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	<title>Obama&#039;s Enemies List: A Growing List of Obama&#039;s Enemies &#187; AmeriCorps</title>
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		<title>What A Big Government Conservative Looks Like</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2012/01/06/what-a-big-government-conservative-looks-like/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2012/01/06/what-a-big-government-conservative-looks-like/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:13:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Linda</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AmeriCorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/2012/01/06/what-a-big-government-conservative-looks-like/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ I&#8217;m rather tired of all the people who don&#8217;t like Romney trying to claim Rick Santorum is not a big government conservative, or not a pro-life statist.  I would support him before I would support Romney too, but I have no intention of giving up ideological and intellectual consistency in the name of beating Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum is a pro-life statist.  He is.  You will have to deal with it.  He is a big government conservative.  Santorum is right on social issues, but has never let his love of social issues stand in the way of the creeping expansion of the welfare state.  In fact, he has been complicit in the expansion of the welfare state. I and some friends, none of us Romney fans, have set about exploring Santorum&#8217;s record since Wednesday morning.  Here now is a non-exhaustive list of what we have found. It does not even include his support for No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, etc. This is not the record of a man committed to scaling back the welfare state or the nanny state.   NEA Voted for taxpayer funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. Voted against a 10% cut in the budget for National Endowment for the Arts. Bankruptcy Voted for a Schumer amendment to make the debts of pro-life demonstrators not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Defense and Foreign Policy Voted for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Voted against requiring the President to certify that the CWC is effectively verifiable. Voted against requiring the President to certify that that Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, China, and all other countries determined to be state sponsors of terror have joined CWC prior to submitting the instrument of ratification. Voted for the START II Treaty Voted to allow the sale of supercomputers to China. Voted to ban antipersonnel landmines Voted against increasing defense spending offset by equivalent cuts in non-defense spending. Voted to require that Federal bureaucrats get the same payraises as uniformed military. Voted to allow food and medicine sales to state sponsors of terror and tyranical regimes such as Libya and Cuba. Voted to limit the President’s authority to impose sanctions on nations for reasons of national security unless the sanctions were approved by a multilateral regime. Voted against requiring Congressional authorization for military action in Bosnia. Voted to give $25 million in foreign aid to North Korea Voted to weaken alien terrorist deportation provisions.   If the Court determines that the evidence must be withheld for national security reasons, the Justice Department must still provide a summary of the evidence sufficient for the alien terrorist to mount a defense against deportation. Voted against delaying the India Nuclear until the President certified that India had agreed to suspend military-to-military exchanges with Iran. Voted against the Conventional Trident Missile Program Nominations Voted for Richard Paez to the 9th Curcuit (cloture) Voted for Sonia Sotomayor, Circuit Judge Voted for Richard Holbrooke to be Ambassador to the UN Voted for Margaret Morrow to be District Judge Voted twice for Marsha Berzon to the 9thg Circuit Voted for Mary McLaughlin to be District Judge Voted for Tim Dyk to be District Judge Voted for James Brady to be District Judge Labor Voted against National Right to Work Act Voted against Real of Davis-Bacon Prevailing union wages Voted for Alexis Herman to be Secretary of Labor Voted for mandatory Federal child care funding Voted for Trade Adjustment Assistance. Voted for Job Corps funding Voted twice in support of Fedex Unionization Voted against allowing a waiver of Davis-Bacon in emergency situations. Voted for minimum wage increases six times here here here here here and here Voted to require a union representative on an IRS oversight board. Voted to exempt IRS union representative from criminal ethics laws. Voted against creating independent Board of Governors to investigate IRS abuses. Guns Voted to require pawn shops to do background checks on people who pawn a gun. Voted twice to make it illegal to sell a gun without a secure storage or safety device Voted for a Federal ban on possession of “assault weapons” by those under 18. Voted for Federal funding for anti-gun education programs in schools. Voted for anti-gun juvenile justice bill. Reform Voted for funding for the legal services corporation. Voted twice for a Congressional payraise. Voted to impose a uniform Federal mandate on states to force them to allow convicted rapits, arsonists, drug kingpins, and all other ex-convicts to vote in Federal elections. Voted for the Specter “backup plan” to allow campaign finance reform to survive if portions of the bill were found unconstitutional. Voted to mandate discounted broadcast times for politicians. Voted for a McCain amendment to require State and local campaign committees to report all campaign contributions to the FEC and to require all campaign contributions to be reported to the FEC within 24 hours within 90 days of an election. Immigration Voted against increasing the number of immigration investigators Voted to allow illegal immigrants to receive the earned income credit before becoming citizens Voted to give SSI benefits to legal aliens. Voted to give welfare benefits to naturalized citizens without regard to to the earnings of their sponsors. Voted against hiring an additional 1,000 border partrol agents, paid for by reductions in state grants. Taxes Voted against a flat tax. Voted to increase tobacco taxes to pay for Medicare prescription drugs Voted to increase tobacco taxes to fund health insurance subsidies for small businesses. Voted to increase tobacco taxes to pay for an $8 billion increase in child healh insurance. Voted to increase tobacco taxes to pay for an increase in NIH funding. Voted twice for internet taxes. Voted to allow gas tax revenues to be used to subsidize Amtrak. Voted to strike marriage penalty tax relief and instead provide fines on tobacco companies. Voted against repealing the Clinton 4.3 cent gas tax increase. Voted to increase taxes by $2.3 billion to pay for an Amtrak trust fund. Voted to allow welfare to a minor who had a child out of wedlock and who resided with an adult who was on welfare within the previous two years. Voted to increase taxes by $9.4 billion to pay for a $9.4 billion increase in student loans. Voted to say that AMT patch is more important than capital gains and dividend relief. Welfare Voted against food stamp reform Voted against Medicaid reform Voted against TANF reform Voted to increase the Social Services Block Grant from $1 billion to $2 billion Voted to increase the FHA loan from $170,000 to $197,000.  