Progressive "Life Support"

By Karen De Coster on August 30

Detroit public schools are the worst prison system in the nation, with less than 30% of its inmates receiving a high school diploma. It is also the most corrupt system, run by amateurs and thieves and liars that reside within the city’s Marxist power structure. The fraud is so lowbrow that insiders have resorted to putting ghost workers on the payroll.

Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, appointed by Jennifer Granholm to oversee DPS, hinted at ghost workers back in April and earlier this month took the unusual step of forcing the district’s estimated 13,880 workers to pick up their checks in person.

…Thirty-seven paychecks and 220 direct-deposit slips totalling approximately $208,000 were not picked up, according to the Detroit Free Press.

It has also been determined that at least 500 people were illegally receiving health care benefits. Employees throughout the school system have stolen money and assets at will, and that includes low-level workers such as cafeteria workers and clerical staff. One payroll manager got away with almost a half million dollars in four years.

Among the five charged was a clerical worker at an elementary school who wrote herself 15 checks and made 17 withdrawals from district accounts that netted her more than $25,000, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said. Also charged were a high school teacher’s aide, a food service coordinator at an elementary school, a truck driver and a district controls office worker.

The charges come after an audit last week revealed the district has been paying $2.1 million per year for health coverage for ineligible dependents, unused cell phones and 11 motorcycles.

Adam B. Schaeffer of CATO writes:

Detroit is crumbling, with public schools leading the way toward total dissolution. After decades of mismanagement and malfeasance, after countless scandals and promised reforms, after losing about half of its student population since 2001, the end seems finally, perhaps mercifully, here. The Detroit public school system is on the edge of bankruptcy.

Millions have been found to be misappropriated. School officials were receiving inappropriate loans and shoddy bookkeeping is helping to cover up years and years of fraud. Also, $1.7 million was transferred from the tax-exempt district to the city of Detroit – but no one has yet to explain where that money went.

Now for the final, merciless statistic: the DPS budget for 2009 calls for it to spend $13,500 [annually] for each student.

Our "Brilliant" Socialist in Chief

The "messiah's" intellectual superiority on full display.

This would have been spread over the entire MSM 24-7 had "Dubya" been seen as the "Fool".

Glenn Beck

The Republican Party is Evil

By Laurence Vance

I don’t mean all members of the Republican Party, although many of them are (especially Religious Right defenders of torture), but certainly the leadership and the party itself. Mr. Rockwell’s post about the Republican Party backing the opponents of Rand Paul and Peter Schiff is merely example no. 5,396 that the Republican Party is not the lesser of two evils.
The Republicans can sometimes talk a good talk about liberty, free markets, and limited government, but when a Republican candidate comes along who actually believes in these ideals he is rejected. Even worse are the Republicans who are now talking about much they loved Ted Kennedy instead of how much they loathed him.

A "Big Apple" Medical Solution?

By David Kramer :

Let’s say you have a city that currently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, e.g., New York City. And let’s say you are an economically-ignorant New York City politician (but I repeat myself). What would you do to “help” alleviate the unemployment situation in New York City?

Would you:
a) Cut or—perish the thought—abolish corporate taxes so that employers have more money to hire people?
b) Push for a law that requires (i.e., forces) employers to spend more money than they would have, thereby having less money to hire more people, or to at least keep their current workforce employed—especially in these economically challenging times?

If you guessed “b,” go to the head of the class. It seems that economically-ignorant New York City Councilwoman Gail Brewer has come up with a “progressive” idea mandating earned sick time for New York City workers. This would cover all low-paid workers who are currently not paid for sick leave and, therefore, sometimes have to work while they are sick—thereby possibly giving other workers or customers the “sniffles” (i.e., they also get sick and can’t go to work—therefore, productivity is cut down).

