Category: Guest Authors

Questions For Corbett Regarding Sandusky

By Chris Freind

An open letter to Pennsylvania’s governor, who refuses to answer disturbing questions about his role investigating the Penn State sex scandal:


Bursting with righteous indignation, his cheeks flushed with rage, the governor banged the podium in disgust while berating a journalist – in fact, chastising the entire media – for the audacity to ask questions on the issue.

We’re not talking about New Jersey’s Chris Christie, who gets away with such outbursts because of his stellar track record and pure gravitas.

No, this tantrum came from Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett after being queried about his incredibly long investigation of child predator Jerry Sandusky

And it backfired in spectacular fashion. Why?

Because Tom Corbett is no Chris Christie.

Since questions on this matter remain unanswered, it seems only fitting, on behalf of the media and public, to pen an open letter to Mr. Corbett.

For the record, no media commentator in Pennsylvania supported Corbett’s ideas more than Freindly Fire during the 2010 campaign, from increased Marcellus Shale drilling to school choice to liquor privatization. In fact, FF even backed Corbett’s decision to subpoena Twitter during the Bonusgate corruption probe – a highly unpopular position. Bottom line: this isn’t personal, and it’s not partisan. It’s only about one thing: the truth.

Dear Gov. Corbett:

Since there are a number of questions which you have failed to answer concerning your investigation of Jerry Sandusky, on behalf of the media and the public, I respectfully ask for clarification in the following areas:

1.  Based on a decade’s worth of evidence of Sandusky’s predatory activities, why did it take the Attorney General’s Office three years to arrest him? I fully understand that it takes time to conduct an investigation, but as numerous prosecutors have stated, you could have arrested him quickly and continued building the case.

Tragically, it is probable that Sandusky continued to molest victims during your epic investigation, as predators do not stop preying unless forced to do so. Had he been arrested early, (standard procedure in many cases with a lot less evidence), Sandusky would have had to post bail, had restrictions placed upon him, and, most important, been under an ultra-intense media and community spotlight – every minute of every day until his trial.

In short, children would finally have been safe. And contrary to your assessment, this would have created a much more favorable environment for additional witnesses to come forward, knowing their bigger-than-life demon could hurt them no more. Arresting Sandusky quickly would have in no way jeopardized the strength of the case.

One of two things seems to be true, as there is no third option. Either   you were an incompetent attorney general, which virtually no one believes, or the investigation was deliberately understaffed and drawn out because you did not wish to be the gubernatorial candidate who took down fabled Penn State – with its massive and intensely loyal alumni network – and the beloved Joe Paterno. Since doing so would have presented difficult campaign challenges, many are asking if politics was placed above children’s safety. Which leads to the next question.

2. Why was the investigation so understaffed? Yes, you just now claimed – after eight months – that media reports are wrong that only one investigator was assigned the case for the first 15 months. The real number, as you now state, was a whopping two. We know you were busy with Bonusgate, but political corruption never threatens anyone’s physical well-being, particularly defenseless children.

And the two investigators assigned were narcotics agents. While Sandusky’s heinous crimes were many, drug offenses were not among them.

Yes, they were former police officers. But wouldn’t the reasonable course have been to assign agents with experience in child molestation cases? Did their inexperience lengthen the investigation more than normal … say, past your election in November 2010?

Additional resources were available. Upon becoming governor, you placed state police on the case. You could have made that same request to Gov. Ed Rendell, and, given the stakes, there is virtually no possibility he would have refused. And since you are a former United States attorney, you undoubtedly realized that federal assistance was also available.

3. Do you believe ethical and moral lines were crossed when, after investigating Penn State as Attorney General, you then participated as a member of the Board of Trustees upon becoming governor?

In other words, knowing full well that the investigation was still in full swing, conducted by your handpicked attorney general successor, you nonetheless chose to sit on the very board you had been – and still were – investigating!

Did you ever consider recusing yourself from board activities until the investigation was concluded? Since governors rarely attend board meetings, this would have in no way raised suspicions.

4. As governor, why did you personally approve a $3 million taxpayer-funded grant to Sandusky’s Second Mile charity, given your knowledge that Sandusky was under investigation for multiple child rapes?

Your statement that blocking the grant would have tipped people off to the investigation is utterly disingenuous, particularly since the media reported on the investigation in March, and you did not approve the funds until July 2011.

Vetoing the charitable grant would have simply been viewed as another financial cutback in a budget full of slashed programs.

So one has to ask if the $640,000 in campaign donations from board members of the Second Mile, along with their businesses and families, had anything to do with your actions?

If not, fine. But how did such a massively significant point slip your mind – until the media brought it up? And was that question also out of line?

Since these are matters of grave concern, I and many others look forward to your immediate response.

The media talks about Penn State’s Big Four casualties: Joe Paterno, former President Graham Spanier, Senior Vice President Gary Schultz, and Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley. But perhaps they are missing the biggest: Tom Corbett.

He has always claimed to hold himself to a higher standard, and has roundly criticized Paterno and others for not doing more to stop Sandusky. But when it came down to it, when Corbett had the power to put a speedy end to Sandusky, he didn’t.

If mistakes were made, fine. People can accept that. But to stonewall reasonable questions on such an important matter, and then stalk off , is something that should not, and will not, be tolerated.

Tom Corbett has a choice, perhaps the biggest of his career. He can either answer now – or in 2014.

 

Questions For Corbett Regarding Sandusky

Pennsylvania HRC CAIR Connection

Pennsylvania HRC CAIR Connection

 

By Hillel Zaremba

Tasked with administering and enforcing the state’s anti-discrimination laws, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) has become entangled in aiding an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in its goal of stigmatizing and silencing any criticism of Islam or Muslims, including those engaged in terrorism.

The law that created the PHRC empowers it to:

Track incidents of bias that may cause community tension and to educate the general public, law enforcement, educators, and government officials in order to prevent discrimination and foster equal opportunity.

Occurrences labeled “bias incidents” are logged into a monthly “bias report” that is forwarded to the Pennsylvania State Police, who decide whether to investigate items appearing there. Thus, the PHRC generates a government-sanctioned report card on the level and types of intergroup tensions and possible hate crimes within the commonwealth. In the words of one PHRC official:

We use the bias report to inform the Legislature about trends and for our community education purposes.

In a better world, this course of action might be considered admirable. But in Harrisburg a system has evolved by whichCAIR-PA,[1] the local affiliate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — an organization declared an unindicted co-conspirator in America’s most significant terror financing trial — can manipulate data and push the pernicious myth that the U.S. is filled with hateful, anti-Muslim citizens.

How does it accomplish this? The PHRC convenes a working group, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Civil Tension, whose purpose is “to prevent and/or respond to bias-related incidents and the escalation of intergroup tensions” in Pennsylvania. It includes representatives from the FBI, state police, the state attorney general’s office, and numerous public and private advocacy organizations throughout Pennsylvania. One of these is CAIR-PA.

Beginning in 2004 — and increasing in tempo from 2006 to the present — CAIR-PA has fed the PHRC items that it claims demonstrate bias against Muslims. These items then end up in the PHRC’s bias reports with no apparent reflection on whether they truly constitute bias incidents, actually took place, or ought to appear in a report intended to focus on Pennsylvania.

CAIR-PA registered as a non-profit corporation in Pennsylvania in 2005 and was recognized as a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) entity in 2006. Annual reports from the PHRC record an uptick in bias incidents against Muslims coinciding with those dates and with CAIR-PA’s growing relationship with the state agency. After a post-9/11 high in 2001-2002, such alleged incidents declined to an average of eight per year through 2005-2006, then increased again to the present, more than doubling to an average of 19 per year.

