Your One Minute News Digest

By Don Rae

• At this writing there are 110 bills in the California legislature, all by Democrats, which would raise taxes and fees.

• The New York Times said “Median Household Income Down 7.3% Since Start of Recession.” in the very last paragraph of the story, 5.6 percent of that decline has occurred since the Obama “recovery” began which has supposed to have been in progress for years. $6 trillion in deficit spending to “stimulate” the economy has been spent, supposedly for the benefit of the average household.

• A recent Census Bureau report points out that California has the nation’s highest poverty rate of any state. 23.5 % of California’s population is poor, while only 15.8% of the nation’s population is poor. No other state is above 20%.

• President Obama’s kids and friends took their spring break at the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, most of which we paid for.
• According to Judicial Watch, Malia Obama's trip to Mexico last spring break, during which she was accompanied by Secret Service protection, cost taxpayers $115,500.87. But school kids going to Washington using money they earned to tour the White House were turned away because there isn’t enough money to fund the tours.
• The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex. Your tax dollars hard at work.

• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that she and President Barack Obama are “honoring the Constitution” by opposing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). She went on to say “When you pass a bill in the House, as we did with the health care bill, we made it iron clad constitutionally.” Congress passed DOMA, therefore, by Pelosi’s own logic, it is constitutional. Why did she ask that it be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

• President Obama directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to begin studying the causes of gun violence. The CDC awarded a contract to the Institute of Medicine, which will begin looking at the role video games and social media play in gun violence, as well as whether gun technologies and access to guns can be used to reduce violence. The first part of the study makes common sense and logic; the second is political theatre.

• A solar panel farm is proposed for Sutter County. 250 acres of ugly black rectangles designed to add to the ever increasing cost of electricity in California. Before we know it, everywhere we look will be solar panel farms. Think they will become as much of a tourist destination as Yosemite or Lassen?

• It is amazing where our priorities are. In the same local media a baseball player is lauded almost as a hero by receiving a $167 million contract. But a school superintendent makes $195,000 and not only gets slammed, but folks demand she get fired. Where are our priorities? Catching a round ball or educating the next generation of citizens? An afterthought: If there is a contract, should one side get to unilaterally break it?

Published April 10, 2013