OBAMA AND 900 DAYS OF IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR BY HARRY REID AND OTHER MORONS..NO BUDGET YET!

Dems' 900 Days Of Irresponsibility

Over the weekend, Senate Democrats passed a dubious milestone — going 900 days without fulfilling their legal obligation to pass a budget. Worse is the fact that this gross dereliction of duty has gone largely unnoticed.

You have to go all the way back to April 29, 2009 — just three months after President Obama took the oath of office — to find the last time Senate Democrats managed to discharge their legal obligation to produce a budget plan.

That's right — legal obligation. It says right in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 that the Senate must produce a budget resolution by April of each year.

Instead, all the country has gotten from Senate Democrats are excuses.

In May, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said "it would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage," since the so-called Gang of Six was working with Vice President Biden to come up with a debt reduction deal.

In early July, Republicans sent a letter to Reid asking where the Democrats' budget was. Turns out, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., had a plan ready to be unveiled, but Reid forced him to keep it locked up. Ostensibly that was because of the then-ongoing debt ceiling talks.

Democrats did, however, find the time in May to force a vote on the House Republican budget plan, but only in hopes of embarrassing their Senate counterparts.

Obama's hardly been any better. His latest budget was so outrageously irresponsible that the entire Senate, including every single Democrat, voted against it.
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So, without any budget plan to guide them, here's what Congress managed to do in the 29 months since the Senate last passed a plan:

• Spent a total of $8.5 trillion.

• Ran up monthly deficits totaling $2.6 trillion.

• Added $3.6 trillion to the national debt — a stunning 32% increase.

Now it's the middle of October, with the debt deal done months ago, and there's still no Senate plan anywhere in sight. What's Reid's new excuse?

Turns out, he doesn't have to make one up, since the debt deal Obama signed in August lets the Senate off the budget hook for another two years.

According to a Democratic Policy and Communications Center memo obtained by Commentary magazine in August, "One important but overlooked element of the bipartisan debt limit compromise is that it ... in effect, 'deems' a budget resolution passed for each of the next two fiscal years."

This, the memo says, "significantly reduces the chances of a sequel to last spring's government shutdown drama."

But what it really does is let Democrats continue to play political games with the budget, attacking serious, credible GOP proposals without ever having to offer anything concrete of their own.

Earlier this year, Obama said that "families across this country understand what it takes to manage a budget," and that "it's time Washington acted as responsibly as our families do."

He's right. Except that it's members of his own party who refuse to act like responsible adults.

SOCIAL SECURITY IS A PONZI SCHEME AND PRESIDENT OBAMA JUST PROVED THAT HE LIES AND LIES ABOUT IT...HIS OWN WORDS!

Trying to score political points against the GOP by recently warning that retirement checks were in jeopardy if the debt ceiling isn't raised, President Obama exposed the fraud at the heart of Social Security.

The closer the self-imposed deadline for raising the debt ceiling come, the more oddly politicians in Washington were behaving — and that's saying something.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ridiculously insisted on a plan within 48 hours. Sen. Mitch McConnell proposed a Rube Goldberg idea to let President Obama increase the debt by vetoing a bill denying him a debt increase, or something like that.

Obama beat everyone, however, with his scaremongering claim that Social Security checks are at risk if he doesn't get his way on the debt ceiling. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out if we haven't resolved this issue," he told CBS News, "because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."

Wait! What happened to Social Security's "guarantee"? You know, the iron-clad assurance of Social Security benefits in exchange for paying into the program your whole working life? It's something Democrats constantly talk about, particularly when attacking Republicans who propose privatizing the program.

As Nancy Pelosi once put it: "Social Security has never failed to pay promised benefits, and Democrats will fight to make sure that Republicans do not turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble."

The AFL-CIO warned in 2005 about "President Bush's plan to replace Social Security's guaranteed benefits with risky private accounts." The AARP describes Social Security as "the guaranteed part of your retirement plan." Etc., etc.

Turns out, this "guarantee" is a lie.

In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that workers do not have a legal right to their Social Security benefits. Congress can cut them any time it wants, which it's done several times. And, because there are no ownership rights, if you die the day you retire after making a lifetime of payments into Social Security, your heirs get nothing.

Indeed, Social Security's only guarantee is that today's workers will get an incredibly lousy return on the huge amount of money they've "invested" in the program.

And what about that Social Security "Trust Fund" the Democrats rhapsodize about? Isn't it supposed to guarantee benefit payments for another 30 or 40 years?

Truth is, the fund is nothing more than an accounting gimmick designed to make the program look healthier than it is. Obama exposed this scam as well by showing that retirees can't trust the "Trust Fund" for anything.

These are, by the way, all shortcomings that Social Security privatization advocates have tried to point out for years, only to be shouted down by Democrats.

In the current debt debate, Republicans could easily waylay Obama's threat about cutting off grandma's Social Security checks with a resolution ordering the Treasury to put retirees first in line for any government spending after Aug. 2. Let Democrats try to block that.

Whatever happens, the fact remains that Obama has accidentally made a pretty good case for Social Security reform by revealing the program for what it really is. A BIG PONZI SCHEME.

COMMENTS:
Posted By: billmeek

When Lyndon Johnson was president he and his Democratic Congress quietly moved Social Security funding from a separate pool of money ("Lockbox") into the general fund. He did this to hide the true cost of his Vietnam war from the taxpayers. Am I the only one who remembers this?

Posted By: moebellini

Thank you and can someone please see that Bernie Sanders, the delusional moron from Vermont, reads this. He has steadfastly held to the idea that there is no problem with social security and that republicans are fear mongers. Well Bernie, your guy, the president has just blown your cover. One of you guys is a total liar and should be removed from office.

Posted By: JohnQLiberty(5) on 7/14/2011 | 3:13 PM ET

Unlike other federal expenditures, Social Security is a separate program with its own income stream of FICA taxes, which will continue to be paid regardless of the debt limit. To the extent that FICA taxes are enough to cover the outgoing checks, no social security recipient need lose a dime. Michele Bachmann pointed this out on cable news last night.

Posted By: mrtriax

Isn't it time to stop the 'which party is responsible for what' squabbling and addressed the real problem? Both parties have been fiscally irresponsible for decades. The ratio of productive workers to consumers has tanked. Small businesses have seen their operations choked by mindless regulation. Entitlements have gone through the roof with no additional income to pay for them. 4 indecisive wars they lacked the guts to win. Medical costs have soared ... the list goes on.

AMERICA SUCKS, END CAPITALISM, CONFISCATE THE ASSETS OF THE RICH,TAX THE 1%, CANCEL ALL DEBT, PAY EVERYBODY $20/HR...IN AMERICA

I have read a bit more about the goals of the WALL STREET occupiers and in a further evaluation of SOME of their goals, the goals started to sound familiar to me and then I realized that these "goals" were familiar, since they were the identical goals of the Bolsheviks!

These were the goals of the many, many, failed Communist policies that have failed, and finally died a well deserved death in the Soviet Union!

THESE PROTESTERS HAVE BEEN SUPPORTED NOW BY PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, WHO HAS FINALLY SHOWED HIS TRUE COLORS ( in case you did not know this previously).

Imagine the destruction of the banking system as all loans to the 99% are to be forgiven. Imagine then all employees at the lowest level that will have to be paid $20/hr. How many jobs will this create?

These policies have been put forth from the unions and the clueless "students" who have had their minds loaded with nonsense by the likes of "professors", Obama's intimate friends in Chicago who bombed the Pentagon!

Do you expect anything else....well now you know, and are warned. Truth hurts those who lie!

STATES THAT HAVE LOW TAXES AND SPEND LESS HAVE HIGHEST CREDIT RATINGS..DUH!!! IS THAT ANY SURPRISE? IL AND CA ARE WORST!

