Reinke Faces Life

What a joke.

RU was playing Morgan State. Not a big game by any means. But, SNY left live coverage of that for the Mets “post game” show, where they couldn’t show any of the game highlights. So they spent the better part of a hour TALKING about it. Talked it to death! How dumb!

Sorry RU, you deserved better!

They rejoined it with 2:57 left in the SECOND quarter with the score 35 zip. Game was over.

Why bother?

Just shows you the level of respect SNY has for its viewers.

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http://www.centerforsmallgovernment.com/

BELIEVE 15% OF WHAT YOU SEE IN THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Carla Howell

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Our mothers told us, “Believe nothing you hear and half of what you see.” But when it comes to government spending articles in the Globe, perhaps we should only believe 15% of what we see.

Governor Patrick recklessly ratified a $2.55 billion spending increase for plush government pensions — boosting an already bloated government pension cash cow. While most private sector workers and taxpayers have NO employee pension.

But the newspapers made it look like Governor Patrick bravely vetoed a $3 billion govenrment employee pension increase.

I pride myself in spotting bias, inaccuracies and deception in news coverage that pertains to government budgets. Sadly, I find it in almost every single one I read.

Unless I read too fast — and don’t take the time to read the fine print. Which I did last week. The Boston Globe ran a story with the headline “Patrick rejects pension increase…Benefit could have cost state billions.” The second paragraph states, “Fiscal watchdogs had warned that the benefit could cost the state more than $3 billion over the next 20 years.”

I concluded from this that Governor Patrick vetoed the entire $3 billion government employee pension expansion, which he had previously supported.

A few days before this story, a Globe editorial advised the governor to veto this one – hinting that letting the bill stand could incite voter anger and affect the November election. It seemed to be a thinly veiled warning that a veto was necessary to stop Question 1 to End the Income Tax from winning.

I helped give legs to the story by mentioning in a media interview last week that Patrick’s $3B veto was a sign that Question 1 to End the Income Tax is already having an impact on government spending.

Then I saw a letter to the editor in the Globe penned by a careful reader who pointed out that Gov. Patrick did not veto the entire $3B
government employee pension increase as the Globe’s headline suggests. Rather, he vetoed only 15% of the increase – and let 85% of the increase stand.

I should know better than to ignore the fine print of a news article about government budgets. Mea culpa.

Upon rereading the article, I can’t vouch for what percentage was actually vetoed without doing research. But 15% seems to be in the
ballpark.

So it’s possible our initiative already helped to stop $450 million in new state spending, but not the $3B I’d hoped (at least not as a result
of this particular veto).

Please use my oversight as a reminder of how much care it takes to avoid falling for claims that a politician cut government spending – when he
actually increased government spending.

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Like Star Trek and their Prime Directive, the Doctor’s Hippocratic Oath, and the old Gallo ad “We serve no wine before its time”, politicians have an a similar canard. I don’t know who came up with it, but I first heard it from a troublemaker, Jim Gearhart, at the local radio station 101.5.

“Politicians are ALWAYS: feathering their own nest, rewarding their friends, or punishing their enemies.”

Carla would be well advised to remember that. In her “mistake”, she forgot that the paper was reporting on a “politician”. Vetoing a public pension bill would be that political directive. So by definition, the report was EITHER biased or just honestly wrong! Guess I’m jaundiced, it was a deliberate cover up to give the Guv good press and a handout to the trough feeders.

Argh!

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You have to admire the power of sarcasm! National energy policy should be imho: nukes; natural gas in cities transport, drill, defeat nimby, and empower the free market to solve the “problem”. One created by the gooferment I might add! Argh!

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/composer-says-b.html

Composer Says Beijing Olympic Committee Ripped Him Off
By Eliot Van Buskirk EmailAugust 22, 2008 | 10:05:10 AMCategories: Copyright and Copyfight

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Beijing Peter Breiner, who arranged more than 200 national anthems for the 2004 Olympics, has accused the Beijing Olympic Committee of stealing those works for this year’s Games. He says he is “100 percent sure” that his arrangements are being played at medal ceremonies — and the Washington Post’s culture critic couldn’t agree more.

