The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom
and individual liberty
"There is but
one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
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Groups Opposed to Chicago School Closures Seek U.N.
Intervention, Claim Human Rights Violations By
Patrick Goodenough
Advocacy
groups opposing the planned shutdown of 49 schools in Chicago are turning to
the United Nations for help, urging U.N. officials to investigate and take
steps to prevent human rights abuses which, they say, will result from the
closures.
The
move by these people demonstrate a core ideology. I say, they do not accept nor respect U.S. sovereignty. We have courts, various levels of government
and the freedom to sue for alleged rights abuse. More over the administration as pandered to
this ideology by supporting and signing onto dubious U.N. "so called
treaties" that provide evidence to such people that subscribe to this
ideology. Put this in relief to what is
happening to Detroit and it leads one to wonder.
In
the latest in a number of appeals by U.S. civic organizations to the world
body, the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights this week submitted a letter to
the U.N. human rights apparatus in Geneva, asking that it “investigate and take
preventative measures to address the potential domestic and international human
rights violations that may result from these school closings.” The action comes alongside two federal
lawsuits seeking injunctions to block the closure of the institutions by the
nation’s third-largest public school district before the new school year
begins. Chicago Public Schools says there
are currently some 500,000 available classroom seats in the district but only
400,000 students. It argues that millions of dollars saved in shutting down
schools deemed to be “underutilized” can be used to improve education for
students at the schools to which they will be relocated. Opponents of
the move say it will disproportionately affect minority students, and worry
about the risk to students’ safety as they are compelled to cross gangs’ turf
boundaries to reach their new schools. The
Midwest Coalition addressed its submission – known in U.N. parlance as a
“letter of allegation” – to three U.N. rights specialists: an Indian whose
mandate covers the “right to education,” a Hungarian expert responsible for
“minority issues,” and a Kenyan dealing with “contemporary forms of racism.”
It
justified making the appeal to the trio on the basis of their mandate to
“examine, monitor, and advise and publicly report on human rights situations in
specific countries.” The U.S. is a party to treaties including the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination. In brief, the advocacy
groups argued that:
--Eighty
percent of the almost 30,000 children affected by the closures are
African-American, and that disabled children “will be forced to move to new
schools without any guarantee that their special needs will be met.”
--The
closures “place children at greater risk of violence and death,” since “[m]any
Chicago neighborhoods are gang-controlled” and students will have to cross gang
lines to reach their new schools.
--The
movement of students from the closing schools will increase class sizes in the
receiving schools, thus eroding the quality of education.
The
coalition also alleged that Chicago education authorities had not taken
opposition from parents, residents and teachers into account, despite direct
pleas, objections aired during public hearings and street demonstrations.
“If
a governmental body can simply ignore the views of the people they claim to
represent, the right to participate in governmental affairs is meaningless.” The U.N. says “letters of allegation”
to its rights experts usually remain confidential, as do subsequent U.N.
communications with the relevant government authorities, until all the
documents in a particular case are published in an annual report to the U.N.
Human Rights Council (HRC). In this case
however, a copy of the Mideast Coalition’s letter was posted online
by Chicago community development consultant Valerie Leonard, who drew attention
to it on her Twitter account on Wednesday.
Once a complaint containing “reliable and credible information” is
received, the U.N. explains, the experts take up the matter with the country
concerned, “in order to induce the national authority to undertake the
necessary investigations.” Attempts to get comment from Chicago Public Schools
were unsuccessful Thursday.
The
Midwest Coalition comprises 56 organizations, legal service providers and
university centers. Its submission to the U.N. was also supported by various
other groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union’s human rights committee;
and by individual teachers, parents and others, among whom the controversial
retired University of Illinois education professor Bill Ayers stands out. This
isn’t the first time the coalition has made a submission to the U.N. about
issues of concern at home.
Months
earlier a NAACP delegation had addressed the HRC on voter-ID and other laws. As reported at the time, its
audience included representatives of countries whose citizens have long been
denied a free vote, including Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia. Earlier
this month Rainbow Push Coalition president Jesse Jackson called for the HRC to
investigate the Trayvon Martin shooting to see “whether the U.S. is upholding
its obligations under international human rights laws and treaties.”
~~~~~~
Big Majorities Oppose Obamacare, Say CBS, Fox, NBC/WSJ Polls
By Michael W. Chapman
Poll
results released this week by CBS News, Fox News, and NBC News/Wall Street
Journal show that strong majorities of Americans disapprove of Obamacare, would
repeal it if given the chance, and think the law itself is a “total bad idea.”
In
the CBS News poll, 54% of Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare) while only 36% approve of it. CBS also found that 38% of Americans
said Obamacare will personally “hurt me,” while only 13% said the health care
law would “help me.” In the Fox News poll, 53% of Americans said they would
vote to repeal Obamacare if given the chance. In addition, 47% said the
law would cost them money while only 11% said it would save them money in the
coming year.
