Category Archives: common core education

EPA, Where Waste and Abuse Reigns

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EPA: The Intersection of Invasive and Inefficient

By Curtis Kalin

There is no shortage of government agencies that fritter away hard-earned tax dollars by imposing hostile rules and regulations on businesses and individuals.  But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has practically cornered the market on invasiveness and inefficiency.

A March 16, 2015 EPA Inspector General (IG) report found that $2.95 million of sampled EPA research equipment went unused for two to 14 years in the Office of Research and Development (ORD).  The IG reviewed “capital equipment,” defined as a piece that costs more than $75,000, at three of ORD’s 14 research facilities nationwide.

The IG “determined the date the equipment was last utilized,” and found that 30 of the 99 pieces of capital equipment reviewed, or 30 percent, hadn’t been utilized for between two and 14 years.  The report provided a harsh assessment of the agency’s cost-controls, concluding, “The EPA does not manage its scientific equipment as a business unit or enterprise.  ORD managers and staff are not aware of federal property management requirements.”  This latest review followed previous reports from the IG, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Academy of Sciences on unused EPA equipment since 2011.

As the EPA allows 30 percent of ORD research equipment to languish, the agency has no problem “researching,” or snooping, on the showering habits of millions of Americans under the guise of measuring water usage.  The EPA’s $15,000 grant to the University of Tulsa, under the People, Prosperity and the Planet student design competition for sustainability, “aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers.  This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”  The monitoring device will be coupled with a smartphone app that would allow the user to access hotel water usage at anytime, anywhere.

Beyond monitoring guests’ shower use, the EPA is peeping around other aspects of hotel hygiene and cleanliness.  The agency’s WaterSense Challenge program asks hotels to track “water use and upgrade their restrooms with low-flow toilets and showerheads” and “encourages linen and towel reuse programs.”

In response to the claim that the agency is infringing on Americans’ personal hygiene habits, EPA Deputy Press Secretary Laura Allen said, “EPA is not monitoring how much time hotel guests spend in the shower.”  And even as the EPA, rather than the private sector, is spending money on this project, Allen assured everyone that, “The marketplace, not EPA, will decide if there is a demand for this type of technology.”

These infringements are not a new phenomenon.  The EPA proposed a rule in March, 2014 that would allow the agency to encroach on private property so long as there is any body of water, from a pond to standard runoff.  Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) warned that “this rule could allow the EPA to regulate virtually every body of water in the United States.”

The EPA’s thirst for regulatory encroachments has been quenched with regularity during the Obama administration.  Since 2009, the EPA has instituted 3,120 new regulations totaling 27,854 pages in the Federal Register.  To feed this ever-growing appetite for intrusiveness and interference, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy asked Congress for a $452 million increase in the EPA’s budget for fiscal year 2016 to more than $8.5 billion.  McCarthy defended the request by claiming the EPA was “building a solid path forward for sustainable economic growth.”

Administrator McCarthy was named CAGW’s March Porker of the Month for her agency’s unremitting and invasive use of taxpayer dollars to intrude on the personal habits of Americans.

The EPA has quickly risen through the ranks of invasive and over-reaching federal agencies.  Without action by Congress to stem the tide, the agency’s fiscal and regulatory overreach will continue unabated.

*** So what is the EPA doing with the billions it is costing taxpayers? Maybe the individual states should take control.

1. The President’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget request for EPA demonstrates the Administration’s commitment to protecting public health and the environment. The $8.6 billion request is about $450 million above last year’s enacted amount, and will protect our homes and businesses by supporting climate action and environmental protection.

2. Investments in public health and environmental protection pay off. Since EPA was founded in 1970, we’ve seen over and over that a safe environment and a strong economy go hand in hand. In the last 45 years, we’ve cut air pollution 70 percent and cleaned up half our nation’s polluted waterways—and meanwhile the U.S. economy has tripled.

3. The largest part of EPA’s budget, $3.6 billion or 42%, goes to fund our work with our state and tribal partners—because EPA shares the responsibility of protecting public health and the environment with states, tribes, and local communities.

4. President Obama calls climate change one of the greatest economic and public health challenges of our time. So the FY16 budget prioritizes climate action and supports the President’s Climate Action Plan. The budget request for Climate Change and Air Quality is $1.11 billion, which will help protect those most vulnerable from both climate impacts and the harmful health effects of air pollution.
States and businesses across the country are already working to build renewable energy, increase energy efficiency, and cut carbon pollution. Our top priority in developing the proposed Clean Power Plan, which sets carbon pollution standards for power plants, has been to build on input from states and stakeholders.

