News

While Americans keep seeing their wages go down, the big business CEO's are getting even fatter wallets:

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.

The Guardian's exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America's widening income gap. The survey, the most extensive in the US, covered 2,647 companies, and offers a comprehensive assessment of all the data now available relating to 2010 pay.

Last year's survey, covering 2009, found pay rates were broadly flat following a decline in wages the year before. Base salaries in 2009 showed a median increase of around 2%, and annual cash compensation increased just over 1.5%. The troubled stock markets took their toll, and added together CEO pay declined for the third year, though the decrease was marginal, less than three-tenths of a percent. The decline in the wider economy in 2007, 2008 and 2009 far outstripped the decline in CEO pay.

$145 million a year? How in the world can anyone survive on such a puny amount????

You know what I think? We should give these people even bigger tax cuts!

Usually it seems near impossible for a police officer to be fired. They can taser someone to death and end up getting paid time off. They get busted for driving under the influence and end up back behind the wheel of a cruiser.

Well there appears to be one sure fire way for someone in law enforcement to lose their job. It's called "having an opinion". But not just any opinion. It turns out the opinion must be favoring legalization of marijuana. Take Bryan Gonzalez, a border agent who was just starting his career:

Stationed in Deming, N.M., Mr. Gonzalez was in his green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle just a few feet from the international boundary when he pulled up next to a fellow agent to chat about the frustrations of the job. If marijuana were legalized, Mr. Gonzalez acknowledges saying, the drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease. He then brought up an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that favors ending the war on drugs.

Those remarks, along with others expressing sympathy for illegal immigrants from Mexico, were passed along to the Border Patrol headquarters in Washington. After an investigation, a termination letter arrived that said Mr. Gonzalez held “personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps.”

This goes back to the entire "war on drugs", that failed, total waste of money policy this country has been pursuing for the past 3 decades.

Billions have been spent on this so-called "war", yet has produced nothing. Instead we now see things we used to be able to buy over the counter, like Sudafed, become near impossible to get.

I blogged about Emma Sullivan on Saturday. She's a high school senior in Kansas who made a "disparaging" comment about Sam Brownback on Twitter and got called to the principals office for it. The principal tried to force her to write a letter of apology to the Republican governor after his office complained about the tweet. Sullivan is now refusing, saying such a letter wouldn't be sincere.

This is my "feel good" story of the day. It's great to see a young person stand up for their rights today. As the article pointed out, Sullivan was only talking to he 65 friends on Twitter when she made the comment. Now she has exploded to over 3,000 followers and is becoming a hero for freedom of speech.

Here's the interview with Sullivan, a new crusader for our Constitutional rights.

Jennifer Fox, 19, was in attendance last week at an occupy rally in Seattle decided to respond very harshly. Fox was three months pregnant at the time. Here is her account of what happened:

"I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in," she says. "I was screaming, 'I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'" At that point, Fox continues, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. "Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut," she says.

This week she suffered a miscarriage. Even though they haven't been able to attribute the harsh treatment by Seattle police to her miscarriage, it's hard to believe it didn't contribute.

My question is this - where's the outrage from the pro-lifers? The Seattle Police Department essentially aborted a fetus. You think the pro-lifers would be outraged over this.

And as a final moment of disgust, here's a video of Jennifer just after the attack:

A manhunt was underway yesterday for Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, who was suspected of firing a gun at the White House last week. Last night authorities caught the man and now we are starting to learn more about him:

CBS News, also citing unnamed sources, reports they say "Ortega-Hernandez was not on the radar of the Secret Service before Friday's shooting. But investigators believe he may have targeted the White House due to a hatred of President Obama."

[SNIP]

In Idaho Falls, LocalNews8.com reports that a local computer consultant, Monte McCall, says he spoke with Ortega-Hernandez in July and that the young man referred to President Obama as "the antichrist."

As I pointed out yesterday, Michelle Malkin quickly said that the left would blame the Tea Party, but in fact it was the right trying to associate this man as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Now that we are learning more about the man, it appears his thinking is more aligned with America's right than left. The "antichrist" meme we started hearing during the 2008 elections from the right. Numerous religious leaders and Republican activists tried to make President Obama out to be the antichrist.

Last week President Obama was accused of calling American workers "lazy", which of course he didn't. That hasn't stopped the right from taking his comment out of context and seizing on it as Obama hating America.

While that story is still going on, we now have a new one. Now the Prez has decided to insult our school children:

Speaking at a high school in Australia, President Obama told a group of Aussie students that their counterparts in his country had “fallen behind” when it comes to math and science, saying he wants to reform the public school system.

Obama also asserted that poor children don’t get “support they need when they’re very young’’ and are “already behind’’’ when they enter grammar school, according to a press pool report.

Obama might have thought twice before casting America’s public school kids in a negative light to foreign students. Especially since he can exclude his own children from the system by paying for them to attend private school.

How are that America hating, Muslim terrorist insult our children!

I watched this story evolve rapidly on Twitter the other night. By the end of it they thought it was just someone randomly firing a gun. I guess not...

The Secret Service is investigating how a bullet hit an exterior window of the White House. A round was stopped by ballistic glass behind the building's historic exterior glass.

The Secret Service also tells News4 that one additional round was also found on the exterior of the White House. Both rounds were discovered Tuesday morning.

The investigation started after an incident on November 11, when gunshots were heard near the White House. The Secret Service has not yet conclusively connected Friday's incident with the bullets found on White House grounds. On Wednesday morning, ballistic testing had not yet been completed.

The Secret Service, Park Police, D.C. police and Arlington police all responded to the reported shooting at 9:30 p.m. on Friday night. Investigators found an assault rifle in a car abandoned near the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. It was not an AK-47, as suggested in previous reports, and the owner of the gun is unknown at this time.

And then you got Malkin "going there":

Doesn’t fit the Tea Party profile, but it won’t be long before the “Blame Righty” meme gets underway, anyway.

Now I just spent some time going through all the blog postings I can find on this story. I have seen NONE blaming the right or the Tea Party. You know what I did find?

DC #Occupyer Shot at White House May Be Threat to President

That's from the right wing blog The Jawa Report. He is referring to this snippet from the article:

The extreme right’s battle against organized labor is taking another turn in Ohio:

Just two days after voters overwhelmingly killed legislation restricting collective bargaining for public employees, Tea Party activists and a nonunion trade group Thursday launched a campaign to put a broader crackdown on union rights on the statewide ballot in 2012 or 2013.

The proposed right-to-work constitutional amendment would prohibit making union membership a condition of employment.

Chris Littleton of West Chester Twp. in Butler County, a Tea Party leader and co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council, said at a Statehouse press conference that the amendment would provide “work place freedom for every single Ohioan.”

It takes signatures from 385,253 registered voters to put an amendment on the ballot and Littleton said that it might take until the November 2013 election to meet that requirement.

This appears might be going to far even for a lot of Republicans:

However, Republican leaders distanced themselves from the amendment. “Job creation” is the top priority, Rob Nichols, spokesman for GOP Gov. John Kasich, a key backer of Senate Bill 5, said in an email.

Actually this is nothing more than a continued assault on workers right by the extremists that have taken over America’s right. The people spoke in Ohio on Tuesday and told the state to stop limiting bargaining rights of Ohio’s public workers. The Tea Party, in their closed, cult like mindset, can’t acknowledge that so now they are going to try to make it even a broader assault. It’s no wonder that the Tea Party’s popularity is going down in flames. Thankfully more Americans have awoken to the bullshit these people push and are turning them away.