This NRO article is both maddening and frightening:
Perhaps a suddenly firearm-friendly President Obama can put in a good word for Jared Marcum. In April, Marcum, an eighth-grader at Logan Middle School in Logan, W. Va., was arrested when he refused to take off his NRA t-shirt. The New York Daily News reports:
The clothing kerfuffle began when Marcum wore a shirt bearing the NRA’s logo and a hunting rifle. As he stood in line in the cafeteria, a teacher ordered him to either change shirts or turn it inside out.
Marcum declined and was sent to the office, where an officer was dispatched after he again refused to comply with the school’s request.
Cops arrested him and charged him with disrupting the educational process and obstructing an officer.
The teacher who told Marcum he shouldn’t wear the t-shirt apparently doesn’t care about the First Amendment. It’s pretty clear that the teacher doesn’t like the Second Amendment, either. With that in mind, perhaps this teacher should learn from people smarter than him. I’d submit that this young lady could teach this teacher a ton about the Constitution:
First, the school didn’t have the right to tell the student he couldn’t wear that t-shirt. The First Amendment trumps everything else. That should be case closed.
Second, this teacher should be disciplined for teaching a student through his actions that the Constitution should be ignored. After that, this student should put the fear of God into this teacher and the school district for violating this student’s constitutional rights.
During the last couple of weeks, I’ve highlighted how the St. Cloud Times editorial staff gone overboard. I’d hoped they’d gotten it out of their system. Unfortunately, this editorial proves that the Times isn’t just occasionally foolish. It’s more a way of life. Here’s what I’m talking about:
Though Republicans have generally represented the St. Cloud area, this race may serve as a reality check for the party.
That statement is factually inaccurate. The seat currently held by Tama Theis is definitely a GOP seat. By contrast, the seat now held by Zach Dorholt, who isn’t anything close to a moderate, has been represented by Democrats, with King Banaian the sole exception for the past 20 years. Sauk Rapids and Sartell are pretty reliably liberal at the local level. Ditto with Waite Park.
This statement deserves additional scrutiny, too:
Can it find a moderate candidate, or will it resort to another flamethrower backed by the big money of special interest groups? We can cross our fingers for the former.
Talk to King Banaian about the special interest money the DFL spent to defeat him. The DFL’s attack/smear operation spent tens of thousands of dollars last year to defeat King. I haven’t seen the Times editorial page utter a word about the tons of DFL special interest money spent to defeat King.
Further, this obsession with moderates is overrated. This past election, the DFL legislative candidates ran as moderates. Then they passed the biggest budget in Minnesota history. It passed the biggest tax increases in Minnesota history, too. Among other things, this legislature ignored federal labor law, specifically the NLRA, when it passed a bill that seeks to turn private sector employers into public employees.
It’s worth noting that Michele Bachmann is an expert on regulations, banking procedures, taxes, health care and national security. The Times won’t admit that because of their outright hatred of her.
The reality is that people want politicians who either stop bad things from happening or politicians who gets positive things accomplished. In Michele’s 8 years in Congress, she’s either been in the minority or she’s had to deal with a corrupt, inept Democrat president. It’s difficult getting positive things done in that environment.
Finally, there’s this laugher:
Unlike Democrats, the Republican Party has everything to lose in this election.
I have a simple question for the Times. What are they smoking?
Each week, people are bombarded with another scandal. Right now, the NSA surveillance is the one capturing the people’s attention most, followed by the IRS targeting of conservatives placing second. According to this article, distrust with the federal government is killing immigration reform:
On immigration, there is broad popular support for comprehensive immigration reform. Most Americans believe legal immigration is good for the country, but most do not trust the government to enforce any provisions in the new law that would improve border security and reduce illegal immigration. Only 7 percent believe that enforcement is “very likely” to happen.
This is not just Republicans grumbling about Barack Obama in the White House. The same skepticism was there when George W. Bush was president. Unless the government does something to address the border problem, it will be there for the next president, as well. Because of that distrust, prospects for passing serious immigration reform this year are slim indeed.
