Biden has middle class digs? Nope. $172,000 is the medium price for a home in America. Joe Biden’s home is worth $2.8 million -and that’s not counting the “cottage” [home] the government rents from Biden for $12 K to provide him protection.
Yet, he calls himself middle class Joe (Biden).
While it’s not clear who actually calls the vice president that, it is clear that his house and finances tell a different story. Here’s a picture of his home:
one car in front of Joe Biden's middle class home
Zillow.com, a reliable real estate web site, estimates the worth of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home (pictured above) to be a cool $2,856,950. (This does not appear to include the cottage on the Biden estate, which the vice president rents out to the Secret Service for more than $12,000 per year.)
“The vice president and his wife, Jill Biden, reported assets of between $239,000 and $866,000,” according to Bloomberg.
Biden added: “What do they think we think? What do they think we think in our houses? We’re like the rich guys — we have dreams, we have aspirations.” Indeed.
Elizabeth Warren plagiarized recipes from expensive, French restaurant Le Pavilion and published them as passed down from her Cherokee relatives?
The credibility of Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren took another hit today as Boston radio talk show host Howie Carr released evidence that appears to confirm Ms. Warren may have plagiarized at least three of the five recipes she submitted to the 1984 Pow Wow Chow cookbook edited by her cousin Candy Rowsey.
Two of the possibly plagiarized recipes, said in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook to have been passed down through generations of Oklahoma Native American members of the Cherokee tribe, are described in a New York Times News Service story as originating at Le Pavilion, a fabulously expensive French restaurant in Manhattan. The dishes were said to be particular favorites of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cole Porter. crab & cognac in Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee recipe
The two recipes, “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat” and “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing,” appear in an article titled “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat,†written by Pierre Franey of the New York Times News Service that was published in the August 22, 1979 edition of the Virgin Islands Daily News, a copy of which can be seen here.
Ms. Warren’s 1984 recipe for Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing is a word-for-word copy of Mr. Franey’s 1979 recipe.
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This phoney is the woman who Obama would have had running our lives [via the Consumer Financial Protection Agency]. Connecticut has its lying senator. Is Mass. far behind?
Individual conscience and service or a proletarian struggle? personal conscience of each individual What makes the individual matter?
For Obama it is the collective force that individuals can exert through mass action such as the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not the individual but the collectivity of individuals subsumed to some greater goal that causes important change according to Obama. Life is a proletarian struggle.
For Romney, “the call of service is one of the fundamental elements of our national character. It has motivated every great movement of conscience that this hopeful, fair-minded country of ours has ever seen.”
Recently, Gov. Romney told graduates of Liberty College that “the great drama is always personal, individual, unfolding in one’s own life… and that Men and women of every faith — and good people with none at all — sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life.”
Life is politics says Obama. Obama tells college graduates at Banard College that the road ahead is a fairly grim proletarian struggle and that they need to be ready to occupy everything. Mass political action is the way to make significant change says Obama.
The contrasting world views of Romney and Obama as to how change occurs through individual actions could not be starker.
What say you as to why individuals matter?
DrCameronJackson@gmail.com
See Opinion piece in WSJ A Tale of Two Commencements below
“Two days after Mitt Romney delivered the commencement speech at Liberty University, the big evangelical Christian school founded by Jerry Falwell, Barack Obama tutored graduates at Barnard College, the intensely liberal all-women’s school adjacent to Columbia University. As you might guess, the wisdom these two political elders imparted to the Class of 2012 was not the same.
Of course the first purpose for both men was to turn young graduates into believers. Mr. Romney, a Mormon, needs to win over ambivalent evangelical voters. Mr. Obama, a liberal Democrat, expects to have the 22-year-old college graduate vote locked up—if they vote.
Yes, of course, they pandered.
Related Video
Columnist Daniel Henninger on what Mitt Romney and President Obama’s commencement speeches say about their world view. Photo: Associated Press
Barack Obama, by now a master at faux self-deflation, admitted he was pandering: “Now I recognize that’s a cheap applause line when you’re giving a commencement at Barnard.” (Laughter.) He had said the women of this generation will help lead the way. (Applause.)
