Is the Hard Left at War With the American Idea?

By David Limbaugh

Friday, May 03, 2013

 

I think the current controversy over immigration reform points to a larger issue in America today, which is that Americans are essentially split on the very idea of what America is and should be.

 

It used to be that Americans mostly agreed that in order to attain citizenship, immigrants had to not only come to this country legally but also demonstrate, after training and study in the American system, that they believed in the unique United States Constitution and embraced what it means to be an American. Though that still occurs in the naturalization process, we seem to have abandoned it altogether in connection with the immigration debate.

 

What sense does it make that we seek to instill a love of America in those earnestly seeking to acquire legal citizenship through the proper procedures but ignore it altogether in our rush to legalize 11 million illegals?

 

One major difficulty is that the hard but extremely influential American left, by and large, doesn't seem to have any special affinity for the American idea, the gloriousness of the U.S. Constitution or even the notion of national identity at all, which they associate with intolerance, cultural chauvinism and anti-globalism.

 

Indeed, hard-leftists don't just disagree with many of America's founding ideals; they believe that it's somehow backward even to have such ideals, because to them, it reflects a prejudice against other systems, cultures and values.

 

So, you see, this is not really a debate over whether the American system and the ideas and values undergirding it produced the greatest nation in world history and thus should be preserved. It is a core disagreement about whether it's even proper and desirable to endorse a unique set of founding ideals as being superior to any other.

 

But I ask you: What nation has ever survived, much less thrived, when it lost its national identity?

 

But just as the left blocks proposals to reduce federal spending and entitlement reform while claiming to support them, it is doing everything it can to block border enforcement. Barbarians aren't at the gate; they are inside and blocking the erection of the gate.

 

Why would any American citizen want to encourage immigrants to come to this country and not embrace America? Yet how can we doubt that leftists want that result when they flood our universities with like-minded colleagues who are indoctrinating their students against embracing it and when President Obama identifies with La Raza, the militant Mexican nationalist group?

 

It's not the right wing that is constantly berating the United States before the United Nations. It is not originalist Supreme Court justices refusing to recommend the U.S. Constitution as a model for Egypt. It is not right-wing university professors (to the extent that this species is not wholly extinct) loading up their curricula with courses denouncing everything imaginable about the United States. It is not a conservative presidential candidate who vowed to fundamentally change America and then proceeded to do so once in office.

 

But what does being American or supporting American ideals even mean anymore? Let's take one example. Can we all agree that promoting a strong work ethic was something almost all Americans once agreed on? Weren't self-reliance and rugged individualism -- a can-do attitude -- admired traits that were understood not to conflict with Christian charity and compassion?

 

Yet today our leftist ruling class is making it noble to be on government assistance and ignoble to work and produce. Call that hyperbole if you choose, but I hear a president who is constantly berating capitalism, the free market, business and those who have been successful. He has incentivized states to expand their food stamp rolls, reversed welfare reforms, extended unemployment benefits to the point that it exacerbates unemployment, and fiercely opposed entitlement reform. How can this agenda possibly be good for America, much less in the long-term interests of those targeted for government dependency?

 

Are reports that the Obama administration doesn't require applicants to declare their immigration status to qualify for food stamps true? Is the Department of Agriculture really actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens? I don't know, but these types of outrages are certainly believable with this administration. What self-respecting nation engages in such insanity?

 

Call me harsh for suggesting the hard left, which controls much of our government, is at war with the American idea. But today the left paints those who support traditional values as bigoted, those who support traditional marriage as homophobes and bigots, and those who support welfare reform, school choice, voter identification laws and securing the borders, as well as those who oppose punitive taxes on the "wealthy," as racists.

 

No, we just aspire to colorblindness and promote equal opportunity and equal protection of the laws for all Americans. We have pride in America and its founding ideals and unapologetically assert that they are responsible for the greatest experiment in constitutional governance in history and therefore want to preserve them.

 

Liberals are always paying lip service to consensus building. How about we start by agreeing to embrace America? Or is national pride truly a dirty term?

Would Shutting Gitmo Satisfy Them, or Whet Their Appetites?

By Cliff May

Thursday, May 02, 2013

 

The detention camp at Guantanamo Bay was established in 2002 to hold the most dangerous of those captured in what the Bush administration called the Global War on Terrorism. Controversy over the facility has simmered ever since. In recent days, it has begun to boil. One hundred detainees, at last count, are staging a hunger strike.

