NY Times News Alert:
New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday approved a broad rollback in benefits for three-quarters of a million government workers and retirees, the deepest cut in state and local costs in memory, in a major victory for Gov. Chris Christie and a once-unthinkable setback for the powerful public employee unions.
Notice! It is not necessary to register on this blog to comment. First comment will be held for approval. After that, you will be good to go.
Notice 2! It is necessary to chose a name or moniker. ‘Anonymous’ will NOT go through moderation. It gets too confusing.
Summer is officially here. The heat, the humidity, the picnics, the beach,the pool, the kids out of school!
The codification of same sex marriage rights has passed the house but not the Republican held senate in NY State. Observers expect the needed vote to come as early as next week. NY is significant because it it the third largest state by population.
President Obama stopped short of endorsing the efforts to pass marriage equality legislation by stating that he is evolving on this issue. The President sees the issue as a civil rights equality issue but personally struggles with his comfort zone of one man-one woman marriage.
Should marriage equality or same-sex marriage be decided at the state level or should it be national? Will the courts decide or will legislatures decide? Should the nation just go with civil unions for all and leave ‘marriage to churches and other religious institutions? Is this a civil rights issue such as the President believes?
Former PWC IT chief, Maneesh Gupta, plead guilty to 49 felony charges related to a bid rigging scheme. Gupta is the former head of Prince William County’s Office of Information Technology. According to insidenova.com:
Maneesh Gupta, 47, the former OIT systems division chief, pleaded guilty to charges of public fraud, combination to rig bids, conspiracy to commit forgery, uttering and obtaining money by false pretenses.
The public fraud charge was amended from a charge of racketeering. Prosecutors dropped a charge of money laundering.
Prosecutors offered Gupta a plea agreement, but Prince William Circuit Court Judge Richard B. Potter said he would defer his decision on whether or not to accept it until Gupta’s sentencing hearing on Oct. 6.
Buried deep within insidenova.com under many other crime stories:
Teen charged with sexually assaulting 7-year-old girl
A 13-year-old Manassas boy has been charged with sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl on Friday, police said.
The victim told police that the boy assaulted her multiple times — at least once in the 9900 block of King George Drive, in the West Gate of Lomond neighborhood — for about a year, Prince William police spokesman Jonathan Perok said.
The boy was charged with two counts of aggravated sexual battery and two counts of indecent liberties by a child, Perok said.
The boy’s court date and bond information were not immediately available.
Police did not release the identity of either kid due to their age.
Here we go again. Once more we have children sexually assaulting younger children and no one knows who the child who assaults even is. I am having a bad flash back.
I remember almost 35 years ago coming home from work to face a tragic story about our little 3-year old neighbor being abducted and taken across the road into what was then Barrett Field. She was assaulted. Was she raped? No, but only because she was so young and it wasn’t for lack of effort on the part of the 16 year old perp.
Inexplicibly, the owner of BVBL continues to reduce politics to a personal level. It has come to the attention of Moonhowler and myself, that Greg has singled out the ages of Martha Hendley(R) and Toddy Puller (D), and the skirt style and overall intelligence of Suzanne Miller(R).
Greg says about Martha:
Her experience and history are a strong positive but she’s quite a bit older than someone you typically see running for their first elected office, and how that might impact the dynamics is yet to be seen. She’s in good health however, so there’s not any evidence to suggest she isn’t going to run as hard as anyone else.
What does Martha’s age matter? She has been more involved in county politics and policy than other person running for Gainesville Supervisor, age is definitely NOT an issue so why even bother to bring it up.
His comments about Toddy Puller are even more offensive:
The contrasts between Toddy Puller and Jeff Frederick are tremendous. Puller is a grouchy old party-line hack who isn’t fun at all to listen to. Frederick is a young engaging maverick (the real kind, not the McCain BS kind) who is funny, warm, friendly and engaging. Puller isn’t physically able to knock on doors while Frederick attacks doorknocking with the single-minded purposefulness of George Patton. Frederick’s campaign literature will feature him and his cute family while Puller’s campaign staff will desperately try to keep Toddy’s picture from appearing anywhere unless it’s at least fifteen years old.
Now, you think that was inappropriate, wait til you read what Greg wrote about Suzanne Miller:
If ever there was someone utterly unprepared to run for office this would be it. I’ve seen some pretty awful candidates in my time, and this one takes the cake. Any random neighbor in the county would likely demonstrate higher capabilities to run for office or qualifications to hold it.