So in addition to EPA’s operating funding, the President’s Budget proposes a $4 billion Clean Power State Incentive Fund. EPA would administer this fund to support states that go above and beyond Clean Power Plan goals and cut additional carbon pollution from the power sector.

5. EPA will invest a combined $2.3 billion in the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds, renewing our emphasis on the SRFs as a tool for states and communities.

We’re also dedicating $50 million to help communities, states, and private investors finance improvements in drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.

Within that $50 million, we’re requesting $7 million for the newly established Water Infrastructure and Resilience Finance Center, as part of the President’s Build America Initiative. This Center, which the Vice President announced on January 16th, will help identify financing opportunities for small communities, and help leverage private sector investments to improve aging water systems at the local level.

6. Scientific research remains the foundation of EPA’s work. So the President is requesting $528 million to help evaluate environmental and human health impacts related to air pollution, water quality, climate change, and biofuels. It’ll also go toward expanding EPA’s computational toxicology effort, which is letting us study chemical risks and exposure exponentially faster and more affordably than ever before.

7. EPA’s FY 2016 budget request will let us continue to make a real and visible difference to communities every day. It gives us a foundation to revitalize the economy and improve infrastructure across the country. It sustains state, tribal, and federal environmental efforts across all our programs, and supports our excellent staff. We’re proud of their work to focus our efforts on communities that need us most—and to make sure we continue to fulfill our mission for decades to come.

Resettlement of Somalis in America, Threat Matrix

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Refugee resettlement into the United States where the U.S. State Department in coordination with the United Nations has brought terror recruiting to our homeland. Arrests occur weekly of those that either have traveled to Iraq and or Syria, trained and have returned or are part of a peer to peer process to attack soft targets in America. Each mayor, each governor must demand a stop to this program. Is it happening in a town in which you live? Likely yes. 190 towns across America are targeted locations for resettlement.

In case you have any questions on the matter of ‘Refugee Resettlement’ click here to listen to the facts.

Just this past February in Minneapolis:

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin and U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger for the District of Minnesota announced today the indictment of Hamza Naj Ahmed, 19, for conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  Ahmed is also charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIL and for making a false statement in a terrorism investigation.  Ahmed was previously charged by criminal complaint for lying to FBI agents.  The defendant was detained on Feb. 5, 2015, after making an initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Steven Rau in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“Hamza Ahmed is at least the fourth person from the Twin Cities charged as a result of an ongoing investigation into individuals who have traveled or are attempting to travel to Syria in order to join a foreign terrorist organization,” said U.S. Attorney Luger. “Since 2007, dozens of people from the Twin Cities have traveled or attempted to travel overseas in support of terror. While my office will continue to prosecute those who attempt to provide material support to ISIL or any other terrorist organization, we remain committed to working with dedicated community members to bring this cycle to an end.”

The photos above were taken in Minneapolis.

 

FBI Arrests 6 People In 2 States In Terrorism Investigation

The FBI made a string of arrests Sunday, taking a total of six people into custody in Minneapolis and San Diego in a terrorism joint task force operation. The arrests follow an inquiry into young people from the Twin Cities area who have joined terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Shabab.

Details about the case are still emerging. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Minnesota office has confirmed the arrests to several media outlets, saying that public safety was not under an immediate threat. So far, it seems that all of those arrested are young men whose families are originally from Somalia.

A news briefing about the arrests is scheduled for Monday morning; we’ll update this post with news.

From Minnesota Public Radio:

“A Somali woman who said she was the mother of two men who were arrested told MPR News that the FBI arrived at her house around noon. One of her sons was arrested at her house; the other was arrested in San Diego.

“She said more than a dozen FBI and police officers searched her house and confiscated a tablet computer owned by the son arrested in San Diego.”

That woman met with other parents whose sons were arrested Sunday; they’re part of a large Somali community in Minneapolis. ***

“We have a terror recruiting problem in Minnesota,” US Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger said during the press conference.

“As described in the criminal complaint, these men worked over the course of the last 10 months to join ISIL,” said Luger. “Even when their co-conspirators were caught and charged, they continued to seek new and creative ways to leave Minnesota to fight for a terror group. ”

According to the FBI, authorities on Sunday arrested Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, Adnan Farah, Hanad Mustafe Musse and Guled Ali Omar in Minneapolis, and Abdirahman Yasin Daud and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah were arrested in California after driving from Minneapolis to San Diego. All the accused are between the ages of 19 and 21.

 

 

Governor Christie is Desperate by his own Doing

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Imagine that you invested in a 4 bedroom home. You raised your family and now the children are adults and have moved on. Three of those bedrooms are no longer occupied by a family member. So one room is an office, one room is a workout room one is a guest room. Well the government steps in and says, you don’t need those other bedrooms you bought and paid for so we are moving in 2 other families less fortunate and you need to provide them with medical benefits, transportation and food. What you say????