Mitt Romney solved his more problematic pandering assignment by piling praise onto the university’s late founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell—”a cheerful, confident champion for Christ.”
But even amid pandering one may find truths about candidates revealed, and so it was in New York City and Lynchburg, Va.
The world that Barack Obama conveyed to the women at Barnard is totally, overwhelmingly political. To be sure, there were references to parental joy at the success of children completing college, but virtually every thought in the Obama commencement address—on the accomplishments of the past or a graduate’s goals—was defined by political activity.
He said they are about to grapple with unique challenges, “like whether you’ll be able to earn equal pay for equal work” or “fully control decisions about your own health.”
Related Media
Read a transcript of Barack Obama’s commencement speech at Barnard College
Read a transcript of Mitt Romney’s commencement speech at Liberty University
The role of the citizen in “our democracy” began 225 years ago at the Convention in Philadelphia, which had “flaws,” to wit: “Questions of race and gender were unresolved.” Nonetheless, it “allowed for protest and movements.”
And so: “Don’t accept somebody else’s construction of the way things ought to be. It’s up to you to right wrongs. It’s up to you to point out injustice. It’s up to you to hold the system accountable and sometimes upend it entirely. It’s up to you to stand up and to be heard, to write and to lobby, to march, to organize, to vote.”
Mr. Obama described his own early job as a community organizer: “I wanted to do my part to shape a better world.” He cited the accomplishments of previous generations of young people who “stood up and sat in from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall.” This, Mr. Obama said, is how “we achieved” women’s rights, voting rights, workers’ rights and gay rights.
Barack Obama seems to inhabit a world of history and personal experience in which good people at every turn are held back by individuals or oppressive forces that one only overcomes by personal or public resistance.
Someone in high school told Labor Secretary Hilda Solis she wasn’t college material. Mr. Obama’s grandmother worked for a bank but hit the glass ceiling. And today there are “those who oppose change, those who benefit from an unjust status quo [and] have always bet on the public’s cynicism or the public’s complacency.” He predicts they will lose “this time as well.”
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The president giving remarks at Barnard College, May 14
Fair enough. That’s how the world works for Barack Obama, though it strikes me he is telling America’s 22-year-olds that the road ahead is a fairly grim proletarian struggle. Be ready to occupy everything. Where’s the joy in that?
There was less tooth and claw in the Romney speech at Liberty University. In a discussion of the uses of religious freedom, one passage in particular separated Mr. Romney from Barack Obama’s default to mass action. “The great drama of Christianity,” Gov. Romney said, “is not a crowd shot, following the movements of collectives or even nations. The drama is always personal, individual, unfolding in one’s own life.” Out of this, he said, “Men and women of every faith, and good people with none at all, sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life.”
Progress, he argued, emerges through “conscience in action,” for him “the nation’s greatest force for good.” Mr. Romney referred several times to the idea of personal service. “The call to service,” he said “is one of the fundamental elements of our national character. It has motivated every great movement of conscience that this hopeful, fair-minded country of ours has ever seen.”
For Barack Obama, life is politics. For Mitt Romney, life includes politics; politics, he said, does not define us.
To wage a presidential campaign in our nonstop media age, the man who sees politics as a battering ram may have an edge. But Mitt Romney, with his politics of optimism and personal conscience, could be onto something that will serve him well.
treat all terrorists alike -- whether captured in a cave or shopping mall
Tell Adam Smith and Justin Amash that they are ‘losing it’ to seek to remove the legal authority granted by Congress after 9/11 to fight terrorists on every front.
If you live in Adam Smith’s district it is easy to contact him. He is on Facebook so you can leave him a note there. Adam Smith’s FAX is 202 225-5893 and voice is 202 225-8901.
Smith and Amash have proposed an amendment to next year’s defense authorization bill that more or less revokes the legal authority granted by Congress to fight terrorists on every front.
