Currently viewing the tag: “guts”
In February 2009, Continental flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, plunged into a suburb of Buffalo, NY, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground. Pilot error was named as the chief cause of the crash, and investigators focused on pilot fatigue as one of the primary problems. The co-pilot had taken a cross-country, overnight flight the day before the crash, and only slept briefly in an airline lounge before she was required to pilot the flight.
When the plane encountered an ice storm as it attempted to land in Buffalo, the pilots struggled to respond appropriately, and The National Transportation Safety Board found that their “performance was likely impaired because of fatigue.” Both pilots were heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder.
Families of the victims channeled their grief into action in the following months, launching a 15-month campaign to convince Congress to enact a variety of pilot performance safeguards. The bill passed last summer and, among other things, required the FAA to create tougher rules aimed at controlling pilot fatigue.
But today, the Republican House of Representatives passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) to a Republican-drafted aviation bill that would essentially gut the planned pilot fatigue rules by requiring extensive tailoring to many different segments of the aviation industry, and exempting several others.
Hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger blasted the amendment yesterday before it passed, saying “it creates a huge obstacle to new regulations,” and that, “at some point in the future, we don’t know when, it’s likely people will die unnecessarily.” Last night on the Ed Show, Sullenberger said the bill is a “slap in the face” to the Flight 3407 families. He also decried “special interests only interested in the bottom line.”
Watch it:
Family members of those killed on Flight 3407 are already speaking out against the Republican vote. “You can try to dress this up however you like, but we all know which special interests that [the amendment] is attempting to help and what it’s attempting to do for them, which is make it more difficult for the FAA to do its job and regulate them,” said Susan Bourque, who’s sister, Beverly Eckert, was killed in the crash.
Eckert’s husband, Sean Rooney, was killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and in the years following his death, Eckert became a leading 9/11 activist and helped lead the push for the 9/11 Commission. She was flying to Buffalo that evening to attend the unveiling of a scholarship in her late husband’s name.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has vowed to prevent the Shuster Amendment from becoming a part of the final aviation bill, after the House and Senate versions are reconciled.
Wednesday’s terrorist bombing outside the main bus terminal in Jerusalem was not an isolated incident, it was part of a ramp-up of terrorist acts by the Palestinians during the month of March:
- March 6: A sanitation worker from the Jerusalem Municipality lost his hand on Sunday when a garbage bag he was lifting exploded, in what police believe was the first terrorist attack in the capital in more than a year. The garbage bag was on a traffic island in the middle of Derech Hebron, next to the Mar Elias Monastery, in south Jerusalem, almost in the Gilo neighborhood. Another sanitation worker who was working alongside the first victim was lightly injured by the explosion. Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated both men to Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem.
- March 11: Terrorists Sneak into Jewish Town of Itamar, killing 5 members of the Fogel Family three of which were young children, all of which were brutally massacred.
- March 18-March 23 (the day of the Jerusalem Bombing) : During that six day period 80 “projectiles” were fired into Israel from Gaza-70 Mortars, 3 Grad Missiles, 7 Qassams (3/18 10 Mortars; 3/19 50 Mortars; 3/20 2 Qassam Missiles, 1 Grad Missile, 1 Mortar; 3/21 1 Qassam Missile; 3/22 4 Qassam Missiles, 4 Mortar; 3/23 2 Grad Missiles, 5 Mortars) The attacks on Israel from Gaza continue through today/
On March 22 (the day before the Jerusalem bombing) Israel struck back against the projectiles being fired from Gaza into Israel:
On Tuesday, IDF forces responded to projectiles fired at Israeli territory from the northern Gaza Strip. The attack took place in the afternoon when projectiles were fired toward the area of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. In response, IDF forces fired mortars to the point from which rockets were launched resulting in the injury of uninvolved civilians. Among them was the boy taken for medical treatment in Israel today.
The IDF regrets harming any uninvolved civilians but stresses that it is the Hamas terror organization which chooses to operate from the heart of civilian activity and uses people as a human shield. The event is currently being investigated.