Not many of them would look better in a tight, short skirt at a campaign event like this, however.
Let’s start with why would anyone comment on her skirt in such an offensive manner? Suzanne Miller holds dual masters degrees, one in instructional technology and another in Computer Science. She has also authored several technical publications.
Greg not only proudly represents himself as a loyal conservative Republican, but he also does work for Republican Candidates. We expect that when it comes to discussing candidates, the criticism should be directed at policy, not age, not skirt choice.
We all must live by that age old standard of the golden rule, especially during election season. We can discuss differences, loudly, passionately, even angrily, but to get personal, to focus on the way someone looks, or their age, is simply a poor show of character.
UPDATE: It appears we need to put in another requirement for the election season–truthfulness.
Reprint:
Jon Stewart is right about Fox News
By Adam Serwer
Yesterday Daily Show host Jon Stewart appeared on Fox News Sunday, where he accused the network of taking ideological “marching orders.”
Fox Anchor Chris Wallace took exception to Stewart’s remarks:
STEWART: You can’t understand because of the world you live in that there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change because that’s the soup you swim in. I appreciate that. I understand that. It reminds me of, you know — you know, ideological regimes. They can’t understand that there is free media other places. Because they receive marching orders.
WALLACE: How do you explain me? Do you think I get my marching orders?
STEWART: I think that you are here in some respects to bring a credibility and an integrity to an organization that might not otherwise have it, without your presence. So, you are here as a counterweight to Hannity, let’s say, or a counterweight to Glenn Beck, because otherwise, it’s just pure talk radio and it doesn’t establish the type of political player it wants to be.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the nation’s biggest companies.
The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could not proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to wrap into one lawsuit.
The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages.
So did all of them agree or was there a 5-4 vote? It can’t be both. Basically the Supreme Court tacitly approved gender discrimination with a ‘too big to sue’ statement. It might hurt business. It might hurt Walmart.
Does that mean its ok to pay women differently? Should they not be promoted the same way men who work for Walmart are promoted? Should they not be paid the same salary for the same work or get raises on the same scale men do? What is Walmart afraid of?
Walmart and other businesses need to be sent a strong message that discrimination is unacceptable. I am not sure how to do it. Some of us won’t go into a Walmart. I also won’t go inside a local Home Depot because the male workers ignore women customers. That’s the only way I know to send a message that business practices are unacceptable. It is probably wise to sent an email to corporate to tell home office why you don’t shop at the local retail stores also.
The original complainants can still pursue their claim but they cannot move forward in a massive class action lawsuit.
Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty have signed on to the Susan B. Anthony List’s 2012 Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge. The presidential candidates have pledged to roll back abortion rights in four key areas, and the duo join three other presidential contenders: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Bachmann went after fellow presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday for not signing the pledge and not committing to “ending the practice of abortion.”
The candidates pledged to appoint anti-abortion judges, to appoint anti-abortion cabinet members, to defund Planned Parenthood and to sign a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks gestation.
Bachmann went after Mitt Romney for not signing the pledge.
So there is a litmus test now for presidential appointments, cabinet members, and I would assume Supreme Court Justices? I guess its official now. What about the 50% (at least) of us who are pro-choice?
Out of all the contestants in last night’s Miss USA pageant, only two affirmed they thought evolution should be taught in schools.
The winner, 21-year-old Alyssa Campanella was one of the two. The rest either confused the question with evolution of species (versus the intelligent design debate), or stated that they thought both should be taught in school, according to Scientific American.
Campanella and Alida D’Angona from Massachusetts were the only two contestants to state that they fully believed in evolution, according to Think Progress.
Apparently, all of the Miss USA contestants were aware of the question before they were asked it in the preliminary rounds. In recent years the contest has attempted to avoid delicate subjects such as this, according to Think Progress.
While 96 percent of the contestants essentially avoided the question or indicating that people should look at both the religious and the scientific perspective, there were also those who firmly opposed evolution. Perhaps most prominently was Miss Alabama, Madeline Mitchell’s opinion that evolution should flot-out(sic) not be taught in schools.
My world is getting scary. In the first place, many of these young women sound like they don’t understand the question, even though they knew about it before hand. I fail to understand why religion and science are even competing. Have these attractive women been told that its unfeminine to think? Are people afraid of being offensive? Is ‘evolution’ a dirty word?
