DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
Tuesday, June 02, 2015
What's Going On In Texas!
What's going on in Texas!This is about 15 miles south of us. River is out, and cattle had to be moved to save their...
Posted by Cloud 9 Walkers on Sunday, May 31, 2015
Cash for Slackers
Wouldn’t you like to have a job where you get paid to slack off, and no matter what, have a powerful authority to back you up, winning battles to preserve your salary, benefits, and your every demand if your boss tries to fire you?
It’s a fact of life for many government workers. A dive into government labor fights at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) reveals a nasty secret—the great lengths federal unions go to protect government slackers, at your expense.
Cases at the FLRA, a quasi-judicial body that oversees disputes between federal agencies and government unions, show federal labor unions are winning battles that are putting taxpayers, and the government, at risk.
And now one big government insider is calling foul on government union abuses of taxpayers and federal agencies. Patrick Pizzella, one of the three referees at the FLRA adjudicating these fights, is blowing the whistle on federal union abuses in case after case. “One cannot make this stuff up,” Pizzella said.
For example, federal labor unions are winning fights against federal agencies who try to fire their union workers for letting mentally ill military veterans walk out the door of psychiatric units in Veterans Affairs hospitals, or for not catching things like a major rat infestation in a food factory. Instead, union lawyers are getting their members’ jobs, back-pay, and benefits reinstated, all at taxpayer expense.
Federal unions have also battled Defense Dept. agencies that, for example, try to suspend a daycare worker for letting a toddler wander off a military base down the sidewalk toward traffic.
At the same time, federal worker unions have been fighting to unionize federal inspector generals’ offices, the watchdogs who catch waste, fraud and abuse committed by federal workers at agencies like the IRS, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Transportation, or the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
More here
It’s a fact of life for many government workers. A dive into government labor fights at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) reveals a nasty secret—the great lengths federal unions go to protect government slackers, at your expense.
Cases at the FLRA, a quasi-judicial body that oversees disputes between federal agencies and government unions, show federal labor unions are winning battles that are putting taxpayers, and the government, at risk.
And now one big government insider is calling foul on government union abuses of taxpayers and federal agencies. Patrick Pizzella, one of the three referees at the FLRA adjudicating these fights, is blowing the whistle on federal union abuses in case after case. “One cannot make this stuff up,” Pizzella said.
For example, federal labor unions are winning fights against federal agencies who try to fire their union workers for letting mentally ill military veterans walk out the door of psychiatric units in Veterans Affairs hospitals, or for not catching things like a major rat infestation in a food factory. Instead, union lawyers are getting their members’ jobs, back-pay, and benefits reinstated, all at taxpayer expense.
Federal unions have also battled Defense Dept. agencies that, for example, try to suspend a daycare worker for letting a toddler wander off a military base down the sidewalk toward traffic.
At the same time, federal worker unions have been fighting to unionize federal inspector generals’ offices, the watchdogs who catch waste, fraud and abuse committed by federal workers at agencies like the IRS, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Transportation, or the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
More here
Vince Vaughn wants all American schools protected with firearms
That’s one of the statements actor Vince Vaughn makes in in a wide-ranging interview to the UK edition of GQ magazine that includes his views about the rights of Americans to carry firearms.
“I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don't have the right to bear arms because of burglars,” he said. “We have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It's not about duck hunting, it's about the ability of the individual.
"It's the same reason we have freedom of speech,” he added.
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Justice Department Funding Study On ‘Far-right’ Social Media Use
The Department of Justice is concentrating on "far-right" groups in a new study of social media usage aimed at combating violent extremism.
The Justice Department's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) awarded Michigan State University $585,719 for the study, which was praised by Eric Holder, the former attorney general, earlier this year.
"There is currently limited knowledge of the role of technology and computer mediated communications (CMCs), such as Facebook and Twitter, in the dissemination of messages that promote extremist agendas and radicalize individuals to violence," according to the NIJ grant. "The proposed study will address this gap through a series of qualitative and quantitative analyses of posts from various forms of CMC used by members of both the far-right and Islamic extremist movements."
The study draws more upon right-wing forums than upon the corners of the web inhabited by Islamist extremists.
"We will collect posts made in four active forums used by members of the far-right and three from the Islamic Extremist community, as well as posts made in Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter, YouTube, and Pastebin accounts used by members of each movement," the grant said.
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The Justice Department's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) awarded Michigan State University $585,719 for the study, which was praised by Eric Holder, the former attorney general, earlier this year.
