The U.S. economy grew more slowly than previously thought in the three months ending Oct. 31, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said, revising the nation’s third-quarter gross domestic product downward to growth of 2% from its previous estimate of 2.5%.
Has there been a quarter in recent memory where the GDP numbers haven’t gone down, and the unemployment numbers gone up in recent memory?
It seems that there is an automatic .5-1% bias in whichever direction helps the Administration. It’s as though the margin for error is always favorable for the Ruling Class Overlords, even though the revisions should have some normal distribution. Haven’t got sufficiently irritated yet to see if the the figures and revisions are all available publicly somewhere.
We need to communicate to our elected officials that we are going to support and reward an honest, clear depiction of exactly how screwed we are. Conversely, they need to know that (a) we’re on to the shenanigans, (b) the jig is up, and (c) they shall be thumped in the court of public opinion for this nonsense.
Any candidate who seems like they will Merely Institutionalize The Tendency toward the silliness Might Instead Try Telling the truth in a more blunt, less polished and focus-group-tested way.
Last night I got an e-mail from a friend down home:
Fulton Science Academy Middle School won a 2011 National Blue Ribbon School Award. That’s no mean feat. (Even Arne Duncan “congratulated the school”.) And, if I do say so myself, it’s no surprise. My sons attend the school and my wife and I are very proud of their progress and accomplishments there.
Currently, the school charter is up for renewal and the Fulton County Superintendent of Schools is on track to recommend againstrenewal! They give some lame excuses to justify this, but scuttlebutt from the department suggests that it’s because “all the good students go to FSA and that makes the test scores go down at the regular schools.”
The school website has a running status page of the renewal process (fsamiddle.org) and there’s an independent website that’s tracking things, too (savefsa.com)
I’ve written to and asked Congressman Tom Price to get involved. I also suggested that he could come to the FC Board of Education meeting when they vote on the charter.Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Hopefully this will turn out well for us, but — keep your fingers crossed!
Keep my fingers crossed? Sir, I intend to raise holy unshirted hell!
This kind of bureaucratic attempt to shut down a quality school cannot be tolerated. There ought to be a nationwide crusade on behalf of Fulton Science Academy. This is from the parents organization web site:
At the moment, the charter renewal staff of the Fulton County School System are offering non-negotiable terms regarding the charter that would hurt FSA’s ability to improve its physical facilities and manage the standards and operations of the school.
As parents of happy, well-educated FSA students, we feel it would be a shame if the Fulton County School System shuts down one of Georgia’s 4 National Blue Ribbon Middle Schools.
We ask for your support to try to prevent this from happening.
Has anybody told Neal Boortz about this? Somebody call him or send him an e-mail. I’d imagine Neal could put some mighty intense heat on the Fulton County School Board.
And while I’m thinking about it: Herman Cain is from Georgia. I’m going to do my best to bring this story to Herman’s attention: “School board bureaucrats trying to shut down award-winning charter school” sounds like the kind of issue a Republican presidential candidate ought to be talking about, don’t you agree?
Parents of Fulton Science Academy Middle say their school is being denied the “blanket waiver” of full flexibility from state education mandates they have enjoyed for 10 years because of a board practice withdrawing the option for district charter schools. . . .
Fulton Science Academy, a school of 508, is Georgia’s first charter school to be named a national Blue Ribbon School for its success on state exams. “Our school has always met or exceeded its [state exam] and charter goals,” said parent board member Angela Lasseter. “The intention for a charter school anywhere in the nation is to grant full flexibility and autonomy in return for better than average results.”
Wait a minute: 508 students? That’s got to be at least 500 parents. And I think 500 parents raising holy unshirted hell — writing letters to the newspaper, attending school board meetings, calling their state legislators, calling the governor’s office — would make life very uncomfortable for these school system bureaucrats.
UPDATE IV: Just spent 30 minutes on the phone with FSA spokeswoman Katy Dion and 15 minutes on the phone with John Trainor of the Save FSA parents group.
There’s still more reporting to be done, but certainly there seems good reason to suspect that the Fulton County Board of Education (FCBOE) isn’t doing right by FSA. This is a school that, since its founding 10 years ago, has already seen its alumni go on to such schools as Harvard, Princeton and West Point. More than 400 applicants are on the “wait list” to get into FSA, indicating that there is a high level of public demand for the kind and quality of education this school provides. Therefore, why the FCBOE would be trying to yank the school around on its charter-renewal process is somewhat mysterious.
At least one commenter has called attention to an issue that has not been raised directly by the FCBOE: Allegations that FSA is part of a “stealth Islam” sort of operation known as the Gulen (or Gulenist) movement. Longtime readers know I sure as hell am not going to ignore an angle like that, but Trainor assures me that there’s never been any hint of a pro-Islam influence at FSA, and Trainor is a conservative Catholic who is sensitive to such issues.
Nevertheless, I wonder if this angle doesn’t cut the other way, also. That is to say, perhaps FCBOE isn’t being entirely upfront about its own agenda in this matter. Can you say . . . “Islamophobia”?
Stay tuned. This story could get pretty interesting.
