Friday, May 28, 2010

Canada may point the way to sensible immigration policy

BY: Froma Harp

Immigration reform? Look north. Canada has a large immigration program but little illegal immigration, because Ottawa won't tolerate it.

Ripped from the news: Haitians are illegally crossing into Vermont from Canada, looking for work.

Why didn't the Haitians stay in Canada, where the social-safety net is far cushier? Because, as the head of a Haitian radio station in Montreal told The New York Times, "they saw that they had no chance to become Canadian permanent residents." And, he added, "people thought that the United States were going to receive all the Haitians."

What do we take home from this?

First off, porous borders are not the biggest reason that illegal immigration has become such a huge problem in the United States. Note that while President Obama is sending up to 1,200 National Guard troops to secure the border with Mexico, there are no troops, rivers or even fences along most of the U.S.-Canadian border. Some country roads mark the boundary with a simple stone.

True, illegal aliens can walk into the United States from Mexico. The logistics are easier in the American Southwest. But there are plenty of illegal workers in Washington state, Michigan and Maine — and little stopping them from going on to Canada.

Our northern neighbor has a large immigration program but little illegal immigration, because Ottawa won't tolerate it. No country with generous entitlements can afford a growing population of low-income workers.

Canada tweaks its immigration program to meet economic needs. It favors entrants with highly desirable skills. And when the economy recently turned sour, it stopped renewing many temporary work permits.

Should America do as Canada does? Should it stringently enforce its ban on hiring illegal workers? Yes. And should it stop fretting over what happens to undocumented people already in the country? Yes, but not yet.

What separates the United States from Canada on illegal immigration is a consistent message.

America's landmark 1986 immigration-reform law banned the hiring of illegal workers while granting amnesty to several million already here. But it was purposely rendered toothless at the last minute, when saboteurs yanked out a provision requiring a secure check of job applicants' identities.

Talk about messages. Suppose you're an impoverished Mexican. You know that the United States has offered several amnesties to illegal workers, and in any case, hasn't much enforced the law. You heard President George W. Bush announce that he was going to "match any willing worker with any willing employer." And you know that the conservative Wall Street Journal has called for open borders, while the liberal New York Times runs editorials on immigration that refuse to distinguish between legal and illegal.

What would you do? You would come to the United States, papers be damned.

We've had several decades of a two-faced immigration policy during which millions have come to this country illegally, taken jobs, started families and become part of the American scene. They are mostly good people who have been integrated into our economy and communities. There must be a last amnesty to cover them.

And it will be the last one if two things happen: One, we pass immigration reform that requires every new hire to present counterfeit-proof ID. Two, the public demands that their government go after lawbreaking employers.

After virtually no enforcement in the Bush years, the Obama administration has begun to cite and fine employers who break the law. This is needed to move public opinion toward an immigration package that includes legalizing many already here. Sending troops to the border may also boost confidence.

But as Canada shows us, it's not the ease of crossing the border that encourages illegal immigration, but the ease of getting a job once in. The United States needs to get its act together and its message straight on immigration.



Immigration

Darden turns himself in, then heads back for "treatment"

It's not the treatment in rehab he needs to be worried about. It's the treatment he'll be receiving from his new friends in jail.

Former Yazoo teacher returns to rehab


YAZOO CITY — Former Manchester Academy teacher Richard Darden is back in rehab today after turning himself in to authorities Thursday evening.

Yazoo County Sheriff Tommy Vaughan said Darden arrived at his office around 5 p.m. with his attorney. This morning, Darden made his initial court appearance in which Justice Court Judge Pam May set bond at $200,000, and Darden was ordered back into rehabilitation.

Once Darden finishes, the Sheriff's Department will place him in county jail under the bond. Vaughan said he did not know for how much longer Darden would need treatment.

"It sounded like it would be several weeks," he said. The sheriff would not say what specifically Darden is seeking treatment for other than an "addiction."

Darden's attorney, Cynthia Stewart, said her client "is innocent until proven guilty. All we have now is just allegations and many of them made in a lawsuit seeking money."

Vaughan said his investigators waited to take Darden into custody "because there were so many complaints filed we had to investigate each on independently and that takes time. We don't work on hearsay."

More than 100 students have come forward with allegations against Darden. Many are minors.

Investigator Dennis Moulder said he has yet to interview Darden because the suspect's attorney refused.

Investigators have been through Darden's house and have taken several items of evidence. Moulder also confirmed finding a room from where Darden may have watched students.

As for claims of abuse conducted at the school, Moulder said there is no firm evidence anything occurred at Manchester Academy.

Vaughan also said he is not investigating accusations against Darden made in the suit filed Wednesday in Yazoo County Circuit Court.

"I haven't seen it. I don't want to see it. I don't deal with civil. I deal with criminals," he said.


Clarion Ledger



Manchester/Darden Scandal


Related Posts: Manchester teacher caught peeping refuses to turn himself in.

Students sue former Manchester Academy teacher accused of abuse

Harper Says Military not a "testing ground for social change"

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Representative Gregg Harper (R–Miss.) issued the following statement after opposing final passage of the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act. This legislation includes an amendment by Democratic Representative Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania that repeals “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a long standing law banning homosexuals from openly serving in the United States military.

“The Democratic leadership only allowed 10 minutes of debate on an amendment that will repeal a 17-year-old law. By repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ without a thorough review process, the majority is attempting to put the proverbial cart before the horse.

“Our men and women in uniform must be consulted to address the possible complications of implementing this controversial policy change. I agree with all four uniformed service chiefs who earlier this week sent letters strongly imploring Congress to defer any legislation repealing this regulation until the Department of Defense completes its review.

“At a time when our military is stretched thin fighting two wars, I do not believe we should consider policy changes of this magnitude. The United States military should not be used as a testing ground for social change.”



Harper vote on Defense Authorization

Whatchootalkin’bout, Willis? Gary Coleman Dead at 42

Another Icon of the 80's is gone.

Diff’rent Strokes Actor Gary Coleman Dead at 42



Gary Coleman, 42, the diminutive Diff’rent Strokes actor and poster child for the latter-day troubles of kid stars, died Friday at a Provo, Utah hospital of a head injury caused by a fall

Time

We’re too broke to be this stupid

STEYN: Beleaguered taxpayers may finally put a stop to the sheer waste of government spending

by Mark Steyn
Back in 2008, when I was fulminating against multiculturalism on a more or less weekly basis, a reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.”

Two years later, we’re a lot less rich. In fact, many Western nations are, in any objective sense, insolvent. Hence last week’s column, on the EU’s decision to toss a trillion dollars into the great sucking maw of Greece’s public-sector kleptocracy. It no longer matters whether you’re intellectually in favour of European-style social democracy: simply as a practical matter, it’s unaffordable.

How did the Western world reach this point? Well, as my correspondent put it, we assumed that we were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid. In any advanced society, there will be a certain number of dysfunctional citizens either unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to support themselves and their dependents. What to do about such people? Ignore the problem? Attempt to fix it? The former nags at the liberal guilt complex, while the latter is way too much like hard work: the modern progressive has no urge to emulate those Victorian social reformers who tramped the streets of English provincial cities looking for fallen women to rescue. All he wants to do is ensure that the fallen women don’t fall anywhere near him.

