h/t Glenn Beck




http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/03/15/time-to-opt-out-of-creepy-fed-ed-datamining-racket-n1534759

Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket

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• Michelle Malkin 
   

Mar 15, 2013

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Last week, I reported on the federal government's massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme.

The bad news: GOP "leadership" continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush).

The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children's academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats' grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/uncategorized/ccss-parent-opt-out-form/

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country. Echoing families across the city, Big Apple public advocate Bill de Blasio blasted the tracking database in a letter to government officials, according to the New York Daily News: "I don't want my kids' privacy bought and sold like this." On Wednesday, prompted by parental objections, Oklahoma state representatives unanimously passed House Bill 1989 -- the Student Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act -- to prohibit the release of confidential student data without the written consent of a student's parent or guardian.

As I noted in last week's column, the national Common Core student database was funded with Obama stimulus money.Grants also came from the liberal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which largely underwrote and promoted the top-down Common Core curricular scheme). A division of conservative Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. built the database infrastructure. A nonprofit startup, "inBloom, Inc.," evolved out of the strange-bedfellows partnership to operate the invasive database, which is compiling everything from health-care histories, income information and religious affiliations to voting status, blood types and homework completion.

But it gets worse. Research fellow Joy Pullmann at The Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student monitoring techniques such as "functional magnetic resonance imaging" and "using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids' wrists."

The DOE report exposes the big lie that Common Core is about raising academic standards by revealing its progressive designs to measure and track children's "competencies" in "recognizing bias in sources," "flexibility," "cultural awareness and competence," "appreciation for diversity," "empathy," "perspective taking, trust (and) service orientation."

That's right. School districts and state governments are pimping out highly personal data on children's feelings, beliefs, "biases" and "flexibility" instead of doing their own jobs imparting knowledge - or minding their own business. And yes, Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush continue to falsely defend the centralized Common Core regime as locally driven and non-coercive, while ignoring the database system's circumvention of federal student privacy laws.

Why? Edu-tech nosy-bodies are using the Common Core assessment boondoggle as a Trojan horse to collect and crunch massive amounts of personal student data for their own social justice or moneymaking ends. Reminder: Nine states have entered into contracts with inBloom: Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Louisiana and New York. Countless other vendors are salivating at the business possibilities in exploiting public school students.

Google, for example, is peddling its Gmail platform to schools in a way that will allow it to harvest and access families' information and preferences -- which can then be sold in advertising profiles to marketers. The same changes to federal student privacy law (known as FERPA) that paved the way for the Common Core tracking scheme also opened up private student information to Google. As FERPA expert Sheila Kaplan explains it, "Students are paying the cost to use Google's 'free' servers by providing access to their sensitive data and communications."

It's a Big Brother gold rush and an educational Faustian bargain. Fortunately, there is a way out. It starts with parents reasserting their rights, protecting their children and adopting that old motto from the Reagan years: JUST SAY NO.

The caliph خليفة Benedict Arnold's Layoff Bomb

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• Michelle Malkin 
   

Oct 31, 2012

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In June, a diffident and self-deluded President Obama claimed that "the private sector is doing fine." Last week, the private sector responded: Speak for yourself, buster. Who needs an "October Surprise" when the business headlines are broadcasting the imminent layoff bomb in neon lights?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Tuesday that employers issued 1,316 "mass layoff actions" (affecting 50 workers or more) in September; more than 122,000 workers were affected overall. USA Today financial reporter Matt Krantz wrote that "(m)uch of the recent layoff activity is connected to what's been the slowest period of earnings growth since the third quarter of 2009." Some necessary restructuring is underway in response to the stagnant European economy. But more and more U.S. businesses are putting the blame -- bravely and squarely -- right where it belongs: on the obstructionist policies and regulatory schemes of the blame-shifter-in-chief.

Last week, Ohio-based auto parts manufacturer Dana Holding Corp. warned employees of potential layoffs amid "looming concern" about the economy. President and CEO Roger Wood specifically mentioned the walloping burden of "increasing taxes on small businesses" and the need to "offset increased costs that are placed on us through new laws and regulations."

