I have one question about the way Majority Leader Harry Reid has been conducting the Senate. Has he committed a felony or a mere misdemeanor?
The wags will say that a politician from Nevada does not commit misdemeanors, but I am in earnest. The difference between whether Dingy Harry – as he is known by the eminent political scientist Dr. Rush Limbaugh – shuffles off to a federal prison or merely pays a hefty fine is significant. I suppose we can leave it to the federal prosecutors to decide, but if he gets off on a misdemeanor I urge it also entail mandatory budget counseling. No one would be surprised to hear of Harry being sentenced to a stint at anger management counseling. Why not mandatory budget counseling too?
Majority Leader Harry’s transgression is that for over 1300 days he has failed to pass a budget. In fact, there is no evidence he has even tried. This is against the law. Federal law clearly requires the Congress to pass a budget every year. I presume the reasoning behind this is that the American people deserve to know what their taxes are paying for, or another way of putting it is, why are the American people being mulcted every year by the Internal Revenue Service to pay for Harry and his gang’s criminal activities? What are their activities? Are they buying votes with public moneys? Are they favoring friends with subsidies and other extensions of the people’s treasure? What about lucre they have extended for “renewable energy,” for automobiles no one wants, for every idiot enthusiasm of the so-called welfare state.
For over 1300 days Harry has been operating his scam without a budget. The House of Representatives has passed budgets in accordance with the law. They have been designed by the law-abiding chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan. He has braved obloquy from Democrats and other ideologues for putting down on paper what he would spend federal money on and where the citizenry’s taxes are going. Harry has not, and according to the law he ought to go to jail or be otherwise punished. Surely we do not make laws without punishments, do we?
Not all senators are complicit in Harry’s intrigues. For instance, the affable Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama is blameless and actually indignant with his colleagues and with Harry in particular. Recently he told my colleague at the Washington Examiner Byron York, “I think it should be a firm principle that we should not raise the debt ceiling until we have a plan on how the new borrowed money will be spent. If the government wants to borrow money so it can spend more, then the government ought to tell the Congress and the American people how they will spend it.” York concludes, “One problem, of course, is that the law already requires Congress to pass a budget, and Reid has violated that.” I say prosecute him. This is malfeasance on a vast scale.
Whether Harry goes to the can or accepts a lesser sentence, as I have suggested, a mandatory course in budget management, we are going to have to face up to these trillion dollar deficits that the government has been piling up since our smug President took over, Barack Obama. He envisages them for years to come, though obviously if those trillion-dollar deficits do come life in the great Republic will be very different from what it has been. We have already raised taxes on his hellish two percent, now Republicans have got to insist that President Obama make good on the other half of his deal and cut spending. The way to cut the trillion-dollar deficit is now through budget cuts. The federal government spends too much. It spends money it does not have. In the coming debt-ceiling fight Republicans and the handful of sober Democrats out there should offer suggestions on where the cuts should be.
I have just read a study by the increasingly mainstream Heritage Foundation outlining $150 billion dollars of cuts in the budget. Patrick Louis Knudsen, the author of the study, points out that many of the cuts are perfectly doable, for they envision the federal government’s desisting from undertaking what it should never have undertaken in the first place. Other cuts involve privatization, policy consolidation, ending ineffective programs, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. For instance, Knudsen’s plan calls for cutting $13.5 billion from the Department of Agriculture, $3.5 billion from Community Development, $15.1 billion from Health Care, and $15.8 billion from the Department of Transportation. So it goes through every nook and cranny of the federal government, save the Department of Defense. Knudsen does not cut from the Pentagon because he feels that the military is an essential area of government involvement. Presumably he leaves it to the generals and admirals to decide what is essential for the security of the country.
The coming battle over the debt ceiling is the right time to demand our government get its fiscal house in order. If not now, when? As for Dingy Harry, possibly under the threat of prosecution he will smarten up. No one wants to see him go off to the calaboose.
Have you ever met a pro-gun activist who ISN’T an advocate for anarchy? “Criminals don’t obey laws, so why should we have any?” #NoMoreNRA
I don’t know any anarchists, and I know a lot of shooters.