Judge Economic Policies By State's Credit Ratings

By JAMES CARTER AND CHRISTINE HARBIN

The Tenth Amendment and America's federalist structure give the states the right to be "laboratories of democracy" — each with the opportunity to implement unique public policies within the confines of their borders.

(THIS PROVES ONCE AGAIN THAT KEEPING THE BOOT OFF THE NECK OF CITIZENS AND BUSINESS IS THE WISEST POLICY TO FOLLOW FOR SUCCESSFUL QUALITY OF LIFE AS WELL AS FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.)

Writing for the dissent in an early 1932 Supreme Court case, Justice Louis Brandeis celebrated this right, declaring:

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

In the nearly eight decades since Brandeis issued his opinion, divergent state-level economic policies have led some states to prosper while others have learned — sometimes painfully — that not all "experiments" succeed. Divergent policies bring divergent outcomes.

Imperfect as they are, state credit ratings speak volumes about the underlying quality of a state's economic policies.

But what are they saying?

What are highly rated states doing right?

What are the lowest rated states — California and Illinois, in particular — doing wrong?

• States with strong credit ratings have a few key traits in common. For one, they tend to keep taxes low.

The average top marginal personal income-tax rate for states boasting the S&P's AAA and AA+ credit ratings (the two highest ratings) is 5.1%. This figure rises to 6.3% for states in the middle-rated group (AA and AA-) and 7.7% in states in the lowest-rated group (A+ and A-).

The average top marginal corporate income-tax rate for states boasting the S&P's AAA and AA+ credit ratings is 6.7%. This figure rises to 7.6% for states in the middle-rated group and 9.2% in states in the lowest-rated group.

The overall state and local tax burden is lowest in the highest-rated group and highest in the lowest-rated group.

• State governments with strong credit ratings tend to carry less debt and spend less on debt service. On average, the highest-rated states spend 7.8% of their annual tax revenue on debt service. States in the middle-rated group (AA and AA-) spend 8.4% while those in the lowest-rated group (A+ and A-) spend 9.2%.

• State governments with strong credit ratings are far more likely to be a "right-to-work" state. Roughly half of the states with AAA and AA+ credit ratings give employees the right to decide whether to join or financially support a union.

Fewer than one in three states in the middle-rated group, and none of the states in the lowest-rated group, give employees that right.

• States with strong credit ratings maintain quality legal systems that are conducive to economic growth. As a group, states with the highest credit ratings score the highest in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "State Liability Systems Ranking Study." States with the lowest credit ratings tend to fare among the worst in the study.

• States with strong credit ratings tend to maintain those ratings for extended periods of time. That is, credit ratings may rise and fall for most states, but the highest-rated states tend to maintain consistently high credit ratings.

For example, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and Utah have each held AAA credit ratings for at least 45 years while Maryland has held that distinction for 50 years.

None of this should come as a surprise. States that keep taxes and spending in check have a greater untapped capacity to meet their debt obligations and deal with budget problems as they arise.

States that maintain policies conducive to economic growth are less likely to encounter debt and budget crises and, over time, benefit from a healthier tax base.

Justice Brandeis believed in the usefulness of having states "try novel social and economic experiments."

But with decades of divergent policies and divergent outcomes behind us, the lesson going forward should be clear to anyone willing to listen.

• Carter was a deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury under President George W. Bush and served on the staff of the Senate Budget Committee. Harbin is a research manager for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonpartisan group of state legislators.

OBAMA AS RABBLE ROUSER SUPPORTS CLASS WAR AND WAR AGAINST ALL BUSINESSES NOW, NOT JUST OIL COMPANIES AND COAL COMPANIES AND...YOU.?????

Obama on Occupy Wall Street: 'We Are on Their Side'

Who exactly is the "WE" he is referring to? Not me, not anybody I even know!

Now Obama and his idiot sidekick, Biden, are at war with all corporations, all businesses. It was not enough to be against oil companies, coal companies, energy companies, big automobiles being built, against Boeing opening a new plant in the Carolinas without union labor,against all "big" business...now he and Biden are against all business, against capitalism.

Hey Mr. Obommer, and WALL STREET protesters take note, nobody has to buy anything from a big business...it got that way making and selling products people want to buy.

Don't like their product? Buy somebody else's, or better yet see if you can make your own, maybe for less, and you can then sell yours to others and if they like it they will buy more and tell others, and you too can become rich in America.

Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer in his garage, while a college dropout. Now Apple has a market value of $400 BILLION! Do you hate Mr. Jobs and Apple? Are they too big for your liking? Should he have to divide up the shares and give them to people who do not have them?

Herman Cain, one of the GOP presidential hopefuls had it right: in America if you are poor do not blame somebody else, blame yourself!

If you do not graduate high school, if you acquire no job skills, if you do not want to work, why should it be somebody else's responsibility to make sure that your income is equal to someone who is working 80 hours a week!

In an interview ABC News, President Obama continues to express his commitment to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. A commitment? What commitment? To destroy business, to have a business give up its profits?

The very reason a business is started is to make a profit for the people who started it as their financial reward...that is the very essence of an economy and how it works.

One of the earliest examples of this was how the early voyages to the NEW WORLD were financed, and later various other business ventures in the NEW WORLD and throughout the newly discovered "trading" countries.

Investors would put up funds to buy or sponsor a sea voyage to the new area to bring back goods to sell in the original country. They bought products in say, India, and brought them back to England, and bought products made in England and brought them back to India. Each time making a profit!

That is the basis of all business...there is no variation, ever!

If each voyage would be at a loss, there would be no profit, and there would be no commerce without a profit to support more trade.

Mr. Obama is clueless about this, apparently never learning anything about the discovery of the NEW WORLD, he probably did not take that class being a part of the "special" programs that just moved him up though the classes.

The only "business" in the world that does not ever make a profit, but only takes capital and takes and takes, is the government!

If businesses were run like the government, we would still be writing on stone tablets and arguing against putting out of work buggy manufacturers!

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

What does this statement really mean? Not rewarded? Does that mean they are not allowed to make a profit? What obligation does a business have to its workers?
Something way over and above providing a safe place to work and a wage that they accept in return for their work? Now it it the business of business to provide more now? Apparently according to Obama, that is the case, or else that business has to "NOT BE REWARDED!" What is that, Communism, Marxist theory, what is it?

The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party. “In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party," Obama says. "Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”

But it wasn't too long ago that President Obama openly mocked the Tea Party movement:

"Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around,["] Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

News to Mr. NOBAMA, you have been given plenty of suggestions what to do but you only do what you want as stupid as it is. When will you get this?

GOVERNMENT LIES ABOUT TRUE INFLATION BY EXCLUDING FOOD AND FUEL COSTS..DECEIVING US BY SHOWING A SMALLER AMOUNT THAN ACTUAL

When we receive from the government the official results of inflation, we get as expected, a lie! They basically exclude the increased costs of the basic commodities we buy every day like FOOD and FUEL to tell us that prices did not increase!

They exclude the things that affect us the most, and tell us that there is no inflation, when those things that affect us the most are EXCLUDED.

Typical government mumbo jumbo.

To explain it in layman's lingo, something we can all understand this is the long and short of it, and why it is so deceitful.

Let's say that Michelle Obama goes shopping for the White House food pantry and she buys a dozen eggs for $3, and a gallon of ice cream for $8. These same products cost $1.50 and $4 last month.

So they were up by 50% in just a month, showing significant inflation!

But that is not how the government figures it ( how it lies and misleads).

It considers other factors which it refers to as CORE INFLATION, a term to screw us all to hide the true inflation.

What this essentially means is that in addition to the eggs and ice cream you purchased at 50% more than the previous month, (and you noticed how high it got), they compare that increase against a cost DECREASE in the price of the WAL-MART television manufactured in China that was $400 last month, and is now priced at $199, thus a 50% DECREASE.

