Via Hot Air, it appears New York City is–surprise!–participating in an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars in the midst of the state’s fiscal crisis.

Hundreds of New York City public school teachersaccused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that’s what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its “rubber rooms” — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

“You just basically sit there for eight hours,” said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. “I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.’ `I’ve been sitting here for six months.’ That sort of thing.”

From the NYC Department of Education:

Salaries are based on prior teaching experience as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees.  As of May 2008, starting teacher salaries range from $45,530 (bachelor’s degree, no prior teaching experience) to $74,796 (master’s degree, 8 years teaching experience).  Teachers who already have a master’s degree but no teaching experience will start at $51,425. With annual increases plus increases for additional coursework, teachers’ salaries will rise to the current maximum of $100,049 per year over time.

If my math checks, that means that 700 teachers having quiet time is costing the taxpayers of New York anywhere between $32 million and $70 million per year.

In case you were wondering, in 2009’s fiscal year New York faces a midyear budget gap of $2.5 billion, and the FY2010 budget deficit projection is $17.9 billion.

Almost makes you pine for card check and government run healthcare, doesn’t it?

If Republicans could communicate as effectively as this guy, Eric Cantor’s 2010 congressional race predictions would be in the bag.

I was on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show today to talk about the resurgance of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. The 9.5 minute segment can be found here (mp3 Quicktime file will play).

Gordon: In case you’re just joining us at this hour, what we’re going to do today is introduce you to the top, cream-of-the-crop, of young conservative, politically-active people. As much beating of the breast and what have you about how the Republican leadership has failed us and so on and why we’re in the situation in which we find ourselves, and where we’re going to look for new leadership, well, believe me, there is plenty of conservative talent coming up. Our overarching theme today is hope and change. That is to say, hope for the future, as seen through the eyes of some of today’s youngest, brightest conservative leaders. Our lovely intern, Alyssa Farah, has put together an all-star guest list today. And right now, we are going to hear from Matt Wolking. He is the President of the American Conservative Student Union. It’s an organization that works to unite collegiately affiliated conservative policy organizations in order to provide outlets to students for effective activism. He’s also First Vice Chair of the Virginia chapter of the College Republicans, and he worked on Fred Thompson’s campaign as well as dozens of other state and local campaigns. Mr. Wolking, welcome to the show.

Matt: Good to be with you, sir.

G: Now, the ACSU works to unite collegiately affiliated conservative policy organizations. Tell us what exactly that means.

M: Sure. Well basically that’s a fancy way of saying that we are here to equip and support conservative students on campuses nationwide. We are available to help them find speakers to bring to campus to advance conservative principles. A lot of times students run into free speech issues or academic freedom issues in the classroom or when trying to bring speakers to campus as far as arranging campus funding and things of that nature. But we are also here to provide them with some networking and make them aware of opportunities offered by other organizations geared toward students. Organizations like the Leadership Institute, Young America’s Foundation, and the American Conservative Union, which I should mention we are unaffiliated with.

G: So in other words, the ACSU is separate and apart?

M: It is entirely separate, yes.

G: You mentioned difficulties that conservative students might have in bringing speakers to campus and one reads from time to time where colleges that are known for the liberalism of the faculty and so forth, there’s active resistance to bringing speakers who are conservatively oriented to the campus. We’ve also learned of publications such as conservative student newspapers that are vandalized and stolen and things like that …

M: Right.

G: … do you teach ways to combat all that?

M: Yes. In effect. David Horowitz has done a lot of excellent work as far as combating the liberalism on campuses. You have your Bill Ayerses out there, radical professors. He’s done a lot of work in that area. There’s another organization as well, called FIRE, they are the campus freedom resource. So we would point students towards those types of resources to help them combat those kinds of situations on their campuses.

G: Since the advent of the Obama administration, have you found that your membership has grown or declined? What’s been the effect of the Obama administration and its policies?

M: It’s grown, and I think a major reason why is that students have a real interest here. We see the radical spending that’s going on in Washington, and they are spending our future. So college students and those in the younger generations have a very vested interest in what’s going on in Washington right now because that’s their futures that are being bet and …

G: I hate to tell you but it’s also your children’s futures, if you do the math.