Let’s not reward terrorists with better treatment for having the wits to get out of their caves and sneak in to America to blow up civilians in shopping malls. Whether discovered in a cave in Yemon or Time Square New York all terrorists must be dealt with through legally approved military methods.
Obama refuses to transfer terrorists to Gitmo. Obama gave the protections that criminals have — Miranda rights — to terrorists. Obama has treated terrorists as though they were common criminals.
Obama is wrong. Terrorists are terrorists and not simply criminals. And that’s why the military must have the freedom to use military methods to deal with terrorists.
no more forced SEIU union dues win-win for political free speech Let’s take the wind out of sails of the SEIU?
How? Through state legislation, stop automatic deductions of union dues from SEIU workers pay checks.
Let workers be free to choose yes or no whether to pay union dues. Many government union workers will opt out of automatic dues removed from their checks. No automatic dues flowing into the SEIU results in less political clout that they can exert.
Why should any worker just to hold a job have to pay SEIU union dues so that the SEIU can use dues to flow into other organizations like Change to Win which seeks to intimidate private companies such as Wellpoint from making political contributions?
Look at who runs Change to Win. The President of SEIU, the Vice President of the SEIU and the Treasurer/Secretary of the SEIU are all key players of Change to Win.
Union front organization such as Change to Win seek to know and limit the political donations made by private corporations. Why? So that the unions are the only big players in who make large donations.
The unions such as SEIU want to control the political free speech exercised by of private corporations.
The SEIU seeks to grow government unions to grow their power.
Recently, in Michigan the SEIU suffered a setback to their political clout. In states including Michigan and California home health care workers were forced to pay union dues.
Persons with developmental disabilities are frequently cared for life long by family members.
It is good news that developmentally disabled persons can stay in their homes thanks to health care provided by parents and relatives. Those who best know and love a relative with disabilities provides care at a fraction of the cost if the person had to be placed in a government run facility.
To deem home health care workers as “government employees” and force them to pay SEIU union wrongfully categorizes people and allows the SEIU to skim off millions of dollars. Home health care workers seek to care for their loved ones — not to do a government job. Recently Michigan has changed their laws. No more taking of union dues from Michigan home health care workers.
Can California wake up and follow Michigan’s lead? Let’s hope so. The necessary labor and employment laws are already in place to protect jobs.
written by drcameronjackson@gmail.com
By: Chase Ingersoll
Home Health Care Aides not longer required to pay SEIU union dues
Posted: Apr 11, 2012
MIDLAND — Michigan’s 60,000 home health care aides will no longer be deemed government employees — meaning they cannot be forced into a government employee union and have dues withheld — as a result of legislation signed today by Gov. Rick Snyder. The next step is for the Michigan Department of Community Health to immediately stop the collection of dues from subsidy payments intended to assist developmentally disabled adults and the diversion of those funds to the Service Employees International Union, said Patrick J. Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation.
“Ending this lucrative charade is terrific news for Michigan’s home health care providers who have seen nearly $30 million skimmed from their payments over the last six years,†said Wright. “The designation of these private contractors and family members as government employees was illegal from the beginning. Michigan’s Constitution explicitly states that only the Legislature can define government employees. No political arrangement or interlocal agreement can change that.
“Now that the law has been clarified, the dues skim must end,†he added.
The arrangement that allowed the SEIU to skim from Medicaid payments to some of the state’s most vulnerable residents was concocted during the administration of Gov. Jennifer Granholm. An interlocal agreement between DCH and the Tri-County Aging Consortium allowed for the creation of the Michigan Quality Community Care Council, which served as the “employer†for what were really self-employed independent contractors or, overwhelmingly, family members caring for loved ones.
Despite the fact that there was no real employer with whom to engage in collective bargaining, the SEIU conducted a union representation vote in 2007. Out of the 44,000 home health care providers in Michigan at the time, only 7,900 voted; 6,900 cast ballots for the union. Although many providers were unaware that a vote was taking place, they nonetheless were forced into the union.