"There is currently limited knowledge of the role of technology and computer mediated communications (CMCs), such as Facebook and Twitter, in the dissemination of messages that promote extremist agendas and radicalize individuals to violence," according to the NIJ grant. "The proposed study will address this gap through a series of qualitative and quantitative analyses of posts from various forms of CMC used by members of both the far-right and Islamic extremist movements."
The study draws more upon right-wing forums than upon the corners of the web inhabited by Islamist extremists.
"We will collect posts made in four active forums used by members of the far-right and three from the Islamic Extremist community, as well as posts made in Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter, YouTube, and Pastebin accounts used by members of each movement," the grant said.
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WAS AMERICA FOUNDED ON CHRISTIAN RELIGION?
On March 28, 1786, America’s new Congress of the Confederation received word from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson of their meeting in France with Tripoli’s ambassador regarding Muslim Barbary pirates raiding American ships in the Mediterranean.
Jefferson and Adams asked Tripoli’s ambassador, Abdrahaman, what the new nation of the United States had done to provoke them: “The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of the prophet, that it was written in their qur’an, that all nations who should not have acknowledged islam’s authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and every musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Jefferson bought a Qur’an to learn why Muslim pirates attacked unprovoked.
Jefferson wrote to John Jay, 1787, explaining his efforts to ransom captured American sailors through the mediation of the Catholic Order of Mathurins, which was later disbanded during the French Revolution: “There is an order of priests called the Mathurins, the object of whose institution is to beg alms for the redemption of captives. They keep members always in Barbary, searching out the captives of their country, and redeem, I believe, on better terms than any other body, public or private. It occurred to me, that their agency might be obtained for the redemption of our prisoners at Algiers. …
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New Union-friendly Rule From Obama Targets Small Business
Supporters of tougher regulations on businesses usually present them as necessary to curb abuses by large "fatcat" corporations.
However, President Obama's administration is pursuing a new labor rule that would largely ignore big business and instead target small and medium-sized companies.
Under the federal "persuader" rule, businesses currently must disclose whenever they hire somebody to try to convince their employees they shouldn't unionize — hence the rule's name. Now the administration wants to expand the disclosure to include any time managers receive legal advice on the subject.
The persuader rule is part of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which was passed in 1959 to prohibit stealth anti-union campaigns by employers.
The new disclosure rule won't matter much for large corporations, which have in-house lawyers or are used to disclosing when they hire pricey outside "consultants" to fend off union organizing campaigns. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, would find it much harder to get legal advice, critics charge.
More here
However, President Obama's administration is pursuing a new labor rule that would largely ignore big business and instead target small and medium-sized companies.
Under the federal "persuader" rule, businesses currently must disclose whenever they hire somebody to try to convince their employees they shouldn't unionize — hence the rule's name. Now the administration wants to expand the disclosure to include any time managers receive legal advice on the subject.
The persuader rule is part of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which was passed in 1959 to prohibit stealth anti-union campaigns by employers.
The new disclosure rule won't matter much for large corporations, which have in-house lawyers or are used to disclosing when they hire pricey outside "consultants" to fend off union organizing campaigns. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, would find it much harder to get legal advice, critics charge.
More here
America Is Being Run Just Like Baltimore
Like the Clinton Foundation, the CBC exists to trade money for influence. The Caucus takes in tens of millions from major corporations and spends it on parties for its members and funnels the rest into fake non-profits. Even the minority scholarships endowed with great ceremony as a way of providing opportunity to their underprivileged constituents have a way of going to their own children and friends.
The Congressional Black Caucus claims that it’s “the conscience of the Congress” when it’s actually the tip of a corrupt urban political machine that keeps black people in chains. Its members are lying idiots whose only response to criticism (including the ethics charges leveled against them) is to shout racism because that is the job they were chosen for by their real backers and masters.
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Obama Goes After the Farmers
Farmers are now the bad guys.
President Obama’s administration last week claimed dominion over all of America’s streams, creeks, rills, ditches, brooks, rivulets, burns, tributaries, criks, wetlands — perhaps even puddles — in a sweeping move to assert unilateral federal authority.
The New York Times had a wonderful take on the power grab, saying the move “opened up a broad new front for attacks from business interests like farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and golf course owners, who contend that the rule would stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners’ rights.”
Those, according to the Times, are the demons: Developers, oil producers, pesticide makers. But farmers? Farmers?!
Mr. Obama said that “one in three Americans now gets drinking water from streams lacking clear protection, and businesses and industries that depend on clean water face uncertainty and delay, which costs our economy every day. Too many of our waters have been left vulnerable to pollution.”
