When Deric Feacher left Winter Haven, Fla. in 1995 to study at Bethune-Cookman College, he never imagined that he’d end up walking in Mary McLeod Bethune’s footsteps . . . back in his own hometown. Yet, this fall, Feacher is helping launch a new charter school in Winter Haven that has a lot in common with the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls that Bethune started in 1904.

Like Bethune’s academy, New Beginnings High School targets a disadvantaged student population often left behind by the conventional school system. It seeks to help at-risk students acquire both higher learning and practical job skills. It tries to cultivate in its students a determination to overcome all obstacles, even if that means putting in an extra-long day.

And, sadly, it too has had to contend with naysayers.

Twice New Beginnings’ application was considered by the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee. And twice the committee voted to deny New Beginnings’ application.

Apparently, some of the review committee’s unease stemmed from a concern about whether the charter school would reduce the “regular” school district’s student population (and its corresponding state funding). For example, in its response to New Beginnings’ application, the review committee asked:

• “Is the proposed school planning to recruit students who are currently in traditional PCSB schools?”; and
• “What % of the charter school’s total population is projected to come from currently enrolled students?”

While it is hard to imagine that these two questions would rank high on prospective parents’ list of concerns, Feacher and his colleagues painstakingly responded to these and other inquiries. In time, they managed to convince the Polk County School Board to overrule the charter school review committee and approve New Beginnings High’s application.

(more…)

One of my life’s maxims is:

Education and knowledge are often mutually exclusive.

With the Barack Obama Administration’s all-out assault on the for-profit higher education industry, one of the books I have long intended to write is becoming ever more true:

College IS for Dummies.

We the People who closely follow politics have assuredly noticed an incessant trend on Talking Head TV.  Very often the Leftist debater is – a college professor.  Often teaching some very Leftist, completely pointless “scholastic” field.

For instance, National Review’s John Derbyshire rightly calls for an end to all collegiate programs that end in the word “Studies.”  Do a little Web search, and you’ll quickly reach the same conclusion.

The point being – college campuses are rife with hard Left ideologues posing as “educators.” Hiding there because their worldview doesn’t jibe with Reality.

And because they are paid handsomely to spout utter nonsense to the next generations – at a $100,000+ premium to the victims…I mean students.

The new meat can’t even get through orientation – the indoctrination is already underway.

Is this claptrap Leftist racket worth your time and considerable coin?  Hardly.

(more…)

**Updated, bumped.

Democrat Dov Hikind, State Assemblyman for District 48 (Brooklyn), endorsing Republican Bob Turner for U.S. Congress in New York’s 9th District, moments ago:

A Siena poll released earlier today showed Turner with a 6-point lead over Democrat rival David Weprin, and indicated that 32% of the district’s Democrats intend to vote for the Republican.

Just before the press conference, Turner spoke to me about the issues driving the election.

“I think people are looking at this as a referendum on the president’s policies, that cover jobs, the economy, and–very strongly–the State of Israel, how Obama’s treatment of that impacts the voters of this district,” he said. (more…)

It is not uncommon to hear of lawsuits being filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Citizens and states might sue the EPA for overregulation of an industry that could lead to lost jobs and revenues.  Green groups might sue the EPA because they feel it hasn’t done enough to over-regulate businesses or to expand enforcement of current environmental laws.

But it is important to note that in many cases the EPA and Treasury Department are required to award attorney’s fees to those plaintiffs that successfully dispute the EPA.  And because the Justice Department is what defends the EPA in court cases, your tax dollars are what are used to pay the opposing sides’ attorneys.

Facts on just how much taxpayer money is spent on these environmental court cases and who benefits wasn’t well known until Senators Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and David Vitter, R-La., and a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), shed some light on the subject.

The GAO report found that in addition to attorney’s fees awarded, the Justice Department spent at least $43 million in taxpayer dollars defending EPA in court from 1998 to 2010.  That doesn’t include the fact that Treasury paid about $14.2 million from fiscal year 2003 through 2010 and the EPA paid approximately $1.4 million from fiscal year 2006 through 2010.