Also opposed increasing GNMA guaranty from 6 basis points to 12. Voted for $2 billion for low income heating assistance. Waste Sponsored An amendment to increase Amtrak funds by $550 million Voted to use HUD funds for the Joslyn Art Museum (NE), the Stand Up for Animals project (RI) and the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Project (WA) Voted to increase spending on social programs by $7 billion Voted to increase NIH funding by $1.6 billion. Voted to increase NIHnding by $700 million Voted to for a $2 million earmark to renovate the Vulcan Monument (AL) Voted for a $1 billion bailout for the steel industry Voted against requiring that highway earmarks would come out of a state’s highway allocation Voted to allow Market Access Program funds to go to foreign companies. Voted to allow OPIC to increase its administrative costs by 50% Voted against transferring $20 million from Americorps to veterans. Voted for the $140 billion asbestos compensation bill. Voted against requiring a uniform medical criteria to ensure asbestos claims were legitimate. Voted to increase community development programs by $2 billion. Spending and Entitlements Voted to make Medicare part B premium subsidies an new entitlement. Voted against paying off the debt ($5.6 trillion at the time) within 30 years. Voted to give $18 billion to the IMF. Voted to raid Social Security instead of using surpluses to pay down the debt. Health Care Voted to allow states to impose health care mandates that are stricter than proposed new Federal mandates, but not weaker. Voted twice for Federal mental health parity mandates in health insurance. Voted against a allow consumers the option to purchase a plan outside the parity mandate. Education Voted to increase Federal funding for teacher testing Voted to increase spending for the Department of Education by $3.1 billion. Voted against requiring courts to consider the impact of IDEA awards on a local school district. Energy Voted to allow the President to designate certain sites as interim nuclear waste storage sites in the event that he determines that Yucca Mountain is not a suitable site for a permanent waste repository. Those sites are as follows: the nuclear waste site in Hanford, Washington; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; Barnwell County, South Carolina; and the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. Voted to make fuel price gouging a Federal crime. ]]></description>
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		<title>Morning Briefing for October 14, 2011</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/14/morning-briefing-for-october-14-2011/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/14/morning-briefing-for-october-14-2011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BrennanShawna20</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AmeriCorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stupid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[americorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[barack obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conservative]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[morning briefing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stupid]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/14/morning-briefing-for-october-14-2011/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ RedState Morning Briefing For October 14, 2011 Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge. Dear Wife of Mine, Thanks for putting up with me for eleven years. Oh, and thanks for two wonderful kids and all the wonderful things you cook with bacon drippings. Love, Erick 1. Are Republicans Just This Stupid?! Apparently So. 2. Environmentalists Battle Lawn Mowing 3. Sen. Richard Shelby on Why He’s Blocking the New Consumer Czar’s Confirmation 4. Behind The Pink Ribbon 5. Fraud in signature collection for Obama and Hillary in 2008 6. Returning an Obscure Congressman to Permanent Obscurity 7. The Horserace for October 13, 2011 &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;- 1. Are Republicans Just This Stupid?! Apparently So. Billie Tucker down in Florida makes an excellent point worth reiterating. The GOP is set, yet again, to have a debate on MSNBC. Seriously. Dare I refresh your memories on the last one? For two hours we were stuck with Brian Williams and John Harris of the Politico asking questions no one cared about in picking the Republican nominee. It was a dreadful debate that was capped off with Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ed Schultz, and the rest of the crew at MSNBC commenting on the debate. Why does the GOP do this to itself? Seriously? These people are not your friends. The people who watch that network are not the great unwashed willing to be persuaded. MSNBC is actively opposed to the GOP. At the end of the last debate millions of Republicans suddenly cried out in terror and suddenly switched the channel upon seeing the MSNBC panel show up. Those who stuck around saw a network biting the hands of the candidates who had just given that channel more traffic in one night than it probably had ever gotten. The GOP should stop being stupid and just tell MSNBC no way. Why waste the candidates’ time or ours — particularly since every bit of demographic data on that network shows the typical MSNBC watcher would rather vote for Charles Manson than any of the Republicans. Please click here for the rest of the post. 2. Environmentalists Battle Lawn Mowing Environmentalists are up in arms and going to court to try to prevent the mowing of grass taking place around the future site of the Keystone XL Pipeline, an oil pipeline connecting Alberta, Canada with Gulf Coast refineries. The Center for Biological Diversity, Western Nebraska Resources Council and Friends of the Earth have filed a lawsuit making the charge that the mowing of grass along the proposed route is really the beginning of construction. Please click here for the rest of the post. 3. Sen. Richard Shelby on Why He’s Blocking the New Consumer Czar’s Confirmation Richard Cordray, President Obama’s pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, won approval from the Senate Banking Committee last week on a party-line vote. His confirmation to run the new agency faces fierce opposition from Republicans, who have vowed to block Senate approval until reforms are made to the agency. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is leading those calls for reform. As the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, Shelby has maintained a hard line with Obama and Democrats on Cordray’s confirmation. Please click here for the rest of the post. 4. Behind The Pink Ribbon Every year thousands of women train and prepare to Race for the Cure organized by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest breast cancer nonprofit. During October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, almost every product on the shelves, from batteries to blenders, turns pink and contributes a portion of their sales to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. One needs not see the name to know who is behind the pink ribbon. Most people, however, do not know what is beyond the ribbon and the name for which it stands. $731,303. That is the amount donated to Planned Parenthood by Susan G. Komen for the Cure in 2009 alone. The relationship between Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen has been documented and objected to for so long that Komen actually has an explanation letter on their website. Please click here for the rest of the post. 5. Fraud in signature collection for Obama and Hillary in 2008 Getting a candidate on the ballot in Indiana is not easy. I know, from first hand experience, that many campaigns struggle to do it. But it now appears that in 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took a short-cut. They just cheated. It