The Newseum Tilts to the Left

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard 2

newseum I was in Washington, DC yesterday and after I finished my business there I had a few hours of free time before my flight home. I had been wanting to visit the Newseum, and here was my chance.

At this point I should come clean. I must admit that I have an addiction. My name is Tom Balek, and I am a newsaholic.

There, I said it. Ever since high school journalism class I have had a fascination with news – the process of investigation and reporting, the incredible importance and power of freedom of the press, the technology, the ethics, the relentless pace, the pathos of a great story well written. I spent many hours working on my high school paper, and after college I taught journalism for a couple of years in small-town Montana.

Back then journalism students learned that impartial honesty and accuracy were sacrosanct to a reporter or editor. A journalist was duty-bound to report the facts and nothing else. Facts must be verified and double-verified. Opinion was not allowed outside the confines of the editorial section. That was that.

It was the “Edward R. Murrow” school of journalism. Murrow has been credited with creating radio and television news as we know it. Or, I should say, knew it. Modern news reporting came of age during World War II, and pioneers like Murrow set the bar high.

Then, as we all know, journalism changed. Some years ago I had an animated discussion with a top news producer for ABC about what I felt was a growing liberal bias in news reporting. He very candidly told me that as far as he knew, at least in his own news division, there was (at that time) no left vs. right bias. The mission of his department was to produce news stories that would increase ratings and thereby maximize ad revenue. Period.

That caused me to ponder whether the news is a reflection of real life, or real life is a product of the news. I concluded that the question is really not that deep: the news media merely pander to the latest whims of pop culture in search of ratings.

This was just before the first Obama election, and we all know what happened to the news media since then. Chris Mathews’ “thrill up my leg.” The defense of blatant lies by the State Department about the Benghazi embassy attack. The blind eye to the attorney general’s Fast and Furious scandal. The refusal to report the IRS targeting of opponents of the administration. While talk radio and Fox News built a thriving industry on the popularity of conservative opinion and news analysis, the liberal media bias in hard news reporting became almost universal. Ratings were no longer the primary objective. Networks like MSNBC and CNN persisted in their liberal propaganda campaigns despite plummeting viewership.

Nowhere is this liberal bias more evident than at the shrine of the news industry, the Newseum. It would be naive to expect anything else. Study after study has determined that modern journalists are predominantly liberals and any pretense of adherence to the Edward R. Murrow rules of journalistic propriety is routinely sacrificed to the mission, as defined by Peter Jennings: “Those of us who went into journalism in the ’50s or ’60s, it was sort of a liberal thing to do: Save the world.”

While the Newseum does point out some ‘errors in fact’ produced by the news media over the years (Dewey Defeats Truman), it has no criticism of MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, who remains immune from a history of outrageous lies, including his totally fabricated story of the rape of Tawana Brawley by a group of Boston police officers and an attorney. Only fleeting mention is made of the pioneers of conservative media, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Andrew Breitbart, who had a profound effect on national politics and culture. And that fleeting mention is pointedly disparaging.

At least half the displays in the Newseum were dedicated to the civil rights movement, featuring compelling stories, photos, and video of Ku Klux Klan rallies and violent abuse of southern blacks. But there was not a single mention of the ties between the Democrat party and the Klan, or the Republican leadership against segregation.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.” Unfortunately, the average citizen today is not very discerning – only 36% of adults know the three branches of government – and the news industry does not hesitate to take advantage of our ignorance.

The Newseum aspires to be a “champion of the first amendment” and promotes the value of freedom of the press. It admits, in one display, that bias can exist in news reporting, and then points to Fox News as an example. If only it could see this failing within its own left-tilting walls.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

I make my living off the Evening News
Just give me somethin’, somethin’ I can use
People love it when you lose, they love dirty laundry

Dirty Laundry – the Eagles

Even idiot rock stars can’t resist taking a shot at Fox News:

Net Neutrality Could Make MSNBC Official Govt. News Agency

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Juli Hanson – Shutterstock.com

In today’s 30-second sound-bite world it’s so easy to pull one over on the American people.

