Cuomo

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News/Politics 5-7-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. Oh look, the Senate is actually doing it’s job again. With Harry Reid no longer in charge, they actually have a budget for the first time since 2009. 

From HotAir  “Republicans promised to restore order to a dysfunctional Congress in the midterm elections. Yesterday, they delivered on that campaign promise, passing the first regular-order budget framework since 2009. It didn’t come easy, though:

The 51-48 vote capped weeks of work by Republican leaders in the House and Senate, who shepherded the blueprint through a messy debate over defense spending that at times threatened to split their conferences. …

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had ripped Democrats for years over their failure to pass a budget, and said Tuesday’s vote shows his GOP majority is getting the Senate working again.

“No budget will ever be perfect, but this is a budget that sensibly addresses the concerns of many different members. It reflects honest compromise from many different members with many different priorities,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor.

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2. About those charges against the Baltimore police officers…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rqKoemmkR0g

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3. The corruption of bi-partisanship. 

From TheAtlantic  “People say they want more bipartisanship. In poll after poll after poll, they decry the polarized atmosphere in Washington and say they want their leaders to work together.

To which the people of New York and New Jersey might reply: seriously?

It’s indictment-and-arrest season in the tri-state region. Monday morning, New York State Senate Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, and his son Adam were arrested on federal charges of extortion, fraud, and soliciting bribes. It’s been just three months since State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, washimself arrested on federal corruption charges. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, two former top allies of Governor Chris Christie, pleaded not guilty to nine counts apiece including wire fraud and conspiracy in the George Washington Bridge Scandal. On Friday, David Wildstein, a Christie appointee, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges in the same scandal.

What New York and New Jersey share, besides oft-imitated accents and embarrassing reputations for political corruption, is bipartisan governance. It wasn’t that long ago—before the bridge scandal, credit downgrades, and collapse of Atlantic City—that Christie seemed like a model of a Republican who could work with Democrats and achieve his priorities. Christie forged an alliance with Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross and his protege Steve Sweeney, the Democratic president of the State Senate. Christie even managed to gain many Democratic endorsements in his 2013 run for reelection. In fact, prosecutors say it was his aides’ overzealous attempt to squeeze an endorsement from the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee that led to the bridge closure that now threatens to undo his career.

Something similar was going on in Albany. Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, became extremely close with Silver and Skelos, even though Skelos was a Republican. In his January State of the State address—the day before Silver’s arrest, it turned out—he described his relationship with the two as “the three amigos.” The alliance drove some other New York Democrats nuts. Even though Cuomo had delivered two major progressive priorities in passing gun control and legalizing gay marriage, he governed far too close to the center for liberals’ taste on economic issues. But that allowed Cuomo to run the state government smoothly and implement his agenda.”

Careful what you wish for.

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4. More on that “safe space” nonsense. 

From USAToday  “Christina Hoff Sommers has been speaking on college campuses for two decades challenging students to embrace what she calls “equity feminism” over “gender feminism.” In her view, the former is focused on legal equality between men and women, the latter on disempowering women by portraying them as perpetual victims of the patriarchy.

This heretical view now requires campus security.

Prior to a mid-April lecture at Georgetown University, the American Enterprise Institutescholar was deemed a “rape apologist” by campus feminists for challenging statistics that she says overstate the rate of rape on campus. “The postings were so frantic that Georgetown sent undercover security into the audience,” Sommers told me.

An Oberlin College lecture a few days later met the same fate. The Oberlin Reviewpublished an open letter, “In Response to Christina Sommers’ Talk: A Love Letter to Ourselves” two days before Sommers’ visit. Usually people wait to offer a “response” until after an event has occurred, but not so in our Brave New World. The students wrote that Sommers’ presence on campus was “harmful,” and lamented that “her talk is happening, so let’s pull together in the face of this violence.”

In case you missed that: A differing viewpoint is an act of violence.