That isn’t good news for Sen. Schumer and the Gang of Eight. As Scott Rasmussen says, support for immigration reform is broad, with an asterisk. The American people want it provided the border is secured. They don’t want a 21st century replay of Simpson-Mazoli.
Change is needed in Washington but not the type Democrats and Republicans are pushing:
Many in Washington are frustrated by the public distrust. They dream of public relations programs to overcome it. What’s needed, though, is for the government to change its behavior so that it can earn the trust of the people it serves.
The concept of doing the right thing is, unfortunately, a foreign thing in DC these days. Slick PR games won’t cut it. People are demanding solutions. Washington’s insiders are pushing PR gimmicks. That’s why the disconnect between real people and DC is growing.
If DC doesn’t start doing what the American people expect of them, starting with protecting them from terrorists and illegal immigrants, immigration reform will still be a problem a decade from now.
The last 2 budget cycles, conservative bloggers have criticized the DFL for talking about increased LGA in the context of property tax relief. I’ve written about how Gov. Dayton’s staff testified that increasing LGA wouldn’t prevent property tax increases. Mitch has written about it, too. Finally, the Twin Cities media is writing about what conservatives have written about for years. Better late than never, I guess. This Pi-Press editorial includes the statistics that prove us right:
A Pioneer Press report this week on 31 metro suburbs cheering the restoration of funding they receive from the state included this note of caution: “There’s no guarantee cities won’t spend all the new state money on services, salaries or public works projects.”
Reporter Bill Salisbury cited findings in a 1990 analysis by the Office of Legislative Auditor that “state aid may boost city spending more than it provides local property tax relief.”
It said cities had used 82 percent of their additional aid to pay for increased spending and only 18 percent to reduce property taxes. Citizens should be prepared to hold their local lawmakers accountable.
Let’s be blunt about this. Increasing LGA payments just lets big city mayors spend money foolishly. It’s important for citizens to hold mayors and city councils accountable. That said, it’s better if they simply elect reform-minded city councilmembers and mayors because that’s the real key to lower property taxes.
Another thing that’s needed are fewer spendaholic mayors like R.T. Rybak, Don Ness and Chris Coleman. Taxpayers need fewer compliant city councils that just rubberstamp Rybak’s reckless spending.
While it’s great that the Twin Cities media is finally writing that increasing LGA won’t lower property taxes, they should’ve written about it during the session when it had the potential for informing taxpayers while the budget was still taking shape. Had they done that, they would’ve done taxpayers a great service. Instead, they waited, increasing the possibility that a) their property taxes will increase and b) their mayors and city councils will increase spending rather than cut property taxes.
This LTE shines a spotlight on how much Democrats are owned by the unions, not their constituents:
On May 20th of this year, home health care workers and child care workers who receive state funding finally won the opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to organize a union. As a home health care worker, I feel it is one of my rights to decide my future for myself.
Also understanding the worker’s right to organize was Representative Zachary Dorholt of District 14B. Representative Dorholt knows what it would mean for the citizens of Minnesota and employees of home health and child care industries to give us the freedom to decide our own future.
For Minnesotans receiving care, it would mean better-trained people and fewer turnovers. For those of us employed in this field, it means we are able to stay in a job we enjoy, earn a fair livable wage and still save the taxpayers money. I would like to thank Representative Dorholt for taking a stand for the liberties of the workers and voting in favor of our right to organize if we so desire.
What Rep. Dorholt and other Democrats did was ignore the National Labor Relations Act, aka the NLRA. The person who wrote this LTE says that everyone should have the right to vote on unionization:
For me, the freedom to decide to form a union is a fundamental right that every worker should have.
I’d just highlight the fact that the NLRA says employers can’t unionize. These childcare providers are small business owners in the private sector. They aren’t state employees.
That means Rep. Dorholt broke the law by voting for this union payback. It’s apparent that Rep. Dorholt thinks it’s more important to carry the union’s water than to follow federal labor law.