While I’m certain that there are anarchists that own firearms, we typically find that anarchists align themselves socially with the radical far left. You know… Ladd’s people.
While anarchists oppose law in general, legal gun-owners, concealed carry permit holders in particular, tend to be more law-abiding than the average citizen. That CCH holders are more law-abiding than the average citizen is an objective fact not open to interpretation. Ladd’s assertion that gun-owners promote or condone anarchy is absurd on its face, but that is to be expected from a man who lies as a profession.
The statement “Criminals don’t obey laws, so why should we have any?”he cites is a lament repeated for decades not just by gun owners, but by small businessmen,homeowners, people who drive cars, are sexually-molested at airports by federal employees, and just about anyone else who has seen intrusive government regulation strangle the law-abiding, as real criminals go unpunished.
He’s also no student of history, or at least he’d prefer to rewrite it.
Go read it all. People like Everitt are enemies of liberty, no other way to put it. They actively seek to deprive us of the most basic human right, that of self-defense.
The Black dirtbag loser bitch headline I got from Donald Douglas, because, well, it fits this waste of human skin. And this reporter who interviews her acts so sympathetic to her! Give me a break! This foul woman can take her phony apology and stick it frankly! She is sorry, sorry the phone call was taped and made public! All she does is play the victim here, she is “angry” , and blah, blah, blah! No, she is simply a racist piece of filth who has been exposed. And, would you believe it? She has had trouble with the RAAAAACIST police too!
Michelle Williams, who was once known as Michelle Conyers, has had several run-ins with the law. She’s been arrested on charges ranging from aggravated assault with a handgun to fraudulent use of personal information, fraudulent use of a credit card, petty theft, two counts of grand theft, two counts of forgery and exploitation of an elderly person.
She entered guilty pleas to several of the charges and was sentenced to restitution and probation, which she completed successfully. Williams hasn’t been involved with the court system since 2005.
The gun-grabbing Mayor Nanny Bloomberg! Doug Powers documents Bloomberg’s latest trip into the Pit of Eternal Liberal Stupidity!
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News that goes for a record in misguided problem solving. In the article, Bloomberg calls for more gun laws that would accomplish little except take guns out of the hands of non-criminal legal gun owners. Then Bloomberg virtually admits (unwittingly, of course) that people who follow the law and possess firearms legally aren’t the problem:
Every one of the criminals who has shot at our police officers possessed his gun illegally. Every one.
Good grief! It is true that stupid should hurt. Bloomberg would have a headache that 1,ooo,000 Excedrin could not cure.Powers notes,the absurdity of Bloomberg’s”logic”
He destroys his own argument in a single sentence. “Problem: Criminals shooting at police officers. Solution: Keeping guns out of the hands of people who don’t shoot at police officers.”
Would Bloomberg be happier if the people who shot at cops possessed their guns legally? At least then his argument might make at least a modicum of sense.
As bad as Bloomberg is, the idiots in New York that continue to vote for him are even worse. Why do they keep voting AGAINST basic liberties? I suppose I should bestow upon these pinheads, who have no earthly clue what the Hell freedom is, a Marxist Moron Award of their own.
Reason TV has just named their Nanny of the Month for March. And it is none other than Mayor Nanny Bloomberg
This month Alabama lawmakers were itching to make it a criminal offense to annoy people online (isn’t that what the interweb is all about?), and a national pollexposed the split personality of Americans who pretend to support individual responsibility, all the while cheering bans on smoking, transfats and the like.
But this month top dishonors go to the man who is perhaps the busiest busybody of them all, the big-city mayor who decided to halt private donations to his city’s homeless shelters (after all, who can be sure that such donations wouldn’t fill homeless people with fatty or salty food?!).
Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for March 2012: New York City Mayor Meddlin’ Mike Bloomberg!
Matt at Conservative Hideout gives us some examples of “hate crimes” that are not being splashed all over front pages and highlighting newscasts from coast to coast. I will give you just one example that Matt lists, but be sure to read them all, and make sure you consider Matt’s closing question
I’ve been paying attention to crime for quite some time, and I usually don’t cover it, as it isn’t really in the scope of this blog. However, ever since the Trayvon Martin case became a political football. I thought it would be a good idea to examine some other recent crime, and contrast that with the coverage of the Martin case.