Government-sector unions recently proposed a constitutional amendment to circumvent this legislative fix and restore the flow of the so-called dues. Wright noted that if passed, this proposed amendment would violate the U.S. Constitution since private employee unionization is purely a matter of federal law.
This is the third time in 14 months that an illegal unionization arrangement has been brought to an end. On March 1, 2011, Gov. Snyder issued an executive order ending the illegal dues confiscation affecting tens of thousands of home-based day care providers who had been forced into a government-employee union through a similar scheme. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation fought an 18-month court battle on behalf of day care owners.
On March 13, Gov. Snyder signed into law a bill clarifying that graduate student research assistants are not government employees subject to forced unionization. The MCLFrepresented more than 370 such students from the University of Michigan who objected to the illegal unionization effort.
“Government-sector unions are clearly trying to expand the definition of government employees in order to grow their membership and direct taxpayer money into their coffers,†said Wright. “If business owners, the self-employed, family members and students can be roped into such schemes, then grocers, doctors, landlords and anyone else who receives a direct or indirect payment from the government can’t be far behind.â€
In a big change, the state-run Keep Your Home California program will use federal money to reduce an eligible homeowner’s mortgage balance by up to $100,000 without requiring a matching reduction by the bank servicing the loan.
Many more underwater California homeowners will get principal reductions when the change takes effect in early June, but there’s a catch: The reduction is structured as a forgivable loan. If they sell their house within five years, any profit will go toward repaying the principal reduction. After five years, there is no repayment requirement. Under current rules, the loan is forgiven after three years.
Loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are potentially eligible for principal reduction under this program.
The money is coming from a $2 billion grant the state was awarded in 2010 from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Hardest Hit Fund. The grant provides four types of assistance to low- and moderate-income homeowners who can document a financial hardship.
To qualify under the new rules, homeowners must use the home as their primary residence, owe more than it’s worth, fall below the income limit for their county, demonstrate a financial hardship and owe no more than $729,750 on a first mortgage originated on or before Jan. 1, 2010. (The previous cutoff date was Jan. 1, 2009.)
In San Francisco the household income limit is $121,900. For other counties see keepyourhomecalifornia.org/files/income.pdf.
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This is simply outrageous. If in San Francisco you make $121,901, you have the privilege and honor to pay taxes so the federal government can turn money over to the state government(forget all the carrying charges here and there) to give your neighbor who overextended himself or lied on his loan application a gift of $100,000. This is fair?
Obama supports gay marriage
“Whatever people think about this issue, we know it’s controversial, there’s no denying when a president speaks out for the first time like that, it is history,” co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America” George Stephanopoulos said to Robin Roberts.
And let me tell you, George, I’m getting chills again,” “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts said about her interview with Obama.
“When you sit in that room and you hear him say those historic words. It was not lost on anyone in there right there. You never know what he’s going to say until you ask him,” she added.
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In another courageous move our president said that the states should decide about gay marriage, but he was for it. And if she doesn’t know what he’s going to say she need only read his old speeches which are endlessly repeated.
no food or water for college student picked up in driug raid
A college student picked up in a federal drug sweep in California was never arrested, never charged and should have been released. Instead, authorities say, he was forgotten in a holding cell for four days.
Without food, water or access to a toilet, Daniel Chong had to drink his own urine to survive and began hallucinating after three days because of a lack of nourishment, his lawyer said.
“He nearly died,” Eugene Iredale said. “If he had been there another 12 to 24 hours, he probably would have died.”
The top Drug Enforcement Administration agent in San Diego apologized Wednesday for Chong’s treatment and promised an investigation into how his agents could have forgotten about him.
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Fire everyone within 500 yards of the building.
Even the TSA isn’t this stupid,yet. jaj48@aol.com
EPA views soot control more important
EPA’s rules cost the private sector $105+ BILLION compared to $5 billion for the rest of government. And the EPA continues to make outrageous statements. It has been brought to light that in testimony to Congress last September, Administrator Lisa Jackson claimed that further controls of soot would be as beneficial to public health as finding a cure for cancer.
