LOESCH: We’re going to have more on the terror attack in Garland, Texas, last night. I’m glad that they had security, well-thought-out security for that event. And I was reading an article just the other day where author Peter Schweizer, whose new book Clinton Cash — and this book is just, is really making a lot of people uncomfortable — Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. I was reading the other day that Peter Schweizer who, the author who joins us by phone right now, was very smart and ended up getting himself security. And I know that Peter, first off, thanks so much for joining me. I know you don’t want to talk too much about it, but there is that, there is always that concern for anyone who goes up against the Clinton machine that they could be Vince Fostered, and I’m sure that that was something that you took into consideration.
SCHWEIZER: Well, Dana, first of all thanks for having me on the show. I always love doing it. Yeah, I mean look — there are security concerns that arise in these kinds of situations. You know, you don’t like to go into too much detail, there were some things that were going on that we felt needed to be addressed. The decision on security wasn’t actually made by me, it was made by board members of Government Accountability Institute, and you know, it’s I think showing an abundance of caution. The reality is we’ve touched on a major nerve within the Clinton camp. They are very, very upset, and they are pulling out all the stops to attack me in an effort to kill this book off.
Oh, please. The media is finding so much wrong with this book, it’s a wonder people don’t ask for their money back.
Though he has yet to officially declare his bid for president, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is frequenting early primary states and hinting at what he would do if elected to the White House. In a recent interview with Radio Iowa, Walker said he would champion a federal version of the controversial ‘right-to-work’ law he signed earlier this year.
“As much as I think the federal government should get out of most of what it’s in right now, I think establishing fundamental freedoms for the American people is a legitimate thing and that would be something that would provide that opportunity in the other half of America to people who don’t have those opportunities today,” he said.
With Walker’s blessing, Wisconsin became the 25th state to pass a so-called ‘right-to-work,’ which bans workplaces that have voted to unionize from collecting mandatory dues to support their collective bargaining efforts. Since then, the state’s union membership has been decimated. Two-thirds of the state’s members of American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have dropped out, causing membership to plummet from 63,000 to less than 20,000.
Governor Walker’s pledge to bring this policy to the “other half of America” would exacerbate the existing decline in union membership that began in the late 1960s and sped up in the 1980s, and would hit hardest the country’s few remaining labor strongholds: Kentucky, New York, California, Alaska and West Virginia. With the sharp falling off of union membership comes increasing economic inequality and a drop in middle class incomes. Several studies have also found that ‘right-to-work’ laws result in lower wages and a lower likelihood of health care and pensions for all workers, both union and non-union.
As new ‘right-to-work’ bills come up for debate in Maine, Illinois, Ohio and other states, Walker vowed to aid those efforts if elected in 2016 by governing the US as he has governed Wisconsin.
“Really what we did wasn’t just fight unions,” he said. “It was fight the stranglehold that big government special interests had on state and local governments. I think in Washington we need that even more.”
Hundreds of guitar-toting Texans gathered at a bridge in downtown Dallas on Sunday to deliver a message that the streets would be a lot safer if people packed musical instruments instead of firearms. Many of them are gun owners, but the organizer, Kyle Reynolds, 46, explains, “They just think the open carry thing is crazy.” According… Continue reading “Open carry guitar rally returns to Dallas”→
I keep promising myself I won’t ever watch Bill Maher’s “Real Time” again — but I keep getting sucked in. This time, I had to watch Dan “Mr. Campbell Brown” Senor (the man who told us so many lies about Iraq) spreading misleading lies about the amount of money spent per pupil in Baltimore schools.
There is no single argument that is more likely to give me an aneurysm.
Back when I was a newspaper editor, I assigned a reporter to do a “tale of two school districts” story. She came back with a fairy tale. “Well, you see, the poor district spends as much per pupil as the wealthy one, so they must be squandering the money. They even have the same amount of books in their school libraries!”
I looked at her. Dear sweet Jesus, but reporters are lazy. “What is the average age of the books in their library?” I asked. She looked at me: “I… don’t know.” I told her to go back to the district and find out. Instead, she went to the managing editor and said I was being mean to her. She never wrote the story. (But she did end up getting a PR job with the wealthy district, which was more appropriate.)
Here’s the thing: You never, ever get an accurate view of school district funding by dividing the budget total by the number of pupils. Republicans have been using this trick for a long time, and it’s a lie. You know why?
Because poor districts get a lot of federal funds that are for specific remedial services and things like school lunches. (In a city like Baltimore, almost everyone qualifies for school lunches.) You have to subtract all those dedicated funding streams from the budget before you can get an idea of actual expenditure per pupil — and even then, there are other variables.