As has already been reported, Allen was a victim of a vicious racial attack last week in which two older black teens doused him with gasoline and set him alight, saying, “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.” Not surprisingly, Coon has pulled her son out of East High and, concerned about further racial violence, intends to leave the K.C. area.
While this crime is making headlines, Coon states that it was merely the horrible culmination of continual racial harassment her son had to endure at East High. Moreover, after conducting an investigation that included extensive interviews with parents and students, I’ve learned that Coon’s son is not alone. Other white students also report a pattern of racial harassment at the high school at the hands of their peers — and, shockingly, their teachers.
In a nation consumed with RAAAAACism, and with a media consumed with ratings, you would think this story would be front and center wouldn’t you? Yet, it has been buried, yes even by Fox. Talk about things that make you go HMMMMM. Of course, we kinda know why the stories Matt highlights, cases which are CLEARLY racially motivated by the way, are swept under the rug.The Left, of course, is using the Trayvon Martin case as a political football, but, the media is as culpable as the Left because they are acting as willing accessories to the Left.
The reason is simple, the media IS dominated by Liberals, who seem to have a deeply held desire for America to be a RAAAAACIST nation, and they report, and yes exploit stories that paint America that way! Every journalist that engages in this ought to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
Donald Douglas via Blazing Cat Fur reports about an “expert”, one Professor Hubert Van Gijseghem of the University of Montreal, who has some deluded views of Pedophilia. One sick bastard this guy is!
I was shocked a few weeks ago to show up to listen to the Commons Justice Committee debate a bill on tougher sentences for sexual predators who target children. At that hearing, the Criminal Lawyers’ Association said Bill C-54, also known as the Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act, was too tough because it had mandatory minimum sentences.
The bill seeks to raise some existing mandatory minimums from 14 days to 90 days while others would go up to one year for people who sexually abuse children. Of course, the lawyers think any minimum sentence is wrong for their clients because it ties the hands of judges, and politicians, they say, shouldn’t do that.
Funny, I don’t hear them arguing against maximum sentences using the same arguments.
Of course, the criminal lawyers are not the only ones arguing against a bill that targets pedophiles and perverts. There’s the opposition parties, all three of them.
But what really shocked me was the Universite de Montreal professor, Dr. Hubert Van Gijseghem, who showed up to tell MPs pedophilia was a sexual orientation just like heterosexuality or homosexuality.
Leave it to the experts.
If it were up to me, anyone who molested, raped, sexually abused a child would get life the FIRST freaking time they were convicted! No three strikes BS, no early release, no parole, none of that at all! The same for rapists frankly. Some crimes are that serious folks. Some crimes are serious enough that society can never be out at risk from that monster again!
Just to be clear, I am not talking about some 18 or 19 year-old guy having consensual sex with a 16 or 17 year-old girlfriend either, we must use some common sense in sentencing guidelines, and society is certainly not at risk from such examples as I just gave!
If you want to see the utter greed and selfishness of public sector unions look no further than Camden, New Jersey. Drug related violence and a high level of gang activity has made Camden the second most dangerous city in America.
Gov. Chris Christie has been working hard to put New Jersey back on firm financial footing. He has promised to balance the state’s budget by any and all means necessary.
Camden has a $26.5 million deficit that it must close. Lay offs are simply unavoidable in a situation like that. The logical and responsible thing to do is lay off those employees whose work isn’t absolutely critical to the city, right? Lay off the paper pushers first and then see where you stand. Only as a last resort would you cut critical positions like police, firefighters, paramedics, etc.
Not in Camden. The city council voted unanimously to lay off 400 workers, half of them cops and firefighters. That’s close to half the city’s entire police force and a third of all firefighters.
Meanwhile, the public sector union workers are free to sit on their fat, bloated asses and let the gravy train keep right on rolling. What a disgrace.