“Net Neutrality? What’s in it for me? Oh, I will get the same high-speed broadband as the big guys for the same price? Cool. I’m for that. Hey, look at this Beyonce video!”

It’s the old tried-and-true class-envy play: Promise to take something away from the big, rich corporations and give it to the ‘little people,’ who won’t ask any questions about the details or the real motives.

This week the FCC will vote on Net Neutrality, a proposal which would authorize them to regulate the internet as a public utility. As recently as Monday FCC chairman Tom Wheeler again refused to release the details of the regulation to the general public until after the vote. Like ObamaCare, we won’t know what’s in the bill until we pass it. And like ObamaCare, when we know, we won’t like it.

Some of the dangers of Net Neutrality are obvious: whenever the government takes over a segment of the economy, competition is throttled. Prices are higher, service levels are worse, and a few well-connected pay-for-play corporate cronies are the big winners. No wonder Comcast and a few other mammoth internet players are huge supporters of Net Neutrality.

Some of the dangers are not so obvious. Here’s one: Is there any doubt that an administration which frequently tests the limits of the Constitution would use this new authority to intercept and accumulate web data for political purposes? You might want to hold back on making those online contributions to your favorite conservative candidate.

Here’s another: Big-government Democrats have long wanted to stifle conservative voices by reinstating the “Fairness Doctrine”. Having control of the internet would give them the tools to accomplish just that. Broadcast, cable, and satellite television will soon be obsolete as more consumers receive their news and entertainment digitally over the web. It’s not hard to imagine MSNBC, owned by Comcast, being ‘selected’ as the government’s official news outlet.

[please see the rest of my article by following this link to WatchdogArena.com]

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

A Pat On the Butt for the Democrats

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard 2

photo by Rich Sugg – Kansas City Star

Point guard Frank Mason of the Kansas Jayhawks took the outlet pass and pounded the ball down the left sideline on the fast break. Out of the corner of his eye he saw teammate Perry Ellis racing for the basket behind the TCU defender. Mason lobbed a perfect pass over the rim to Ellis and BOOM! With one hand Perry caught the ball and hammered it down through the rim, even while being fouled. “That’s gonna be on Sports Center,” chuckled the TV announcer. Wide-eyed fans howled as the cameras panned their faux-shock-and-awe faces.

One of the TCU players passed behind Perry at the free throw line and gave him a pat on the butt. Even though they are mortal enemies, a great play like that has to be recognized.

This morning I have to give the Obama administration a little pat on the butt.

Don’t get me wrong, we are mortal enemies too. I am furious and frightened by almost everything this administration does. But I have to admire how well they execute their game plan. Nothing is left to chance. No player on the administration’s team makes a free-style move. Every statement is carefully coordinated. They all get the memo, and they all follow the script.

Following Obama’s claims last week that poverty is the root of terrorism, the administration sent out State Department’s Marie Harf to explain why young men become terrorists, behead Christians, and burn victims alive in cages. Harf said, “We need the media to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs … ” And this: “They are using social media to get converts to their cause and to spread their hatred all over the world.”

Today Jeh Johnson, director of Homeland Security, was the administration’s point guard, running the offense from the same playbook. He, too, blamed social media – repeatedly – for ISIS’s organizational success, along with poverty and joblessness. And he threw in, for good measure, the need for Congress to fully fund Homeland Security while disregarding the president’s executive amnesty edicts.

Absurd. Blaming social media for the ISIS atrocities is like blaming Hitler’s World War II barbarity on the telephone. And, as George Will pointed out, singling out poverty as the cause of terrorism is “an insult to poor and jobless people all over the world who don’t strap bombs onto their women and children and send them into shopping centers to kill innocent strangers.” Not to mention, most ISIS terrorists are far from destitute, according to CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen.