Voila, like magic, there was no inflation that month since the cost increase in your food of 50%, was OFFSET by the 50% DECREASE in the cost of TV's at Wal-Mart.(NOTICE THE WAL-MART SALE SIGN...MADE FOR DUMMIES)

THAT IS HOW THEY FIGURE YOUR INFLATION. Go buy a TV at Wal-Mart and stop complaining about inflation, you just would have save $199, and buy all those expensive eggs and ice creams...you are way ahead on the savings!!

If the same methodology that was used in 1980 to chronicle the double digit inflation of that era were in use today, we would have an inflation rate of ten percent right now, according to Shadow Government Statistics. We are entering a massive era of stagflation which recalls to us our writing in Catastrophe, published two years ago, that “inflation may well be the enduring legacy of the Obama presidency.”

How does the federal government understate the inflation rate? Let us count the ways:

1. It excludes food and fuel costs from its rate of “core inflation.” Each month, the Federal Reserve calms national inflation fears by pointing to the low rate of core inflation, currently at an annual pace of just 2.1%. It reaffirms that the economy is meeting the goal set for it by the Fed of keeping core inflation around or below two percent.

Claiming that food and fuel are too unstable to be included in the inflation rate, it excludes precisely those areas in which inflation is felt most deeply. In the past year, the cost of commodities from corn to soybeans has doubled and the price of gasoline at the pump is one third higher than it was one year ago. The average American household budget devotes one-third of its cash to food and energy costs. Leaving these elements out of the inflation rate has no justification.

2. It substitutes less expensive products when prices rise When prices go up, the economists who generate the Consumer Price Index substitute less a expensive alternative product for the one that has risen in price. For example, if the cost of steak goes up, the CPI does not reflect the increase, but simply replaces steak with hamburger in computing the price index.

3. It excludes “hedonistic” products as price rises The Fed adjusts for price rises by dumbing down the luxury elements of the products whose price it measures. It might, for example, measure the price of cars without air conditioning as a way of avoiding reporting the increase in the cost of automobiles. Even when the luxury features cannot easily be removed from the product, the CPI economists assume that they are.

4. In averaging the price of different commodities, it uses a geometric — not an arithmetic mean. Since the geometric mean, which compares the square roots of product prices, comes out lower, it understates the rate of inflation.0

To the layman, an increase in total spending of 50 cents on a base of $2 would represent a 25% increase in price. But that uses the arithmetic mean.

The geometric mean compares the square root of (new price / original price) multiplied by the same for the other commodity. Using this method of calculation, the increase in price would only be 22.5%.

The CPI switched to geometric comparison in 1994. Neat huh?

But no matter how the federal economists bend and twist the data, most Americans realize that we are in for a massive bout of inflation.

And this inflation is dramatically different from the last hyper inflation of the late 70s and early 80s. That inflation was caused by too much money chasing too few products. To slow down the economy and tame price increases, the Fed raised interest rates. But this inflation has nothing to do with demand. Rather, it is caused by the upward push of costs like gasoline, taxes, food, health insurance, and, soon, interest rates. This cost-push increase in prices cannot be tamed by cooling off the economy, which is, in fact, so cool already that it is approaching zero growth.

Stagflation, which will get worse and worse, may be Obama’s real legacy to this country.

GOVERNMENT SPENT MORE THIS YEAR THAN LAST; TAXPAYERS ARE LIED TO AGAIN AND AGAIN AS SPENDING INCREASES!!

The Austerity Myth: Federal Spending Up 5% This Year

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011's budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year's economic slowdown.

But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven't been any spending cuts at all.

Higher Spending, Deficits

In fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That's an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher.

These spending hikes haven't stopped many analysts from claiming that the country is in an age of budget austerity, one that's hurting economic growth.

A July article in USA Today, for example, claimed that "Already in 2011, softer government spending has sapped growth."

Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Biden, wrote over the summer that "government spending cutbacks have been a large drag on growth in recent quarters and have led to sharp losses in state and local employment."

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued in September that "the turn toward austerity (is) a major factor in our growth slowdown."

If government spending is related to growth, as these and others claim, then the economy presumably should be growing faster, not slower, given the current higher rates of federal outlays.

State Spending Higher Too

Nor does the claim that state governments sharply cut spending stand up well to closer scrutiny.

Overall state spending continued to climb right through the recession, when all money from state general funds and other funds, federal grants and state bonds is combined.

Total state outlays in 2010 were almost 10% higher than in 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers' annual State Expenditure Report.

And general fund spending — which makes up about 40% of total state spending — is expected to climb 5.2% in 2011 and 2.6% next year, according to the association's latest survey.

NASBO says that states were able to sustain spending growth through 2010 only because the federal government was pumping more money in via the $830 billion stimulus, and that these funds are now all but exhausted.

As the survey report notes, the tapering off of the stimulus "combined with a slow recovery in state revenue collections, will continue the tight resource environment for states in fiscal 2012."

Meanwhile, the claim that state and local government jobs have been severely cut is, at the very least, open to some debate.

"We know that the biggest problem that we've had in terms of unemployment over the last several months has not been in the private sector," President Obama said at a recent press briefing. "It's actually been layoffs of teachers and cops and firefighters."

Monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics do show that from December 2007 — when the recession officially started — until the end of 2010, state and local governments shed 221,000 jobs. And they've cut another 234,000 jobs so far this year.

But a separate annual survey from the Census Bureau shows that "full-time-equivalent" state and local employment climbed 200,000 between 2007 and 2010 (the latest year for which these census data are available.) The differences come from the methodologies used.

In any case, even using BLS data, the number of state and local government jobs has fallen just 2.3% since December 2007. That compares with a decline of 5.4% for private-sector jobs.

1,271 GOVERMENT ORGANIZATIONS NOW WORK ON COUNTER-TERRORISM AND 854,000 PEOPLE HAVE SECURITY CLEARANCE TO SPY ON ALL CITIZENS!! MORE MONEY WASTED !

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Gallery thumb
An alternative geography
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the top-secret world created to respond to the terrorist attacks has grown into an unwieldy enterprise spread over 10,000 U.S. locations.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation's security.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

"I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities," he said in an interview. "The complexity of this system defies description."

The result, he added, is that it's impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste," Vines said. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

The Post's investigation is based on government documents and contracts, job descriptions, property records, corporate and social networking Web sites, additional records, and hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and corporate officials and former officials. Most requested anonymity either because they are prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns.

The Post's online database of government organizations and private companies was built entirely on public records. The investigation focused on top-secret work because the amount classified at the secret level is too large to accurately track.

Today's article describes the government's role in this expanding enterprise. Tuesday's article describes the government's dependence on private contractors. Wednesday's is a portrait of one Top Secret America community. On the Web, an extensive, searchable database built by The Post about Top Secret America is available at washingtonpost.com/topsecretamerica.

Defense Secretary Gates, in his interview with The Post, said that he does not believe the system has become too big to manage but that getting precise data is sometimes difficult. Singling out the growth of intelligence units in the Defense Department, he said he intends to review those programs for waste. "Nine years after 9/11, it makes a lot of sense to sort of take a look at this and say, 'Okay, we've built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?' " he said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was also interviewed by The Post last week, said he's begun mapping out a five-year plan for his agency because the levels of spending since 9/11 are not sustainable. "Particularly with these deficits, we're going to hit the wall. I want to be prepared for that," he said. "Frankly, I think everyone in intelligence ought to be doing that."

In an interview before he resigned as the director of national intelligence in May, retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair said he did not believe there was overlap and redundancy in the intelligence world. "Much of what appears to be redundancy is, in fact, providing tailored intelligence for many different customers," he said.

Blair also expressed confidence that subordinates told him what he needed to know. "I have visibility on all the important intelligence programs across the community, and there are processes in place to ensure the different intelligence capabilities are working together where they need to," he said.

