All posts by Jim

Left HS before report cards came out. Enlisted in the Marines for four years. By the time those years were over, I was hooked - they had me for life. Spent nearly ten years as enlisted. Received a Silver Star, Bronze Star w/V, Purple Heart as a Sgt during first RVN tour. Upon returning to the State's received a combat commission to 2Lt. Retired after 36 total years as a Colonel. Book follows my career, but is more about the heroes with whom I served, the great mentors I had, and the leadership principles they instilled in me.
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Trust Me – You’ll Love This One

New Travel Arrangements for the Washington Press Corps.

OUCH! Well, I never thought much about this, but now it that it’s  out in the open, I wonder why someone did not question this years ago. You and I both know the answer to that — they were afraid of the 4th estate; afraid they would hammer them in the press, which they did anyway.The saying that comes to my mind is: don’t bite the hand that feeds you!   Now we have an administration that is unafraid of these pompous , arrogant jerks who hammer them all the time anyway. So, let the media heavies pay for their reporters to follow the news. Think any CEO will let them use his/her private jet? Maybe they won’t even pay for first class. No more parties on the plane folks. Lord, I love it! This will surely cut back on transportation funds spent on flights. LOL 

A Reuters filing en route to Asia showcases the bitterness, anger, and seething rage of U.S. journalists who have been forced to fly First-Class Commercial to cover Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Asia trip. State Department correspondents are used to the exclusive wide-body private charters of the U.S. federal government’s airline fleet.

Previous heads of the Department of State have flown aboard Air Force 3.  Normally a Boeing 757.  At the very worst Air Force 3 would be a C17 Globemaster.

However, T-Rex is taking a smaller jet to Asia and only one journalist accompanies him.  To make matters exponentially worse, T-Rex did not select a journalist from the corporate stable of the refined and pedigreed media elites.

We can only imagine how Andrea Mitchell must be seething at having to take simple first-class commercial flight accommodations with ordinary people.  The scope of the almost unimaginable horror she has to face will soon pour from her pursed and vengeful lips.  We can predict a retaliatory report soon from the wrath of the ignored elitist within NBC.  This shall be, as they say, epic.  Secretary Tillerson has rebuked customs and norms.  The traveling correspondents will have to pass through customs and passport checks as if they are ordinary travelers.  There is a very real possibility no-one will recognize them or care diligently for their very individual and specific needs.  Can you imagine Mrs. Alan Greenspan flying all the way to Asia from the Eastern Seaboard and having to do that on a commercial flight?  My God, have we really dropped our standards of decency that far…

 

Oh yeah, the pontificating journalist elites are  pi**ed off.   After traveling with every possible indulgence aboard exclusive State Department accommodations with Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry, you cannot even fathom how angry they are right now without private dining, DoS chefs, shaved chocolates and Cristal mimosa.  None of this is me joking.  This bunch of snobs having to fly commercial is unheard of.  They are ready to tear into Secretary Tillerson in every single filed report.  Just watch what you see on TV:

(Reuters) U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is traveling to Asia this week accompanied by only one reporter, a White House correspondent from the Independent Journal Review (IJR), a digital news outlet founded in 2012 by former Republican political operatives. The IJR said in a statement late Tuesday the State Department last week offered one of its reporters, Erin McPike, a place aboard the Secretary’s aircraft on his trip this week to Asia.[…]  The State Department had previously told reporters covering Tillerson’s trip to South Korea, Japan, and China that he would not be taking reporters on his plane and that they would have to fly commercially, breaking with decades of precedent stretching back to Henry Kissinger.  Major news organizations complained, among them the BBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post and Reuters. 

Things you won’t see when Secretary Tillerson is traveling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The party’s over you arrogant snobs!

Originally posted 2017-03-24 15:49:04.

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School orders boy to “tolerate” undressing with girl and make it “natural”

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Absurd, absolutely, positively absurd!! What pray tell are our schools coming to, especially in PA? You mean if this were to have taken place in the mid-50’s, all I would have had to do was say I identified with girls, and I could have changed to gym clothes in their locker room? Interesting.

Something has got to be done about this idiotic idea that subjects the rest of the children to accommodate one child! I’d like to hear your thoughts on this one, maybe I’m just old fashion and need to go with the flow? I think not!

By Todd Starnes

A teenage boy was told by school leaders that he had to “tolerate” undressing in front of a female student and to make it as “natural” as possible, according to a blockbuster lawsuit filed in a Pennsylvania federal district court.

Click here for a copy of Todd’s new book – “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.”

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Alliance Defending Freedom and Independence Law Center, alleges the Boyertown Area School District shamed the teenage boy and violated his personal privacy. They are also alleging sexual harassment.