A sign outside the lecture read “Rape Culture Hall of Fame” with the names of past and present members of the libertarian and Republican student group that invited Sommers. The Oberlin Review reported that “activists organized a safe space … (that) was attended by approximately 35 students and one dog” as Sommers spoke.”The irony is (the complaining students) postings were so extreme that the administration provided me with security,” Sommers said.”

And now you know why Rush refers to them as Femi-Nazis. 

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News/Politics 1-24-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. It. Just. Gets. Worse.

From FoxNews  “While the administration publicly expresses full confidence in its health care law, privately it fears one part of the system is so flawed it could bankrupt insurance companies and cripple ObamaCare itself.

 “Week after week, month after month,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, “the Obama administration kept telling us everything’s working fine, there’s no problem and then they turn on a dime and fire their contractor.”

To justify a no-bid contract with Accenture after firing CGI as the lead contractor, the administration released documents from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services that offered a rare glimpse of its worst fears, saying the problems with the website puts “the entire health insurance industry at risk” … “potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

Then it went even further, saying if the problems were not fixed by mid-March, “they will result in financial harm to the government.”

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2. It’s the Chicago way.

From Reuters  “Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner angrily warned the chairman of Standard & Poor’s parent that the rating agency would be held accountable for its 2011 decision to strip the United States of its coveted “triple-A” rating, a new court filing shows.

Harold McGraw, the chairman of McGraw-Hill Financial Inc , made the statement in a declaration filed by S&P on Monday, as it defends against the government’s $5 billion fraud lawsuit over its rating practices prior to the 2008 financial crisis.

McGraw said he returned a call from Geithner on Aug. 8, 2011, three days after S&P cut the U.S. credit rating to “AA-plus,” and that Geithner told him “you are accountable” for an alleged “huge error” in S&P’s work.

“He said that ‘you have done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country,'” and that S&P’s conduct would be “looked at very carefully,” McGraw said. “Such behavior could not occur, he said, without a response from the government.”

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3. If intimidation is how they respond to a downgrade, I’d be nervous if I was these guys.

From TheHill  “Moody’s announced Thursday it was downgrading its outlook for health insurers from stable to negative based on uncertainty related to ObamaCare.

The credit rating agency cited an unstable environment because of the healthcare law’s difficult rollout, and projected that insurers would earn 2 percent less than forecast in 2014.

“While we’ve had industry risks from regulatory changes on our radar for a while, the ongoing unstable and evolving environment is a key factor for our outlook change,” Moody’s Senior Vice President Stephen Zaharuk said in a statement. “The past few months have seen new regulations and announcements that impose operational changes well after product and pricing decisions were finalized.”

The Moody’s report also cites the slow enrollment of young people into ObamaCare as a reason for the downgrade.”

🙄

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4. The IRS intimidation of conservative groups continues. And it looks like they’ve targeted one of the few conservative groups in Hollywood.

From TheNYTimes  “In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds. A collection of perhaps 1,500 right-leaning players in the entertainment industry, Friends of Abe keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist, albeit on the other side of the partisan spectrum.

Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Last week, federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.”

“Those people said that the application had been under review for roughly two years, and had at one point included a demand — which was not met — for enhanced access to the group’s security-protected website, which would have revealed member names. Tax experts said that an organization’s membership list is information that would not typically be required. The I.R.S. already had access to the site’s basic levels, a request it considers routine for applications for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.”

“People for the American Way, Mr. Lear’s group, stands as something of a liberal counterpart to Friends of Abe, though the organization is far larger, with an affiliate that spends millions of dollars a year on issue advocacy in Washington and beyond. But the entertainment industry has been crisscrossed by progressive groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, which maintains a tax-exempt educational adjunct under the 501(c)(3) provision, and includes the producer Laurie David and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio among its trustees. Another, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, is a nonprofit that supports marriage rights for gay people and counts the producer Bruce Cohen and the writer Dustin Lance Black among its founders.”