‘Evolution’ really is very much of an understatement when it comes to the origins of the earth and the development of plants and animals over the eons. There are many types of ‘evolution’ from genes changing to species changing. Biological evolution is both fact and theory. People often confuse biological evolution with cosmogony, the study of the creation of the universe. The subsequent development of the earth from molten matter to the form we recognize today is a form of geological evolution, but this study really isn’t evolution.
I am of the firm belief that all it takes is one trip to the Grand Canyon and the first 60 seconds gaping at its awe and majesty to convince most folks that the earth is not 6,000 years old and that only a supreme being could put the mechanics in place for mother nature to form anything quite that spectacular. Science and religion are on a collision course only if we throw up artificial barriers that prevent us being thinking beings. Meanwhile, let school handle the science and church handle the religion. Everyone wins.
This guy is just lame.
I hope they didn’t pay much for him. Talking about a need for vetting!
The Republican Leadership Conference met in New Orleans and ended up shooting itself in the foot pretty quickly with a maverick Obama impersonator named Reggi Brown. Reggie not only took some questionable shots at Obama but he really took aim at some of the party faithful.
Some examples of his poor choice of humor:
1. Lewd photos of Anthony Weiner
2. Saying Gingrich’s supporters “are dropping faster than Anthony Weiner’s pants.”
A very Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, whether you are a dad, a grandfather, a special uncle, or just a surrogate dad to someone who needs a male role model in their life. May you have a very special day.
Some of our dads are no longer with us but they have left an indelible mark on our lives.
There has been a spike in Navy commanding officer firings this year, according to the Washington Post. The WaPo reports:
Navy has fired a dozen commanding officers this year, a near-record rate, with the bulk getting the ax for offenses related to sex, alcohol or other forms of personal misconduct.
The terminations, which follow a similar spike in firings last year, have shaken the upper ranks of the Navy, which has long invested enormous responsibility in its commanding officers and prides itself on a tradition of carefully cultivating captains and admirals.
The Washington Post further reports:
Over the past 18 months, the Navy has sacked nine commanding officers for sexual harassment or inappropriate personal relationships. Three others were fired for alcohol-related offenses, and two on unspecified charges of personal misconduct. Combined, they account for roughly half of the 29 commanding officers relieved during that period.
Improvements in communication have been cited as the root cause of the increased firings. Read More
Guest contributor: Michael Stafford, author of An Upward Calling: Politics for the Common Good.
Part 1
In January, 2010, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (“USCCB”) launched a campaign in support of comprehensive immigration reform urging “Congress to take up as its next priority comprehensive immigration reform that would reunite families, regularize the status of an estimated 12 million people in this country illegally and restore due process protections for immigrants.” The effort, although ultimately unsuccessful, was joined by leaders of other faith communities.
The USCCB’s call to action on this issue ought to be renewed. Simply put, comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to legality (“earned legalization”) for some of our nation’s millions of illegal immigrants is long overdue. It is also my hope that the effort to reform our nation’s immigration laws will enjoy bipartisan support that transcends the bitter divisions so prevalent in politics today.
America’s immigration laws should serve our national interest while, at the same time, respecting the inherent human dignity of immigrants. These two principles complement one another. Our current, antiquated system does neither well. A pathway to legal status for some of our unauthorized immigrants must be a piece of any comprehensive immigration reform. At the same time, our federal government has a duty to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. An “earned legalization” program would not subvert these critical goals; on the contrary, it would further them.
Guest contributor: Michael Stafford, author of An Upward Calling: Politics for the Common Good
Part 2
Comprehensive immigration reform that includes both an “earned legalization” program and improved enforcement of our immigration laws would likely enjoy broad support. According to polling done over the past several years, a majority of Americans support the development of an earned legalization program done in conjunction with enhanced border security and internal enforcement. Polls show that a majority of Republican, Democratic and Independent voters support reform. At the same time, when given a choice, a majority favor “earned legalization” programs over an “enforcement-only” approach. This support for comprehensive reform has stayed consistent over time. As such, comprehensive reform that includes an “earned legalization” program would command legitimacy. 3
The absence of realistic alternatives also weighs heavily in favor of comprehensive reform and earned legalization. A massive round-up and deportation of the millions of unauthorized immigrants in the United States is not feasible from a practical perspective- as Sen. John McCain observed in 2006, “it would take 200,000 buses extending along a 1700 mile long line to deport 11 million people”- and would, if carried out, lead to immense human suffering and disruption to our own economy. It would also entail the disruption of well-established family units, the deportation of heads of households, and the removal of many United States citizen children born to undocumented parents.
