In Virginian-Pilot, Project 21’s Dillard Calls Section 5 “Relic of the Past”

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and the “preclearance” standards the law imposes on select states and localities will undergo constitutional scrutiny on February 27 as the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court hear arguments in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder.

Project 21 member Coby Dillard — a resident of southern Virginia — considers the Section 5 standards, restrictions that judge targeted areas by the actions of people who were in charge generations ago, to be “a relic of the past, tied to conditions that have been long since reconciled and remedied… It’s time for it to fall.”

In a column published by the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Coby wrote that he gives all due respect to the Voting Rights Act for what it has done to advance civil rights, but points out that the law’s Section 5 restrictions are no longer necessary:

In the years since the VRA’s enactment, we’ve seen the election of the country’s first black president, the election and all-but-inevitable re-election of Virginia’s only black U.S. representative and a turnout of minority voters in the 2008 and 2012 elections that equals — and possibly surpasses — that of whites not only in Virginia but nationwide…

No one can argue its success.  However, to continue to require a state, or city, to ask the federal government how it can conduct its elections, based on the sins of its past, is a gross violation of the federalist principles our country was founded under.

To those, and there are many, who would liken any alteration to the Voting Rights Act to the creation of a slippery slope that will once again put the ability of blacks to vote at risk, Coby notes that America is already past the point of no return when it comes to securing peoples’ votes:

Contrary to popular opinion in the black community, the end of Section 5 will not mark a return to the discriminatory practices of our state’s and nation’s past.

The responsibility to ensure that it doesn’t is not the responsibility of the federal government; it is the responsibility of those same voters who filled the polls in 2008 and 2012.

To read Coby’s column in the Virginian-Pilot, click here.

To read about Project 21’s further involvement in the Shelby County case, click here.

Cooper Criticizes Civil Rights Enforcement Shift from "Racism Punishment" to "Racism Prevention"

Discussing problems regarding current adjudication of the almost 50-year-old Voting Rights Act, Project 21 co-chairman Horace Cooper says “it is the enforcement in the name of the preclearance standard that is the subject of the problem.”

Specifically, Horace tells his fellow MSNBC panelists that “the problem has become that the Justice Department has become more interested in racism prevention than racism punishment…. The Justice Department has decided that the number of black elected officials is a proxy for the degree of racism — or not — that’s going on.  That’s an untested premise.”

In the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Eric Holder, to be argued before the Court on 2/27/13, the justices are asked to determine if the “preclearance” standards found in Section 5 of the law that target selective states and localities for scrutiny now — based on civil rights movement-era bad behavior — is still constitutional.

Horace was joined in debate on the 2/23/13 edition of MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes” by the host, Ryan Haygood of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Shelby County resident Bishop Harry Jones, Ari Berman of The Nation magazine and former deputy attorney general Julie Fernandes.

Project 21's Cooper: Voting Law Flaw Stems from Different Standard for Different States

Explaining why it is now up to the U.S. Supreme Court to reform the Voting Rights Act in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Eric Holder, Project 21 co-chairman Horace Cooper easily dispels the rhetoric of the other MSNBC panelists — noting that the justices will be considering “specific factual issues and the legal arguments that are associated with those.”

Pointing out how the Act unfairly holds certain states and localities to a special scrutiny for generations-old bad behavior, Horace said that “the actual, serious constitutional challenge of separating some states out and treating them one way challenges the notion of state sovereignty.”

Horace was joined in this lively debate by 2/23/13 edition of MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes” by the host, Ryan Haygood of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Shelby County resident Bishop Harry Jones, Ari Berman of The Nation magazine and former deputy attorney general Julie Fernandes.

Where Did Obama’s Compassion Go? Project 21’s Hughey Newsome Wants to Know

In a recent New Visions Commentary entitled “Politics and Pawns,” Project 21 black leadership network member Hughey Newsome suggested that President Obama callously used the heartfelt concerns of the American people – like pawns on a chessboard – in 2011 to advance his economic agenda.  Now, after his re-election, it would seem that his concern for the middle and lower class isn’t as clear as it once was.

Hughey used the example of Obama’s reaching out to Americans in 2011 to push for a continued payoll tax holiday that boosted take-home pay by lowering the amount deducted from Social Security taxes.  When the White House wanted to continue the cut, people were asked to log onto Twitter and tweet to their social media friends how much the estimated $40 in savings would mean to them.

But the White House rather silently let the tax cut die after the 2012 election in the midst of fiscal cliff negotiations.  When people received their first paychecks of the new year, many of them got a rude awakening when they found they would have less to spend and save.

Wondering about this change of priorities, Hughey wrote in his New Visions piece:

Can it be assumed that there was no longer a need for this $40 to buy medication or groceries?  Are these ordinary Americans no longer struggling?  Obama no longer seemed to have the same compassion or interest…

If it was good policy to continue the payroll tax holiday in 2011 and important enough for Obama to ask people to help him demagogue their struggles, why were those same struggling Americans apparently overlooked in 2013 when the holiday expired at the same time Hollywood and the windmill industry got tax breaks?

Noting that payroll taxes shot up in 2013, and new taxes such as the $63 ObamaCare fee that many Americans will pay in 2014 to cover others with pre-existing medical conditions, Hughey questioned whether or not Obama was genuinely concerned about the plight of America’s working families or just used them at the time as a means to and end:

It seems that, in Obama’s mind, $40 was more important before 2012 than it was after 2012 — so much so that now $63 isn’t even being considered as a burden. People and their problems were apparently being used as pawns in a political game.

It’s all that much more important to consider right now because the impact of the lapsed payroll tax cut and the specter of further taxes is already being felt by businesses.

Wal-Mart is reporting dismal sales and executives at the mega-retailer are blaming the trouble on the increase in the payroll tax.  Other businesses such as Burger King and Kraft Food Group are lowering their economic growth forecasts and trying to figure out how to remain in the black in an America where fewer Americans are dining out and they are postponing big purchases due to their own feelings of economic uncertainty.

While the Obama White House is new spreading predictions of doom and gloom regarding the federal budget sequester, speculating that food safety is at risk because meat inspectors might be laid off, food companies such as Tyson Foods are already shifting to cheaper cuts of meat and cheaper chicken over expensive beef.  According to a survey by the National Retail Federation, 45.7 percent of consumers are dampening their spending habits as a result of uncertainty over their take-home pay and the overall economic situation.

Hughey continues to wonder where Obama’s concern for the plight of the little guy went to all of a sudden.  He says:

It’s disheartening to see that the Obama Administration seems to have decided that it didn’t need to leverage its influence and power to fight for ordinary Americans.

Obama usually tries position himself as a fighter for middle-class America whenever that position is politically feasible, but apparently now is not one of those times.

According to reports from Bloomberg, more than $100 billion will likely be lost from the economy in 2013 due to the expiration of the payroll tax holiday affecting around 77 percent of American households.

Considering that the payroll tax relief died during fiscal cliff negotiations when tax breaks were created for the wind energy industry and the entertainment industry, it sends a very poor signal to the hard-working public.

