Month: February 2011

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As long as were just proposing an undercard bout rather than the next installment of Ward Vs. Gatti, National Geographic doesn’t seem to sweat the whole unintended consequences category. Being the Ops. Research type that I am; I decided to nerd around a bit in the negative externalities. They seemed to suggest India versus Pakistan as a possible conflict that generates the right volume of smoke and ash. So I decided to look up what sort of targets the two opponents would seek to flash-fry.

Mombai has 13.8 Million People, Delhi has 12.6 Million and Bangalore and Kolkata top out a shade over 5 million each. Assuming the Pakistani attack generates 50% KIAs in each of these for cities, we get around 18M worth of instantaneous carbon sequestrations.

If India inflicts similar damage on the top four Pakistani cities, we would experience about 12M units of human CO2 emitter reductions. And not to bug these scientific wonder-kids in the middle of dinner, but what I’ve just described involves an hypothesized 30 million deaths. It required the Good ‘Ol US of A about 25 years of Roe V. Wade abortions to generate the same despicable level of casually sadistic genocide. So much for American Exceptionalism.

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continued here… War, What Is It Good For? – Ask National Geographic. | RedState.

Teachers are right that the crisis transcends compensation. Yet why, others might ask, would teachers’ unions oppose merit pay? Why should someone who did not join the union still have to pay its dues? Why should the state have to collect the dues from employee paychecks on behalf of the union? Moreover, when these questions are posed amid a landscape of teachers skipping classes to protest, urging students to join them, and soliciting fraudulent doctors’ notes to cover their cancellations of classes — while their supporters in the legislature hide out to prevent a quorum and thereby subvert the democratic process reaffirmed last November — the public becomes further estranged from their cause.

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On Teachers and Others – Article – National Review Online.

The head of one of the US’s biggest industrial groups has launched a scathing attack on Barack Obama’s attempts to repair relations with companies, dubbing him “anti-business”.
Manufacturers could shift production out of the US to Canada or Mexico as a result, warned George Buckley, chief executive and chairman of 3M.

“I judge people by their feet, not their mouth,” he told the Financial Times. “We know what his instincts are – they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business.”

The Obama administration has struck a more conciliatory tone towards business since the Democratic defeat in November’s midterm elections.

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Read the rest here.

Gingrich: If Palin Took Obama Actions, There Would Be Calls for Impeachment.

Enormous contributions, yes — to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign. Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

Public unions force taxpayers to fund Democrats | Michael Barone | Politics | Washington Examiner.

YouTube – Criminals For Gun Control 1 Home Invasion.

YouTube – Funny Politics – (Socialism Spoof) Social Life Board Game Commercial.

Jewish Groups Repudiate Jewish Funds for Justice Anti-Beck Effort – Big Journalism.

YouTube – US admin pays hundreds of millions for foreign mosques.

Incoming AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s Ugly History of Violence and Corruption

Tue, 09/15/2009 – 13:14 — Nick Cote

At this week’s AFL-CIO national convention, Richard Trumka is expected to be elected president of the nation’s largest union umbrella organization. The National Right to Work Foundation has prepared a Fact Sheet about Trumka’s record of militancy and disregard for the rule of law.

As president of the United Mine Workers (UMW) union, Trumka led multiple violent strikes. Trumka’s fiery rhetoric often appeared to condone militancy and violence, especially against workers who dared to continue to provide for their families by working during a strike. As a Virginia judge ruled in 1989, “violent activities are being organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”

Take the murder of Eddie York, a nonunion contractor, who was shot in the back of the head and killed while leaving a worksite in 1993. Trumka and other UMW officials were charged in a $27 million wrongful death suit by Eddie York’s widow. After fighting the suit intensely for four years, UMW lawyers settled suddenly in 1997 — just two days after the judge in the case ruled evidence in the criminal trial would be admitted.

Later, as Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Trumka pleaded the Fifth Amendment before Congress and a court-appointed election monitor over his role in an illegal fundraising scheme to benefit the Teamsters president Ron Carey’s re-election. Trumka has remained in his position ever since despite an AFL-CIO rule (adopted in 1957) which held that union officials who plead the Fifth have “no right to continue to hold office” in the union umbrella organization.

Read more about Trumka’s history of condoning union violence and corruption in the Foundation’s eye-opening Fact Sheet (PDF).

via Incoming AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s Ugly History of Violence and Corruption | National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.