But here’s why I have to give the “pat on the butt”.

This week Congress will have a hearing and likely a vote on whether to turn control of the Internet over to the FCC by classifying it as a public utility. The “Net Neutrality” issue has been misrepresented, misreported, and remains totally misunderstood by most Americans, and unfortunately by most of our legislators, who swallow the warm, fuzzy claims that we poor citizens must be protected from the money-hungry huge corporations who want to deny us fair access to the internet. Government good! Competitive free internet bad! In reality, it is yet another federal power-grab that would result in poorer internet access and performance, loss of privacy to government snooping, and huge profits for a select few crony corporations at taxpayer expense. (Is it any wonder Time Warner / ComCast is a huge supporter of net neutrality?)

Concurrently, the Obama administration is pushing for a new blowout budget with higher spending on social programs, and they want Congress to release its hold on funding Homeland Security and allow Obama’s executive amnesty edicts to continue unfettered.

The administration is using the “ISIS Crisis” to drive home their real domestic agenda: Pass Net Neutrality and give the government control of the web. Pass the budget and give the government more taxpayer money for the ‘poor and jobless’ (mainly more government jobs). Fund HHS without restrictions so we can open the borders and give full rights and benefits to illegal immigrants.

More government control. More dependence on big government. More Democrat voters.

I hate it. I hope to hell enough thoughtful people see through it. But Democrats, I have to give you a patt on the butt for executing a great play.

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On the Right Side

From Piston Pete to Doctor J,
Michael Jordan’s fadeaway,
Hip hop is the way I live
And basketball’s the game I play

Basketball Jones – Gabe York

March Madness is around the corner, and then the NBA playoffs!

Here is the very indiscreet, racist, misogynistic, nasty, politically incorrect and mostly funny original by Cheech and Chong – watch at your own risk, you will be offended, and I am not responsible for content! 1975 was a very different time!

A Conservative Thankful for . . . Government Employees?

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Thankful Turkey Yes, I am a conservative, and on this Thanksgiving holiday I’m thankful for government employees.

Now, before you choke on your turkey giblet stuffing – let me explain. There are many things that government does extremely well. When I turn the tap at my sink, I get clean, safe water every time. And the cost of it is pretty darned reasonable. My garbage gets picked up right on time. The stop lights work, our streets and highways are pretty good, and if there is an emergency the fire, police and EMS/rescue guys are top notch.

I generally don’t worry about our country being pushed around by other nations because our military is still the biggest, baddest dawg in the junkyard.

We need good government employees and the services they provide that we just can’t do as individuals. I believe for the most part our local and state governments do what is expected of them and at a cost we can manage. I just wish the same were true of the federal government.

It’s not that the federal government doesn’t do enough for us. Quite the contrary, it does way the hell too much.

Most Americans don’t understand that our Constitution limits the authority of the federal government to a fairly short list of “enumerated powers“. The first item in the list says:

The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States

The remaining items on the list mostly refer to national defense, currency, and post offices. And anything not specifically on that list, according to the Tenth Amendment, is strictly off-limits to the feds.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

There is nothing in the enumerated powers that allows the federal government to redistribute income or to compensate anyone for financial loss or misfortune. You won’t find any reference to endangered species, or global warming. Nothing there about foreign aid. No mention of education. The feds aren’t authorized to provide bailouts of private companies, banks, or mortgage-holders. They aren’t supposed to be buying up private land and property.

In fact, most of what our federal government does is not authorized by the Constitution. Maybe that’s why our current administration — cheered on by the media, academia, and a good portion of our nation’s under-educated and disengaged citizens — doesn’t feel it should be restricted by Constitutional law.

Sometimes we conservatives are mischaracterized as “anti-government” zealots. Contrary to liberal claims, we don’t want our children to drink dirty water, our disabled to die in poverty on the streets, or our grandmas to be pushed over a cliff when they pass the age of usefulness.