Weeks later, as he sat in the corner of a ballroom at the Willard Hotel waiting to give a speech, he mused about The Post's findings. "After 9/11, when we decided to attack violent extremism, we did as we so often do in this country," he said. "The attitude was, if it's worth doing, it's probably worth overdoing."

22 MILLION PEOPLE WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA...ONE OUT OF SEVEN NOW ARE ON DIRECT GOVERNMENT DOLE! THIEVES ROBBING PENSIONS!

As we read about the unsustainable burden of having less and less workers contributing to the Social Security system, now at 2.5 workers per retiree, we have an even bigger burden that is coming...the GOVERNMENT WORKER drag on the economy!

An even bigger problem is that literally the only place that Unions are growing is though the unionization of those poor downtrodden government workers, by the SEIU for instance!

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES BY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT
Government Level Total Employees AS PERCENT OF Labor Force
Federal 2,730,040 2%
State 5,329,022 3.4%
Local 14,227,163 9%
Total 22,286,225 14.4% OF THE LABOR FORCE WORK FOR GOVERNMENT!

This total is ever increasing and if continued, will reach 25% of the workforce by 2050, and 50% by 2100!

That total is totally unsustainable, and will be heading to Communism where the government IS the employer....of everyone. Furthermore, every communist country is a failed state having nothing but poverty and shortages of everything necessary for a decent life.

We need to wake up and stop electing those who keep fostering this, especially with the uncontrollable and generous pensions!

At least eight Chicago labor leaders who are eligible for inflated city pensions also stand to receive union pensions covering the same work period, thanks to a charitable interpretation of state law by officials representing two city pension funds, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.

By double and even triple dipping on pensions, these union officials stand to reap millions more in retirement while thousands of rank-and-file union members face hard times and city pension funds stagger toward insolvency.

Union pension benefits are not public record, but the Tribune and WGN-TV obtained information confirming that at least seven union officials are accruing benefits in multiple pensions and another retired official already is receiving money from two pensions.

One labor leader stands to reap more than $400,000 a year from three pensions — the city laborers fund, a union district council fund and a national union fund — all covering the same time period. During his expected lifetime, he stands to receive approximately $9 million, according to an analysis based on the funds’ actuarial assumptions.

Union officials are accumulating these benefits even though the state pension code includes language aimed at preventing double dipping.

Pension experts, state lawmakers and attorneys specializing in pension law say the spirit of the statute clearly prohibits labor leaders from receiving a second pension from funds established by their locals, although it does appear to contain a loophole that allows pensions from national unions.

City pension fund directors and their attorney, Fredrick Heiss, say that the law is vague and that if the Legislature had wanted to bar labor leaders from participating in union pension plans, they would have said so more clearly.

“The Legislature never told us how to administer this thing,” Heiss said. “They could have said ‘no second pension at all,’ but they didn’t say that.” And this coming from a lawyer, what a surprise!

Retired Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon was rehired by the city for one day, after years of being off the payroll, so he would qualify for an annual pension of more than $150,000. His highest pay at the city was $56,000. Twenty-two other labor leaders are also gaming the pension system in what will ultimately cost it and taxpayers a total of $56 million.

Some background: Pension laws are set by state government. Boosts in benefits are easy for lawmakers to support because they offer future benefits to government employees at no immediate budget cost. Every two years an omnibus pension bill would wend its way quietly through the General Assembly, providing pension credits for such things as time served as a member of a park board or city council, which are volunteer or low-paid positions, not generally thought of as jobs that carry pension credits. All the legislators and lobbyists were aware of the bill (though not its details) and said nothing, myself included, when I was president of a business trade association.

It isn't just those big bad people in Chicago who play the game. Many school boards jack up their superintendents' salary in the two or three years prior to retirement. So if a superintendent was paid $100,000 but then in his or her final years that was boosted to $200,000, the pension benefit would increase dramatically - without the superintendent having paid into the system over the years to support such a high pension.

The foundation for Chicago's shenanigans go back to the 1870s, when the leaders of immigrant populations began taking over local governments. Irish, German, Italian, Polish and Eastern European residents were shunned by the better educated, more prosperous WASPs, and decided they could get the better of them. Patronage and corruption reigned, and carry over to this day.

I define public corruption as "personal gain at public expense." The pension scams certainly fit. To pay the union leaders' extravagant government pensions will require that taxpayers and current and future city employees pay more to keep the systems solvent. According to the Civic Committee, a watchdog group, the city pension funds will be depleted of assets in 20 years unless government steps in and the benefits of today's and tomorrow's employees are reduced. As for the union bosses, there's nothing that can be done. The state constitution guarantees pension benefits that are legally "earned," even though in these cases the benefits were not ethical.

It's enough to make you sick, and to lower trust and confidence in our governments, which scrape the ground as is.

Comments:

Cowboy Logic 144p
Have they no shame? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKn7vkSMBc

FlexoRick 93p
Union Bosses...the new Mob....what good is RICO?

OLJingoist 102p
REMARKABLE

Darby64 93p
Obama is right to transfer money from the poor to union leaders. What are the poor going to do with that money? Probably buy food. Certainly not retire. The unions need to be kept wealthy at all costs, be it higher taxes, impoverishing Americans, so says Barack Obama.

USMCsc 82p
Tell me it's not true! How can the labor bosses who only care about the working stiffs be accused of something this despicable? And in Chicago? And bears do what; where?

EOD 125p
Treasonous.

These actions must be punished under the Treason Statute to the fullest extent that the Law allows.

One_More_Nail 78p · 4 days ago
Union leaders looking out for themselves.........................Come on Trumka....speak out against this......for the working class....?.....should we hold our breath????????????..........brotherhood........?.........hello...........is that crickets I hear......................................................no doubt Bushes fault.........damn banks........o and wall street...that evil wall street...............

onecornpone 123p
Anyone who doesn't leave IL ASAP has questionable intelligence.

I wish that state to become a vacant wasteland... Why would anyone stay?

GUNNYG 116p
HAHAHA! As the song goes, "just look for, the union label, for crony corruption and lies..."

Small wonder President Alinsky supports unions, hell, his Klingon War Bride had a job not unlike a union boss at a hospital, doing NOTHING and making big coin.

http://theantiliberalzone.blogspot.com/
THE ANTI LIBERAL ZONE

HeReturnsSoon 108p
That's why the Laborers Union and others LOVE college kids.
They pay dues for a few years then they disappear.
It's FREE MONEY to the unions.

crankitup 87p
hoffa jr. wants to take the SOB'S out. Oh not them, sorry!

EricBrodin 112p
Hey, caring for the "working man" is hard business. It's hard damn work community organizing, lying, and raping the taxpayers.

War_Machine 109p
But the problem is big business and Wall Street?!?!?!? Isn't it?!?!?!?............. LOL..when someone retires after working for a BUSINESS, BIG OR SMALL, they do not steal the pension money from the rest of us taxpayers!!!!!

IsrealFeller 83p
Man, you just can't make this stuff up.

actsnow 113p
it's all about the ruling class,it's hard work keeping the Rubes in line.

John G 86p
Don't the rank and file union members have a problem with this? Is this even known to them?

ReaganiteGOPer 83p
SLIME

DrConstitution 83p
I wonder how long the rank and file will remain completely ignorant of these facts. Not just this, but how about all the union members (public unions in particular) who got let go because their "senior brethren" refused to a take a minor paycut in order to avoid letting other workers go - as has happened with many police departments (oh wait - I thought they were all about public safety, right?) ? How do you think they'll vote this time around?

I love to see unions shoot themselves in the foot, it's really fun to watch.

JTWhistler 59p
Union Bosses: Union Members = Useful Idiots.

Wesley69 114p
Where are the Wall Street Protestors?????

Cannon649 73p
The state just raised taxes 67%, to help pay for this fraud.