Of course, as you’ve been hearing in the media for the last 100 years, New York City has had an “epidemic” of people getting sick from other people at work, so this mandate should really make a “big dent” in improving the health and financial well-being of every New Yorker. Or perhaps, depending upon the number of employees an individual employer has, even more New York City employees will be collecting unemployment after they lose their jobs because their employers couldn’t afford to keep them on anymore due to this added cost. (Obviously, the thought has never occured to Brewer that all of the employers, who are obviously smart enough to still be in business, know what works best for their own companies regarding their employees’ health and productivity—and their customers’ needs, if it is a service company.)

Someday, perhaps in the next millenium, politicians will take the time to read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.

By Mark R. Crovelli
When one comes to realize just how amazing and miraculous Mr. Obama’s [cash for clunkers] program really is, an obvious question comes to mind: If Mr. Obama’s program can really make us richer by destroying cars and tricking people into buying new cars, then why don’t we give this miracle program a try in the housing sector? Indeed, since the financial crisis struck most severely against the housing sector, then is that not precisely the sector where Mr. Obama’s miracle program is most direly needed? The program is easily adaptable to housing, after all. All that is needed is to give people an incentive to buy a brand new house that they can scarcely turn down (or afford), and, once they move into their new home, simply burn the old house to the ground.

Think of the amazing stimulus the economy would get from having tens of thousands – or even hundreds of thousands – of perfectly usable homes burned to their very foundations. Masons, carpenters, roofers, and appliance makers would all suddenly be reemployed to the hilt. The American housing stock would be made more energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing – and more "eco-friendly," to boot.

There’s no reason to stop with just the housing sector, though, when the clothing retailers are struggling mightily. Mr. Obama could simply pass a similar law to encourage people to go into debt buying a brand new wardrobe at the GAP (or a more "eco-friendly" retailer, to save the Earth at the same time), and then round up the shoppers’ old wardrobes and sink them to the bottom of the ocean.

Just think how much better off we would be if Mr. Obama could manage to destroy half of the supply of cars in the U.S., half of the supply of homes in the U.S., and half the supply of clothing in the U.S. It boggles the mind to think how rich we would be.

For the time being, we will just have to content ourselves with Mr. Obama melting down half of our cars.

The Obamunists Blink

By Karen De Coster

I tried to report David Kramer’s flaming right-wing opposition to ObamaCommuCare and his horrifying disinformation campaign to my White House superiors, but the snitch line (flag@whitehouse.gov) has gone kaput. Gone and done. It ran out of approval. The White House has lied about this, and it has lied about the spamming campaign, and now Gibbs, the dough-faced, White House shill, is at the liar’s microphone to make up a great big story about how people got spammed from those who were collecting the Enemy List. But we are to believe there is no enemy list. That’s just conspiracy, tinfoil hat stuff for whackos who oppose a black president. But then again, these same soldiers of propaganda were stupid enough to think that this, posted on the White House website, would pass muster with the press and the awakening masses.

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

So now they have replaced ‘Snitch to Daddy Obama’ with ‘Reality Check’. YooHoo! Look how dumbed-down and cartoon-ish the site is. Just what soft Boobus likes. Plenty of eye candy, huge logos, and diversity for the TV-educated sheeple with half their brains tied behind their Crocs.

Pizza, The New Weapon of Choice?

“Felonious Assault” with a Pizza Slice

Posted by William Grigg on August 15, 2009 05:24 PM

One of the dubious “advantages” provided by the government school system to its inmates is the knowledge that they can enlist the State as an ally in petty disputes within the home.

This is the likely reason why a 38-year-old Gainesville, Florida man is behind bars tonight for the grave alleged offense of hitting his daughter with a pizza slice. The daughter promptly called 911 and within minutes the father was in handcuffs and facing felony charges.

According to the Orlando Sentinel: “Deputy Nick Vickers says the man used racist and sexist terms when he asked his daughter to turn off her computer, and she fired back with some crude language of her own. Vickers says the father `intentionally threw a slice of pizza at the victim’” — note the use of the term “victim,” not alleged victim, thereby planting the assumption of guilt — “`striking her at the back ot the neck, against her will.’”