Just the same, we aren’t pleased when our federal government takes our hard-earned money – our property – by force and gives it to another person, company, or nation for motives we don’t support, and purposes that are not constitutional. And we wonder how awesome life in America would be if our federal government was the lean, mean machine the framers of our Constitution intended – protecting the borders, providing national defense, and doing only what it is supposed to – without the incredible waste of resources and failed social experimentation that holds us back.

It’s true we are abused by a growing number of (mostly federal) unaccountable bureaucrats who never answer the phone. But most of our government employees are just out there doing the honorable work of the People, and they deserve a thank-you.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

You didn’t have to love me like you did
But you did, but you did – and I thank you
You didn’t have to hold me like you did
But you did, but you did – and I thank you

I Thank You – Billy Gibbons and Daryl Hall

Conservative Immigrants – Don’t Turn Around!

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Turn-Around-Sign-300x196 I’m trying to get a better understanding of the immigration reform and amnesty issues, and while traveling recently I have had some enlightening conversations with immigrants.

Rafael is from the Dominican Republic. He has been working in New York City as a driver for about ten years, and is saving money to rejoin his wife and daughter back in Santo Domingo permanently. Meanwhile, he watches for airfare bargains and makes several brief trips home each year. Rafael believes in the “American Dream” – anyone who is willing to work hard can succeed here. But he is skeptical of the US government. He bought some land in the Dominican Republic and plans to build a house on it. “Nobody can take your land away from you there,” he said. “Once you pay for your land, it’s yours forever. Here in the US, if you don’t pay your taxes, or if the government wants your land for some reason, they can just take it away from you.” Hard work, personal responsibility, and property rights – Rafael is a conservative immigrant.

Jonathan immigrated to New York City from Hong Kong with his parents ten years ago. He started a couple of small businesses in Chinatown, but both failed. Undaunted, he is still bullish on the US economy and while working a couple of service jobs he is an ardent investor in stocks. I asked him about the dicey situation in Hong Kong, where the communist Chinese government is now stripping away many of the freedoms citizens enjoyed when it was a British protectorate and then a quasi-independent state. “The government has become so corrupt,” Jonathan lamented. “You can’t do anything without having to pay off somebody in the government.” I suggested that our government has become corrupt, too. “But there’s a difference,” he said. “In China, everybody knows about the corruption and just deals with it. Here, it’s supposed to be a secret.” Opportunity, free markets, and freedom from big, corrupt, oppressive government – Jonathan is a conservative immigrant.

Javier is from Puerto Rico. “I’m a US citizen,” he boasts. Still, as a Hispanic he is considered a minority and somewhat outside the mainstream. He works long hours, and loves it. The more he works, the more he earns. And he has no patience for those who expect to be cared for without working, whether they are traditional American citizens or immigrants. “They make me sick, these guys who do nothing all day. Why should I pay taxes for them to be lazy?” he rails. Hard work and the desire to keep what he earns. Yes, Javier is a conservative immigrant, too.

I did not ask these gentlemen whether or how they vote. The Democrats believe all minorities are their chattel property. And because Democrats have so vilified Republicans and conservatives in the mainstream media, minorities do pretty much vote in lock-step for liberals.

Why? Every immigrant I talk to is a conservative. It is conservative values that drives most immigrants to our shores.

Donna, a native of Guyana of Chinese descent, is a conservative activist. She told me the compelling story about her path to America. “I was in Guyana, minding my own business. I turned around, and suddenly I was surrounded by socialists. So I moved to Venezuela. I was minding my own business, and when I turned around, again there were the socialists. So then I came to the United States.”

“The moral of the story,” she says, “is don’t turn around!”