So the easiest “solution” to the problem is to throw public money at it. You know how it is when you’re at the mall and someone rattles a collection box under your nose and you’re not sure where it’s going but it’s probably for Darfur or Rwanda or Hoogivsastan. Whatever. You’re dropping a buck or two in the tin for the privilege of not having to think about it. For the more ideologically committed, there’s always the awareness-raising rock concert: it’s something to do with Bono and debt forgiveness, whatever that means, but let’s face it, going to the park for eight hours of celebrity caterwauling beats having to wrap your head around Afro-Marxist economics. The modern welfare state operates on the same principle: since the Second World War, the hard-working middle classes have transferred historically unprecedented amounts of money to the unproductive sector in order not to have to think about it. But so what? We were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid.

That works for a while. In the economic expansion of the late 20th century, citizens of Western democracies paid more in taxes but lived better than their parents and grandparents. They weren’t exactly rich, but they got richer. They also got more stupid. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the modern British welfare state in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want.” Sir William and his colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic succeeded beyond their wildest dreams: to be “poor” in the 21st-century West is not to be hungry and emaciated but to be obese, with your kids suffering from childhood diabetes. When Michelle Obama turned up to serve food at a soup kitchen, its poverty-stricken clientele snapped pictures of her with their cellphones. In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. They are not so much without employment as without need of it. At a certain level, your hard-working bourgeois understands that the bulk of his contribution to the treasury is entirely wasted. It’s one of the basic rules of life: if you reward bad behaviour, you get more of it. But, in good and good-ish times, who cares?

By the way, where does the government get the money to fund all these immensely useful programs? According to a Fox News poll earlier this year, 65 per cent of Americans understand that the government gets its money from taxpayers, but 24 per cent think the government has “plenty of its own money without using taxpayer dollars.” You can hardly blame them for getting that impression in an age in which there is almost nothing the state won’t pay for. I confess I warmed to that much-mocked mayor in Doncaster, England, who announced a year or two back that he wanted to stop funding for the Gay Pride parade on the grounds that, if they’re so damn proud of it, why can’t they pay for it? He was actually making a rather profound point, but, as I recall, he was soon forced to back down. In Canada, almost every ethnocultural booster group is on the public teat. Outside Palestine House in Toronto the other week, the young Muslim men were caught on tape making explicitly eliminationist threats about Jews, but c’mon, everything else in Canada is taxpayer-funded, why not genocidal incitement? We’re rich enough that we can afford to be stupid.

It’s not so much the money as the stupidity, which massively expands under such generous subvention. When it emerged that President Barack Obama had appointed a Communist as his “green jobs czar,” I carelessly assumed it was the usual youthful “idealism”: no doubt Van Jones, the Communist Obama appointee in question, had been a utopian college student caught up in the spirit of ’68 and gone along for the ride. A passing phase. Soon grow out of it. But, in fact, Mr. Jones became a Communist in the mid-nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union. He embraced Communism after even the commies had given up on it. Like the song says, he was commie after commie had ceased to be cool. On Fox News, Glenn Beck made a fuss about it. But the “mainstream” media thought this was frankly rather boorish, and something only uptight right-wing squares would do. I mean, what’s the big deal? True, everywhere it’s been implemented, Communism causes human misery—not to mention an estimated 150 million deaths. But it doesn’t make you persona non grata in the salons of the West. Quite the opposite. The Washington Post hailed the grizzled folkie Pete Seeger as America’s “best-loved commie”—which, unlike “America’s best-loved Nazi,” is quite a competitive title. Even so, why would you stick a commie in the White House and put him in charge of anything to do with jobs, even “green jobs”?


Well, because “green jobs” is just another of those rich-enough-to-be-stupid scams. The Spanish government pays over $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. This money is taken from real workers with real jobs at real businesses whose growth is being squashed to divert funds to endeavours that have no rationale other than their government subsidies—and which would collapse as soon as the subsidies end. Yet Tim Flannery, the Aussie climate-alarmist who chaired the Copenhagen racket, says we need to redouble our efforts. “We’re trying to act as a species,” he says, “to regulate the atmosphere.”

Er, “regulate the atmosphere”? Why not? We’re rich enough to be stupid with the very heavens.

In his book The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism (La tyrannie de la pĂ©nitence), the French writer Pascal Bruckner concludes by quoting Louis Bourdaloue, the celebrated Jesuit priest at the court of Louis XIV, who preached on the four kinds of conscience: 1) the good and peaceful; 2) the good and troubled; 3) the bad and troubled; 4) the bad and peaceful. The first is to be found in Heaven, the second in Purgatory, the third in Hell, and the fourth—the bad but peaceful conscience—sounds awfully like the prevailing condition of the West at twilight. We are remorseful to a fault—indeed, to others’ faults.

It’s not just long-ago sins like imperialism and colonialism and Eurocentric white male patriarchy and other fancies barely within living memory. Our very lifestyle demands penitence: Americans have easily accessible oil reserves, but it would be wrong to touch them, so poor old BP have to do the “environmentally responsible” thing and be out in the middle of the Gulf a mile underwater. If you’re rich enough to be that stupid, what won’t you subsidize? The top al-Qaeda recruiter in Britain, Abu Qatada, had 150,000 pounds in his bank account courtesy of the taxpayer before the comically misnamed Department for Work and Pensions decided to cut back his benefits.

The green jobs, the gay parades, the jihadist welfare queens, the Greek public sector unions, all have to be paid for by a shrinking base of contributing workers whose children and grandchildren will lead poorer and meaner lives because of the fecklessness of government. The social compact of the postwar era cannot hold. Across the developed world, a beleaguered middle class is beginning to understand that it’s no longer that rich. At some point, it will look at the sheer waste of government spending, the other shoe will drop, and it will decide that it no longer wishes to be that stupid.

Macleans

Was it a bribe? White House Used Bill Clinton to Ask Sestak to Drop Out of Race

White House attorneys say that Mr. Emanuel’s proposal was for an unpaid job, so it doesn't rise to the level of bribery.

Representative Joe Sestak, with his wife, Susan, and daughter Alex, won the Democratic primary for the Pennsylvania Senate seat even though his opponent had the backing of President Obama and other Democratic party leaders. President Obama’s chief of staff used former President Bill Clinton as an intermediary to see if Representative Joe Sestak would drop out of a Senate primary if given a prominent, but unpaid, advisory position, people briefed on the matter said Friday.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, asked Mr. Clinton to explore the possibilities last summer, according to the briefed individuals, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the politically charged situation. Mr. Sestak said no and went on to win last week’s Pennsylvania Democratic primary against Senator Arlen Specter.

The White House did not offer Mr. Sestak a full-time paid position because Mr. Emanuel wanted him to stay in the House rather than risk losing his seat. Among the positions explored by the White House was an appointment to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides independent oversight and advice the president. But White House officials discovered it would not work because Mr. Sestak could not serve on the board while still serving in Congress.

Mr. Sestak first mentioned publicly in February that he had been offered a job but provided no details, and the White House for three months has refused to discuss it, generating intense criticism from Republicans who accused it of trying to bribe a congressman and deep consternation among Democrats who called on the administration to answer questions.

Mr. Obama promised on Thursday to release an account of the matter, which White House lawyers have been drafting in recent days in consultation with Mr. Sestak’s brother, Richard, who runs his campaign. The White House plans to release its statement later on Friday. Until now, the White House has said publicly only that whatever conversations took place with Mr. Sestak were not inappropriate.

The office of Robert F. Bauer, the White House counsel, has concluded that Mr. Emanuel’s proposal did not violate laws prohibiting government employees from promising employment as a reward for political activity because the position being offered was unpaid. The office also found other examples of presidents offering positions to political allies to achieve political aims.