For
the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, people were asked, “From what you have
heard about Brack Obama’s health care plan that was passed by Congress and
signed into law by the President in 2010, do you think his plan is a good idea
or a bad idea?” 47% responded that the president’s health care plan was a “total bad
idea” while only 34% said it was a “total good idea.” At the same time, 45% said
Republicans in Congress should do everything they can to prevent the law from
going into effect but 51% said Republicans should stop trying to block the law.
For
the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 1,000 adults were interviewed by
telephone July 17-21, and the poll had a margin of error of +/- 3.10%. For the Fox
News poll, conducted with Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company
Research (R), July 21-23, 1,017 randomly chosen registered voters were
interviewed by telephone; the margin of error was +/- 3 percentage
points.
~~~~~~
Bachmann: Do House Republicans Have the 'Guts to Fight'
Obamacare? By Elizabeth Harrington
Rep.
Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) said a number of “high-profile” senators are
willing to shut down the government over the funding of the president’s health
care law, an effort being led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). Bachmann said that
while she was encouraged by a meeting with the Tea Party caucus on Tuesday
evening, she fears the GOP leadership in the House does not have the “guts” to
block Obamacare from being implemented.
“This
is the line in the sand that we have to draw,” Bachmann said following a
“Conversations with Conservatives” event on Capitol Hill Wednesday. “Republicans
are the only possible salvation that we have, because Democrats have made their
decision. They want socialized medicine. In other words, they want national
bankruptcy, because that’s what we’ll get,” Bachmann said. And so it’s whether
or not the Republicans in the House have the guts to fight, because it’s like
[Winston] Churchill famously said – if you don’t fight now, it’s going to be a
lot harder to fight later," Bachmann added. “And the question is: Are you
going to be willing to fight when it’s hard or will you become slaves, because
that’s your choice,” she said. “We are going to become economic slaves to this
system we’re about to go in.”
~~~~~~
Obama celebrates Ramadan: 'Islam has contributed to the
character' of US by
Kyle Balluck -
In
remarks before the Iftar dinner, eaten by Muslims after sunset to end the day
of fasting, Obama quoted from the Koran, according to a White House pool
report. "As the Koran teaches, whoever does an atom's weight of good will
see its results." "Muslim-Americans
and their good works have helped to build our nation, and we've seen the
results," he
added. Obama, who has hosted five Iftar dinners, focused on
entrepreneurship during much of his speech.
“Every
day, Muslim-Americans are helping to shape the way that we think and the way
that we work and the way that we do business," he said. "And that’s
the spirit that we celebrate tonight — the dreamers, the creators whose ideas
are pioneering new industries, creating new jobs and unleashing new
opportunities for all of us.” Obama
recognized three entrepreneurs, including Shazi Visram, the founder and chief
executive of Happy Family Organic Superfoods; Aunim Hossain, chief executive of
Tista Games; and Iya Khalil, who co-founded GNS Healthcare, a biotech
research company. “So Shazi, Aunim, Iya and so many of you who have traveled
here tonight — each of you have traveled your own path, but each of you have
also lived out an American story. “And of course, this isn’t just the American
Dream; it’s the aspiration of people around the world. It’s the basic human
desire for progress, to find dignity that comes from work, to give our children
something better.” That is except their
home Islamic countries. So no mention of
Christian Americans, Jewish Americans or any others?
~~~~~~
Those Who Preach ‘Diversity’ the Loudest Expect a
Collective Singularity
By: the Common
Constitutionalist
Former
Pres. George W. Bush once stated: “The diversity of America has always been a
great strength of this country. Here you can be proud of your cultural
heritage, proud of your ancestry, proud of your native language, and still be a
proud American.” I don’t mean to single him out for many if not most
politicians have said the same thing at some time and although the quote sounds
great there is always something missing from these types of declarations. We’ve
heard the constant echoes of that same sentiment dribbling out of the mouths of
progressives for years. It is one of the tried and true talking points of
advocates that support the amnesty bill. So what is always missing? Diversity of
thought. That’s what seems to be missing, and I think purposefully,
from every speech regarding diversity.
America
is considered the great “melting pot” of the world. Nowhere on earth is there
more cultural diversity. Yet different cultures residing in the same
geographic location do not automatically equate to a melting pot.
The
term melting pot was once synonymous with assimilation. It wasn’t that one had to give up
their original culture to assimilate. It merely meant you were American first
and whatever other culture second. Yet we still have places like Little Havana,
Chinatown, Little Italy, etc. where there is a predominant culture other than
American. That’s just human nature, or for that matter, just nature. You’ll never
see a giraffe joining an elephant herd. Thus it is with those of like cultural
backgrounds. It’s perfectly natural. It does enhance the American experience
but that diversity does not make us great. The freedom that comes from
diversity of thought is what makes America the great melting pot; independent
thinkers. However, it seems those who preach of diversity the loudest
want to limit our diversity of thought. They preach diversity but expect a
collective singularity.