 

Their lawyers, along with self-proclaimed human-rights activists, are insisting that the U.S. respond by closing Guantanamo, something President Obama has long been eager to do. The questions seldom asked: How would that be accomplished? And what would it solve?

 

Closing Gitmo would, fairly obviously, require moving out those now detained. But where would they go? We could transfer them to prisons in the U.S., but is there anyone who seriously believes that once on American soil these detainees would become hearty eaters and happy campers?

 

More likely, having learned that refusing food brings concessions, they would use that strategy again and again. U.S. prison officials would respond as have U.S. military authorities at Gitmo: letting the prisoners protest by not eating (that’s their right), but not letting them die — instead, restraining them, if necessary, and administering the nutrition their bodies require. The not-so-nice term for that: force feeding.

 

In any case, the option of sending detainees from Gitmo to American prisons is moot for now because Congress, on a bipartisan basis, is adamantly opposed. Four years ago this month, the Senate voted 90 to 6 against spending the money necessary to close the facility in Guantanamo.

 

A second option: Let the detainees go. A little background may clarify why this, too, is not feasible. The Bush administration brought 779 prisoners to Guantanamo. By the time Obama became president there were 240 left — about two-thirds had been transferred to their home countries or to a third country willing to take responsibility for them. But in some cases, neither of those options was available because it is U.S. policy not to turn detainees over to regimes that might summarily execute or otherwise abuse them. (Remember the Uighur detainees who ended up in Bermuda because U.S. authorities would not send them to China?)

 

During Obama’s tenure in office, additional detainees have been shipped out. Of the 166 who remain, 46 are considered too dangerous to release or transfer. That leaves 86 detainees who have been “designated for transfer if security conditions can be met.” There has been confusion — and disingenuousness — about what that means. It does not imply that they are innocent. It does not even imply that U.S. authorities are convinced they no longer pose a threat. On the contrary, of those released from Gitmo to date, an estimated 27 percent have returned to terrorist activities.

 

Of the 86 “designated for transfer” about 50 come from Yemen. As the New York Times has reported, “Mr. Obama himself has indefinitely barred further repatriations [to Yemen]…because of Yemen’s active al Qaeda branch.” That branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, targets both Americans and the Yemeni government that we’re attempting to support. You’ll recall it was AQAP that gave us the Christmas 2009 “underwear” bomber.

 

Obama’s decision seems sensible to me but not to the Washington Post’s Max Fisher, who calls the situation “almost Kafkaesque in its cruel absurdity.” He asks if there isn’t something “distasteful and unsettling about imprisoning people not because they’ve done anything wrong but because they might in the future?” He does not appear to understand that he’s talking about members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and affiliated groups apprehended on foreign fields of battle — not goat herders who were on their merry way to a cousin’s wedding in Afghanistan when they got caught up in the malevolent maw of the U.S. military.

 

In times of war, presidents have the authority to kill the enemy. In the past, those captured rather than killed were considered lucky. Those doing the capturing rather than the killing were considered humane. It makes no sense — legally, morally, logically — to say that an enemy whom the president can kill with a drone or a SEAL team suddenly undergoes a metamorphosis — speaking of Kafka — transforming into an innocent-until-proven-guilty suspect in a criminal investigation if he is handcuffed rather than buried. Never in the history of armed conflict have prisoners been given such a privilege.

 

And should our troops come to understand that anyone they capture rather than kill is likely to be pointing a gun at them again before long, they will be incentivized to use lethal force with increased frequency. Would that be preferable from a human-rights perspective? From an intelligence perspective? From any perspective?

 

Something else you should know: Since taking office, Obama has not sent a single al-Qaeda or Taliban member captured in Afghanistan to Guantanamo. Instead, those captured rather than killed in that country have been detained at a facility that was recently given over to Afghan authority. How do you think the living conditions in Afghan prisons compare to those at Gitmo?

 

Final point: When Max Fisher referred to Kafka, he was doubtless thinking of The Trial, the story of a man arrested by a shadowy authority that conceals the nature of his crime. But Kafka also wrote The Hunger Artist, about a performer who sits in a cage for weeks on end without eating. Eventually, the public loses interest in his “art,” and he dies unnoticed and unmourned. I’m not suggesting that should influence U.S. policy. I am suggesting that Fisher read it.