The problematic relationship between the two groups has come to light thanks to the efforts of State Representative Curt Schroder, who submitted a right-to-know request to the PHRC for correspondence between it and CAIR-PA at the behest of Islamist Watch (IW), a project of the Middle East Forum. The emails reveal a corrupting, overly friendly relationship between CAIR-PA and the PHRC, resulting in the government agency manipulating data on behalf of the Islamist group.

Examples of the unbecoming nature of this association abound:

  • In the fall of 2008, a DVD documentary about violent Islamism, Obsession, was distributed in newspapers across the country. CAIR’s national office referred to it in a complaint to the Federal Election Commission as “a blatant piece of anti-Muslim propaganda.” CAIR-PA’s Harrisburg representative Samia Malik alerted the PHRC’s Ann Van Dyke about the film; Van Dyke referred to it as bias incident (BI) #24115 on September 15. Shortly thereafter, a PHRC investigator assigned to evaluate the film wrote: “The information … in the DVD does not disparage Muslims as a group, and no racially or religiously offensive or derogatory language was used in the video.” Despite its own findings, the incident remained logged in the PHRC’s September 2008 bias report as a bias incident.
  • In August 2010, Tom Trento, a Florida-based activist, spoke at the Philadelphia Free Library about Islamism. CAIR-PA lodged a complaint with the PHRC about the lecture, alleging that “Trento … spoke in a biased manner against the broader Muslim community in Philadelphia.” The speech was then tagged as BI #34340. When Van Dyke notified PHRC staff, she attached an article about the presentation from the Philadelphia Bulletin, which quoted Trento as saying: “The issue isn’t Muslims, it’s where you stand on Sharia law.” The Bulletin article continued: “While quick to remind the audience his desire was not to bash Muslims … it was his intent to confront the ideology of Islam.” As no one from the PHRC had attended the speech, the agency apparently chose to label it a bias incident based solely on CAIR-PA’s version of what was said.
  • In March 2011, CAIR-PA held its annual fundraising dinner at a country club owned by Springfield Township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The story was picked up by a reporter for Examiner.com who sharply criticized the township’s hosting the group. CAIR-PA in turn threatened Examiner.com with a lawsuit. When the PHRC’s Van Dyke wrote CAIR-PA’s Executive Director Moein Khawaja urging him to file a report about the incident, Khawaja balked because he did not “want a lot of bias incidents against Muslims to be against CAIR.” Van Dyke persisted and suggested masking CAIR-PA’s involvement. Khawaja agreed with the solution, and BI #34387 against an unnamed “Muslim group” was logged for March 2011. By removing CAIR-PA’s identity from the equation, the PHRC transformed a warning about a municipality’s relationship with a suspect organization into a generic incident of anti-Muslim bias. (In a similar example from later that month, CAIR-PA claimed it had received a solicitation from an unnamed group to participate in acts of terrorism; the letter was inexplicably given a bias incident number, 34395, but again the bias report only mentioned an unnamed “Muslim group.”)

CAIR continually claims it is a civil liberties organization watching out for Muslim Americans, which helps explain its presence on the Inter-Agency Task Force. The PHRC is aware of CAIR’s troubling background but chooses to look the other way.

In June 2011, Islamist Watch supplied the agency with two sourced documents: one demonstrating governmental shunning of CAIR; the other illustrating CAIR’s past questionable behavior in word and deed. IW pressed the agency to reassess the relationship. Its reaction? “[T]he PHRC does not anticipate any further response to you at this time.” There is also clear evidence that the PHRC was aware of questions about CAIR before being contacted by IW.

It bears repeating that the PHRC has been charged with keeping accurate records of incidents with the potential to cause harm to the larger community. When such an agency becomes so closely involved with an advocacy group that it fudges or obfuscates data, real-world repercussions can ensue.

The most significant fallout from this dereliction of duty is the perpetuation of the notion that there is widespread “Islamophobia,” which must then be combated through educational and legislative remedies as well as through changes in law enforcement behaviors. The problem extends beyond Pennsylvania, as a group with an agenda like CAIR and its allies can use this faulty data to declare that FBI and other statistics only reveal the tip of the anti-Muslim iceberg.

For example, in March 2011 testimony[2] was offered before the U.S. Senate by Richard Cohen, president of theSouthern Poverty Law Center, who claimed that FBI “numbers vastly understate the problem” of hate crimes against Muslims. Cohen blamed “limitations in the collection of data” and went on to testify that his group “compiled news reports” of anti-Muslim bias that prove an increase in this phenomenon (as if newspaper reports are unassailable truth). According to the PHRC’s Doreen Winey[3] (director of education and community services and chairperson of the Inter-Agency Task Force), the agency also relies on news reports for collecting its data, which can result in travesties like the following.

An apparent mugging in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, was initially reported in an area newspaper as a possible hate crime because the victim was thought to be of “Middle Eastern descent.” But in a subsequent communication to the PHRC from local police, the event was revealed to have been a drug deal gone sour. Notwithstanding this important correction, BI #24596 remains on the books as an example of “Islamophobia” for March 2010.

There are undoubtedly occurrences of real prejudice within the state, but most of the incidents provided by CAIR-PA do not pass any rational smell test. For example:

  • In April 2006, CAIR-PA alerted the PHRC to an online cartoon published by an evangelical group in California which, in essence, claims that Muslims follow a false prophet. There was no noticeable Pennsylvania connection for BI #23290, but apparently in the PHRC’s eyes Christian evangelizing causes community tension. Muslim proselytizing does not, if its absence in PHRC’s records is any evidence.
  • For organizing “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” events on college campuses in October 2007, theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center was assigned BI #23738. Its “Stop the Jihad on Campus” educational events in 2008 earned it BI #2191, #24129, and #34122 (for three different campuses). While multiple anti-Israel demonstrations which might have discomfited Jewish students took place on many Pennsylvania campuses in those years, none were ever assigned a bias incident number.
  • In late 2009, CAIR-PA filed a complaint with the PHRC against Mason Crest Publishers and the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute for their World of Islam book series. CAIR-PAclaimed the series is “rife with false, anti-Muslim allegations, making this clear propaganda masquerading as a textbook” and the PHRC tagged it as BI #34258. There is no indication in the emails that PHRC staff examined the books themselves, a series praised by the School Library Journal as “illustrat[ing] the diversity of Islamic faith in a clear and unbiased manner.”
  • BI #24901 was assigned to the 2011 congressional hearings in Washington, D.C. about domestic terrorism, chaired by Congressman Peter King. Although the hearings had no Pennsylvania focus, the PHRC, relying on media reports that smeared the testimony as McCarthyism redux, obliged its Islamist partner — which had come under scrutiny during the examination — by identifying the hearings as a source of “intergroup tension.”
  • In 2011, the town council of Carnegie Borough discussed whether an empty church could be used as a mosque. The council voted 5-1 in favor of local Muslims’ request, but that was apparently not good enough for the PHRC. Van Dyke wrote: “I’m including this as a bias report [#2468] since it appears there were no concerns from the community when the building was used by Presbyterians but concerns/questions arose now that the building will be used by Muslims.”
  • Also in 2011, Islamist Watch itself was awarded BI #34427. Its crime? It had written to a Pittsburgh-area high school embroiled in an alleged anti-Muslim incident in an attempt to ascertain what had occurred. A section from IW’s mission statement was quoted in the bias report, but the wording explaining that IW is engaged in “identifying and promoting the work of moderate Muslims” was suspiciously omitted.