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Don’t turn around, uh-oh
Der Kommissar’s in town, uh-oh!
You’re in his eye and you’ll know why
The more you live, the faster you will die

Der Kommisar – After the Fire

Conservatives – We Got To Keep On Truckin’

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

I talk politics with friends, acquaintances, family, and even strangers, all the time. You probably do too. Many of these people have a growing sense that something is wrong, but they have not been engaged in politics or receiving real news and honest information about what’s going on.

They find their financial security under stress due to stagnant or declining wages and hours, difficulty finding suitable jobs or promotions, more work for less pay, relentless price inflation for most consumer items, and no place to invest their savings (if they have any) that offers reasonable safety and any kind of return.

On top of that, the people I talk to don’t understand why their biggest concerns are not aggressively confronted by our government, while much attention is given to relatively small-scale issues, like gay marriage, or who should pay for birth control pills.

These ordinary folks are concerned about national security, education, health care, deteriorating race relations, privacy, property and water rights, and a host of other things, and they don’t find comfort in the words and actions of anybody in Washington, DC – Democrat or Republican. Trust level is at an all-time low, but the guy on the street doesn’t quite know what to do because he is not getting enough facts.

After I gave an interested but under-informed friend a mini-seminar on the many threats posed to us and our children by our over-reaching government’s accelerating failure rate, he asked, “Where do you get all this information?”

Conservatives, this is our challenge. We can’t let up. Not now. People know something is wrong, and they are beginning to seek the truth. It’s up to us to keep putting that truth out there.

I lamented to Bill Whittle, renowned conservative blogger and writer, that it seems we conservatives mostly “preach to the choir” and seldom actually win a convert to the “right” side. Bill’s reply: “There’s nothing wrong with preaching to the choir. When the troops are in the trenches, worn out and outnumbered, somebody has to walk down the line, hand out some more clips of ammunition, and tell them to keep their heads down.”

Keep your heads down, my friends. Keep on Truckin’. And keep Rockin’ On the Right Side!

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Ain’t nothin’ holdin’ me back . . . nothin’!
I’ll keep right on, right on truckin’.
Ain’t nothin’ holdin’ me back . . . nothin’!
I’ll keep right on, right on truckin’.

Keep On Truckin’ – David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks

Reacting to Crises vs. Thinking About Tomorrow

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 2

crisis-economica-empresas-internet Every now and then I complain that the news media/liberal government is totally geared to our tiny little attention spans (the news media and liberal government are now inseparable and indistinguishable). They fully understand and exploit how soon we forget one earth-shaking news story when the next one comes along. We don’t care whether the last crisis was explained, let alone resolved. Instead we lurch ahead to the latest shocking crisis. And the news media/liberal government seemingly never runs out of crises. We’re so busy dealing with the latest crisis that we never take the time to look ahead.

Do you feel manipulated?

A few weeks ago the earth stopped rotating because Central American kids were walking across our southern border expecting (and receiving) amnesty. It was 24/7 news. What happened? The hand-wringing, the speeches, the headlines, the passion, the crisis – it all just . . . stopped.

Benghazi? Forgotten. Kidnapped Nigerian girls? Who cares. Even the Ferguson riots don’t matter today.

The VA scandal? Hmmph. The IRS targeting of conservative groups? No big. Trayvon Martin? Operation Fast and Furious? Free birth control pills for Sandra Fluke? Syria? Ukraine? Hamas lobbing rockets into Israel? Fagettaboutit.

I thought ObamaCare was a BFD. Joe Biden said so. But I haven’t heard anything about it in the news for a long time. Have you? Everything must be just peachy.

Today it’s all about ISIS. Or ISIL. (Why can’t the news media/liberal government just pick one label?) The shocking beheadings supercede any and all previous shocks. Until the next shock.

Rahm Emanuel said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Hillary Clinton doubled down on the same strategy. They are disciples, along with Barack Obama, of Saul Alinsky and the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which advises socialists to stir up as much crisis as possible in order to drive the frightened and under-informed into the warm and waiting arms of a big-government oligarchy. Cloward and Piven were deep-thinking socialists from Columbia University – Barack Obama’s alma mater. But I digress.