There is also a larger truth that Obama and his supporters still apparently do not have the fortitude to face.  Social Security, which is funded through the payroll tax, is hopelessly underfunded.

The White House has not only fallen short in addressing the shortfall of funding Social Security over the long term, but they also use any attempt by political opponents to try to fix it as a political weapon against them.  While such cynicism may generate immediate political points, it dissuades serious discussion on how to restructure the retirement safety net to ensure it is available for decades to come.

And, with the nation now facing sequestration-related across-the-board federal spending cuts, the pattern of the White House to choose politics over solid policy continues.  While the rich got a significant tax hike to avert the fiscal cliff, Obama now wants to close tax breaks all Americans enjoy.

Notwithstanding the devastating effect this will have on charitable organizations and other beneficiaries of tax-exempt giving, the Obama Administration fails to admit that closing such alleged “loopholes” was originally turned down by White House negotiators because the revenue generated was supposedly limited.

It seems that getting more taxes from the rich – and now middle-class and even less fortunate Americans – to pay for an ever-growing government is the gift that keeps on giving for liberals.

top photo credit: iStockphoto

Project 21's Innis: Crooks "Armed and Don't Give a Darn About Gun Control"

Project 21 member Niger Innis, whose family has suffered greatly from gun-related violence, decried liberal attempts to further regulate the ability of law-abiding Americans to own and use firearms.

At the 2/22/13 “Black Leaders Speak Out on Gun Control” press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Niger said:

The Second Amendment is not about guns.  It’s about freedom.  It’s about liberty.  And it’s about full humanity of decent people.

Niger added:

And, so, today, in our urban centers, innocent black folk may not be the victims of the Klan or white racism, but we are the victims of merciless criminals that are armed and don’t give a darn about gun control laws.

Project 21’s Green: Old Media is the New Black for Obama

Where’s Sam Donaldson when we need him?

A combination of new media (such as Facebook and Twitter) and the decline of old media (the Washington Post just laid off dozens of staff and is contemplating selling its headquarters) gives a savvy Obama White House the opportunity to promote its message through much friendlier press than preceding administrations.

Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen recently wrote in the Politico that the Obama Administration has “cleverly and ruthlessly” exploited the rapid evolution of the media to gain the upper hand on a press corps that has historically held a healthy skepticism with even the most beloved of presidents.

Vandehei and Allen point out:

The President has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions.  Instead, he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities.  Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?

At the same time, this White House has greatly curtailed impromptu moments where reporters can ask tough questions after a staged event – or snap a picture of the President that was not shot by government-paid photographers.

One recent example of this is how Obama shut out the press last week on his Florida golf vacation.  Another was his radio interview with steadfast supporter and economic advisor Al Sharpton.

Former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry told Politico: “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing.”

On one favored new media venue, a Google+ Hangout, Obama claims he’s been very forthcoming, saying, “This is the most transparent administration in history.”  But Ann Compton, who has covered presidents since Gerald Ford in the mid-70s, begs to differ: “This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”

Project 21 member Derryck Green sees this media manipulation as yet another soured relationship between Obama and a core constituency.  Like black Americans who supported the President so loyally to receive so little in return, a once cheerleading media is now finding it much harder to do their job and hold their tongues.  So Derryck suggests they cut the complaining and get back to work:

This past week, the D.C. business-of-government newspaper Politico described how the Obama Administration is circumventing traditional media outlets to create its own narrative – effectively freezing out traditional mainstream media outlets.   

Politico reported that members of the mainstream media are upset that the White House is ignoring them and exploiting the losing combination of their old ways and dwindling resources and they aren’t the least bit happy about it at all.
According to the report, the Obama White House prefers to create its own content, disseminating it themselves through social networking and media that is either lacking in experience and old-school skepticism or wants to be a cheerleader.  

We all should take issue with this practice because the President is actively creating a narrative – the narrative, in fact – of himself and his leadership in the way he wants the public to see it.  This insulates him from being accountable and responsible for what his policies have wrought for the country. 

It appears that the mainstream media has become the new black – not the fashion statement, but a group that offered unwavering and unwarranted support for a guy who now feels extremely confident in abusing and manipulating that support as he sees fit.

In other words, Obama is doing to the media exactly what he’s done to black Americans since throughout his campaigns and his presidency.  With no pretense, he’s taken for granted a group that has the ability to hold him accountable but has – to this point – apparently decided against it.

Until and unless the media holds him accountable, Obama will continue to manipulate them (at best) or disregard them (at worst).

One sure way to regain the attention and accountability of the White House (and regain the credibility of both the black community and integrity of the media) is for all of them to publicly and demonstrably withdraw their loyalty and support.  For the media, that means actually recovering the very lost art of objective journalism and reporting on the President’s culpability regarding his policies, legislation and actions.

For black supporters of Obama, they missed their opportunity in this past election cycle to send a very clear message to Obama and liberals in general about their unrewarded loyalty.  Therefore, all the efforts at begging the President for a gesture – symbolic or legislative – will likely continue to go unanswered.

Politico’s report complained about the media’s lack of access to the White House.  The media doesn’t need access to report the negligible effects of ObamaCare.  It doesn’t need access to actively seek out what happened in Benghazi and hold those at fault accountable.   It doesn’t need access to bring attention to the President’s disingenuous stance on guns and gun violence and how his attempt to create more laws on guns does nothing to penalize criminals who ignore current laws – or how handguns (and not military assault weapons) are mainly responsible for gun violence and how inner-city violence and the real causes of crime remain largely ignored.

What about sequestration?  Do the media need access to report him saying he’d veto any attempt to remove it, then try to blame it on Congress?  What about the increase of gas prices versus the President’s energy policy and how an increase of prices essentially functions as a tax – taking more money out of the pockets of Americans and is especially hurtful to the poor among us? 

What about the debt and deficit?  Do the media need access to report on this fiasco, too?   

There is a very tangible reason why the nickname “lame-stream media” is accurate.

Both groups – actual blacks and the “new black” media – should start holding President Obama accountable.  If not, stop complaining about the situations they helped create. 

top photo credit: iStockphoto

Project 21's Swimp: Gun Control Helps Crooks, Hurt Blacks

At the 2/22/13 “Black Leaders Speak Out on Gun Control” press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Project 21 member Stacy Swimp discusses the racist underpinnings of early gun control laws that were enforced in the Reconstruction-era American south. Stacy notes “there was a correlation, a direct relation, between gun control and black people control.”

Stacy also discussed how modern gun control laws are helpful to criminals. Admitting he was not always considered an upstanding citizen, he said that criminals prefer homes they know are unprotected. He said: “If you think for one minute that gun control is gonna do anything about reducing crime, what you’ve done — you’ve just played into the hands of criminals.”

ObamaCare: Where's The Lefty Outrage? Part II

As noted in a previous blog post, most left-wing pundits were silent when Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia succeeded in getting part-time state workers limited to 29 hours per week so as to avoid giving them health insurance as required by ObamaCare.  That was a far cry from the way the left treated John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John’s, about two months earlier.

At the time I suggested that the reason for the silence was that the “evidence is piling up that, indeed, ObamaCare is going to have a very unpleasant effect on the U.S. labor market.”

