs, so they are getting what they deserve.[emphasis added]
Quit yer whinin' and get off yer ass go out and get a job! I shouldn't have to pay for your protests!
Jeff McQueen, 50, began organizing Tea Party groups in Michigan and Ohio after losing his job in auto parts sales. “Being unemployed and having some time, I realized I just couldn’t sit on the couch anymore,” he said. “I had the time to get involved.”Um, Jeff? The free trade (or at least the freer trade of the past few decades) occurred when the guv'ment relaxed its rules in an attempt to be less intrusive into the free market system that built this great nation into the shining city on a hill that it's been since God ordained it.
He began producing what he calls the flag of the Second American Revolution, and drove 700 miles to campaign for Mr. Brown under its banner. Flag sales, so far, are not making him much. But he sees a bigger cause.
“The founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor,” he said. “They believed in it so much that they would sacrifice. That’s the kind of loyalty to this country that we stand for.”
He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.” [emphasis added.]
They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.In answer to the question at top:
They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.
This week, they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, received letters about Father Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who said that the deaf community needed “a healing response from the Church.” The Vatican sat on the case, then equivocated, and when Father Murphy died in 1998, he died a priest.
Among the supervisors was John Conway, now the deputy administrator of workers’ compensation for the State of Wisconsin. Mr. Conway, the students and others collected affidavits from 15 to 20 former students about Father Murphy’s violations. They were granted a meeting with Archbishop William E. Cousins.The archdiocese and the Church as a whole did little if anything about Father Murphy. And as many as 200 boys were abused. By just one priest.
“In my extreme naïveté,” said Mr. Conway in an interview on Friday, “I told them the archbishop would take care of this.”
He said they were surprised to find the room packed with people, including several nuns and teachers from the school, two priests who said they were representing the apostolic delegate in Chicago, and Father Murphy himself.
Arthur Budzinski and Gary Smith, two more victims of Father Murphy, said in an interview last week that they remember seeing Archbishop Cousins yell, and Father Murphy staring at the floor. The deaf men and their advocates were told that Father Murphy, the school’s director and top fund-raiser, was too valuable to be let go, so he would be given only administrative duties.
They were outraged. They distributed “Wanted” posters with Father Murphy’s face outside the cathedral in Milwaukee. They went to the police departments in Milwaukee, where they were told it was not the correct jurisdiction, and in St. Francis, where the school was located, Mr. Conway said. They also went to the office of E. Michael McCann, the district attorney of Milwaukee County, and spoke with his assistant, William Gardner.
“A criminal priest was an oxymoron to them,” Mr. Conway said. “They said they’ll refer it to the archdiocese.” [emphasis added.]
It's the rape and torture of children.
I find it hard to believe that 1970s domestic terrorist William Ayers will be the keynote speaker today at the Spring 2010 Conference of the University of Pittsburgh's Council of Graduate Students in Education. I would think that in the interest of education, intellectualism and ethics, the council would be concerned about the unethical life of its honored guest.Something about this stuck in my head. The memory clicked back to to this from the Trib. The third paragraph of the editorial reads:
Bill Ayers was the co-founder of the radical Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group that participated in a series of bombings in the early 1970s, including the 1974 bombing of Pittsburgh's Gulf Tower. Mr. Ayers admits to participating in bombings at a New York City police headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. Federal conspiracy charges against him were dropped in 1974 because of illegal surveillance.
Surely the University of Pittsburgh group could have found some other speaker who has values and loves our country, instead of a criminal. By paying this person to speak, is it honoring his behaviors? Why have someone from Chicago education circles speak on educating students? Have you seen the statistics of Chicago schools? [emphasis added.]
Mr. Ayers admits to participating in bombings at a New York City police headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. Federal conspiracy charges against him were dropped in 1974 because of illegal surveillance.Notice anything?
Republicans and Tea Party activists condemned the threats and violent actions directed at a host of lawmakers this week in the wake of the passage of health care reform, but warned Democrats not to make a political issue out of it.Cantor, however, went on to be come the punchline du jour.
Top Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Wednesday that they do not condone the violence, which has included broken windows at campaign offices, threatening phone calls and faxes, and a severed gas line at the home of a lawmaker's brother.
"I do not condone violence," Cantor said on Capitol Hill on Thursday. "There are no leaders in the building, no rank and file members that condone violence, period."