turns out that someone appears to have forged the signature of former Democratic Governor Joe Kernan on the petition to get Barack Obama on the ballot. Please click here for the rest of the post. 6. Returning an Obscure Congressman to Permanent Obscurity He was elected in 2000, and is serving in his 6th term in Congress as a Republican. He is pathetic on education issues and school choice reforms in particular. He voted in favor of No Child Left Behind, and earlier this year, was one of only 4 Republicans to oppose reinstating opportunity scholarships for poor children in D.C. He is a restrictor of free speech. He supported McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform,” along with 527 reform a few years later. He even opposed a bipartisan bill to ensure that campaign finance laws would not apply to bloggers. He is a defender of seemingly every liberal spending program, including: the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Amtrak, Headstart, Americorps, the National School Lunch Program, the Legal Services Corporation, etc. He is serial reauthorizer of farm subsidies, highway subsidies, and energy subsidies. He is profoundly unserious about cutting spending. He voted to earmark funds for Kentucky’s tourism industry, the DC metro system, a National Mule and Packers Museum, researching the genetic makeup of grapes, the Bronx Council of Arts, etc. He consistently votes against the conservative budgets offered by the Republican Study Committee (with one exception, which must have been a mistake). He opposed comprehensive reforms to the budget and spending process designed to limit government rather than expand it, probably because they were opposed vigorously by the appropriators. Please click here for the rest of the post. 7. The Horserace for October 13, 2011 It was the one question in the Bloomberg-Washington Post debate that gave away the game. A source close to, but not in, the Bachmann campaign told me it was that question when he realized the game was over for Michele Bachmann. It was that one question that, according to a source close to the Perry camp and a source close to the Cain camp, raised a red flag for the Romney campaign and shows just how worried the Romney camp is about the race consolidating. It was that one question that also shows why the Romney campaign is, behind the scenes, furiously pushing states to move up their caucuses and primaries. That one question spoke louder to more people than all the other questions asked Tuesday night. And in that question lies Michele Bachmann’s ultimate defeat and Mitt Romney’s Achilles heel. Yes, one question did all that. Find out what that question was in this week’s horserace. Please click here for the rest of the post. ]]></description>
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		<title>Returning an Obscure Congressman to Permanent Obscurity</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/13/returning-an-obscure-congressman-to-permanent-obscurity/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/13/returning-an-obscure-congressman-to-permanent-obscurity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ebliversidge</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AmeriCorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[bush]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[sarbanes-oxley]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[ He was elected in 2000, and is serving in his 6th term in Congress. He is pathetic on education issues and school choice reforms in particular. He voted in favor of No Child Left Behind, and earlier this year, was one of only 4 Republicans to oppose reinstating opportunity scholarships for poor children in D.C. He is a restrictor of free speech. He supported McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform,” along with 527 reform a few years later. He even opposed a bipartisan bill to ensure that campaign finance laws would not apply to bloggers. He is a defender of seemingly every liberal spending program, including: the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Amtrak, Headstart, Americorps, the National School Lunch Program, the Legal Services Corporation, etc. He is serial reauthorizer of farm subsidies, highway subsidies, and energy subsidies. He is profoundly unserious about cutting spending. He voted to earmark funds for Kentucky’s tourism industry, the DC metro system, a National Mule and Packers Museum, researching the genetic makeup of grapes, the Bronx Council of Arts, etc. He consistently votes against the conservative budgets offered by the Republican Study Committee (with one exception, which must have been a mistake). He opposed comprehensive reforms to the budget and spending process designed to limit government rather than expand it, probably because they were opposed vigorously by the appropriators. He voted for the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the expansion of SCHIP, and voted to block the Bush Administration from controlling Medicaid spending. And in this age where every Republican tries to outdo each other on repeal of Obamacare, he voted to expand one of its grant programs earlier this year. He is a regulator. He voted for Sarbanes Oxley and led the effort for higher CAFÉ standards on cars and trucks. He voted to over regulate credit card companies so that they increase costs on consumers. And before it was fashionable to Drill Baby Drill, he opposed lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. He was one of only three Republicans who voted for all of “Six in 06” priority bills of the new Democrat Majority in 2007 (increasing the minimum wage, adding price controls in Medicare, Democrat PAYGO, etc.). And of course, he voted to massively increase the nation’s debt limit by a trillion dollars this past summer with virtually nothing in exchange for it. He currently has a 52% on Heritage Action’s scorecard. He represents a district that is currently a +12 GOP district. George W. Bush and John McCain won the district convincingly, as did Tom Corbett in 2010. (To give you a sense for how conservative that is, Jeff Flake’s district is +15 GOP, and Mike Pence’s district is +10 GOP.) Meet Todd Platts. He represents Pennsylvania’s 19th district, and he needs to be primaried. ]]></description>
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		<title>Regaining Control When Your Congressman is Out of Control</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/04/regaining-control-when-your-congressman-is-out-of-control/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/04/regaining-control-when-your-congressman-is-out-of-control/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:03:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Onoshobishobi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AmeriCorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cash For Clunkers]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/10/04/regaining-control-when-your-congressman-is-out-of-control/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Editor&#8217;s Note: Starting last week and each week from here on, I&#8217;ve decided to focus on a Republican in the House or Senate the Tea Party should consider primarying. I think we are too distracted by Presidential politics and cannot afford to keep on keeping on in the House and Senate. Last week I started with Martha Roby . This week, another one. Each week, based on finding pitiful scores in the Heritage Action for America rankings and considering the districts at stake, I&#8217;ll highlight a new one. This should be fun. &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211; He was elected in 2002. He is serving his fifth term in Congress. In 2003, his first year