As I write this, Republicans are playing the role they often play: that of the timid, unprincipled party. They’re doing a terrible job negotiating the immigration bill. It’s time for them to tell Sen. Schumer that there won’t be a bill unless the fence is built. Yesterday, Sen. Schumer lied through his teeth when he said that building a fence “might take years and years and years.” A double fence doesn’t take long to build once there’s a will to do it.
Republicans should run from this bill. Instead, they’re giving platitude-filled speeches on the subject:
Sen. Marco Rubio stayed away from specific immigration reform policies during a talk Thursday, reiterating that America must be recognized as an exemplary nation that welcomes those seeking freedom they don’t have in their home countries.
“What we have is special,” Rubio said. “Every single human life is worthy of the protection of our values. Who else will do it if not us?”
The Florida Republican also appealed to America’s religious heritage, asserting that as the “salt of the earth,” the United States has a duty to be compassionate to the less-fortunate.
That’s pretty sounding Unfortunately, that isn’t what’s needed. What’s needed is for Republicans to tell Sen. Schumer that the bill isn’t going anywhere without guaranteed border security. If Sen. Schumer replies that it’s impossible to do with this bill, Republicans’ response should immediately be that it’s never impossible to build things like fences.
If Republicans vote for this immigration bill, they’ll be the minority party for a generation. They will have shown themselves to be as unprincipled as Democrats. Not as corrupt but as unprincipled.
At this point, they aren’t engaged in negotiations. They’re engaged in taking orders from Sen. Schumer. They’re frightened that the media and the DNC will paint them as mean-spirited, rigid ideologues. They shouldn’t worry about that. Democrats will paint them that way regardless of what happens.
As for Sen. Rubio, he should be ashamed. If he asserted himself on the fence, he’d win that negotiation. He isn’t asserting himself, which is why Republicans appear to be on the verge of signing onto another bad bill. If he doesn’t assert himself on that specific issue, he’ll never be president.
The bottom line is that no bill is better than a bill that doesn’t build a fence. The bottom line is that Republicans hurt themselves when they’re seen as being unprincipled. That’s what they look like now.
Devinder Malholtra was quoted in this MPR article as saying 2 things that deserve extensive scrutiny. Here’s the first thing that deserves greater scrutiny:
In reviewing a sample of 237 student transcripts changed between July 2011 and June 2012, the university found that administrators responsible for making the changes consulted faculty in 69 percent of the cases. In others, it was not clear whether the faculty member was not notified or did not respond to a request for comment.
“It was clear to us that sometimes that protocol wasn’t being followed,” St. Cloud State Provost Devinder Molhotra said. “So we want to be sure that people were reminded…We had a conversation and put in place a very specific protocol.”
That isn’t what professors are talking about. Malholtra knows that it isn’t. This is what professors are worried about:
Last spring, Tamara Leenay, a chemistry professor at St. Cloud State University, was reviewing grades when she came across the transcript of a student who failed an organic chemistry class she taught a couple of years earlier.
“I noticed the course was not even on his transcript,” Leenay said. “There was no ‘F.’ There was no course number…It was completely gone. And I have [a] record that he was in my class and that I gave him a grade…and I was never notified of any of these changes.”
Let’s be clear about this. There is a formal procedure that students follow when they drop a class late. That procedure, for the most part, has been in place for a generation. That isn’t what happened with Dr. Leenay.
For instance, when a student drops a class because they’ve been called into active military duty, the student will provide documentation showing that they’re being called into active military duty. The student is then dropped from the class with a notation in the student’s transcript. A copy of the student’s military orders is kept in the student’s paper file. On the electronic record, the student’s last date of attendance is frequently included.
In that instance, there’s a record of the student’s participation in the class with the special notation. That isn’t what Dr. Leenay is talking about.
According to Dr. Leenay, a student participated in an organic chemistry class that she taught. That student got a failing grade, which went into the student’s transcript. She later looked at the student’s transcript and found that “the course was not even on his transcript. “There was no ‘F.’ There was no course number…It was completely gone. And I have [a] record that he was in my class and that I gave him a grade…and I was never notified of any of these changes.”