Enter New Jersey Governor Christie and his proposal to reform social security in this state. Imagine his proposal saying that anyone earning over $200,ooo per year and having paid into social security, does not really need their funds at age 65, so Governor Christie wants to offer it to others. Does this mean socialism? Why yes it does. But is he proposing this now? Simply said, he made both bad decisions and no decisions and is out of money. Then it is suggested you find out what is going on in your state.

Follow The Money

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor

 

Over the last few years we have seen many stories and articles that discuss the problems States and Municipalities are having in paying their public pension payments and how various politicians propose to fix those “problems”.  The politicians almost always seem to blame the pension problems on the overpaid government workers and their unions. The idea that Wall Street might have something to do with these government pension plans being underfunded is rarely discussed.  Until now.

A significant portion of the funds deposited in government employee pension plans is invested with Wall Street. According to one recent study, the public pension plans are paying at least $5.4 Billion dollars each year to Wall Street.

“Currently, about 9 percent — or $270 billion — of America’s $3 trillion public pension fund assets are invested in private equity firms. Assuming the industry standard 2 percent management fee, that quarter-trillion dollars generates roughly $5.4 billion in annual management fees for the private equity industry — and that’s not including additional “performance” fees paid on investment returns. But even the $5.4 billion number could be drastically understated, according to CEM.” Reader Supported News

$5.4 Billion dollars is a lot of money, but as usual, Wall Street may be getting an even bigger piece of the pie. “If CEM’s calculations are applied uniformly, it could mean taxpayers and retirees may actually be paying double that $5.4 billion number — or more than $10 billion a year. Public officials are overseeing this massive payout to Wall Street at the very moment many of those same officials are demanding big cuts to retirees’ promised pension benefits. By comparison, the total budget of the Environmental Protection Agency is just over $8 billion.” RSN

In order to fully understand the scope of the costs these pension plans are paying to Wall Street, it may help to see how these huge fees are paid on the state level.

“California’s report said $440 million. New Jersey’s said $600 million. In Pennsylvania, the tally is $700 million. Those figures are public worker pension fees being paid annually by taxpayers to Wall Street firms, and they have kicked off an intensifying debate over whether such expenses are necessary.” RSN

When you consider that the CEM study figures that public pension plans are paying from $5.4 Billion to more than $10 Billion a year in fees, it is no wonder that so many politicians want to privatize Social Security and bring other public pensions into the Wall Street fold.  Using just the standard 2% fee noted above, just how many billions would Wall Street rake in if Social Security was privatized? How many billions more would Wall Street collect if the entire public pension asset pool was also “invested” with Wall Street?

At the least, shouldn’t these States insist on a full disclosure of the secret fees that the CEM study alleged?  And if the study is correct, shouldn’t Wall Street refund the secret fees back to the pension plans?  In one example, the State of Pennsylvania is balking at its high fees and the Governor and the Legislature are trying to find a way to make the cost of their underfunded pension plans more manageable. Both sides of the aisle differ in their approaches to solve the problem.

In New Jersey, the evidence is mounting that the Governor steered public pension money to political allies and donors.

“This week, after an International Business Times investigative series found that Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s officials were not disclosing all state pension fees paid, New Jersey pension trustees announced a formal investigation of the fee payments. Some of those fees have flowed to firms whose executives made big donations to political groups affiliated with Christie. In just the five years since Christie took office, New Jersey fees paid to financial firms have more than quadrupled. At the same time as fees spiked, Christie has said the pension funds do not have enough money to pay promised benefits to retirees.” RSN

Do you think Gov. Christie will ask his cronies for New Jersey’s money back?

In various states, one side of the discussion wants to use bonds to make the payments more palatable and the other side is pushing to put new hires into a 401(k) system where the employees do their own investing.  Of course, neither plan will quickly solve the problem of underfunded pension plans when state and municipalities have reduced or ignored payments to the pension plan for years and in some cases like in Illinois and other states, for decades.

And if the 401(k) plan that is being promulgated for Pennsylvania and other states is incorporated, who do these employees invest their retirement money with?  Wall Street, of course.

I believe that a reasonable taxpayer would think that at the least, the politicians should be able to agree on reducing the cost of the Wall Street investment fees and demand an accounting of all undisclosed fees and if possible, a refund of those undisclosed fees.   With both Democratic and Republican administrations involved in allowing or funneling public pension funds to supporters and donors,  politics and cronyism may get in the way of a real and equitable fix.  What do you think?

On College Campuses…Really?