One union official had this to say about the cuts:
“If we agreed to everything that the city proposed in concessions, it would only have a minor impact on the number of layoffs,” Walco told the council members.
How much you wanna bet that’s a load of crap? This was purely a political stunt to try and damage Gov. Christie.
Want proof?
When it was over, Council president Frank Moran suggested they’re not to blame.
“We didn’t put a price tag on public safety. Unfortunately, the governor of the State of New Jersey put that price tag on it,” he said at the packed Council meeting.
That price tag is $69 million, in transitional aid. Moran suggested that Camden residents should vent to Governor Chris Christie.
We’re used to hearing liberals warn of having to lay off cops and firefighters, but we all recognize it as meaningless rhetoric. There’s plenty of people to get rid of before cops and firefighters. But Camden actually did it.
They’re playing politics with peoples lives. The public sector unions in Camden are going to have blood on their hands. How many citizens are going to be murdered, mugged, raped, or assaulted as a result of losing half the police force?
Moreover, how many people are going to be helped because a bunch of paper pushing bureaucrats get to keep gossiping around the water cooler?
Chris Christie should run an ad campaign touting the selfishness and greed of public sector unions. He should show the people of New Jersey that city workers don’t care about their safety.
St. Louis overtook Camden, N.J., as the nation’s most dangerous city in 2009, according to a national study released Sunday.
The study by CQ Press found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. That helped St. Louis beat out Camden, which topped last year’s list and was the most dangerous city for 2003 and 2004.
Detroit, Flint, Mich., and Oakland, Calif., rounded out the top five. For the second straight year, the safest city with more than 75,000 residents was Colonie, N.Y.
The annual rankings are based on population figures and crime data compiled by the FBI.
A city watchdog is outraged that Mayor Dana Redd wants to double the top maximum salaries for three jobs.
The top salary for mayoral aides would jump to $150,000 from $71,000. Redd also wants to raise the maximum salaries for city attorney and mayor’s counsel, though not as drastically.
Her spokesman said the bigger salaries are needed to attract a qualified and experienced staff.
Watchdog Kelly Francis called raises for anyone during a recession in the impoverished city “insane.”
At ground zero of the police corruption scandal in Camden, prayers for a community’s rebirth are painted on boarded-up storefronts, fading old-timers drain bottles of cheap liquor on dirty porches, and young men waste away on trash-littered corners.
And nearly everyone in this Waterfront South neighborhood has a story about the officers at the center of the ongoing federal investigation.
“They were the dirtiest cops I ever seen,” said Keith Sartin, standing in front of a park at Broadway and Ferry Avenue.
Interviews with more than two dozen residents last week added emotion to the spare comments from authorities Friday, when former Camden Police Officer Kevin Parry pleaded guilty in the case.
Parry acknowledged his role in a corrupt police operation that has led to charges being overturned or dismissed in 185 drug cases. Parry implicated four other officers.
Since December, dozens of low-level drug dealers and drug users have been released from prison, and their stories – coupled with a review of the convictions vacated by the court since December – indicate the accused officers claimed the Waterfront South neighborhood as their territory.
The officers are being investigated on allegations that they skimmed cash and planted drugs during illegal searches and illegal arrests. Parry, 29, entered his plea in U.S. District Court, saying he and four other officers stole drugs, stashed them around the city, and bribed people in exchange for information in at least 70 incidents.
In some cases, he said, additional drugs were planted on people to increase the charges. He said he and other officers had falsified police reports and lied in court.
Base pay for Camden’s state-appointed chief operating officer is more than the mayor of Philadelphia.
Theodore Davis earns $220,000 compared to $167,436 for Michael Nutter.
Davis was the highest-paid person in New Jersey’s executive branch in 2008. He’s 26th when comparing total pay, which includes overtime and bonuses or incentives.
The 75-year-old retired judge also collects a pension of nearly $10,000 a month.
The COO position was created when the state gained control over Camden in 2002. The job carries the same duties as mayor.
Davis says he negotiated his salary with the state Treasury Department based on what he thought was fair. Davis says claims that he’s overpaid are “ridiculous.”