Case in point: Obamacare. The mandate will cost Dana Holding Corp., which employs some 24,500 workers, "approximately $24 million over the next six years in additional U.S. health care expenses." As Ohio Watchdog blogger Maggie Thurber reported, the firm's Toledo area corporate offices laid off seven white-collar employees last Friday; company insiders told her more were on the way. They are not alone.

On Tuesday, Consol Energy issued a federally mandated layoff disclosure announcing its "intent to idle its Miller Creek surface operations near Naugatuck, W.Va." The move will affect the company's Wiley Surface Mine, Wiley Creek Surface Mine, Minway Surface Mine, Minway Preparation Plant and Miller Creek Administration Group, all in Mingo County, W.Va. Despite state approval, cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and myriad other agencies, and a stellar safety record, Obama's EPA dragged its feet on the permit approval process. The impasse has forced layoffs of 145 Consol Energy employees that will hit at the end of the year. They are not alone.

In August, Robert E. Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation in Ohio, blasted the White House anti-coal agenda for the layoffs and closure of his company's mine. He told Obama water-carrying CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien that "the many regulations that (Obama) and his radical appointees and the U.S. EPA have put on the use of coal, there are dozens of them and collectively by his own energy administration, have closed 175 power plants." As O'Brien barked at her guest about purported environmental objections, Murray explained that "we cannot get permits for these mines. They are delaying the issuance of permits. If you can't get the permit, you can't have the mine. ... I created those jobs, and I put the investment in that mine. And when it came time to lay the people off, I went up personally and talked to every one of them myself to lay them off. It's a human issue."

And it's an innovation issue, too. As I reported in February, Obamacare's impending 2.3 percent medical device excise tax has already wrought havoc on the industry:

Stryker, a maker of artificial hips and knees based in Kalamazoo, Mich., is slashing 5 percent of its global workforce (an estimated 1,000 workers) this coming year to reduce costs related to Obamacare's taxes and mandates.

Covidien, a N.Y.-based surgical supplies manufacturer, recently announced layoffs of 200 American workers and plans to move some of its plant work to Mexico and Costa Rica, in part because of the coming tax hit.

Mass.-based Zoll Medical Corp., which makes defibrillators and employs some 1,800 workers in the U.S. and around the world, says the medical device tax will cost the company between $5 million and $10 million a year.

This July, Indiana's Cook Medical Inc. shelved plans to open five new plants because of the imminent medical device tax hit. They are not alone.

The heads of Koch Industries, Westgate Resorts and ASG Software Solutions have all separately informed their employees of prosperity-undermining Obama economic politics. Left-wing groups have lambasted the executives for exercising their political free speech.

But they have remained silent while the White House corruptocrats bribed federal defense contractors into delaying federally mandated layoff disclosures before the election. In a memo now being investigated on Capitol Hill, Obama promised to cover the legal fees of Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors if they ignored legal requirements to inform workers in advance about so-called sequestration cuts to the military's budget scheduled to kick in next year.

Truth suppression is a time-honored Obama tactic, of course. Remember: The administration and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill attempted to punish Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and ATT in 2010 for disclosing how the costs of Obamacare taxes were hitting their bottom lines -- even though they were simply following SEC disclosure requirements. The White House also tried to silence insurers who dared to inform their customers about how Obamacare was driving up premiums. Not this time.

The administration's bully boys don't have enough whitewash and duct tape to cover up the past, present and future devastation of the president and his economic demolition team.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/10/31/obamas_layoff_bomb
http://cowboybyte.com/14507/obamas-layoff-bomb/

What About the Camp Bastion Attack?

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• Michelle Malkin 
   

Oct 26, 2012

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Three days after the bloody 9/11 siege on our consulate in Benghazi, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. The murderous jihadists released video exactly one month ago this week showing off their training exercises in preparation for the assault. Where are the questions?

Where's the accountability? Where's the Obama administration? Where's the press? Where's the outrage?

Two heroic U.S. Marines were killed in the battle. Their names -- Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell -- have not been uttered publicly by the commander in chief. Their arrival back in the U.S., in flag-draped coffins, was not broadcast on network TV. But their brothers-in-arms did not and will not forget. And neither must we.

On September 20, John Gresham of the Defense Media Network wrote a scathing detailed breakdown of this little-noticed terrorist attack on our troops. He called it "arguably the worst day in USMC aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968." Eight irreplaceable aircraft were destroyed or put out of action by Taliban warriors dressed in U.S. combat fatigues -- amounting to "approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet," Gresham reported.

