It’s Friday, August 3rd, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of the WSJ, Jay Richards and James Robison, a Roman Catholic and an Evangelical Christian detail the Leftist conspiracy we’ve all known about for some time:

The Chicken Inquisition

The campaign against Chick-fil-A is an attack on religious liberty.

 

Actually, Mr. Cathy said nothing against homosexualtiy, only that he supported the Biblical definition of marriage.

The campaign against Chick-fil-A may be a more ominous attack on religious freedom than the Affordable Care Act’s mandates. ObamaCare would force millions of Americans to fund actions they find morally reprehensible but leaves them free to denounce it. The chicken inquisition, by contrast, directly targets religious speech itself.

Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy recently dared to describe his views on marriage during a radio program. “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,'” he said. “I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is about.”

For this, activist organizations are trying to brand Chick-fil-A as “anti-gay” and intimidate other businesspeople into thinking twice before exercising their freedom of speech.

The agitators chose a most improbable villain. Dan Cathy is the son of the 91-year-old founder of the company, S. Truett Cathy. Truett is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who is also a committed Christian. His fast-food chain is famous not only for tasty chicken sandwiches but also for being closed on Sundays. The Cathys don’t think of their company as a “Christian company,” but they have sought to run their business on “biblical principles.” This gives them a special interest in families.

“We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit,” Mr. Cathy explained recently in an interview with the Baptist Press. “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

In virtually every culture, marriage is an institution involving a public commitment between a man and a woman. The complementary nature of men and women points to the unique purpose of marriage: to bear and raise children. One can recognize this fact and so conclude that “same-sex marriage” is an oxymoron—without being “anti-gay.”

Mr. Cathy and many other Americans see marriage as a sacred institution. As a result, the campaign against Mr. Cathy is not just an attack on speech but on religious speech.

Irresponsible parties have referred to Chick-fil-A’s “discrimination” and “anti-gay policies.” There are no such policies. Gay customers and employees are not tossed out of Chick-fil-A restaurants. Mr. Cathy has expressed no animosity toward gays. He has not even referred to same-sex marriage.

He has simply articulated the historical Christian view of marriage, the same one President Obama endorsed until just a couple of months ago. (You know, when he still pretended to be a Christian!)  For that thought crime, Mr. Cathy is now the target of a conspiracy of intimidation.

Most disturbing is the behavior of politicians like Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who have joined the crusade. As soon as the controversy emerged, these officials announced plans to hinder Chick-fil-A from operating or expanding in their fiefdoms (though Mr. Menino seems to have retreated).

Even some on the left have seen this for what it is: an attempt by government officials to punish a company because of the religious views of its president. In response to the Chicago alderman who said he would prevent Chick-fil-A from expanding in his area, Adam Schwartz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, declared that “the government can regulate discrimination in employment or against customers, but what the government cannot do is to punish someone for their words. When an alderman refuses to allow a business to open because its owner has expressed a viewpoint the government disagrees with, the government is practicing viewpoint discrimination.”

Americans are free to eat or not to eat at Chick-fil-A. But we need to push back strongly against attacks on this company. If you’re concerned, we hope you’ll join us and hundreds of thousands of other Americans this week by giving Chick-fil-A your business. Defending freedom of speech never tasted so good.

And how did America respond?

Chick-Fil-A Breaks World Sales Record

 

So you go on a have your kiss-ins and counter-demonstrations, sonny, and….

And neither do real Americans.

In a related item, courtesy of Townhall.com, though NBC and ABC felt obliged to note the largest grassroots demonstration in American history, the network that brought us Rathergate and rendered the North Vietnamese greater service than a thousand Hanoi Janes found more important stories to report:

CBS Evening News Ignores Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day

 

On Aug. 1, CBS Evening News ignored the massive crowds that turned out that day at Chick-Fil-A restaurants around the nation in support of traditional marriage, free speech, or simply tasty fast food. ABC and NBC, by contrast, covered “Chick-Fil-AAppreciation Day” with full and surprisingly respectful reports on their evening newscasts.

The August 1 episode of CBS Evening News completely failed to mention the massive crowds at Chick-Fil-A restaurants across the country. And it’s not as though the network was unaware of it. CBSNews.com mentioned Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day (without providing video), reporter Stephanie Condon treated the event as an inside-the-beltway political affair, calling it a “rallying point for conservative pols.” The site also featured commentary from writer Erik Sherman, arguing that Chick-fil-A’s “brand perception” took a major hit because of Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy’s remarks. (Any more major hits like yesterday, and Chick-Fil-A’s sales will surpass Apple’s!)