M: Yes, yes. We’ve never seen spending like this before. It’s incredible. But you’ve talked about the theme of the day is change and hope. Barry Goldwater said that real change will come we entrust government to men who understand that their first duty is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. And what we’re seeing in Washington today is the opposite of that. Real change will be evident, and it will come, and our generation will hopefully be able to bring that about.

G: The Left has made very good use of technology for fundraising, for communications, organization and so forth, especially in regards to young people. Are conservative young people doing the same or do they have a lot of catching up to do?

M: Well, we are in the midst of catching up, but it’s exciting to see what a lot of conservatives around the country are doing. I’ve been involved with the #dontgo Movement which originated last August and successfully fought Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to ban offshore drilling during the energy crisis last year. The American Liberty Alliance grew out of that just recently. It’s a rapid-response organization built to bring attention to issues that impact our democratic, free-market way of life. Things like the coming attempt to pass government-run healthcare, we’re tackling those issues and we are going to have a tour that’s kicking off in September,  visiting many cities, focusing on encouraging, training, and resourcing conservative activists in association with organizations like American Majority and Americans for Limited Government. It’s going to feature activist training, candidate training, town hall events, rallies, and blogger meet-ups as well. So we are working to catch up. I think we’ll get there. But yeah, we definitely have a great model to use in achieving that and that is, unfortunately, Barack Obama’s campaign.

G: Alright. Now, are you going to reach out not just to the young people but to middle-aged people and others as well?

M: Of course. What I like to call “thinking conservatism” has been left behind by the mainstream conservative movement. I’m talking about the conservatism of Edmund Burke, Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley, Russell Kirk, those types of thinkers. Our major crisis in the conservative movement and in the Republican Party at large is that we don’t know why we believe what we believe. So we have no backbone and we have no way of articulating our ideas clearly to individuals. So we need to stick to our first principles, yet still allow ourselves to be the big tent party that Reagan brought about. But we need to know how to articulate our ideas, and we need to have a singular, effective message. Conservatism stands for more choice, more freedom, and more opportunity.

G: Matt Wolking ladies and gentlemen. President of the American Conservative Student Union and also First Vice Chair of the Virginia chapter of College Republicans. I want to thank you very much for what you are doing, it is vital to the future of this country.

M: Thank you very much, Gordon.

G: God bless.

Cassy Fiano noted last September 11 that Google decided not change its logo in honor of our national tragedy, despite its tendency to do so for things such as Earth Day, the Olympics, and the Persian New Year.

In recent weeks, Google has celebrated the discovery of the “missing link” fossil that really isn’t …

 … and the birthday of Mary Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926), an American Impressionist painter and printmaker …

And so today, on Memorial Day, what creative modification did Google come up with to honor those who have bled and died for the freedom of millions of Americans and people from a host of other nations?:

Must have taken a lot of effort.

Most decent people will be relieved to find out that Democrats are finally finding their civility in the Carrie Prejean saga. Top Democratic operatives are finally breaking the party’s collective silence and speaking out against the vicious attacks on Prejean’s mental sanity, womanhood, and femininity that followed her answering a question regarding homosexual marriage in the 2009 Miss USA pageant.

MSNBC’s team of male talking heads bashed Prejean nonstop for weeks. Keith Olbermann devoted more than one Countdown installment to her “boob job” and supposed mental-deficiency. David Schuster decided Prejean was “superficial”and implied, too, that she was intellectually lacking. These comments were typical of the coverage Prejean received after Parez Hilton called her a “dumb bitch” and publically wished he could use the c-word to describe her.

These below-the-belt attacks, said former Hillary Clinton senior advisor Ann Lewis, imply that people like Olbermann ”can’t seem to distinguish between a backroom smirk among the boys and something you put out in public.”

“It’s an attempt to demean your opponent, rather than debate them. If they’re serious [about the issue of gay marriage], then you’d think that one would want to debate it on the merits,” she says. “It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves.”

Others quoted in the same article as Lewis went further:

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, believes that those who attack female leaders on gender grounds do so out of weakness.

