UPDATE: Still tearing families apart in Arlington

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
11/05/09 11:19 AM

Here’s a link to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on a federally funded program call Extreme Recruitment that partners social workers and private investigators to locate foster children’s long-lost family members.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/F961F6DF9898B2FE86257659000925A4?OpenDocument

If they can do it in St. Louis, they can do it in Arlington.

Three biggest losers – and winners – in Virginia

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
11/04/09 1:28 PM

Biggest losers:

1. President Barack Obama

Spinmeisters at the White House are desperately trying to blame the landslide loss of Creigh Deeds on the candidate’s poor campaign. They have a point. Deeds’ ran one of the nastiest, dirtiest, and mean-spirited campaigns in recent memory, spurred on by the Washington Post’s frenzied attempts to paint Bob McDonnell as some sort of theocratic freakshow.

But the president unwisely put his own political capital on the line when he campaigned for Deeds in the same state he won last year, with a candidate who said of his preferred health care reform: "I don't think the public option is necessary in any plan and I think Virginia--certainly, I would certainly consider, opting out if that were available to Virginia." Whether the White House admits it or not, when Obama’s own party’s candidates start peddling away from his top legislative priority as fast as they can, he’s in deep political trouble.

2. Governor Tim Kaine

The part-time governor, full-time head of the Democratic National Committee just got his clock cleaned by the Republican sweep. Not only did Jody Wagner, Kaine’s former finance secretary, lose her bid for lieutenant governor, Republicans managed to pick off Democrats Paul Nichols, Chuck Caputo, David Poisson and probably Margi Vanderhye in Northern Virginia and increase their ma...

The really big picture

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
11/03/09 3:33 PM

There’s nothing like looking at the cosmos to get your puny little mind off your not-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things problems, especially when you are staring at imploding stars, frolicking galaxies and parts of the universe never before been seen by human eyes.

Last night, I attended the Kennedy Center’s world premier of “Cosmic Reflection,” which included a delightful prelude by composer Nolan Gasser played by the superb American Brass Quintet, and Symphony No. 4, Opus 29 “The Inextingushable,” by the late Carl Nielsen, played by the Boston University Symphony Orchestra.

The lush symphonic score, which the student musicians played with youthful exuberance, was accompanied by a video of absolutely stunning photographs taken by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope, launched on June 11, 2008. Built by a partnership of particle and astrophysicists from the U.S. and several other countries, the space lab has been peering at the universe across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and revolutionizing our knowledge of the cosmos.

The musical accompaniment to the video by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center alternately invoked the pluckiest little atoms to the violent collapse of stars in the constantly moving, unimaginably vast universe we live in. An uncountable number of stars looked like tiny grains of sand on an unending black beach.

The na...

‘No forced shots!” Controversy erupts over swine flu vaccine

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
10/16/09 3:30 PM

A state Supreme Court judge in New York issued a restraining order Friday barring the first state in the nation to require swine flu vaccinations for all health care workers from implementing the statewide mandate after hundreds protested in Albany shouting “No forced shots!”

A group of New York medical professionals have also filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, requesting an emergency restraining order against the U.S. Food & Drug Administration based on allegations that the FDA’s hasty licensing of four A/H1N1 vaccines on Sept. 15 violated federal law.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 9 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of physician Rima Laibow, MD, dietician Gary Null, PhD, nurse Suzanne Field, RN, and other New York health care workers, charges that the FDA used its Emergency Use Authorization powers to illegally approve vaccines that have not been tested for either safety or effectiveness.

“Since one of the vaccines approved (and the first one that the government is making available to the public) is a ‘live virus’ nasal mist vaccine, made with a virus declared by both the government and the World Health Organization to be a ‘novel virus’ with pandemic potential, this particular Vaccine poses an immediate risk of irreparable harm,” the complaint charges. To date, there are no published, ...

UPDATE: The taxed protest: Another legal challenge to Dulles Rail

10/15/09 2:07 PM

A Petition for Appeal of Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush’s dismissal of a constitutional challenge to the financing mechanism for Dulles Rail has been filed with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Attorney James Markels represents FFW Enterprises, which owns commercial property in Tysons Corner that is subject to two taxes on commercial and industrial property within the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. The taxes will be used to pay for Phase 1 of Dulles Rail.