NBC Nightly News showed five separate quick clips of protestors against Chick-fil-A, but showed numerous images of massive crowds in support of Chick-fil-A. Reporter John Yang noted: “From Texas to Pennsylvania to Chicago, people lined up in big numbers to support a fast food chain under fire.” Brian Williams even began the report with a respectful nod to the company’s product, declaring: “For those who live near one, Chick-Fil-A makes a good product and they do chicken well. It’s when the man in charge branched off into family values that his chicken chain got into the news as part of a larger debate over same-sex marriage.” (As if, as the photo below depicts, Chick-Fil-A promoting Biblical values is a recent development!)

ABC’s World News Tonight also noted the “thousands and thousands of people at Chick-Fil-Arestaurants from coast to coast” and showed several images of massive lines and crowds at several Chick-Fil-A restaurants. The report even featured a woman who declared: “I don’t support the politics, but I do support the food. Go Chick-fil-A.” But reporter Steve Osunsami couldn’t resist making one statement that could have been right out of a Human Rights Campaign press release: “Chick-Fil-A has long handed out millions to groups that fight against protections for gay Americans.”

The major networks tend to ignore trends and major events that do not fit liberal narratives. ABC and NBC’s evening newscasts bucked the trend this time, covering Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day fairly respectfully. CBS’s evening newscast, however, ignored the “buycott” altogether.

Update: CBS This Morning did cover the events at Chick-fil-A.

Consider for a moment “reporter” Steve Osunsami’s statement highlighted in red italics above; it is a prime example of the MSM penchant for nonsensical non sequiturs.  If support of the Biblical definition of marriage (i.e., heterosexual unions designed for procreation and emblematic of Christ’s relationship with his Church) constitutes opposition to “protections” for homosexuals, then disapproving of lotteries conveys a hatred of gamblers.

The two are impossible to conjoin, particularly in view of Chick-Fil-A’s demonstrated willingness to welcome employees and customers of any and every race, creed, color, sexual preference and/or national origin.

If we were at trial, we object on the grounds Mr. Osunsami is entering facts not in evidence….and ask for a mistrial because he’s purposely attempting to prejudice the court of public opinion.

Next up, courtesy of the WSJ, Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Dubya and currently economic adviser to Mitt Romney, presents a overview of….

The Romney Plan for Economic Recovery

Tax cuts, spending restraint and repeal of Obama’s regulatory excesses would mean 12 million new jobs in his first term alone.

 

We are currently in the most anemic economic recovery in the memory of most Americans. Declining consumer sentiment and business concerns over policy uncertainty weigh on the minds of all of us. We must fix our economy’s growth and jobs machine.

We can do this. The U.S. economy has the talent, ideas, energy and capital for the robust economic growth that has characterized much of America’s experience in our lifetimes. Our standard of living and the nation’s standing as a world power depend on restoring that growth.

But to do so we must have vastly different policies aimed at stopping runaway federal spending and debt, reforming our tax code and entitlement programs, and scaling back costly regulations. Those policies cannot be found in the president’s proposals. They are, however, the core of Gov. Mitt Romney’s plan for economic recovery and renewal.

In response to the recession, the Obama administration chose to emphasize costly, short-term fixes—ineffective stimulus programs, myriad housing programs that went nowhere, and a rush to invest in “green” companies.

As a consequence, uncertainty over policy—particularly over tax and regulatory policy—slowed the recovery and limited job creation. One recent study by Scott Baker and Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago found that this uncertainty reduced GDP by 1.4% in 2011 alone, and that returning to pre-crisis levels of uncertainty would add about 2.3 million jobs in just 18 months.

The Obama administration’s attempted short-term fixes, even with unprecedented monetary easing by the Federal Reserve, produced average GDP growth of just 2.2% over the past three years, and the consensus outlook appears no better for the year ahead.

Moreover, the Obama administration’s large and sustained increases in debt raise the specter of another financial crisis and large future tax increases, further chilling business investment and job creation. A recent study by Ernst & Young finds that the administration’s proposal to increase marginal tax rates on the wage, dividend and capital-gain income of upper-income Americans would reduce GDP by 1.3% (or $200 billion per year), kill 710,000 jobs, depress investment by 2.4%, and reduce wages and living standards by 1.8%. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, the large deficits codified in the president’s budget would reduce GDP during 2018-2022 by between 0.5% and 2.2% compared to what would occur under current law.

President Obama has ignored or dismissed proposals that would address our anti-competitive tax code and unsustainable trajectory of federal debt—including his own bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform—and submitted no plan for entitlement reform. In February, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner famously told congressional Republicans that this administration was putting forth no plan, but “we know we don’t like yours.”