The picture that emerges from this survey of “bias incidents” is disturbing in the extreme. Not only do none of these items amount to expressions of bias per se, but it would seem that anybody who even raises a question about Islamists, let alone Islam, is smeared as a bigot. Ann Van Dyke, her colleagues at the PHRC, and their cronies within CAIR-PA have become the arbiters of free speech, the living embodiment of Orwell’s “thought police.”

No one is spared the PHRC’s righteous indignation. A Jewish temple disinvited a CAIR representative once it had learned more about the group’s background: BI #34383. Commentator Dennis Prager opined on the suitability of Congressman Keith Ellison swearing his oath of office on a Qur’an: BI #23466. An online article questioned the motives of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish expatriate with a history of Islamist statements, who runs a network of schools across the U.S.: BI #24906.

In a September 2011 phone conversation with the PHRC, IW asked whether steps were taken to determine whether a reported incident actually occurred, before it is logged with a bias number; the answer was “no.” When asked what forensic credentials PHRC investigators possess, the answer was “none.” In addition, those accused of having engaged in a bias incident are not afforded any due process to refute the charge, nor is a bias incident, once entered, ever expunged from the record, even if it is determined to have no merit.

Thus BI #34357 remains on the books, despite being essentially debunked. The entire sordid story can be read here, but briefly, individuals associated with Philadelphia’s Masjid Al-Jamia (including CAIR-PA’s outreach director, Rugiatu Conteh) alleged that Islamophobes had repeatedly tried to block worshippers from entering the mosque in the summer of 2010. No police record of such behavior ever came to light, though two evangelists were arrested for preaching outside the building in July. They were eventually acquitted of all charges; Conteh, who claimed to have been at the mosque during one of the alleged protests, never showed up to tell her tale in court. Nonetheless, CAIR’s national office and the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender relied upon the unverified story in a 2011 report documenting “Islamophobia.”

CAIR-PA’s too-close relationship with the PHRC is further manifest in the matter of “hate mail.” It could perhaps be argued that if an organization receives a torrent of expletive-filled letters, it is the target of group hatred and that such behavior merits concern. But that does not appear to be the case with CAIR-PA, despite its and the PHRC’s attempt to frame its experiences in that fashion:

  • BI #23424 refers to a “hate mail” sent to CAIR-PA’s Samia Malik in October 2006, urging her not to be too upset about a reported Qur’an desecration. While the tone was sarcastic, there was no offensive language in the letter.
  • BI #23435 refers to a “hate mail” sent to Malik in August 2006, urging her to expose terrorists that CAIR and other Muslims allegedly know about. There was no offensive language in the letter.
  • Two “hate mails” from April and May 2006 seem to be “community alerts” sent to subscribers of a site called primitivepiety.net. The first alert threatened to beseech God to reveal unnamed Muslim “operatives” if recipients did not make free English-language Qur’ans available by a certain date. The second “hate mail” warned that a less “gentle” letter would soon arrive if Muslims did not comply with the writer’s wishes, which included adherence to Christian Science.
  • BI #23436 refers to an August 2006 “hate mail” in which the writer offered a rambling cross-analysis of the Qur’an and Bible, concluding that the latter is full of the word “love” while the former is full of “hell” and “slaughter.”
  • BI #34274 refers to a November 2009 “hate mail” to CAIR-PA, in which the writer stated: “If you do not like the West, you are free to leave” and “This nation was founded upon Christianity… and [not by] uncivilized and backward [people] like you.”

This is not to say that CAIR-PA or other Muslim groups have never received spiteful letters. The question is: do these occasional letters contribute to an atmosphere that threatens the safety and stability of the larger community? The answer, based on the incidents recorded by the PHRC, is painfully obvious.

At the same time, CAIR-PA is guilty of the unreflective prejudice it condemns, yet it remains a member of the Inter-Agency Task Force. Referring to a 2010 profanity-filled letter sent to the imam of the Muslim Association of Lehigh Valley (BI #24788), CAIR-PA’s Khawaja wrote: “If [the purported sender’s] name is actually Joe Martin, the offender is most likely white.” When discussing the World of Islam book series previously mentioned, CAIR described the publishing partner, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, as “a right-wing, pro-war think tank.” Referring to the Peter King congressional hearings, Khawaja tweeted: “If ur minority and havent figured that GOP is bastion of racism and bigotry, get ur head out of ur ass.” Apparently, malicious characterizations give offense only when the receiving end is an Islamist organization.

Unpleasant as it may be, the tone of CAIR-PA’s less-than-civil ruminations is not the fundamental issue. Freedom of expression is. CAIR should be permitted to malign white people or Republicans if it so wishes; it must not, however, be permitted a forum — and an influential relationship — to shut down others’ rights to free speech. By registering sporadic and generally innocuous private communications as bias incidents, by credulously accepting CAIR-PA’s allegations as truth, by labeling all who question the behaviors of Islamists or even Islam itself as bigots, the PHRC is guilty of inflating the number of anti-Muslim acts, fueling the “Islamophobia” industry, and threatening public discourse on controversial issues.

As long as the PHRC’s method of doing business, especially its reliance on CAIR-PA, is not reformed, the citizens of Pennsylvania will continue to suffer. Setting aside the waste of taxpayer dollars for an agency that uses the shoddiest research methods imaginable, the PHRC, in collusion with CAIR-PA, besmirches the commonwealth’s reputation by creating the impression that it suffers from rampant anti-Muslim bias. This, in turn, can have important legislative and law enforcement repercussions affecting the quality of life within Pennsylvania. Simultaneously, the PHRC helps spread the dubious meme of nationwide “Islamophobia,” providing it with the patina of governmental endorsement.

As thought and criticism come under attack by these fatally flawed gatekeepers, legislators may be encouraged to view perfectly legitimate critiques as “hate crimes” and enact laws infringing on public expression. Police may err on the side of caution, shutting down dissenting voices, because they perceive that free speech laws do not apply equally in cases involving Islamists. Such a chilled atmosphere may also hinder law enforcement from conducting necessary investigations, for fear of giving offense.

The PHRC and CAIR-PA are fostering an environment of thought control, where no criticism of Islamists or troubling aspects of Islam is tolerated. This is a path that all Pennsylvanians should resist, including those Muslim Americans who oppose CAIR’s agenda of false victimization and whose voices need to be heard the most.

[1] The branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations examined here calls itself variously CAIR-PA and CAIR-Philadelphia. For purposes of this report, we use only CAIR-PA.

[2] The PHRC absurdly tagged the testimony as BI #24934, even though Cohen’s statement has practically nothing to do with Pennsylvania and is, in fact, against anti-Muslim bias. Cohen does mention an unnamed Pennsylvania educator whose “history program had come under attack by several parents because they believed the text was ‘advocating a positive “indoctrination” of Islam.’” The PHRC’s Van Dyke corresponded with Khawaja about this and the latter admitted he “can’t pinpoint whether or not we have heard from that PA history teacher, but that is a VERY common occurrence w/ parents disparaging of any curriculum that is not critical of Islam or Muslims.” (Moein Khawaja, email to Doreen Winey, April 19, 2011.) Thus, despite no outside corroboration — even from CAIR — the item was logged as a bias incident.