But, with a few exceptions such as farmland, Article X of the Virginia Constitution requires that all taxes be “uniform.” Markels argues that the General Assembly exceeded its constitutional authority by excluding other owners of commercial and residential property, who will also benefit from Dulles Rail. For that reason, FFW Enterprises is also questioning the validity of bonds that will be sold to pay for Dulles Rail.

“These taxes force a tiny minority of landowners in the County to pay for all of the roads everyone uses....If these taxes pass constitutional muster, then the General Assembly will be able to force commercial and industrial real property owners to shoulder the entire burden of any and all public improvements throughout the Commonwealth...

“At some point, the difference between the taxed and the untaxed merely becomes a matter of who has political sway in the Ge...

Bailout bubble: Washington fiddles while economy burns

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
10/08/09 12:07 PM

NH firms files protest with GAO over PLA

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
10/07/09 1:54 PM

UPDATE: “No local construction firms need apply,” Oct. 2

On Monday, a Concord, NH-based general contractor filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office, alleging that the U.S. Department of Labor’s mandated use of a project labor agreement (PLA) for a jobs center in Manchester is discriminatory because 91 percent of the construction workers in New Hampshire don’t belong to a union. The company is asking GAO to put a stay on the bidding process until the PLA is removed.

PLAs discourage competition by requiring winning bidders to recognize unions as the representatives of their employees on that job, hire workers through the union hiring hall, obey restrictive apprenticeship and work rules, and contribute to union pension plans – even though their employees will never benefit unless they join a union.

Ken Holmes, president of North Branch Construction, told The Examiner that “one of the requirements of the bid is that it is subject to a PLA, which very specifically requires general contractors to use exclusively union workers. But virtually every major contractor and subcontractor in New Hampshire is non-union. This basically knocks all of us out of the ballgame. We believe it’s discriminatory and violates the federal Competition in Contracting Act.”

Like all federally financed projects, Holmes says, the project is already ...

Baucus claims it's too difficult to put health care bill online

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/24/09 5:49 PM

A proposal by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., that would have required the Senate Finance Committee to post the final language of the $900 billion health care reform bill, as well as a Congressional Budget Office cost analysis, on the committee’s website for 72 hours prior to a vote was rejected 12-11. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., was the only Democrat to side with Bunning. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, who is not a member of the Finance Committee, said she also supported Bunning’s proposal. Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., himself admitted that “This probably sounds a little crazy to some people that we are voting on something before we have seen legislative language.” Indeed.

Baucus’ excuse - that it would take his committee staff two weeks to post the bill online – sounds a little crazy too. Finance Committee members are the only ones who vote based on the “plain English” version of a bill, not the legally-binding language.

“Senator Baucus, do we not deserve a few extra days of your time given that you and your fellow Democrats are setting out to completely overhaul our entire health care system funded with our tax dollars?” asked Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

UPDATE: VA stiffs Normandy survivor ...for 60 years

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/24/09 4:40 PM

A World War II Navy veteran who was severely wounded on the second day of the Normandy Invasion is still trying to get the Department of Veterans Affairs to pay him his disability benefits – 60 years later!

John Burres, who lives in Moro, Oregon, was knocked unconscious on April 27, 1944 when his minesweeper was hit by enemy fire and he was blown 100 feet into the air. He landed on top of a gun mount and suffered a serious head wound that left a still-visible hole in his skull. Two friends kept the unconscious sailor from drowning as their minesweeper sunk. His son, Jim Burres, joined his 88-year-old father’s fight with the VA 12 years ago after “clear and unmistakable errors” were found in his case file.

Jim Burres told The Examiner that when his dad was discharged in 1945, his 23-page medical record included a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), even though the military supposedly didn’t discover the psychiatric condition until 1980. But the record made no mention of the Purple Heart the elder Burres had been awarded, allowing the Navy to discharge him on psychiatric grounds “so they wouldn’t have to pay him benefits.”

After 12 years, Jim Burres finally got his dad reinstated at a 50 percent disability level - which increased his monthly check from $104 to $2,700 – but only after spending two years researching...

UPDATE: Re: “Instead of a check, VA sends widow a profanity-laced screed,” Sept. 15

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/23/09 3:49 PM

Bessie Krone, the widow from Montgomery, AL who reported receiving a scurrilous, profanity-laced letter from the Montgomery Regional Office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, called today to tell me that the same two VA agents who had grilled her last week showed up at her house Tuesday evening – this time, to apologize:

“My door bell rang at 5:50 pm last night and Agents Hudson and Humes were here to pick up the original letter and Form 4107 plus the 3-page ratings decision. I’m faxing you the paper they left me, signed by both of them and myself [acknowledging receipt of the documents]. They admitted that they have a mole inside the VA and they hope the fingerprints on the letter and envelope will help to identify who it is. They apologized to me and wished me well.”