“In a way, it shows the desperation of the opposition,” she says. “If all else fails, you do something on their looks, or you remind them of sex.”

Phil Singer, who dealt with the issue as a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, takes it one step further, arguing that such tactics are actually likely to be counterproductive in the end.

“As the degree of viciousness escalates and increases, I think women – and most people living in the modern era, including men – are more likely to rally to [Prejean's] cause,” he says.

He suggests that gender-based attacks can actually be the crucible within which a woman’s base of support is forged.

“Certainly nobody wants to be on the receiving end of this type of rhetoric, but in the long run I think it could end up making [Prejean] a stronger national figure, and creating a real base for her,” he says.

… Marie Wilson, president of The White House Project, which promotes women’s leadership … notes, “If a man gets in a situation about he-said, she-said, or what people knew, you don’t go to his maleness as a way to attack him.”

OK, you probably know by now that these quotes, while authentic, are not related to the Miss USA furor. No, these quotes are from a Politico article debating the misogyny in the RNC’s recent ad taking Pelosi to task for lying about her briefings regarding the waterboarding of terrorists as far back as 2002.

AllahPundit says the ad is tone-deaf and I couldn’t agree more; it’s just bad form and strategy. But let’s get this straight: the RNC creates a poorly-themed ad that tries to tie the popular and catchy Bond music and franchise to Pelosi’s accusations against the CIA (our nation’s spies and security experts), and uses a famous female bond villian in the marketing scheme, and suddenly Democrats come out of the woodwork to protest the “vicious” and “gender-based” attacks. But when Prejean’s chest becomes a topic on the networks for a solid week (the direct result of her voicing a majority opinion), well, that’s just fine and dandy.

A DNC email signed by Executive Director Jen O’Malley Dillon:

I wanted to pass along an exciting opportunity to stand up for an important leader in our party, Hillary Clinton.

When she ran for President, Hillary Clinton showed America just what kind of party we are — one that believes in breaking new ground, with opportunities for everyone to reach our highest office. She blazed a trail for women across the country and represented the values and ideals of all Democrats.

Now she needs our help. When Hillary agreed to join President Obama’s administration, she made the decision to continue her lifelong commitment to serving our country. But with that commitment came the reality that she could no longer be personally involved in paying down the debt from her historic campaign.

If you stand up for Hillary Clinton now — as she’s done for this party — you could win one of three exciting opportunities, including spending a day with former President Bill Clinton.

Make a donation of $5 or more now to win one of these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

They are clearly pandering to women with this email, and the prize is … Bill Clinton? Gee, I wonder how hard they had to twist his arm to bring him on board for this?

Here’s your background:

This brouhaha regarding Rush Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC has now received almost a full week of news coverage, with the “drive by media” creating as much controversy as possible. RNC Chairman Michael Steele was suckered into demeaning Rush, which of course entailed an apology afterwards, which has let the DNC and Obama White House run wild with their accusations that Rush is the true leader of the Republican party, which of course means that Republicans hate America and want everyone to starve to death after the stock market crashes, especially black people.

It is quite obvious that there is a struggle currently being waged for the soul of the conservative movement. Some frame it as a fight between highbrow and lowbrow conservatism.

Rod Dreher took Rush to task the day after his speech, and provided an argument I have been mulling over ever since:

Take a look at this passage [from Rush's speech], and please tell me what is conservative about it?:

Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. [Applause] When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see — what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government.

This is a comforting lie. It is Rousseau conservatism: the idea that man is born innocent, but corrupted by society, or government. Remove the chains of government, and man will return to his natural, good state, which is one of limitless possibility. This denies two bedrock truths of philosophical conservatism, which are that 1) human nature is fallen, and 2) man must learn to live within limits. A conservatism that is not founded on a conscious recognition of those two truths is a false conservatism, and has a shaky foundation from which to criticize liberal utopianism.

As someone who attended Rush’s speech and sat through all 85 minutes of it, in person, I must admit that the portion Dreher quotes here was my absolute favorite part. Limbaugh’s words here embodied exactly what I believe to be conservatism, and I remarked the same to a friend at the exact moment he said it. But to me, someone who abhors Rousseau’s state of nature philosophy and believes it to be antithetical to the true nature of man, i.e. sinful and depraved, Dreher’s words came as a shock. And I think that to arrive at this conclusion about “Limbavian orthodoxy,” as Dreher likes to call it, is to fundamentally misunderstand what Rush is saying.