Thanks to everyone for their links! Deadline for next week’s roundup – which may actually be on time thanks to the Thanksgiving weekend – is Saturday, November 26; PLEASE send all links to Rule 5 Wombat, not my e-mail address from the top of the post!
There are probably women who aren’t bothered much by poor hygiene, and there may be women who aren’t bothered by a lack of toilet and bathing facilities. But I think you’ll have a hard time finding women who aren’t bothered by the kind of bad stuff that happens to women when they’re constantly surrounded by a bunch of scummy, predatory cop-haters: Rape, sexual assault, sexual assault, rape, sexual assault, indecent exposure, sexual assault, gang rape . . . You get the picture.
The Occupy movement’s seething hostility toward law enforcement is not coincidental to their seething hostility toward capitalism.
The rationale of these protests is fundamentally anti-social, so the protests attract deviant personalities — including drug addicts, psychotics and sexual predators — who aren’t really keen on the whole “obeying the law” trip. And while the simple-minded lefty punks who are leading the protests might not be violent rapists, neither are they the kind of guys that chicks usually like to hang out with.
“Girls just want to have fun,” as Cyndi Lauper famously sang. Camping out in a park with a bunch of unemployed dropout dudes whining about their student loan debt? Not fun.
Heather: “Wanna go to the Occupy protest?”
Nicole: “You mean where all those smelly unemployed losers are camping out in the park and chanting about bankers?”
Heather: “Yeah.”
Nicole: “Let’s go shopping at the mall instead.”
Heather: “Cool.”
The guys at the mall are cuter. And probably have jobs and cars and money. Chicks dig that stuff. Also, hygiene.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! You probably don’t need to be told that this is a totally capitalist blog. But you may not realize that this is “Black Friday Deals Week” at Amazon: You save money with great bargains, I get a commission on every sale, and we’re all richer as a result. Chicks dig capitalism. Because it’s fun.
First hand reports (by women) indicate that reporting of assaults is discouraged. One woman at Occupy Wall Street told the New York Post “We don’t tell anyone…We handle it internally. I said too much already.” My own original reporting on the situation at Occupy Baltimore indicated that sexual harassment was a common complaint, but organizers didn’t want word of it leaking to the media. . . .
There’s a reason women aren’t flocking to these tent cities. They aren’t safe. It would be nice if people claiming to be feminists could acknowledge the serious problems rather than glossing over it.
When I previously explained that Mika Brzezinski is smarter than you, a commenter called to my attention a video clip from Oct. 17. It’s of Mika’s father, Zbiginew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, in an appearance on Morning Joe:
“You know, how many Americans are really fully aware of how many other good people, that’s like Warren Buffett and others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to philanthropy? But how many more are there in the hedge funds, in the banks, in a variety of other places who, on the basis of speculation literally make millions of dollars that it would take a century or two for the average person ever to make? I would like to see those lists. And they shouldn’t be that difficult to produce. And I think public pressure might have also some effect, not only in terms of moving towards more systematic international coordination and regulation. But also to pressure some of those people to give some of it back, back to society.”
— Zbiginew Brzezinski, Oct. 17, 2011
Does he sound like Dr. Evil or what? Let’s talk about “speculation.” What does Brzezinski mean by that word?
“Speculation” involves risk, which is the same thing expressed by the words “enterprise” or “entrepreneur.”
To launch any business endeavor is to take a chance. When I quit my job at The Washington Times in January 2008, it was with the belief that I might be able to make more as a journalistic free agent than I was then being paid in salary. While this speculative effort has not yet met revenue expectations, as the business guys might say, 400,000 page-views per month is nothing to sneeze at, and we’re working tirelessly to increase traffic and enhance the monetization. IYKWIMAITYD.
What the managers of banks and hedge funds do is a more lucrative field of endeavor than “blog proprietor” (or “New Media savant” or whatever you want to call it) because the work they do is more valuable. If I screw up or miss a day at work, what do you lose? Some political news, some snarky commentary and maybe hot chicks in lingerie. But if a hedge fund manager screws up, there goes your 401(k), there goes your retirement dreams, there goes your kids’ inheritance. Kinda more important than a blog, even a blog with 400,000 page-views per month.
Who am I — or who is Zbiginew Brzezinski — to say whether a financial manager makes “too much” money? Isn’t it true that everyone is, to some extent, dependent on the financial sector for their livelihood? Consider that I earn income from Amazon Associates sales (I remind you that this is “Black Friday Deals Week“). Isn’t Amazon a corporation that was launched by enterpreneurs funded with investments provided by financial managers? Wasn’t it “speculation” that led people to invest in Amazon in the belief that their online sales model would work, whereas many other such projects have failed?
If we want investment in the private sector — and we do — then what we want is what Zbiginew Brzezinski calls “speculation,” a word he uses as a derisive epithet, evidently assuming that others share his ignorant (or envious) contempt for people who make their living through “speculation.”
News flash for Zbiginew Brzezinski: People also lose money through “speculation.” For example, if you bought a house in Orlando in 2006, supposing that the market value would increase . . .