[3] Doreen Winey, telephone interview with author, September 21, 2011.

Pennsylvania HRC’s CAIR Connection

Let’s Not Get Too Political As They Divide and Conquer

It is summer again. A struggle is taking place between those who want so support the downtrodden and help uplift the whole society, and those who want to grab everything for themselves and people who are like them while destroying all others. I think that this has been the primary battle on Earth since the beginning of the age of the human being. There have been forces that wanted to bless people and make those who were blessed be a blessing to everyone in which they came in contact vs. those who thought they were blessed because of their own superiority and who learned to despise those who God was said to love and want blessed, the downtrodden and the pure of heart.

The same old battle is fought again and again at the end of each
age and the beginning of the new. Humanity strives to jump to a new
state of creativity and awareness while other forces filled with
fear, greed, and lack of insight and vision, continually try to push
back toward the dark ages full of fear, discrimination, and created
scarcity so they may maintain their seats of power.

 

The main difference today is that we can see how scarcity is
created right before our eyes. We see how a few people working
behind the scenes can buy the rights of the many through bribery and
media manipulation. We couldn’t see that a long time ago. Because
of more information we can look at the major religions and see how
they played a part in perpetuating the myths that led to fear of the
other and constant wars in the name of God and country. It is as if
the sheet has been pulled back and we see all of the ugly people
conspiring behind the scenes to build empires for themselves
regardless what happens to the majority of the people in their
communities, countries, or even in the world.

This is a good thing. Now is the time for us to look at the place
from whence evil comes. It is time for us to sketch it into our
minds with hot irons, or chisel it into our psyches like truth
written in stone so that we can heal all of the separation that has
been created by these people and their spiritual ancestors, and begin
to rebuild the world the way most of us prefer. The racism, the
sexism, the religious bigotry, and homophobia has to go. These are
the tools they use to conquer us. It is time to realize that we
are part of an interdependent system. We are part of one world. We
are not separate. Poverty and oppression in one part of the world
translate to the same things in the other parts.

 

This is something we are recognizing today through this so called
war on terror. The major chance that we have to make this world
better is to get rid of the hate, nullify the effects of the haters
and Empire builders so that we can have life. When we can do this,
live in a multicultural world where we can enjoy others cultures and
share our own freely, we will create the Rule of Love, The Kingdom of
Heaven, Satchitananda, or even, as the far right conservatives say, all boats rise on the economic tide, on this Earth.

 

We will be what we were born as, a wonderful creative beings who are kind, loving, and capable of creating the world that most of us dream. A world of peace, a world of joy, a world of mutual sharing, in other words, a world of love.
It just takes letting go of the false identity that has been force
fed to us since the day we were born, and remembering who we really are. We are beings connected in an interdependent web of existence.
More than that, we are the guardians of that independent web. This is only if we decide to be that, though.  We have just forgotten who, and what, we really are and it is time to remember before global warming and WWIII..

 

Om Prakash is a Writer, Life-Coach, and Leader of Spirituality
Workshops. He is available for lectures and workshops on various
areas of practical spirituality. He is also the host of the talk show The Spiritual Warrior: Reclaiming your power at:
www.blogtalkradio.com/practical-spirituality.
For more info. visit www.nextstepcoaching.4t.com

 

 

Let’s Not Get Too Political As They Divide and Conquer

LePage’s Cure for High Unemployment: Get a Job

I read a story in the Huffington Post. It said that at the Maine
GOP convention, Gov. Paul LePage (R) received an enthusiastic
standing ovation from his fellow Republicans for saying that all
able-bodied out-of-work Americans need to “get off the couch”
and go find employment.

He wanted the state legislature to pass structural changes to
welfare, saying, “Maine’s welfare program is cannibalizing the
rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there:
Get off the couch and get yourself a Job.”

“I understand welfare because I lived it,” he added. “I
understand the difference between a want and a need. The Republican
Party promised to bring welfare change. We must deliver on this
promise.”

LePage has been pushing for these reforms for months, which the
Democrats have argued, define Welfare Reform to broadly. They
include things like disability, Maine Care, which is Medicaid, as
Welfare”

Mike Tipping, communications director for the Maine People’s
Alliance, said LePage’s comments were “downright offensive to
Maine people searching for work in a difficult economy, especially
considering his embarrassing record of failing to invest in programs
that create jobs and cutting assistance for the unemployed while at
the same time giving massive new tax breaks to the wealthy.”

I have been getting Telemarketing Calls from the Sheriffs Office,
From Firefighters, and from Veterans, and I donate what I can. I’m
struggling to find work myself. Why am I paying taxes with this not
being taken care of? What is wrong with a country when it can’t take
care of firefighters, Veterans, and Law Enforcement agencies, or the
people, but can continually give tax cuts to millionaires who take
the money out of the country, invest in overseas companies paying
slave wages, and then pretend like they are competing with someone
else by constantly raising prices when they are competing with
themselves?

Some people feel good about people like LePage working is way up,
or whatever he may have done. But that was a different world.
Before, if one had a dream and was willing to do the work, one could
start making money by even selling rags and end up as buying houses,
renting apartments, or whatever was possible. If one worked hard
enough in a factory one could move to a supervisory position. One
could work their way through school and come out of the other side
without debt.

When I was young a person could work for the summer and save
enough to pay tuition for the college year. Nowadays this is
impossible. Costs have been going up and real wages have been frozen
and going down since 1968. Jobs have been exported overseas.  The more profits the companies make the more they can afford to invest in jobs overseas with slave wages or low paying jobs here that are worthless.  There is a major problem here. Saying
“Go out and get a job,” when he is the one in charge of creating
jobs, but thwarting the creation of them at the same time, is not
acceptable.

There is a lot of unnecessary struggling going on now, when it
comes to the economy. The one thing that I can see contributing to
it all is that companies and corporations want people to do the work without paying them.
Now it has gotten so bad that LePage even wants people to work not
only with no pay, but with no job! What a world we live in!

Dr. John Gilmore, D. Min.

Life-Coach, Writer, Workshop Leader

www.nextstepcoaching.4t.co

Corbetts Colossal Cockiness Castrates His Credibility

By Chris Freind

“Stevie Welch sat on a wall (of cards); Stevie Welch had a great fall (winning a mere two of 67 counties). All of King (or is it Joker?) Corbett’s horses (jackasses), and all the King’s men (endorsements by 27 County Commissioners and 35 State Legislators), couldn’t put Stevie’s candidacy together again (4 of 5 Republican voters rejected the Welch-Corbett-Obama “ticket”).

And so Freindly Fire’s prediction that Governor Corbett-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Steve Welch would come in a whoppingly-bad third place was proven correct, though it didn’t take a political genius to guess that result.  After all, asking — strong-arming, actually — Republicans to support the Obama-voting, Joe Sestak-supporting Welch was anathema to common sense and political savvy.  And the resulting carnage is everywhere: the endorsement of the state Republican Party is as meaningful as being valedictorian of summer school; getting backed by Corbett now carries substantial negative baggage, and GOP legislators will think long and hard about aligning themselves with the Governor on his signature issues (are there any?), fearing that his promises of support could be akin to political suicide.

And all of this occurred just 15 months after being ushered into office with a ten-point margin and solid majorities in the House and Senate. And ironically, so easily preventable.