Wouldn’t it be great if our political leaders would, just once, look ahead a little instead of just reacting to the latest crisis?

They could be figuring out how to match up the capabilities of the work force with the needs of employers. Or maybe what role our tremendous energy resources could play in the world economy. We could be working on a mathematical solution to our insolvent social security system (it is do-able). Shoot, maybe somebody could be thinking about how to deal with the cancerous radical Muslim ideology that threatens to overwhelm the politically-correct Western world. Our president says, “we don’t have a strategy yet.”

We need political leaders who are thinking about tomorrow to replace those who only react to the latest crisis.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone

Fleetwood Mac – Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)

Yup, the gig with the USC marching band – Classic!

“Talking Heads” – Think Before You Talk

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 1

photo courtesy of yourblackworld.net I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I watch the news I wonder what planet these talking head “experts” are from.

Michael Eric Dyson is regarded as an expert on race relations. He is an author and professor at Georgetown University, and a devout liberal Democrat. He was the “go to” talking head on Face the Nation this morning.

The topic was the riots in Ferguson, Missouri that resulted when a white policeman shot and killed an unarmed young black man who had allegedly just robbed a local store. The details of the shooting have not been released by the police department. Last night one person was shot and seven arrested in the rioting.

Here are Dyson’s talking points about the community, the shooting, and the riots – all wrapped up in a neat, little political package. Moderator Bob Schieffer dimly grinned and nodded throughout Dyson’s soliloquy as though his hearing-aid battery had just gone stone cold. Following Dyson’s points are the questions Schieffer should have asked:

“You’ve got white flight – this formerly predominantly white suburb is now 65% black . . . ” (Um, okay. Are you saying that having more pigment in one’s skin causes one to smash store windows and steal stuff?)

“You’ve got 22% poverty . . .” (Is that because liberal government officials made fatherhood obsolete by paying single women to stay home and make babies? Or because liberal government officials won’t allow parents to remove their children from failing government schools? Or maybe because the policies of our liberal government over the last six years have driven the economy into the dumpster?)

“You’ve got the over-policing of an entire community, who feel racially harassed by the police . . . [only 3 African-American officers on a staff of 60]”    (How many applicants for the police academy were black? Have any African-American applicants have been rejected? Most police departments will do almost anything to train and hire minority applicants. Are there any?)

“Every 28 hours across America a black person is killed by a security guard, police officer or some other executive of the state or police force . . . ”   (Did you know every 58 hours a policeman is killed in the line of duty. Aren’t there a lot more bad guys than there are policemen?)

“The militarization of the police force . . . ” (Yes, they say all that armament given to police departments since Obama started disassembling our national military forces is “surplus” military equipment. Do you suppose the administration is worried about a revolution here at home?)

This president knows better than most what happens in poor communities that have been antagonized by the hostile relationship between black people and the police department . . . (How would he know that? He was a pampered rich kid who got a free ride to Harvard. His wife spends more on designer purses than you make in a year.)

There is no functional equivalence between police who are armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry trained at vulnerable black communities who are inflamed now as a result of decades of negligence. (Why do blacks keep voting for the same guys who neglected them for decades?)

This is one of the key points that we expected from (Obama) as an African-American male. (You voted for him only because he’s black? That explains it. He certainly had no experience or knowledge.) He could inform American society why people might be hurt and angry.   You can deploy political strategies and public policies at the same time. (Obama makes his decisions based on politics instead of good policy? Shocking!) He’s an oratorical genius! (With or without his teleprompter and speech writers?) Deploy that to . . . white people whose white privilege obscures from them what it means that their children can walk home every day and be safe. They are not fearful that somebody will kill their child who goes to get some iced tea and candy from a store. (Is that because they left the neighborhood when the gangstas took over?)