The next day, immediately after the Jerusalem bombing, President Obama issued a statement of consolation to Israel. But showing his bias he could not console Israel without giving a tweak to the IDF about its defensive action the day before. The POTUS drew a moral equivalence between the terrorist bombing in Jerusalem and Israel’s defensive response to Palestinian mortars and rockets:
I condemn in the strongest possible terms the bombing in Jerusalem today, as well as the rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in recent days. Together with the American people, I offer my deepest condolences for those injured or killed. There is never any possible justification for terrorism. The United States calls on the groups responsible to end these attacks at once and we underscore that Israel, like all nations, has a right to self-defense. We also express our deepest condolences for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza yesterday. We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to do everything in their power to prevent further violence and civilian casualties.
Now for a moment lets examine the difference between the Jerusalem bombing, and the IDF attack on Gaza.
The Jerusalem bomb was unprovoked and set to go off near a busy bus station in a way to maximize the civilian deaths and injuries. As for Gaza, during the five days prior to Israel’s “attack” there was a constant barrage of rockets and mortars directed toward civilian targets in the Negev communities. Israel directed its mortar attack to the coordinates of the most recent projectiles fired from Gaza. Because Hamas uses its own citizens as human shields at least four non-combatants were killed by the Israeli mortars.
If President Obama wanted to give a non-biased response, he would have expressed his deepest condolences for the deaths of Palestinian civilians and then would have blasted Hamas for using civilians as human shields which is against the Geneva Convention. But Obama refused to acknowledge that the both the civilians killed and injured in Jerusalem and the ones in Gaza were a direct result of Palestinian terrorism…well to be perfectly fair terrorism and the Palestinian’s habit of using civilians as human shields.
Yesterday, Defense Secretary Gates, was in Israel where he had a joint press conference with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. When answering one question, Gates seemed to go against the President’s comment about “stressing of the importance of calm.”
“No sovereign state can tolerate having rockets fired at its people,”
Nice statement by Gates, but it makes one wonder, was that sentence the answer to a question by the Israeli press, or was it a message to his boss? Was he telling Israel that in the face of unremitting terror, Israel can count on the continued support of the United States as she exercises its right to defend its people, or was he telling Obama to stop appeasing terrorism?
During the first four weeks of March, Israel has been hit with terrorist attacks and a barrage of projectiles from Gaza. Our President downplays those attacks as part of a violent episode of tit-for-tat between Israelis and Palestinians, instead of what they really are- Palestinian terrorism resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians on both sides.
And these attacks are not just the fault of Hamas, throughout the Palestinian Authority controlled territories and Gaza there is constant anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian mosques, schools and media, along with a refusal on the part of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist that it has created.
Since his inauguration, this President has been pushing Israel to make one-sided concessions, even to the point of canceling US/Israeli agreements made during the Bush Administration. At the same time he has not called on the Palestinians to make similar concessions.
Peace will never be achieved as long as the Palestinians cause the deaths of innocent Israelis and Palestinians and make martyrs of terrorists who carry out those attacks. The Palestinians will never change their ways as long as the American President whitewashes the terrorist acts of the Palestinians by drawing a moral equivalent between their acts of terrorism and Israel’s defense of it’s citizens. Sadly Barack Obama does not have the guts or the inclination to identify and confront Palestinian attacks for what they are…. acts of terror.
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Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
As we’ve been documenting, several conservative governors have been asking their middle- and lower-income to bear the brunt of deficit reduction in their states, while simultaneously cutting corporate taxes and handing out new tax breaks to favored industries. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) yesterday was the latest to unveil a budget that guts important investments in education to pay for tax cuts that the state can’t afford:
In education, Corbett’s budget would wipe out more than $ 550 million in basic funding – a 10 percent cut from this year – and an additional $ 260 million in grants to school districts for prekindergarten, full-day kindergarten, and class-size reduction in kindergarten through third grade…All together, education advocates say, basic education funding would be reduced by more than $ 1 billion. […]
In other areas, the administration is proposing to resume the phaseout of the capital stock and franchise tax, a levy on companies incorporated in Pennsylvania.