America’s Most Feared Economist

By Ann Coulter

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

 

You can tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as "discredited." Ask Sen. Ted Cruz. But no one is called "discredited" by liberals more often than the inestimable economist John Lott, author of the groundbreaking book  More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.

 

Lott's economic analysis of the effect of concealed-carry laws on violent crime is the most thoroughly vetted study in the history of economics, perhaps in the history of the world.

 

Some  nut Dutch professor  produces dozens of gag studies purportedly finding that thinking about red meat makes people selfish and that litter leads to racism -- and no one bothers to see if he even administered questionnaires before drawing these grand conclusions about humanity.

 

But Lott's decades-long studies of concealed-carry laws have been probed, poked and re-examined dozens of times. (Most of all by Lott himself, who has continuously re-run the numbers controlling for thousands of factors.)

 

Tellingly, Lott immediately makes all his underlying data and computer analyses available to critics -- unlike, say, the critics. He has sent his data and work to 120 researchers around the world. By now, there have been 29 peer-reviewed studies of Lott's work on the effect of concealed-carry laws.

 

Eighteen confirm Lott's results, showing a statistically significant reduction in crime after concealed-carry laws are enacted. Ten show no harm, but no significant reduction in crime. Only one peer-reviewed study even purported to show any negative effect: a temporary increase in aggravated assaults. Then it turned out this was based on a flawed analysis by a liberal activist professor: John Donohue, whose name keeps popping up in all fake studies purporting to debunk Lott.

 

In 1997, a computer crash led to the loss of Lott's underlying data. Fortunately, he had previously sent this data to his critics -- professors Dan Black, Dan Nagin and Jens Ludwig. When Lott asked if they would mind returning it to him to restore his files, they refused. (One former critic, Carlisle Moody, conducted his own analysis of Lott's data and became a believer. He has since co-authored papers with Lott.)

 

Unable to produce a single peer-reviewed study to discredit Lott's conclusions, while dozens of studies keep confirming them, liberals have turned to their preferred method of simply sneering at Lott and neurotically attaching "discredited" to his name. No actual discrediting ever takes place. But liberals think as long as they smirk enough, their work is done.

 

Average readers hear that Lott has been "discredited" and assume that there must have been some debate they didn't see. To the contrary, the leading source for the claim that Lott's research doesn't hold up, left-wing zealot Donohue, has been scheduled to debate Lott, one-on-one, at the University of Chicago twice back in 2005.  Both times, Donohue canceled at the last minute. 

 

Donohue accuses Lott of libel for pointing this out. Suggestion for Mr. Donohue: Instead of writing columns insisting you've been libeled, wouldn't it be better just to agree to a debate? It's been eight years!

 

Scratch any claim that Lott's research has been "debunked" and you will find Donohue, his co-author and  plagiarist  Ian Ayres, or one of the three "scholars" mentioned above -- the ones so committed to a search for the truth that they refused to return Lott's data to him. (Imagine the consequences if Lott had been forced to admit to plagiarism, as Ayres has.)

 

Donohue's previous oeuvre includes the racist claim that the crime rate declined in the 1990s as a result of abortion being legalized in the '70s. (Nearly 40 percent of the abortions since the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade were of black children.)

 

This study was discredited (not "discredited") by many economists, including two at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, who pointed out that Donohue's study made critical mistakes, such as failing to control for variables such as the crack cocaine epidemic. When the Reserve economists reran Donohue's study without his glaring mistakes, they found that there was  "no evidence in (Donohue's) own data"  for an abortion-crime link.

 

Curiously, the failure to account for the crack epidemic is one of Donohue's complaints with Lott's study. It worked so well against his own research he thought he'd try it against Lott. The difference is: Lott has, in fact, accounted for the crack epidemic, over and over again, in multiple regressions, all set forth in his book.

 

Donohue and plagiarist Ayres took a nasty swipe at Lott in the Stanford Law Review so insane that the editors of the Review -- Donohue's own students -- felt compelled to issue a subsequent "clarification" saying: "Ayres and Donohue's Reply piece is incorrect, unfortunate, and unwarranted."