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor just gave a brief speech accusing Democrats of using reports of recent threats of violence for political gain, and saying someone shot a bullet through the window of his campaign office this week.That last part, the bullet, is the joke.
The Richmond Police Department is investigating an act of vandalism at the Reagan Building, 25 E. Main St., Richmond, Virginia. A first floor window was struck by a bullet at approximately 1 a.m. on Tuesday, March 23. The building, which has several tenants including an office used by Congressman Eric Cantor, was unoccupied at the time.
A Richmond Police detective was assigned to the case. A preliminary investigation shows that a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman.
A bullet that hit a window in Republican U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor’s office building was fired randomly into the air, police said Thursday.
“It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain,“ Cantor told reporters.Ha. Funny.
Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.Deaf boys???
The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal. [emphasis added.]
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Authorities are investigating the severing of a gas line at the home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello's brother following the posting of his address online by Tea Party activists.Talkingpointsmemo has a map. Some details:
The activists are upset with the Virginia congressman's vote in favor of the health care reform.
At a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that at least 10 members of Congress have requested extra security due to recent threats.
Then there's this bit of news:
- Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), who is on the map above, today said he confronted Minority Leader John Boehner over an interview in which Boehner said Driehaus would be a "dead man" if he voted for the bill. "I think it's really important for folks around here, especially leader Boehner, to understand that his words have consequences," Driehaus said.
- Sarah Palin posted on Facebook a map of her own -- showing cross-hair graphics over the districts of vulnerable Democrats who backed the health reform legislation. Earlier she tweeted "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: 'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!' Pls see my Facebook page."
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) released the following statement today about acts of vandalism in her district. Here's the full text:Bricks thrown through windows. Physical intimidation. Acts of Vandalism. Death Threats.
There were two events in my district during the last week that were alarming to me and I have reported them to the proper authorities. There was a brick thrown through my Niagara Falls district office and a voice mail referencing snipers that was left on the answering machine of my campaign office. The U.S. Capitol Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police departments are all aware of these incidents and are still investigating.
I know you're a Republican running for Governor, but Pennsylvania is a BLUE state that voted for Barack Obama for President who ran on health care reform so, please, STOP YOUR FUCKING PARTISAN POLITICS.
That is all.
Sincerely,
Maria
Pittsburgh, PA
__________________________________________________________
Irate at Rep. Jason Altmire’s vote against the health care legislation, Jack Shea, the president of the Allegheny County Labor Council, said he is considering a challenge the McCandless Democrat in either the primary or general elections.Seems that Jason the Dino had a few conversations with Shea that seem to conflict with his vote.
Describing Mr. Shea as “a friend,’’ Mr. Altmire said, “The conversation that he is referring to took place in November,'' after Mr. Altmire’s initial vote against the House version of the health care legislation.What conversation? Here's Jack:
“At that time I said, ‘look I’m going to keep at this. I have every expectation that we’re going get to something that I can vote for’ … we didn’t get to a place were I could do that.’’
[Shea] said that his consideration of a challenge was a response not just to the Mr. Altmire’s health care vote itself but also to his belief that Mr. Altmire had misled him and other labor leaders on his plans on the legislation.We know Jason's lost the P-G but has he lost labor, too?
“He didn’t keep his word,’’ Mr. Shea said. “I’m not the only one that he committed to. He told [Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President] Bill George the same thing. He told [USW President] Leo Gerard. … What he said very plainly was, at the end, the final bill, he would be there.
Referring to the failed health care push during the Clinton administration, when Mr. Altmire, as a congressional staffer worked with the administration’s health care task force, Mr. Shea claimed that the congressman had assured him that, “He said he was around [when] they walked away empty handed he wasn’t going to do that again.’’
When history came calling, Jason Altmire turned away.Jason the DINO has a problem.
The two-term congressman from McCandless voted against his party's long-fought effort to reform health care in America.
He stood with insurance companies that raised premiums by 30 and 40 percent, tea party protesters who mistake decibels for decency and wild-eyed Republicans with a zeal to bring down a president.
By claiming to want a better bill, he stood as a defender of the status quo, which leaves millions without health coverage, denies insurance for pre-existing conditions and causes headaches for employers and misery for working-class families.