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new "Adopt-a-Jihadist" program Ms Farhat-Holzman’s articles routinely cause apoplexy for left leaning progressive types in Santa Cruz, CA.
Read her latest article below which quotes a satirical, imaginary letter to a Canadian group that sees no threat to freedom posed by radical Islam. The letter by British Freedom suggests that the Canadian group try out a new “Adopt-a-Jihadist” program. It’s doubtful that the politically correct or Santa Cruz progressives will get the humor.
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Laina Farhat-Holzman: Fear and loathing or analysis and perspective?
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Posted: Santa Cruz Sentinel, 04/28/2012
“There are two ways to analyze the violent eruption of global terrorist attacks that have marked the past three decades: analyze the nature of the threat and the culture supporting it, or blame it all on the evils of Western colonialism and American militarism.
“The latter analysis is the choice of the “politically correct,” who say that terrorism is as rampant in the West as it is in the Muslim world. A truth check, however, will tell us that for every Western terrorist such as Timothy McVeigh, there are hundreds almost exclusively from the Muslim world.
“If colonialism is the villain of this piece, why do ideologues only talk about Western colonialism? Why ignore that Arab Muslims and European Christians suffered under 500 years of Ottoman Turkish colonialism well before Western colonization, and how about the Muslim world in Central Asia that suffered under both Russian Tsarist and Communist colonialism?
“Arabs themselves were dreadful imperialists 700-1000 A.D. and every land they conquered is still dysfunctional today, according to Harvard economics professor, Eric Chaney: “Democratic Change in the Arab World, Past and Present,” in the April 7 Economist and Fareed Zakaria in Time, April 7. Wherever Arabs conquered, bad governance and economic development remain smothered to our day. This is even true for countries temporarily conquered but not converted to Islam by the Arabs Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy.
“Islamist terrorism is not just aimed at the West revenge for colonization, but also at Thailand Buddhist; Muslim Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia; and Nigeria, where jihadis murdered Christian church goers on Easter Sunday. Black slavery was an Arab business long before it was European.
“American deniers and apologists for Islamist terrorism have a colleague in Canada: Mira Blinkers, president of “Canadians-are-Under-No-Threat,” who has passionately denounced the treatment of “captive insurgents” her term for terrorists and thinks that they should not only be treated better, but should be integrated into Canadian society. The current object of her attention is Afghan jihadi, Ahmed Allah-Akbar.
The satirical website, British Freedom, has offered an imaginary letter from Canada’s Department of Defence, providing Ms. Blinker with a new “Adopt-a-Jihadist” program designed specifically for her. See britishfreedom.org/canada’s-new-adopt-a-jihadist-program/
“In accordance with the guidelines of this new pilot program, we have decided to release one terrorist and place him in your custody. I am pleased to inform you that your personal detainee has been selected and is scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard from Pearson International to your residence in Toronto next Thursday.
“Ahmed Allah-Akbar you can just call him Ahmed is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of complaint. In other words, the standards which you and most people of your ideological persuasion demand of civilized democracies like Israel, but not of Islamic dictatorships.
“We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home-schooling. Be warned. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills at your yoga class or while you are piloting your Cessna aircraft. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless you think that this might offend him. [Canada permits ruinous lawsuits against those who “offend” Islamists.]
“You will appreciate that Ahmed, as an Islamic fundamentalist, views females as a subhuman property without rights, including the right to refuse his sexual demands. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him and he has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress code that he will “recommend” as more appropriate attire. I’m sure that, over time, you will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the burka. Just remember that it is all part of respecting his culture and religious beliefs’ as described in your letter.”
The letter was signed by “General I. M. Perturbed.” A man after my own heart.
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of How Do You Know That?’ You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.Dr. Farhat-Holzman, www.globalthink.net
Laina Farhat-Holzman was born in Rochester, New York; received her BA from UCLA and her MA and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. She was married to an Iranian student for 15 years, lived on and off in Iran, and had two children in that marriage. She is now married to E. H. Holzman, an American businessman, ostrich rancher, and a former Baseball Coach at Stanford University.They live in Aptos, California.