 

When you have to be corrected on your basic anti-gun facts by an ABC correspondent -- as Donohue was by "Nightline" correspondent John Donvan in a 2008 televised panel discussion -- you might be a few shakes away from a disinterested scholar.

 

But the easily-fooled New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has repeatedly called Lott "discredited," based on a 2003 a non-peer-reviewed law review article by charlatans Donohue and Ayres. In a 2011 column, for example, Kristof dismissed Lott's book, "More Guns, Less Crime," with the bald assertion that "many studies have now debunked that finding."

 

The details of the chicanery of Donohue,  plagiarist Ayres, as well as all of Lott's other critics, are dealt with point by point in the third edition of Lott's  More Guns, Less Crime  There, and in a number of published articles  by Lott and others , you can see how his critics cherry-picked the data, made basic statistical errors, tried every regression analysis imaginable to get the results they want and lied about Lott's work (such as Donohue's claim that he neglected to account for the crack epidemic).

 

Suffice it to say that of the 177 separate analyses run by all these critics, only seven show a statistically significant increase in crime after the passage of concealed-carry laws, while 90 of their own results show a statistically significant drop in crime -- and 80 show no difference.

 

"Discredited" in liberal lingo means, "Ignore this study; it didn't come out well for us."

The Left's Sick Fetish for Cop-Killing Radicals

By Michelle Malkin

Friday, May 03, 2013

 

There's a stomach-turning segment of the American population that sees surviving Boston bomber suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a romantic maverick. The New York Times mused about the accused jihadist's "Holden Caulfield-like adolescent alienation." Pop singer Amanda Palmer wrote a fan girl "Poem for Dzhokhar." An adoring "Free Jahar" movement thrives on social media.

 

Fringe, you say? Think again. The fetish for cop-killing fugitives and cop-hating radicals is a mainstay of Hollywood, academia, the liberal media and Democratic Party circles. It has persisted for decades. It reared its head on May Day with rock-hurling anarchists in Seattle and D.C. shouting "F**k the pigs" and kicking cops. And consider the exaltation of the woman just named to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list, Joanne Chesimard.

 

On Thursday, the feds announced that they are doubling their reward for the capture of Chesimard (a.k.a. "Assata Shakur"). The former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army agitator has been a fugitive from justice for nearly 40 years and openly thumbs her nose at her victim's family while living in Cuba as a political asylee. Congressional Black Caucus members have stubbornly protested extradition efforts, invoking the poisonous race card and deifying Chesimard as a "political prisoner." Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill glorifies her as a "freedom fighter."

 

Just last week, rapper Common added an Assata Shakur tribute verse to Jay Z's recent "Open Letter" rap defending his wedding anniversary trip to Chesimard's sanctuary of Cuba. "The same way they say she was a shooter, Assata Shakur, they tried to execute her. We should free her like we should (convicted cop-killer) Mumia (Abu Jamal)," Common proclaims.

 

Chesimard/Shakur is the godmother of the late Tupac Shakur, a gangsta rapper whose genre spawned NWA's "F**k tha Police," Ice-T's "Cop Killer" and The Game's "911 is a Joke" ("I ought to shoot 51 officers for the 51 times that boy was shot in New York").

 

Mic check this: In 1973, Chesimard shot and killed New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster execution-style during a traffic stop. The gunfight also left her brother-in-law, Black Liberation Army leader Zayd Malik Shakur, dead. At the time, the BLA had been tied to the murders of more than 10 police officers across the country. Chesimard, Zayd Shakur and another member were wanted for questioning in the murder of two of those cops when they were stopped.

 

Chesimard was convicted and sentenced to life in 1977, but escaped from prison two years later with help from violent left-wing accomplices. One of those thugs, Black Liberation Army killer Tyrone Rison, admitted to participating in a series of armored-car robberies, including a $250,000 heist in the Bronx on June 2, 1981, that left a Brink's guard dead. Rison also confessed to taking part in the planning of the Rockland County, N.Y., $1.6 million Brink's robbery by left-wing domestic terrorists on October 20, 1981. Police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady and Brink's guard Peter Paige were murdered during the siege.

 

Chesimard's brother, Jeral Wayne Williams (a.k.a. Mutulu Shakur), was the convicted ringleader of the group responsible for murdering those law enforcement officers; he also masterminded Chesimard's escape. His release is set for February 2016.