Many insiders will claim the blow to Corbett’s prestige will be a fleeting, short-term event. As is most often the case, those “experts” will be wrong. The political reality is that next month, when the Governor wants his ill-fated and unpopular voucher plan for only low-income families (which ignores the middle class) to pass, he will fall short, as his Party walks away from him. When he attempts to garner support for his proposed education cuts in the budget, he will meet substantial resistance. And should he try his hand at privatizing liquor, many in his GOP caucuses will cut and run.  Very few will risk their neck for a Guv who in the best of times was invisible, preferring the shadows to the bully pulpit. Now, Corbett has become a liability.

(Sidenote: Corbett’s low-income voucher allies made that issue the only issue this election, losing all of the races in which they were involved.  In particular, they spent big money trying to defeat West Philadelphia State Representative James Roebuck and mid-state Senator Pat Vance –who only ran again because she was “not going to be pushed out by any Political Action Committee.”. Both won easily — another reason Corbett will have a difficult time with that issue.)

Not only is Corbett’s popularity plummeting, but his reputation has been cemented as a lightweight empty-suit who simply can’t deliver.  The fact that he poisoned his own Party and made it a national laughingstock is icing on the cake.

In addition to Corbett’s endorsement of Welch (and the fact the he personally recorded the voice vote of every State Committee member during the GOP endorsement process), he went to the mat for his boy through mailers, phone calls, fundraisers and speeches.  Yet his election night was a disaster. Consider:

-The Corbett- Welch-ObamaDrama Ticket had all the advantages going into the race. With Santorum out of the presidential contest, many conservative-leaning Republicans did not vote — and low turnout elections almost always favor the endorsed candidate (especially the hand-picked favorite of a Governor).  The Party’s organizational structure and resources are usually sufficient to propel the anointed candidate to victory, but many Party committee people rebuked the Governor by openly supporting non-Welch candidates.

– Even better for Welch, there were two other major candidates in the race (Tom Smith, Sam Rohrer), both of whom would split the anti-establishment, anti-endorsement vote (and the remaining two candidates, David Christian and Marc Scaringi, did the same, taking 18 percent collectively). It should have been an easy “divide and conquer” campaign for Welch. Instead, it was a Kamikaze mission.


-There was a large snowstorm the day before the election across much of western Pennsylvania — Smith’s critical home base. Any dampening of that vote should have proven beneficial to the endorsed candidate, but it was Smith’s supporters who out-performed the once-vaunted statewide GOP machine.

– It should have been a slam-dunk for Welch to raise millions from Corbett and the big GOP donors.  But he took in an embarrassing $150,000 in the entire first quarter —half of Smith’s total and, quite possibly, even less than Smith’s dog. That lack of gravitas is quite telling.

– There was one bright spot: Welch’s campaign consultants reaped the benefits of the $1 million Welch personally gave his campaign.  The effectiveness of how they spent that money is another story, since there was no Philadelphia broadcast TV, limited media, and, come to think of it, virtually no campaign at all — usually not the best way to win an election.

-By far the most surreal moment of the night was Welch crying poor, complaining about being outspent 5-1 —even though he is accurately described in every news article as being the self-funding millionaire entrepreneur.  All self-funders claim that they will only spend a fixed amount, and, of course, exceed that after consultants convince them they are “closing fast.”  That never happened with Steve.  The irony is that he was always perceived as a self-funder (and no one wants to contribute to a rich candidate), but he clearly wasn’t able to micturate (look it up) with the big dogs in the tall grass.  Playing the rich-guy card (against a really rich guy like Smith) without having the aces in your hand isn’t just a bad bluff. It’s a dead-man’s hand.

Kind of makes you wonder what the hell the point was in going for the endorsement — or running at all.

*****

So what happens from here?  Prosecutor Kathleen Kane, who whipped the whining Patrick Murphy despite his endorsements from all the wrong folks (career pols Rendell and Nutter), is in the driver’s seat to become the first Democrat Attorney General. And expect the Penn State scandal to be front-and-center in the fall election, with Kane pounding away about what former Attorney General Tom Corbett knew, and when he knew it.

Not only would a Kane victory reflect negatively on Corbett (since the Dems would have captured that prize on his watch, and in doing so, beaten the Governor’s hand-selected candidate in what should be a Republican-leaning election), but his image and effectiveness will be further compromised as more is learned — and publicized —about his role in how the Penn State investigation was handled.

From having it all just a year ago, Tom Corbett will witness his own Party run away from him on the issues and in the election — and helplessly watch as the Democrats make him the issue.

It took George W. Bush six years to get to that point.   If Tom Corbett’s goal was to best the former President, well…Mission Accomplished.

Corbetts Colossal Cockiness Castrates His Credibility

Pa Attorney General Race

Pa Attorney General Race
By Chris Freind

Well, primary election day is almost here, and some of the races have gotten downright nasty. From disingenuous, mean-spirited campaign ads to a Democrat masquerading as a Republican accusing his opponent of being a Democrat, there’s something to satisfy everyone’s entertainment needs.

Perhaps the ugliest race is the Democratic contest for attorney general, pitting a woman against a whiner: prosecutor Kathleen Kane and former congressman Patrick Murphy. Murphy certainly can’t run on his record (there isn’t one), so instead he has charged Kane with being a millionaire trucking executive. (Note: If you can figure out how being married to a trucking company owner would prevent a career prosecutor from being an effective AG, please let me know. Perhaps she would look the other way on the rampant truck-on-truck crime in Pennsylvania?)

Of particular concern to many is that Murphy, who as a congressman perfectly personified the deer-in-headlights legislator (remember the Hardball interview with Chris Matthews on the Iraq war?), is running for the state’s top law enforcement job despite never prosecuting a single criminal case in Pennsylvania.

Murphy will need all the help he can get to pull out a victory, and apparently that help has arrived. Sources tell me that elements of the Republican Party have been covertly (and even overtly) pulling out all the stops for the young doe. And for good reason: They see him as infinitely easier to beat in November than an articulate (and better-looking) female prosecutor.

***

Speaking of Republicans helping Democrats, for your reading pleasure I have a letter from Governor Tom Corbett pushing Steve Welch, the Obama-voting, Joe Sestak-supporting U.S. Senate candidate he personally endorsed (and strong-armed the Republican Party into endorsing). So in the spirit of accuracy, I’ve “corrected” the Governor’s letter to reflect the truth, though we will leave the bad sentence structure intact. My commentary in bold:

Dear Friend,

In less than two years we have turned the tide [by being just like Ed Rendell?], and are righting the wrongs of the liberal agenda here in Pennsylvania [yes, that same “liberal agenda” that, in fact, was passed by an overwhelmingly Republican state senate]. We brought a new way of thinking to Harrisburg after inheriting a recession and a $4.2 billion dollar budget deficit in 2011 [Sorry, Guv, but despite the constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, those deficits still exist because no one—Republican or Democrat—will address the issues that led to those deficits. Examples abound, such as the $400 million in I-80 tolls used to “balance” a prior budget—even though that interstate never became a toll road, and the money was never “repaid.”]. While we have witnessed others in the past attempt to solve our state’s problems by spending more of your hard-earned tax dollars, I have employed a fiscally conservative approach to our economic issues [Yes,by finishing Rendell’s spending legacy of bailing out the Philadelphia shipyard to build ships with no buyers, constructing a new stadium for the  [obviously poor] New York Yankees’ AAA baseball team, funding the multimillion dollar Arlen Specter library, spending Delaware River Port Authority funds [AKA taxpayer dollars] on projects having nothing to do with the bridges while tolls continue to increase … we’d love to continue, but column space is limited to 10,000 words].