Well, the evidence keeps piling up.  And the left keeps silent.

Most recently Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts and Kroger have been affected by or are openly worried about ObamaCare.

A Taco Bell franchise in Oklahoma reduced its workers hours to under 30 per week to avoid paying insurance or paying a fine.  Management “informed everybody that nobody was considered full-time any longer, that everybody was now considered part-time, and [they] would be cutting hours back to 28 hours or less due to Obamacare,” [employee Johnna] Davis said.

Dunkin’ Donuts hasn’t reduced workers hours—yet.  Rather the company is lobbying Congress to change the definition of a full-time employee under ObamaCare from 30 hours a week to 40 hours.  But if the company fails in that, what is Dunkin’s Donuts next step?  Probably similar to that of Taco Bell.

Finally, Kroger, a supermarket chain, said it will continue to provide coverage to its full-time employees.  But its CEO, David Dillon, warned that some companies would rather pay the fine since it is cheaper than providing coverage:

“If you look through the economics of the penalty the companies pay versus the cost to provide coverage, the penalty’s too low, or the cost of coverage is too high, or the combination is wrong….If [policy makers] get those things too far out of balance, everybody will have to reconsider their position on that point, including us. But we’re going to wait and see how that all develops.”

Expect Kroger to go the fine route if its competitors do the same.

As a reminder, under ObamaCare businesses with 50 or more full-time employees (full-time defined as working 30 hours or more per week) must either buy their employees insurance or pay a fine.  If they pay the fine, they have a choice to pay whichever is less: 1. (The number of employees - 30) multiplied by $2,000; or 2. The number of employees who qualify for insurance on an exchange multiplied by $3,000.  Either way, those costs have to be paid.

Or shifted.  Businesses can try to reduce their number of employees to under 50 or reduce their employees’ hours to less than 30 per week.  In other words, the costs are shifted onto the employees in the form of fewer jobs and less work hours.

Anyway, the left’s reaction to Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts and Kroger has been pretty much the same as it was to Gov. McDonnell:  Silence.  Other than some reporting on this over at Huffington Post (reporting, not editorializing), nothing.

Apparently as the evidence piles up that ObamaCare will have a disruptive effect on the labor market, the left just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

photo credit: ©iStockphoto

Layers of Green: Greens Accuse Green Certifiers Of Greenwashing Seafood

National Public Radio (NPR) is featuring an excellent 3-part investigation into the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) fisheries certification program.  Journalists Daniel Zwerdling and Margot Williams attempted to answer the loaded question: “Is Sustainable-Labeled Seafood Really Sustainable?” while green groups loudly accused the ultra-green MSC of greenwashing:

But some environmental groups argue that the label is misleading, and that as more retailers promise to sell only sustainable-labeled seafood, the program is certifying fisheries that don’t deserve it.

Eco-labeling schemes like MSC’s add additional layers of bureaucracy on retailers, farmers and fishermen while passing on costs to consumers.  These programs also ignore the fact that fishermen already participate in taxpayer-funded government management regimes ensuring the long-term health of fisheries.

So seafood lovers buying MSC-certified fish pay twice - once to government in the form of income taxes and again at the checkout counter where, hidden in the price, are fees paid to “green” certifiers and logo licensing agencies like MSC.  This explains why “certified” swordfish can cost $18.99 a pound instead of $15.00.  Another fisherman in the very same fishery, working under the exact same management regime, can sell his fish for less two doors over.  His fish is every bit as good and, when you buy it, you’re not supporting Big Green.

Layers of Green

After years of “green” campaigners wailing about overfishing the oceans, it was inevitable that some “green” corporation would step forward and offer to certify product as sustainable.  For a fee, of course.  Eco-labeling or eco-extortion? Or just another tax-free way to shelter profits? 

NPR’s report revealed the size and scope of the MSC program:

MSC says its system has certified more than $3 billion worth of seafood, representing at least 8 percent of the world’s annual seafood catch.

But MSC own financial reports reveal it closed 2012 with 275 fisheries in its program, representing 10 million tons of seafood, fully 11% of the annual global catch:

Total group income in 2011/12 was £15 million [US$23M] compared to £12.8 million [US$20M] in the previous year, a 17.6% increase.  For the first time, incoming resources from charitable activities (that is, logo licensing revenue) exceed the contributions from foundations and trusts in the USA, Europe and UK.  The percentage of logo licensing income compared to total income increased to 56% (2010/11 49%).

Costco, Target, Whole Foods, even McDonald’s, have all bought in and are paying licensing fees to MSC – well, technically you are - while hoping to carve out a marketing advantage, praying that a simple logo on a can or filet of fish will make all the negative green attack campaigns just go away. 

Naïve, at best.  There is always someone further left, always a critic.

But pity the fisherman caught in the middle of this muddle.  NPR reveals he pays too, in both time and treasure:

MSC does not certify fisheries itself; instead, a fishery that wants the label hires any one of roughly a dozen commercial auditing companies, which can cost up to $150,000 or more, to decide whether the fishery’s practices comply with the MSC standards.

NPR detailed the experience of fishing boat owners pressured by Whole Foods, run by vegan CEO John Mackey, to comply or lose sales:

The way Day Boat’s owners tell their story, they decided to go through the complicated process of getting certified mostly because of their major client, Whole Foods.  Co-owners Howie Bubis and Scott Taylor began supplying the upscale chain soon after they founded their seafood company in 2006.

They say business was good.  But executives at Whole Foods announced that they were going to buy as much seafood as possible with the MSC label.  … [They] hoped that MSC approval would give them a competitive edge — and Whole Foods might pay them more than fishing companies that didn’t have it.

Day Boat’s owners say the process cost more than $200,000 — at least half for the audit company and the rest for related expenses.  “It’s occupied three years of our life,” says Bubis. …[who] assigned a staff member to work almost full time for two years, just to supply [the certifying company with] information. …But he and his partner say the MSC label has been good for business: They have been selling their swordfish for 10 percent more than competitors who don’t have it.

What’s Sustainable?

Quite frankly, “sustainable” has to be one of the most overused words out there. 

“Sustainable,” in the case of fisheries, generally means fishermen are working within a science-based management regime to ensure their harvests don’t jeopardize the biomass of a fish stock. 

For example, you wouldn’t want to take, in one year, 80% of a stock that is reproducing annually at a rate of only 20%.  And fishermen avoid harvesting young fish before they’ve had a chance to reproduce, staying out of the “nursery areas,” as areas full of juvenile fish are called.  These are great ways to kill a fishery fast - and go bankrupt in the process.   

Green labeling schemes ignore the fact that we already pay taxes to cover the salaries and pensions of hordes of government biologists and fisheries managers to ensure that the science is done and that harvests are regulated.  While such science-based management regimes are not perfect systems – changing ocean temperatures and conditions can remove fish from an area far faster than fishermen can – they are taxpayer-funded investments in education, in slowly and methodically learning about the food-producing oceans on which we all rely. 