Other needed reforms would emphasize opening global markets for U.S. goods and services—but the president has made no contribution to the global trade agenda, while being dragged to the support of individual trade agreements only recently.

The president’s choices cannot be ascribed to a political tug of war with Republicans in Congress. He and Democratic congressional majorities had two years to tackle any priority they chose. They chose not growth and jobs but regulatory expansion. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act raised taxes, unleashed significant new spending, and raised hiring costs for workers. The Dodd-Frank Act missed the mark on housing and “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions but raised financing costs for households and small and mid-size businesses.

These economic errors and policy choices have consequences—record high long-term unemployment and growing ranks of discouraged workers. Sadly, at the present rate of job creation and projected labor-force growth, the nation will never return to full employment.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Romney economic plan would fundamentally change the direction of policy to increase GDP and job creation now and going forward. The governor’s plan puts growth and recovery first, and it stands on four main pillars:

• Stop runaway federal spending and debt. The governor’s plan would reduce federal spending as a share of GDP to 20%—its pre-crisis average—by 2016. This would dramatically reduce policy uncertainty over the need for future tax increases, thus increasing business and consumer confidence.

• Reform the nation’s tax code to increase growth and job creation. The Romney plan would reduce individual marginal income tax rates across the board by 20%, while keeping current low tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The governor would also reduce the corporate income tax rate—the highest in the world—to 25%. In addition, he would broaden the tax base to ensure that tax reform is revenue-neutral.

• Reform entitlement programs to ensure their viability. The Romney plan would gradually reduce growth in Social Security and Medicare benefits for more affluent seniors and give more choice in Medicare programs and benefits to improve value in health-care spending. It would also block grant the Medicaid program to states to enable experimentation that might better serve recipients.

• Make growth and cost-benefit analysis important features of regulation. The governor’s plan would remove regulatory impediments to energy production and innovation that raise costs to consumers and limit new job creation. He would also work with Congress toward repealing and replacing the costly and burdensome Dodd–Frank legislation and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Romney alternatives will emphasize better financial regulation and market-oriented, patient-centered health-care reform.

In contrast to the sclerosis and joblessness of the past three years, the Romney plan offers an economic U-turn in ideas and choices. When bolstered by sound trade, education, energy and monetary policy, the Romney reform program is expected by the governor’s economic advisers to increase GDP growth by between 0.5% and 1% per year over the next decade. It should also speed up the current recovery, enabling the private sector to create 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month, or about 12 million new jobs in a Romney first term, and millions more after that due to the plan’s long-run growth effects.

But these gains aren’t just about numbers, as important as those numbers are. The Romney approach will restore confidence in America’s economic future and make America once again a place to invest and grow.

Otherwise, the YOLO generation won’t have to worry about working until they die; how can you work….

….without any jobs?!?

Moving on, Conn Carroll’s Morning Examiner tells us….

Why Democrats own the defense sequestration

 

By law, this January the Obama administration must cut defense spending by at least $50 billion. Defense contractors have warned that if these cuts occur on schedule, they will have to lay off more than one million employees, many of whom live in the swing state of Virginia. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires large employers to notify employees 60 days in advance of layoffs caused by a foreseeable event. That means defense contractors would have to tell many of their employees they are about to be unemployed on the Friday before President Obama is scheduled to appear on the ballot for reelection.

For some reason, Obama does not want this to happen. So, this past Monday, Obama’s Labor Department issued a guideline instructing defense contractors to ignore the law and not send layoff notices to their employees. Most defense contractors are expected to ignore Obama’s request. “The Labor Department doesn’t determine whether a company has failed to give the warn notices,” Kirkland and Ellis lawyer John Irving told The Hill. “Even the Labor Department has said, in advisory interpretations of the WARN Act, that when in doubt you are supposed to give notice.”

Since Obama can’t force private companies to break the law, his administration is trying to shift blame for the defense cuts to Republicans. “The root cause of the problem here is the Republican refusal to acknowledge that the top 2 percent have to pay their fair share,” White House Office of Management and Budget acting director Jeffrey Zients testified yesterday.

But while Republicans did agree to the sequester as part of last year’s debt limit deal, it was Democrats who insisted on including the defense cuts in the package. The one million defense industry employees at risk of losing their jobs are Democrat hostages, not Republican. And, more importantly, House Republicans have already moved to reverse the defense sequester. If Democrats really wanted to stop those layoffs from happening, the Democratic Senate could easily agree to the House bill.