Because most people don’t have millions of dollars on hand to sue the EPA if need be, these statutes were put into place so citizens and industries could afford to bring charges against the federal government.  However, less than 20 percent of awarded money has been given to private industries, citizens, state agencies and associations combined.  This begs the question, what were the largest beneficiaries of these payouts?

The three primary beneficiaries from 1998 to 2010 were: Sierra Club, Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).  Total amounts these organizations received from all attorney fees paid to EPA litigants combined was at least 41 percent of the total payouts.  Earthjustice alone received 32 percent, as indicated by this report.

Go figure that the primary beneficiaries of statutes set to protect citizens and private industries would instead be awarded to environmental groups that want nothing more than to extend the power and grasp of the federal government’s EPA.

(more…)

Last night the President started his reelection campaign for real by setting up the Republican Party to take a fall.  Today he takes that act on the road.

Allow me to put the entire speech into two sentences, “Hey Republicans,  Pass my bill or its your fault the American people are out of work. If you do not pass it, I will demonize you on my way to winning reelection.” It’s  interesting that Obama started and ended his speech, saying that his proposal was not political.  Understand that everything he said between those two declarations was 100% political.

This was not the new creative approach we were promised a month ago, before his vacation. There was nothing new in his plan. In fact halfway through I felt we were no longer watching live TV and  someone slipped a DVD of Barack Obama’s Greatest Hits into my player.  Obama is fully aware that the bulk of his plan will be thrown into the dustbin.  There is no way way it gets passed by either the House or the Senate, but he will use its failure to campaign against his chosen 2012 opponent  the Republican Party, more specially that horrible tea party who stubbornly prevents the GOP from agreeing with the president about anything.

By my count, Seventeen times during the speech, the President urged congress to pass this bill now. The problem is there is no bill…nothing in writing, no details and we have to wait two weeks to find out how the $450 Billion dollar stimulus plan is going to be paid for.

It’s like a realtor saying buy this house now, without a title or appraisal report, heck without even letting you inside. But there is the realtor holding the contract in his hand telling you to sign the contract to buy the house immediately, even before you arrange for financing. Would you buy that house? Or would you tell the realtor that he is crazier than a loon?  But that was the deal the President offered the American people last night.

Below is the text of the President’s speech as delivered, as is the tradition of this site, the President’s words are in black, my comments are in red.

(more…)

Maxine Waters’s startling call for a trillion-dollar jobs bill this past week sent shudders down the spines of Democrats–for more than one reason. In addition to her ubertransparency about the progressives’ Keynesian desire to heap debt upon debt, you have to wonder if they’re hoping no one remembers what happened almost exactly one year ago this week.

It was September 16, 2010, when President Obama signed into law the Democrats’ Small Business Jobs Bill, a behemoth lending program in the mold of the TARP bailouts with a soaring price tag–and even more soaring promises from the promoters of this spending.

Clocking in at a sobering $30-billion, The Small Business Jobs Act was touted as the last, best chance for the Democrats to show the country how their solutions would restore our economy’s strength. The premise was that the Treasury would flood banks with capital, in the hopes that they would lend the money to small businesses–despite the lack of any requirements for banks to use this money to lend.

Some of the claims made exactly one year ago this month, as part of the full-court-press marketing for The Bill to End All Jobs Woes:

“Democrats estimate the measure could create 500,000 new jobs,” one reporter noted in September of 2010.

From the Democrats’ House Committee on Financial Services website:

From the Associated Press:

Union activists aren’t backing off demands to work at a new Washington state grain terminal after hundreds of Longshore workers stormed the facility, overwhelmed guards and dumped grain.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton issued a preliminary injunction to restrict union activity, saying there was no defense for the aggressive tactics used in recent days.

Workers have been battling for the right to work at the new terminal in Longview. Protesters twice blocked the pathway of a train carrying grain to the terminal at the Port of Longview on Wednesday, and on Thursday hundreds of carried out the aggressive raid, police said.

The dispute halted work at four other Washington ports, including Seattle, on Thursday as hundreds of longshoremen refused to show up or walked off the job.

(more…)

Last week, in Washington, DC, I attended what is is expected to be the last hearing on the Pigford settlement–Judge Paul Friedman, presiding.