Rush does not believe man is born innocent. If this were the case, why wouldn’t he trust him to govern fairly, morally, and without pride or self-interest? No, Rush knows, just as most conservatives do, that man is no angel, and that more often than not his governments are overreaching in their power and oppressing in their self-righteousness. The conservative knows that God is man’s absolute authority, and that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that man is as free as is orderly possible and that his God-given rights are upheld. Ultra conservatives would hold that government has no proper role outside of this function.

Russell Kirk wrote in The Roots of American Order: 

[M]odern liberalism and democracy are contemptuous of the whole concept of moral authority; if not checked in their assaults upon habitual reverence and prescriptive morality, the liberals and democrats will destroy Justice not only for their enemies, but for themselves. Under God, the will of the people ought to prevail; but many liberals and democrats ignore that prefatory clause. In America, particularly since 1825, there had been distressingly obvious a tendency to make over the government into a pure and simple democracy, centralized and intolerant of local rights and powers, upon the model of Rousseau… This would be a change from a civilized constitution to a barbaric one.

A pure democracy where the will of the people is free from under the authority of God, is barbaric. It is what James Madison described and the Rousseau-fueled French Revolution demonstrated: turbulent, contentious, and incompatible with personal security and property.

Kirk then quotes Orestes Brownson: ”[T]he humanitarian democracy … scorns all geographical lines, effaces all individualities, and professes to plant itself on humanity alone.”

The humanitarian presently will attack distinctions between the sexes; he will assail private property, as unequally distributed. “Nor can our humanitarian stop there. Individuals are, and as long as there are individuals will be, unequal: some … have natural advantages which others have not. There is inequality, therefore injustice, which can be remedied only by the abolition of all individualities, and the reduction of all individuals to the race, or humanity, man in general.” …

The humanitarian, or social democrat … is by definition a person who denies that any divine order exists. Having rejected the supernatural order and the possibility of a Justice more than human, the humanitarian tends to erect Envy into a pseudo-moral principle. It leads him, this principle of Envy, straight toward a dreary tableland of featureless social equality–toward Tocqueville’s democratic despotism, from which not only God seems to have dissapeared, but even old-fangled individual man is lacking.

But erasing individualism leaves people equal to cattle and flies in the face of our seal’s inscription, E pluribus Unum. Out of many individuals formed one nation, dedicated to the precepts of equality, liberty, and other God-given rights. For the liberals and “humanitarians,” it is inconceivable for infinitely different individuals to unite around these universal principles.

More of Rush’s speech:

So here we have two systems. We have socialism, collectivism, Stalin, whatever you want to call it, versus capitalism. Admittedly over on the right side capitalism there will be unequal outcomes because we’re all different. And some of us care more and have more passion and we know what we want to do and others are still struggling for it. Some people are just going to work harder than others. Okay. You get what you work for. Those who have a genuine inability for whatever reason are taken care of. We’re compassionate people. On the left side when you get into this collectivism socialism stuff, these people on the left, the Democrats and liberals today claim that they are pained by the inequities and the inequalities in our society. And they believe that these inequities and inequalities descend from the selfishness and the greed of the achievers. And so they tell the people who are on different income quintiles, whatever lists, they say it’s not that you’re not working hard enough, you could have what they have, perhaps, if you applied it. They’re stealing it from you.

Limbaugh recognizes the same class envy propogated by liberals that Kirk described.

Barry Goldwater surmised that the conscience of a conservative is pricked by anyone who would debase the dignity of another individual. This was the crux of Rush’s speech:

Ladies and gentlemen, there ought not be any poverty except those who are genuinely ill equipped. But most of the people in poverty in this country are equipped for far much more. They’ve just been beaten down. They’re told don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. There’s nothing out there for you anyway; you’ll be discriminated against. Breaks our heart to see this. We can’t have a great country and a growing economy with more and more people being told they have a right, because of some injustice that’s been done to them or some discrimination, that they have a right to the earnings of others.