But Democrats will never do that. As Zients’ testimony yesterday proved, the Democrats’ highest political priority is to punish the rich with higher taxes, even if it means layoffs and a double-dip recession. Voters will judge them on their choices.

Meanwhile, courtesy of George Lawlor, even as The Manchurian-in-Chief slashes America’s defenses well past the danger point, as Mike Shear writing for the New York Times reports, he sees no incongruity in pressing the public for every possible penny:

Obama Supporters Barraged With Pleas for Cash

 

Yo….Barry!

And in the Education Section, courtesy today of the AEI, Mike McShane notes yet another example of how none of what the teachers unions do is actually about the children:

Union thuggery in Louisiana

 

A private-school voucher program in Louisiana is set to expand to include more students than ever, and the teachers’ union is not happy. Last week, the Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE), the local affiliate of the National Education Association, had its lawyers send this intimidating notice to a school participating in the newly expanded voucher program.  The message: participating in this program could get you sued. According to the Advocate, similar letters have been mailed to 95 other participating schools. The lawyers state in the letters that they are prepared to pursue legal action against schools that participate in the voucher program because it is, in their estimation, unconstitutional.

The state of Louisiana specifically designed its voucher program, the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence, to serve low-income students trapped in failing schools. In order to qualify for the program, the student had to have attended a school that was rated “C,” “D,” or “F” by the state accountability system and to have come from a family that makes less than 250 percent of the federal poverty line. Originally limited to Orleans Parish, the program is slated to expand statewide in August 2012. Students are allowed to take the vouchers to private schools, which do not have unionized teachers, a point of contention for the union.

Teachers’ unions fear vouchers, as students choosing to attend private schools cut into their market share and curtail the primary source of their revenue and political power, the dues of their unionized members.

In particular, the LAE is upset because the Louisiana appellate court did not strike down the program when asked to rule on it, clearing its implementation for the upcoming school year. But, rather than spending their time and energy focusing on an appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court, they have tried to intimidate schools into not participating. It is highly unlikely that the state supreme court would hear the case until after school started and, should the union be successful in their challenge, they would be responsible for forcing students to leave the private schools they had begun to attend. This would be a PR nightmare. To circumvent this problem, the unions are trying to prevent students from taking advantage of the program in the first place.

In Louisiana, the response to the letters was one of disgust. According to a story in the Lafayette Advertiser, Louisiana state superintendent John White called these actions “disgraceful,” while Penny Dastugue, president of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education termed it “outrageous” and “absurd.”

Around the nation, responses took on a tone of shock. Kevin Chavous, a leader of the Black Alliance for Educational Options and former D.C. council member said, “Even by standards of the typical special-interest bullying tactics, this is an unbelievably demeaning and insulting action that aims ultimately to hurt the futures of thousands of children.” Clint Bollick, a litigator for the Goldwater Institute,  said, “In over two decades of school choice advocacy, I’ve never seen thuggery of this magnitude. What the unions can’t accomplish in the courtroom, they’re trying to achieve through bullying schools whose only offense is offering educational opportunities to children who need them.”

While the union’s behavior is disgusting, it certainly isn’t shocking. Unfortunately, this is just another example of unions choosing to harass educators when they have lost a political or legal battle. It was just about a year ago that the pro-union protesters who were attempting to recall Scott Walker put on a shameful display in Wisconsin. At Messmer Prep, a private non-union school in Milwaukee, protesters super-glued doors shut, creating a fire hazard that endangered children; they berated Brother Bob Smith, the school’s leader and an anchor to Milwaukee’s black community; and they denigrated the school’s teachers who had done nothing more than show up to work that day.

If unions do not like vouchers, there are plenty of outlets for them to voice their distaste. If they wish to change the law, they should lobby their legislators. If they don’t like the governor, they should try and vote him out in the next election. If they don’t like the way the court rules, they should camp outside in protest. Any of these remedies are well within both their rights and the scope of appropriateness and decency.

What they shouldn’t do is badger, demean, or harass people that are working hard every day to educate children. When they do that, they look less like an organization with the best interests of children in mind and more like a power-hungry interest group that will stop at nothing to maintain its hegemony.

In other words, it’s the NEA’s “You didn’t build that” moment; they’re finally showing Cajuns their true face.

Turning from Thuggery to Thievery, here’s the Environmental Moment, courtesy of an Administration clearly as crooked as a stick:

Solyndra CEO Called Obama White House the “Bank of Washington”

 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/08/02/wow_solyndra_ceo_called_obama_white_house_the_bank_of_washington

On the Lighter Side….

Enjoy the weekend, and, with apologies to J.T.,….

Magoo