Businesses are leaving -

Unemployment rising

Any reason why unions are needed - Think this guy was worth anything like his pension
Illinois has a Attorney General - where is she - or is she part of problem?
Can't the people see it?
What will it take?

larrygrant876 98p
Union Violence anyone? Don't forget one of the steps the communists stated was to take over the unions, they have.
http://www.righttoworkcommittee.org/fuva_videohn....

hologram5 113p · 4 days ago
What?! No trolls here to defend their supreme overlords? What's up with that?

MEXICANIZING AMERICAN STUDENTS BY FORCING TO LEARN THE MEXICAN ANTHEM AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO MEXICO-A FAILED HELLHOLE AND NARCO STATE

TX High School Students Made to Recite Mexican National Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance
by Madeleine Morgenstern

JUST AN FYI, THE PHOTO IS FROM THE CITY OF CANCUN,,,THIS IS HOW PEOPLE IN MEXICO REALLY LIVE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT WORK IN THE RESORT HOTELS...NOW YOU KNOW WHY THEY WANT TO COME HER???

Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson.

It happened last month in an intermediate Spanish class at Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas — a city located about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Wearing red, white and green, students had to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class.

That didn’t go over well with sophomore Brenda Brinsdon. The 15-year-old sat down and refused to participate. She also caught it all on video:

“I just thought it was out of hand, I didn’t think it was right,” she told The Blaze. “Reciting pledges to Mexico and being loyal to it has nothing to do with learning Spanish.”

She said she was particularly offended because the presentations in teacher Reyna Santos’s class took place during “Freedom Week,” the week after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and on U.S. Constitution Day — the same day as Mexico’s Independence Day.

“Why are we doing their independence when it‘s Freedom Week and it’s also Constitution Day?” Brinsdon said.

Brinsdon said she complained to the school principal, Yvette Cavazo, who told her it was part of the curriculum and that she should participate. Her father, William, also got involved, calling the school district superintendent to complain.

When Brenda made clear she would not stand up and recite the pledge, she was given an alternative assignment: an essay on the history of the Mexican revolution.

Meanwhile, other students continued with their presentations, which took place over the course of several days.

When Brinsdon talked to Santos — a first-year teacher at Achieve — about her new assignment, the teacher told her she grew up in Mexico.

“She told me that she loved Mexico,” Brinsdon said.

School district spokesman Mark May defended the presentations, saying it’s a state requirement for upper-level language classes to teach about foreign culture.

According to the state’s Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, students are expected to gain “knowledge and understanding” of other cultures and use the language to demonstrate understanding of different practices and perspectives. There are no specific requirements about learning to recite pledges or anthems.

May said it’s up to the teacher how to interpret and teach the standards.

“It wasn’t required to pledge loyalty and renounce the U.S., they were simply spreading the culture of another country,” May told The Blaze. “In my mind it’s no different from memorizing a poem or memorizing a passage from Shakespeare.”

William Brinsdon took issue with that notion, saying if that’s the case it cheapens the pledge.

“You‘re taking their allegiance and their oath from Mexico and cheapening it just as a grade or words don’t mean anything,” he said.

May reiterated that the lesson was all done within the context of meeting the state requirements, and that the school did its duty providing Brenda with an alternative assignment when she objected.

“The students came away with a better understanding of the culture, heritage and customs of a neighboring country where Spanish is the primary language,” he said.

May added that the lesson was “well received” by other students and parents.

“There’s always going to be people that always feel a little bit differently,” May said.

William Brinsdon is still having a hard time fathoming the idea of reciting foreign pledges and anthems in a U.S. public school in the first place.

“Our kids don’t even know the [American] national anthem and here we are…teaching them to memorize and perform the national anthem for Mexico,” he said. “I just think it’s so backwards.”

Jon Seidl contributed to this report.

Comments

Mandors
Okay, it’s SPANISH class. Singing the national anthem of Mexico, fine. Reciting their pledge? No. Nationalism turns to chauvinism turns to bigotry, and I’m talking about Mexicans in this country.

Eliasim
Do you know there are people of Mexican descent in the U.S military who would fight for Mexico if it ever came to blows between Mexico and the U.S?

TXPilot

One has to wonder why Mexicans come here and talk about how great Mexico is, and profess how they would like the US to be more like their homeland. However, if Mexico truly is that wonderful, why are people so willing to flee from it, even at the risk of their own lives to do so? The truth is that Mexico has always been a poverty stricken, corrupt Hellhole, where there has never been anything approaching human liberty, and with the drug wars continuing to heat up, its getting nothing but worse down there. It’s bad shameful that illegal aliens break the law, come here and take jobs away from hard working Americans, avail themselves of any taxpayer provided free service and increase our crime rates , but to also stand around insulting our country and comparing it to a place that has always been and will always be a sewer.

Stuck_in_CA

THIS IS RECONQUESTA!!! The “Tan Klan” has been working overtime, reclaiming the Southwest. The last three presidents have endorsed and encouraged, as Al Gore once put it, “The browning of America.”
Our Republic is under assault from within and without.
WHEN will we make a stand??? And there’s this:
Now we now why Gov. Perry panders to illegal aliens…they can vote in Texas!‏ By Dave Gibson
http://www.examiner.com/immigration-reform-in-national/now-we-now-why-gov-perry-panders-to-illegal-aliens-they-can-vote-texas?render=print#print
Stuck_in_CA
grfd703

When I was in Spanish class back in the eighties, we were required to learn the US pledge of allegiance in Spanish. Very different, and still meets the intent.

Yo hago juramento a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America, y a la quien representa. Una nacion, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos.

ashestoashes

Part of the curriculum? Rick Perry’s state.

grfd703
Ok, let’s try this again… (I left out “and to the republic” the first time)

Yo hago juramento a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America, y a la republica a quien representa. Una nacion, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos.

Eliasim

Do you know there are people of Mexican descent in the U.S military who would fight for Mexico if it ever came to blows between Mexico and the U.S?
********************************************************************************************************************

I find this statement sooo funny. the mexicans in the US already chose not to fight for mexico. There is a war going on in mexico right now. all this mexican Pride yet none of them are going home to fight the drug cartels for mexico. So please stop pretending to be proud of mexico. If you disagree with me. by all means go to mexico and prove me wrong. Thats what i thought!

autoteck1

If the Mexicans want to recite their pledge of alegiance they should be in Mexico! If it’s so great there that you need to sing the anthem and recite your loyalty, just go back! No one is forcing you to stay here against your will. If it were american Citizens in Mexico doing it they would either be jailed or mysteriously dissapear! Another case of “Do as we say, Not as we do”!

teamarcheson

WHAT IS GOVERNOR PERRY GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS?

What a mistake it was to back Perry. What a mistake it was to back Christi of New Jersey. A pledge is an oath and these students raised their hands to signify the affirmation oath followed by the Mexican National Anthem. This is not a mistake or class room exercise. We are not shooting each other yet but the second American Civil War for Freedom as already started. Our enemy has invaded our schools, our parks and our governments.

Nostraquedeo

Heck I had whole classes that were taught in spanish because all the rest of the students understood spanish better. I was told your a smart little white kid and your going to pass anyways so just sit in the back and take the tests so I can teach the other kids so they can pass. South Texas is Mexico.

gsplgtr

My Chilean grandfather is rolling over in his grave. He would never had allowed his children to disrespect the country that adopted him! In spanish class yo learn SPANISH. You can learn about the history of Mexico in HISTORY CLASS. Enough said!

ALSO….if Mexicans/latinos come here for a better life than they have had..
???…WHY DO THEY KEEP TRYING TO CHANGE THIS COUNTRY INTO WHERE THEY “RAN” FROM????
You miss it?…you love it?? want to live here?…go visit, but quit trying to change America into the loser/down trodden culture you came from!!
Latinos have a culture that has seen many ups and downs, a grand warm culture…that has at this point failed to help it’s own people. Quit trying to force it on Americans.

lillymckim
Ok parents this is when YOU stand up and take them out of that classroom.