Rush denounces the corrupting forces of government upon “innocent” man, to use Dreher’s terms, because he agrees with Frederic Bastiat:

God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social reform as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.

Thus, I believe Rush’s position is very much rooted in the two bedrock principles Dreher identifies: 1) human nature is fallen, and 2) man must learn to live within limits.

Human nature is fallen, thus we believe that power corrupts him and that his government must contain checks and balances so as to contain his ambition, lust, and greed. Most importantly, government must remain small and limited.

Man must learn to live within limits, thus we believe that he is under God and subject to his principles of truth and justice.

Liberalism afflicts our society like a bloated leech, seeking at every moment to swell the numbers under its influence, restricting the activity of free people in the name of equalization and social justice. Conservatism, in acknowledgment of man’s great potential yet also the finiteness of his character, stands athwart this insult to man’s nature as an ideology of freedom, choice, and responsibility.

“The Conservative,” wrote Goldwater, sees “politics as the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consitent with the maintenance of the social order.”

For today’s liberal, this belief is essentially reversed. A fair and perfected society is the ultimate end, artificially created and maintained by whatever means necessary—even force and the gradual elimination of individual liberty. Thomas Jefferson rejected the early manifestations of this abomination outright: “We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Imagine the words he would have for our welfare behemoth now.

Conservatives understand that every individual’s development, personal or material, is his own responsibility, and is no business of another human being or legislative body. “The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make,” affirmed Goldwater. This was Ronald Reagan’s ideal of rugged individualism, the initiative and resolve American backbones have been gladly carrying since the dawn of our shining city on a hill. Thus, the conservative seeks to conserve the immutable privileges of choice and responsibility for everyone, understanding that this is the only justice, the only fairness, the only society worth keeping. Egotistical organizers may think they embody the change we need, but Goldwater described the solution very differently: real change will come when we entrust government to men who understand their first duty is to divest themselves of the power they have been given.

Dreher mocks Rush’s assertion that conservatism is a set of unchanging principles:

We have a challenge. We’ve got factions now within our own movement seeking power to dominate it, and worst of all to redefine it. Well, the Constitution doesn’t need to be redefined. Conservative intellectuals, the Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined and neither does conservativism. Conservativism is what it is and it is forever. It’s not something you can bend and shape and flake and form.

Because, what, it was handed down from Sinai? One hardly knows what to say to this. Do they really believe politics is dogmatic religion? They must. And if so, they’re hopeless.

In a sense, all correct and virtuous principles were handed down from Sinai. Does Dreher really believe that political principles can be separated from religious influence? That political conviction is created out of nothing in a universe separate from morality? We are conservatives because we believe it is a principle consistent with the laws of nature and of nature’s God, are we not?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: John Locke claimed that to offend a man’s property was to offend his life. The founders understood that the principle of property was connected indissolubly with the God-given right to life. Thus, high taxes aren’t just bad for the economy, they are immoral, and that is the primary reason to oppose them. When the government forcibly relieves an individual of a majority of his labor’s fruits, it is legalized theft, and it is a violation of his life. When Rush states that the Declaration of Independence does not need to be redefined, this entire argument is implied. This is why conservatism is a set of principles that “are forever.” And this is why we believe it is right.

Rush may be bombastic. He may be crude. He may be lowbrow in the opinion of Rod Dreher. But his conservatism is certainly not related to Rousseau, and the principles he espouses are not something he has created on his own to the tune of millions of dollars. Rush’s conservatism is just as intellectual as Goldwater, Buckley, and Reagan, Kirk and Bastiat. It is simply disguised in the language of someone who preaches for three hours a day to what Dreher would refer to as the lowbrows. It is packaged by a capitalist who has mastered his artform and keeps millions coming back for more.

But he’s a Democrat, so there are no racist undertones here. Move along, nothing to see.

The Democratic Special Interest Dream Spending Bill of the Century passed the Senate today with the help of the following Republicans:

Senate: 67-37-1

Senator Olympia Snowe (ME)

Senator Susan Collins (ME)

Senator Arlen Specter (PA)

Senator Judd Gregg (NH) did not vote

The 244-188-1 House vote took place on January 28, and 11 Democrats joined all 177 Republicans in opposition to it. Representative Virginia Brown-Waite (R-FL) did not vote.

