News Items

Meet California’s 218,667 Public Employees Making Over $100,000/Year

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Open the Books is back with another important government transparency report. This time, the organization looked closely at California payrolls, and found that 218,667 public sector employees earn six-figure salaries (in many cases far above that threshold), at a cost of $35 billion.

If Californians are fine with this sort of thing, more power to them, but it’s important to be knowledgable about where and how tax dollars are spent.

Below are a few highlight’s from Adam Andrzejewski’s (founder of Open the Books) recent article published at Forbes titled, ‘$100K Minimum Wage’ For 220,000 Highly-Compensated California Public Employees Costs Taxpayers $35B:

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Students and Professors Send Letter to University of Virginia Head Criticizing Her For Quoting Thomas Jefferson

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I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. 

Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet. Whatever he may have lacked, if he could have had his former colleague, Mr. Franklin, here we all would have been impressed.

– John F. Kennedy, at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, 1962

Snowflake university culture in America may have just hit peak safe-space stupidity.

Here’s what happened according to the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily:

Several professors on Grounds collaborated to write a letter to University President Teresa Sullivan against the inclusion of a Thomas Jefferson quote in her post-election email Nov. 9. 

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President Obama Leaves Behind a Deplorable Civil Liberties Legacy

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More disappointing than the Obama administration itself (which was very disappointing), were the seemingly endless hordes of fake liberals constantly justifying and making excuses for his well documented litany of civil liberties abuses. Naturally, I likewise expect countless Trump supporters to instinctively make similar excuses for Trump if he should end up naming former Goldman Sachs Partner, and overall finance miscreant, Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary. This is a huge part of our problem as a nation. Rather than having well defined principles and defending them, we tend to pick personalities we like and then cheer them on as uncritically as our favorite sports teams.

Moving along, a New York Times article published yesterday highlighted some of the extremely illiberal policies perpetrated by so-called “liberal” champion, Barack Obama.

Here are a few key excerpts:

Over and over, Mr. Obama has imposed limits on his use of such powers but has not closed the door on them — a flexible approach premised on the idea that he and his successors could be trusted to use them prudently. Mr. Trump can now sweep away those limits and open the throttle on policies that Mr. Obama endorsed as lawful and legitimate for sparing use, like targeted killings in drone strikes and the use of indefinite detention and military tribunals for terrorism suspects.

And even in areas where Mr. Obama tried to terminate policies from the George W. Bush era — like torture and the detention of Americans and other people arrested on domestic soil as “enemy combatants” — his administration fought in court to prevent any ruling that the defunct practices had been illegal. The absence of a definitive repudiation could make it easier for Trump administration lawyers to revive the policies by invoking the same sweeping theories of executive power that were the basis for them in the Bush years. 

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Can President Trump Really ‘Open Up Libel Laws’?

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Ken White over at law blog Popehat has written a very useful article on whether or not Trump is likely to be the existential threat to free speech that so many are concerned about.

Fortunately, he argues that free speech is pretty well protected at the judicial level, adding that most contemporary attempts to whittle away at First Amendment rights actually emanate from “liberal” judges targeting hate speech, as opposed to conservative ones.

Here are notable excerpts from, Lawsplainer: About Trump “Opening Up” Libel Laws:

Donald Trump famously said he’d like to “open up” libel laws. How much should that concern you?

From my perspective — as a First Amendment advocate and an opponent of Trump — it should concern you as an attitude about speech, but not much as a policy agenda.

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Must Read – ‘You’re Afraid of Power, Not Trump’

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Something to think deeply about, irrespective of where you fall on the ideological spectrum.

Written by Jason Stapleton and published at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE):

You aren’t scared of Trump the person. Trump has been on this earth for 70 years and other than a general distaste for him, no one ever feared for their life because Trump walked the earth. He could do what he wanted because he didn’t affect your life. He had no control over you. What you fear is the power he now wields.