Presumably, if the daughter had explicitly consented to being hit in the neck with a slice of pizza, everything would have been copasetic. As it happens, the father was charged with “child abuse without great harm,” which is a third-degree felony.

Rational people would recognize that the father’s act involved no measurable “harm” whatsoever, and thus no crime over which the State could claim jurisdiction. But we should not forget that the State claims all children as its property — whether for purpose of criminalizing parental discipline (or, in this case, trivial fits of pique) or — when permitted to – for the purpose of conscripting them into the military for use as trigger-pullers and coffin-stuffers.

Gun Control: How's That Working in Chicago?

People Die in Obama’s Unarmed Chicago
By Karen De Coster

A reader sent me this amazing article. The disarmed Chicago citizenry is getting slaughtered. The article refers to Chicago as a bloodbath. He summarizes:

The #’s total were 48 dead 210 wounded with the most draconian laws in the country. We don’t need to mention the 624 armed robberies (handgun), 1454 burglary’s (forceable entry) or the others.

From the article:

" As of July 30, at least 42 people had been shot and killed, and 183 more had been shot and wounded since July 1. Among the injured were a 9-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy, a UPS driver who was on a break after making a delivery, and two Chicago police officers serving a drug warrant.

Here’s a perfect example of a sitting duck in Chicago. A UPS driver, taking a break to pick up a snack, was robbed and shot in the back. Another amazing comment:

There were several especially bloody nights in the month of July. At least eight people were killed and almost two dozen others were wounded on July 4 and 5, four of whom died during a bloody six hours. Overnight July 28 and 29, at least 15 people were shot and wounded – seven of them in a single incident at Homan Boulevard and Walnut Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood.

See this map of July 2009 shootings in the city of Chicago. Almost NOWHERE do I see reports on this perpetual bloodbath. Except NPR covered it. But of course, as soon as some alleged “gun nut” shoots a few people, or cops, the cries for gun control are amplified from the left-wing rafters. Chicago disarmed peaceful people so that parasitic criminals could have their way with the sitting duck citizenry. But then again, people like Alan Gottlieb, of the Second Amendment Foundation, knew this long ago.

This is Obama’s city. This is what Obama and his minions (Emanuel, Holder, Frank, Pelosi, etc., etc., etc), who all have hordes of personal security, want for America. They want you unarmed in the name of …… “peace.”

In this age of a sissified, feel-good, group-hug America, how do the Chicago police intend to get this under control? They are holding anti-violence marches. Holding up signs that say “Working together to keep our neighborhoods safe.” I’ve got a better idea – how about a new motto for the Chicago PD: ”We’re there when you’re not.” What have the Chicago public schools students been taught about this situation? They’ve been told to rally and demand more gun control.

An Oxymoron: Government Health "Care"

By Michael Prell

"The Greatest Canadian," according to Canadians themselves, was Tommy Douglas: the socialist who created socialized health care. Canadians from coast to coast regularly wait up to 36 weeks for an MRI. The average emergency room visit is 6 hours -- just to be seen. Stretchers pile up in hospital hallways. People wait years to get family doctors. And my mother's three year ordeal with pain was so dehumanizing she almost killed herself.

These are the people who voted for their slavemaster as The Greatest to ever walk among them. That is what public health care will do to you. It won't just make you a prisoner of the system. It won't just destroy the great American spirit of self-reliance. It will weaken you to the point where you look upon those who enslave you as your heroes.
Read more here

The Lying Liars

How Politicians Lie About “Budget Cuts”

By Thomas DiLorenzo on July 22, 2009 12:08 PM

An old political game is for a governor of a state to PROPOSE say, a $2billion increase in next year’s budget, and then when the legislature can “only” squeeeze another $1.5 billion out of the poor, hapless and helpless taxpayers, the Gov. then decries a “half billion dollars in budget CUTS.” Since most newspapers are little more than the propaganda arms of big government in each state, there is then a chorus of crying, sobbing, moaning, gnashing of teeth, whimpering, and doomsaying over the social catastrophe that is surely imminent.