Mr. Emanuel was eager last summer to clear the way to this year’s Democratic Senate nomination for Mr. Specter, who had just left the Republican party to join the Democrats and bolster their majority in the Senate. Mr. Sestak, a retired admiral and two-term House member, was already planning a run.

In tapping Mr. Clinton as the go-between, Mr. Emanuel picked the party’s most prominent figure other than Mr. Obama and someone Mr. Sestak had worked for on the National Security Council staff in the 1990s. Mr. Sestak endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton against Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential primaries, and Mr. Clinton was one of the first to call to congratulate him on his Senate victory last week.


Read more at The New York Times



WH used Clinton to make offer to Sestak

YouCut: Gimmick or Good Idea? (Video)


The House GOP’s YouCut program is gimmicky, sure, but savvy, too.

In 2006, with a flashy, YouTube-mimicking cover, Time magazine declared you — “Yes, you,” they wrote — their Person of the Year. Frank Rich of the New York Times called it a “cover stunt,” one that revealed the dead-tree weekly’s “desperation” to “appear relevant and hip.”

House Republican whip Eric Cantor has been subject to similar eye-rolls from the Left for YouCut, his office’s anti-spending overture to plugged-in Americans. But while the program is a tad gimmicky, it’s also politically and technologically savvy.

Cantor debuted YouCut earlier this month. Its premise is simple: Each week, Americans can vote for their favorite of five potential spending cuts on the web (or via text message to 68398). Cantor works to bring the winner to the House floor. With one click, you can help to shape the House GOP agenda.

“It allows us to focus on out-of-control federal spending, the number-one issue for millions of Americans,” Cantor says. “For us, it is an unprecedented online project. So far, we’ve received over 500,000 votes. The response has exceeded all of our expectations.”

Some critics, such as economist Mark Lieberman of Fox Business Network, have criticized Cantor for “ceding” power to “Internet browsers” and ignoring the argument of Edmund Burke that legislators should be strong figures, not simply delegates who act according to the popular will. But YouCut is hardly the start of direct democracy in Washington. Instead, it is a way for the House GOP to prick the Pelosi machine, hand in hand with frustrated citizens.

“It is important for Republicans to demonstrate that we want to engage with the public,” Cantor says. “The public wants to participate. This country, and the rest of the world, is now communicating 24-7, so you have to embrace that; you can’t avoid it.” Every day, he adds, he becomes more involved with social-media tools such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

“YouCut’s focus like a laser on spending is why it has been wildly successful,” says David All, the founder of TechRepublican.com. “People are deeply interested in this, and there is a hunger out there to be involved and at the table. They want to know, and change, what’s happening in Congress. YouCut’s ability to adapt to the quick news cycle — a new winner and resolution every week — says a lot about where House Republicans are at.”

Not surprisingly, some Democrats have slammed YouCut. They seem quite nervous about the GOP out-hustling them in the wired arena. “First, this is not American Idol or Dancing with the Stars,” snapped Rep. Alcee Hastings (D., Fla.). “This is America’s legislature. For all we know, on YouCut, Osama bin Laden could be voting. Please know that a handful of organized, gotcha Republicans are not going to control this legislature.”

Read more at NRO





YouCut: Gimmick or Good Idea?

Mike Kent wants your help.

An open letter from Madison County Superintendent of Edcuation Mike Kent:

I am sure that most of you are aware that the City of Canton Zoning Board is scheduled to hear a request from local developers on TUESDAY, JUNE 1 at 3:00 p.m. to rezone approximately 26 acres at the intersection of Old Jackson and Sowell Roads to allow for construction of 300 apartment units.


Although this area has been annexed into the city limits of Canton, there is case law from the Mississippi Supreme Court that distinguishes between city limit boundaries and school district boundaries. If apartments are built on this site, the Madison County School District will have the responsibility of educating children who reside there.

In recent years, all of the District’s planning, demographic studies, bond issues, etc. have been based upon numbers consistent with zoning regulations in Madison County which currently favor single family residences. With that as a rationale, the Madison County School District opposes the construction of apartment complexes and any other high density residential complexes.

We have attempted to gain permission to speak at the meeting on Tuesday, but have been told that the deadline to be placed on the agenda has passed and that we will not be allowed to address the zoning board about our concerns. This makes it all the more imperative that we have as many citizens as possible attend the meeting to show the board that we oppose this zoning request.

We will keep you updated on any new developments in this matter; but I strongly encourage you to plan to attend the zoning meeting on Tuesday, June 1 at 3:00 p.m. at the Canton City Hall.

Thanks for all you do to support our schools!

Mike



School Board Opposes Canton Apartments

How Tan Are You?

Thursday, May 27, 2010

All is well.

Obamacare’s Cooked Books and the “Doc Fix”



The Obama administration continues to insist (see this post from White House budget director Peter Orszag) that the recently enacted health-care law will reduce the federal budget deficit by $100 billion over ten years and by ten times that amount in the second decade of implementation. They cite the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimate for the final legislation to back their claims.

And it is undeniably true that CBO says the legislation, as written, would reduce the federal budget deficit by $124 billion over ten years from the health-related provisions of the new law.

But that’s not whole story about Obamacare’s budgetary implications — not by a long shot.

For starters, CBO is not the only game in town. In the executive branch, the chief actuary of the Medicare program is supposed to provide the official health-care cost projections for the administration — at least he always has in the past. His cost estimate for the new health law differs in important ways from the one provided by CBO and calls into question every major contention the administration has advanced about the bill. The president says the legislation will slow the pace of rising costs; the actuary says it won’t. The president says people will get to keep their job-based plans if they want to; the actuary says 14 million people will lose their employer coverage, many of whom would certainly rather keep it than switch into an untested program. The president says the new law will improve the budget outlook; in so many words, the chief actuary says, don’t bet on it.

All of this helps explain why the president of the United States would be so sensitive about the release of the actuary’s official report that he would dispatch political subordinates to undermine it with the media.

It’s not the chief actuary’s assignment to provide estimates of non-Medicare-related tax provisions, so his cost projections for Obamacare do not capture all of the needed budget data to estimate the full impact on the budget deficit. But it’s possible to back into such a figure by using the Joint Tax Committee’s estimates for the tax provisions missing from the chief actuary’s report. When that is done, $50 billion of deficit reduction found in the CBO report is wiped out.

And that’s before the other gimmicks, double counting, and hidden costs are exposed and removed from the accounting, too.

For instance, this week House and Senate Democratic leaders are rushing to approve a massive, budget-busting, tax-and-spending bill. Among its many provisions is a three-year Medicare “doc fix,” which will effectively undo the scheduled 21 percent cut in Medicare physician fees set to go into effect in June. CBO says this version of the “doc fix” would add $65 billion to the budget deficit over 10 years. The entire bill would pile another $134 billion onto the national debt over the next decade.

If the Obama administration gets its way, this three-year physician-fee fix will eventually get extended again, and also without offsets. Over a full 10-year period, an unfinanced “doc fix” would add $250 to $400 billion to the budget deficit, depending on design and who is doing the cost projection (CBO or the actuary).

Administration officials and their outside enthusiasts (see here) say the Democratic Congress shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix” because everybody knows a fix needs to be enacted and therefore should go into the baseline. (By the way, the history of the sustainable growth rate [SGR] that Ezra Klein provides at the link above is a misleading one. The SGR was a replacement for a predecessor program that too had run off the rails — the so-called “Volume Performance Standard” enacted by a Democratic Congress in 1989.)