Republicans felt the same way eight years ago when Obama was elected, only for them, it was gun rights and religious persecution. We all remember the mass hysteria that drove gun prices up 200 even 300 percent. Obama called them bitter clingers; many others called them crazy right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Those of you on the progressive left fear Trump because he is going to have control over you. He has the power to affect your personal life and the lives of those you love and he has threatened to use that power in a way you find unthinkable.

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Veteran Reporter Exposes The New York Times’ Arrogant, Disconnected, Agenda Driven Perspective

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Yesterday, Michael Cieply, a 12-year veteran of the New York Times who left this past July, wrote a phenomenal article at Deadline Hollywood titled, Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Searching. Before highlighting some key excerpts, let’s set the stage.

The New York Times’ coverage of the 2016 Presidential election was an abysmal disgrace. I first became aware of the extent of the paper’s shady and compromised reporting, when the editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary over Bernie Sanders without making an intelligible or coherent argument to justify the stance. This outraged me to such an extent, I wrote a post titled, A Detailed Look at The New York Times’ Embarrassing, Deceitful and Illogical Endorsement of Hillary Clinton, which you should reread in full.

Here’s how I began the piece:

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Man Viciously Beaten in Chicago For Being a Suspected Trump Voter

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This is disturbing, depressing and sickening.

The Washington Post reports:

In a video that appeared to be shot on a smartphone, a group of young men and women viciously beat a 49-year-old man named David Wilcox while screaming phrases such as “You voted Trump” and “Don’t vote Trump.”

Wilcox told the Chicago Tribune that it began Wednesday about 1 p.m. at the corner of Kedzie Avenue and Roosevelt Road, when a black sedan scraped along the side of his Pontiac Bonneville, scratching it.

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Here’s The Daily Caller List of People Trump is Considering For Senior Roles

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With so much interest and speculation out there, I thought it might be useful to share The Daily Caller’s List of People Donald Trump Is Considering For Senior White House Jobs. According to the DC, the list was “provided by a member of the transition team on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.”

Here it is:

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Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Pledge to Work With Trump on Economic Issues

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Since the article I published earlier today had a more negative tone, I want to end the day on a more positive note. As I explained in yesterday’s piece, I want Trump to be successful because our fellow countrymen and women need him to succeed. This isn’t an episode of Game of Thrones, this is real life and millions of Americans are in deep pain.

In order to be a truly great president, Trump needs to unite as many Americans as possible around his agenda. On the positive front, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both pledged to work with Trump in order to help our less fortunate fellow citizens get back on the right track. I really hope this happens.

As David Sirota highlighted at International Business Times:

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Draining the Swamp? Wall Street is Already Loving Donald Trump

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Before we move forward, let’s start with the following extraordinarily disturbing report out of CNBC:

In the wake of Donald Trump’s upset victory, advisors to the president-elect have floated the possibility of naming JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon Treasury secretary, according to two people familiar with the matter, but one of them added that Dimon said he would not be interested in the role.

A Trump spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment, and a spokesman for Dimon declined to elaborate beyond his past remarks that he would not be interested in the job.

First off, I want to say that the above isn’t confirmed. If it’s totally false, the Trump campaign should come out with a quick and vehement denial. I sincerely hope that happens.

That said, the report is cause for serious concern. Why? Because Trump’s reluctance to go after Wall Street was apparent throughout his entire campaign (as opposed to Bernie Sanders), and it was one of the main reasons I could never get comfortable with him. I wrote several posts where I articulated my concerns, but here’s an excerpt from one of them, Donald Trump’s True Colors Emerge as He Snuggles up to Wall Street:

While I’m not a Dodd-Frank fan, it’s not because it was too harsh, but because it didn’t really do much of anything. It was the typical neoliberal bait and switch, designed to look tough for public consumption, while merely making tweaks around the edges of a financial system that requires systemic, paradigm level change.

Trump’s support of repealing Dodd-Frank tells you all you need to know. A Trump Presidency will see Wall Street felons who should be in prison, running as wild and free as ever.

He will be the same thing to distressed working class whites that Obama was to the black community. A fake messiah and a shyster.

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