However, the disabled widow is still terrified that she won’t be getting her benefits on October 1, since the regional office kicked her out of the VA computer system right after the original story ran in The Examiner. Cutting off her widow’s pension would be adding injury to insult.

UPDATE: Vitter goes after ACORN’s fire grants

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/23/09 9:45 AM

Re: “Even federal programs that don’t work are tough to kill,” Sept. 23

Sen. David Vitter is urging Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to rescind a $997,402 fire grant her department awarded to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Both houses of Congress voted to cut off funding to ACORN after several of its employees were caught on tape counseling a young couple in ways to evade the law.

“When so many fire departments throughout the nation are struggling for funding for important and lifesaving projects, how is it that a non-fire department with no clear expertise in fire safety and prevention is given such a large award for fire safety?” Vitter asked in a letter he sent Napolitano on Tuesday.

"ACORN's continued contempt for state and federal laws has placed their entire organization under a cloud of serious scrutiny, and this grant should be rescinded and awarded to a more deserving group of first responders," Vitter added.

UPDATE: Veterans come first

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/16/09 2:28 PM

Here's the question of the day:

"If it cannot handle the challenge of caring for 8 million veterans, how will a government bureaucracy manage a system dealing with 300 million Americans?" asks Ray Nothstine, an associate editor at the Acton Institute.

Here's a link to his article, "Veterans First on Health Care":

http://www.acton.org/commentary/532_veterans_first_on_health_care.php

UPDATE: Veteran FAA whistleblower quits in disgust

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/16/09 1:57 PM

Twelve years after first reporting serious safety problems at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, including numerous cover-ups of near collisions and the abuse of prescription narcotics by her fellow air traffic controllers, Anne Whiteman has resigned.

The 25-year FAA veteran told CBS affiliate WFAA-TV (http://www.wfaa.com/video/index.html?nvid=398097) that she was isolated, demoted, and physically assaulted for filing complaints with the Office of Special Counsel, which confirmed most of her safety concerns, including her accounts of air traffic controllers blaming pilots for their mistakes. She also said her equipment was sabotaged in retaliation.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, who was appointed to the post in June, said he was "reaching out to whistleblowers," but Whiteman said he never responded to her emails.

UPDATE: “Instead of a check, VA sends widow profanity-laced screed,” Sept. 15

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/15/09 4:22 PM

Make a complaint about government employees, and you – not them –could end up as the target of a criminal probe.

That’s exactly what happened to Bessie Krone, a 62-year-old disabled widow from Montgomery, Alabama who recently received a expletive-filled letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Instead of finding out who sent her the vile letter and why, the VA’s Office of Inspector General, Division of Criminal Investigations is apparently investigating her!

Krone told me that Special Agents Humes and Hudson from Atlanta interrogated her for nearly an hour and a half at a nearby Arby’s restaurant. “A hamburger does not get as much grilling as I got today,” she told me. “They knew everything about me – how many brothers and sisters I had, when I was born, where my son lives, the number of grandkids I have, my cell phone number, when I went to the store this morning, even the exact time I called The Examiner.”

“So I told them: ‘You’ve investigated me real good. Now go investigate whoever sent that letter and leave me alone.’”

The agents kept pressing her again and again for the name of her alleged accomplice, Krone told me, but she didn’t budge. “They told me that I knew somebody in the VA who was feeding me this information and I needed to tell them who it is. If I didn&rsquo...

UPDATE: VA can’t keep track of veterans’ claims, but throws a great office party

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/15/09 11:36 AM

I’ve already gotten feedback from my column today on the Department of Veterans Affairs (“Instead of a check, VA sends widow a profanity-laced screed”). Turns out that Larry Scott at VA Watchdog.org has been reporting on serious problems at the same Montgomery, Alabama regional office since May, after a whistleblower there reported:

“The mail keeps backing up so bad .. there is right this moment a stack of 3000 writeouts (2009) stacking up in Triage. They have been sitting in a unused desk for months. We have 500 pieces of returned mail and a box (6000 pieces) of returned mail-COLA. It has been collecting for months in a box under a table.

