Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/24/14

Source: Flight 370's Altitude Dropped After Sharp Turn

Mary Landrieu Is Paying—and Getting Paid Big—for Her Stance on Global Warming

Obama's Destruction Of The Military Is By Design

Dad Who Fathered 98 Kids Offers Free Sex 

Cruz: GOP Should ‘Continue to Defend Life’ and ‘Defend Traditional Marriage’ 
 
Giuliani: de Blasio Turning New York City in Wrong Direction
 
If It's Sunday, The Washington Post Is Promoting Fellatio In the Movie 'Nymphomaniac'
 
Nate Silver: GOP Has 60 Percent Chance to Take Senate in 2014

Colorado House To Consider Controversial Vaccination Law 

Jimmy Carter Thinks The NSA Monitors His Emails
 
Drudge, White House in Twitter Spat over Obamacare Mandate Payment

Politiks As Usual: In The News 2/23/14

Sex-Obsessed Lefty Horrified by 'Toxic Purity Culture'

NYC: More Black Babies Killed by Abortion Than Born 

Jimmy Fallon, Democrat Political Asset 
 
George W. Bush: I Have a Duty to War Vets
 
Michigan Democrat Threatens to Shut Down TV Stations Airing Anti-Obamacare Ad
 
CNN Cancels 'Piers Morgan Live'
 
Networks Ignore FCC Plan to Investigate Newsrooms
 
Former Justice Stevens: Change 2nd Amendment to Improve Constitution
 
NFL To Punish Use Of N-word
 
Girl Scout Sets Up Shop Outside A Marijuana Clinic
 
The de Blasio de Bacle: New NYC Mayor Off to a Hilariously Horrific Start
 
Bill Maher Confronts Maddow over MSNBC’s Christie Hysteria: ‘It’s Not Watergate!’

Bill De Blasio Draws All Godless Liberal Eyes to New York City

NYTimes.com:

Liberals across the country are looking to Bill de Blasio, who was sworn in as mayor early Wednesday, to morph New York City’s municipal machinery into a closely watched laboratory for populist theories of government that have never before been enacted on such a large scale. 

The elevation of an assertive, tax-the-rich liberal to the nation’s most prominent municipal office has fanned hopes that hot-button causes like universal prekindergarten and low-wage worker benefits — versions of which have been passed in smaller cities — could be aided by the imprimatur of being proved workable in New York. 

“The mayor has a remarkable opportunity to make real many progressive policies and prove their merit,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, who as mayor of San Francisco introduced a form of universal health care and allowed same-sex couples to wed. 

“De Blasio matters,” Mr. Newsom said. “A lot of us are counting on his success.” 

New York has long been a lodestar for urban governments the world over. The avant-garde policing pioneered by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani transformed the way major municipalities fight crime. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s corporate-minded approach to education and feats of social engineering, like the ban on smoking in bars, quickly gained global traction. 

In Mr. de Blasio, a wily, image-conscious strategist who had lagged far behind in polls just weeks before the Democratic primary, advocates on the left see a unique aligning of the stars: a champion of their values who is also a shrewd and cunning practitioner, stepping into office at a time when the national debate over inequality and social justice has reached a fever pitch. 

His administration could be a redemptive moment for a national left whose policies were often blamed for the crumbling of urban centers in the 1960s and 1970s, yet has now started to reassert itself in smaller jurisdictions with bold new approaches on issues like income equality and poverty. 

But Mr. de Blasio must also grapple with the restraints placed on local executives: He is barred from unilaterally setting income tax policy, meaning he must persuade legislators in Albany and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to approve his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy. And he has never experienced the day-to-day demands and compromises of managing an enterprise anywhere near the size of the city he will now lead. 

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New York City Charter Schools Worry About Mayor-elect Bill De Blasio's Plans

Townhall.com:

Operators of New York City's publicly financed, privately run charter schools are bracing for changes promised by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio — including the possibility of having to pay rent — that they worry could reverse 12 years of growth enjoyed under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

De Blasio has pledged to charge rent to "well-resourced" charter schools and has called for a moratorium on allowing new charters to share buildings with traditional schools, taking aim at a Bloomberg policy that helped the schools grow from 17 to 183 during his time in office. The policy has also led to complaints that the charters draw an unfair amount of resources.

"It is insult to injury to give them free rent," de Blasio said last summer, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination.

Charter school backers around the country are watching to see what happens in New York — which they consider an incubator for the charter school movement — while de Blasio supporters hope that the changes help fulfill his campaign promise to improve educational access for all children. De Blasio takes office on Jan. 1.

"The nation as a whole has always looked to New York City in this area," said Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. "The climate in New York City is a healthy one because of the co-location arrangements."

A majority of the nation's charter schools either pay rent or are paying off a loan or bond issue for their buildings, according to Rees' group, but New York City real estate pressures make that a challenge. She said that many charter schools wouldn't have been able to open if they had to find their own building and start from scratch.

