George Rebane
This launches the sometime series of things that I did not know, or was not fully aware of the details.
The censoring of free speech on college campuses is much more pervasive than the lamestream has led us believe. It turns out that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been keeping tabs on the shenanigans that liberal dominated academe has been practicing. In 2007 FIRE found that three out of four colleges and universities in the land explicitly proscribed students’ and faculties’ First Amendment rights. The situation has gotten better. Today FIRE reports that the 2013 fraction has been reduced to about three out of five. These diktats are all to be interpreted by the accusers who might claim to being offended on account of what they overheard someone say about sex, race, age, religion, national origin, color, marital status, pregnancy, disability, or status of veterans. My question is why stop there when you’re on a roll? Anyway, I didn’t have a clue that such a large majority of campuses were down on free speech which the Constitution guarantees us exactly because it may be offensive to someone else, but not in the ivied halls where enquiring minds are hobbled as they gather to discover and debate.
California’s Cap & Trade law is following the Pelosi Principle to the letter. State Senate president Darrell Steinberg is starting to worry out loud about all the undiscovered effluent that the “quarter baked” legislation is beginning to disgorge. Well, the Democrats did get a glimmer of the crap they had cobbled together when early on they kind of forgot that the passed ‘Global Warmings Solutions Act’ (aka AB32) should really be referred to the ‘California Air Pollution Reduction Act’. Of course, both names are ludicrous.
But the real disaster for the Dems (and the rest of us) was the discovery that AB32 is driving businesses out of the state. During strong denials of the same, the scumbags opened up the carbon credit markets to out-of-state participants that today reach as far as Quebec in order to let the state’s desperate businesses find cheaper avenues for making their mandated protection payments. Now, of course, this means that the state will not get the projected monies for projects having nothing to do with ‘green’ or ‘global warming’ (e.g. high speed rail to nowhere) – we all (save the local leftwing lackeys) knew it would be another slush fund for liberal politicians buying votes. When voters get stupid, they pay through the nose, except when they’re the transferees of transfer payments.
[Added] Reader Greg Goodknight has a considerable opinion piece in today's Union that covers global warming and Common Core among other topics. Hope it's not paywalled.
Finally, Hillary Rodham Clinton is now coming into the sights of Republicans and conservatives across the country as they try to derail her 2016 bid. Did you know that in 1974 she was fired from the House Judiciary Committee investigating Watergate for what her boss Jerry Zeifman accused as having "…engaged in a variety of self-serving unethical practices in violation of House rules."? Actually, why he really fired her for, besides incompetency (“erroneous legal opinions”) was “(b)ecause she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.” In Zeifman’s 2006 book, Hillary's Pursuit of Power, he says, "Hillary Clinton is ethically unfit to be either a Senator or President – and if she were to become President, the last vestiges of the traditional moral authority of the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson will be destroyed.” You’d think?
But Hillary’s subsequent rise as the wife of ascending politician Bill Clinton made all this moot. No member of the lamestream has dared bring up her dismissal and Zeitman’s charges – which she also has never brought up publicly or denied. It was as if it never happened. According to the record, the lady subsequently became a crack commodities investor and prestidigitator, making the Rose Law firm’s lost billing records magically appear in the WH presidential quarters after the statute of limitations had run out on the matter. Without much risk, I predict that the lamestream will paint her as “the most consequential Secretary of State since Dean Acheson” before 2016 kicks into gear. Her empty record will be populated with accomplishments which will even make her blush in their recounting as she takes the podium during the upcoming campaign.
While we’re on the Clintons, did you know that Chelsea Clinton Mesvinsky’s father-in-law, former congressman Ed Mesvinsky, is a convicted fraudster who did time and still owes over $9M to his victims. ‘Fast Eddie’ has been the lifelong friend of the Clintons, so it was a blessing that their kids finally tied the knot. While none of this impugnes Chelsea's character, I wonder if the same cricket coverage would have been accorded had one of the Bush or Chaney kids such familial connections.
I bet our readers have a lot of similar stories to tell about Repubs (start with Bush2’s well publicized DUI). After all we do want some balance here 😉
[20jan14 update] Income inequality has again become the progressives’ class war rallying cry for this election year. We are constantly reminded of how the conservatives favor the 1% at great cost to the wretched refuse of our teeming shore who should have received their fair share of that excess income from an tilted playing field on which the rich play under different rules than everyone else. Well, UC Berkeley just released an interesting study citing the fraction of income growth that went to the 1% during 2002-07 under Bush2 – 65%; during the 2007-09 depth of the Great Recession – 45%; and (wait for it) during 2009-12 recovery – 95%. So contrary to the popular opinion now being furiously cobbled together, income inequality has become much worse and steadily widened while we have been hoping for change under Obama. I didn't know that.
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