Well, that was “speculation,” and you got screwed, whereas the guy who sold that house, cashing out his equity while the market was hot, walked away a winner. And if he then invested his equity in gold — another sort of “speculation” — he’s sitting pretty right now.
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. It’s speculation either way.
Nearly all of us engage in economic speculation of one kind or another, but because some ultra-successful speculators on Wall Street make millions of dollars, Zbiginew Brzezinski throws in the phrase “on the basis of speculation” as if it’s legitimate to hate bankers or hedge fund managers in a way we don’t hate professional athletes, pop singers or TV stars — like Zbiginew Brzezinski’s daughter Mika. She reportedly gets $4 million a year, but Zbiginew believes his daughter earns that money, whereas the investment banker is engaged in evil “speculation.” So he takes pride in his daughter’s success, but wants us to think that bankers are a bunch of crafty swindlers up to no good, robbing us blind and exploiting us.
This evil which Zbiginew Brzezinski imputes to greedy bankers is evidently the inspiration for his desire to have their names on a list, in order to subject them to “more systematic international coordination and regulation.”
That should scare the hell out of everybody, because who’s going to do all that “coordination and regulation”? Government-appointed bureaucrats, that’s who. And as bad as private-sector “speculation” may be, government regulators have the authority to send you to prison if you disobey them. For the guy who ran Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy to be demanding “systematic international coordination” of the private sector is highly ironic, and also scary.
By the way, did you ever notice that greedy Wall Street millionaires always have a fancy smart phone? Because that’s what it takes to make the big bucks nowadays. And it just so happens that Amazon’s having a limited-time special sale on smart phones — great bargains for you, a small commission for me.
So buy a smart phone and become a Wall Street millionaire. Don’t let Zbiginew Brzezinski stop you. Because capitalism is beautiful.
Chuck Schumer appears to have achieved a full metamorphosis: he may be the first Senator to have achieved the full odiousness of the British Parliament which the Founders opposed. From a Freedom Works email:
We observed all the rules. Senator Mike Lee reserved the room for us weeks in advance. Every “i” was dotted and every “t” crossed. But when Senate Democrats got word that we planned on doing their job for them … that we planned to suggest real cuts to the budget … well, that’s when they got scared and pulled the plug.
Tyranny!
I submit that every right-thinking blog should post this video, and increase the pressure on Congress. The Tea Party Budget is all about doing the job that Congress abdicated. Senator Schumer should be disciplined and ejected, so that his falsehood is no longer a drag on our government.
The stench of everything coming out of the Beltway is rancid. One case in a thousand points of mold is Elena Kagan, via American Power: Douglas also links IBD:
Should a justice who participated in ObamaCare’s creation recuse herself from the court’s review of that law? Of course. But then a nominee who lies in confirmation hearings shouldn’t be on the court anyway.
If Justice Elena Kagan were a person of character, she would sit out the Supreme Court’s hearing of the challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
But during her confirmation hearings in June of last year, she indicated she would not. And since this Monday, when the court announced it would take the case, she has done nothing to suggest she will recuse herself after all. Nor has the court made any statement about her recusal, a convention it usually follows when a justice takes himself or herself off a case.
and:
Nearly lost in this is the possibility that Kagan lied during her confirmation. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had not been asked about the legal issues of ObamaCare nor had she offered any views on them. The emails, however, seem to tell a different story. Two exclamation points plainly show that in her legal opinion, ObamaCare was constitutional.
Senate Republican leaders sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday expressing their view that testimony he gave in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week on the Justice Department’s handling of then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s involvement in litigation arising from the administration’s health care legislation was “belied by the facts.”
The senators also urged Holder to comply with requests that have been submitted to the Justice Department by Congress seeking information about Kagan’s involvement in the matter and expressed their view that Kagan’s activities as solicitor general may have triggered two different provisions of a federal law that governs when a Supreme Court justice must recuse from a case.
From all appearances, pretty much everyone appointed by BHO is a shameless, amoral, ideological hack of mediocre skill at best. In the case of ObamaCare, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to get enough lift under that pig to make it fly. The discussion, I’m guessing, will revolve around how to reject ObamaCare narrowly enough that the ground remains un-laid for the next obvious step: realizing that the SCOTUS under FDR beclowned itself by not rejecting the New Deal. Progressives have cherished 10th Amendment violations to protect, you see. Commie morons.
Step back though, and let’s consider a post-Progressive era. For surely this noise cannot continue. How in the world do we restore faith and transparency in our institutions after BHO, Holder, and Kagan? We’ve got a collection of people in higher office that don’t seem to understand anything, anything at all, except power. What do we do about that?
Is voting these clowns out, on its own, enough? Or do they leave enough residue of abuse, enough tradition of disregard, even rejection, of the Enlightenment principles that inform our founding documents that this administration completes the ‘mission kill’ of our Constitution by Progressivism?
That’s a hard thought, coming as it does in a context of economic ruin. However, as with calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, the sooner we face fact that the effect of Progressivism has been an Article V amendment of the Constitution via ‘settled law’, the sooner we can set about unwinding the evil the Progressives wrought.
Douglas also