3 Republicans out of a possible 219 voted for it overall.

Looks like the Democrats own it.

Your background is here.

Memo to the media: Eat it.

Via Hot Air (be sure to read AP’s criticism), can we finally recognize this crackpot for what he is?

Maxim: Hottest politician in the world, second only to a former Italian show girl

Michalle Malkin has a great article out today contrasting the media’s Obamagasms with their treatment of President Bush’s workout regimen.

Fit Republican president = Selfish, indulgent, creepy fascist.

Fit Democratic president = Disciplined, health-conscious Adonis role model.

Meanwhile, Newsbusters points out the labeling of Michelle Obama as a “goddess,” Barack a “sex god,” and Sarah Palin as the “sexless,” worst dressed of the year. I’ll leave it to you to discover the irony Newsbusters points out in all that, but I am going to have to leave you with this, curteousy of Reuters:

The president-elect, looking uber-cool with his White Sox baseball cap on backwards, flipped the shaka to a crowd of about 30 people as he left a gym on a Marine Corps base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he is vacationing.

Make sure to click the link and read the whole thing.

Hamas’s Strategy: The Rockets or the Media

Nothing is clearer than Hamas’s strategy. It gives Israel the choice between rockets and media, and Hamas thinks it is a situation of, “We win or you lose.”

Option A: The Ceasefire

Hamas ends a ceasefire giving it the peace and quiet needed to build up its army and consolidate its rule over the Gaza Strip. Israel would deliver supplies as long as there weren’t attacks. From a Western-style pragmatic standpoint this is a great situation.

But Hamas isn’t a Western-style pragmatic organization. Peace and quiet is its enemy not only because of its ideology–the deity commands it to destroy Israel–or its self-image–as heroic martyrs–but also because battle is needed to recruit the masses for permanent war and unite the population around it.

Hamas has no program of improving the well-being of the people or educating children to be doctors, teachers, and engineers. Its platform has but one plank: war, war, endless war, sacrifice, heroism, and martyrdom until total victory is achieved.

Thus, it ends the ceasefire …

Stimulating.

The total value of the bailouts undertaken by the federal government in 2008 now exceeds the combined cost of every major war the United States has ever engaged in, according to a comparison of war costs calculated by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the value of the bailouts as calculated by Bloomberg News or Bianco Research.
 
According to CRS, all major U.S. wars (including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but not the invasion of Panama or the Kosovo War), cost a total of $7.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars. 
 
According to Bloomberg, the federal government has made commitments worth a total of $8.5 trillion in the bailouts of 2008. That includes actual expenditures as well as loan and asset guarantees.
 
Bianco Research puts the total value of the bailouts at $8.7 trillion.

That’s $8,700,000,000,000. For what?

Live Action Films has caught Planned Parenthood red-handed with at least two undercover investigations at seperate PP locations in Indiana. In both cases, PP employees did the same exact thing: pretended not to hear a 13-year-old girl claiming to have been impregnated by a 31-year-old boyfriend, which not only is statuatory rape but must be reported to authorities. Both employees also advised the girl on how to obtain an abortion outside the state of Indiana, which requires parental consent.

So far, one employee has been fired and the other was suspended without pay. The Attorney General of Indiana has decided to investigate the scandal.

As Ed Morrissey notes,

Planned Parenthood receives over $300 million a year in taxpayer subsidies. It’s a non-profit, but they made $100 million in surplus last year, thanks to those subsidies and apparently a hard-sell attitude on abortions, one of their primary revenue channels.

So here’s my question. Democrats love to beat up on the oil companies for their profits, and they are actual businesses. Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization making millions, and it’s all made possible via subsidies courtesy of the US taxpayer … so why not enact that windfall profits tax Democrats were so in favor of for the oil companies and make PP a little more patriotic, to utilize Joe Biden’s sense of the word?

Because, after all, killing off a disproportionate number of racial minorities isn’t enough.