Expert talking head Michael Eric Dyson may not know it, but he finds fault with all the policies of Obama and the liberal Democrats. And still, I will bet you a dollar to a surplus militarized police department donut that Mr. Dyson will vote straight Democrat in the next election. Go figure.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself
My God!…What have I done?

THE TALKING HEADS – Once In A Lifetime

Can’t have an article about talking heads without a song by THE TALKING HEADS . . .

No One Ever Is To Blame

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 1

U.S. Capitol, Senate Office Buildings It must be great to work for the federal government.

The pay is outstanding – the CBO says wages and benefits for almost all federal workers are much higher than for the same jobs in the private sector. Federal employees get extra paid days off, like extra holidays, personal leave time, snow days, sick days, etc. They get full pay for not working whenever the President chooses to shut the government down rather than live within a budget. They can take early retirement from their federal jobs after 20 years if they are 50 years old.

Heck, while private sector managers work 45 – 55 hours per week, the upper-half of the federal food chain works only about half-time. I have offered a standing challenge for many years (and done the exercise myself many times): pick any manager-level federal employee, at random, from the government phone directory and call his or her office after 2:00 pm on Monday through Thursday, or after 12:00 pm on any Friday. You will never, never, never reach that person. Never. Try it!

But the best thing of all about working for the federal government is: nobody ever gets fired. Once you land a federal job, you will get your full paycheck, pay raises, ever-growing benefits, and bonuses for the rest of your life, no matter how poorly you perform. Turnover is virtually non-existent. Even the guy who was written up for farting at employees 61 times in 17 days was not reprimanded.

Jeff Neely, the GSA executive who helped put together the million-dollar conference in Las Vegas for his 300 hard-working office jockeys, is a rare exception – he actually got fired. But he was reinstated eleven months later with full back pay.

My Congressman, Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), at one of his outstanding recent town hall meetings, told us, “The Veteran’s Administration has 330,000 employees and only about 500 have been fired in the last ten years.” Meanwhile executives in the VA received bonuses based on fictitious reports about their pristine performance while soldiers died waiting for health care. Director Eric Shinseki was powerless to fire anybody, and committed political hara-kiri by resigning.

Congressman Mulvaney told another stunning story about a meeting he had with an upper-level HUD executive. He was grilling her about some problem in her agency, and she was having none of it. “Don’t give me a hard time,” she said. “I don’t make that much money and it doesn’t matter whether I do a good job or not.” She had absolutely no fear of discipline from a United States Congressman. Is that job security, or what?

And it’s not just the mid-level federal employees who are totally unaccountable. When pressed for evidence that she knew would implicate her in a world-class corruption scandal, IRS director Lois Lerner made up a story about seven simultaneous hard-drive failures that ate her e-mails. The odds of that happening are one in 79 billion. Nobody has been held accountable.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is made of Teflon, too. She never has recanted the lame excuse that terrorists murdered our Libyan ambassador and his brave defenders because they were upset about a Hollywood video. One of the terrorists admitted planning and executing the Benghazi attack, but knew nothing about any video, and the CIA was listening in on terrorist phone activity during the attack, which never mentioned any video. She still deflects questions about her failure to provide adequate protection after it was requested, saying “what does it matter?” And nobody has even asked yet why the ambassador was in Benghazi in the first place. Not only is she not accountable for the fiasco, Clinton is the current leader in the 2016 presidential race.

President Obama carries a long list of excuses for the many failures of his administration. Most of them blame his predecessor. The latest failure is the border crisis that resulted from his open invitation to illegal immigrant children to enter our country and enjoy the amenities. When he finally did go to Texas to meet with Governor Perry, who is trying to deal with the situation, he spent most of his time shifting the blame.

I seldom agree with John Boehner any more, but I jumped up and cheered when, in utter exasperation with the Obama administration, he cried, “He’s been president for five and a half years. When is he going to take responsibility for SOMETHING!”

But hey, it’s the government. No one ever is to blame.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Doctor says you’re cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain
No one ever is to blame.