Of course, there have been no budget “cuts” at all, but a gigantic budget increase of one and a half billion dollars in my example. This dishonest scam is currently being played out in Maryland (and in most other states). The front page of todays’ Baltimore Sun, the propaganda rag of the state Democratic Party, screams, “[Governor] O’Malley Proposes Millions in Cuts“!!!!!!!!!

If one scrolls down to the sixth paragraph of the article, one reads in the first sentence that “Since taking office [three years ago], O’Malley has reduced spending by more than $3 billion.” But then the last sentence of the paragraph contradicts this, saying: “[T]he size of Maryland’s overall budget, which includes federal funds . . . has grown over the past three years” (emphasis added).

So what has been “cut” is O’Malley’s pie-in-the-sky wish list of billions of dollars of goodies to be passed out to any and every special-interest group in the state. In reality, Maryland state government is still growing by leaps and bounds and should be cut at least in half — for starters.

Greens Hate the Poor

By Lew Rockwell

Concerning Rob’s comment below, the whole environmental movement is an attack on the poor, when it isn’t just plain anti-human. Virtually everything that movement advocates is designed to make life better, as they see it, for the upper-class types who founded it and have always run it, at the expense particularly of the poor and working class. Even their foot soldiers are upper-middle class types. Folks, our anti-capitalist enemies are by and large the rich who want to use the state to keep them that way, and to prevent others from getting rich through the market. Their slogan might as well be, “No Upward Social Mobility.”

The Left Hates the Poor

By Lew Rockwell

The Left, which represents the wealthiest people in society, can’t stand the poor unless they are on the state payroll and enlisted in its army of crime. Why else the hate campaign against Wal-Mart, which has done more for the poor than all the non-profit charitable programs put together, and certainly more than welfare? And now look at this: IKEA, the progressives’ favorite (and one of mine too), is a problem because it also promotes the idea of low prices. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon, which caters to the wealthy Left, in reviewing a new anti-poor book, longs for the days of expensive, detailed craftsmanship. How horrible that cheap goods are available to society. IKEA, she says, is “as bad as Wal-Mart.” This is criticism? Save Money, Live Better.

UPDATE from Rob Worsnop:

And also isn’t the ridiculous “Cash for Clunkers” program an attack on the poor? In order for this program to be judged “successful”, surely we would be seeing large numbers of vehicles, whose value happens to fall below $3500 or $4500, disappear from the market. So then what is left for the poor to buy? New vehicles? I don’t think so.

I was thinking yesterday what a disgrace it would be for my 1996 Nissan Pickup, with only 90K on the clock, to be crushed under supervision of the Federal Government instead of being sold on to someone of modest means.

True Bliss

Boo Got Shot!!

Boo Got Shot - Animation - video powered by Metacafe

New Santa

Just a reminder for 2008. All of you Elves i.e. taxpayers will be working overtime this year.

Tis The Season

Pogo, as well as Albert Alligator, Owl and the rest of the gang living here in the Okefenokee Swamp wish all our friends (and others) the very best of this season, whatever you may call it!!

Pogo 'Possum

A friendly cartoon swamp creature comments wryly on politics and philosophy. Walt Kelly, a cartoonist and movie animator, visited the Okefenokee Swamp in 1942 and was inspired to draw some "swamp critters." Pogo ‘Possum appeared in comic books in the early 1940’s and became the star of a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip in 1949. Declaring "We have met the enemy and he is us," Pogo poked fun at the vanity and shortcomings of people everywhere. The General Assembly voted Pogo the Georgia State ‘Possum in 1992.

Islamist Fashion

This is the latest in desert chic (did I spell that right?)

Arise Marsupials

Currently we marsupials are at risk of becoming endangered creatures in that continent most famous for our species to wit: Australia. Fortunately the Aussies have devised several strategies for dealing with the threat of the cane toads.

Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week

Time for wakeup call!!