“Why do we keep making the same mistakes - because the supervisors / management do not pride themselves on their work / responsibilities or the VA organization. Now, if you ask them to put a table of food together, well then, smiles and dedicated caterers emerge. Character!”

Here's the link: www.vawatchdog.org/09/nf09/nfjul09/nf071509-4.htm

Scott’s website broke the story about VA employees who were caught deliberately shredding veterans’ claims in Detroit. The Montgomery regional office is, he says, “not the worst RO, just one of the worst.”

Former FAA inspector predicts: Next 9/11 attack could be with booby-trapped planes

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/11/09 4:20 PM

A former Federal Aviation Administration inspector from Long Island, who says he was fired in 2002 for refusing to cover up glaring safety issues, predicts that the next major terrorist attack will involve airplanes blown up simultaneously in the air.

Richard Wyeroski told The Examiner that he warned the Department of Transportation’s inspector general that the next terrorist attack will likely involve a series of booby-trapped airliners detonated by cell phones. He bases this grim prediction on the fact that the FAA has allowed major commercial carriers to maintain and inspect aircraft in unsecure facilities overseas that the agency has never gotten around to checking itself.

The most recent incident involved Southwest Airlines, which was caught using unapproved parts in violation of FAA regulations. But instead of grounding the aircraft involved, FAA officials allowed them to continue flying provided they were inspected every seven days and the illegal parts were removed by December. “Third World countries are maintaining our aircraft overseas. This is playing Russian roulette with people’s lives,” Wyeroski said.

Maintenance facilities in the Philippines, El Salvador, Mexico, and South America, where much of the maintenance work is outsourced to save money, do not even require background checks or fingerprints of mechanics who work on planes, he says. &ld...

UPDATE: “Instead of ‘GT’ for gifted & talented, how about an ‘M’ for mediocrity?”

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
09/02/09 11:36 AM

Finally, a happy ending to the absurd spectacle of watching Montgomery County Public School officials refuse to allow academically precocious Caitlyn Singam to enter sixth grade at Cabin John Middle School in Bethesda, even though she was clearly qualified and had already been welcomed to the school earlier in the summer.

Caitlyn’s father, Dr. Kumar Singam, just sent me this email:

“After a week during which MCPS informed us that our daughter would fit into a Highly Gifted Center, and acknowledged that she was more than qualified for sixth grade, last night at 10:31 PM, [Cabin John principal] Dr. [Paulette] Smith took matters into her own hands and invited my child to her school. In doing so, I believe, she ...showed immense courage and fortitude.

“My child was met by a principal who cried, and the chief of the guidance group, who cried as well. I can say with absolute conviction, now supported by events, that my child being kept out of school for two days was never about her academics. Her academic achievement was measured by MCPS with its own yardstick.

“[Community superintendent] Dr. [Sherry] Liebes had the gall to look me in the eyes and tell me she didn't have the MCPS testing results. (I had it, and proved to a group of officials that MCPS had it, too). My child was accepted after a social worker from MCPS stood up and said she could, and Dr. Smith ins...

UPDATE: Instead of ‘GT’ for gifted and talented, how about ‘M’ for mediocrity?

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
08/27/09 4:28 PM

Montgomery County Public Schools has sunk to a new low. It’s using a nine-year-old child as a political football.

Orientation at Cabin John Middle School in Bethesda was held this morning, but Caitlyn Singam wasn’t there. MCPS educrats are still refusing to enroll this academically gifted little girl. They insist that Doctors Kumar and Aki Singam place their daughter at Seven Locks Elementary School, even though Caitlyn’s reading and math test results clearly prove she is capable of accelerated work.

In an August 26 letter to the Singams, community superintendent Sherry Liebes wrote: “Let me be clear, Caitlyn will not be enrolled at Cabin John Middle School for this school year.” This despite the fact that Caitlyn had already been welcomed to the school this summer and her parents were told she was eligible for 8th grade math.

But at MCPS, a child’s academic needs take a back seat when the system has a political axe to grind with her parents.

In an email sent to Dr. Singam the same day, Marty Creel, director of MCPS’ Enriched and Innovative Programs – who is supposed to be the head cheerleader for this precocious child – said: “ No determination of placement can be made until she is registered [at Seven Locks]. Once she is registered, the school can go through the process of collecting the relevant information and making a...