in Congress, he voted for a massive omnibus spending bill and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. In 2004, he voted for an energy bill bloated with subsidies (ethanol, clean coal, loan guarantees, etc.), and he voted against long-needed conservative reforms to the federal budget process, but ones opposed by the appropriators. In 2005, he voted for a highway bill loaded with earmarks and billions more than the Highway Trust Fund had collected in gas taxes. He voted to keep funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and to postpone savings from realigning defense bases. He voted against at least seven across-the-board amendments to cut just 1% from various of the annual spending bills. He voted to increase funding for Big Bird and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And he voted to keep Fannie and Freddie’s line to the U.S. Treasury wide open. In 2006, he never seems to have found an earmark he didn’t like, including: the Leonard Wood Research Institute, the Bronx Council for the Arts, the Kentucky tourism industry, and a city-owned pool in California. Oh, and he voted for campaign finance restrictions. When Democrats took control, his votes got worse. In 2007, he voted to increase the minimum wage and for card check. He voted to maintain ten of the most underperforming Amtrak routes. He again voted to keep the flood gates of pork open: lobster and shellfish research, local parking lots, county courthouses, economic development conveniently located near the home of former Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, and&#8230;the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service (the infamous earmark authored by Congressman Rangel that was used as seed money to solicit private donations in his honor). He voted to expand and reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and to override one of President Bush’s few vetoes to control spending. In 2008, he voted to block new regulations from the Bush Administration designed to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. He voted to expand federal student loan subsidies and against capping farm subsidies. He again voted to reauthorize Amtrak and to bailout the federal highway program. He voted for a $300 billion bailout of Fannie and Freddie and to suspend a warning trigger designed to keep Medicare from going broke. In 2009, he voted to reauthorize Bill Clinton’s Americorps program and to provide cash for clunkers. He voted to subsidize research on gas turbines and extend unemployment benefits (unpaid for, of course) and small business subsidies. He voted for new solar technology programs. In 2010, he voted to bribe senior citizens with $250 payments and to again preserve Amtrak. He voted to bail out state governments and provide subsidies to the manufacturing sector. This year, in this new era of fiscal responsibility, he has voted to block funding for federal employee pay increases and against returning spending to the already high level when Democrats took control. He voted against the RSC’s balanced budget. He has again voted to preserve funding for the NEA and energy efficiency programs. And of course, he voted for both versions of the final trillion dollar debt limit increase and the recent continuing resolution that violated the Republicans’ own budget. His current Heritage Action for America score is 58%. His district voted for George W. Bush and John McCain for president, and Tom Corbett recently for governor. It is +6 GOP district. It is not a marginal Northeast district. Think he might be just a reasonable moderate but a good and honorable elected official? He was accused of using taxpayer resources for campaign purposes by a member of his own staff, fired the staffer, and then got huffy in public when confronted by the media . His name is Tim Murphy, and he needs to be primaried. PS: This is an ongoing series at Redstate about pathetic Congressmen who need to be primaried. Solid diary entries that provide updated local reporting of these potential primary fights will likely find themselves promoted to the front page. ]]></description>
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		<title>RSC Spending Plan a Good Start, More is Needed</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/01/21/rsc-spending-plan-a-good-start-more-is-needed/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/01/21/rsc-spending-plan-a-good-start-more-is-needed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:18:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>IDontThinkSo0001</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/2011/01/21/rsc-spending-plan-a-good-start-more-is-needed/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ From the diaries by Erick The Republican Study Committee, the conservative House caucus, released a bill this week to cut $2.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.  This plan, which is summarized in a two page documen t, includes cuts in specific Obama programs, as well as the elimination of old programs and subsidies. The main objective of the RSC plan is to pass a CR that caps non defense/security discretionary spending for the remainder of FY 2011 to 2008 spending levels.  Then, beginning in 2012, this bill would slash discretionary spending to 2006 levels and would eliminate automatic increases for inflation.  The Spending Reduction Act of 2011 also calls for cuts in federal employees and their salaries, the privatization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the sequestering of the remaining stimulus funds.  Finally, the plan calls for the elimination of 56 programs, mandates, or subsidies that will save an additional $330 billion over 10 years. While the RSC plan is a bold and prudent beginning, there is much more work to be done.  It&#8217;s important to note that recent budget deficits have skyrocketed to a gargantuan $1.3-$1.4 trillion.  This budget plan would only shave off an average of $100 billion per year.  Here are some other programs that should be eliminated as we aim for a balanced budget.  Many of these cuts will probably be included in the new Welfare Reform Act that the RSC plans to unveil in the coming days. These figures represent annual budget cuts from eliminating or restructuring programs that were identified and compiled by Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation.  I highlighted the suggestions that were already adopted by the RSC in their Spending Reduction Act. Spending Cuts for FY 2012 (in millions of dollars) Agriculture $15,000 Replace farm subsidies with Farmer Savings Accounts and improved crop insurance. $2,033 Eliminate the Foreign Agriculture Service. $1,500 Merge all four agriculture outreach and research agencies and cut their budget in half. $1,000 Fund the Food Safety and Inspection Service with user fees. Commerce $500 Eliminate business subsidies from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Community Development $6,000 Eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program . $598 Eliminate the Rural Utilities Service. $523 Eliminate the Economic Development Administration . $480 Eliminate NeighborWorks America (formerly the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation). $200 Consolidate the Rural Housing and Development Programs and convert them into block grants. $73 Eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission . $48 Eliminate the Denali Commission. $31 Eliminate the Minority Development Business Agency. $8 Eliminate the Delta Regional Authority. Education $8,000 Return Pell Grants to their 2009 funding level of $24 billion, which is still double the 2007 level. $2,000 Trim Head Start by $2 billion and convert it into vouchers. $2,000 Scale back the Education Department bureaucracy. $1,500 Eliminate dozens of small and duplicative education grants . $298 Eliminate state grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities. Energy and the Environment $6,500 Reduce energy subsidies for commercialization and some research activities . $600 Block grant and devolve Environmental Protection Agency grant programs. $200 Restructure the Power Marketing Administrations to charge market-based rates. $63 Eliminate the Science to Achieve Results Program. Government Reform $44,000 Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors. Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors. $20,000 Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months. $12,500 Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties . $10,000 Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending). $3,000 Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed . $1,000 Suspend acquisition of federal office space . $600 Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles) . $300 Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion . $215 Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund . $100 Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies. $70 Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights. Health Care $6,200 Reform Medigap. $5,000 Repeal Obamacare (larger savings in later years) . $3,700 Require Medicare home health co-payments. $673 Eliminate the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant. $414 Eliminate Health Professions grants. $327 Eliminate Title X Family Planning . $150 Eliminate the National Health Service Corps. $98 Repeal Rural Health Outreach and Flexibility grants. Homeland Security $2,700 Eliminate most homeland security grants to states and allow states to finance their own programs. Income Security $500 Better enforce eligibility requirements for food stamps. Interior $1,500 Open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing. (The savings are leasing revenues, which are classified as negative spending in the federal budget.) $200 Suspend federal land purchases. International $2,636 Eliminate the Development Assistance Program . $625 Eliminate the State Department’s education and cultural exchange programs. $321 Eliminate the International Trade Administration’s trade promotion activities or charge the beneficiaries. $183 Eliminate the Democracy Fund. $68 Eliminate the International Trade Commission and transfer oversight of intellectual property rights to the Treasury Department. $56 Eliminate the Trade and Development Agency . $29 Eliminate the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. $19 Eliminate the East–West Center. $17 Eliminate the United States Institute of Peace. $2 Eliminate the Japan–United States Friendship Commission. Justice $7,334 Eliminate all Justice Department grants except those from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice, thereby empowering states to finance their own justice programs. $398 Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation . $32 Eliminate the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service. $30 Eliminate the duplicative Office of National Drug Control Policy. $26 Reduce funding for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by 20 percent because of its policy against race-neutral enforcement of the law. $4 Eliminate the State Justice Institute. Labor $4,300 Eliminate failed federal job training programs. $2,000 Eliminate the ineffective Job Corps. $576 Eliminate the Senior Community Service Employment Program. National Science Foundation $1,700 Reduce National Science Foundation funding to 2008 levels. $86 Eliminate National Science Foundation spending on elementary and secondary education. Transportation $45,000 Devolve the federal highway program and most transit spending to the states. ( partially addressed in RSC plan ) $1,900 Privatize Amtrak. $1,009 Eliminate grants to large and medium-sized hub airports . $554 Eliminate the Maritime Administration. $125 Eliminate the Essential Air Service Program . Treasury $26,646 Eliminate the additional child refundable credit. $103 Eliminate the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund . Veterans $2,500 Cap increases in Department of Veterans Affairs health care spending. $1,930 Reduce Veterans’ Disability Compensation to account for Social Security Disability Insurance payments. Cross-Agency and Other $60,000 Repeal unspent stimulus spending . $8,000 Switch to using the “Superlative CPI” in funding calculations. $6,000 Repeal the Davis–Bacon Act. $2,250 Eliminate Federal Communications Commission funding for school Internet service. $2,000 Ban project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects . $1,000 Eliminate the Small Business Administration, which unnecessarily intervenes in free markets. $736 Eliminate the National Community Service programs, such as AmeriCorps . $253 Eliminate the Institute of Museum Services and Library Services. $140 Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities. $133 Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. $61 Eliminate Army Corps of Engineers funding for beach replenishment projects . $10 Eliminate the Commission of Fine Arts . $8 Eliminate the National Capital Planning Commission. $5 Eliminate the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Total $343,207 million As you can see, the Republican plan has touched upon many of the suggested cuts by the Heritage Foundation.  There are also some cuts that are mentioned in the RSC plan that generally cover some other programs that are listed above.  However, there are still billions of dollars in cuts that need to be made, especially in the realm of welfare and &#8220;tax credit&#8221; handouts to those who don&#8217;t pay taxes.  There are also several agencies in the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, and Labor that need to be ameliorated or eliminated.  We look forward to RSC Chairman Jim Jordan&#8217;s welfare reform bill which promises to be a second act of this budget proposal. Unfortunately, even if we take the scythe to every gratuitous component of discretionary spending, we will never balance the budget unless we enact entitlement reform.  Discretionary spending will only account for $1.3-$1.4 trillion of the estimated $3.7 trillion in total FY 2011 outlays.  In other words, the budget deficit is roughly as large as the sum total of all discretionary spending including defense, homeland security, and veterans expenses.  We simply must deal with the $2.3 trillion in annual entitlement spending if we are going to achieve any budget solvency. Although many Republicans blithely shy away from entitlement reform, now is the time to push for privatization of Social Security and Medicare and the complete overhaul of Medicaid.  We need to stop the left and the media from framing it as &#8220;cuts in SS and Medicare&#8221;.  That disingenuous portrayal of entitlement reform  implies that seniors will be denied a percentage of their benefits even while contributing the same amount.  Instead, we need to advocate the empowerment of the individual through private ownership of their own destiny.  We must certainly honor all of the obligations to those who paid into the system.  But there must be a way out of this government control of retirement for younger workers.  When an American worker keeps, controls, and invests 100% of his retirement money at his own discretion, it is not a cut in benefits.  It is a restoration of private property to its rightful owner. There is no better time to enact entitlement reform than now.  Here are the latest polling numbers from Rasmussen on all of the major policy issues: Surveys of 1,000 Likely Voters January 11-14, 2010 Issue Democrats Republicans Economy 39% 48% Health Care 38% 52% Education 38% 40% Iraq 37% 45% Immigration 37% 48% Social Security 36% 46% Afghanistan 36% 44% Government Ethics 35% 43% National Security 35% 50% Taxes 33% 52% I don&#8217;t recall a time when Republicans were leading Democrats on issues such as Social Security, Health Care, and Education.  If we are not willing to tackle entitlement spending (which cuts to the core of our constitutional belief in private ownership), then we will never balance the budget.  If we fail to do it now, we will never have the intransigence to implement such reforms in the future.  Godspeed, House conservatives! Cross-posted to Red Meat Conservative ]]></description>