In the U.S., the Magnuson Act, passed in 1976, established regional fisheries Councils to ensure sustainability.  Outside the U.S. 200-mile limit, regimes exist in cooperation with multiple government fishery agencies.  For example, the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) provides the science for 25% of the world’s canned tuna supply, the harvests in the eastern Pacific yellowfin tuna fishery.  Established in 1950, the IATTC has accumulated some of the finest science on the planet, science used by government fishery agencies for decision making in over a dozen countries including the U.S.   

Fisheries management regimes are investments in long-term commitments to a difficult and laborious process.  It can easily take decade and multiple core samples to get the most basic information on the impact of natural shifts in ocean conditions on a fishery.  But it’s well worth the effort. 

Add in at-sea sampling, data crunched from log books, observer reports and unloading records, and there’s a lot going on here.  Management plans are created, harvest quotas set and reviewed regularly as new information is analyzed: cyclical changes in ocean conditions; changing predator/prey relationships; increases or decreases in harvest levels due to changes in demand or the number, size or efficiency of fishing vessels; shifts to harvests earlier or later in a season or the lifecycle of the fish.  Government fines, penalties and jail time show we are serious about the process.

All this is paid for by your tax dollars – and seldom mentioned by the greens or eco-certifiers.  And, since many of the green groups peddling such eco-schemes eschew animal products – they’re philosophically vegan, relying on soybeans for their protein - they’re not potential customers for any seafood, certified or not. 

Savvy Consumers Seek Out the Best

But never mind the vegan non-consumer, many savvy and jaded omnivores avoid eco-labels on principle: bypassing the “organic” produce, the FSC-certified lumber, the MSC-certified fish.  They search for products sold by those free spirits who absolutely refuse to bow to Global Green Overlords running these intrusive and overbearing eco-schemes - those living “beyond organic,” the “non-bar code people.”

While the quality of a product – and the producer’s life - is often reflected in its price, layers of middlemen don’t add a thing to that equation.  So, yes, the free consumer is free to reject all this and buy something else.  And they do. 

Just six months after StarKist labeled its tuna “dolphin safe,” Greenpeace accused it of greenwashing, citing the IATTC’s science on the ecological downside of “dolphin safe” fishing. 

Consumers questioned and resisted the eco-label, and freely chose other protein sources.  Tuna sales plummeted 20% in the five years after StarKist adopted its destructive policy.  Sadly, during that period we also lost half our yellowfin tuna fishing fleet.

StarKist’s CEO grumbled:

It was disappointing that the environmentalists were not able to come through for us at the cash register.

Lesson learned? Probably not.

——————————————————————————

Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Top photo: iStockPhoto.com; Second photo: Teresa Platt

Can We Be REALLY Hard-Headed About Preschool?

Grover Whitehurst, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, has spent much of his career developing learning programs for young children.  He recently wrote two very good essays asking if we could be “hard headed” about Head Start and Universal Pre-K by admitting that the data shows that such programs have no lasting effect on the low-income children who participate in them.

But let’s take it a step further.  Can we be really hard-headed and confront the question: what if there is nothing the government can do for low-income children to improve their educational performance?  That’s a question that needs asking because, first, Whitehurst doesn’t want to ask it:

I hope you will agree that we must do something.  A program that is supposed to prepare the neediest children in the nation for school and fails to do so is a program that needs fixing. 

Second, the reason to ask it is that low-income children may not be getting the one thing that has been shown to have lasting educational benefits:  parents reading to their toddlers.  A lot of evidence shows that parents endow their children with a lot of advantages in school if they read to them when they are three and four years old.

As one summary of the research states:

When parents hold positive attitudes towards reading, they are more likely to create opportunities for their children that promote positive attitudes towards literacy and they can help children develop solid language and literacy skills. When parents share books with children, they also can promote children’s understanding of the world, their social skills and their ability to learning coping strategies. When this message is supported by child health professionals during well child care and parents are given the tool, in this case a book, to be successful, the impact can be even greater. This effect may be more important among high risk children in low income families, who have parents with little education, belong to a minority group and do not speak English since they are less likely to be exposed to frequent and interactive shared reading. (Emphasis added). 

The problem is that many low-income parents don’t regularly read to their toddlers.  A study in Child Development found that only about half of low-income mothers were reading regularly to their children.

In short, the practices that endow children with lasting educational benefits begin at home.  Low-income families are less likely to engage in those practices.  And the research on Head Start shows that there is not much these programs can do to overcome what isn’t present in the home.

So, to reiterate, what if there is nothing the government can do for low-income children to improve their educational performance?  It’s understandable why Whitehurst doesn’t want to raise this question—many, many people don’t.  Clearly, it isn’t fair that upper- and middle-class children get the benefit of a parent reading to them when they are young, and so many low-income children do not.  We all want to cling to the belief that there is something that can done for those children who did not receive the necessary development at home.  Sadly, it’s a belief that isn’t supported by the evidence.  And if we persist in it with programs like Head Start, then we are spending resources in a way that will do little good.

If we are really going to be hard headed about early childhood education, we need to ask if there is any government program that can compensate for parents that fail to read to their young children and face the implications if the answer is “no.” 

Welcome Instapundit readers!

  photo credit: ©iStockphoto.com

President Obama Is Not African-American and Other Lessons in the Hyphenation Rules

Think this man is African-American? Think again.

As readers of this blog know, I sometimes go over to the Diversity Inc. magazine website for a look at the views of race-obsessed people.

More often then not, I find something surprising, as in a column I read today that explains who is qualified to be called "African-American," and most important, who is not.

Apparently, the term "African-American" is exclusively to be used to describe the "descendants of enslaved Black people who are from the United States."

So if your ancestor was a black slave in Jamaica, say, and you live in the United States, and you look black and consider yourself to be black and so did every ancestor of yours you know of, you are not an African-American, but if your ancestor was a black slave in South Carolina you are, even if he or she had children with a white person and every other one of your ancestors from that generation forward to the present were white.

Likewise, if you were born and raised in Africa and moved to America, you are not "African-American." This is because you (presumably) did not have a black American slave ancestor. If you want to have a special name, you have to call yourself a "insert-country-name-here"-American. This is true regardless of what your race(s) might be.

A black lady I know very well was born and raised in Ghana and moved here when she was 30 and became an American citizen. I will have to let her know that she, her husband (also from Ghana) and their daughter (born in the United States) are not African-Americans, because I'm pretty darn sure she thinks they all are, and I doubt very much it is a mistake she'd wish to make in a public setting. (She'd probably never live it down.)

She thinks President Obama is African-American, too, and Diversity Inc. magazine would have her know she's wrong about that as well. Even his black half isn't. His daughters, however, are half African-American, because some of their mother's black ancestors were slaves in America. Some of their mother's ancestors were white, too, but we don't count them.

The article makes very clear that if your ancestor was an American slave who was white (which did happen in the early years), or an indentured servant, you do not get a special name. In fact, it is "insulting" to the author of the Diversity Inc. column that you might think you should get your own special hyphenated name. What do you think, special names are free? Or that being a white slave in a prior century is as bad as being a black slave in a prior century? (You have a lot to learn about being race-obsessed, I can tell you.)