And none of those have been targeted. Neither has Obama’s OFA.

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5. This also stinks of intimidation, but we’ll have to wait and see. If he is guilty, then he’ll pay the price.

From Variety  “Dinesh D’Souza, director of the 2012 documentary “2016: Obama’s America,” was arrested and indicted for campaign finance fraud on Thursday, Reuters reports.

The conservative filmmaker and best-selling author allegedly contributed $20,000 in 2012 in the name of others to Republican Wendy Long’s U.S. Senate campaign. Long ran for Hillary Clinton’s vacated Senate seat, but lost to Kirsten Gillibrand.

Federal law in 2012 limited election campaign contributions to $5,000 per person per candidate. Breaking this law is punishable to two years in prison.

“As we have long said, this Office and the FBI take a zero tolerance approach to corruption of the electoral process,” Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, said in a statement.”

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6. And it seems Gov. Cuomo is taking a page from the Obama playbook.

From FoxNews  “Conservative activist James O’Keefe is accusing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration of targeting his group with document requests and a subpoena, claiming the Democratic governor’s recent comments critical of conservatives “aren’t simply words.”

“”Governor Cuomo’s shocking words this past week aren’t simply words,” O’Keefe said in a statement. “Governor Cuomo and the New York Department of Labor are on a witch hunt, demanding all documents and financials since our founding. … His goal, of course, is to harass us and limit our effectiveness by tying us up in court. Just like President Obama used the IRS to target and suppress conservatives, Governor Cuomo is using his Department of Labor to do the same exact thing.”

“The group claims its finances are “meticulously maintained to the penny” and calls the inquiries “meritless.” A statement said Project Veritas would be relocating to New Jersey. 

Further, the group claimed that it complied with an earlier document request and showed up for a scheduled meeting on Dec. 13, but state labor officers “never showed up.”

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7. The White House is rejecting a review board’s findings that calls their NSA data sweep illegal.

Also From FoxNews  “The White House on Thursday disputed the findings of an independent review board that said the National Security Agency’s mass data collection program is illegal and should be ended, indicating the administration would not be taking that advice. 

“We simply disagree with the board’s analysis on the legality of the program,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. 

He was responding to a scathing report from The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which said the program ran afoul of the law on several fronts. 

“The … bulk telephone records program lacks a viable legal foundation,” the board’s report said, adding that it raises “serious threats to privacy and civil liberties” and has “only limited value.” The report, further, said the NSA should “purge” the files. “

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8. We’re all racist, and there’s nothing we can do about it. 😯

From TheFederalist  “One of the most troubling aspects of modern racial discourse is how it often, if not usually, rests upon an unequivocal and unassailable assumption, namely that “society” makes everyone, or nearly everyone, racist. The presumption is not that most of us are racist in the way that a Klansman, or a diehard segregationist, is racist; such bigotry would be easily provable by examining the actions and the stated intentions of a person or a group of people. Nor is the debate given to the idea that people simply believe in genuine racial bigotry but is holding it back for one reason or another. Today’s discussions on race are more often than not informed by the notion that racism is a deep-seated, internal, subconscious set of values within the lion’s share of the populace, fashioned by “culture” or “society,” undetectable in superficial appearances but still omnipresent: this racism is insidious, surreptitious, unconscious and, most importantly, ineradicable without a great deal of dramatic, penetrating, soul-searching mental and emotional labor.”

“The most frequent encounter one has with the “everyone is racist” or “most people are racist” tenet is the one that argues that our “culture” or our “society” has conditioned us to be racist; to use one of the more widespread examples, for instance, it is held that popular perceptions and depictions of black men have created in all of us the tendency to suspect all black men to be criminals, and in many cases, the theory goes, we are not even aware of this tendency, lodged so firmly and deeply in our minds as it is. It is true that the proponents of this theory cannot clearly prove that you contain this invidious judgment within your psyche, but then again, and most importantly, you cannot disprove it. Ideally, the burden of proof would be upon the accuser, as is the case in any competent judicial system; but in instances like these the burden of proof is not even on the accused, because there is no proof to be had—there is only an accusation with which one cannot argue, because one is not even aware of one’s deepest thoughts.”