AIDANMAN
why MEXICO… it should be SPAIN…

rodamaa
Interesting,

Why the Mexican anthem? With all the other countries in south and central America why that choice?

I am American of Cuban decent and I have never once had any desire to sing the Cuban national anthem. We need to get rid of these traitors that now occupy our country.

God Bless America


Nostraquedeo
Posted on October 17, 2011 at 10:24am

In a little town outside of McAllen I remember during recess running from a gang of 8 boys. Almost reaching the security guard who was watching and being taken to the ground and I will never forget the look of disinterest on his face as I looked up from the ground through the dust and the boots that were stomping and kicking me and watching him 6 feet from me just leaning against a pole and finishing his cigarette. Or my first day of school being told to get off the bus because the bus driver said I must be a rich little white kid and should have my parents pick me up and he didn‘t want to clean up the blood from the buss if I was on it because he didn’t have time to drive and protect a little white kid. I’m having involuntary shaking just remembering it. They told me over and over when I was growing up. They were going to take back the land we stole from them.

watchtheotherhand

Ok, here is the problem with this whole situation. It may be Spanish class, but you have a situation on the US-Mexican border where there is daily violence and fighting, illegal immigration, and drug running, however, liberals want to make it about struggling people looking for work and jobs, which is fine, but when they come to this country legally they take an oath of loyalty to this country. The problem I have is many want the benefits of this country but then want to show disdain for it by remaining loyal to their homeland at heart (which is OK if you also assimilate to your new home). They do not want to assimilate they want to change what is already here in many instances. Learn the American pledge in Spanish. I am so sick of this cultural sensitivity BS I could puke. Our children are falling behind in public education in every way and we are trying to teach them about other cultures when they don’t even know American history or geography. We have got to be one of the dumbest generations in the history of man for the disservice we have done to our children !!!! We sell them out to China, we bow to dictators around the world so they will like us and we teach other countries Pledges to our own children and call it meeting state requirements. Doubt me just take one look at the “brilliant” minds on the Occupy wall street front. Those people are some of the dumbest people I have ever seen on TV.

@OGmoonman

10-15 years ago, there were MS-13 kids in class “A” school with the tear drop tatoo, which means they had a kill in the gangs. They come in to learn skills that they can take back to the gangs. I believe every word that if it came down to it there are Mexican-Americans that would side with Mexico. Of course, they won’t actually LEAVE America to fight they would fight from our shores. They know how much better America is, but they‘ll send their money home to family that can’t get out.

@leftfighter

I disagree. I live in Florida. I didn’t learn the Cuban (or Mexican, Venezuelan, Spanish, etc) anthem in high school Spanish, nor did the German classes learn the German anthem, or Italian in Italian.

Learning a foreign language doesn’t include learning the national pride aspects of another nation, particularly when the nation chosen isn’t the only nation in the world speaking that language. When I took Japanese in college, I didn’t sing their anthem, and they *are* the only Japanese speaking nation in the world. Just sayin’.

This is content for a Mexican history class, not Spanish language. There, I’d have no issue with it- providing, of course, that the “Mexico was stolen” curriculuum is left at the teacher’s home.
@leftfighter
bigwheel4482

the immigrants that came years ago cannot be compared to what is happening today. 40 million Spanish people in this country. when do you see any on tv? they are already a country within a country. they have their own tv and radio stations they don't need ours. we have encouraged them never to Americanize. they are more closely tied to mexico. mecha and la raza are the most dangerous anti-american hate groups in this country. this teacher should be deported, she shows no love for this country. mexico is a very nationalist country that doesnt like this country.

TH30PH1LUS

One wrong move and those painted-on-pants are going to explode. What self-respecting teacher stands in front of students looking like a stuffed sausage in clothes so tight she can’t bend over without detroying them?

Oh, she’s indoctrinating students in the anti-American public school system. Makes sense now.

AzDebi

Abolish the Department of Education!

http://aconservativeteacher.blogspot.com/2011/09/abolish-department-of-education-what.html

President Reagan declared that he would rid our country of this cancer…he was unable to accomplish it!
AzDebi
motonutt

The parents need to show up at the school and make the school administraters see that they are not going to tolerate it. Plain and simple. This is what I did when my boy’s were still in school. You would be surprised how easly they cave in when you go in calm cool and collected, after doing your homework on the matter.


Eliasim, “Do you know there are people of Mexican descent in the U.S military who would fight for Mexico if it ever came to blows between Mexico and the U.S?”

Yes, I’ve seen it first hand. In fact, I wanted to look up some old friends in the Corps by joining a facebook group, and one of the first pictures I came across was two Marines (in their barracks) with a Mexican flag on their wall. This was prevalent in 1991, I can’t imagine how it is now.
This_Individual
Jim in Houston

She loves Mexico? Send her @ss back and tell her to stay there!

mils

ALSO…
when i took Spanish….we learned about SPAIN…..SPAIN…NOT MEXICO….

Imagine learning about the country that the language originated in…hhmmmm that would be novel.


teddrunk

Mexican national anthem? Is that a song about burros, a siesta, and dancing around a hat?

euragone

Mexican National Anthem has detail’s on how to cross the border into the U.S.
euragone
Roz Anders

It’s a song about Cucarachasssssss!

kentuckypatriot

I find it ironic when one person complains, yet they continue with this outrageous assignment. If a muslim or an illegal complained, I’m sure the school would bend over backwards and discontinue the assignment because they were “ offended ”.
kentuckypatriot
smithclar3nc3

It’s very simple pull you children out of the public indoctronation centers and either home school them or private school them. If there was a mass exodus from the public school system in texas it would send a message that every school district in the country would hear. The bi*ch and complain will do nothing it takes action to get things changed.

TheWholeTruth

Exactly! ONE person complains about the US flag in a room and BOOM, it’s GONE! ONE person complains about the lyrics of a song and BOOM! it can’t be sung. But yet no one said anything other than “It’s just part of the course?” Give me a BREAK!

I was the soloist at my High School Baculariat back in 1979. I had my song all done and read. Then the choir teacher came to me and told me that I couldn’t sing it because 2 girls (sisters) complained that their ‘religion’ forbade mention of the crucifiction. She told me that I would have to change my song because these girls couldn’t mention it. THEY WEREN’T SINGING IT, I WAS! But, she told me I had to change it three days before the performance. WAKE UP AMERICA!

BOspreadnwealth

Ask the teacher if she denounces the US Pledge of Allegiance and her citizenship (assuming she is a citizen, if not then deport her). Then ask the teacher why she couldn’t just have taught the kids how to say the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in spanish.

keith phillips

While I agree with SEC777, I am sure that the pledge and the anthem are not the only two things that the Mexican culture has written. Use anything else out of the 10′s of thousands of articles short enough to learn.


uzi4u2

I beg to differ, I taught school in the Philippines for 8 years and we never had the students recite the pledge or the National Anthem. We did have them do theirs in English. I wonder if they should be made to recite what ever the pledge of Iran is if they are in a middle eastern studies class? Or as said above, muslim students in english classes? Another example of the “we hate the US” crowd.

NHwinter

How do you know its false outrage? If a muslim didn’t want to recite our Pledge of Allegiance would that be false outrage? You have no right to judge this young girl. I admire her for even thinking beyond the assignment to what it means to actually say a pledge to any country. A thinking young person!!! Good for her, its rare.