 

Celebrated left-wing heroine Kathy Boudin and her then-husband David Gilbert were convicted for their role in the bloody Rockland County robbery. Boudin and Company, as I reported in March, are the inspirations for Robert Redford's new movie love letter to the Weather Underground. Boudin now holds an adjunct professorship at Columbia University's School of Social Work, along with a scholar-in-residence post at New York University, as the New York Post reported in April. The adoptive parents of her son, Rhodes scholar and Yale legal fellow Chesa Boudin, are Weather Underground militants-turned-academics Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

 

Susan Rosenberg, a violent "progressive" domestic terrorist who participated in bombings of the United States Capitol Building, three military installations and other sites during the 1980s, was a principal getaway coordinator for Chesimard, Shakur, Boudin, et al. After receiving a pardon from Bill Clinton, Rosenberg taught literature at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and was offered a teaching position at Hamilton College.

 

Blogger Bill Ardolino, whose father was a N.J. state trooper and classmate of murdered N.J. trooper Werner Foerster, recounted Chesimard's chilling lack of remorse: "After their capture, my father was part of the team assigned to guard the severely wounded Chesimard in the hospital. As the troopers stood outside of her room, she incessantly chanted, 'If I had some poison gas, I'd throw it on your white ass.' ... Today she walks free as a professor, counter-cultural heroine and published author reviewed by The New York Times: "A deftly written book ... a spellbinding tale."

 

From Free Assata to Free Mumia to Free Jahar, the left's police-bashing bloodlust is not just a sick joke. Their romanticizing of cold-blooded terrorism is a pathology. Twisted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev summed it up in three letters for his friends while still on the lam for committing a deadly terrorist attack, murdering a police officer and wounding another:

 

"LOL."

Is America Nasty and Homophobic?

By Ben Shapiro

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

 

On Monday, former Washington Wizards center Jason Collins revealed to the world that he is gay, prompting a complete media meltdown. Collins appeared on Good Morning America; he made the cover of Sports Illustrated; he became the lead on Huffington Post. The president of the United States congratulated him at a press conference, and the former president of the United States congratulated him via Twitter. So did the first lady, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association and a bevy of pundits and athletes across the spectrum.

 

Which leaves one question: What's the big deal?

 

Tennis star Martina Navratilova, the best player of her era, came out in 1981. Ellen Degeneres came out on national television in 1997. The president and CEO of the Golden State Warriors, Rick Welts, is openly gay. Top politicians, rock stars, athletes, movie and television stars and business moguls are gay. Gay Americans have been announcing their sexual orientation for decades. Why the hubbub?

 

The media announced that Collins was a hero because he had provided hope to millions of gay male teens. There is some credibility to that argument. But there is another, more powerful aftertaste from the media's champagne party for Collins: The bitter feeling that America is a nasty place, so nasty that we require overwhelming shows of support for people who just want to live their lives. When the media labels Collins another Jackie Robinson, that not only does massive injustice to Robinson, it implies that America of 2013 is to sexuality what America of 1947 was to race. That is not only ignorant. It is tremendously harmful.

 

The hubbub from the media assumes that America is a massively homophobic place -- a place where people like Collins must regularly fear for their lives, are forced not to participate in the private sexual activities they choose and face routine discrimination. There is certainly discrimination against gays in American society, but it is by far the exception rather than the rule. On average, gay couples earn significantly more money per year than straight couples do ($94,000 versus $86,000). Gay couples are more educated than straight couples (46 percent of gay couples have both gone to college, compared with less than one third of straight couples). Unemployment is lower among gays than straights. There is no law in any state in America that gays cannot live together or engage in consensual activity of any sort. There is no law in any state in America preventing contractual provisions for inheritance, hospital visitation and the like.

 

As far as violence against gays, while it is still sadly far-too-prevalent, it is nowhere near the epidemic the media suggests. Approximately 1,300 hate crimes based on "sexual orientation bias" were reported by the FBI in 2011.

 

There are approximately 9 million gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the United States, according to a UCLA study. That would mean that about one of every 7,100 LGBT people in the United States became a hate crime victim in 2011. That same year, there were some 935 Jewish victims of hate crimes according to the FBI. There are approximately 5.5 million Jews in the United States. That means that one out of every 5,900 Jews became a hate crime victim in 2011. Yet no one suggests that America remains a massively anti-Semitic country, requiring massive media coverage every time a Jewish person reaches a position of power or influence.