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		<title>Opposing Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2010/12/02/opposing-obama/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2010/12/02/opposing-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:09:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Markisacopyrightthief</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AmeriCorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/2010/12/02/opposing-obama/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Gird up for battle. The next two years will be a rocky road. Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton. He's far more leftist. He's at least equally as ruthless (which is really saying something, because both Clintons are among the most ruthless American politicians of our lifetimes). His outlook is far more alien to middle America, in that he really does believe much of middle America is benighted -- clinging wrongly to God and guns, unable to think clearly under pressure, too stupid or ignorant or bourgeois to know what's in their own best interests. And he doesn't share Clinton's neediness for short-term, person-to-person, feel-the-brotherly-love positive reinforcement. His goal isn't personal "connection" with voters; it's long-term adulation or adoration, verging on worshipfulness -- an adulation that recognizes him as a world-transformational figure, a virtual gift to mankind. Clinton, for all his faults, actually did empathize with individuals. Obama doesn't empathize; he pities. And the object of pity is not an object to respect, so he doesn't really respect the citizens he serves; he merely wants to tell them how to live, for what he imagines is their own good. But it's a cold, supra-rational (but far from reasonable), hyper-judgmental conception of exactly what characterizes the "good" in the first place. Not to push the analogy too far, but at times he reminds me of "IT," the brain on the planet Camazotz in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time . One gets the impression Obama would be perfectly happy if all of us bounced our basketballs in unison -- in "mechanistic synchronicity," as the Wikipedia entry put it -- with his aim being "to enforce absolute conformity…, with the claimed benefit of eliminating war, unhappiness and inefficiency." Again, the analogy should not be pushed too far: This is not to suggest that Obama, like IT, is evil, but only that he seems in a rather bloodless way to want a society that marches to a uniform beat, dictated by supposed cognoscenti from above. Even if not evil, this vision is antithetical to freedom -- not to mention astonishingly creepy. Obama is perfectly willing to push executive power -- actually, executive fiat -- to the limit. The blizzard of regulations, or administrative rule-making divorced from congressional intent, that will come in the next two years will be staggering. So will the executive orders. The "privilege" claims against public disclosure will be extravagant. He'll use the IRS, other administrative agencies, and perhaps the Justice Department, to harass political opponents. He'll keep trying to find ways to empower union bosses and trial lawyers, leftist "non-profits" and interest groups; and he'll use AmeriCorps and other federal outlets to help organize quasi-political efforts, too. And everything, absolutely everything, by hook and crook alike, will be aimed at creating a vote-generating machine -- (and this does mean generating votes , not necessarily real, live, eligible vot ers ) -- unprecedented in the annals of American politics. This is, after all, a man who looks with a fair amount of disdain, rather than pride, at American history. He sees our flaws, and imagines other flaws that didn't exist. He despises our ally Great Britain, and resents our ally Israel, and doesn't really mind leftist agitators such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. He believes corporations are inherently evil, unless they are "partnered" with (or dominated by and directly answerable to) government. He believes not in a free market but a managed market, not in entrepreneurship but in incentivized "investment," both private and especially public, for the supposed common good. Obama is, to use the vernacular, an entirely different breed of cat. He does not think in conventional American political terms, or conventional societal terms. This is problematic: While some escapes from convention are devoutly to be desired, his model of action does not even nod to convention at all, and thus not to established and valuable societal norms. We want to celebrate American civilization; Obama wants to redefine it. Ronald Reagan famously advised Americans to "trust but verify"; when it comes to Obama, conservatives should verify without trusting. We can even give him credit for what by his own lights are noble intentions, while knowing that there really is neither nobility nor admirability in them. To deal with Obama, then, conservatives will need to keep our cool and keep our wits. But in keeping our cool, we must not be cold-blooded. We act not in hatred for what Obama stands for, but through love for country, Constitution, and civil society. The better angels of our nature, guided by a tough-minded realism, must prevail. ]]></description>
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		<title>Good Rheedance</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2010/10/18/good-rheedance/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2010/10/18/good-rheedance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:09:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Markisacopyrightthief</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/2010/10/18/good-rheedance/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Although the incumbent mayor of Washington, D.C., was soundly defeated in the Democratic Party primary a few weeks ago, the larger story, judging from press commentary both locally and nationally, was that the voters of the nation's capital had rejected public school reform. No one could point to any truly substantial difference between the politics of Adrian Fenty, or his policies, and those of his rather popular predecessor, Anthony Williams, nor for that matter those of his main challenger, the chairman of the city council, a veteran of Washington politics named Vincent Gray (who has indicated he may give Williams a job). However, the manner in which the incumbent was advancing his school-reform agenda became an issue during the last weeks of the campaign, particularly when the young schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, openly joined his campaign, possibly in violation of the Hatch Act despite her own insistence that she was acting in a private capacity. When he won the mayoralty four years ago, Adrian Fenty gave school reform pride of place on his agenda. He quite deliberately declared himself a student of New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and said