This was sent to me by a young friend and I think it is well worth watching:
I find it amazing that many admit to getting their news from John Stewart or Keith Olbermann. But the coverage of the latest elections showed the “fair and balanced’ nature of the big three cable news networks:
(Language Warning)
USA Today has this story about the problem that faces conservatives as they regain fiscal responsibility from Obama and the previous administration.
The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week’s elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president’s plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.
FEDERAL WORKERS: Earning double their private counterparts
[….]
•Government-wide raises. Top-paid staff have increased in every department and agency. The Defense Department had nine civilians earning $170,000 or more in 2005, 214 when Obama took office and 994 in June.
•Long-time workers thrive. The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years. Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate.
•Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500, up from $111,000 in 2005.
(Cartoon)
Some commentary over at the Atlantic Journal led me to HotAir where Ed Morrissey pointed this out:
….What does that mean in real numbers? In 2005, only 7,420 federal employees make $150K. Today, that number has grown to 82,034, roughly double what it was at the end of 2008. Nor is that just inflationary growth across an artificial line. In 2005, only 2,852 federal workers made more than $160,000; now it’s 44,898. Five years ago, less than a thousand workers made over $180K, but today that number has increased by more than 20 times to 16,912 workers.
This would be problematic even if the country had experienced boom times over the last five years, and especially over the last two. But that has obviously not been the case — or at least not the case inside of the Beltway bubble. Given the tough labor market for workers over that period, the government should have been in a better position to negotiate wages to decrease the cost of its workforce, which gets paid by the sweat of the taxpayers’ collective brow. Instead, they have become profligate with our money.
Florida Attorney General-elect Pam Bondi told Greta tonight that a majority of states are now joining the suit against Obamacare. …. Only 43 states have attorney generals.
A discouraging story of PC proportions:
Back in September I reported on a video showing that Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, spiritual mentor to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, had led Friday prayers in the U.S. Capitol for congressional Muslim staff members. The video was part of the PBS documentary, “Mohammad, Legacy of a Prophet”. And just a few weeks ago Catherine Herridge at Fox News reported that Awlaki had been hosted at a luncheon at the Pentagon by the U.S Army’s Office of Government Counsel.
Now I can report exclusively here at Big Peace that Anwar Al-Awlaki, who is currently subject to a kill-or-capture order signed by President Obama, was involved in the training of the Defense Department’s Muslim chaplains and lay leaders as an instructor at the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America (IIASA) in the Washington D.C. area.
A great HotAir h/t:
That’s what makes this clip from Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show even more interesting. Ratigan gives six minutes of air time to Ted Rall, the cartoonist last seen shark-jumping by insulting the late Pat Tillman for dying in service to the country. Now Rall has a new idea for improving the country, and Ratigan seems very interested the the proposal (via Verum Serum and Directorblue):
Ironically, it was only about a month ago that Sharon Angle was excoriated by several MSNBC talking heads for making a reference to “2nd amendment remedies.” Is Chris Matthews going to call out Ted Rall and/or Dylan Ratigan for letting him promote this? Rachel Maddow wanted to know if Angle’s language was finally too extreme. Well is it still extreme when it’s coming from the far left over your own TV channel, Rachel? If so, maybe you should poke your head down the hall and say something.