Memo to Rep. Jim Moran: Health care protestors are your constituents

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
08/26/09 1:59 PM

Hundreds of protestors angry about the prospect of spending $1.6 trillion on Obamacare showed up at Rep. Jim Moran’s raucous town hall meeting Tuesday in Reston. Some carried signs reading: “$40 Billion in Medicare Fraud - Fix the BLEEDING Economy!"

When catcalls from the crowd punctured his introduction of former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dead, an angry Moran sputtered: "These folks are not from the 8th District, they don't really belong here, and I'm going to ask them to leave.”

But many of the “folks” who were not from his district happened to be union members and party loyalists who had been summoned from as far away as Front Royal to pack the South Lakes H.S. auditorium before 8th District residents arrived. They were allowed to stay.

A glossy postcard, printed and sent at taxpayer expense, informed Moran’s constituents that a “town hall discussion on health care reform” including Dean would be held on “Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 7:00PM - 9:00PM; Doors open at 6:00 PM.”

However, in an email sent by Brandyn Keating, Virginia state director of Organizing for America - "a project of the Democratic National Committee" - Democratic operatives were told to show up at 5:00 PM – an hour earlier than Moran’s constituents were told they would be allowed into the hall. "Ple...

UPDATE: Instead of ‘GT’ for gifted and talented, how about ‘M’ for mediocrity?

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
08/24/09 4:24 PM

Montgomery County Public Schools has sunk to a new low. It’s using a 10-year-old as a political football.

A meeting scheduled for Friday between Cabin John Middle School principal Paulette Smith and the parents of a precocious 10-year-old who was told she could not enroll in sixth grade because of her age never happened, with both sides blaming the other for the cancellation.

However, Dr. Aki Singam, the girl’s mother, complained in an email to Smith that “despite your claims that an outcome had not been predetermined, the sole purpose of the meeting was to justify the ongoing harassment of my child by [GT program director] Marty Creel and, at his behest, to discuss a SINGLE predetermined option of placing my child at Seven Locks [Elementary School].

“Both you and Dr. Weast are acutely aware that Mr. Creel has engaged in this harassment in retaliation for my husband's successful showing that the GT program implemented by him violates the requirements of Brown v. Board of Ed., etc.”

Smith’s decision to turn away the Singams’ daughter, who had already been welcomed at the school and completed the summer math packet, was obviously due to her parents’ vocal dissent about the stealth dismantling of Montgomery County’s GT program.

The message she’s sending to other parents is as clear as it is chilling: Speak out and your child...

UPDATE: No back-to-school for gifted 10-year-old

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
08/19/09 12:05 AM

Re: “Instead of ‘GT’ for gifted and talented, how about an ‘M’ for mediocrity?” Feb. 22

What public school principal would turn away an obviously gifted and talented student with documented academic accomplishments? Try Paulette Smith, principal of Montgomery County Public School’s Cabin John Middle School, who this week informed the parents of a 10-year-old girl that she was not welcome.

This was after Cabin John officials had already interviewed the girl, tested her, welcomed her to the school and recommended a suitable math placement. (“Caitlyn's scores suggest that she should be in... an 8th grade pre-algebra class,” the school’s math teacher told them.) In a July 22 email to Dr. Kumar Singam and his wife Aki, Tamara Bishop, the school’s registrar, told them that their daughter “will be a great addition to Cabin John Middle School this coming school year.”

But just two days before orientation, the Singams got a disturbing email from Principal Smith informing them that their daughter would not be going to Cabin John after all. It apparently took an entire month for Smith to realize Caitlyn was a year younger. “Your daughter's birthday... indicates that she is nine (9) years old. Therefore she is the age of elementary students,” Smith told the Singams in an Aug. 17 email, recommending that...

UPDATE: NTSB judge dismisses claim against FAA doc

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
08/10/09 3:15 PM

Administrative law judge William R. Mullins rejected former Continental Airline pilot Newton Dickson’s claim that Dr. Michael Berry, now a top Federal Aviation Administration physician, improperly used a phony diagnosis of epilepsy to medically ground him after he complained about pilot fatigue and inadequate training, both cited as contributing factors in the fatal crash of Colgan Flight 3407 in Buffalo.

However, Greg Winton - the Rockville lawyer who represented Dickson - told me that Mullins’ ruling did not address the fact that there was “absolutely no clinical evidence” to support Dr. Berry’s diagnosis. Winton says he plans to appeal.

Dr. Brian D. Loftus, a board-certified neurologist who testified at the National Transportation and Safety Board hearing in Houston last week, said that there was less than a one percent chance that Dickson could have experienced a tonic-clonic epileptic seizure (formerly called a grand mal seizure) and exhibit no symptoms.