Together with the General Assembly, we have put our state’s economy back on track [uhhh, the natural gas industry is leaving the state, in part because of no political leadership, and the unemployment rate has not measurably dropped], not by demonizing the private sector, but by lowering taxes [Really? The job-killing taxes haven’t been touched, such as the nation’s second-highest corporate tax and the 18 percent tax on every bottle of wine and booze to rebuild Johnstown from the flood—of 1936!], cutting government spending [let’s be honest—that’s only because the federal stimulus dollars dried up],balancing the budget on time and giving businesses the ability to create jobs and drive economic growth.

Unfortunately, we have a government in Washington, D.C. stuck in the same liberal trap that Pennsylvania was suffering in. We started the fight in 2010 by talking about real change and real reforms  [Very, very true. It was, and remains, all talk.] With your help and support, I was elected along with a Republican State Senate and House Majority, U.S. Senator Pat Toomey and 12 Republican congressmen to cut wasteful spending and promote economic growth. This year, we have to continue our efforts and send U.S. Senate candidate Steve Welch to join the fight! [The irony is just dripping here. Pennsylvania elects all those Republicans to stop the “liberal” Obama agenda—and Corbett is pushing an Obama-voter who was, until fairly recently, a Democrat. Go figure].

I endorsed Steve because he has the passion and ability to take our shared Pennsylvania values to Washington, D.C. and get our federal government’s reckless spending back under control. He is a businessman who has worked tirelessly to achieve the American dream, creating a successful living for himself and creating jobs for hundreds of others. In the private sector, Steve has helped young entrepreneurs achieve their own dreams of launching a successful small business [In keeping with the “dream” theme, who in their right mind could possibly dream that endorsing an Obama supporter would rally the Republican Party?]

Steve is running for the U.S. Senate because he believes in the same values you and I do! [Wait, whose values? Obama’s or Sestak’s? Or both? And do most in the GOP share those values? Admittedly, the Party’s pick for Prez is the architect of government healthcare, but still … ]Steve could no longer sit back and watch as President Obama and Senator Bob Casey continue to spend our way into oblivion and add more debt onto the backs of future generations [Damn! If only Welch didn’t vote for Obama, that line may have worked!!]. Steve wants to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington, D.C. and help others achieve the American dream, as he has. [Unfortunately for Corbett and Welch, that’s not going to happen. There are no points for second  [or third] place. Sorry, Bob Casey: It doesn’t look like Christmas is coming early for you.]

Remember that we have a great slate of statewide candidates including Steve Welch—David Freed for Attorney General, John Maher for Auditor General and Diana Irey Vaughan for Treasurer—who need your support over the next few days. You can visit www.pagop.org to learn how you can help.

Most importantly, I hope you will join me on April 24th and cast your ballot for Steve Welch for U.S. Senate and our entire statewide team! [Too bad Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary, since that would at least give your man a fighting chance … ]

Sincerely,

Tom Corbett
Governor [well, at least until 2014…]

Pa Attorney General Race

Why Dominic Pileggi Gets a C+

I am the owner and sole founder of The Liberty Index and solely responsible for grading the Acts of the General Assembly and the Governor. I would like to provide a context for Senator Dominic Pileggi’s C+ grade.
Because The Liberty Index is graded on a curve, Senator Pileggi’s grade shows relative standing to other legislators.
Dominic Pileggi’s grade and position on the curve mean he is not as bad as his colleagues.
Given the State Senate’s own record, the grade must be interpreted as not as bad as a bad bunch.
Looking behind the grade at the actual votes, let us compare and contrast the rhetoric and the reality of the record.
Disappointingly, the alleged fiscal conservative Sen. Pileggi, who represents the 9th District, voted “YEA” for seven of eight Ed Rendell’s Bankrupting Budgets. It’s sometimes hard to tell the Democrats from theRepublicans, especially, when Republicans are in Leadership.With his “YEA” vote for Capital Budget Act 130 of 2011,
Senator Pileggi (and every otherPennsylvania State Senator) added $1.6 billion dollars in debt to Pennsylvania’s ForgottenTaxpayer’s financial burden and, simultaneously, voted millions for billionaire corporations: Comcast, Janney, Teva Pharmaceuticals, ShopRite, Franklin Mint and $850,000 toPhiladelphia Democrat Chaka Fattah’s Philadelphia House of Imoja and $1,970,000 to Philadelphia University‐Arlen Specter Library and $10,000,000 John P. Murtha Center for Public Policy in Cambria County.
Contrary to Senator Pileggi’s rhetoric, the reality of the record is that Senator Pileggi is not The Forgotten Taxpayer’s BFF.
Mr. Guzzardi of Montgomery County runs the watchdog blog LibertyIndex.Com.
Why Dominic Pileggi Gets a C+

Is Archdiocese Lying Or Just Incompetent On School Closings?

By Chris Freind

“I don’t know Chief…this shark is either very smart, or very dumb…”

So was the famous line uttered by the legendary Quint in Jaws, as he was trying to figure out the intentions of the great white.

After
the recent roller coaster ride regarding Archdiocesan school closings –
and now the many reprieves – Catholics across the Philadelphia region
are wondering the same thing. Is the church hierarchy very smart (in a
conniving way), or very dumb?

Or are they, and the “Blue Ribbon” school commission deciding the fate of so many, just downright incompetent?

There isn’t a fourth option.

At
issue is that a whopping 75 percent of Catholic elementary schools that
appealed their closings were successful, meaning that their doors are
staying open, at least for now.

Last Friday, it was announced
that of the 24 appeals, 18 won. While it seemed like a “Good Friday” to
many, something tells me it may turn into a day of regret, closer in
fact to a Black Friday.

This is not meant to rain on anyone’s
parade, as there is obvious cause for celebration for many Catholic
families. After all, they had been told last month that their beloved
schools – 49 of them -were slated for permanent closure. While there was
an appeals process, based solely on factual errors committed by the
commission, virtually everyone figured there would be very few
successful appeals, if any.

And with good reason.

In
January, the chairman of the Commission, John Quindlen, former chief
financial officer of DuPont, made it crystal clear why schools were
closing and consolidating.

“A lot of this should have been
done 10 years ago…(but)… naivete and an unwillingness to face reality”
kept many pastors and archdiocesan leaders from halting long ago the
“death spiral” of declining population and rising tuition at so many
schools, he said, according to Philly.com.
“They would say, ‘I can make this work … But we had to come along and
finally say, ‘God bless you, but this has got to stop.’ ”

Fast
forward one month to the church’s about-face, and Quindlen’s comments
tell a starkly different story. “I celebrate the results and pray they
all survive in the long term … Neither the commission nor the
archdiocese was in a rush to close schools. Our focus was on how to
sustain them.”

What? Did he seriously say that with a straight face?

How
can you make the leap from a “death spiral” to “celebrating the
results” and talking about sustainability in less than one month?

Give
the archdiocese credit for one thing: if they are trying to anger as
many Catholics as possible in the most bumbling manner while ignoring
all rules of good communication and PR, they are succeeding beyond their
wildest dreams.

Let’s cut through the emotions tied to school
closings and look at this situation objectively. In doing do, one has to
ask: Why the games? Why did the Church say one thing – that in
retrospect now seems very suspect – and then almost completely reverse
itself, all the while talking in platitudes that didn’t remotely address
the questions and concerns of many?

It has left many scratching their heads, and even more seething.