One thing I wonder is if we have the term "African-American" only for descendants of black slaves who were enslaved in the United States, why don't we have hyphenations for people whose ancestors suffered likewise ghastly fates? For example, shouldn't a child who survived a Nazi concentration camp when his parents did not, upon moving to America, be called a "Holocaust-American" or something similar? Surviving a concentration camp in which your parents die has to be as bad as having ancestors who were slaves 150 years ago, and we can't claim no American complicity in the Holocaust, either -- Franklin Roosevelt could have let a lot more Jews come to America in the 1930s than he did. There are people alive today who voted for Roosevelt (maybe they should be called "Bad-Americans"?), while there is no one alive today who voted for slavery. So there's kind of an immediacy to the moral problem with Holocaust victims that the progeny of slaves many times removed just don't have.

Furthermore, in the interest of label integrity, I think we should have debits. That is, if you are descended from one black slave enslaved in America and one white slaveowner who enslaved in America, you'd lose half the right to be called African-American. You'd just be "Afri-American." If two slaveowners and one slave, then an "Af-American." We'd have to work out all the permutations, but it is kind of important that we do so. It just doesn't make any sense to count the blameless suffering of one's ancestors if we don't count the moral culpability of our other ancestors as well. Truth in labeling and all that.

This whole area of scholarly study was a surprise to me. As I recall it, the day Jesse Jackson announced that black people henceforth were to be referred to as "African-American," he didn't mention all these arcane rules as to who qualified and who did not. I guess he was waiting for the owner of Diversity Inc. magazine to codify the regulations, and, thank goodness, he has stepped up to the plate.

He's a white guy, by the way.

I previously wrote about Diversity Inc. magazine here, when it excoriated Pat Buchanan based on something a satire website pretended he said, with followups here and here when Diversity Inc. refused to apologize.

In Another Government-Run Health Care Horror Story, Man Dies Because EMS Workers Call in Sick -- On New Year's Eve

An extremely unfortunate story comes out of the District of Columbia, where a 71-year-old man, Durand Ford, Sr., died. Mr. Ford had trouble breathing very early on January 1, and his family called an ambulance, but it took 33 minutes for an ambulance to arrive -- too long.

It seems very many firefighters, who staff the ambulances in DC, called in sick that night, so the District called the county next door. EMS personnel in that county felt like working, or, at least, enough of them had the ethics to do so despite the holiday, but they were 7 miles away -- 5.5 more than a DC ambulance would have been.

Nearly a third of the District's firefighters called in sick New Year's Eve - 97 out of 340. The next day, not a traditional party night, only 20 were sick.

The firefighters' union, ever helpful, said 97 firefighters sick out of 340 isn't unusual.

As a result, the District has changed its policies for emergency personnel calling in sick. On the future, they won't be allowed to call in sick to a computer, and the District will try to find a replacement for them immediately when they do call in sick to a human.

Seems to me charging anyone who was scheduled to be working on a relevant ambulance that night who can't prove he or she was sick with some form of homicide charge might be a bit more effective. Naturally, I appreciate a working EMS employee as much as anyone, but saving people's lives on a Tuesday doesn't give a person the right to essentially kill them on a Monday.

Ask any doctor. Or the trial lawyers' association, which would be all over this story if it were not yet another case of death by government-run health care.

Speaking of which, when the ever-incompetent DC government followed up on killing Mr. Ford by sending his family a $780 bill for the "service," the DC Councilwoman who represents the Fords in Ward 7 told the local NBC News affiliate that she was surprised the family got a bill, because, "based on my experience in similar circumstances, DC Fire & EMS has not billed."

Similar circumstances?

Just how many people are DC's partying firefighters killing? And with service like this, why did over 90 percent of the population of the District of Columbia vote to re-elect the man who is bringing government-run health care to America?

National Center's Stier Talks Tobacco Risk Reduction on Israeli Radio

While attending a health policy conference co-sponsored by the National Center and the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, Risk Analysis Division director Jeff Stier was interviewed about harm reduction measures related to tobacco by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority’s radio news.

Jeff points out there there are “alternative products” such as smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes that can “lower the risk of cigarettes” as a public health concern.  The problem in promoting these potentially beneficial alternatives is that critics seeking a “risk-free society” seem averse to anything but a complete prohibition all tobacco-related products.

An Interview Rep. Cohen Probably Regrets

During the State of Union speech, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn, age 63) tweeted a message to a 24-year-old woman that included the letters “ilu,” short for I love you.  While in some of us (I plead guilty) it conjured up the joys of the Anthony Weiner scandal, it turns out Cohen was tweeting to his 24-year-old daughter whom he only found out about three years ago.

Cohen has never been married, and that made him the lead interviewee for an article in The Hill back in 2007 about the growing number of members of Congress who are single:

Freshman Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has been happily married for 36 years — to his constituents.

“Having been out there so long, I used to be on the most eligible bachelors list,” the 57-year-old bachelor said of his early years in the Tennessee state legislature. “I don’t think you get promoted to the emeritus level. I think you become ineligible.”

All pretty harmless.  Until you read a little further into the piece:

For Cohen, the idea of limiting his social life to buffer his political image was never even a consideration. Far from it, he says — he’s had many girlfriends in Tennessee over the years.

Besides, as many a Washington scandal has proven, it isn’t single politicians whose activities prove most controversial. 

Sometimes, being married is trickier in politics than being single. While no union is perfect, public office has a way of spotlighting the cracks in a very public way.

What do you wanna bet that Cohen is considering the effect of his “many girlfriends” on his political image now?

Leftist Journalists Tout Exposure of Decade-Old "Dark Money," But May Instead Have Revealed Their Own Collusion with a Federal Agency that is Supposed to be Neutral and Guard Our Privacy

Is it the money that is "dark," or how it was revealed?

Salon's running a breathless headline: "Republican Dark Money Group’s Corporate Sponsors Revealed."

Sounds like a scoop exposing something nefarious, right?

Maybe, but not in the way the left thinks.

The left's "scoop" is that it got a list of who donated to an apparently 100% legal charitable group called the State Government Leadership Foundation in 2003 and 2004.

But as I'll show in a minute, the real scandal may be in how the information came to be released.

Salon, and the outfit that really wrote the piece, the left-wing ProPublica, lists some of the group's activities from 2011 in its breathless piece.

The idea is to associate the 2003 and 2004 donors, who are big bad corporations who give people jobs and make products that make our standard of living, and sometimes our very lives, possible (for shame!), with the group's activities in 2011. Activities that were -- prepare yourself, it's shocking -- right-of-center!

And then there's the key-but-fake phrase "dark money." What that really means is that, under the law, the group is a charity that doesn't have to list its donors publicly, even though the left wants them to. That makes the donors "dark." Dark donors. And dark donors are bad.

According to the left.

But in fact the "dark donors" aren't bad at all. The group is organized under 501(c)(4) of the tax code, having applied for this status relatively recently (which is important, as this post will soon make clear). The group is not required to list its donors. Not the ones from 2003, nor the ones from 2013, according to a law I don't believe Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi is trying to change.

They aren't trying to change it because, you see, there are very many left-wing 501(c)(4)s. They don't make their donor lists public, and Obama, Reid and Pelosi like it that way.