Black
Americans experience this possibly more than any other. They are expected to
act, think and vote as a collective. If a black American dares to demonstrate
diversity of thought or action, the collective shuns him or her. Somehow
diversity of thought has been supplanted by cultural and linguistic diversity
as our source of strength. It’s almost as if those who promote and extol the
virtues of cultural diversity do so with a purpose. As I stated, those of like
cultures will congregate to form small collectives. I wonder if those who really do
believe in the grand collective vision have figured out that it is easier to
sway and control a singular body, to cause them to move en masse, then to
control individuals of diverse thought and opinion. Control the leader
of the collective and you control the collective. Yes, it sounds nefarious but it
is also potentially genius. Evil genius, but nonetheless genius. It’s the
difference between herding cattle and attempting to herd cat
~~~~~~
Phony President
Offers Moldy Economic Agenda - Alexander
"Enlightened
statesmen will not always be at the helm." --James Madison
On
Wednesday, Barack Obama pulled some moldy pizza out of the fridge, popped it in
the microwave and offered it as fresh gourmet fare. That was the essence of his
over-hyped economic
speech at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. But Obama's 83rd
"pivot" toward jobs was virtually the same speech he gave in the same
location eight years earlier, and dozens of times since. He could've saved
taxpayers a bundle on Air Force One by just patching through a video replay.
A
new
report by Daniel Alpert at the Century Foundation lays out the sorry state
of the Obama economy. (The Century Foundation is a self-described
"progressive non-partisan think tank," not a bunch of
"right-wing extremists.") Alpert notes a few specifics -- we'll
highlight two. First, in a normal recovery, the number of involuntary part-time
workers decreases as they find full-time work, but in the Obama
"recovery" the opposite is true. Most of the jobs created are
part-time, while full-time workers have seen their hours reduced due to
ObamaCare regulations.
Second,
and more important,
Alpert writes, "Nearly 100 percent of the decline in the U-3 unemployment rate
has been the result of there being fewer workers in the labor force as a
percentage of the employable population." In other words,
attrition, not jobs, accounts for the lower headline unemployment rate. Nearly
90 million Americans are not working, up by 9.5 million since Obama took
office. Conversely, 15 million more Americans are on food
stamps today than in January 2009, bringing the total to nearly 50 million.
So what was Obama
saying again?
In
the run-up to the speech, he arrogantly opined, "I've given some pretty
good speeches before, and then things still get stuck here in Washington."
During
his first two years, Obama enjoyed overwhelming Democrat majorities in both
houses of Congress, but instead of easing the government burden to allow a
healthy recovery, Democrats rammed through a takeover of one-sixth of the
economy (ObamaCare) and onerous regulations of another chuck (Dodd-Frank
financial "reform"). These burdensome laws crush private
sector efforts to create jobs. So "pretty good speeches" aside,
Obama's actions during ideological hegemony in Washington belie his complaint.
"Washington
hasn't just ignored this problem," he lectured. "Too often,
Washington has made things worse." More than anyone else, Barack Obama is Washington. And he has definitely
made things worse.
Most
hypocritically, he blamed "an endless parade of distractions, political
posturing and phony scandals" for causing Washington to take "its eye
off the ball." His
own actions, though, have been a "parade of distractions" -- from
standing on the caskets of children killed by an evil psychopath in order to
push for federal gun control, to exploiting a neighborhood watch incident for
race bait, to making sequestration as painful as possible so as to thwart any
meaningful spending cuts. As for those "phony scandals,"
there's nothing phony about running illegal guns to Mexico, leaving four
Americans to die in Benghazi and arguably stealing the 2012 election through
IRS persecution of political opponents.
Obama
has only himself to blame
for the worst "recovery" since FDR's Great Depression. Five years
after the recession began, instead of the normal 3-4 percent growth in an
expansion, we've seen the stagnation of 0.4 percent growth in the fourth
quarter last year and 1.8 percent in the first of this year. That's
not in spite of but thanks to
years of massive government initiatives and wealth redistribution schemes
contrived by Obama and his NeoCom cadres.
The
president now plans an eight-week campaign (wasn't the election last year?) to
rehash his economic agenda. One of his stops next week will be right here in
our own Chattanooga, Tennessee. We can hardly wait. He's calling it the "Better
Bargain for the Middle Class" tour, but if you want to see how his snake
oil works in practice, take a look at Detroit.
"We've
come a long way since I first took office," Obama bragged Wednesday.
Unfortunately, he's all too correct -- we've come a long way from the free-market
economic principles that made our nation the wealthiest in the world. He
continued, "As a country, we're older and we're wiser." On that last
count, let's hope it means voters are now wise enough to reject honey-lipped
tyrants like him in the future.
~~~~~~
Trey Gowdy Absolutely Unloads On Key Obama Adviser:
‘Demagogic, Self-Serving, Political Hack’
watch
here.....
Trey
Gowdy (R-S.C.) in a House immigration hearing Tuesday characterized one of President
Barack Obama’s chief advisers as a “demagogic, self-serving, political hack.”
The South Carolina congressman’s remarks were made in reference to White House
adviser Dan Pfeifer
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