Howard Jones – No One Is to Blame

I want to thank all the many great songwriters and performers who inspire and enrich my blog topics. This is one of the best “fits” – music to message – yet, I think! Here’s a great live performance by Howard Jones, very much enjoyed by his audience.

Another “BFD” for Obama – How Many More BFDs Can We Take?

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

smug_obama I have reported to you Rockers many times that I am on the President’s mailing list. I get an e-mail almost every day, usually just to ask me for five dollars.

Most of the time it provides me amusement. Today, not so much. I got four letters from my friend Barack and his operatives today. Yes, one of them asked me for three dollars. But the other three were back-slapping, high-fiving, chest-bumping celebrations of Obama’s latest and greatest attack on our economy and citizens.

Here is one of them, from Jim Messina, Obama’s data-mining and mass-media guru:

Friend —

This is a BFD:

The New York Times is calling President Obama’s plan “the strongest action ever taken by an American president to tackle climate change” — he’s proposing new EPA standards to limit carbon pollution from existing power plants, the single biggest source of the pollution in the United States that causes climate change.

Listen, it should come as no surprise that polluters and groups that like things the way they are have already started fighting this with everything they’ve got. The best thing we can do is show just how many Americans believe this is the right thing to do.

Add your name right now — stand with President Obama and support aggressive action to fight climate change.

Announcements like this are why we all do this work. It’s proof that grassroots organizing really does pay off. Climate change activists have fought for years for EPA standards on carbon pollution — and this week President Obama is making it a reality.

This fight is about our future, but the effects of climate change are being felt right now — it’s linked to stronger weather, from more frequent and severe droughts to floods, storms, and wildfires.

It’s affecting public health, too. Over the past three decades, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital. Over half of all Americans live in an area where air pollution levels are too often unhealthy to breathe.

But while we place limits on dangerous air pollution like mercury, arsenic, and lead, existing power plants have had no national restrictions on the amount of carbon pollution they can emit.

None at all — until now.

The President’s plan promises to cut carbon pollution from power plants for the first time, setting a new standard for action on climate change.

As I write this, powerful interests on the other side are lining up their dirty budgets to try to tear this down. They have plenty of allies in Congress that will try to stop us.

I’m asking everyone who cares about this fight to stand up and say so today — stand with President Obama and new carbon pollution standards.

The media will not let us forget for a moment that this is the first black president. Who cares. I’m more concerned that he is the first president to bypass congress with proclamations that are given the force of law. The first to openly flaunt the constitution and decide which laws will be enforced. The first to deny the sovereignty of states, not to mention citizen’s rights including the rights of private property.

Certainly Obama is the first president to repeatedly look directly into a camera (actually a teleprompter) and lie with impugnity. Calling carbon dioxide “carbon pollution” is so brazen that he must think we are all cretins. Claiming that the carbon dioxide that we exhale, and that makes all plant life possible, is causing droughts AND floods, storms AND wildfires, is an insult to our intelligence. Worse, he seeks to intentionally damage the well-being of all Americans. Why not just break our kneecaps?

Obama’s letter to me today said, “I’m not going to wait to take action on this.” The anointed one will accept no limits to his authority.

I thought Joe Biden’s BFD, ObamaCare, was an epically egregious assault on our economy and families. Now comes BFD number two, using the EPA to ruin entire industries, destroy countless jobs, and raise energy costs to crushing levels.

The next BFD will be complete amnesty and open borders – you can expect an executive order for this purpose the moment Congress leaves for summer recess.

I really wonder if the United States can withstand any more BFDs from the first BFD president.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Big Deal! So what? Who cares?
You just got lucky, that’s all
Oh oh, it’s a real big deal!
Oh, yeah!
Oh oh, it’s a real big deal!
Big deal!

Big Deal – LeAnn Rimes

Country gal Leann Rimes rocks it . . . Big Deal!