It's unclear how much New York's charters would pay. De Blasio has said he would use a sliding scale, with deep-pocketed charter operators forced to pay more, while some schools would continue to pay nothing. A spokeswoman said that de Blasio would work out the plan with his schools chancellor.

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Glenn Beck: Bill De Blasio Victory May Turn New York City Into the ‘Next Detroit’

Mediaite.com:

Glenn Beck went off on Wednesday over Bill De Blasio‘s triumph in the New York City mayoral election. He warned that New York could descend into an extreme low point with a “communist” in charge, and things may get so bad, “New York will become the next Detroit.”

Beck said in the 1970s New York was governed by “nightmarish progressive policies that aren’t even close to De Blasio” and projected a fear that the new Democratic mayor will “destroy” the city.

He played a soundbite of De Blasio talking about income inequality, with co-host Pat Gray calling it “such drivel.” Beck suggested De Blasio might be popular because, like Rudy Giuliani, he’s seen as a “strong man, and that’s what New Yorkers like.”

And as opposed to De Blasio saying the defining argument of the modern age is inequality, Beck shot back that the real question is: “Is this the era of the individual or not? is the next hundred years, or possibly five hundred years, where people are more free?”

As opposed to progressivism, which Beck said is always asking the question of “how can we control man.”

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Bill de Blasio’s War on Blacks and Other Minorities

NYPost.com:

Bill de Blasio wants to be seen as a champion for blacks and other minorities. So why is he planning to wage war on them?

De Blasio clinched the Democratic primary for mayor in large part by promoting his inter-racial family and, notably, his son’s prominent Afro. His “two cities” mantra is meant to suggest he’ll fight for the have-nots — minorities. In a new poll, African-Americans say they back him over Republican nominee Joe Lhota by a whopping 86 percent to 3 percent — that is, near-unanimously.

Yet de Blasio’s positions on all the key issues — crime, jobs, education — will hit minorities hard. At the same time, despite his attacks on the “1 percent,” he’ll leave wealthy New Yorkers relatively unscathed.

Think about it: De Blasio has been front-and-center in the drive to constrain pre-emptive crime-fighting in the city. He rails against “the burdensome impact of overly-aggressive [police] tactics,” like stop-and-frisk. As mayor, he’d drop the city’s appeal of federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s recent ruling against stop-and-frisk and has already moved to oppose a stay of that ruling.

He also demands an end to “racial profiling” of suspects (though NYPD policy and city law already ban it) and supports the law creating a new inspector general for the department.

The net result of all this: Hamstrung cops. Less pro-active policing. More violent crime. And that will be particularly true in New York’s sketchiest neighborhoods, where aggressive policing is most needed.

Who will be the victims of more violent crime? Predominately, blacks and Hispanics. Last year, for example, 96 percent of all shooting victims in New York have been black or Hispanic. And nine out of 10 murder victims are minorities.

A spike in murder, to put it bluntly, means more dead blacks and Hispanics. Whites won’t be affected as much.

The same logic holds for de Blasio’s stands on education. Wednesday night, the United Federation of Teachers threw its support to de Blasio. That’s because it knows he’ll back the union over the interests of kids — particularly on core issues like charter schools, which the UFT despises.

But with fewer charters, more kids will remain imprisoned in rotten traditional schools. The tens of thousands of desperate families who routinely get shut out of charter-school lotteries for lack of seats will continue to get shut out.

Who are these families? Hint: New York’s public-schools are 69 percent black and Hispanic. Whites disproportionately send their kids to private schools, or find the very best public schools for them. They won’t suffer as much.

But hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic kids trapped in failing city schools, which de Blasio vows to keep open, certainly will. 

And to make it more tragic, they’re the ones who, collectively, need help most: College-readiness rates among minority graduates, for example, are about half that of whites. And the graduation rate for minority kids is itself about 25 percent lower.

Then there are jobs. De Blasio favors “living wage” laws, higher minimum-wage rates, mandatory paid sick days and other costs to businesses that tend to price entry-level and low-skill employees — largely minorities, especially the young — out of jobs. And his plan to sock the rich with higher taxes will encourage investors to look elsewhere to run businesses.

Upshot? Kids like de Blasio’s son Dante (or, rather, kids like Dante whose dads aren’t powerful) will be hurt most. And never mind the high unemployment rates among minorities: 13 percent, for example, for blacks nationally, compared to 6.4 percent for whites — and 38 percent for black teens. 

Let’s face it: Whites, particularly wealthy ones, will have more options if de Blasio becomes mayor and pushes through his plans. If his tax hikes are too high, they’ll move out of town. If schools continue to fail, they’ll rely on private schools. If crime shoots up, they’ll steer clear of the bad areas.

Alas, blacks and Hispanics won’t have such easy choices. They’ll be hit with more violent crime. They’ll be cheated of the kind of educations that whites enjoy at private schools. Their young will lose out on entry-level jobs and perhaps lapse into lives of dependency.

Talk about a tale of two cities.

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