His summary is bone chilling: "A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC's response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility."

On September 21, the left-leaning magazine The Atlantic published an article on the Camp Bastion attack titled "The U.S. Suffered Its Worst Airpower Loss Since Vietnam Last Week and No One Really Noticed." A few right-leaning blogs raised troubling questions about preparedness and security.

"How did this band of radicals even manage to approach a highly advanced multi-national military base without being detected, much less force their way inside en masse?" asked Kim Zigfeld of the American Thinker. "How were they able to attack so quickly and efficiently that, even though nearly every one of them was killed in the effort, they were able to harm the mighty leathernecks more than they had been in half a century?"

National Review's Jonathan Foreman wondered whether Pakistan was behind the attack. "It seems likely that the special forces of a professional army planned the raid, and trained, advised and led the raiders -- that is if they did not actually take part in it. Those special forces would, of course, be those of Pakistan," Foreman posited. "This may sound shocking, but it would hardly be the first time that Pakistani special forces have operated in Afghanistan on behalf of Islamabad's allies and proxies."

President Obama has referred callously to the murders of our civilian diplomatic staff in Benghazi as "bumps in the road." Even more maddening, though, is the radio silence from the White House about what happened that day at Camp Bastion -- and what, if anything, Obama's Pentagon did between the last major attack on Bastion in March and the bloody siege in September.

Somehow, a band of 15 insurgents managed to penetrate the wire with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons on 9/14. Their destruction was of historic proportions. The attack came six months after U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the target of a failed suicide attack attempt at Bastion. The (UK) Sun reported at the time that an Afghani was believed to have made the deliberate attempt on Panetta after "he broke through defenses and drove a vehicle towards his aircraft. He then went past the perimeter surrounded by armed security and large concrete block guards. Disaster was only averted when the truck caught fire and crashed into a ditch on the runway close to where Mr. Panetta's jet had landed or was set to land."

Team Obama mocks GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney with snarky lines about bayonets and binders. The thin-skinned commander in chief exploits Seal Team Six to burnish his "leadership" cred. And the president's campaign surrogates have ceaselessly attacked their critics as "unpatriotic" for questioning this administration's commitment to national security.

But silence is complicity. The questions must be asked: Did politically correct rules of engagement hamper our troops' defenses? Who knew what and when? Who was behind the attackers? And what is being done to ensure our front-line defenders of freedom are able to defend themselves?

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/10/26/what_about_the_camp_bastion_attack

h/t SB

Hope Is the Thing With Feathers

OCTOBER 5, 2012 12:00 A.M.

 
Desperate Dems hide behind Big Bird.

By Michelle Malkin

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Michelle Malkin 

Mitt Romney sure ruffled a lot of feathers over his proposal to eliminate taxpayer funding for government-sponsored TV. As soon as the GOP presidential candidate singled out PBS for cuts during the presidential debate in Denver, the hysterical squawking commenced.

Left-leaning celebrities immediately erupted on Twitter. “WOW!!! No PBS!! WTF how about cutting congress’s stuff leave big bird alone,” Whoopi Goldberg fumed. “Mitt is smirky, sweaty, indignant and smug with an unsettling hint of hysteria. And he wants to kill BIG BIRD,” actress Olivia Wilde despaired. “Who picks on Big Bird!!! #bulliesthatswho,” actress Taraji Henson chimed in.