Z_only1

Such a sheeple response but nevertheless patently ignorant of what is happening around you. It‘s people like you that ignore the warning signs before it’s to late. It’s people like you that say we should be tolerant when behind the scene they spit on our flag, burn our flag. It’s people like you who bury their heads in the sand when disrespectful occurrences happen towards our nation. It’s people like you who take being an American for granted. It’s people like you who seems to think that compromise ones principles is okay. It’s people like you who are to ignorant to notice little by little our republic is slowly being eating away from invaders. It‘s people like you who don’t understand Islam and Christianity can never compromise and/or get along. It’s people like you that are the useful idiots amongst us.

READ THE BOOK: DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA BY 2050
It describes how the Mexicans will be 150 million strong here by 2050, as predicted by the US CENSUS BUREAU.

1st a Father

You know, you’re right. If I moved to a different country either permanently or temporarily, I would expect I would be fine with learning such materials. They have moved here. They have committed to be here, why are they requiring US citizens to recite the Mexican pledge? If this were just an exorcise in reciting the pledge, why would they have the student make the solute while reciting it. Sure, show the solute, but requiring them to do it during the recitation. Something is definitely wrong here.

It‘s time to stand up to the school districts and tell them it’s wrong. Time for parents to review the curriculum being taught to their children. Get involved.
SEC777. (rolling eyes)

Please, Obi Wan, enthrall us with your extensive knowledge! Please, oh please, continue to explain to us how it would simply NOT BE POSSIBLE to teach the American pledge in Spanish (or any other language) like it’s been done in many other classes across this fine country for years and years. And please bestow upon us your wisdom regarding the teacher’s inability to find anything else written in Mexico from which she could have chosen her assignment. Oh, we wait with bated breath for the wisdom to flow from your keyboard….. (cough)

bigwheel4482

what planet are you living on? i lived on the border for 16 yrs. my nieces who have a spanish last name had to take all spanish classes even though they only knew english and didnt want to learn spanish. using that same logic there if your last name was german they would teach you in german. bi-ligual education is forced on schools and it is very expensive and waste of time. we spend more money per student educating illegals than we do our own. 30 yrs ago lemon grove ca was a beautuful place go today and it is unrecognizable

OBAMA BLAME GAME NEVER ENDS, NOTHING IN THE COUNTRY IS HIS RESPONSIBILITY, HE TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING HE HAS CAUSED-NEEDS MORE EXCUSES!

I am so sick and tired of hearing over and over that whatever is happening in our economy is not the fault of this President but that it is always somebody else's fault: Big banks, small banks, traders on the exchanges, the Arab Spring, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and of course the RICH and my favorite...WE ARE NOT PAYING ENOUGH TAXES!

Obama's speeches are so boring and pointless lately and their theme is the same: " I need more money from the taxpayers, to pay to and employ the non-taxpayers!"; "I need the rich to pay more than the 70% of the taxes that they are paying, to be more fair to everyone"; and my all time favorite..." We need to stop spending and need to make the deficits smaller!".

Are we the morons or is he the moron here?

This is like that mind control thing used by the jedi in the Star Wars movie, where the drones end up "hearing" what the jedi is saying to make them believe it?

Does anyone ever believe this divisive race hater, rich people hater and class envy generator, no matter what he says?

Yes, they do...there is a solid group that do not read the papers, know anything out politics and will believe anything that they may hear in the 10 second sound bites..they are called THE DEMOCRATIC BASE.

WHAT DO OBAMA, THE NAZI PARTY, THE COMMUNISTS, THE ANARCHISTS IN EUROPE AND THE TEACHER'S UNION HAVE IN COMMON? ANTI CAPITALIST PROTESTS!

As amazing as it would seem, this week has seen the unification of the weirdest groups around the country and the world. This unification clearly shows that the leftist leaning groups are much like the communists and the Nazi's in hating the status-quo, the bourgeois.

To me the marching scenes on TV reminded me of that opening scene in the movie Dr. Zhivago, where the disenfranchised are marching on the winter palace, with one exception....there is no oppression and the demonstrators are the results of the excesses of the bourgeois! THESE MARCHERS HAVE VOTED IN THE PEOPLE THAT CREATED THE PROBLEM, AND THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS AS TO THE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEMS!

Can you believe it, the population can be so easily duped to just follow blindly...nothing...they do not really know what they are for but they sure hate those 1% that are the top earners...those who pay 30% of all taxes collected.

Was it not the goal of every American to have upward income mobility??

Only in America it is said that you can be anything you want ( Obama?) earn as much as your abilities can allow, and to show your financial success in a wonderful lifestyle? Now that is wrong?

OBAMA DEMEANS MARTIN LUTHER KINGS ACCOMPLISHMENTS; TIES HIM INTO WALL STREET PROTESTERS WHICH MLK WOULD NEVER AGREE WITH AT ALL! MLK WOULD HATE OBAMA

Again Barack Obama showed that he in nothing but a divider and hater, and not a "uniter" as he falsely claimed to be. So far in his failed destructive presidency, he has done nothing to unite the people, he has instead consistently sought to divide by race, by wealth and by color.

Martin Luther King would be criticizing this evil and divisive president, and especially if he tried to tie him into the so called Wall Street protesters. Shame on Barack Obama, shame for this low blow to Dr. Martin Luther King, who would never side with these ill informed people.

MLK, would never support the life on the dole that has become the norm for blacks in America, he would never support the rhetoric of the Al Sharpton's and the Jesse Jackson's or Obama as well. MLK would never support demeaning notions like the affirmative action programs, and the dumbing down of firefighter's exams so blacks could qualify. THAT WAS NOT WHAT MKL WAS ALL ABOUT.

BARACK OBAMA, I KNEW DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, AND YOU ARE NOTHING AT ALL LIKE THAT GREAT LEADER, YOU ARE NO DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING.

Obama is the opposite of what MKL was all about and a traitor and usurper of the legacy that is not his to usurp. I know I was there in 1968, and understood that MLK was proud to say that his plan for his black people was that they could easily show that they were in fact equal, and he would never accept an affirmative action step-up! MLK would probably be a Republican today!

On this day of dedication of the MLK long overdue memorial to this great leader, Obama diminished his legacy shamefully by equating what MLK stood for with the likes of the clueless Wall Street protesters in his shameful speech printed below.

In addition Obama managed to add some additional pro-Union thuggery to his speech as well, thus further diminishing the occasion.

Obama diminishes the occasion further by trying to usurp the occasion mas "his" to profile, when MLK would be ashamed of this shameful Marxist "leader", a divider if there was ever one, far worse than the "haters" of the 1960's.

MLK never envisioned taking from those who have and giving it to those who refuse to work, never.

I can still remember the Chicago speech I attended as a teenager to hear the voice of MLK, and there is absolutely no words that were used to divide, or words to claim somebody else's wealth to be given to those that did not have it.

His inspiration to me was that one famous speech that I will always remember...what a speech..."if a man is a street sweeper.... ".

Here is what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a speech in 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.’”

THESE ARE WORDS YOU WILL NEVER HEAR FROM OBAMA, AND HIS FRIENDS LIKE SHARPTON, JACKSON OR ANY OF THE CURRENT BLACK LEADERSHIP. To the contrary, you only hear about the entitlement mentality, and never standing up for yourself, ever!

MLK, never invoked the likes of slavery or entitlements. Now people like Obama who is not ever remotely related to any slaves, still hold the grudges and incite other to hold those grudges.

What a shameful way to usurp the great man that MKL was.

Here is the text of the speech that was not worth of the great MLK, by Obama, of course as usual written for him by his liberal speech writers:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you. (Applause.) Please be seated.

An earthquake and a hurricane may have delayed this day, but this is a day that would not be denied.

For this day, we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s return to the National Mall. In this place, he will stand for all time, among monuments to those who fathered this nation and those who defended it; a black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals, a man who stirred our conscience and thereby helped make our union more perfect.

And Dr. King would be the first to remind us that this memorial is not for him alone. The movement of which he was a part depended on an entire generation of leaders. Many are here today, and for their service and their sacrifice, we owe them our everlasting gratitude. This is a monument to your collective achievement. (Applause.)