“With today’s rule,” he said, “we take another step towards protecting the waters that belong to all of us.”
More here
President Obama’s administration last week claimed dominion over all of America’s streams, creeks, rills, ditches, brooks, rivulets, burns, tributaries, criks, wetlands — perhaps even puddles — in a sweeping move to assert unilateral federal authority.
The New York Times had a wonderful take on the power grab, saying the move “opened up a broad new front for attacks from business interests like farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and golf course owners, who contend that the rule would stifle economic growth and intrude on property owners’ rights.”
Those, according to the Times, are the demons: Developers, oil producers, pesticide makers. But farmers? Farmers?!
Mr. Obama said that “one in three Americans now gets drinking water from streams lacking clear protection, and businesses and industries that depend on clean water face uncertainty and delay, which costs our economy every day. Too many of our waters have been left vulnerable to pollution.”
“With today’s rule,” he said, “we take another step towards protecting the waters that belong to all of us.”
More here
Baltimore Pays the Price
Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.
Various other communities across the country are experiencing very similar explosions of crime and reductions of arrests, in the wake of anti-police mob rampages from coast to coast that the media sanitize as “protests.”
None of this should be surprising. In her carefully researched 2010 book, “Are Cops Racist?” Heather Mac Donald pointed out that, after anti-police campaigns, cops tended to do less policing and criminals tended to commit more crimes.
If all this has been known for years, why do the same mistakes keep getting made?
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BREAKING NEWS: FIFA President Sepp Blatter reportedly under investigation by US officials
U.S. officials are investigating FIFA President Sepp Blatter as part of an ongoing corruption scandal, the NY Times reported.
American Islamic Backlash Simmers
This weekend, a protest by anti-Muslim demonstrators with military-style weapons and an in-flight disagreement over a can of Diet Coke provided fresh evidence of a mounting Islamic backlash in America.
High-profile incidents have become familiar in recent months, with an outpouring of anti-Islamic sentiment on social media after the release of the surprise hit film "American Sniper," and a protest against an annual Muslim day of outreach at the Texas Legislature. A Mohammed cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas, last month, even provoked a failed terrorist attack.
Polls suggest that these flashpoints come from a decisive and growing split in how Americans see Islam. The current backlash is largely among conservatives, and it appears to reflect not just a fear of terrorist attack but also a deeper conviction that the tenets of Islam fundamentally prevent it from living peaceably with the modern world. The result has been a hardening of rhetoric.
Friday's protests were a response to last month's attack in Garland. About 250 demonstrators – many of them armed, some wearing T-shirts with profane anti-Muslim messages – gathered outside the Phoenix mosque where the shooters in the attack had worshipped. The organizer called himself a patriot standing up against the perceived tyranny of Islam.
Meanwhile on Sunday, social media was humming with the story of a Muslim scholar who had been denied a can of soda on a United Airlines flight because the attendant said it could be used as a weapon – though others on the flight had received cans, the scholar said. A fellow passenger also told the scholar: "yes you know you would use it as a WEAPON, so shut the **** up," she added on her Facebook page.
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High-profile incidents have become familiar in recent months, with an outpouring of anti-Islamic sentiment on social media after the release of the surprise hit film "American Sniper," and a protest against an annual Muslim day of outreach at the Texas Legislature. A Mohammed cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas, last month, even provoked a failed terrorist attack.
Polls suggest that these flashpoints come from a decisive and growing split in how Americans see Islam. The current backlash is largely among conservatives, and it appears to reflect not just a fear of terrorist attack but also a deeper conviction that the tenets of Islam fundamentally prevent it from living peaceably with the modern world. The result has been a hardening of rhetoric.
Friday's protests were a response to last month's attack in Garland. About 250 demonstrators – many of them armed, some wearing T-shirts with profane anti-Muslim messages – gathered outside the Phoenix mosque where the shooters in the attack had worshipped. The organizer called himself a patriot standing up against the perceived tyranny of Islam.
Meanwhile on Sunday, social media was humming with the story of a Muslim scholar who had been denied a can of soda on a United Airlines flight because the attendant said it could be used as a weapon – though others on the flight had received cans, the scholar said. A fellow passenger also told the scholar: "yes you know you would use it as a WEAPON, so shut the **** up," she added on her Facebook page.
More
HUMAN TRAFFICKING HIDDEN IN DOZENS OF MARYLAND COMMUNITIES WHILE AUTHORITIES STRUGGLE TO FIGHT IT
BALTIMORE – These women’s stories, told in a variety of Maryland courtrooms, are similar. And chilling.