 

Jason Collins has every right to announce his sexual orientation. If announcing it makes him a happier person, more power to him. But the media's overwrought coverage of Collins demonstrates their deeply dangerous view that America is a disgusting place filled with budding Aaron McKinneys and Russell Hendersons looking for their Matthew Shepards to murder. The media's treatment of Collins as a full-fledged hero assumes that America is filled with full-fledged villains. It is not -- and the media coverage of Collins shows that. The media coverage also does young gays and lesbians a massive disservice. There is no surer way to keep young gays and lesbians living in fear than tacitly telling them that those who surround them despise them.

What Students Won’t Learn During California’s Labor History Month

By Kyle Olson

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

 

California lawmakers don’t simply like labor unions. They love them.

 

So much, in fact, that they recently eliminated Labor History Week from the state law books and replaced it with Labor History Month, with the first scheduled for this May.

 

That means starting tomorrow, Californians (particularly school children) will be getting a steady diet of pro-labor propaganda, displaying the history of the union movement in only the most flattering light.

 

That’s where EAGnews comes in. We believe it’s necessary to balance that stream of happy history with the rest of the story.

 

So starting Wednesday (which ironically is the socialist rallying day of May 1), EAGnews.org will launch a daily installment of “The Other Labor History: What Kids Won’t Learn.”

 

All month long – including the weekends because there are just so many rich examples – we’ll highlight a significant moment in Big Labor history that isn’t likely to be mentioned much during California’s Labor History Month.

 

We’ll share just a few of the many true tales of embezzlement, intimidation, physical violence and many, many other questionable moments in labor’s checkered past.

 

There are two sides to every story, and we won’t rest until the ugly side of Big Labor history is given equal billing.

 

Gov. Jerry Brown comes through for Big Labor

 

The Sacramento Bee reports, “Gov. Jerry Brown, like the Democratic-controlled California Legislature, wants schoolchildren to learn about labor unions, preferably when they are in school and aren't too busy with other matters.”

 

You know, like learning to read and multiply and think for themselves about various issues, like the true impact of organized labor on the American economy in recent decades.

 

A website called “Speaker’s Commission on Labor Education,” sponsored by California Speaker of the Assembly John Perez echoed Brown’s sentiments:

 

“Labor History Month offers an opportunity to give all students something precious: knowledge of where their rights came from, and how to preserve them today.”

 

And we always thought our rights derived from the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. Silly us.

 

Can California teachers be expected to cooperate with this indoctrination effort? Consider the following from the California Teachers Association’s labor history page:

 

“As we honor our workers every day - and particularly those who hold our children's futures in their hands, our educators - we also need to pull together and do the right thing to help return the economy to a healthier state.

 

“It's time to strengthen our resolve and to reinvigorate the Union Movement. Working for a common goal - with everyone paying their fair share - will propel us to the more prosperous time of the recent past, a time when (we) weren't stripping education budgets and other vital services, but enhancing them.”

 

Surely the schools will be using material from various sources, like the Chamber of Commerce, National Right to Work Committee or other business-friendly groups, just to present students with a fair and balanced picture of labor history.

 

Right?

 

Unfortunately we found no suggested Labor History Month materials that do anything but shine a steady ray of artificial sunshine on the topic. As if there’s nothing sordid, illegal or downright disgusting in Big Labor’s past that’s even worth mentioning.

 

The California recipe seems simple enough. Start with a dollop of Democratic politicians passing labor history bills with hugs and kisses, sprinkle in a heavy dose of politically liberal teachers presenting their personal views in classrooms, and voila, the unholy alliance has an instant indoctrination program ready to go, all funded with tax dollars paid by people who may or may not be progressives.

 

What won’t kids learn?

 

Do you think California students will learn about the Washington Teachers’ Union’s former president Barbara Bullock? In testifying against two of her colleagues, she admitted to embezzling a handsome $5 million from the union to buy such things as a $50,000 silver set in New Orleans and a $40,000 custom-made fur coat.

 

She and the two others “milked the union bank accounts to buy anything their hearts desired,” the Washington Post reported.