By voting no, Jason Altmire turned his back on his president and his party, and today he stands as a Democrat in name only.
So who were the 34 House Democrats that voted against the health care bill -- and what are the politics for them back home? A close look at the list shows a heavy tendency towards Democrats who come from districts carried by John McCain in 2008 -- though not completely so.McCain carried Jason's district by 10% according to the chart at TPM. It also gives Jason a PVI rating of R+6.
People in high office seldom get such a clarifying moment -- when their voice and their vote matters to the nation and to posterity. We have seen such moments with the dawn of Social Security, the declarations of war on Japan and Germany, the court rulings to end racial segregation. Jason Altmire looked his moment straight in the eye and couldn't muster the backbone to embrace change.Jason Altmire has officially lost the P-G. What do you say next about a candidate once you've pointed out their political cowardice? A candidate who'd go with weaselly political expediency over being on the right side of history?
The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.
In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.
The U.S. Senate must help America get to the bottom of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks.And my astute reader prodded me:
The FBI hasn't produced convincing answers. It had to pay damages to former government scientist Dr. Stephen Hatfill for wrongly labeling him a "person of interest."
It can't convict the government scientist it now blames, Dr. Bruce Ivins, because he took his own life amid FBI hounding.
And a National Academy of Sciences review of FBI scientific evidence, which the FBI itself ordered, isn't finished.
Yet the Obama Justice Department says it's a closed case.
As Cliff Kincaid of America's Survival Inc. (usasurvival.org) notes, the FBI seems hellbent on exonerating al-Qaida. And left-leaning mainstream media have focused on domestic, preferably right-wing suspects -- despite evidence that al-Qaida strove to add anthrax to its arsenal.
So the Senate must follow the House's lead and require the intelligence inspector general to determine whether credible evidence exists of a link between a foreign entity and the anthrax attacks.
Mr. Kincaid chillingly points out that the FBI's handling of the case raises doubts about both its own practices and U.S. readiness for biological terror attacks. Without solid answers about the anthrax attacks, those doubts will only grow.
Look up America's Survival -- hell, look up Cliff Kincaid -- and you'll see what a RMS creation this study was.Ok. Let's.
On the 1993 deficit reduction package:Many, many more quotes here
Rep. Robert Michel (R-IL), Los Angeles Times, 5/28/93:They will remember who let loose this deadly virus into our economic bloodstream.On jobs:
Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), 5/27/93:...your economic program is a job killerOn Medicare:
Rep. Durward Hall (R-MO), 4/8/65:...we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.em>On Social Security:
Rep. John Taber (R-NY), 4/19/35:Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.
There seems to be a profound mistrust of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress," says political guru Charlie Cook. "(It's) a sense that, at best, this president and Congress lack an understanding of small business. But among many, it goes much further than mistrust. They see Democrats in Washington as hostile forces that could implement policies that would effectively destroy their businesses," Mr. Cook adds. Translation: All that "change" has been shaken from their pockets and now President Hope is going after the paper money.Now, who do you think the "they" are in that passage? Just reading the passage you'd think that Charlie Cook was talking about the electorate in general, right?
But privately, some business leaders and bankers say that beyond small-business owners' concerns about the direction the economy and the durability of this recession, political concerns have crept in. There seems to be a profound mistrust of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress, a sense that, at best, this president and Congress lack an understanding of small business. But among many, it goes much further than mistrust. They see Democrats in Washington as hostile forces that could implement policies that would effectively destroy their businesses.Cook's talking about the distrust among "some business leaders and bankers." The "they" isn't the everyone but a small segment of the population. If there's any doubt, here's Cook's last paragraph:
In short, even inadvertently, Democrats have made their own job harder by alienating the one group of people they want to be hiring and turning the unemployment rate around.
While I don't think that is true -- and Democrats are quick to say it's important to get health care costs under control, with their unsustainably high increases jeopardizing the ability of almost any business to make money -- a lot of these business owners simply don't see it that way, or they choose not to see it that way.So what the Trib uses as a quote from Charlie Cook, Cook doesn't actually believe. Can they actually do that?
Tea partiers and other anti-health care activists are known to get rowdy, but today's protest on Capitol Hill--the day before the House is set to vote on historic health care legislation--went beyond the usual chanting and controversial signs, and veered into ugly bigotry and intimidation.And then there's:
Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming "kill the bill"... and punctuating their chants with the word "nigger."