Unlike the special situation dropping of a class, this student didn’t drop the class. The student’s participation in the class that he/she failed just disappeared into thin air. There isn’t a special notation on the student’s transcript because there isn’t a record of the student’s participation in the class.
Dr. Malholtra’s dishonest quote that this was a bureacratic mix-up is disgraceful. Completely deleting a student’s participation in a class is wrong. It isn’t a bureaucratic mix-up. Which brings us to the other statement that Malholtra made:
“Integrity of transcripts and the record is very, very important and so is the involvement of the faculty in that process,” Molhotra said. “There’s no question about that in my mind. And it’s our attempt to make sure that going forward we do our due diligence and we make sure that the faculty input is not only taken but recorded.”
What proof do employers have that the administration takes this seriously? At one of this year’s Meet & Confer meetings, the faculty asked for the status of “the investigation” into the transcripts. The person speaking for the administration said that they didn’t “think of this as an investigation”, then saying they thought of it “as about data analysis.”
When document of a student’s participation disappears outright, the only accurate way to describe that is that the administration is changing a student’s grades without the professor’s input.
If this happened at other universities, this wouldn’t be tolerated. Proverbially speaking, heads would roll. Administrators would be terminated, up to and including the president and the provost. This type of corruption can’t be tolerated.
When a university’s record-keeping can’t be trusted, academic integrity doesn’t exist.
This article is the Potter administration’s worst nightmare. Until now, the SCSU transcript scandal has been confined to Meet & Confer meetings. That’s where the SCSU Faculty Association, aka the SCSUFA, asks the Potter administration questions about campus issues. The paradigm just shifted:
ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Last spring, Tamara Leenay, a chemistry professor at St. Cloud State University, was reviewing grades when she came across the transcript of a student who failed an organic chemistry class she taught a couple of years earlier.
“I noticed the course was not even on his transcript,” Leenay said. “There was no ‘F.’ There was no course number…It was completely gone. And I have [a] record that he was in my class and that I gave him a grade…and I was never notified of any of these changes.”
Leenay’s experience isn’t unique. Faculty members at St. Cloud State say they’re concerned that students’ grades have mysteriously disappeared from transcripts. Professors and instructors aren’t sure how widespread the problem is, but say, except in rare instances, the university’s failure to notify them of grade changes is an ethical breach.
“A number of faculty members raised concerns that they believed from what they were seeing that student’s grades were actually disappearing off transcripts,” said Stephen Hornstein, president of the university’s faculty association. “A student would take a course, get a poor grade and then a semester or two later that grade would not appear on the transcript at all.”
The paradigm shifted. First, professors are stepping forward with proof that students who did poorly in their classes got their poor grades deleted. Next, the paradigm shifted because, finally, someone other than me is reporting on this corruption. Still, there’s proof that the administration is still spinning rather than confessing:
“It was clear to us that sometimes that protocol wasn’t being followed,” St. Cloud State Provost Devinder Molhotra said. “So we want to be sure that people were reminded…We had a conversation and put in place a very specific protocol.”
n January, Molhotra issued a memo reiterating the policy to nine deans and associate deans responsible for authorizing transcript changes. He also said that in the absence of the course instructor, a department chair can weigh in on their behalf.
Molhotra stopped short of saying the university has fixed a problem. Instead, he said, by reviewing the process in which transcripts are changed, the university has improved it.
“Integrity of transcripts and the record is very, very important and so is the involvement of the faculty in that process,” Molhotra said. “There’s no question about that in my mind. And it’s our attempt to make sure that going forward we do our due diligence and we make sure that the faculty input is not only taken but recorded.
That’s a bald-faced lie. Malholtra’s lies don’t fit with the minutes of the Oct. 18th Meet & Confer meeting:
I don’t know a way to describe it but I am going to use alterations where students are removed from being listed as having been enrolled.