Welcome to the kangaroo court of the politically correct. Either way, you’re guilty.

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News/Politics 1-22-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. ObamaCare?…  Affordable Care Act?…….

Nope, doesn’t ring a bell…..

From NationalReview  “At this point, the real action of 2014 will be in the red state Senate races in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, South Dakota, and Montana. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee isn’t so eager to talk about Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act — at least on their home page.

The only reference to “health” on the DSCC home page right now is a John Walsh tweet that “#MT can’t afford ppl like @SteveDaines who don’t believe in a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions” and a generic “war on women” blog post that claims “We must do everything in our power to protect women’s rights and women’s health.”

The words “Affordable Care Act” and “Obamacare” do not currently appear on the home page of the DSCC web site, nor do the words “exchange” or “insurance” or any other reference to the president’s signature domestic legislation, impacting families, workers, and businesses right now.”

As if we’d let them get off that easy. 🙄

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2. This is what Democrats consider success. This is also why having your state running one of these debacles is a bad idea. Thankfully I live in a state that refused.

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3. Four minutes. That’s how long it took to hack HealthCare.gov.

From TheDailyCaller  “David Kennedy, the hacking expert that shook the country this week with his congressional testimony about the security failures of HealthCare.gov, explained Sunday how he was able to penetrate the site.

“There’s a technique called, what we call ‘passive reconnaissance,’” Kennedy explained to “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, “which allows us to query and look at how the website operates and performs.”

“And these type of attacks that I’m mentioning here, and the 70,000 [personal records Kennedy found] that you’re referencing, is very easy to do,” Kennedy continued. “It’s a rudimentary type attack that doesn’t actually attack the website itself. It extracts information from it without actually having to go into the system.”

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4. The walk back.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “New York governor Andrew Cuomo came under fire for criticizing pro-life and pro-Second Amendment citizens of his state — and saying “that is not who New Yorkers are.”

“Now his office is backtracking and insisting that the governor said “‘it is fine’ to be anti-gun control, and anti-choice – as he respects both positions.

The video at the link demonstrates otherwise, in his own words.

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5. Here’s a fun one.

From Time  “See how your preferences in dogs, Internet browsers, and 10 other items predict your partisan leanings.”

I’m 87% conservative.

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News/Politics 1-21-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

After a couple of days off, I have a bunch, so I’ll try to be brief. As always, clicking the text will take you to the entire article.

1. Not shocking. It’s one of the reasons Planned Parenthood pushes both to young girls. It guarantees return business either way.

From CNSNews  “A new report released by the Family Research Council (FRC) on the demographics of abortion in the United States reveals that when and if a woman undergoes the procedure once or more is tied directly to chastity, monogamy and the use of contraceptives.”

“It also shows that 34 to 38 percent of women who became sexually active as young girls (12 or younger, 13, or 14) have had an abortion, while six percent of women who had intercourse for the first time at age 20 or later have had an abortion. “There’s a huge relationship between the earlier one starts being sexually active and the more likely things are going to go wrong, including undergoing an abortion,” said Patrick Fagan, director of FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute and co-author of the report with Scott Talkington, research director for the National Association of Scholars and Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University School of Public Policy.

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2. Cuomo says pro-lifers aren’t welcome in his state. They can’t have conservatives challenging the abortion extremists, now can they?

From HotAir  “Forty-eight percent of Americans and all priests and nuns are no longer welcome in the Empire State, according to its governor. Delivering a monologue on Republicans with all the hyperbole of an MSNBC anchor and none of the charm, Cuomo offered this:

You have a schism within the Republican Party. … They’re searching to define their soul, that’s what’s going on. Is the Republican party in this state a moderate party or is it an extreme conservative party? That’s what they’re trying to figure out. It’s a mirror of what’s going on in Washington. The gridlock in Washington is less about Democrats and Republicans. It’s more about extreme Republicans versus moderate Republicans.