And that wasn't an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed "Barney, you faggot"--a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter.Great group of folks, huh?
On March 16 the Tea Party crowd showed up for yet another demonstration on Capitol Hill in Washington. Curious about the factual knowledge these people have regarding the issues they are protesting, my friend David Frum enlisted some interns to interview as many Tea Partyers as possible on a couple of basic questions. They got 57 responses--a pretty good-sized sample from a crowd that numbered between 300 and 500 people.David Frum? He's another conservative. Resident Fellow at AEI and speech writer for George W Bush.
The first question that was asked concerned the size of government. Tea Partyers were asked how much the federal government gets in taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product. According to Congressional Budget Office data, acceptable answers would be 6.4%, which is the percentage for federal income taxes; 12.7%, which would be for both income taxes and Social Security payroll taxes; or 14.8%, which would represent all federal taxes as a share of GDP in 2009.The TP crowd got more wrong:
Not everyone follows these numbers closely, and Tea Partyers may have been thinking of figures from a few years ago, before the recession when taxes were higher. According to the CBO, the highest figure for all federal taxes since 1970 came in the year 2000, when they reached 20.6% of GDP. As we know, after that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress cut federal taxes; they fell to 18.5% of GDP in 2007, before the recession hit, and 17.5% in 2008.
Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944. [emphasis added]
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.So The Tea Party crowd is wrong about taxes, I get it.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it's hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama's stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
According to the JCT, last year's $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies. [Emphasis added.]
"I ran for Congress in large part because I believe we need to find a way to bring down the cost of health care. I also ran for Congress with a simple promise: I would do my best to represent my district and to give western Pennsylvania a voice in Washington, not the other way around.He voted against HCR -- and for Stupak -- last time around.
"I regret that this year-long process of debating health care reform has resulted in a final product that I cannot support. The cost of inaction on health care is great, but it would be an even bigger mistake to pass a bill that could compound the problem of skyrocketing health care costs.
"Simply moving money around within the existing system, rather than enacting real delivery system reform, might change who pays the bill, but it does not improve the quality of care or reduce costs for families, small businesses, or the federal government. It creates a system of winners and losers, rather than reforming the system in a way that lets everyone win. It is estimated that after passage of this bill, federal health care expenditures would likely increase above what they would under current law.
"It has become clear that the vast majority of my constituents want me to oppose this bill. Particularly hard hit would be western Pennsylvania’s Medicare beneficiaries, which many experts believe would experience dramatic premium increases with enactment of this bill.
"I am acutely aware that my decision to vote against the health care bill will disappoint some of my constituents and alienate supporters of the bill. The politically easy vote would have been to vote with my party. But I was not sent to Congress to take the easy way out or to vote the way they want me to vote in Washington. I was elected to represent my district and give western Pennsylvania a voice in Congress. I strongly believe that a vote in opposition to the health care bill is consistent with the views of the district I represent, and is the correct vote based on the impact of the bill on my constituents and the overall health care system."
In a Thursday panel at Cato on conservatism and war, U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.) revealed that the vast majority of GOP members of Congress now think it was wrong for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.Rohrabacher (who voted for Authorization to use Military Force in 2002) is even quoted as saying:
I will say that the decision to go in, in retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake.Their party is still filled with birther/tenther crazies, but at least some of them now recognize that the war in Iraq was a. horrible. mistake.
This is outrageous!: A White House task force draft report contends that "climate change" has wrought "pervasive, wide ranging" effects on the United States, including "increasingly severe floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, along with rising sea levels ... ." This is the same kind of garbage-laced exaggeration that forced an advertising watchdog group in Britain to ban government ads claiming the same thing. Americans should not stand for such pure fiction.As we pointed out yesterday, that "advertising watchdog group" the Trib is referencing actually presented the IPCC as the "mainstream scientific consensus." Oh, and they misrepresented what the group said. The ads were criticized for not pointing out the "uncertainties" already included in the IPCC report - not for claiming that climate change will be increasing severe floods.
We considered that the imagery of flooding in the TV ad, together with the claim "There was once a land where the weather was very very strange. There were awful heat waves in some parts and in others terrible storms and floods was presented in a context which visually referenced a UK town and UK countryside.