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Islamic jihad comes to campus
Anti-Semitism under the guise of social justice is seeping into the college scene

By David Horowitz – – Thursday, April 16, 2015

The world is witnessing a resurgence of global anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s and the “Final Solution.” In the Middle East, Hitler-admiring regimes like Iran, and Hitler-admiring parties like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, are openly planning to finish the job the Nazis started. Even in America, until now the most hospitable place outside of Israel for Jews, the atmosphere is more hostile than at any time in the last 70 years.

According to the FBI, three-fifths of all religious hate crimes in America are now committed against Jews, while a recent Pew poll revealed that 54 percent of Jewish students have either been the subject of an anti-Semitic attack or witnessed one. The frequency of these attacks among college-aged students, moreover, is five times that of any other age group. The reason for this is obvious: Across the United States student groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association, are engaged in a vitriolic campaign against Israel and those students who support its right to exist. These organizations promote the propaganda of the terrorist organization Hamas, and call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Students for Justice in Palestine, the more active of the two groups, claims to support a left-wing agenda of “social justice,” and “universal human rights.” Like the left itself, though, Students for Justice in Palestine doesn’t stand for the rights of Palestinians in the territories controlled by Palestinians, including the rights of Palestinians to disagree with each other without being targeted by their terrorist rulers. Instead, SJP’s sole agenda is the destruction of the Jewish state.

While SJP’s self-professed purpose is “to promote self-determination for the Palestinian people,” the organization defines the boundaries of this liberation as extending “from the river to the sea,” i.e., from the Jordan River on Israel’s eastern border to its western border on the Mediterranean. To advance this genocidal agenda, SJP endorses the lie that Israel was created on territory stolen from the Palestinians and, therefore, Jews illegally occupy Arab lands from which they must be purged.

In fact, Israel was created on land that had belonged to the Turks, who are not Arabs, for 400 years previously. In 1948 when Israel was created, there was no Palestinian political entity, no movement for a Palestinian state, and no people calling itself Palestinian. These core genocidal lies make up the primary agenda of SJP and its anti-Jewish allies, and are crowned by the ludicrous claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” with policies worthy of the “Nazis.” In fact, Israel is the only democratic and ethnically tolerant state in the Middle East, the only place where gays, Christians and women are safe. The real Nazis in the Middle East are the Arabs who openly call for the extermination of the Jews.

Despite its anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agendas, SJP is funded by university fees. University administrations officially recognize the organization and grant it the privilege of erecting walls of hate, and conducting “die-ins” and other propaganda stunts in campus centers where other students can’t avoid being assaulted by their noxious accusations.

University administrators who refuse to rein in this hatred operate under pressure from faculty and student activists of the anti-Israel “social justice” left. These include the self-hating Jews of J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, who join hands with their mortal enemies to condemn anyone who confronts SJP and the malignant forces it represents as “Islamophobes.”

As it happens, “Islamophobe” is a term coined by the Muslim Brotherhood to demonize its opponents, and the center of a campaign seeking a universal ban on critics as religious blasphemers. The campaign’s success can be seen in President Obama’s refusal to call the terrorist Islamic State “Islamic,” or to describe the war waged by the Islamic State, al Qaeda and other Islamic terror organizations as a religious crusade.

Thanks to the savageries of the Islamic State, however, Americans have begun to wake up and to see Jews as canaries in the mine, and to understand that what is happening to Jews is also happening to Christians and others in the way of Islamic Nazis. Nonetheless, the continuing successes of front organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine are ominous indicators of the dangers that confront us, and should be a wake-up call, too.

 

Who is that Devil at Obama’s Heels?

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Found in the bowels of the Cambridge Library a video was discovered of Barack Obama where he not only delivered a book reading of one chapter in his book, ‘Dreams From My Father’. Beyond reading this particular chapter where he explains his relationship with his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama during this event in 1995 also has a question and answer session with those in attendance. Clearly, he is conflicted on race relations, wants to continue to advance the politics on race and most of all speaks to tribes that need more attention.
He explains his intermittent disdain for his grandparents on his mother’s side while speaks to his isolation and anger over his father leaving him as well.

There are some additional truths that surface in this video, speaking deeper to his history than otherwise known today. He maintains anger still today on the Reagan Bush era on his notion that they did next to nothing on civil rights which Obama says was a prime time to do so given the Cold War had ended and resources, attention and government could now turn inward and address the racial divisions at home. For Barack Obama, discrimination is the core of life’s objective.

A big hat tip to Breitbart for this great find. In it, Obama talks about sitting with Davis in his home drinking whiskey listening to him talk about how “black people have a reason to hate… so you might as well get used to it.”  More here.