Dickson, who now works for the Transportation Safety Administration, maintains he has never had epilepsy. One of his TSA co-workers told Mullins that he has never seen any seizure activity during their 40-hour weeks together over the past two years.

Also present in the Houston courtroom was retired Delta pilot Wayne Witter, who successfully challenged his own medical grounding by Dr. Berry, but w...

Examiner Exclusive: Federal lawsuit challenges funding of Dulles Rail

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
08/07/09 3:08 PM

Christopher Walker, owner of commercial property in Reston and president of the Dulles Corridor Users Group, has filed a 131-page federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the validity of the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority’s (MWAA) takeover of the Dulles Rail project.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to force MWAA to return the Dulles Toll Road (DTR) to the Commonwealth of Virginia and to refund some $300 million in tolls it claims have been illegally collected, as required under Virginia’s Revenue Bond Act. Gov. Tim Kaine handed over the toll road to MWAA on March 28, 2006.

Walker maintains that MWAA has no legal authority to impose tolls on the general public or even to build a construction project outside airport property. He also accuses MWAA of deliberately lying about the official cost of Phase I, which will not reach the airport. MWAA advertised the cost at $2.5 billion; according to the lawsuit, the full funding agreement with the Federal Transit Administration officially lists the price tag at $3.1 billion.

The suit also charges that MWAA inserted “hell or high water” language in its July 21 proposed bond prospectus that assumes unilateral authority to raise tolls as high as it wants: “At no time will [MWAA] subject its exclusive right to establish, charge and collect Tolls and other User F...

Abortion today, burqas tomorrow

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/29/09 12:05 AM

Europe is doomed by demographics. We’re next.

Western, democratic Europe as we now know it will abort its way into oblivion by 2050. That’s the gloomy conclusion of the German government, which recently admitted that its downward demographic spiral is “no longer reversible.” In just three decades, Germany will become a Muslim majority state, with much of the freedom of modern life likely swept away under Sharia law.

A YouTube video reports on the Continent’s declining fertility rates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhomelandsecurityus%2Ecom%2F%3Fp%3D2959&feature=player_embedded

It takes a fertility rate of 2.11 for a culture to maintain itself. Historically speaking, none has ever reversed a 1.9 (less than replacement) rate, and there is no economic model that supports a 1.3 fertility rate, since it would take up to a century to reverse itself. In other words, countries that fail to reproduce their own populations are committing demographic suicide.

The 31 nations in the European Union have a collective fertility rate of 1.38. Southern France now has more mosques than churches, and the 52 million Muslims now living in Europe are expected to double over the next 20 years. With lower than replacement fertility rates in France (1.8), England (1.6), Greece (1.3), Germany (1.3), Italy (1.2), and Spain (1.1), tolerant, cos...

Is unemployment actually much higher? Like close to 20 percent?

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/22/09 5:10 PM

Every month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six “measures of labor underutilization” (i.e. unemployment). The official unemployment rate used by politicians and the media, referred to as U3, measures the percent of the civilian labor force that is out of work. (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/print.pl/lau/stalt.htm)

But U3 does not include so-called “discouraged workers” who have completely stopped looking for jobs, “marginally attached” workers who had not searched for a job within the past month, or those involuntarily employed part-time instead of full time. U6 includes every willing worker who wants, but is not able to secure a full time position, so a state’s U6 rate is obviously higher than its U3.

Much higher, in fact. For example, Michigan, which has the highest U3 figure in the nation (11 percent), has an eye-popping 19.2 percent U-6 unemployment rate. Nine other states’ U6 figures are also above 15 percent, according to BLS:

Oregon: 18.4% California: 17.7% Rhode Island: 17.1% South Carolina: 16.8% Tennessee: 15.7% Florida: 15.6 % Arizona: 15.5% Nevada: 15.2% Ohio: 15.1%

Shadow Government Statistics (shadowstats.com

) puts the nation’s true unemployment rate even higher - close to 20 percent – which is well above the U6 and into Great Depression territory, when nearly one out of five workers foun...

UPDATE: DOT IG urged to investigate one of FAA’s top docs

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/17/09 4:46 PM

Here's the FAA's response:

"We have no information that would support any of these personal attacks against Dr. Berry."