This isn’t something that will require a minor tweak in SCSU’s procedure. That shouldn’t happen. I’d love to hear Malholtra explain how it’s a minor thing to have students disappear from SCSU’s enrollment lists. The presenter for the Faculty Association mentioned this, too:
I saw three [withdrawals] in one day in my department where the faculty were not consulted last spring…
Malholtra is suggesting that faculty didn’t respond. That isn’t what’s happening here. In this instance, a professor identified a situation where the faculty wasn’t consulted prior to a student’s grades were deleted from the record. In fact, the student’s participation in the class was deleted.
It’s predictable that Malholtra isn’t admitting the administration is corrupt. Nonetheless, that’s what the documentation and the professors’ statements point to. It isn’t a simple malfunction when a student disappears from a university’s enrollment list. That’s one of the things that happened here. It isn’t a simple administrative malfunction when 3 students withdrew from classes without the professor getting notified.
That’s corruption. The only question left is whether the University’s apologists will continue to defend this administration’s corrupt behavior.
If this article is accurate, and I think it is, then HHS Secretary Sebelius is latest in a growing list of high-ranking Obama administration officials who don’t think this nation’s laws apply to them:
Ever wonder what Kathleen Sebelius does when she isn’t sentencing children to death, shaking down health care providers, or violating campaign finance laws? Well, it seems she spends her spare time, and a lot of taxpayer money, dabbling in illegal lobbying. The Anti-Lobbying Act forbids federal bureaucrats from using money appropriated by Congress to influence “an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose… any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation.” Sebelius evidently didn’t get the memo.
Specifically, it looks like Madam Commissar and her HHS minions have been using federal money to lobby state and local officials to “favor, adopt or oppose” countless initiatives involving everything from local zoning rules to ordinances concerning tobacco use to the imposition of new taxes on soft drinks. The cash they are thus spreading around comes from an obscure Obamacare trove called the “Prevention and Public Health Fund,” which provides Sebelius with what amounts to $12.5 billion in pin money.
It’s pretty clear that Sebelius is spending money in a way that violates the Anti-Lobbying Act. Even if spending money this way wasn’t illegal, which it is, there’s no question that cabinet officials shouldn’t be spending the taxpayers’ money to lobby Congress, legislatures, city councils and county commissioners to make laws the administration favors.
Democrats have consistently whined about how Big Business has too much influence in the political process. Why aren’t these same Democrats complaining that Big Government has too much political influence? After all, Congress, legislatures, city councils and county commissioners represent the people. Actually, US senators represent their state whereas representatives represent the people of their district.
Therefore, Secretary Sebelius’ acts are how she’s using the taxpayers’ money to drown out the taxpayers’ influence. Think about this a bit:
For any reader too young to recognize the term “pin money,” this refers to a regular allowance your grandfather might have given to your grandmother for various incidental household purchases that she wasn’t expected to report to him or account for later. And this, despite the truly gigantic amounts of money involved, is pretty much how the “Prevention and Public Health Fund” works. As Stuart Taylor reports in Forbes, “[HHS] can spend the money as it sees fit and without going through the congressional appropriations process.”
And if you have become so jaded by the government’s fiscal profligacy that you’re not impressed by the $12.5 billion figure, consider that this is only for the first decade. After that money is gone, this fund will be replenished to the tune of $2 billion per year — forever. Yes, forever. The statute doesn’t actually say “as long as the wind blows and the grass grows,” but it does clearly stipulate that the fund never expires. Yet, as the law is written, HHS doesn’t have to account for its outlays in any meaningful way.
Think of all the different ways this money might be used. It might be used to lobby Minnesota cities to enact soft drink size limits. It might be used to lobby for laws that enable cities to harass fast food restaurants. That fund might be used to enact, at a city level, all kinds of statutes that the Obama administration can’t get through Congress.
The Anti-Lobbying Act probably didn’t ponder the possibility of an administration using the taxpayers’ money to get around Congress. Still, it’s pretty clear the Anti-Lobbying Act might be a valuable tool to prevent this administration’s attempt to ignore Congress.