R, an immigrant in her early 20s with no papers, a third-grade education and a baby girl, entrusted her life to a man she met at a restaurant in Prince George’s County who told her he’d take care of them. Instead, he beat her and threatened to harm her daughter to force her into prostitution.
S, 23, took a bus from St. Louis to Baltimore to work for a man who promised he’d give her a job in his “webcam business.” Arriving on the ticket he paid for, she learned the man was actually a pimp — who told her she’d have to work as a prostitute to pay him back, including a stint in a hotel near Baltimore Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport.
C, a 14-year-old runaway, was walking down the street when a man offered her a ride and a place to stay in Clinton. He pampered her, fed her and took her shopping. Then on the third day, he revealed he ran a prostitution business and expected her to work for him. When she messaged friends on Facebook that she wanted out, he became violent.
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R, an immigrant in her early 20s with no papers, a third-grade education and a baby girl, entrusted her life to a man she met at a restaurant in Prince George’s County who told her he’d take care of them. Instead, he beat her and threatened to harm her daughter to force her into prostitution.
S, 23, took a bus from St. Louis to Baltimore to work for a man who promised he’d give her a job in his “webcam business.” Arriving on the ticket he paid for, she learned the man was actually a pimp — who told her she’d have to work as a prostitute to pay him back, including a stint in a hotel near Baltimore Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport.
C, a 14-year-old runaway, was walking down the street when a man offered her a ride and a place to stay in Clinton. He pampered her, fed her and took her shopping. Then on the third day, he revealed he ran a prostitution business and expected her to work for him. When she messaged friends on Facebook that she wanted out, he became violent.
More
Bias in Case Against Bakers Who Denied Service for Same-Sex Wedding?
Communications between the agency, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, and the LGBT organization, Basic Rights Oregon, raise questions about potential bias in the state’s decision to charge the Kleins with discrimination for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.
In April, a judge for the agency recommended the Kleins be fined $135,000.
Communications obtained through a public records request show employees of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries—which pursued the case against the Kleins—participating in phone calls, texting, and attending meetings with Basic Rights Oregon, the largest LGBT advocacy group in the state.
“That’s a clear conflict of interest,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
Communications between Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Brad Avakian and Basic Rights Oregon, which has actively spoken out against the Kleins, raise questions about whether the commissioner and other agency employees were using the case to benefit a political agenda, and in the process, stripping the Kleins of their right to a fair trial.
According to emails, Avakian met with Basic Rights Oregon on multiple occasions.
One of those meetings was planned for May 1, 2014, shortly before a federal court struck down Oregon’s Defense of Marriage Act.
More here
BREAKING NEWS: Senate approves bill to resume, overhaul NSA surveillance
Bill to resume, overhaul NSA surveillance heads to President Obama’s desk after the Senate passed the legislation 67-32.
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John Oliver vs. chicken
The comedic anchorman recently used his HBO show, “Last Week Tonight,” to attack the way giant poultry processors — like Tyson Foods, Perdue, Pilgrim’s and Sanderson Farms — allegedly have treated their chicken growers, punishing them for speaking out against their conditions, and pressured Congress into defanging the Agriculture Department’s protections.
“When the chicken companies describe it — again, over jangly f—-ing guitars — they make the system sound great for farmers,” Oliver said in a recent report, referring to the industry’s sunny promotional videos. But he added, “It turns out, many farmers have a very different experience.”
By Saturday — less than two weeks after the 18-minute segment aired — it drew more than 2.1 million views on YouTube.
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FREE MOVIES ON THE BEACH AT 27TH STREET
MOVIES ON THE BEACH AT 27TH STREET
Movies on the Beach at 27th Street
Free movies on the beach for the entire family! Bring your beach chair or a blanket and enjoy the night beside the ocean.
Every Monday & Friday from June 22 to August 7 - 8:30 p.m. - 27th Street Beach
Schedule
June 22 - The Lego Movie
June 26 - 101 Dalmatians (vintage)
June 29 - Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day
Summer Movie Express. $1 Movies All Summer Long
FREE: Movies On The Beach (The Carousel)
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| Carousel Hotel – 118th St. |
ALL MOVIES BEGIN AT 8:30 p.m.
- June 3: Blended
- June 10: Big Hero 6
- June 17: Muppets Most Wanted
- June 24: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
- July 1: Into the Woods
- July 15: Dolphin Tale 2
- July 22: Planes – Fire & Rescue
- August 5: Annie (2014)
- August 12: Cinderella (2015)
- August 19: Frozen
- August 26: Guardians of the Galaxy
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