But supporting a “doc fix” is not the same as supporting an unfinanced one on a long-term or permanent basis. Not everybody in Congress is for running up more debt to pay for a permanent repeal of the scheduled fee cuts, which is why such a repeal has never been passed before. In the main, the previous administration and Congresses worked to find ways to prevent Medicare fee cuts while finding offsets to pay for it.

But that’s not the policy of the Obama administration. The truth is the president and his allies in Congress worked overtime to pull together every Medicare cut they could find — nearly $500 billion in all over ten years — and put them into the health law to pay for the massive entitlement expansion they so coveted. They could have used those cuts to pay for the “doc fix” if they had wanted to, as well as for a slightly less expansive health program. But that’s not what they did. That wasn’t their priority. They chose instead to break their agenda into multiple bills, and “pay for” the massive health entitlement (on paper) while claiming they shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix.” But it doesn’t matter to taxpayers if they enact their agenda in one, two, or ten pieces of legislation. The total cost is still the same. All of the supposed deficit reduction now claimed from the health-care law is more than wiped out by the Democrats’ insistent march to borrow and spend for Medicare physician fees.

And the games don’t end there. CBO’s cost estimate assumes $70 billion in deficit reduction from the so-called “CLASS Act.” This is the new voluntary long-term-care insurance program that hitched a ride on Obamacare because it too created the illusion of deficit reduction. People who sign up for the insurance must pay premiums for at least five years before they are eligible to draw benefits. By definition, then, at start-up and for several years thereafter, there will be a surplus in the program as new entrants pay premiums and very few people draw benefits. That’s the source of the $70 billion “savings.” But the premiums collected in the program’s early years will be needed very soon to pay actual claims. Not only that, but the new insurance program is so poorly designed it too will need a federal bailout. So this is far worse than a benign sleight of hand. The Democrats have created a budgetary monster even as they used misleading estimates to tout their budgetary virtue.

There is much more, of course. CBO’s cost projections don’t reflect the administrative costs required to micromanage the health system from the Department of Health and Human Services. The number of employers looking to dump their workers into subsidized insurance is almost certainly going to be much higher than either CBO or the chief actuary now projects. And the price inflation from the added demand of the newly entitled isn’t factored into any of the official cost projections.

We’ve seen this movie before. When the government creates a new entitlement, politicians lowball the costs to get the law passed, and then blame someone else when program costs soar. Witness Massachusetts. Most Americans are sensible enough to know already that’s what can be expected next with Obamacare.

Fix Health Care Policy



Health Care Reform

'Top kill' stops gulf oil leak for now, official says

Officials are cautionary but say drilling fluid has blocked oil and gas temporarily. Engineers plan to begin pumping in cement and then will seal the well.

Reporting from Houma, La. —Engineers have at least temporarily stopped the flow of oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico from a gushing BP well, the federal government's top oil-spill commander, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said Thursday morning.

The "top kill" effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers, had pumped enough drilling fluid to block oil and gas spewing from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well was very low, he said, but persisting. The top kill effort is not complete, officials caution.

Once engineers had reduced the well pressure to zero, they were to begin pumping cement into the hole to entomb the well. To help in that effort, he said, engineers also were pumping some debris into the blowout preventer at the top of the well.

As of early Thursday morning, neither government nor BP officials had declared the effort a success yet, pending the completion of the cementing and sealing of the well.

Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well had run out of the fluid, or "mud," and that a second ship was on the way. He said he was encouraged by the progress.

"We'll get this under control," he said.

Allen also said that, later Thursday, an interagency team would release a revised estimate of how much oil had flowed from the well into the gulf before the "top kill" effort began. The Coast Guard had estimated the flow at 5,000 barrels a day, but independent estimates suggested it was much higher, perhaps tens of thousands of barrels a day.

LA Times



Gulf Coast Oil Spill

Madison’s L-3 awarded $18M contract

L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace, LLC, Madison is being awarded an $18,074,568 modification to a previously awarded indefinite-delivery requirements contract (N00019-04-D-0131) to provide for additional logistics services and materials for organizational, intermediate and depot-level maintenance of 13 T39N and 6 T-39G aircraft located at the Naval Air Station (NAS), Pensacola, Fla.

In addition, this modification provides for aircraft intermediate maintenance services in support of Chief of Naval Air Training aircraft and transient aircraft at NAS Pensacola, Fla., and NAS Corpus Christi, Texas.

The estimated level of effort for this modification is 72,657 man-hours. Work will be performed in Pensacola, Fla. (75 percent), and Corpus Christi, Texas (25 percent), and is expected to be completed in September 2010. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.

MBJ

Bug: Stupid Baby Names

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Students sue former Manchester Academy teacher accused of abuse

Accusations are mounting against a former Yazoo City private school teacher charged this week with having inappropriate contact with students.

Several former and current students of Manchester Academy are accusing Richard Darden of administering physical exams during which he touched their genitalia even though he was not a licensed physician.

The exams took place at his home, the private school and the Yazoo City Medical Clinic, according to the civil suit filed today in Yazoo County Circuit Court.

"Plaintiffs and their parents were advised that the physicals were required to be conducted by Darden in order for the students to be eligible to participate in football and in other sports at Manchester," the suit states.

The lawsuit also alleges the school allowed Darden, then a ninth-grade biology teacher and dean of students, to act as an athletic coach and trainer and use his home as a "clubhouse" for athletic teams where male students would shower after games or spend the night.

Attorney Cynthia Stewart, who is representing Darden in his criminal case, could not be reached for comment.

Darden resigned May 7 from the school, where he had worked for more than 25 years. The lawsuit alleges Darden's resignation coincided with several male students' discovery of a secret room in Darden's home that "was used to voyeuristically watch minor boys."

The Yazoo County Sheriff's Department said earlier this week it had obtained an arrest warrant for Darden, who faces three counts of voyeurism and three counts of child exploitation.

Darden reportedly checked himself into an unidentified rehabilitation facility shortly after his resignation and before he could be questioned by authorities.

Assistant District Attorney Steven Waldrup said today he has not been notified whether Darden is still in rehab or in law enforcement custody. Sheriff Tommy Vaughn did not return calls for comment this morning.

If convicted, Darden could face 40 years in prison on each exploitation count and five years on each voyeurism count.

In addition to Darden, the suit names Manchester Academy, the clinic and the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools Inc. as defendants. The suit alleges the entities allowed Darden to abuse his position of authority, fostered an environment where employees did not report questionable contact or behavior and failed to investigate the students' claims of abuse.

Manchester Academy Headmaster Bryan Dendy would not comment. He referred questions to the school’s attorney, Jeff Walker.

“I have not seen the complaint so I cannot comment,” Walker said.

The Clarion Ledger


Manchester/Darden Scandal

Related Posts: Manchester Teacher Caught Peeping Refuses to Turn Himself In

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Obama to send 1,200 troops to US-Mexico border

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will send 1,200 National Guard troops to boost security along the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said Tuesday, pre-empting Republican plans to try to force votes on such a deployment.

Obama will also request $500 million for border protection and law enforcement activities, according to lawmakers and administration officials. The moves come as chances for action on comprehensive immigration reform, Obama's long-stated goal, look increasingly small in this election year. But Obama is under pressure to do something with the issue front and center after Arizona's passage of a tough crackdown law.

The National Guard troops will work on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, analysis and training, and support efforts to block drug trafficking. They will temporarily supplement border patrol agents until Customs and Border Protection can recruit and train additional officers and agents to serve on the border, an administration official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of a public announcement, disclosed the plans shortly after Obama met at the Capitol with Republican senators who pressed him on immigration issues including the question of sending National Guard troops to the border.

Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl have been urging such a move, and Republicans planned to try to require it as an amendment to a pending war spending bill.

In a speech Tuesday on the Senate floor, McCain said the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border has "greatly deteriorated." He called for 6,000 National Guard troops to be sent, and he asked for $250 million more to pay for them.

"I appreciate the additional 1,200 being sent ... as well as an additional $500 million, but it's simply not enough," McCain said.

Democrats were considering countering McCain's amendment with a proposal of their own after disclosure of the White House plans.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., said that the administration would announce the deployments late in the day Tuesday. But the White House wasn't expected to formally send the spending request to Capitol Hill until after the Memorial Day recess, said Kenneth Baer, spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Homeland Security and Pentagon officials have been jousting over the possible National Guard deployment for the better part of a year. Pentagon officials worried about perceptions that the U.S. was militarizing the border and did not want Guard troops to perform law enforcement duties.

In 2006, President George W. Bush sent thousands of troops to the border to perform support duties that tie up immigration agents. But that program has since ended, and politicians in border states have called for troops to be sent there to curb human and drug smuggling and to deal with Mexico's drug violence that has been spilling over into the United States.

More than 20,000 Border Patrol agents are deployed now, mostly along the Southern border.

The Sun Herald

17 States Now Filing Versions of Arizona's Immigration Bill SB 1070

One of America's national organizations fighting against illegal immigration is announcing that 17 states are now filing versions of Arizona's SB 1070 law which is designed to help local police enforce America's existing immigration laws.

Numerous national and local polls indicated that 60-81% of Americans support local police enforcing immigration laws.

"Our national network of activists have been working overtime trying to help the state of Arizona and the brave Arizonans who have passed this bill," said William Gheen, President of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC. "Arizona no longer stands alone and we have now documented state lawmakers filing, or announcing they will file, versions of the Arizona bill in seventeen states! We will not stop until all states are protected from invasion as required by the US Constitution."

ALIPAC has documented the following 17 states are following Arizona's lead in response to citizen pressure.

ARKANSAS, IDAHO, INDIANA, MARYLAND, MICHIGAN, MINNESOTA, MISSOURI, NEBRASKA, NEVADA, NEW JERSEY, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, PENNSYLVANIA, RHODE ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) has helped to pass some form of immigration enforcement legislation in over 30 states, while the group has also gained a national reputation for defeating legislation designed to give licenses, in-state tuition, and other taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens in 20 states.

ALIPAC's President, William Gheen is a former campaign consultant, Legislative Assistant, state lobbyist, and Assistant Sgt-At-Arms staffer in North Carolina who has turned his local experiences into a political battle plan by driving the national operations of ALIPAC.

"The Federal government has been hijacked by special interests that are neglectful of their duties and even hostile towards the rightful citizens of America," said William Gheen. "It is incumbent upon our states to protect American lives, property, jobs, wages, security, and health, when the Executive Branch fails to honor its Constitutional responsibility to do so by enforcing our existing border and immigration laws."

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC lobbied state lawmakers and AZ Governor Jan Brewer to pass SB 1070, which strictly prohibits racial profiling while empowering local police officers to enforce immigration laws.

ALIPAC's activists have been working for almost four weeks now to encourage state lawmakers across the nation to file versions of SB 1070, to help alleviate boycotts and other political antagonism towards Arizona. Citizen activist are being asked to call, e-mail, visit, and fax their state lawmakers to encourage them to support existing SB 1070 type bills or to file them as soon as possible.

For a list of the 17 states joining Arizona's push for this kind of legislation, and to view the associated documentation, please visit our tracking link for updated information at....

Americans for Legal Immigration

Investigation finds terrorist slipping in through Mexico via Europe to South America

This report by Atlanta's Channel 2 television station, shows the evidence many have been talking about for over a year now. We are leaving ourselves vulnerable to attack.

Channel 2 Investigates U.S. Border Security--Part One

Channel 2 Investigates U.S. Border Security--Part Two

Congressman Harper Floor Speech: Democrats' Budget Failure; Republican Solutions

Is there a double standard being applied with Tulane's Madison campus?

Tulane’s satellite campus raises questions

GAUTIER — Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College President Willis Lott is finding that not all out-of-state institutions face the same scrutiny when they open campuses in Mississippi.

Last March, MGCCC had plans to bring the University of South Alabama to its Gautier campus, in the space that had previously been leased by the University of Southern Mississippi. The decision brought up public opposition from state officials. Yet as New Orleans-based Tulane University plans to open a satellite campus in Madison in June, the same opposition has not arisen.

The Sun Herald reports some differences exist between the two situations. Tulane University already has a satellite campus in Mississippi in Biloxi. Also Tulane is leasing space from the city of Madison, while USA planned to lease space from a community college that had previously leased to an in-state university.

MBJ

Manchester teacher caught peeping refuses to turn himself in.

Former Yazoo Co. teacher wanted in voyeurism case


Arrest warrant includes three counts of child exploitation

YAZOO CITY — Yazoo County officials want to arrest a former high school teacher they say behaved inappropriately with students, but they can't find him.

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Richard Darden, who until recently taught biology at Manchester Academy for more than 25 years, on three counts of child exploitation and three counts of voyeurism.

Authorities said Darden had a special room in his home that allowed him to secretly watch young men as they dressed and undressed in the bathroom.

Darden, who resigned from Manchester earlier this month, faces 40 years in prison on each exploitation count and five years on each voyeurism count.

After allegations were raised at school on the morning of May 7, Darden checked into a rehabilitation facility before authorities could question him.

"They involved three male students that are all underage that went to Manchester. None of the actions that occurred were on school property," Sheriff Tommy Vaughn said during a news conference on Monday.

Cynthia Stewart, Darden's attorney, wouldn't say where her client is being treated or what he is being treated for.

"We've made arrangements to handle it appropriately, and I can't comment beyond that," Stewart told The Clarion-Ledger.

"She knows the smartest thing to do is to accompany him up here to face the charges," Vaughn said.

Yazoo County law enforcement authorities said if Stewart doesn't tell them where Darden is within the next week or two, they'll have her in court.

Three male student athletes - whose average age is around 16, authorities said - found the peeping area and confronted Darden on May 6. That evening, Darden reportedly went to his minister before going to the school's headmaster, Bryan Dendy.

Dennis Moulder, chief investigator for the Yazoo County Sheriff's Department, has talked to more than 100 people in the community since the case broke.

Darden, who isn't married, was popular with students. Authorities said students often hung out at his home, appear to have dropped by unannounced and may have called him when they had been drinking alcohol.
The Clarion Ledger

Monday, May 24, 2010

Hubris: A Danger to the Tea Party Movement

by Rob Natelson

The disastrous fallout from Rand Paul’s incautious MSNBC interview shortly after his triumph in the Kentucky Republican primary underlines a real danger for the Tea Party movement as we move toward the 2010 elections.

Any political pro could have told Paul not to give that interview. If it had not been a moment of heady triumph, Paul would have known that himself.

But triumph has a way of making people careless.

“Hubris” generally is thought of as wanton pride. For daily purposes, though, it better applies to situations when, fresh from victory, we become a little careless. “I’m on a roll,” the emotions tell us, “the normal rules don’t apply to me any more.”

Paul’s misstep is not the only example. Here in Montana, one of our county Tea Party groups was going from triumph to triumph. So they decided to sponsor a huge “Liberty Convention” — but in doing so, they disregarded some of the hard lessons Montana conservatives have learned over the years.