So
here are the questions that absolutely must be addressed in order for
the archdiocese to have any credibility moving forward, and to prevent
the exodus of loyal, but very bitter, Catholics:

1) Is Catholic
education too expensive to sustain in most if not all of the 49 schools
that were originally slated for shuttering? If yes – which is what the
archdiocese has been telling us, and selling us, for quite some time –
then how can three out of four appeals have been successful? What
changed? Did a billionaire step up and write a big check to keep the
schools open? If so, we don’t need a name, because charity should be
anonymous, but we do have a right to know if that happened (extremely
unlikely as it is).

2) If the opposite is true – that those
schools are in fact affordable – then why have we been told something so
radically different for so long? It’s like being pregnant: you are or
you aren’t. Either the church can operate these schools efficiently, or
they can’t. There is no in-between. But that’s exactly where this
situation is – in no-man’s land, and their equivocation has just added
to the confusion.

3) Is incompetence to blame for the
contradictory messages? We were told that appeals would only be
considered if factual errors were made in determining which schools
closed. Well, by that logic, that’s a heck of a lot of errors. If a
student makes “factual errors” on 75 percent of a test, his grade is a
25. Which, unless you attend a public school in Philadelphia, is an F.
Not exactly a stellar track record.

4) Were we lied to from the
get-go? And if so, why? Was the threat of closings a grand conspiracy to
flush out big contributors as well as lighten the wallets of the
rank-and-file even more? Don’t scoff. The archdiocese has a history of
not being straightforward.

Just look at its red face regarding
its mishandling – and lack of truthfulness – involving one of its
schools in Philadelphia. According to a news report, a group starting a
public charter school stated that it was assured by the archdiocese that
it could rent Our Lady of Mount Carmel school for that purpose – two
months before the commission recommended closing the school! Mount
Carmel appealed its closing. Any guesses as to how that turned out? It
begs the questions as to why the archdiocese would even allow the school
to appeal when its fate had apparently already been determined.

Since
we are on the topic of education, perhaps a refresher is in order. The
8th Commandment tells us that we should not bear false witness against
our neighbor. In layman’s terms, playing loose with the truth – and
outright lying – doesn’t bode well for a Church preaching morality and
in desperate need of credibility and trust.

5) What about the
folks at all the other schools who wanted to appeal but were dissuaded
from doing so because the odds were so long for success? Common sense
tells us that if they had known such a large number of schools would win
their cases, many others would have appealed. Now, those parents and
students feel even more burned than they did a month ago – a remarkable
feat in itself.

6) The appeals have thrown schools that were
thought to be “safe” into chaos. Nativity BVM in Media, for example, was
originally intended to stay open, absorbing students from St. John
Chrysostom in Wallingford. St. John’s won their appeal though, and now,
in a stunning reversal, Nativity is shutting its doors and the new
school will be located at St. John’s.

Not only do parents and
teachers feel completely betrayed by this out-of-nowhere blindside, but
there’s an even more unjust twist: Nativity apparently does not have the
ability to appeal like all the other schools did. Talk about rubbing
salt in the wound.

And it’s exactly that type of move,
accompanied by virtually no communication, which drives fuming
parishoners to leave the Church. Hence the decline in church attendance
and school enrollment.

7) How can the church push for school
choice when it does not allow choice for its own members at the
elementary school level? So some families in Annunciation parish in
Havertown, for example, whose school closed because its pastor refused
to file the appeal that so many parents begged him to do, must send
their children all the way across town to St. Denis, when in fact they
live within walking distance to Sacred Heart? How ironic that the very
church fighting the image of hypocrisy born from the sex scandal now
engages in more hypocrisy: fighting for school choice as long as it
doesn’t apply to its own flock. When will they learn?

8) There
are no guarantees in life, but what assurances can the church give that,
in the next few years, those 24 schools, as well as any others, will
not close? Since it is impossible to believe that the problems of
declining enrollment, rising costs and overall unsustainability have all
been solved in the last 30 days, woe to those parents who take the
recent reprieves to be a sign of long-term viability, for they may well
be revisiting this exact situation in the near future. And that just
isn’t right.

•

The point of this column
is neither to agree with nor criticize the specific school closings and
successful appeals, but to implore the archdiocese to come clean with
all the facts.

Quint had to figure out what the shark was doing
and why. For all the blood, sweat and tears Catholics have shed for
their Church over the years, they should never have to question the
motivations of their Catholic leaders. They only seek the truth, and
deserve no less. It’s time to give it to them.

And that’s no fish story.

 

Is Archdiocese Lying Or Just Incompetent On School Closings?

Would Bon Jovi Get Half Staff

Would Bon Jovi Get Half Staff

By Chris Freind

With the sparse media coverage of Whitney Houston’s death
and funeral, it’s not surprising that her years of military service
have gone largely unnoticed, as were her activities as an undercover cop
in New Jersey (was she really killed after a sting went bad?). After
all, she must have done these dangerous things to warrant all
New Jersey state flags being flown at half-mast in her honor, as ordered
by Governor Chris Christie.

Because the opposite simply defies common sense. If Houston was not a
police officer gunned down in the line of duty, nor a military hero
killed in a war zone, that means that the hugely significant act of
lowering the flags in deference to her was because she was … a singer?

Really, Governor? A singer? That’s what it’s come down to in Jersey?
Sure, Whitney Houston was a Jersey native, proud of her Garden State
roots. And undeniably, she was one of the most dynamic pop stars of all
time, changing the musical landscape forever and inspiring some of the
brightest performers of today.

But she was just a singer. That’s not to minimize her
accomplishments, as they are many, but let’s cut through the emotion and
talk brass tacks. She was a popular singer, past her prime, with a
not-exactly-stellar personal history.

Play word association with most people about Whitney Houston, and they will tell you two things: great singer and crack addict.

That’s reason enough not to elevate Houston to god-like status. While
Christie can’t control the media’s nauseating coverage of all things
Whitney, he certainly could have sent a message by NOT lowering the
flags for her. By doing so, Houston is now perceived, more than she ever
has been, as a special role model, one for whom the government has
issued its seal of approval.

Where does it end? What is the litmus test for getting flags lowered on your behalf—once
the hallowed territory of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in
service of their country? Christie has changed the rules forever.

If Jon Bon Jovi happens to meet his maker next week, will the Guv give him the same special treatment? And what is the threshold? Record sales? Movie appearances? Rehab stints?
More ominous is to ponder Bon Jovi’s flag fate had he died before
Whitney. Would Christie have honored him the same way? And if not, would
that have been because Bon Jovi wouldn’t have provided the same
perceived political benefit?

Houston fans will take this as a personal affront to Whitney and her
family, but the point remains a valid one, and that bring us to two
possibilities.

1) Is Christie’s move a political calculation,
pandering to constituencies that are not in his camp? And if so, is the
Governor’s attempt at making inroads with the black community and young
hipsters done to seem more “moderate and compassionate,” both perceived
necessities if Christie is running for president or vice-president?

If that is the case, it is a massive miscalculation on three counts.
First, he won’t win over those constituencies because he lowers flags.
He can only do so by sticking to his core convictions, explaining to
them why his vision will benefit them more than failed Democratic
policies will. Second, he has now alienated an influential part of his
natural base—active and retired police and military personnel. Last,
such perceived political posturing doesn’t sit well with the vast
majority of regular, non-political citizens. They may not see his
motives as politically calculated, but many see his decision as a total
lack of good judgment.