We referred to the IPCC report (2007) which stated that climate predictions for the future for Europe, based on current trends, suggested that there would be an increased risk of inland flash floods and more frequent coastal flooding, as well as an increased risk of heat waves. We also noted the joint "UK Climate Science Statement" issued by the Meteorological Office (the UK's Weather Centre), the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society (November 2009) based on the IPCC's review of published climate science together with further scientific evidence, available to Government, which had been collected since the last IPCC report. The joint statement said "Year on year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events - potentially intensified by global warming - are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes: In the UK, heavier daily rainfall leading to local flooding such as in the summer of 2007; increased risk of summer heat waves such as the summers of 2003 across the UK and Europe; around the world, increasing incidence of extreme weather events with unprecedented levels of damage to society and infrastructure ... Sea level rises leading to dangerous exposure for populations ... These emerging signals are consistent with what we expect from our projections, giving us confidence in the science and models that underpin them. In the absence of action to mitigate climate change, we can expect much larger changes in the coming decades than we have seen so far".
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that two government-commissioned advertisements designed to raise awareness of climate change exaggerated the global warming threat. "In definitely asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought, the adverts went beyond mainstream scientific consensus, the watchdog said," reports London's Daily Telegraph. Al Gore must have written the ads.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the adverts – which were based on the children's poems Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub – made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain from global warming.In definitely asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought the adverts went beyond mainstream scientific consensus, the watchdog said.
We considered that the use of well-known UK nursery rhymes and their associated imagery in the press ads referenced a UK setting. We noted that the IPCC report, based on a number of different emissions scenarios and using modelled climate projections, stated that it was "very likely" that "hot extremes, heatwaves and heavy precipitation events" would increase globally, where "very likely" referred to a greater than 90% probability, although we also noted the report did not make direct predictions for future climate patterns in the UK. The report discussed likely regional changes and stated that, at present, it was "likely" that heat waves and heavy precipitation events had become more frequent over most land areas and that, in relation to Europe, based on current trends, there would be an increased risk of floods and heat waves. The report stated that the risk of summer drought was "likely" to increase in central Europe, that extremes of daily precipitation were "very likely" to increase in northern Europe and that it was "more likely than not" that there would be an increase in average and extreme wind speeds in northern Europe, where "very likely" referred to a greater than 90% probability, "likely" referred to a greater than 66% probability and "more likely than not" referred to a greater than 50% probability. We considered readers would understand storms to consist of a combination of rain and wind. Because, in a European context, there was a probability of greater than 90% for some events but a probability of greater than 50% for other events and because all statements about future climate conditions were based on modelled predictions, which the IPCC report itself stated still involved uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change, we concluded that the claim "Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heatwaves will become more frequent and intense" in ad (b) and the claim "extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense" in ad (c) should have been phrased more tentatively to reflect that. However, we considered that the imagery of UK flooding in ad (b) and of a drought in ad (c) were not themselves (and particularly not in the context of a nursery rhyme "what if" presentations) exaggerated or misleading.
It noted that predictions about the potential global impact of global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "involved uncertainties" that the adverts failed to reflect.
Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato has challenged the nominating petitions of Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel, one of his competitors in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.I called it "Douchebaggery" back when Acklin did it to Harris. I'll stand by that designation in this case too.
Hoeffel's campaign called the attempt to knock Hoeffel off the ballot "cowardly."
Ireland's senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Sean Brady, said Monday he would not resign despite admitting he helped the church collect evidence against a child-molesting priest and never told police about the crimes.Point two:
Brady, as a priest and Vatican-trained canon lawyer in 1975, said he interviewed two children about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Rev. Brendan Smyth. He said both children were required to sign oaths promising not to tell anyone outside the church of their allegations.