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Social-media activists called for a Million Muppet March on the National Mall to “show your support for Big Bird, Muppets, PBS and all that is good.” The grammar-challenged operatives of George Soros–funded Media Matters for America lectured “right-wing media” to be “more concerned with Americans having jobs insteading [sic] of obsessing whether or not Big Bird has one.”
Indignant PBS, which employs not-so-neutral debate moderator Jim Lehrer, issued a statement decrying Romney’s failure to “understand the value the American people place on public broadcasting and the outstanding return on investment the system delivers to our nation.” And President Obama, awakened from his beatdown-induced stupor, scurried the next morning to the safe confines of a campaign rally to mock Romney for “getting tough on Big Bird.”
The kiddie-character kerfuffle is a manufactured flap that may play well to liberals in Hollywood and Washington. But beyond the borders of La-La Land, desperate Democrats who cling childishly to archaic federal subsidies look like cartoonish buffoons. Let’s face it: The Save Big Bird brigade is comically out of touch with 21st-century realities.
In 1967, when Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act, family options for quality children’s programming were severely limited. More than four decades later, there’s a vibrant marketplace for educational broadcasting — on radio, TV, and the Internet — that teems with furry friends and information-packed shows.
PBS speaks of itself with cultish self-reverence: “For more than 40 years,” the government network chastised Romney, “Big Bird has embodied the public broadcasting mission — harnessing the power of media for the good of every citizen, regardless of where they live or their ability to pay. Our system serves as a universally accessible resource for education, history, science, arts and civil discourse.”
In reality, of course, PBS affiliates have become increasingly corporatized. As GOP senator Jim DeMint noted last year, franchises like Sesame Street “are multimillion-dollar enterprises capable of thriving in the private market. According to the 990 tax form all nonprofits are required to file, Sesame Workshop president and CEO Gary Knell received $956,513 — nearly a million dollars — in compensation in 2008. And, from 2003 to 2006, ‘Sesame Street’ made more than $211 million from toy and consumer product sales.”
Sesame Street has also become increasingly politicized. Under the Obama administration, Elmo has lobbied for the FCC’s national broadband plan and the first lady’s Big Nanny nutrition bill. Investigative journalist James O’Keefe caught former NPR exec Ron Schiller on tape trashing the Tea Party as “racist” and “Islamophobic.” And the official PBS Twitter account sent a special shout-out to radical leftist group Move On last year for leading the government-media rescue charge. Moreover, as I’ve previously reported, NPR and PBS have no problem raising money from corporations and left-wing philanthropists, including billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Institute gave $1.8 million to pay for at least 100 journalists at NPR member radio stations in all 50 states over the next three years.
President Obama sneered at Romney for daring to mention PBS subsidies in the context of deficit reduction. But Obama’s own Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction commission singled out Corporation for Public Broadcasting spending. “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the panel noted after Obama proposed hiking yearly appropriations to $450 million in 2012. Doing away with the appropriation would save nearly $500 million in 2015 alone. Over ten years, those savings would total $5 billion (or roughly ten Solyndras). In these tough times, that’s more than chump change and child’s play.
Romney’s right: It’s time for government media to grow up and get off the dole. It’s time for taxpayers to flip the Bird.
— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. © 2012 Creators.com

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/329501/hope-thing-feathers-michelle-malkin

Michelle Malkin: I Was Amused By Hair-Pulling Over The caliph خليفة Benedict Arnold’s ‘Phoned-In’ Debate Performance

VIDEO

by Alex Alvarez | 8:13 am, October 4th, 2012

» 3 comments

Michelle Malkin appeared on Thursday morning’s edition of Fox & Friends to weigh in on the previous night’s presidential debate, saying she was amused by the “hair-pulling” following what she viewed as the President’s “phoned-in” performance.

She felt the debate served as a reminder of how “disengaged” the President, pointing in particular to independent and undecided voters. HostSteve Doocy, meanwhile, felt that the President came across as “thin-skinned,” and had attempted to tell moderator Jim Lehrer how to do his job. Malkin then credited Romney for keeping Obama on track and sticking to the matter at hand, something Gretchen Carlson referred to as the “headline of the night.”

The whole crew felt Romney had quite a “zinger” when it came to talking about picking the “losers” in business. Talk then moved on to the President thinking he had the AARP “in his pocket,” only to have the organization come out and say they’re not taking sides.

Everyone then had a laugh over “Hollyweird”‘s Twitter response to the President’s performance.

Have a look at what she had to say, via Fox News:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/michelle-malkin-i-was-amused-by-hair-pulling-over-obamas-phoned-in-debate-performance/

DEBATE QUESTIONS The caliph خليفة Benedict Arnold WON'T BE ASKED

 Malkin   - Guest Columnist 

http://michellemalkin.com/

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

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The media's goal tonight is to make Romney look like a greedy capitalist pig. I challenge the lapdog media to prove me wrong.