(The left has "dark" donors, too, but the right doesn't call them "dark." It would be pilloried on MSNBC for "racism" if it tried.)

What the leftists do is find a way -- by hook or by crook -- to expose the names of donors to right-of-center groups while keeping the identities of donors to left-wing groups secret. The have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too system.

And they also keep what may be their own dark secret -- collusion with a federal agency that is supposed to be neutral.

My husband pointed out something very interesting to me today. It's a 2012 letter from 11 Republican Senators to the Internal Revenue Service. In it, the Senators, led by Orrin Hatch (R-UT), ask the IRS why it is demanding that groups requesting 501(c)(4) tax status (as the State Government Leadership Foundation recently did) be required, against prior practice, to list its donors. The Senators also ask some specific questions about why the IRS is doing what it is doing, where the law authorizes the IRS to request this information, and other rather interesting questions. And the Senators also remind the IRS that Congress has long sought to protect the identity of donors to charitable institutions, because "the public release of private donor information exposes citizens to possible harassment and intimidation by those who oppose the goals of the charitable organization."

Of course, the IRS knows donors can be harassed. As in being called "dark," and having ProPublica and Salon and others of their ilk release their names to the public as if they had done something wrong, or even done anything at all, recently. But no matter, as ProPublica and Salon got the information they revealed as if it were scandalous from the IRS itself.

It seems the IRS will guard your private information if it is on a tax return, but if it requests it without necessarily having statutory authority, well, then it can give it to the left.

Which knew to ask for it. Somehow.

photo credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Rich Vintage

White Smoke And A Potential Pope: Cardinal From Down Under Questions Climate Consensus

White smoke will soon rise from the Vatican’s chimney (adding to the global inventory of greenhouse gases!), announcing that Roman Catholics have elected a new Pope - and it just might be the brave Cardinal from Down Under who questions the climate “consensus.”

Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, is one of only 180 Roman Catholic Cardinals on the planet, 118 of whom are eligible to vote for a new Pope to replace Benedict XVI who is resigning for health reasons at the end of February.

The Cardinal from Down Under has taken the United Nations to task, warning it is the poor who suffer most from bad policy.  Fees and taxes taken from the masses, then transferred to the politically-anointed few, pay for multi-billion-dollar ethanol programs and landscapes littered with inefficient wind turbines and solar panels.  Further burdening the poor, such programs raise energy bills, and their costs are hidden in the price of everything we buy, including food.

Developing public policy is a thoughtful enterprise fraught with moral ramifications, explained His Eminence Cardinal Pell in 2011.

He urged us to be prudent and cautious in our communal decision making:

As a bishop who regularly preaches to congregations of every age and at widely different levels of prosperity and education, I have some grasp of the challenges in presenting a point of view to the general public.  This helps me to understand the propaganda achievements of the climate extremists, at least until their attempted elimination of the Medieval Warming and then Climategate.  

I was not surprised to learn that the [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNIPCC] used some of the world’s best advertising agencies to generate maximum effect among the public.  Since the climate had been changing - as Professor Plimer puts it, ever since that first Thursday 4,567 million years ago when the Earth began and the atmosphere began to form - I am not a “denier” of climate change and I am not sure whether any such person still exists.  Therefore the term “climate change denier,” however expedient as an insult or propaganda weapon, with its deliberate overtones of comparison with Holocaust denial, is not a useful description of any significant participant in the discussion. Who would want to be denounced and caricatured as a “denier?”

…A final point to be noted in this struggle to convince public opinion is that the language used by [man-made global warming] proponents veers towards that of primitive religious controversy.  Believers are contrasted with deniers, doubters and skeptics, although I must confess no one has dubbed me a climate change heretic. 

…Another more spectacular example of this successful spin is the debate on “carbon footprints,” on the advisability or not of a “carbon tax.”  We all know that it is the role of carbon dioxide in climate change which is in question, not the role of carbon, but we continue to talk about carbon.  The public discussion is almost entirely conducted in terms of “carbon footprints” and a “carbon tax”, provoking colorful but misconceived images of carcinogenic burnt toast and narrow, Dickensian chimneys being cleaned by unhealthy young chimney sweeps.  It is brilliant advertising.  But it is untrue.

…I have discovered that very few people know how small the percentage of carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere.  Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere …represent less than one-twenty-fifth of one per cent.  While opinions vary, one geochemist has calculated that only about five per cent of present atmospheric carbon dioxide is derived from burning fossil-fuels; that is, just 19 parts of [carbon dioxide] per million parts of atmosphere.

I can understand why the UNIPCC public relations advisers did not ensure that these statistics were presented vividly to the public, because they are no stimulus to alarm!  In fact they seem to be a well-kept secret outside scientific circles.

…The history of climate change provides no reassurance that human activity can control or even substantially modify the global climate, although humans can effect important local changes for good or ill.  Apparently the present eccentricity of the earth’s orbit is small, decreasing and likely to continue for 30,000 years, meaning that our current interglacial may be exceptionally prolonged.  A pleasant coincidence.

… The propaganda wars, the economic self-interest of participants, the bluster and even intimidation, are peripheral to the painstaking work, sometimes contentious, among competent specialists, dedicated to the pursuit of truth, wrestling with an unruly and surprising complexity of factors, and often with one another. …Theologians do not have too much to contribute … except, perhaps, to note the ubiquity of the “religious gene” and point out regressions into pseudo-religion or rudimentary semi-religious enthusiasms.

…In essence, this is the moral dimension to this issue. … [W]e must be sure the solutions being proposed are valid, the benefits are real and the end result justifies the impositions on the community, particularly the most vulnerable.  You will gather that I have concerns on all three fronts.

…We might call this a cost-benefit analysis, where costs and benefits are defined financially and morally or humanely and their level of probability is carefully estimated.  Are there any long term benefits from the schemes to combat global warming, apart from extra tax revenues for governments and income for those devising and implementing the schemes?  Will the burdens be shared generally, or fall mainly on the shoulders of the battlers, the poor?  Another useful Latin maxim is “in dubio non agitur”: don’t act when in doubt.  There is no precautionary principle, only the criteria for assessing what actions are prudent. 

When Galileo was placed under house arrest primarily because of his claim that the earth moved around the sun, he is said to have muttered “Eppur’ si muove”; and yet it moves. 

As for Galileo so for us, the appeal must be to the evidence, not to any consensus, whatever the levels of confusion or self-interested coercion.

First of all we need adequate scientific explanations as a basis for our economic estimates.  We also need history, philosophy, even theology and many will use, perhaps create, mythologies.

But most importantly we need to distinguish which is which.

Well said, Cardinal Pell, and good luck with the election. 

Millions will eagerly watch the Vatican’s chimney, looking for the white smoke announcing the new Pope!

——————————————————————————

Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Photos: iStockPhoto.com

Project 21’s Swimp on Obama Address: Nothing Surprising

Stacy Swimp, a member of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network, wasn’t impressed with President Obama’s State of the Union Address last night.  In fact, he didn’t like it at all.

Here is Stacy’s review of the speech:

I have been asked repeatedly if there is anything about President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address that I agree with or like.