“No school should rob any student of this legally protected personal privacy,” ILC attorney Randall Wenger said. “We trust that our children won’t be forced into emotionally vulnerable situations like this when they are in the care of our schools because it’s a school’s duty to protect and respect the bodily privacy and dignity of all students.”

In the case of “Joel Doe” – they clearly ignored that duty.

Last Fall, the teen boy was standing in his underwear inside a locker room at Boyertown Area High School preparing to change for a physical education class.

“He suddenly realized there was a member of the opposite sex changing with him in the locker room, who was at the time, wearing nothing but shorts and a bra,” the lawsuit states.

The boy, along with several of his classmates reported the incident to Assistant Principal, named as a defendant.

“Dr. Foley indicated that the legality was up in the air but that students who mentally identify themselves with the opposite sex could choose the locker room and bathroom to use, and physical sex did not matter,” the lawsuit states.

The teenage boy asked the assistant principal if there was anything that could be done to protect him from the situation.

“Dr. Foley told Joel Doe to ‘tolerate’ it and to make it as ‘natural’ as he possibly can,” the lawsuit states.

As the boy got up to leave the office, the assistant principal allegedly told the youngster to again “be as natural as possible.”

Even more disturbing, parents were not told of the school district’s decision to let students of one sex use the locker rooms and bathrooms of students of the opposite sex.

“The District’s directive to Joel Doe was that he must change with students of the opposite sex, and make it as natural as possible, and that anything less would be intolerant and bullying against students who profess a gender identity with the opposite sex,” the lawsuit states. This idiot needs to go to a woman’s Spa and do what he is saying! He needs to “walk in those shoes” before he starts running his mouth. If he did that, I wonder what his wife would think, and would she agree to doing the same thing in a men’s spa?

The young man’s parents made an appointment to school leaders and were told that the district is “all-inclusive.”

The lawsuit alleges that Foley told the boy’s parents their son could use the nurse’s office to change – if he had a problem changing in front of girls.

Principal Brett Cooper, also a defendant, backed up the assistant principal’s solution.

Supt. Richard Faidley suggested if “Joel Doe was uncomfortable changing with those of the opposite sex, or with using the nurse’s office, then he could just withdraw from school and be home schooled.”

The school district has yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Should the school district be found guilty, they should immediately fire Faidley, Cooper and Foley. Their alleged behavior is beyond repulsive.

But the lawsuit clearly illustrates the radical sex and gender narrative being forced on every public school locker room in the nation.

And as evidenced by the school district’s behavior, resistance to this perverse indoctrination seems to be futile.

Click here to join Todd’s newsletter – a must-read for conservatives!

Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.” Follow Todd on Twitter @ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.

 

Originally posted 2017-03-23 13:11:09.

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Why colleges lean left

2 Comments

Campuses that run on subsidies stand apart from the real world.

Folks, this is Econ 101, if you never had the course in college or advanced high school, sit back, read, and learn.  It’s basic stuff, no need for any fancy titles behind your name,  just common sense and somewhat of an understanding of how the “real world” operates. The author has nailed it, thank you Mr. Young and The Washington Times. Remember this writing, the next time you make a donation to your alumni without the ability to state where it is to used — mine does, and I am always careful which choice I make.

 

 

By J.T. Young – – Monday, March 20, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Anti-right turbulence has again raised the question of why America’s college campuses lean so left. The better question for those lamenting this lack of intellectual diversity is why its absence continues to surprise. It would be hard to find conditions more conducive to a leftward tilt than our campus Cominterns.

From Berkeley to New York University, with many points in between, America’s campuses have staged protests over appearances by those deemed “messengers of the right.” The protests have varied in form — from civil disobedience to serious violence — but not in content. The right is denied any right to America’s campuses.

Certainly some of this is simple “acting up” following the November elections. Then, college campuses were immediately beset by whine-ins. Still upset at Donald Trump’s upset, the left continues retaliating the only way it knows, and against the only targets their real-world isolation offers.

 Yet focusing only on today’s temporary temper tantrums is to miss the permanent perturbation on campus against all things right. As far back as most remember, the right has been wrong, until only the left is left at college.

To understand this, first understand the left. As Marx himself argued, the left’s ultimate imprimatur is not ideology, but economics. And the prevailing characteristic of the left’s economics is central control of the economy.

Such central control inevitably means using predetermined price signals. Left alone, the market and private sector determine these. The left’s problem is such determinations also mean society’s resources are distributed accordingly — not how the left desires.

In place of freely determined prices, the left must manufacture price cues for resource allocation. We commonly confront this in our experience as subsidies.