Some giants of the civil rights movement -- like Rosa Parks and Dorothy Height, Benjamin Hooks, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth -- they've been taken from us these past few years. This monument attests to their strength and their courage, and while we miss them dearly, we know they rest in a better place.

And finally, there are the multitudes of men and women whose names never appear in the history books -- those who marched and those who sang, those who sat in and those who stood firm, those who organized and those who mobilized -- all those men and women who through countless acts of quiet heroism helped bring about changes few thought were even possible. "By the thousands," said Dr. King, "faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white...have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." To those men and women, to those foot soldiers for justice, know that this monument is yours, as well.

Nearly half a century has passed since that historic March on Washington, a day when thousands upon thousands gathered for jobs and for freedom. That is what our schoolchildren remember best when they think of Dr. King -- his booming voice across this Mall, calling on America to make freedom a reality for all of God's children, prophesizing of a day when the jangling discord of our nation would be transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

It is right that we honor that march, that we lift up Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- for without that shining moment, without Dr. King's glorious words, we might not have had the courage to come as far as we have. Because of that hopeful vision, because of Dr. King's moral imagination, barricades began to fall and bigotry began to fade. New doors of opportunity swung open for an entire generation. Yes, laws changed, but hearts and minds changed, as well.

Look at the faces here around you, and you see an America that is more fair and more free and more just than the one Dr. King addressed that day. We are right to savor that slow but certain progress -- progress that's expressed itself in a million ways, large and small, across this nation every single day, as people of all colors and creeds live together, and work together, and fight alongside one another, and learn together, and build together, and love one another.

So it is right for us to celebrate today Dr. King's dream and his vision of unity. And yet it is also important on this day to remind ourselves that such progress did not come easily; that Dr. King's faith was hard-won; that it sprung out of a harsh reality and some bitter disappointments.

It is right for us to celebrate Dr. King's marvelous oratory, but it is worth remembering that progress did not come from words alone. Progress was hard. Progress was purchased through enduring the smack of billy clubs and the blast of fire hoses. It was bought with days in jail cells and nights of bomb threats. For every victory during the height of the civil rights movement, there were setbacks and there were defeats.

We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers. We know from his own testimony the doubts and the pain this caused him, and that the controversy that would swirl around his actions would last until the fateful day he died.

I raise all this because nearly 50 years after the March on Washington, our work, Dr. King's work, is not yet complete. We gather here at a moment of great challenge and great change. In the first decade of this new century, we have been tested by war and by tragedy; by an economic crisis and its aftermath that has left millions out of work, and poverty on the rise, and millions more just struggling to get by. Indeed, even before this crisis struck, we had endured a decade of rising inequality and stagnant wages. In too many troubled neighborhoods across the country, the conditions of our poorest citizens appear little changed from what existed 50 years ago -- neighborhoods with underfunded schools and broken-down slums, inadequate health care, constant violence, neighborhoods in which too many young people grow up with little hope and few prospects for the future.

Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination. It took a full decade before the moral guidance of Brown v. Board of Education was translated into the enforcement measures of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but those 10 long years did not lead Dr. King to give up. He kept on pushing, he kept on speaking, he kept on marching until change finally came. (Applause.)

And then when, even after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed, African Americans still found themselves trapped in pockets of poverty across the country, Dr. King didn't say those laws were a failure; he didn't say this is too hard; he didn't say, let's settle for what we got and go home. Instead he said, let's take those victories and broaden our mission to achieve not just civil and political equality but also economic justice; let's fight for a living wage and better schools and jobs for all who are willing to work. In other words, when met with hardship, when confronting disappointment, Dr. King refused to accept what he called the "isness" of today. He kept pushing towards the "oughtness" of tomorrow.

And so, as we think about all the work that we must do -- rebuilding an economy that can compete on a global stage, and fixing our schools so that every child -- not just some, but every child -- gets a world-class education, and making sure that our health care system is affordable and accessible to all, and that our economic system is one in which everybody gets a fair shake and everybody does their fair share, let us not be trapped by what is. (Applause.) We can't be discouraged by what is. We've got to keep pushing for what ought to be, the America we ought to leave to our children, mindful that the hardships we face are nothing compared to those Dr. King and his fellow marchers faced 50 years ago, and that if we maintain our faith, in ourselves and in the possibilities of this nation, there is no challenge we cannot surmount.

And just as we draw strength from Dr. King's struggles, so must we draw inspiration from his constant insistence on the oneness of man; the belief in his words that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." It was that insistence, rooted in his Christian faith, that led him to tell a group of angry young protesters, "I love you as I love my own children," even as one threw a rock that glanced off his neck.

It was that insistence, that belief that God resides in each of us, from the high to the low, in the oppressor and the oppressed, that convinced him that people and systems could change. It fortified his belief in non-violence. It permitted him to place his faith in a government that had fallen short of its ideals. It led him to see his charge not only as freeing black America from the shackles of discrimination, but also freeing many Americans from their own prejudices, and freeing Americans of every color from the depredations of poverty.

And so at this moment, when our politics appear so sharply polarized, and faith in our institutions so greatly diminished, we need more than ever to take heed of Dr. King's teachings. He calls on us to stand in the other person's shoes; to see through their eyes; to understand their pain. He tells us that we have a duty to fight against poverty, even if we are well off; to care about the child in the decrepit school even if our own children are doing fine; to show compassion toward the immigrant family, with the knowledge that most of us are only a few generations removed from similar hardships. (Applause.)

To say that we are bound together as one people, and must constantly strive to see ourselves in one another, is not to argue for a false unity that papers over our differences and ratifies an unjust status quo. As was true 50 years ago, as has been true throughout human history, those with power and privilege will often decry any call for change as "divisive." They'll say any challenge to the existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing. Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest.

But he also understood that to bring about true and lasting change, there must be the possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality.

If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company's union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other's love for this country -- (applause) -- with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound.

In the end, that's what I hope my daughters take away from this monument. I want them to come away from here with a faith in what they can accomplish when they are determined and working for a righteous cause. I want them to come away from here with a faith in other people and a faith in a benevolent God. This sculpture, massive and iconic as it is, will remind them of Dr. King's strength, but to see him only as larger than life would do a disservice to what he taught us about ourselves. He would want them to know that he had setbacks, because they will have setbacks. He would want them to know that he had doubts, because they will have doubts. He would want them to know that he was flawed, because all of us have flaws.

It is precisely because Dr. King was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us that change can come if you don't give up. He would not give up, no matter how long it took, because in the smallest hamlets and the darkest slums, he had witnessed the highest reaches of the human spirit; because in those moments when the struggle seemed most hopeless, he had seen men and women and children conquer their fear; because he had seen hills and mountains made low and rough places made plain, and the crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way.

And that is why we honor this man -- because he had faith in us. And that is why he belongs on this Mall -- because he saw what we might become. That is why Dr. King was so quintessentially American -- because for all the hardships we've endured, for all our sometimes tragic history, ours is a story of optimism and achievement and constant striving that is unique upon this Earth. And that is why the rest of the world still looks to us to lead. This is a country where ordinary people find in their hearts the courage to do extraordinary things; the courage to stand up in the face of the fiercest resistance and despair and say this is wrong, and this is right; we will not settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept and we will reach again and again, no matter the odds, for what we know is possible.

That is the conviction we must carry now in our hearts. (Applause.) As tough as times may be, I know we will overcome. I know there are better days ahead. I know this because of the man towering over us. I know this because all he and his generation endured -- we are here today in a country that dedicated a monument to that legacy.

And so with our eyes on the horizon and our faith squarely placed in one another, let us keep striving; let us keep struggling; let us keep climbing toward that promised land of a nation and a world that is more fair, and more just, and more equal for every single child of God.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)