he too would take control of the city public schools away from a politicized school board. Pointing to the kind of administrative reforms that the New York Chancellor, a Bloomberg protégé and former Clinton Justice department lawyer, Joel Klein, favored, Mayor Fenty appointed Michelle Rhee, a product of the Teach-for-America movement, to the top job and told her that whatever she wanted to do, he would cover for her. In this, Fenty surely was transparent, making it quite clear that he not only agreed with Miss Rhee's ideas and policies, but was, in effect, ordering them. Washington thus became the latest city in the country to serve as a "showcase" for public school reform, the latest, that is, in at least a hundred years of public school reform. It is typical of today's reformers that they seem blithely unaware that public schools, like our nation, evolve, and indeed evolve in ways that parallel the larger society's. The most significant of these parallel trends is the surrender of local responsibility to government authorities, and the pretense of the latter to rely on "experts," a.k.a. technocrats, people parachuted into communities where they have no ties but whose problems they can solve. It is not likely that in rejecting Miss Rhee, Washington's voters voted against the federalization of education, because Washington is a federal plantation and no politician here would dare oppose the movement for statehood which, given the city's socio-economic condition, would serve only to render more blatant this fact. However, they do seem to have rejected the form, if not the substance, of rule-by-experts into which the school reform movement morphed in the past 20 years or so. To be sure, school reform always has been led by know-it-alls, of whom the archetypes were John Dewey and several generations of specialists in education at Columbia University's Teachers College. Specialization has its uses, of course, but even in a discipline where knowledge can be defined with great precision, like nuclear physics, it is unwise to apply notions to real life without knowing something about just that, real life. School reform has focused historically, one might almost say cyclically, on such scarecrows as "entrenched interests" and "out of date pedagogy." In plain English, reformers have tended to think they understand the problems and challenges of educating undisciplined if lovable savages (children and teenagers) better than the people whose job it is to do it, and furthermore that they have a system for teaching math and reading that will work better than any other. In both regards they are very much in the venerable American tradition of snake-oil salesmen, though the Ph.D.'s they often hold are authentic, compared to the "doctor" titles conferred upon themselves by your old-fashioned mountebanks. In terms of truth-in-packaging, the latter were probably more honest. Not a Ph.D. holder herself, Miss Rhee (Cornell B.A., Harvard-Kennedy School M.A.) entered the education field through Teach for America, the successful 1990 brainchild of Wendy Kopp (a Princeton graduate), whose core idea was that it could recruit young graduates to serve in public schools in difficult, usually urban, neighborhoods, give them the requisite training to pass state certification requirements, and motivate them to teach for at least two years, thereby improving the teaching corps, since they were graduates of elite schools. Like so many other universal-improvement ideas, Teach for America rapidly turned itself into a money-making organization. Its most ambitious members tended, as did Miss Rhee, toward administrative positions. After teaching for a year or two in Baltimore, she created a TFA look-alike which obtained public funds to train "excellent" teachers, among other things. The 1990s go-teach-the-underprivileged movements, which several cities, including New York and Washington, soon imitated with their own "Teaching Fellows" programs, was that if you demonstrated that there were lots of bright kids (as well as dim middle-aged folks looking for a career-change) willing to sacrifice themselves for the poor, the money would follow. This is not to denigrate the "send forth the best ye breed" idealism that undoubtedly played its part, or the thoughts to another notch on an attractive résumé that are, after all, altogether reasonable, but it is to underscore that there in fact was money in it. The teaching missionaries typically were funded by, and in fact became de facto recruits of, AmeriCorps, the federal government's "domestic peace corps." The money was there because since the entry of the government into education during Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, there has been a constant search for programs on which to spend the taxpayers' money. (The Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act, renewed by the Obama administration with an added incentive called "Race to the Top" which encourages all-out cramming to produce high test scores, are direct descendants of the 1960s Elementary and High School Education Acts.) The inescapable evidence, however, is that the more federal money has been spent on public education, the more student achievement has plummeted. The question then has to come down to this: does money matter? During her brief tenure as D.C. Schools Chancellor, Miss Rhee claimed as her top achievements that she was diminishing the administrative staff at the schools headquarters; that she was encouraging teachers to brighten their classrooms; and that she was providing programs of professional development for weak teachers. She also took credit for improved test scores, which is the last defense of the educrat. No one who has looked seriously at the way achievements in math and reading are assessed under the No Child Left Behind rules believes you can judge a district on the basis of scarcely a couple of years. The D.C. schools implemented reforms aimed at improving scores, anyway, in 2006, so at most Miss Rhee should claim credit for staying with them, notwithstanding her stated plan to break with business as usual. But the substantive issue is whether it serves a useful educational purpose to turn schools into fill-the-bubble-test cram boxes instead of teaching content-rich courses. No one can possibly complain about this; any schools superintendent would include such items as a matter of course in his program. It does not cost anything, however, or very little. Teachers traditionally decorate their classrooms with their children's work, books are not that expensive, and professional development properly understood means that experienced teachers give pointers to younger ones. The real problem with money, especially money that the local community does not see because it is cloaked in the mysteries of Department of Education allocations or Gates Foundation grants, is that it turns the schools over to the professional educators, all too often individuals like Miss Rhee with almost no classroom experience. These professional educators include the union leaders whose specialty is to negotiate contracts based on the principle that every moment a union member spends on the job (calibrated, literally, to the minute) is remunerated, including when he, or she, gives advice to a fellow-teacher. Professional development, which used to be known as collegiality, thus also became a racket. Miss Rhee, quite laudably, got into trouble with the Washington teachers' union. But the quarrel was not over the kind of issue that principled insurgent-unionists would have joined her in -- replacing venal leadership, for instance (that had already been done) -- but over the division of the spoils, under the cover of non-issues like merit pay and tenure. These items, often