This returns us to our college campuses. Nowhere in America is more awash in subsidies. America’s college campuses rest on subsidies from top to bottom.

Students, the overwhelming majority of campus populations, are the most subsidized of all. First, it comes from parents and is so institutionalized that parental support of young adults is not recognized as the subsidy it is. What parents do not or cannot provide, colleges and government do in the form of loans, grants and scholarships.

Parents, too, are subsidized. Tax-favored vehicles — 529 accounts and the deductibility of financial support for their children — underwrite their costs.

Of course, colleges are similarly subsidized. They are the ultimate beneficiaries of the aforementioned subsidies, which have only driven up demand for their product — and, unsurprisingly, its cost as well.

However, colleges also receive direct subsidizes. As all alumni can attest, the first letter new graduates receive is for contributions to their alma mater. The resulting endowments often amount to enormous sums, yet there is little requirement as to how these tax-free contributions are used.

Colleges also get government funding apart from that funneled through their students. State colleges are crown jewels and receive commensurate support from state governments.

Teachers and professors are also in on the subsidies. Further, they live in the system that promises perhaps the quintessential subsidy of all: tenure, the benefit of which is to be divorced from performance standards for life and virtually immune from dismissal.

Even the administrators, often seen as the only “real adults” on campus, participate in the subsidy party. They benefit from the subsidy system, but they also directly fuel it, too. At the apex are college presidents, who really are more fundraisers than educators.

This top-to-bottom subsidy system produces an entitlement culture like no other in America. Even actual federal government entitlement programs — such Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — pale comparatively.

Certainly, the “Big Three” are bigger, but their subsidy culture of entitlement is less extensive. They have limits on what they cover. The only limitation on college spending is that it goes to a qualifying institution. However, anything the instruction accredits qualifies this spending for favorable tax treatment — contributing to the satire-worthy college courses, and often sadly unusable degrees for those overindulging in them.

In the case of Social Security and Medicare, most beneficiaries pay into the system in their working years. While their later benefits may be inflated beyond those contributions, they are still subsidized far less than the college student who receives from every angle, with little or no contribution requirements, and only minimal ones on the use.

Such complete attachment to subsidies, the hallmark of centralized economic planning, prepares all associated for an embrace of the left. How could a statist mindset not emerge from such a thoroughly statist approach?

The lack of diversity of thought is not the cause of college campuses problems. It is the effect — a byproduct of the subsidy economy in which it flourishes. The folly is actually ours — for being surprised at the subsidy-without-accountability culture. College campuses have not failed in teaching reality, but in learning from their own reality all too well.

• J.T. Young served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, and as a congressional staff member.

Originally posted 2017-03-21 10:12:33.

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NFL Execs ‘Genuinely Hate’ Protesting Kaepernick

Take a knee son — for good! Finally, the NFL does something about this scumbag who started a new fad among the Millennials. If you go to the NewsMax post, you must read the comments, they are great! It surprised me that so many did the same thing I did — stopped watching the football except for the Super Bowl. And you know what, I didn’t miss it. I found other things to do or watch on Monday and Thursday nights and again on Sunday. I have a feeling what finally caused the NFL and the teams to can this guy — $$$$$. We do not need role models for our children like this POS. The only team I know of that made a statement about this bum was Jerry Jones, whom I never had much use for, told the team, take knee and you next move will be to the bench. Good for you JJ!

Now Kaepernick and his Muslim sweetie can spend all their time on their knees or wherever. Wonder how long his money will last?

 * * * * *

NFL teams “genuinely hate” former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick – one executive calling him “an embarrassment to football” – a GM told Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman.

“He can still play at a high level – the problem is three things are happening with him,” the source reportedly said. “First, some teams genuinely believe that he can’t play. They think he’s shot. I’d put that number around 20 percent.

“Second, some teams fear the backlash from fans after getting him. They think there might be protests or [President Donald] Trump will tweet about the team. I’d say that number is around 10 percent. Then there’s another 10 percent that has a mix of those feelings.

“Third, the rest genuinely hate him and can’t stand what he did [kneeling for the national anthem].”

Kaepernick whipped up a firestorm for his protest against police treatment of minorities this past fall, which might have attributed to current lack of interest on the free-agent market in a league with a dearth of quarterbacks. From all the noise of the past fall, the “silence is deafening” now, Freeman wrote.

“They want nothing to do with him,” the source told Freeman. “They won’t move on. They think showing no interest is a form of punishment. I think some teams also want to use Kaepernick as a cautionary tale to stop other players in the future from doing what he did.”

Originally posted 2017-03-20 09:05:15.

