Free Lunches In GA

Georgia GOPer Attacking Free School Lunch Expensed $4,200 In Meals:

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) warned that there's "no such thing as free lunch" for school children in Georgia, but he seems to have enjoyed a few.

An investigation by Georgia's WSAV channel 3 found that Kingston, who is currently running for Senate and recently suggested students work cleaning cafeterias in exchange for lunch, had expensed as much as $4,182 worth of lunches for his office over the past three years.

"Kingston and his staff expensed nearly $4200 in meals for business purposes to his congressional office, paid for by the American taxpayer," WSAV 3's Dan Kartunen reported. The amount could have purchased nearly 2,000 Georgia school lunches...

GOPer Cokeman

Rep. Trey Radel pleads guilty to cocaine charge:

Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla., pleaded guilty Wednesday to possession of cocaine and was sentenced to one year of supervised probation...

The Ghost Of A Drunk Talks Clinton

Here we go again-- the Clinton haters oozing from their toxic hidey-holes. The only candidate I would consider supporing over SOS Clinton is Sen. Warren, and I'll bet I have plenty of company there. I would love to see a whole raft of reform implemented, including such things as the end of the Drug War and the legalization of marijuana, a reining in of the quasi military police forces operating in urban areas, full and increasing funding for all reasonable social programs and etc. In other words, improving the quality of life for everyone, not just the rich. I can trust that Clinton could at least get some of that through what will still be a Congress, if not controlled by, certainly heavily influenced by Little Kochs and their paid teabagging whores. She can politick. Who else do the Democrats have that is that capable?

To defeat the Tea Party, the left needs bolder leader than Hillary - Salon.com:

...I’ll conclude with the words of the always blunt Christopher Hitchens, “Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut.”

Hypocrite Of The Day (At Least)

Former Tea Party Candidate Against Government Healthcare Has 10 Kids on Medicaid (Video):

A former Republican anti-government Tea Party candidate for Congress from Idaho who opposes Obamacare because the “government should not be involved in health care” apparently excludes his Medicare-receiving kids from that sentiment....

The Management Underbelly

Some people will make much of this as a failing in education, but these two nabods were not in education, though that's what their paycheck says. They were in management. I have observed that when you hire a teacher you are going to get one of two kinds of people: those who will have their markers pried from their cold, dead fingers, and those who discover that teaching is work and immediately start scheming to escape the classroom by getting into management. Don't by surprised when these frustrated 1%ers turnout to be bullies, liars, and hypocrites

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A school official’s unbelievably racist texts - Salon.com:

...There is so much that’s contemptible about the exchanges between Como and Donato – the simmering, near constant anger they display, the grotesque, dehumanizing way they view pretty much anybody who isn’t a white man (to their credit, though, I didn’t notice any gay slurs in the lot) and the jaw-dropping amount of arrogance and privilege it takes to speak that hatefully, that freely. But what stinks most is the betrayal it represents, the lie that their jobs were. The disgust they had for their own kids. “They were friendly to our faces,” Zhaqweyza Armstrong, a 16 year-old Coatesville High junior, told the Inquirer Monday, “and then they talked about us behind our backs.”

Right on cue to back me up, Salon posts another essay on teaching:

Perry The Hypocrite

Forward Progressives — Rick Perry is Now Asking President Obama for Funds From Obamacare:

Texas Governor Rick Perry is at it again, and by “at it” I mean acting like a complete hypocrite. The governor who has made a career out of attacking Washington is once again seeking money from Washington...

Comment Of The Day: Shame Edition

Our Broken Social Contract - NYTimes.com: Greg K.
Cambridge, MA

NYT Pick

The one word I don't see mentioned here anywhere is shame. It is somewhat related to fairness, but in general, there is no shame in this country any more. CEO's should be ashamed to take a wage 400x their average employees...stock brokers should be ashamed of milking $500,000 salaries out of 401K's and the investments of retirees. Bankers should be ashamed of the scams they perpetrated which were one of the root causes the housing bubble and the Great Recession. Without shame the greed knows no bounds.
And it works on the other end of the spectrum, from a social worker friend I hear stories of parents on welfare with abusive situations with their kids being brought to a program to teach better parenting where they are provided a healthy meal and they complain that it isn't KFC or McDonalds. They should be ashamed of their ignorance and willing to accept assistance and be grateful for it.

Another Medical Horror Story

Chicago Hospital Accused of Cutting Throats for $160,000 - Bloomberg:

...Based in part on surreptitious tape recordings, an FBI affidavit lays out allegations that a Sacred Heart pulmonologist kept patients too sedated to breathe on their own, then ordered unneeded tracheotomies for them -- enabling the for-profit hospital to reap revenue of as much as $160,000 per case...

This is what you get when the profit motive rules the medical industry.

Crazy In NC: Mayoral Edition

Crazier Quits

The rise and fall (for now) of Michele Bachmann - CBS News:

"...After a great deal of thought and deliberation, I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth congressional term to represent the wonderful people of the sixth district of Minnesota," Bachmann said in her announcement. "After serious consideration I am confident that this is the right decision... The law limits anyone from serving as president of the United States for more than eight years. And in my opinion, well eight years is also long enough for an individual to serve as a representative for a specific congressional district..."