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I don’t follow the argument. I don’t believe in imaginary property any way. But it is funny that the land of copyright infringement, celebrated by the awarding the “games”, keeps its expenses down by infringing. Love it. Guess they didn’t want to give back any of those 5T$ they have in the vault!

Argh!

When you play the imaginary property game, then don’t be surprised when you get screwed!

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http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/
another_cohort_of_kids_failed.html

http://tinyurl.com/48k4qg

August 21, 2008
Another Cohort of Kids Failed by Government Schools
By Christopher Chantrill
Public schooling in too much of America has run down to mediocrity and worse. It’s almost inevitable, and worse in some places than others.

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{Extraneous Deleted}

It was that over 200 years ago the Enlightenment philosophe Condorcet submitted a plan to the French Legislative Assembly that called for universal state education to educate the people out of their prejudice and superstition. Although a government program the system would, of course, be free of political control.

It was that over 160 years ago Horace Mann, the father of US public education, urged a rationalization and centralization of the disorganized schools in Massachusetts under a State Board of Education. Apart from anything else, he confidently predicted just before the crime wave of the 1840s, his program would cut the crime rate by 90 percent. Then he went off to Prussia to see its universal state education system for himself.

It was that over 80 years ago John Dewey, the father of progressive education, proposed a system to teach children problem solving and critical thinking skills rather than training and drilling in basic skills. Of course, there is nothing quite like entrusting a project of flexible, progressive education to a bureaucracy of state employees privileged with lifetime job tenure.

Today, 215 years after Condorcet, 160 years after Horace Mann, and 80 years after John Dewey the schools have run down. Today about half the students entering college are unprepared, according to the New York Times.

Yet 180 years ago when the economist J.S. Mill, father of John Stuart Mill, traveled around Britain making an anecdotal survey of education — at a time when the government actively discouraged education for its revolutionary potential — he found a rage for education:

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”

You can see why those nineteenth century parents sacrificed so much for their children. It didn’t take a rocket scientist back then to see that a basic education in literacy and numeracy was the best way to avoid sending a child “down the pit” or into the textile mill.

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As our children return to school this fall, most of them will do just fine. But many poor and inner-city children will not. Yet we know how to fix the inner-city schools. We have known for decades.

And now in Sweden, of all places, school choice is transforming the education system.

Some day the American mothers are going to have the right that Swedish mothers enjoy. It is the right to wave farewell to the local government school and say: You just don’t care about kids.

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Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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[JR: It is a national disgrace to have the gooferment involved in education. The poor deserve to be left alone. Left to their own devices, and the charity of caring individuals, they will educate their own children. Without the “help” of the gooferment, it’s highly compensated “administrators”, it’s over and underpaid teachers, and the legions of pigs feeding at the gooferment trough, the ‘children’ will be educated unlike what is happening now.]

[JR: Yes, teaches as a group can be both over-paid and under-paid at the same time. Some are over; some are under. When you have unions and one size fits all, you have both types of error in the same population!]

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http://cheflovesbeer.blogspot.com/2008/08/college-presidents-want-to-lower.html

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
College Presidents Want To Lower The Drinking Age

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This is a good start. More than 100 college presidents want the drinking age lowered to 18.

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And, what gives ANYONE the right to TELL another what they can put in their body? It’s their body, right? Hold people accountable for the results of what they put in; fine! But you can’t stop them. It’s insanity to try.

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http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/the_clueless_white_guy_vote.html

August 17, 2008
The Clueless White Guy Vote
By Russ Vaughn

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Contrary to their politically correct aims, the advertising industry in this country has created a voting bloc that I am positively sure they never intended. I refer to all us Clueless White Guys, that resentful constituency that for years has endured a constant onslaught of television commercials in which the white male is always the bumbling buffoon, while minority males, black, Asian and Hispanic are always the cool, in-tune, in-the-know dudes who always, effortlessly get it, whatever it may be.

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I’ll be dipped in you know what if I EVER buy anything from AT&T after listening to their whiny white father in the “milky rollover minutes texting thumbs” commercial.

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