After the Census Bureau reported that Baltimore was the second-highest per pupil expenditure, the Baltimore Sun clarified:
The [Census Bureau] per-pupil expenditures were calculated based on taking the districts’ current spending on day-to-day operations and deducting payments to charter schools and capital funding. The remaining money was divided by the number of students enrolled in traditional schools. The amounts were not adjusted for inflation.
Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso said the city’s total could have reflected large infusions of cash to the district, including millions in federal stimulus dollars and federal Race to the Top funds.
He also credited state lawmakers for maintaining funding.
“As many states pulled back on spending, with many districts losing funding, Maryland held the line on education, which is why you see three districts at or near the top,” he said.
On Monday, the school board passed a $1.2 billion budget that includes per-pupil funding of $5,190. That amount is different from what the Census Bureau reported because the school system takes out other expenses, such as transportation costs and special-education services, before allocating money to individual schools. In addition, the school system provides extra funding for certain groups of students, such as those in special education and dropout-prevention programs.
But Mr. Campbell Brown probably knows this, he and his charter-cheering wife. This is the Republican talking point of the week: “Baltimore gets All That Money, and it still hasn’t worked!”
Like David Brooks did (via Ed Kilgore), writing last week about Freddie Gray’s lack of moral fiber:
Since 1980 federal antipoverty spending has exploded. As Robert Samuelson of The Washington Post has pointed out, in 2013 the federal government spent nearly $14,000 per poor person. If you simply took that money and handed it to the poor, a family of four would have a household income roughly twice the poverty rate.
Yet over the last 30 years the poverty rate has scarcely changed.
If NYT columnists were expected to be accurate when they talked about government programs, Brooks would have been forced to tell readers that around 40 percent of these payments are Medicaid payments that go directly to doctors and other health care providers. We pay twice as much per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries, with little to show in the way of outcomes. We can think of these high health care costs as a generous payment to the poor, but what this actually means is that every time David Brooks’ cardiologist neighbor raises his fees, David Brooks will complain about how we are being too generous to the poor.
The other point that an honest columnist would be forced to make is that the vast majority of these payments do not go to people who are below the poverty line and therefore don’t count in the denominator for his “poor person” calculation. The cutoff for Medicaid is well above the poverty level in most states. The same is true for food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and most of the other programs that make up Brooks’ $14,000 per person figure. In other words, he has taken the spending that goes to a much larger population and divided it by the number of people who are classified as poor.
If Brooks actually wants to tell readers what we spend on poor people, it’s not hard to find the data. The average family of three on TANF gets less than $500 a month. The average food stamp benefit is $133 per person. If low income people are working, they can get around $5,000 a year from the EITC for a single person with two children at the poverty level. (They would get less at lower income levels.)
These programs account for the vast majority of federal government payments to poor people. It won’t get you anywhere near David Brooks’ $14,000 per person per year, but why spoil a good story with facts?
There are many ways to play with data. Now that everyone’s seen Baltimore burning on our teevee screens, expect to see them all on display.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) Isn’t that nice! In a one-on-one interview with The Brody File, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina says God gives us all gifts. Her mother used to say to her, ‘What you are is God’s gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God.’ Fiorina remembers the lesson from those… Continue reading “That clown car’s getting crowded”→
I’m not quite sure if we should take this at face value. Who knows? In light of her recent statement about how people in the governor’s office knew about the lane closures, it seems more like a very strong hint that she’s going to talk if no one coughs up enough money for her defense:
The political operative who wrote New Jersey’s new state slogan, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” is ready to be rewarded for her work.
“This fund will aid in ensuring truth and justice prevails,” reads the appeal for money by Bridget Anne Kelly at the website of her new legal defense fund, which takes credit cards—“$25 minimum donation”—but warns that refunds are out of the question.
Kelly, former deputy chief of staff to Governor Chris Christie, joined the New Jersey Indicted Public Officials Hall of Infamy on Friday along with another former member of Christie’s inner circle, Bill Baroni.
They are, naturally, entitled to a presumption of innocence. Whether that presumption makes it less presumptuous to ask for money on the day you’re charged is a different question, especially within the burgeoning “crowdfunding” industry, which seems to know few bounds of taste or discretion.
[…] Kelly, who poses with her four children in a photo on her legal defense fund website, hasn’t denied writing the “time for some problems” e-mail. She didn’t directly address it at her press conference on Friday.
She did tell reporters that “some of my off-handed attempts at sarcasm and humor were not as witty as they were intended to be.” So much for that new job at “Saturday Night Live.”