Bachman created Political Rule #87: Never eat corndogs when cameras are around.

The Other IRS Shoe

Cannonfire: "Double Standard"---

...Back in the Reagan/Bush I era, not a single conservative complained when the Christic Institute had its 501(c)3 status revoked after the group filed a lawsuit against various CIA operatives. The IRS claimed that the suit was politically motivated, and that the Institute was a partisan group. Yet the Institute's representatives had never endorsed a political party, and always spoke with what I considered genuine disdain for both Democratic and Republican leaders....

Comment Of The Day: Bush Jobs Edition

You Just Move Over, Fred Barnes! - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money:
 Boots Day says:
April 23, 2013 at 11:27 am

For the 96 months of Bush’s presidency, counting February 2001 through January 2009, the economy suffered a net loss of jobs in 39 of those months. We had net job losses every single month from March 2001 through May 2002, and again from February 2008 through the end of the Bush administration in January 2009 (along with several other periods of job losses as well).

There is simply no way even the wingiest of wingnuts can spin that into “7 1/2 years of job growth.” Does the Washington Post have an ombudsman? An editor? Any grownups at all working there?

The Great American Lie

Robert Creamer: The Biggest Republican Lie -- 'America Is Broke'

The big lie in American politics today is that "America is broke" or "in this time of austerity we have to tighten our belts." America is not broke. We are not in a time of "scarcity" and when we buy into this fallacy, we contribute to political decisions that actually will do damage to our standard of living and that of our children...

...Remember that just over 12 years ago, under Bill Clinton, America had budget surpluses as far as the eye could see and the most prosperous economy in human history. Then George Bush and the Republicans cut taxes for the wealthy, conducted two wars on a credit card and intentionally tried to increase budget deficits so they could justify shrinking the size of the public sector and allowing big corporations and the wealthy to have a larger and larger share of the pie...

More NC Craziness

The NC GOP jumps the shark | NC Policy Watch

...The same week the resolution dominated the headlines, Senate Education Committee Chair Jerry Tillman convinced a committee not to require criminal background checks for charter school teachers. The obsession with charters and vouchers to undermine public education is so strong that even children’s safety is apparently not a concern.

A House committee voted to repeal renewable energy standards that more than 80 percent of people in the state support.

Bills were filed to use the state tax code to penalize parents if their children in college have the gall to register and vote in the town where they attend school. The Senate voted to repeal the Racial Justice Act, sending a message that racial bias in the death penalty is not their concern.

Lawmakers approved Governor Pat McCrory’s appointment of a man to the State Board of Education who not only favors voucher schemes but doesn’t seem to think that gay and lesbian students deserve protection from bullying.

McCrory himself held a press conference to announce he was turning over the state Medicaid program that takes care of the most vulnerable people in the state to the profiteers on Wall Street...

Conflicting Conflicts Of Interest

Authors Of NRA's School Safety Report Sell Security Gear And Training | Blog | Media Matters for America

Several members of a National Rifle Association-assembled taskforce to prevent gun violence in schools, which proposed increasing the number of armed individuals in schools, are employed by a firm that provides training and gear, including ammunition, to security personnel...

More self-serving crap from the American Right, otherwise know as CONservatives.

Comment Of The Day: Diapers Edition

WaPo Rehabbing Diapers Vitter re:

Vitter’s efforts in the Senate outlast the shadow of his scandal - The Washington Post

MET9

3/26/2013 2:00 PM ED

He might as well enjoy it while he can. None of the people in congress are going to very popular among voters in red states when the real affects of the sequester take root. All of that evil government spending is finally coming to a stop, so all of those wonderful republican voters will soon get their smaller government wishes. I'm sure that they won't complain about the fact that they have fewer law enforcement officials, firefighters, teachers and such. That was just too much government.

Crazier Under Microscope

Michele Bachmann under congressional ethics investigation | StarTribune.com

Congressional ethics investigators are pursuing allegations of financial impropriety in U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign, according to several attorneys and former staffers involved in the case...

No Rifle For Kelly

Gun store rescinds Mark Kelly's rifle purchase, questions his 'intent' | Fox News

...Store owner Doug MacKinlay said Monday in a Facebook post of his own that he "determined that was in my company's best interest to terminate this transaction prior to his returning to my store."

"While I support and respect Mark Kelly's 2nd Amendment rights to purchase, possess, and use firearms in a safe and responsible manner, his recent statements to the media made it clear that his intent in purchasing the Sig Sauer M400 5.56mm rifle from us was for reasons other then for his personal use," MacKinlay said in the statement...

I don't get the justification.

Not Too Big To Attack

Community bankers call for big banks to be split up - St. Louis Business Journal

The Independent Community Bankers of America stepped up its public campaign against big banks this week.

It said so-called too-big-to-fail financial institutions get a taxpayer-funded advantage over smaller banks, receive favorable treatment from regulators, and should be downsized and split up...

GOPer Budget Lies

The GOP’s Three Fiscal Lies - The Daily Beast

...So let’s review. The GOP is advancing three crucial lies: that we have to balance the budget; that public investment at this point is irresponsible; and that if we do slash spending and balance the budget, jobs will come. It’s all nonsense. In fact every assertion is the exact opposite of the truth. So why do they say it?...