If we had a real attorney general, Secretary Sebelius might join a lengthy list of potential criminals. Jim Geraghty identified some others in his morning newsletter:
LIE ONE: White House press secretary Jay Carney’s November 28 explanation about changes made to talking points about the Benghazi attack:
The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two — of these two institutions were changing the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility,” because “consulate” was inaccurate. Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened.
You can see the twelve rounds of revisions here, well more than a single adjustment, and mostly in response to State Department objections.
After it became clear that Carney had put forth false information, he dug in deeper. Carney paid for his lie with two days of hostile questions from the White House Press Corps . . . and then the storm seemed to have blown over.
LIE TWO: Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying under oath before the House Judiciary Committee, May 15:
Well, I would say this. With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I’ve ever been involved in, heard of or would think would be a wise policy.
Michael Isikoff later reported the precise opposite:
The Justice Department pledged Friday to review its policies relating to the seizure of information from journalists after acknowledging that a controversial search warrant for a Fox News reporter’s private emails was approved “at the highest levels” of the Justice Department, including “discussions” with Attorney General Eric Holder.
There is a claim from the usual, Media Matters, that Holder is in the clear because he was asked about prosecutions for publishing classified information, not solicitation for classified information; they assert that the two actions are totally different. A pretty thin reed for a perjury defense, and one that utterly fails the standard of the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States informing the public of his department’s operations.
For us to believe that, it would mean that during the entire Justice Department discussion of prosecuting Fox News’ James Rosen for soliciting the information, no one suggested or mentioned prosecuting Rosen for publishing it. Remember, Holder didn’t just say he didn’t agree with that idea; he said he never heard of the idea.
LIE THREE: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, testifying under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 12, responding to questions from Wyden:
Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Clapper: “No, sir.”
Wyden: “It does not?”
Clapper: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect—but not wittingly.”
The subsequent explanation from Clapper, to National Journal: “What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails. I stand by that.”
Lying to Congress is a crime. This isn’t just a scandal. It’s a criminal act. When Eric Holder told Congress that he’d never even heard of digging into a reporter’s private emails, that was a criminal act. That’s why we shouldn’t trust Secretary Sebelius when she says this:
HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson raised concerns a year ago about some grants, warning Sebelius that they may violate anti-lobbying statutes. The response was a general assurance that her department was taking care to remain in compliance with all such laws.
When an administration is involved in multiple criminal acts, which were committed in plain sight, they forfeit the right to be trusted.
When Eartbound Marketing Group was hired by St. Cloud State, they were tasked with rebranding the SCSU product. That’s an impossible task considering the fact that SCSU is embroiled in a transcript scandal that isn’t going away. It’s even more impossible considering the fact that President Potter signed a contract with a foundation that’s lost the University more than $1,000,000 a year the first 2 years of the contract. That’s before talking about President Potter agreeing to pay the City of St. Cloud $240,000 a year for 3 police officers to patrol near the SCSU campus.
At a time when the University’s enrollment is experiencing significant annual declines, SCSU can’t afford to make this many major financial mistakes.
How do you rebrand a university whose president intimidates students? Here’s what Logan Vold said in a letter to the student government president:
Furthermore, later, as the meeting progressed, President Potter yelled at myself, as well as another student. He raised his voice at me and mentioned, “do not take that tone with me…” while he leaned over the table with both hands on the table. At this point, I literally shut down as the other 4 individuals resumed the meeting. He also yelled at another student with the same tone and words.
This is disgraceful. University presidents shouldn’t a) yell at students or b) tell these students he’d like to level insubordination charges against their professor.
Meanwhile, the St. Cloud Times won’t print anything negative about President Potter. They won’t even investigate the transcript scandal. What’s worse is that MnSCU just rubberstamps President Potter’s decisions. What’s worst is that the MnSCU Board of Trustees are willing to rubberstamp Chancellor Rosenstone’s decisions.
It’s time to scrap the rebranding. It’s time to rebuild SCSU from the foundation up. It’s time to make SCSU accountable to the city and to Minnesota’s taxpayers. That won’t happen with President Potter.