UPDATE: DOT IG urged to investigate one of FAA’s top docs

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/17/09 12:05 AM

For the past two and a half years, Dr. Michael A. Berry has been the manager of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Medical Specialties Division, Office of Aeronautical Medicine. According to an FAA spokesperson, Dr. Berry is in charge of medically certifying the fitness of all pilots and air traffic controllers in the United States. But some current and former airline employees say that Dr. Berry himself is not fit for the job.

A former Continental Airlines pilot who was medically grounded after complaining about safety problems in the cockpit told The Examiner that “the dreaded Dr. Berry,” as he is known among some pilots, falsified his medical records by telling the FAA he had “a neurological condition (seizure)” that ended his 17-year flying career.

“Dr. Berry found me ‘unfit for duty’ with no corroborating medical evidence, based upon a phone call to the pilot about whom I had complained... and then had the audacity to ask me for money to pay him to take care of it. He even wrote this in his notes...if I decided to work with him, he’d have to charge me for his time.”

The seizure diagnosis was refuted by the other pilot in a sworn affadavit dated Sept. 11, 2008: “I never told Dr. Berry that [the] First Officer...was unconscious or even had a disturbance of consciousness.”

In a written complaint to the FBI...

UPDATE: FAA inspectors pounded for doing their job

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/09/09 12:05 AM

A former FAA safety inspector has asked the Office of Special Counsel to refer a 2005 plane crash near Miami to the Department of Justice to file charges of criminal negligence, manslaughter and a coverup by officials in the Federal Aviation Administration.

Gabe Bruno says that at least one mechanic with phony certification worked on Chalks Ocean Airway’s 58-year-old Grumman G-73T Mallard, which lost a wing and crashed off the coast of Miami shortly after takeoff, killing all 20 people aboard. The mechanic was tested and licensed by Anthony St. George, who was convicted and sentenced to two and a half years in jail FAA for basically selling mechanics licenses without making sure they knew what they were doing.

In 2002, Bruno says, he instituted a retesting program for the 2,000 or so mechanics that were certified by St. George. “The failure rate for the 300 people we retested was between 75 and 80 percent,” he told me.

But former FAA assistant administrator Nicholas Sabatini cancelled the program over Bruno’s strong objections. When retesting was finally reinstated, Bruno says, “it was a rubber-stamp sham, with nobody assigned to monitor the results.”

http://www.whistleblower.org/content/press_detail.cfm?press_id=1625 Three days after the Chalks accident, a mechanic certified by St. George failed the new “dumbed down” exam, and also ...

UPDATE: Big chill

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/02/09 12:05 AM

Last Friday, the House passed onerous cap-and-trade legislation to halt man-made global warming which a majority of House members apparently still believe will devastate the planet.

The very next day, the London Telegraph reported that Canadian polar bear expert Dr. Mitchell Taylor was barred from a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialty Group in Copenhagen because his views on global warming are "extremely unhelpful."

The real reason Dr. Taylor was told to stay home was his signing of "the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

Dr. Taylor also says polar bears are actually doing just fine and, contrary to Al Gore, are not on the verge of extinction. But what does he know? He's only studied the critters for 30 years. It's not like he won a Nobel Prize or anything.

"Meanwhile, the average temperature [of the Arctic] at midsummer is still below zero," the Telegraph reports, "the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping."

Brrrrrrr.

Here's the link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html

UPDATE: TSA responds to "Majority of TSA members at BWI, Dulles fail recertifiction tests," June 24

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
06/26/09 12:05 AM

TSA Statement:

At TSA, our people are our highest priority. TSA will continue to work with unions to educate them on our standards and look forward to an exchange of information in the best interests of our employees. The union statements and figures recently released are inaccurate and we will work with them to correct false information.

During the PASS 2009 performance period, TSA transitioned away from contractors conducting assessments to TSA employees conducting them. This was in direct response to a recommendation made by TSA’s employee advisory board, the National Advisory Council, last year. The assessments are now being conducted by people who know the screening procedures the best.

All evaluators completed a rigorous training course in which they learned how to objectively and consistently evaluate an officer’s performance. The evaluators have been given the necessary tools to ensure fair and consistent evaluations are being conducted at all airports nationwide. The purpose of these evaluations is to ensure that officers have the necessary skills to protect the traveling public.

We continue to implement new and innovative ways to train, test and motivate our workforce to perform at a high level. Under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) of 2001, TSA is required to conduct an annual proficiency review of security officers to ensure that cri...