First, they assumed that people with full-time jobs and families to support would attend a two-day event. [Lesson broken: People with real-world lives can’t afford to spend much time at political rallies—especially not overnight. The big Tea Party crowds of the past year are an anomaly, and probably will not continue. Anyway, the highly competent main-street citizens who are the back-bone of the Tea Party movement are better employed on projects other than sitting in audiences and holding signs.]

Second, the organizers predicted to the press that 5000 attendees would gather in this sparsely populated state. [Lesson broken: Never give an optimistic attendance prediction to the press.]

Third, the organizers chose a huge venue in the most liberal city in the state on the most liberal university campus in the state. [Lessons broken: (1) It’s better to crowd into a smaller facility than make a larger one look empty, and (2) if you want to catch fish, fish where the fish are.]

Fourth: they featured several speakers from the far fringes of political life. [Lesson broken: feature speakers with wide appeal.]

Fifth: They apparently did not seek or follow guidance from those with political organizing experience. [Lesson broken: If you want political success, do what the our Founders did: include experienced politicians; you don’t have to let them take over.] [Disclosure: I was one of those excluded from planning or speaking at the event.]

The results were deeply embarrassing for the Tea Party movement. Instead of the 5000 predicted, only about 250 people showed up, a point emphasized again and again by the local press. Not surprisingly, moreover, newspaper reports featured some of the weirdest comments made there.

Tea Party activists must remember that they are now playing in the Big Leagues. The latter-day Tories who control the federal government and most of the national media will exploit any available opening to discredit and destroy the movement.

Avoid hubris. The task has just begun.

Rob Natelson is a long-time Professor of Law at the University of Montana and a leading constitutional scholar. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on the Necessary and Proper Clause to be published by Cambridge University Press. He is also the author of The Original Constitution: What it Actually Said and Meant, published by the Tenth Amendment Center. Professor Natelson will shortly be leaving academia to work full-time at the Independence Institute.

Eric Adams is right: young black men mistake dehumanization for authenticity

BY: Stanley Crouch

Before New York State Sen. Eric Adams went into politics he became known for shooting off his mouth about how well the New York Police Department handled its business. As a member of 100 Black Men In Law Enforcement, Adams (above) was always there, standing at a press conference to question actions by the armed people in blue whose job it is to protect the citizenry.

His latest controversial focus is on fashion - and he has become one of those who are dismissed as "the fashion police," meaning adults who are convinced that something is wrong with young black men who walk though the world with their pants down so far that the public is offered more than a peek at their underwear.

In a video called "Stop the Sag," Adams looks handsome and dapper. His command of the language is clear, and an unavoidable seriousness seems to steam up through his superbly chosen dress. He is clearly beyond any kind of simple-minded joke, and unable to be dismissed by anyone anxious to write off those who seem to represent some kind of a diverse threat to the status quo.

The startling point of "Stop The Sag" is that stereotypic and denigrating images of ethnic groups usually come from outside of the group itself. We see a number of the minstrel and anti-Semitic images meant to make Negroes, Jews, and others seem closer to cartoons than humanity. The reductive joke always precedes the boot of the bigot.

Now is another time, Adams makes clear as he proceeds to take on the way that too many young black men have been misled by the opportunistic monsters of hip-hop and the prison world. Adams recognizes that this absurd fashion makes it difficult to give these young men the "respect" that seems to obsess them.





Louisiana legislator Ricky Hardy just had a bill banning the fashion rejected, as it should have been. Having the state restrict freedom is going too far. But public comprehension and condemnation of self-destructive behavior is not too far at all.

We have a popular culture that misleads the young as it bolsters their commitment to narcissism and opposition to authority. The mentality of the American adolescent is that he or she has a right to be respected no matter how offensive what is done might seem to others.

The kids are right in that the freedom to offend is part of our democracy. But no other ethnic group ever concluded that terrible behavior was a version of ethnic authenticity. That is a black American innovation in cultural imbecility.

As rapper Chuck D has observed, when one witnesses young black men screaming the N-word at each other in public places, it is obvious that we have a problem confusing obnoxiousness with authenticity.

The answer to the problem might be far simpler than Eric Adams or anyone else has actually considered. Trying to convince the men might be arguing up the wrong tree.

Once young women cease accepting the "culture" of sagging pants and refuse to go out with men who look like fools, we will all be shocked by just how fast it will all end.

The sensibilities of women are always central to what we call civilization anywhere in the world. Even in the inner city.

NY Daily

Tragedy in Amish Country: Living Levi's Example

By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson

I first met Levi almost 20 years ago. He was about 12. We had just purchased our land from his parents, Jake and Nancy. Being old-order Amish, Jake and Nancy needed a ride to the attorney’s office, so we drove them and new-born Chris, their youngest, to finalize the transaction. Thus began a very special friendship between two families.

Every Christmas Eve, our little family of three and Jake and Nancy’s larger family (five children at the beginning, but more recently including four daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, and 13 grandchildren) gather for Christmas fellowship.

Levi is the second of Jake and Nancy’s five children. Friendly, kind, very bright, soft-spoken, strong and gentle, he has always been a gem. I can still picture, during that first year of friendship, Levi sitting next to my daughter on a couch in Jake and Nancy’s house. Karin, who was about 15, was holding a book or magazine. Levi leaned over to get a better look, resting his head on Karin’s shoulder. It was a completely unself-conscious moment for both of them, just two pure and innocent youngsters sharing the joy of a story. Nancy remarked, “I know we don’t have photographs, but I’d love to have a photo of that.”

Levi was an avid reader. I shared dozens of the books that I had read as a young teenager with him and his siblings.

About ten years ago, we attended the wedding dinner celebrating Levi’s marriage to Katie. We were two of five “English” (that’s the word the Amish use for all of us who aren’t Amish) packed in among 200 or 300 Amish.

Katie was a perfect match for Levi, a veritable angel of sweetness and quiet steadiness. A couple of years later, they welcomed Sally into the world. Of all of Jake and Nancy’s 13 grandchildren, it was Sally who bonded most closely with our family. The highlight of her year was to draw pictures to give us at our Christmas Eve gathering and to help my Eileen in the kitchen. Like her Aunt Lizzie before her, she was enthralled by the “miracle” of the “baked Alaska” going into the hot oven and the ice cream not melting.

Five years later (about three years ago) little Anna joined the family. The four of them lived their version of the American dream, keeping to the simple Amish life, placing worship of God and love of their families above all else. It was idyllic.

Two weeks ago, Jake and Nancy were over for dessert. Eileen told Nancy that she would be going over to visit her buddy, Sally, on the following Monday. It wasn’t to be.

On that Saturday, May 8, the unthinkable happened. Levi went fishing with his brother Gideon, one of those simple enjoyments that always remain special to these unspoiled people. It was a miserable day, cold, windy, and rainy. At home, Katie went to light a fire. Somehow the can of kerosene ignited. Katie, Sally, and Anna all quickly succumbed.

The next day was visitation. It was at Levi’s next-door neighbor’s house. I have never seen such gloom and grief in my life. Dozens of Amish were quietly and tearfully sitting on rows of benches—men in one group, women in the other, as is their custom.

I could barely recognize Levi, so transfigured were his features by sorrow. We shared a quiet, private word. Jake, his father, was sitting next to him. He couldn’t speak. I just stayed by his side for a few minutes, hand gently touching him in wordless sympathy. Later a tearful Nancy softly voiced her deep faith to Eileen and me, bravely affirming, “God is in control.”