2) Of course, there may be absolutely no political calculation
whatsoever, with Christie making his decision on a human level only. I,
for one, would certainly like to think so, as no media commentator has
defended Christie’s bulldog approach to tough issues more than Freindly Fire (and, to be fair, hammered him when he was wrong, such as “HelicopterGate”).

But that is exactly why politicians should not be lowering flags and
honoring anyone they happen to like. The nature of politicians is such
that everything they do is perceived to be calculated, that behind every
move is an ulterior motive to curry favor with a particular
constituency.

Why wasn’t the solemn act of lowering flags to honor real heroes left
intact? Why is nothing sacred anymore? Why is common sense so
incredibly uncommon these days, even by those from whom we expect more?

Perception is reality, and the growing perception—from both the
media’s nonstop Whitney coverage and Chris Christie stamping his
imprimatur on her entire life—is that she should be emulated and admired
as one of the nation’s great role models.

Drug Testing Public Workers Isn’t So Far Out. Man.

Drug Testing Public Workers Isn’t So Far Out. Man.

Randomly testing all public workers is simply common sense

Random drug testing of welfare recipients and public workers is racist, discriminatory and blatantly unconstitutional.

And if believe any of that, you’re smoking something.

Once
again, the drug testing issue is making headlines in Pennsylvania, as
such a program is now underway. Unfortunately, because the Legislature
dragged its feet (what else is new?), the current initiative is a
scaled-down version of the original bill, and has been put into effect
via an emergency budgetary order from the Governor. It only applies to
welfare recipients who have been convicted of a felony in the last five
years or are currently on parole or probation.

Too bad. It should include every single non-elected person receiving a paycheck courtesy of John Q. Taxpayer.

(The
only officials who should be exempted from mandated drug testing are
elected officials, though that position is sure to generate hoots and
hollars from the cheap seats. The rationale is simple: they are elected
by the people. They are not collecting government assistance checks,
nor are they hired as civil service workers. True, much of what we see
from elected officials leaves us wondering if they’re all on drugs. And
yes, at first glance it seems hypocritical for lawmakers to enact laws
that they themselves do not have to follow, but they are in the unique
position of being employed directly by the people. What’s next? A State
Rep fails the test and is stripped of his seat? Not practical, probably
unconstitutional, and a very dangerous precedent. Would these elected
office holders be smart to voluntarily take a drug test? Absolutely,
because if they don’t, they’ll be unsuccessfully explaining themselves
all the way to the ballot box.)

Remember the point of
state-mandated drug testing: to ascertain whether someone receiving
money — given to them by hardworking Pennsylvania taxpayers — is
breaking the law by using those funds on illegal drugs. It is not to put
people behind bars, but to ensure that they are clean and not abusing
taxpayer dollars.

Proof that this is not a conspiratorial
police-state tactic designed to incarcerate the state’s drug users, but a
program to simply ensure responsible stewardship of the people’s money?

Consumption
of drugs is not illegal. Manufacturing, distribution and possession of
illicit narcotics is. And since having drugs in one’s system is not
legally considered “possession,” no one failing a drug test would be
arrested.

Taxpayers have an absolute right to know that their
money isn’t going to welfare recipients’ drug habits. No one has a gun
to his head to go on public assistance, just like no one forces people
to work at a private sector company that mandates drug tests. It’s part
of the deal— take it or leave it.

Seemingly lost in the debate is
that drug testing isn’t a discriminatory act against select individuals,
but is increasingly common throughout all of society. Many companies
require applicants to pass a drug test as a condition of employment, for
obvious, common sense reasons. No business wants drug users on the job,
as they would be high-risk, untrustworthy employees who would
undoubtedly threaten not just productivity, but company stability.

It’s
key to remember that public assistance is supposed to help the
recipient and his/her family survive; it should never be used
carelessly, especially for something illegal. Since drugs are illegal,
if recipients can’t prove themselves to be clean, they should receive no
benefits. It’s that simple. Public benefits are a privilege, not a
right, just like driving or flying. If people choose not to abide by the
rules, that’s fine. But it’s simply arrogant to think one is entitled
to these benefits without any conditions.

Here are some of the more disingenuous arguments the pro-druggie side likes to use:

Argument: Welfare recipients are no more likely to use drugs than the rest of the population.

Answer:
Who cares? That’s completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the
percentages are, although that claim is certainly suspect. The majority
of the population isn’t directly receiving taxpayer-funded benefits.
For those who are, drug testing should be the rule. Don’t like it?
Fine. Get a job. And if you have a public sector job, be thankful you
do and act responsibly to keep it. You work for the people. It’s their
money.

Argument: Drug testing is expensive.

Answer: If the government starts operating like a business, and aggressively negotiates volume discounts with private testing companies, the price
isn’t that high. This common sense expenditure would surely even pass
Tea Party muster. By definition, Government must spend money, but
should do so smartly and efficiently. The testing should be for all new
applicants, and random testing of the entire public pool thereafter,
somewhere in the five to ten percent range.

And financially and ethically, what is the cost of having taxpayers subsidize a crack addict’s drug habit?

Argument:
The ACLU challenged the mandatory drug testing program as
unconstitutional, arguing that drug testing of welfare recipients
violates the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable
searches, labeling it “intrusive.”

Answer: That’s insulting to
every citizen NOT on the public dole. First, the anti-testing folks,
including legislators and the ACLU, are not Supreme Court justices, so
it’s not up to them to determine constitutionality. Second, odds are
certainly favorable that given the makeup of both the state and U.S.
Supreme Court, mandatory drug testing would be upheld. Welfare
recipients aren’t being forced to do anything. They choose to apply for
welfare. After that, they must abide by the conditions placed upon
them in return for receiving public money.

Argument: Random drug testing is
thinly-veiled racism, and an attempt to demonize public sector workers
by lumping them into the (false) public perception that all welfare
recipients are drug-using, inner city dregs of society.

Answer: I
wouldn’t have believed these accusations could be made with a straight
face, but that’s exactly what was thrown at me during two televised
debates on this issue. Such weak arguments only serve to bolster what
most people instinctively know: random drug testing of those receiving
taxpayer money is sound policy that serves to weed out bad apples and
preserve the integrity of “charitable” giving.

Given that a
Democratic Senator, John Wozniak, is the prime sponsor of the
Pennsylvania bill, and his Party loves to bill itself as the defender of
the poor, minorities and public sector workers, those charges don’t
stand up for a second.

They are so ridiculous on their face that
they shouldn’t need rebutting, but it bears repeating: this issue has
nothing to do with race (many on public assistance are White), and zero
to do with demonizing public sector workers and unions (as many in the
private sector are tested as well). It has everything to do with the
reasonable expectation of taxpayers that their money be used for
humanitarian purposes (public assistance) and an intelligent, stable and
productive workforce (public sector employees).

The Daily Show
With Jon Stewart ran a comedic segment, with one of its “reporters”
interviewing the Florida legislator who sponsored a similar bill, and
Rick Scott, the Sunshine State’s Governor who also championed the drug
testing cause. Both men are right on the issue, but may have lost the PR
battle, looking downright foolish at times. That’s a shame, because
it’s communication miscues like those in that interview that sets the
issue back in other states, giving credence to otherwise baseless
arguments that should have been smoked from the get-go.

It’s not
what you say, but how you say it. So in Pennsylvania, let’s say it loud
and clear: “This is your paycheck (a lot of taxpayer money). And this
is your paycheck on drugs: Absolutely nothing!”

Finally something worth inhaling.