Judge Friedman has been in charge of the scandal-infested case since it was conceived during the Clinton Administration. He has overseen a process that has funneled billions of dollars to lawyers, bureaucrats and fraudsters who have never farmed a day in their lives, leaving behind many black farmers who suffered actual racial discrimination by the USDA.

Pigford is an interesting bit of legal chicanery. It works on two different levels: one a false cover story, the other the behind-the-scenes legal reality.

In order for Pigford to proceed, there needs to be a public perception that Pigford is helping poor black farmers. That is the constant public drumbeat, and it works because it plays on people’s natural sympathy with the plight of those black farmers who were, in fact, hurt by the government.

Then there’s the actual legal mechanism, including the “attempted to farm” bamboozle, through which people who were never actually farmers have come forward to claim $50,000 payouts as part of an expanded class of beneficiaries that Friedman certified. (more…)

Herman Cain probably had the best reaction to the President’s speech: “We waited 30 months for this?”

My reaction yesterday was mixed. In some sense, I was almost embarrassed for the President. He demanded a speech to a joint session of Congress and then produced a list of recycled (regurgitated might be a better word) Keynesian gimmicks.

But I was also angry. Tens of millions of Americans are suffering, but Obama is unwilling to admit big government isn’t working. I don’t know whether it’s because of ideological blindness or short-term politics, but it’s a tragedy that ordinary people are hurting because of his mistakes.

The Wall Street Journal this morning offered a similar response, but said it in a nicer way.

This is not to say that Mr. Obama hasn’t made any intellectual progress across his 32 months in office. He now admits the damage that overregulation can do, though he can’t do much to stop it without repealing his own legislative achievements. He now acts as if he believes that taxes matter to investment and hiring, at least for the next year. And he now sees the wisdom of fiscal discipline, albeit starting only in 2013. Yet the underlying theory and practice of the familiar ideas that the President proposed last night are those of the government conjurer. More targeted, temporary tax cuts; more spending now with promises of restraint later; the fifth (or is it sixth?) plan to reduce housing foreclosures; and more public works spending, though this time we’re told the projects really will be shovel-ready.

And let’s also note that Obama had the gall to demand that Congress immediately enact his plan – even though he hasn’t actually produced anything on paper!

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Barack Obama’s jobs speech, the chances of his proposal passing Congress and how the markets will react.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Obama jobs speech transcript: Full text
Obama gives campaign speech to liberals
Jobs plan deja vu
FACT CHECK: Obama’s jobs plan paid for? Seems not
Yes, It’s True: Ben & Jerry’s Introduces ‘Schweddy Balls’ Ice Cream Flavor

Follow Brad on Twitter
Follow Ben on Twitter
Follow Francis on Twitter

The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.

Michael Barone in The Examiner:

Barack Obama looked and sounded angry in his speech to the joint session of Congress. He bitterly assailed one straw man after another and made reference to a grab bag of proposals which would cost something on the order of $450 billion—assuring us on the one hand that they all had been supported by Republicans as well as Democrats in the past and suggesting that somehow they are going to turn the economy around. He called for further cuts in the payroll tax (which if continued indefinitely would undermine the case of Social Security as something people have earned rather than a form of welfare) and for a further extension of unemployment insurance (perhaps justifiable on humanitarian grounds, but sure to at least marginally raise the unemployment rate over what it would otherwise be).

He called for a tax credit for hiring the long-term unemployed (unfortunately, these things can be gamed). He gave a veiled plug for his pet project of high-speed rail (a real dud) and for infrastructure spending generally (but didn’t he learn that there aren’t really any shovel-ready projects?). He called for a school modernization program (will it result in more jobs than the Seattle weatherization program that cost $22 million and produced 14 jobs?) and for funding more teacher jobs (a political payoff to the teacher unions which together with other unions gave Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle). “We’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it would do for the country.”

Yeah, sure. Like the screening process that produced that $535,000,000 loan guarantee to now-bankrupt Solyndra. And Congress should pass the free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Except that Congress can’t, because Obama hasn’t sent them up there yet in his 961 days as president.

(more…)

Republican Bob Turner holds a 6-point lead over Democrat rival David Weprin, 50-44, in the race to replace Anthony Weiner in New York’s 9th congressional district, as the campaign heads into its final days ahead of the special election on Tuesday, September 13.