I went to visit Jake and Nancy two days after the funeral. They reported that Levi was trying to buoy up everyone’s spirits. The next day, I spent a half-hour with Levi, and found that to be the case. Though still trying to come to grips with this inexplicable calamity, he continues to be a loving soul, caring deeply for those around him. He has already learned the secret discovered by Job in the Bible, that the key to recovery and renewal from grievous affliction is to pray for one’s friends.

A tragedy of this magnitude puts things in perspective. Why do we waste our scarce and precious time on earth with trivial concerns and petty quarrels?

One of my college classmates told me that her dad’s advice on her wedding day was, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Amen. Let us all honor the gift of life by forgiving and forgetting our misunderstandings, small and great, and use our brief time on earth to do a better job of loving each other. Let us follow Levi’s example.

— Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson is an adjunct faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College.

More Americans support repeal of Health Care Law

Health Care Law


63% Favor Repeal of National Health Care Plan

Support for repeal of the new national health care plan has jumped to its highest level ever. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of U.S. voters now favor repeal of the plan passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Obama in March.

Prior to today, weekly polling had shown support for repeal ranging from 54% to 58%.

Currently, just 32% oppose repeal.

Read more at Rasmussen Reports

Healthcare Bait and Switch AKA Lying

The Obama Administration Now Admits Their Health Care Plan Will Lead To Rationing


Back when Obama was trying to convince Congress to destroy America's health care system in the name of expanding government and giving Democrats more power, his administration claimed that there would be no rationing under the program:

“No one here is talking about rationing,” said Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office for Management and Budget. “What we are talking about, look at the source of that 30 percent or so in potential efficiency gains in the health system are from unnecessary procedures, unnecessary days in hospital, unnecessary applications of technology and what have you.”

But now that they've forced it through, their tune has changed quite a bit:

Read the entire post at Right Wing News

Friday, May 21, 2010

Can I get an Amen?!

I'm not a smoker. I don't want to inhale second hand smoke. I won't go to a place that forces me to do so in order to do business there. That's my choice, and how the free market works.

But I have written before, believe today, and think I will still believe tomorrow, that the government has no place regulating what happens in a private business. Zoning decides if a business fits an area. But, once that is decided no elected official has any right to tell that company how to conduct business.

Kudos to the Aldermen in Booneville! 
Aldermen vote down city smoking ban


BOONEVILLE — The Booneville Board of Aldermen has voted down a proposed ban on smoking in public places.

The vote was 3-2.

The motion to pass the ordinance was made by Alderman David Bolen and seconded by Alderman Wilda Pounds. Aldermen Harold Eaton, Mark McCoy and Jeff Williams voted against the measure.

Aldermen who were contacted by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal chose not to comment.

Business owners said they felt it should be up to a business to decide if smoking would be permitted, and how to accommodate individuals who choose not to smoke.

Several nonsmokers who opposed the ordinance said although they do not smoke, passing the law would be another infringement on individual rights.
Mississippi Business Journal

Bug--Getting Up For Work

BP LAUNCHES LIVE WEBCAM OF RISER FLOW

Today BP launched a live webcam of the riser flow. The webcam can be viewed at http://www.bp.com/.

BP has been providing a live feed to government entities over the last two weeks – including the US Department of the Interior, US Coast Guard, Minerals Management Service (MMS) through the Unified Area Command center in Louisiana – as well as to BP and industry scientists and engineers involved in the effort to stop the spill.

BP continues its work to collect oil by the riser insertion tube tool (RITT) containment system. Once on the drillship Discoverer Enterprise, the oil is then being stored and gas is being flared. The RITT remains a new technology and both its continued operation and its effectiveness in capturing the oil and gas remain uncertain.

BP has, and will continue, to support the government’s work to determine the rate of flow from the well. Since the Deepwater Horizon accident, the flow rate estimate has been established by the Unified Command. Throughout the process, BP has made it a priority to quickly and consistently provide the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Coast Guard with requested information for the joint command structure to make as accurate an assessment as possible of the rate of flow.

The rate of flow from the riser is determined in a number of ways and by a number of variables. For instance, while the original riser was 19.5 inches in diameter prior to the Deepwater Horizon accident, damage sustained during the accident distorted the diameter at the end of the pipe by about 30 per cent. In addition, a drill pipe currently trapped inside the riser has reduced the flow area by an additional 10 per cent. Thus, some third party estimates of flow, which assume a 19.5 inch diameter, are inaccurate. As well, there is natural gas in the riser. Data on the hydrocarbons recovered to date suggests that the proportion of gas in the plume exiting the riser is, on average, approximately 50 percent.

To provide further specificity on the flow rate, the US government has created a Flow Rate Technical Team (FRTT) to develop a more precise estimate. The FRTT includes the US Coast Guard, NOAA, MMS, Department of Energy (DOE) and the US Geological Survey. The FRTT is mandated to produce a report by close of business on Saturday, May 22.

To support this, BP is in the process of providing FRTT with all requested information, including diagrams and schematics showing release points, amounts of oil and gas currently being collected on the Discoverer Enterprise, and subsea video of the oil release point.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Mississippi Paddler Announces Camellia Home Health and Hospice as Gold Level Sponsor for Alzheimer’s Fundraiser

Flora, MS. May 19, 2010—Keith Plunkett, Mississippi paddler and organizer of Lucy’s Revenge, announced today that Camellia Home Health and Hospice will be a Gold Level Sponsor of the yearlong project to raise funds for Alzheimer’s research and support services. Camellia Home Health and Hospice is based out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi and has 18 locations from Jackson to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“I am extremely excited to welcome Camellia Home Health as a partner for this project,” said Plunkett. “They understand firsthand the toll Alzheimer’s is taking on our seniors, and the need to fight this disease.”

In Mississippi alone, 53,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease with an additional 148,000 caregivers providing unpaid care.

“As Keith begins his journey, it is our hope to get our local offices involved in drumming up support and participating in the paddling experience,” said Camellia President Abb Payne. “I look forward to working with him, and the Alzheimer’s Association to further their efforts.”

The effort will begin in July on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and will take Plunkett on a journey across 5 regions of the state to paddle waterways that are both popular destinations and underutilized opportunities. During the trips, the Yazoo County native and Flora resident will tell the stories of Alzheimer’s patients and caregivers in each region, and will highlight ongoing efforts by the Alzheimer’s Association and medical professionals to defeat the disease.

Over the next two months leading up to the kickoff on July 10 in Ocean Springs, Plunkett will speak with groups across the state to raise awareness, and to secure donations. He has set a goal of 600 miles, or roughly 120 miles per region, and hopes to entice a few others to join him on some of the excursions, including Payne.

“Abb told me he would like to join me on a few trips, and I look forward to it,” said Plunkett. “Paddling is a great family friendly sport, and we have so many resources in Mississippi to enjoy. I welcome anyone that wants to join in.”

Work is ongoing to outfit the current website, www.lucysrevenge.com, with a real-time map that uses GPS to track Plunkett’s whereabouts, and a website has been setup by the Alzheimer’s Association to begin collecting donations. A Paddling Partners Program has also been established for those who would like to form paddling teams and compete to raise money for the project.

The project is named in memory of Lucy Plunkett, who suffered from Alzheimer’s before succumbing to the disease in 1994. The matriarch of the Plunkett family reared six children, and oversaw the upbringing of 9 grandchildren. She was a housewife and an active member of her church and the rural community of Little Yazoo in Yazoo County.

Here is your MAGIC diet pill!


In eight easy steps you can get rid of those unwanted extra pounds!

Just one problem . . . your too lazy to do it and too set in your ways to stop your pitiful eating habits!