… You’re seeing that play out in New York. … The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.“

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3. I have a feeling the Gov. would welcome this though, because he obviously agrees with the ideology.

From TheDailyCaller  “Hillsdale professor Terrence Moore, author of  “Story Killers: A Common Sense Case Against Common Core,”  exposed some of the more distressing aspects of the controversial Common Core education standards program, saying that all teachers must tell young students that all right-wing groups are fascist.

Moore highlights how it is not just the reading lists and course materials — which have already attracted a large amount of criticism — that need to be examined by parents. It’s also the teaching notes and standard curriculum; the notes and standards come as part of a comprehensive package. Moore noted through his research that a distinctly political slant is introduced, one which dictates not only what children are taught, but also how they should be taught.”

““In the margin of the teachers edition, the teacher is instructed to explain the term ‘fascist’ to the students and to point out that the term ‘fascist’ is now applied to all right-wing extremist groups.”

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4. In other school news…..

It looks like Atlanta wasn’t the only city with a major teacher cheating scandal.

From FoxNews  “Just days after three Philadelphia school principals were fired for alleged cheating, news comes that the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office is conducting a criminal investigation into widespread cheating involving more than 100 educators around the city.

The Philadelphia Inquirer cites sources with knowledge of the criminal inquiry in reporting the attorney general’s involvement, as well as a grand jury to probe a growing scandal that has already ensnared 138 teachers and principals from schools all over the city.”

Union reps blame the high stakes test.

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5. In other union news…..

From TheFreeBeacon  “Two of the most powerful unions in the country have voiced objections to a bill that would provide better background checks for teachers, Campbell Brown writes in a Thursday Wall Street Journal column.

After the Government Accountability Office found “hundreds of potential cases of registered sex offenders working in schools” across the United States in 2010, the House passed a bill that would streamline the vetting process and close inconsistencies across state lines.

The bill is a common sense measure, according to Campbell, yet powerful teachers unions are opposed to the new standards.”

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6. Who’s up for some judicial stupidity?

From Boston.com  “A federal appeals court in Boston today upheld a judge’s ruling that a transsexual inmate convicted of murder is entitled to a taxpayer-funded sex change operation as treatment for her severe gender identity disorder.

In a ruling that was a first of its kind, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said courts must not shy away from enforcing the rights of all people, including prisoners. “And receiving medically necessary treatment is one of those rights, even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox,” the court said.”

Odd, unorthodox, and stupid. They forgot to mention stupid. 🙄

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7. The new intolerance.

From TheNewStatesman  “The new intolerance: will we regret pushing Christians out of public life?  In this provocative challenge to the left, the former New Statesman deputy editor Cristina Odone argues that liberalism has become the new orthodoxy – and there is no room for religious believers to dissent.”

“Only 50 years ago, liberals supported “alternative culture”; they manned the barricades in protest against the establishment position on war, race and feminism. Today, liberals abhor any alternative to their credo. No one should offer an opinion that runs against the grain on issues that liberals consider “set in stone”, such as sexuality or the sanctity of life.

Intolerance is no longer the prerogative of overt racists and other bigots – it is state-sanctioned. It is no longer the case that the authorities are impartial on matters of belief, and will intervene to protect the interests and heritage of the weak. When it comes to crushing the rights of those who dissent from the new orthodoxy, politicians and bureaucrats alike are in the forefront of the attacks, not the defence.”

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8. Makes sense to me.

From TheTelegraph  “Older people do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to   recall facts because they have more information in their brains, scientists   believe.

Much like a computer struggles as the hard drive gets full up, so to do humans   take longer to access information, it has been suggested. “

“The human brain works slower in old age,” said Dr. Michael Ramscar, “but only because we have stored more information over time