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Trump Slashes Useless Agencies

1 Comment

Yowser! It appears there will be lots and lots of government sand crabs looking for work soon. Take a gander at some of these agencies we have been supporting with our tax dollars; it took someone with some guts to say goodbye to them. NPR and PBS have always been left-wing broadcasting entities anyway. Let the listeners fund them or die. Once again, the “Invisible Hand” will decide.

Trump Budget Eliminates Federal Funding for 19 Agencies

In addition to reducing spending from several large government entities such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department, President Donald Trump’s proposed first budget calls to eliminate federal funding for 19 federal agencies, for a total of $3 billion in cuts.

Some of the agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, are relatively well-known, while others benefit foreign countries and are, in many cases, holdovers from former presidencies.

“Consistent with the President’s approach to move the nation toward fiscal responsibility, the budget eliminates and reduces hundreds of programs and focuses funding to redefine the proper role of the federal government,” a blueprint copy of Trump’s “America First” budget says. 

The agencies to lose their federal funding include: the African Development Foundation; the Appalachian Regional Commission; the Chemical Safety Board; the Corporation for  National and Community Service; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the Delta Regional Authority; the Denali Commission; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the Inter-American Foundation; the U.S. Trade and Development Agency; the Legal Services Corporation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation; the Northern Border Regional Commission; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; the United States Institute of Peace; the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness; and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

According to a breakdown compiled by Business Insider:

  • Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Current budget, $445 million. CPB benefits mainly local public news stations, which receive 90 percent of the agency’s budget. National entities such as NPR and PBS also get small parts of their budgets through CPB.
  • Corporation for National and Community Service: Current budget, $1.1 billion. Cuts funding for AmeriCorps, the Clinton Administration’s program that places more than 80,000 people yearly in service projects, including the City Year program that provides volunteers for schools.
  • National Endowment for the Arts: Current budget, $148 million. Launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson and supports and promotes U.S. artists. Has been a subject of controversy for years after funding went to photographers like Andres Serrano, the person who displayed a photograph depicting a crucifix submerged in urine.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities: Current budget, $149 million. Provides grants for universities, libraries and more to strengthen studies in humanities and culture. Established by Johnson through the Arts and Humanities Act in 1965.
  • Appalachian Regional Commission: Current budget, $146 million. Partners with federal, state, and local governments to develop the economy of the Appalachian region, including 13 states reliant on the coal industry.
  • Delta Regional Authority: Current budget: $15 million. Economic-development agency serves eight-state Delta region, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
  • Denali Commission: Most recent budget, $14 million in 2015. Focuses on Alaska and at one point had a budget of $150 million. Formed in 1998 by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to build power plants and roads, and also offers job training.
  • Northern Border Regional Commission: Current budget, $5 million. Works with distressed counties in Northeast border states including New York, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Established through 2008 Farm Bill.
  • U.S. Trade and Development Agency: Current budget, $80.7 million. Promotes U.S. exports, assists with overseas infrastructures. Links businesses with opportunities for foreign exports and supports efforts to mitigate climate change.
  • Overseas Private Investment Corporation: Most recent budget, $83.5 million in 2016. Works with private companies to develop financial infrastructure in foreign countries. Uses private capital and works with the private sector.
  • African Development Foundation: Current budget, $28.2 million. Supports and invests in African-owned businesses to help improve economies in 20 poverty-stricken African countries.
  • Inter-American Foundation: Current budget, $22.2 million. Focuses on developing non- government and grassroots organizations in the Caribbean and Latin America regions. Has awarded nearly 5,000 grants, totaling more than $600 million since 1972.
  • Legal Services Corp.: Current budget, $502 million. Funds civil legal aid for low-income recipients in the United States, helping deal with legal issues including family law, domestic violence and family law, housing and foreclosures, and veterans affairs.
  • Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp.: Current budget, $140 million. Also known as NeighborWorks America and housed in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency helps urban, suburban, and rural areas’ community development organizations.
  • Institute of Museum and Library Services: Current budget, $230 million. Launched by the Clinton Administration and funds 35,000 local museums and 123,000 libraries across the country.
  • United States Institute of Peace: Most recent budget, 2011, $39.5 million. Established in 1984 by Congress under President Ronald Reagan with goal of preventing and mitigation overseas conflicts.
  • United States Interagency Council on Homelessness: Current budget, $5.4 million. Works to coordinate national solutions toward ending homelessness.
  • Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Current budget, $10.4 million. Founded through the Smithsonian Act of 1950, the center functions as a government-sponsored foreign-policy academic think tank.
  • Chemical Safety Board: Current budget, $11 million. The independent federal investigates industrial chemical accidents, and was established as part of the 1990 Clean Air Act.

Originally posted 2017-03-18 15:04:43.