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On Wednesday night, left-leaning TV anchor Jim Lehrer of government-supported PBS will moderate the first 90-minute presidential debate in Denver. The forum will focus on domestic policy. Lehrer alone will determine the topics and questions for six 15-minute segments, and then he will control an "open discussion" for each segment.
We know the liberal media bias drill: Make the Republican candidate look like a scary extremist on social issues and a greedy capitalist pig on economic issues. Avoid the Democratic incumbent's record of failure. Run out the clock. Thank you and good night.
Here's my starter list of domestic policy debate topics and related questions that should be asked, but probably won't be. Lapdog media, please go ahead and prove me wrong:
- Border security/homeland security. On Tuesday morning, one Border Patrol agent was gunned down and another wounded at our southern border in Naco, Arizona. The agents were assigned to the station recently named after Brian Terry, the heroic Border Patrol agent shot and killed nearly two years ago by drug cartel thugs wielding weapons tied to the Operation Fast and Furious scandal.
After the Obama administration initially denied that U.S. Border Patrol agents were forced to fire on criminal attackers with non-lethal ammo, court records obtained by the Arizona Daily Star showed that Terry and our front-line protectors were indeed under deadly standing orders to use beanbag rounds before using live ammunition.
In December, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General reported that Border Patrol agent "training, deployed weapons, and rules of engagement have not kept pace with the increased violence on the border." Over the past five years, the IG found, "(v)iolence has significantly increased against Border Patrol agents. Since 2007, assaults on agents have risen more than 35 percent, including 13 deaths."
Is the beanbag order still in place today?
Why has the Terry family been forced to file a federal lawsuit to obtain justice?
If the buck stops at the top, why does Attorney General Eric Holder still have a job after years of official DOJ obstruction and falsehoods during the Fast and Furious investigations?
And as commander in chief, what exactly are you doing to ensure that the men and women currently assigned to protect our borders are adequately armed and fully supported in their mission to defend American sovereignty and homeland security?
- Integrity in government. You famously declared, "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." Yet, the very first act of your administration was to violate your transparency pledge to allow full, public viewing of all legislation five days before you signed it.
In fact, the White House didn't even post the very first bill you signed -- the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Act -- until after you signed it.
You failed to televise healthcare negotiations as promised. You cut endless backroom deals protected from public scrutiny. In addition, your administration has routinely evaded disclosure law by meeting with lobbyists off the books at DC-area coffee houses and private townhouses, where Secret Service background checks and login routines are abandoned.
In August, House GOP investigators unearthed communications at the Department of Energy urging officials to use their personal email accounts instead of government accounts to discuss the massive Solyndra green loan failure -- to protect themselves from subpoenas.
And last week, Bloomberg News reported that 19 out of 20 cabinet-level agencies under your administration have failed to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. "During the first year of the administration," the news service found, "cabinet agencies employed exemptions 466,402 times, a 50 percent jump from the last year of the presidency of George W. Bush." Those exemptions remain at levels higher than Bush.
How, exactly, can you claim to have run the most transparent administration ever based on your actual record?
- Auto bailout. Your campaign touts the "success" of the government takeover of the auto industry as one of your proudest accomplishments. In 2010, you bragged that "American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM, and that's a good thing."
Yet, your Treasury Department won't take up GM's recent offer to repurchase 200 million of the roughly 500 million shares the U.S. holds -- because it would incur a $15 billion loss to taxpayers right before the election. GM still owes nearly $30 billion of the $50 billion it received, and its lending arm still owes nearly $15 billion of the more than $17 billion it received. Foreign workers and overseas plants have soaked up billions of American bailout tax dollars. But some 20,000 Delphi non-union workers saw their pensions eroded and health benefits disappear as part of the deal you cut with United Auto Workers.
How are Delphi workers, bondholders, car dealers and taxpayers better off now than they were before the Government Motors bailout given the actual record? If this is your proudest accomplishment, why on earth would reality-based voters want you back in the driver's seat?

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

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Michelle Malkin (malkinblog@gmail.com) is author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
This column is printed with permission. Opinions expressed in 'Perspectives' columns published by OneNewsNow.com are the sole responsibility of the article's author(s), or of the person(s) or organization(s) quoted therein, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff or management of, or advertisers who support the American Family News Network, OneNewsNow.com, our parent organization or its other affiliates.

http://onenewsnow.com/perspectives/michelle-malkin/2012/10/03/debate-questions-obama-wont-be-asked

h/t CN