 

Will they hear the story of Neshaminy, Pennsylvania teacher David Ferrera? Last year he publicly accused his union of employing “terror and fear tactics” to keep teachers in line during a labor dispute with the school board.

 

Will they be told the story of Pennsylvania teachers union leaders vowing to “confront or shun” individuals who do not conform to the union’s agenda? The union was so serious about maintaining forced “solidarity” it produced a 31-page PowerPoint presentation on the subject.

 

How about a lesson about the Detroit Federation of Teachers? Putting its thirst to maintain revenue above teacher quality, the union demanded the firing of 70 teachers for non-payment of dues. What if one of those educators was the Teacher of the Year who provided wonderful service to thousands of school children? Too bad. This is what solidarity looks like.

 

Students would have a great time trying to figure out what happened to legendary Teamsters President James Hoffa, Sr. Now there’s a juicy tale of how Big Labor sometimes handles its internal disagreements and power disputes. And they didn’t even bother with a funeral.

 

This is just a sampling of the version of labor history we’ll be offering for the next month. We hope you will check out the daily entries and share them with others. There’s a lot more to be learned than the classroom activists in California would lead you to believe.

The Elite Media Hates You

By Dan Holler

Monday, April 29, 2013

 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the far left, far right or somewhere in the middle, there is absolutely no denying the rise of the tea party has altered America’s political landscape. And the elite media is making clear, in no uncertain terms, they despise this type of change.

 

Last week, Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) voted against the Schumer-Toomey gun bill because her constituents were opposed to the bill. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former lawmaker Joe Scarborough and his sidekick Mika Brzezinski lit into her:

 

MIKA: She is defending her vote saying her office was flooded with calls from constituents who opposed background checks by a 7-1 ratio.

 

JOE: You can’t handle that?

 

The implication is that Heitkamp, who is not conservative, is supposed to ignore the citizens of her state because the elite media in New York City say the “overwhelming majority of people want to go the other way.”

 

In fact, a Pew Research-Washington Post poll found 47 percent of those closely following the gun debate were “happy” or “relieved” the bill failed. It would be logical to conclude folks in North Dakota, the state with the 8th highest gun ownership in the country, were even more relieved.

 

The cascade of righteous indignation continued, though:

 

JOE: Heidi Heitkamp wants to be a United States Senator but she is not tough enough to handle 4% of her constituents calling into her office a lot. She’s not even taking the phone calls!

 

MIKA: That’s what they do.

 

JOE: … This is one of the saddest most pathetic votes I think I’ve ever seen in Washington, DC. What Heidi Heitkamp has done. Cowarding [sic] in the corner because 4% maybe 5% of the people in her state were making phone calls that her staff had to answer.

 

MIKA: What about her own opinion? Does she have one?

 

The coastal elites regularly dismiss people in fly over country. The difference with this tantrum is that the elites are dismissing a fundamental constitutional right. The 1st Amendment guarantees citizens the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

 

If it seems as though they’re advocating for a callous disregard of their constituents, you’re right:

 

JOE: They are really vocal. Oh, my gosh. When she has to walk past her staff and saying a lot people are calling. I’ve done that. They are calling! I said, “that’s great. I’ll be back.”

 

When you consider this for standard operating procedure for the political and media elites, it should come as no surprise the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with Washington and the media.

 

It goes beyond just demeaning commentary, though.

 

The Washington Post reported this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner “will raise about $150,000 for journalism scholarships, according to the WHCA, a nonprofit group.” The piece then went on to report “some media organizations will drop as much as $200,000 each to entertain an elite list of guests” at after parties.

 

Ultimately, the money raised for scholarships is “small change.” The Post concludes “The real targets are a few hundred elite and influential guests. The parties help news organizations court would-be advertisers and reward existing ones by putting them in proximity to power and the Hollywood figures who will be transported and pampered at the media’s expense this weekend.”

 

Of all people, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw has the self-awareness to realize this type of display is just “another separation between what [journalists are] supposed to be doing and what the people expect us to be doing.”

 

Whether talking heads are dismissing the beliefs and opinions of one segment of the country or engaging in a schmooze-a-palooza with another, there is no doubt a massive disconnect exists between the elites and the rest of America. And politicians, elected by a ridiculed constituency, should remember who they represent.