Thanks to an unnoticed provision legislators slipped into state law 20 years ago, almost two dozen union leaders in Chicago stand to walk off with a cool $56 million in pension money, the Chicago Tribune reported last week.  But only if the Illinois legislature does not repeal the provision, detailed in a lengthy report the Tribune conducted with WGN-TV.  Three of the union leaders may earn as much as $5 million. Legalized Theft No one seems to know, the Tribune reported, who tweaked state pension law to permit the looting. Or at least no one will accept responsibility.  

An honors student at a Fort Worth, Texas, high school was sent to the principal’s office after he told a fellow student that he thought homosexuality is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Dakota Ary was in his German class “when the conversation shifted to religion and homosexuality in Germany,” reported Fox News. “At some point during the conversation, he turned to a friend and said that he was a Christian and ‘being a homosexual is wrong.’” A short time later Dakota’s mother, Holly Pope, received a call from an assistant principal at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School informing her that her son would be serving an “in-school suspension,” along with a two-day full suspension, for his offense. “Dakota is a very well-grounded 14-year-old,” Pope told Fox News, adding that her son is not only an honors student, but plays on the school’s football team and is involved in his church’s youth group. “He’s been in church his whole life and he’s been taught to stand up for what he believes,” she added.

With the U.S. debt having surpassed 100 percent of gross domestic product August 3, to $14.58 trillion, it’s crudely entertaining to see how multimillionaire lawmakers in Congress and administrations both past and present find “compassionate” ways to spend ever-more of taxpayers’ money. The following is just the most recent example of a “compassionate” expenditure taxpayers don’t need. On September 10, one day before the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, a piece was published that set out conditions under which the U.S. should (and should not) provide humanitarian aid at taxpayers’ expense, humanitarian projects being by their nature philanthropic. Just three days later, the Washington Times (one among several other newspapers), ran a story describing how a compassionate George W. Bush was using his namesake institution to jumpstart an initiative combating women’s cancers (cervical and breast) in developing countries, primarily Africa, Vietnam, and Haiti, where such diseases are more rampant than usual due to the high levels of AIDS/HIV. The project is part of the “Pink Ribbon, Red Ribbon,” program, the goal of which is to “expand the services of clinics created under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR),” while the cancers are presumably still treatable.  

Former Godfathers Pizza CEO Herman Cain walked away a clear winner from the Florida Republican Party presidential straw poll September 24. He received 37 percent vote amounted, which was more than the combined percentages won by both Texas Governor Rick Perry (15 percent) and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (14 percent). Florida Governor Rick Scott announced the results and predicted that "the road to the White House runs right through Florida." “Folks, this is what you call momentum,” Cain, a former Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, said in a victory statement. “The Herman Cain Train is picking up steam.” The Florida "President 5" straw poll measured Florida party establishment support for GOP presidential candidates rather than campaign energy, as only registered party members and registered convention-goers were allowed to vote in the poll. Campaigns were not allowed to bus in supporters or buy convention tickets, as most straw polls allow. This may explain the relatively poor showing for Texas Representative Ron Paul, who has won most straw polls but placed fifth in Florida with only 10 percent of the vote.

Not too long ago, The American Spectator contributor Jeffrey Lord authored a couple of articles within which he took to task third-place Republican presidential contender Ron Paul. Because some of Paul’s most earnest defenders have already dealt with the first article in good measure (see here and here), it is on the second of these critiques of the Texas Congressman that I will set my sights. Lord’s objective, to put it bluntly, is to expose Ron Paul as a faux conservative, a less than fully honest libertarian who aspires to “remake” the conservative movement in the image of his own “metaphysically” and morally corrupt ideology. In Lord’s reimagining of the history of American conservatism, Ronald Reagan is the hero while Ron Paul is his nemesis, the “anti-Reagan.” With all due respect to Lord, I find his argument more than a bit peculiar. In order to convict Paul of the charge of being ideologically fraudulent and “metaphysically mad” — Russell Kirk’s description of choice for libertarianism — he leads his readers through a series of mazes of names and quotations.

Former TARP chairman and Senate hopeful from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren gave a shot in the arm to “progressives” everywhere this past Wednesday, with a rousing (or is it rabble-rousing?) extemporaneous speech on the virtues of taxing the rich. Her commentary quickly made the rounds on the Web and radio talk shows — and for good reason. Whatever this law professor said, she said it pretty darn well. Hey, If President Downgrade could articulate himself like that, he wouldn’t be in a bigamous relationship with a Teleprompter. Unfortunately, though, style doesn’t connote substance. And Warren’s words, while rousing, were also reality-bending. Here is what she said: I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you, uh, were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Is the Community Living Assistance Services and Support (CLASS) Act on the ropes? The long-term care provision of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), sneaked into the bill at the last minute, has long been criticized on Capitol Hill as a future budget buster; and recent moves by the Obama administration suggest that the White House, too, is not particularly enthusiastic about implementing the program. First the administration asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to zero out funding for CLASS for fiscal year 2012 despite having previously requested $120 million for the program. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) applauded the move, calling it a “good first step,” but said Congress should finish the job by repealing the CLASS Act. Then on Thursday the chief actuary of CLASS, Robert Yee, announced he would be leaving his post because “the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was closing down the office charged with implementing the program and reassigning its staff,” The Hill reports.

The navigation company OnStar is attracting strong criticism after announcing last week that it would continue to monitor drivers’ speeds and GPS locations — and sell the information to third parties such as law enforcement — even after customers end their contracts. Outrage ensued and even U.S. lawmakers have now entered the fray. OnStar is a subsidiary of General Motors, which is still partly owned by the U.S. and Canadian governments after receiving billions in bailouts Almost immediately after OnStar announced the changes to its privacy policy set to take effect in December, privacy activists and civil-liberties groups expressed concern. Indeed, the company has been deluged with bad publicity about the changes in recent days. Critics attacked the schemes as everything from “spying” to “Big Brother.”

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an AP interview on September 21 that the Obama administration will continue to support solar power. He made the statement despite the growing scandal over $528 million in loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt California solar power company Solyndra and the practical failure of myriad “alternative energy sources” such as wind and solar power. "I think the future for solar energy is bright. It's not going to be a perfect path where every project proposed is going to be built toward completion." He added that the case of Solyndra demonstrated the challenges facing solar energy industries. Other politicians, such as Governor Brown, stand firmly behind the concept of such  government-sponsored enterprises. Alternative energy, as it is commonly called, is energy that private investors have not pursued in the absence of government help. The search for such energy has been ongoing for the last 38 years, at least, when the OPEC nations embargoed oil around the time of the Yom Kippur War. Government support for alternative energy sources has existed since at least Jimmy Carter’s speech on a future of austerity while he was wearing a cardigan sweater in the White House.

Despite all the controversy surrounding what is usually referred to as the Ground Zero mosque, and the efforts put in place to halt the project in its tracks, the Islamic Cultural Center being constructed near the site of 9/11 attacks hosted a photograph exhibit on Wednesday. While the entire Islamic Center is not complete yet, the Cultural Center opened its doors for its first exhibit, which featured pictures of New York children from a variety of backgrounds lining the walls of the building. The photographer for the exhibit is Danny Goldfield, a Jewish man who said he was inspired to create the exhibit by the story of Rana Sodhi, a Sikh from India whose brother was killed in a retaliatory hate crime just four days after 9/11. The exhibit depicts children from 169 countries, and Goldfield said he hopes to find subjects representing 24 other countries to complete the project. Some of the photographs he has taken are currently being exhibited elsewhere.