The Cartel is a hard-hitting exposé that shows how the union stranglehold on public education is destroying the lives of millions of children. Bad teachers can’t be fired because they have tenure. Politicians are bankrolled and controlled by the unions.
Behind all of the dismal tales of greed, graft and goons are real children stuck in failing and often violent schools. The film introduces us to 17-year-old Juan, a soft-spoken kid who played shortstop in high school and wants to open his own car repair business. After ten years in Camden, NJ public schools, Juan could not recite the alphabet, much less read. His math skills were slightly better; by the 8th-grade, he knew the multiplication tables up to four times four.
Students enrolled in a program called Community Education Resource Network (CERN) tell why they prefer it to the public schools they left. Some cite teachers who actually care about student learning, and others stress finally feeling safe at school. The contrast in funding is as stark as the attitudes of teachers and students. Instead of a $17,500 per student budget, CERN is run on a shoestring and a prayer. Teachers are volunteers, classes are held at a church, and the school uses textbooks thrown away by public schools. After working with kids who graduated from Camden public schools, CERN co-founder Angel Cordero has some pointed questions for district teachers and administrators: “For 12 years, what did you do with that child? What did you do with the money?”
There’s no easy way to say it, but Camden, New Jersey — a city right across the river from Philadelphia — has a reputation for being one of the poorest, most decrepit towns in the United States. Since the 1970s, the city has been the epitome of poverty with no solution in sight.
And when the financial crisis hit in 2006, Camden got hit hard. Really hard. Off highway I-676 at Exit 5A lies a place called Transition Park, better known as Tent City. The community even has an official website and they post strict rules for anyone looking to stay there.
If you think you’ve seen poverty, get ready to be shocked at what you’re about to see.
The library board in Camden, one of the nation’s poorest cities, is preparing to close all three of its libraries by the end of the year, saying its funding has been slashed so drastically that it cannot afford to keep operating.
Library officials are hoping enough money surfaces to save the system, but they’re preparing for a shutdown and say they’re not just threatening it as a ploy.
“Of all places, they’re one of the places that needs free public libraries the most,” said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association.
The city of about 80,000 residents across the Delaware River from Philadelphia consistently ranks as one of the nation’s most impoverished. It’s a place where most families don’t own computers, where just one big bookstore serves the local colleges and where some of the public schools don’t even have librarians.
Camden Free Public Library is a major hub for many residents and draws 150,000 visits a year.
Raw sewage seeped into Jackeline and Eduardo Gonzalez’s basement, through its bathroom, hallway, and bedroom.
The fumes forced the family to eat outside and sent 1-year-old Eduardo Jr. to the emergency room three times with respiratory problems. The toxic flow burned holes in walls and ruined clothes and a sofa. The mold ended Grandma’s visits from Puerto Rico.
The sewage comes from a collapsed pipe at the end of their block, on Cherry Street in Camden. How does the city respond? For three hours, three days a week, a bored employee uses a noisy machine to transfer waste from the busted sewer into one that works.
This jury-rigged solution has been in place for more than a year.
Camden is so broke, so unable to perform the basic functions of government, that the obvious solution – repairing the century-old brick sewer system – is almost impossible to achieve, fiscally and politically.
Life in Camden wasn’t supposed to be like this. Seven years ago, New Jersey rolled out a revitalization plan that brought with it the biggest municipal takeover in American history.
After years of being subsidized by state taxpayers, corrupt and crumbling Camden would be taken over, repaired, and put on a path to self-reliance.
Then-Gov. Jim McGreevey gave Camden $175 million in bonds and loans, plus a one-time $7.5 million appropriation from the state budget, in exchange for an appointed chief operating officer to run the government and for gubernatorial control over the school board. His plan would create jobs, improve the quality of life, decrease crime, demolish all unsafe vacant buildings, lure new businesses, and, yes, mend sewers.
Five years later, when the recovery effort was first scheduled to be completed, the Gonzalezes bought a small rowhouse with money earned cleaning offices in Cherry Hill. But their odorous problem has now forced them to put that house on the market for the price they paid, $69,900.
darcprynce
Dave C
Gatordoug