This is why American's (especially Mississippians) are so fat. We're all about hard work, as long as somebody else is doing it. Most of us won't even walk to the mailbox. And we refuse to eat much of anything not loaded down with grease, fat, butter, salt and sugar. Heck, even our vegetables are unhealthy!

Bottom line is if what you're doing isn't working, then you should stop what your doing. The Chinese have it right. I knew there was a reason I was always hungry walking around NYC China Town.

Eight Reason Why The Chinese Are Skinnier Than You

Items 1, 3, 4 and 6 are pretty obvious.

Item 2 is, as well. But, the thought of it has me seeing visions of my Mama standing over me threatening to make me eat the unfinished morsels for breakfast. I'm working through that with self counseling (Thanks Mama!).

Item 5 is a no brainer, too. But so hard to do when you work until 9 on the days your not taking your kids to soccer or baseball game double headers.

Number 7? Please. I know people that will have the driver drop them off at the front door of the All-You-Can-Eat, so they don't have to walk that long 30 yards from the parking lot to the front door.

Number 8 is the only one here that is absolutely NOT going to make it in to any of my diet plans. One thing I know about good Ole' Mississippian's, we'll love you to death with food, literally. But, if you tell us we look fat in that new outfit we picked up from Wal-mart, your likely not going to see our happy side, and may, in fact, leave the whole exchange with something Ajax won't take off!

Harper discusses FEMA flap in Yazoo on Fox and Friends (Video).

U.S. Representative Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) joins Steve, Gretchen and Brian live on FOX & Friends to discuss a recent incident in Yazoo County involving local volunteers and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees. Volunteers with faith-based organizations were asked to change their shirts because of a religious message on the shirt, before they were allowed to proceed with an interview with a FEMA employee. This interview hits on the details of this episode and Congressman Harpers encouraging conversation with FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate.


 



Related Posts: Gregg Harper upset with FEMA over T-Shirt Flap
Michelle Malkin addresses FEMA T-Shirt Flap

Michelle Malkin addresses FEMA T-Shirt Flap

FEMA attempts to whitewash faith-based volunteers


A few years ago, economist Arthur Brooks wrote a must-read book on volunteerism in America titled, “Who Really Cares.” An excerpt:

The conventional wisdom runs like this: Liberals are charitable because they advocate government redistribution of money in the name of social justice; conservatives are uncharitable because they oppose these policies. But note the sleight of hand: Government spending, according to this logic, is a form of charity.

Let us be clear: Government spending is not charity. It is not a voluntary sacrifice by individuals. No matter how beneficial or humane it might be, no matter how necessary it is for providing public services, it is still the obligatory redistribution of tax revenues. Because government spending is not charity, sanctimonious yard signs do not prove that the bearers are charitable or that their opponents are selfish. (On the contrary, a public attack on the integrity of those who don’t share my beliefs might more legitimately constitute evidence that I am the uncharitable one.)

To evaluate accurately the charity difference between liberals and conservatives, we must consider private, voluntary charity. How do liberals and conservatives compare in their private giving and volunteering? Beyond strident slogans and sarcastic political caricatures, what, exactly, do the data tell us?

The data tell us that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. In most ways, political conservatives are not personally less charitable than political liberals—they are more so.

…People living in conservative states volunteer more than people in liberal states. In 2003, the residents of the top five “Bush states” were 51 percent more likely to volunteer than those of the bottom five, and they volunteered an average of 12 percent more total hours each year. Residents of these Republican-leaning states volunteered more than twice as much for religious organizations, but also far more for secular causes. For example, they were more than twice as likely to volunteer to help the poor.

I bolded that last part as a segue to this stomach-turning story from the Associated Press about how a FEMA official taping interviews with volunteers helping tornado victims in Mississippi was so sick of meeting faith-based volunteers in the area that he asked two women to change their shirts to hide their religious affiliation:

The top officer for FEMA said one of the agency’s videographers was “absolutely wrong” to ask Mississippi church volunteers not to wear religious T-shirts for a video about tornado cleanup.

Angela Lott and Pamela Wedgeworth, who are sisters, told The Associated Press that the FEMA worker videotaping the cleanup on Saturday in the small town of Ebenezer asked them to do on-camera interviews but requested that they change out of their T-shirts because of a Salvation Army logo.

“He said, ‘We would like to ask you to change your shirt because we don’t want anything faith-based,’” Lott said Tuesday.

Lott said she asked him why he didn’t want to feature faith groups.

“All he said was, ‘We’ve done that hundreds of times,’” Lott said.

No surprise there.

If only the religious volunteers had worn ACORN or SEIU or “God is Dead” t-shirts, the FEMA employee would have featured them in full-length documentaries and bought them steak dinners.

Michelle Malkin

Work progressing on new station

By the end of the year, the Adam Weisenberger Memorial Fire Station should be in operation on Stribling Road.

In the planning stages for several years but delayed by snags over landing a location, the station becomes the second one operated by the South Madison Fire Protection District and should mean a drop in insurance rates for homeowners in the district.

"I can't wait to see a brand new truck sitting in that brand new station," said Bill Weisenberger, head of the fire district board and the father of Adam.

Adam Weisenberger, 19, was killed when he was tending to victims of a wreck on I-55 in 2002. He became an official volunteer with the South Madison district when he was eligible at age 18 but had spent years hanging around the Gluckstadt station where his father was, and still is, a volunteer. County officials agreed to name the new station in his honor.

"This is a wonderful tribute to our son," Weisenberger said at the recent ground-breaking for the station, located just past Lake Caroline.

"By naming this for one volunteer who gave his life is something we should all appreciate," Supervisor Karl Banks said at the recent groundbreaking.

Read the entire story at The Madison County Herald

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

TEA Party Victories show organization has worked

TEA Party participants nationwide have taken a beating from late night comedians, Democrat name callers, and even the President. But, recent events in Utah, Florida and now, Kentucky, prove that the organization has worked. And, come November, that bodes well for some historic changes.

In Tea Party Victory, Rand Paul Takes Ky. Senate Primary

WASHINGTON – Rand Paul, one of the early leaders of the Tea Party movement, won the Republican nomination for Senate from Kentucky Tuesday night, delivering a powerful blow to the party’s establishment and offering the clearest evidence yet of the strength of the anti-government sentiment simmering at the grass-roots level.

Mr. Paul, the son of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, easily defeated Trey Grayson, the Secretary of State from Kentucky. Kentucky voters turned against Mr. Grayson even though he had the support of the state’s best-known political leader – Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader.

The result appeared less a rebuke of Mr. McConnell – who by most indications remains popular in his home—than a message to the political establishment in Washington. Mr. Paul’s campaign was specifically directed against what he said were the abuses of Washington insiders in the form of excessive spending and government regulation, as he gave voice to the Tea Party movement

It remains to be seen how big a difference Tea Party support means in a general election; many Democrats, and some Republicans, believe that Mr. Paul’s views are enough out-of-the-mainstream to make him an easier target than Mr. Grayson against the Democratic nominee in the fall.

Still, it is the latest development suggesting the sway of the Tea Party movement in the Republican Party. It followed the defeat of an incumbent Republican senator, Robert Bennett of Utah, by conservative forces in that state. And it came after the recent decision by Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida to drop out of the Republican primary for Senate in the face of a surge by a Tea Party favorite, Marco Rubio.

The early verdict in Kentucky came on one of the most active political nights since the presidential election of 2008, one that was being watched nervously in Washington signs of just how strong the anti-incumbent winds are blowing across the country.

Read the entire story at The New York Times