mentioned by conservative critics, because they sound like breaths of fresh and efficient air in sclerotic boondoggling systems, completely miss the point. Miss Rhee fell into this kind of argument because she, like the union leaders and community activists who rallied the city for Gray by denouncing her, does not want to see the point any more than they do. A free society gets the public schools it deserves, and if we, as Americans, cannot create and sustain institutions for public instruction as good at reaching their stated goals -- with all obvious caveats and in all due perspective, of course -- as the Army, for example, does, then maybe it really is time to start over from scratch. At the present, the children of many of our school districts scarcely would lose anything by being given a six-month vacation while the adults ponder just what schools are for. It is here, precisely, that Miss Rhee unfortunately epitomizes the contemporary reform movement of which she is both a product and an emblem. She was probably right to fire teachers and principals whom she did not like -- she said they were incompetent, or "under-performing" in the reformist jargon, but the simple truth of the matter is that if she is in charge, by virtue of commonly acknowledged rules, and she does not want someone, she should do exactly what she did. She was the boss. Leave aside the sexual predators who can be found in any institution, and leave aside, too, that Miss Rhee's then-fiancé, now husband, was investigated for exactly that sort of thing, as well as misappropriation of AmeriCorps money when, precisely, he led a reform-inspired public-charter type school (publicly funded schools that stay outside ordinary district supervision). You should leave it aside because, after all, what's past is past. True, there is the disturbing detail that Miss Rhee, close to Education Secretary Arne Duncan and, reportedly, President Obama, intervened, by means of her prestige (then at its peak) in the matter. And yet, even if this sounds a bit like crossing lines that public officials simply should not cross, could it not be said that she was only standing by her man? No, the core of the matter is not this or that lapse of judgment or a clumsy manner with people. She is said to be abrasive, texts even while in the midst of formal meetings. Well, you can put that down to an American get-to-the-point spirit. However, Miss Rhee never bothered to explain just what all this reform and professional development and search for "excellent" teachers is supposed to mean . She did not explain it to the parents. Or to anybody. And the reason she did not is that, no more than the unions' labor-fakers or the paper-pushers in the Education Dept. or the tax-dollar entrepreneurs of TFA, she does not know or does not care. Should our kids be studying Latin and classical music? Should sports be compulsory; should ROTC? Should Shakespeare be on the finals and should a ninth grader be able to recite the Second Inaugural? Should every kid learn a trade as well as a foreign language? The distinct impression D.C. voters got was that Miss Rhee does not think about these things. Like her beloved, who is now mayor of Sacramento, and, frankly, like so much of the political-administrative leadership of our country today, these are unimportant questions because they do not matter to them. In the world they inhabit they do, of course matter. Michelle Rhee is surely concerned that her children (her first marriage was to a TFA executive, and it somehow seems not a matter of irrelevant gossip to report this) learn calculus and foreign languages and violin. (It seems not a matter of irrelevant gossip, either, that the President of the United States had the candor to allow as how the D.C. schools were not good enough for his daughters, and he might have noted while he was at it that close to a majority of unionized teachers in big-city districts do not send their kids to public schools, either.) Much was made during the Fenty-Gray contest of the fact that Michelle Rhee offended people by her brusque manner, that she was not "in touch." One's first reaction is to think: So what? But on reflection, this can be seen to go to the heart of what's wrong with our public schools. They are run by people who are, in some essential way, antinomians. They use power arbitrarily, for example to block investigations that are too close to home. The inspector general of AmeriCorps lost his job when he got too troublesome in the matter of Miss Rhee's betrothed. Now he may have been a lousy inspector general, incompetent. But ordinary people see this sort of thing happening too often, and they notice that the individuals who do it simply do it again when the chance presents itself. The schools reflect our society, and being vitally, warmly, constantly interested in the immediate and crucial bond between our communities and our schools is part of the job of running them and working in them. This bond has been sundered by the massive infusion of federal money in our school systems. That is what is really wrong with them. It scarcely matters that teenage boys hate to read -- that would not be news. They should spend more time in shop then, or under the supervision of their coaches and their ROTC colonels. They will come to reading in their own good time. No superman is going to change that, and it is symptomatic of the narcissistic, rules-are-for-others types that they can think of nothing better than blaming teachers for a system that has lost its moorings and its compasses, including most pertinently its moral compasses. The charge that Miss Rhee was not listening to the community she was appointed to serve turns out to be not the sort of trivial matter that distracts the voters in a bitter campaign. It turns out to be very close to what is, in fact, wrong with the schools -- which Vincent Gray, no more than the people he chose to run against, gives little indication, so far, of understanding. For this very reason, the "defeat" of the Washington Schools Chancellor may at least serve a useful purpose, namely as a reminder of the core requirements for real reform of our schools. ]]></description>
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		<title>AmeriCorps IG Shredded White House Docs per Spokeswoman</title>
		<link>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2009/11/12/americorps-ig-shredded-white-house-docs-per-spokeswoman/</link>
		<comments>http://www.obamashitlist.com/2009/11/12/americorps-ig-shredded-white-house-docs-per-spokeswoman/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:13:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>markboabaca</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[AmeriCorps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gerald Walpin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Transparency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[americorps inspector general]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[document shredding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kenneth Bach]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ranit Schmelzer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.obamashitlist.com/?p=215</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From CNSNews.com: The acting inspector general of AmeriCorps said he shredded White House documents at the request of an agency press spokeswoman that pertained to the controversial firing of the previous inspector general, who was ousted after investigating a political ally of President Obama. The e-mail message from agency spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer seemed urgent, as [...]]]></description>
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