I will keep my answer simple:  No.  Not really.

It was exactly what I expected.

I’m not surprised.  President Obama failed to tell the truth.  It began in the first few minutes.  The state of our union, despite his claim, is not strong.

Obama says he is concerned about Americans being able to find and retain full-time employment.  If that is the case, then why did he push for — and succeed in enacting — what can only be called socialized medicine.  So far, this big government takeover has led to employers feeling forced to hire fewer full-time workers in order to keep their businesses operating as well as being able to comply with the new federal mandates.

Along those same lines, Obama called for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.  Every sound economist knows that entry-level jobs are at risk every time the minimum wage is increased.  Again, this is a problem that hurts small business owners disproportionately because they simply cannot afford to keep up with federal payroll demands.

Even though Obama and his supporters like to demonize large corporations, most Americans might not realize that large corporations actually favor a higher minimum wage. Why?  Higher costs help to eliminate their smaller competitors.

Who suffers most when minimum wages increase?  Teenagers.  Businesses simply cannot afford those after-school, weekend or summer jobs anymore.  So kids find it harder to get the opportunity to develop skills that can one day lead to more gainful employment.  With black teenagers already facing an unemployment rate that is near 40 percent, the President is dramatically hurting one of his key constituencies.

There was one segment I found myself agreeing with, but with a caveat: “And we’ll work to strengthen families by removing the financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples and do more to encourage fatherhood, because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child, it’s having the courage to raise one.”

This is best soundbite of President Obama’s speech.  But there is major problem with it.

None of his policies back up his words.  It remains just a hollow platitude.

Expansion of entitlement programs — something he vigorously supported — favors more families headed by single mothers over the long-term.  Fewer strong and complete families mean there will likely be more children growing up with a disadvantage and a decreased chance at fully experiencing American exceptionalism.

Obama’s policies also make it easier to imagine that — over time — there will continue to be chronic unemployed, desperation, addiction to drugs and alcohol and a downward spiral among many in the black community.  Too many black men may yet end up in jail or dead.

So much for Obama’s concern about strong families.

Government Excels At Creating Long Lines!

One part of President Obama’s State of the Union speech actually provoked some deep thinking in me:

We should follow the example of a North Miami woman named Desiline Victor. When Desiline arrived at her polling place, she was told the wait to vote might be six hours. And as time ticked by, her concern was not with her tired body or aching feet, but whether folks like her would get to have their say. And hour after hour, a throng of people stayed in line in support of her, because Desiline is 102 years old. And they erupted in cheers when she finally put on a sticker that read “I Voted.”

I can empathize a bit since when I voted in Virginia, I showed up just as the polls were opening and waited half an hour.  Of course, that’s nothing compared to six hours, so, like I said, I can empathize a bit.

Nevertheless, that passage precipitated the following thoughts:

1. After all the efforts taken to make voting easier such as absentee ballots and early voting, government still manages to create long lines for voting.  Amazingly, when lines start to form in private sector establishments, they implement a nifty little innovation called “open another checkout stand.”  Sources tell me they have had this innovation in the private sector for quite some time.  I wonder why the government hasn’t adopted it at polling stations?  

2. But perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it.  Maybe we should look at it in a positive way such as: Government Excels At Creating Long Lines!  Bureaucracy has a talent for this.  Go down to your Department of Motor Vehicles any day of the week.  Or if you are an immigrant and want to migrate here legally, sign up with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.  Or if you live in Britain or Canada, let some of your joints degenerate and then try to get a hip or knee replacement.  Indeed, here in the U.S. we may be on the brink of finding out what that is like.  

3. Given how well government is at making voting a convenient, time-saving endeavor, I have the utmost confidence that government can create manufacturing hubs, combat climate change, produce a clean energy market, drive new research with an Energy Security Trust, cut in half the energy wasted by our homes in the next 20 years, produce high-speed rail, help families refinance their homes, and fund and regulate pre-school.  In short, all of the things that Obama laid out in his SOTU.  

Yes, the government’s ability to make voting efficient has shown us the way.  The future is very bright!  FORWARD!

 Follow David Hogberg on Twitter @DavidHogberg

Photo: iStockPhoto.com

Black Conservatives React to Obama Address

The national debt is well over $16.5 trillion.  There are more than 47 million Americans now on food stamps.  North Korea detonated another nuclear bomb yesterday.  Close to half of the people who got free “Obamaphones” may not be eligible for the taxpayer-funded perk.  Dogs may understand more about human behavior than we ever anticipated!

And what does Barack Obama want to focus on in his State of the Union Address?  Increased spending (call it investment).  More taxes (call it revenue).  Throw in a healthy dose of class warfare to ease this all down the throats of the opposition and the American people.  And a hilarious promise we’ve heard before that all this won’t raise the debt by “a single dime.”

It definitely shows that Obama meant it when he told then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last year that he felt he would have “more flexibility” to do the stuff he really wants to do after the election.  Gone is the president of all America from campaign mode.

Ever wonder what might be on the far-left’s wish list?  It’s probably a good bet that most of it was mentioned at one point or another tonight in the President’s address.

Wanting to pretend to be open to other viewpoints, an angry Obama instead ultimately delivered a my-way-or-the-highway message.  If Congress won’t do what he wants as far as new environmental regulations, for example, he threatened “executive actions” to get what he wants (like he did after “cap-and-trade” failed to pass muster under the democratic process).

After all, winning by fewer votes than he did in 2008 and an approval rating of just over 50 percent just weeks after his second inauguration is a clear sign of a mandate, right?  Right?!

Black conservatives with the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network found President Obama’s speech appalling in its sheer scope of big government overreach and in its profound disrespect for America’s founding principles.

Project 21 members were hoping for more, but they were left disappointed.

Cherylyn Harley LeBon:

Simple fact checks revealed Obama’s State of the Union Address was more talk grounded in very little fact.

For example, the President claimed ObamaCare is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.  Unfortunately, the fact is that ObamaCare is driving up costs and premiums, jeopardizing coverage and making it harder for small businesses to create jobs.

The President also claims he is ready to work with Congress on a serious budget and that Americans expect them to forge compromises.  The fact is that Senate liberals haven’t passed a budget in nearly four years. The President’s own budget is also late again.  There is no plan among the President and his allies to replace the Obama sequester.

It is surprising for the President to list so many new initiatives.  It is inconceivable to create so many programs when you fail to produce a budget or manage the escalating deficit.  Frankly, these are simple facts of budgeting and responsibility that even my children would understand.

Obama’s State of the Union Address was ultimately just another wish list – a tad more aggressive to acknowledge his second term.  Americans will be disappointed in the next four years while we continue to saddle our children and grandchildren with increasing debt.

Coby Dillard:

President Obama tonight delivered an agenda that is largely no different from the failed ones of his first term.  It’s hypocritical to say that Americans don’t want a bigger government, and then spend an hour outlining an agenda that will continue to grow government.

The American people are not interested in more universal programs, additional requirements on small business owners and the further erosion of our rights and liberties.  They are interested in a government that will finally do the difficult work of reining in entitlement spending, providing a tough but achievable path to citizenship and working to stop the devastating cuts to our military that the President’s allies have long championed.