The lead is significant, outside the poll’s 3-point margin of error, and suggests that Turner heads into Tuesday’s contest as the slim favorite.

Turner has surged 12 points in the past several weeks to overtake his rival, amidst a flurry of endorsements from Democrats, including former New York City mayor Ed Koch. President Barack Obama’s poor treatment of Israel and his failing economic policies are key factors in the race.

The poll follows news of Democratic disarray, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee scrapped an expensive television ad showing a corporate jet flying low over New York City, just a few days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Follow BigGovernment.com for continuing coverage…

Only a week into the job, Washington, D.C. mayor Vincent Gray’s deputy chief of staff resigned from her position after admitting she committed what appears to constitute voter fraud. The resignation of Andrea “Andi” Pringle comes as several U.S. states initiate a much-needed crackdown on rampant electoral fraud.

Pringle acknowledged she voted in the September 2010 primary election in the District of Columbia even though she was residing at that time in Montgomery County, Maryland. The county abuts the District. In her resignation letter Pringle said she was quitting because she had “become a distraction from the important work of” Gray’s administration, the Washington Times reports.

Andrea Pringle (photo by Alan Suderman, Washington City Paper)

Like Mayor Gray, Pringle is a Democrat. She was campaign manager for former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) when she ran for president in 2004. Barack Obama helped to elect Braun to the U.S. Senate in 1992 when he ran a successful get-out-the-vote effort for ACORN unit Project Vote.

Pringle worked on both of Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and for his group called the National Rainbow Coalition.

(more…)

On Sunday, September 3, in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, Tea Partiers marched with the Wheeling Township Republicans at the town’s Labor Day Parade. Upon passing the home of AFL-CIO member and retired Buffalo Grove Fire Department Lt. Larry Andres’s house, they were harassed by Andres and his friends watching the parade at his property on Bernard Avenue.

Lt. Andres and his comrades, clutching overflowing plastic cups and wearing stickers to support Democratic candidate Brad Schneider, shouted “Republican-free zone….Go union!!” and the sexually explicit epithet, “move along Tea-baggers!!!”

Lt. Andres, a pillar of the Buffalo Grove community, was given a “lavish” retirement ceremony in 2007, which included the presentation of an American flag from Buffalo Grove fire chief Tim Sashko. He has been quoted as leaving the public sector at age 56 in 2007 to pursue an acting career in a “Scrooge” play.

We stopped to find out why these individuals were so hostile to the Tea Partiers marching in the parade, but all we could get out of these goons were the usual responses, “They [the Tea Parties] breed hate….They are against everything we stand for.” But when questioned about any specific examples, these agitants were, as usual, not prepared to give a coherent answer. You can see how things went downhill quickly, in the following video.

Is this an example of how the Tea Party “breeds hate,” or the how the unions do?

(more…)

While the KXAN television news video below paints a graphic portrait of the damage wrought by wildfires in the Texas Hill Country east of Austin during the past two weeks, it makes no mention of three blameworthy factors that might have played pivotal roles in reducing the size and scope of this red-hot disaster.

The three factors appear below:

First, there’s the lack of enough firefighting air tankers. One could blame President Barack Obama for this, according to a Human Events report Wednesday, because someone in his administration grounded nearly half of the federal government’s firefighting air tankers after a contract dispute with Aero Union just weeks before wildfires swept through the Lone Star State. That decision, no doubt, left fewer resources available to Gov. Rick Perry and his team to fight the fires.

(more…)

Yeah, it isn’t working.

For the past several weeks, as the economic situation has deteriorated, the Obama Administration has shouted that they “get it,” they would have a plan, finally. Obama had two years with complete Democrat control of government and didn’t do anything to turn around the economy but now, when he is facing reelection, he would finally reveal the “grand plan” to get America working again. There was a bus tour, a vacation and some disagreement over a specific night. All that is behind us. Tonight we would get the vision.

So, how did that work out? Comments from Breitbart-opolis below the fold.

(more…)

Okay, this is probably what you most want to talk about tonight. The NFL season kicks off Green Bay v. New Orleans. (If you want to talk about “The Speech”, it’s right below this post.)