Smyth went on to molest and rape scores of other children in Ireland, Britain and the United States before British authorities in neighboring Northern Ireland demanded his arrest in 1994. The Irish government of the day collapsed amid acrimony over why Smyth was not quickly extradited to Belfast
Disgrace already hung over the Rev. Marcial Maciel when he died in 2008 at the age of 87. In 2005, beset by burgeoning charges that he had sexually abused young seminarians for decades, the Mexican priest had resigned as head of the Legionaries of Christ, one of the Roman Catholic Church's most powerful clerical orders. In 2006 the Vatican — which under the late Pope John Paul II had been one of Padre Maciel's staunchest allies — made him give up public ministry and confine himself to a life of "prayer and penitence."Point Three:
But last week in Mexico, where Maciel founded the ultraconservative Legion in 1941, the scandal took an even unholier turn. On March 3, one of Maciel's mistresses, Blanca Lara, and two of Lara's grown sons told MVS Radio that Maciel had sexually abused his own children. It "started when I was 7 years old," said one son, José Raúl González, now in his early 30s. "I was lying down with him like any boy, any son with his father. He pulled down my pants and tried to rape me." The abuse, González said, got worse after that and lasted years. His brother Omar said he too had been sexually abused by Maciel, starting at age 8. (The sons never took Maciel's surname.) Says Maciel victim Juan Vaca, 72, a former priest and adjunct psychology and sociology professor at Mercy College in New York: "This simply confirms what sort of personality we [were] dealing with: a malignant narcissist."
The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys.Can someone explain this to me?
The priest, Peter Hullermann, who had previously been identified only by the first letter of his last name, was suspended from his duties only on Monday. That was three days after the church acknowledged that the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had responded to early accusations of molestation by allowing the priest to move to Munich for therapy in 1980.
Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction.
Benedict not only served as the archbishop of the diocese where the priest worked, but also later as the cardinal in charge of reviewing sexual abuse cases for the Vatican. Yet until the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising announced that Father Hullermann had been suspended on Monday, he continued to serve in a series of Bavarian parishes.
In 1980, the future pope reviewed the case of Father Hullermann, who was accused of sexually abusing boys in the Diocese of Essen, including forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The future pope approved his transfer to Munich. On Friday, a deputy took responsibility for allowing the priest to return to full pastoral duties shortly afterward. Six years later, Father Hullermann was convicted of sexually abusing children in the Bavarian town of Grafing. Father Hullermann's identity was revealed Sunday, when a man whose marriage he was scheduled to perform in the spa town of Bad Tölz stood up in the pews and began shouting as the head of the congregation was speaking in vague terms about the scandal.
It's scheduled to be voted on in the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.
The only things bills like this one do is "protect" and enshrine inequality and therefore must be protested.
As I wrote back in 2008:
The subject of the "equality" of this day is an attempt to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to define marriage as solely between one man and one woman as part of a "Marriage Protection Amendment."
First, let's throw out any straw man arguments: we are talking about the legal institution of marriage. We are not speaking about any particular religion's take on the subject -- they are free to define marriage exactly as they want.
What we are talking about is a legal contract between two adults. A contract that, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, confers over 1,000 protections and benefits to couples who enter into it. A contract that is currently only available to heterosexual couples. This despite the fact that there are already thousands of families in Pennsylvania headed by gays and that society has determined that encouraging stable, monogamous relationships is healthy for children in these and all families.
Moreover, Pennsylvania already prohibits same-sex marriage so this bill is a waste of time and resources.
PLEASE TAKE ACTION TODAY!
1) Make sure that this divisive, hateful initiative never becomes a reality in Pennsylvania by emailing the Senate Judiciary Committee members here and letting them know that you oppose discrimination in our constitution.
2) Call the Senate Judiciary Committee members (phone numbers here) and tell them to vote NO on SB 707.
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You can click here to see what other Pittsburgh bloggers have to say on this issue.
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I am just so grateful to the Pennsylvania legislature for acting to protect the institution of marriage from those despicable homosexual hordes. I mean if my gay friend Sue - and don't get me wrong, I don't hate teh gays, some of my best friends are gay - but if she were allowed to marry her partner it would disturb my life in many many many frightening ways. Ways I can not now imagine without some horrific soul-crushing shudder.But it seems that the reason for that blog for equality day is back. This is the text a few in our illustrious State Senate want to add as an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution:
Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid and recognized as a marriage in this Commonwealth.Other sections of the Declarations of Rights revolve around guaranteeing the rights of Pennsylvanians or otherwise limiting the power of the state.
Section 1
All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness.Or the last one:
Section 28
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania because of the sex of the individual.So how does defining marriage in such a way that it limits the rights of gay Pennsylvanians fit into the spirit of the first or last section?