Stacy Washington:

Proposing lots of new spending through lofty promises and soundbites borrowed from the proposals of his presidential challengers, President Obama attempted to create an atmosphere of bipartisanship and making it appear he was tacking to the middle.

Obama spoke about fixing tons of problems facing America, but I would argue this was one of the most unserious State of the Union Addresses in the modern era of politics.  It began with his veiled demagoguery.  His speech was filled with platitudes that sadly hearkened back to his first State of the Union Address, when he made far too many promises and delivered on virtually nothing.  The speech, especially toward the end, had the feeling of a campaign rally.

Expecting that Obama would seriously address Social Security, Medicare and lay out a clear plan for entitlement reform was apparently too large a task for this second-term president’s State of the Union Address.  Instead, he spent far too much time flitting from topic to topic without any real new ideas or interesting proposals.

The President did speak of passing a budget for the first time in four years, but couched it in promises to solve America’s problems with more government.  If there’s ever to be a serious discussion on cutting the deficit and reigning in out of control spending, it did not begin tonight.

Darryn “Dutch” Martin:

Whether the President discussed “attracting more jobs to our shores,” “launching three new manufacturing hubs,” or whatever other measures he mentioned to spur job creation, he said absolutely nothing about cutting taxes on small businesses and corporations – the very sector of the economy that’s primarily responsible for creating jobs!  Furthermore – at the beginning of his address – he said that under his watch, over six million new jobs were created.  Apparently, he forgot to mention that so many of those new jobs are part-time, and with no health benefits because of ObamaCare.

Despite his Ivy League pedigree, President Obama remains woefully ignorant of the basic economic principles of lowering tax rates to create jobs and jumpstart our nation’s economic recovery.  Would it be too much to ask to take a lesson from Ronald Reagan, under whose administration over 20 million new jobs – full time and with benefits – were created!

On his desire to play the class warfare card by wanting another raise in the minimum wage, he should know that minimum wage laws have historically been the primary cause of high unemployment among black youth in our nation.  Now, the President wants to increase the minimum wage?  This just proves the notion of his ignorance of basic economics.

Derryck Green:

President Obama once again appealed to a “stronger and thriving middle class” while using the middle class as pawns in his quest for government expansion and redistribution based in “social justice.”

It’s evident that the President continues to demonstrate a level of cognitive dissonance in regards to the continuing struggle so many Americans face under his idea of economic revitalization.

His agenda is nothing more than a recapitulation of the same naïve dream to create a government-sponsored utopia – a utopia that is over $16 trillion in debt ($7 trillion of it created under his watch).  This utopia is characterized by more “investments,” subsidized “green energy,” an increase of “infrastructure” projects that serve as code for more union jobs,  amnesty for illegal immigrants, increased federal minimum wage that may prices low-skilled workers out of the workforce, increased taxation and abridged expression of the Second Amendment.

After hearing the President speak tonight, it should be abundantly clear his goal isn’t the repair of the American economy by reducing unemployment and encouraging businesses to expand and hire.  Rather, President Obama diligently intends to implement a profoundly ideological agenda at the expense of the very people he disingenuously claims he desires to help – the middle class.

In his second term, Americans can legitimately expect – without question or confusion – that President Obama will seek to solidify his legacy as the most ideologically “progressive” in American history.  He seeks to best both FDR and LBJ in his attempt to morally and politically justify a rugged and manufactured egalitarianism.

What Obama doesn’t understand is that he’s actually creating more inequality by trying to manufacture justice and “equality.”

Lisa Fritsch:

It’s unbelievable that our President has nothing new to offer this nation but more divisive and bloated ideas on how government should rule and control every sector of our lives.

This president is setting our nation up for mass failure and rapid economic, moral and social decline.

And wearing a green ribbon won’t change the damage that denial towards our moral decay has done to increase of violence across the nation and in fatherless homes in Chicago.

ObamaCare and Virginia: Where's The Lefty Outrage?

Yesterday the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that

The General Assembly has now affirmed Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decision to order state agencies to cut back part-time employee hours to no more than 29 a week to avoid triggering a requirement under the federal law to provide health insurance.

A Republican who is trying to get around paying for ObamaCare by reducing employees’ hours?  Where was the left-wing outrage?  Narry a peep from the usual suspects like the Huffington Post or Salon.

Things were sure different about two months ago when Papa John’s, Darden Restaurants, and Denny’s announced that they were considering similar cut-backs due to ObamaCare.  Then the left was in full-throated apoplexy. “The Corporate Blackmailing Of America Is Now All the Rage” one pundit ranted.  A little later, other liberal pundits were filled with glee to learn that the “brand names” of these companies supposedly took a hit due to the ObamaCare fall out.

Papa John’s CEO, John Schnatter, took the brunt of the criticism because he was a supporter of Mitt Romney.  My favorite piece was by Prachi Gupta of Salon, who wrote an article about Papa John’s with the sub-headline: “CEO John Schnatter insists that the Affordable Care Act necessitates price increases. Experts disagree.”  Isn’t it nice when there are experts out there that know the costs that businesses will incur better than the people who actually run those businesses?  

Regardless, though, the question sill remains: why no lefty outrage over what a GOP Governor Bob McDonnell is doing?

Perhaps the best explanation is that the evidence is beginning to pile up that this is not just a Republican CEO “thing.”  Other companies like Krispy Kreme, Frish’s (Bob’s Big Boy), and a Wendy’s franchise are also considering cutting back on employee hours.  Interestingly, various colleges and universities are looking at doing the same with their adjunct faculty.

There is even preliminary evidence from Bureau of Labor Statistics data.  As my former colleague Jed Graham noted for Investor’s Business Daily:

The fly in the ointment of January’s jobs report was the apparent shift to part-time work ahead of a key ObamaCare deadline.

Although retail payrolls grew by 32,600, total hours worked in the industry dipped, Labor Department data out Friday showed.

The explanation? Rank-and-file retail workers logged the shortest workweek since early 2010: just 30.1 hours, on average, vs. 30.4 in December….

A similar trend showed up in leisure and hospitality: January payrolls rose by 23,000 even as aggregate hours dipped 0.3%.

Reading over all the lefty outrage from a few months ago, it wasn’t clear that there was much understanding of what, exactly, ObamaCare requires of businesses. To be clear, business with 50 or more full-time employees (full-time defined as working 30 hour or more per week) must either buy their employees insurance or pay a fine.  If they pay the fine, they have a choice to pay whichever is less: 1. (The number of employee - 30) multiplied by $2,000; or 2. The number of employees who qualify for insurance on an exchange multiplied by $3,000.  Either way, those costs have to be paid.

Or shifted.  Businesses can try to reduce their number of employees to under 50 or reduce their employees’ hours to less than 30 per week.  In other words, the costs are shifted onto the employees in the form of fewer jobs and less work hours.

Perhaps the left is no longer outraged because evidence is piling up that, indeed, ObamaCare is going to have a very unpleasant effect on the U.S. labor market.  

Photo: iStockPhoto.com