“It’s even worse than I thought it would be,” Ron Cowell, a former state legislator and president of the Education Policy and Leadership Council, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Corbett also said that he will ask public employees to take pay and benefit cuts, and proposed a pay freeze for Pennsylvania’s teachers. But while asking his state’s public employees, teachers, and students to sacrifice, Corbett let one big Pennsylvania player off easy — the state’s gas “fracking” industry:
But there’s another group that’s tapping into big-time wealth — a buried treasure right here in Pennsylvania — that isn’t facing those kinds of tough decision that causes a pay-frozen schoolteacher’s family to cut back on groceries or cancel a weekend down the shore.
That would be the economically booming, mostly out-of-state natural gas companies and their multi-millionaire CEOs, who continue to rapidly expand their aggressive form of drilling known as hydrofracking, or simply “fracking,” across large swaths of upstate Pennsylvania. The companies take in hundreds of millions of dollars without paying any dedicated Pennsylvania tax — even as such levies are imposed in the other 14 of the top 15 gas-producing states, even in red-state bastions of free-market libertarianism like Dick Cheney’s native Wyoming and George W. Bush’s Texas.
Corbett’s budget also “articulates a philosophy of regulation that makes the hair stand up for many concerned about the burgeoning natural gas industry,” calling for expedited permits for the industry. Why isn’t Corbett asking the environmentally destructive fracking industry to pay its fair share? Maybe it’s that he received “a whopping $ 835,720 from oil-and-natural gas interests, including his largest single contributor — Marcellus Shale driller Terry Pegula and his wife Kim, who gave $ 305,000 to the Republican’s campaign.”
As Hypocrisy Watch PA summed up, “the juxtaposition was stunning in the budget plan [Corbett] released yesterday. It was a dream come true for Big Business – with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks including a new 35% cut in one major corporate tax. Meanwhile, working families got hosed: programs to prevent foreclosure and make housing affordable were eliminated; K-12 public school cuts of over $ 1 billion…and unprecedented higher education cuts.”
As we’ve been documenting, several conservative governors have been asking their middle- and lower-income to bear the brunt of deficit reduction in their states, while simultaneously cutting corporate taxes and handing out new tax breaks to favored industries. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) yesterday was the latest to unveil a budget that guts important investments in education to pay for tax cuts that the state can’t afford:
In education, Corbett’s budget would wipe out more than $ 550 million in basic funding – a 10 percent cut from this year – and an additional $ 260 million in grants to school districts for prekindergarten, full-day kindergarten, and class-size reduction in kindergarten through third grade…All together, education advocates say, basic education funding would be reduced by more than $ 1 billion. […]
In other areas, the administration is proposing to resume the phaseout of the capital stock and franchise tax, a levy on companies incorporated in Pennsylvania.
“It’s even worse than I thought it would be,” Ron Cowell, a former state legislator and president of the Education Policy and Leadership Council, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Corbett also said that he will ask public employees to take pay and benefit cuts, and proposed a pay freeze for Pennsylvania’s teachers. But while asking his state’s public employees, teachers, and students to sacrifice, Corbett let one big Pennsylvania player off easy — the state’s gas “fracking” industry:
But there’s another group that’s tapping into big-time wealth — a buried treasure right here in Pennsylvania — that isn’t facing those kinds of tough decision that causes a pay-frozen schoolteacher’s family to cut back on groceries or cancel a weekend down the shore.
That would be the economically booming, mostly out-of-state natural gas companies and their multi-millionaire CEOs, who continue to rapidly expand their aggressive form of drilling known as hydrofracking, or simply “fracking,” across large swaths of upstate Pennsylvania. The companies take in hundreds of millions of dollars without paying any dedicated Pennsylvania tax — even as such levies are imposed in the other 14 of the top 15 gas-producing states, even in red-state bastions of free-market libertarianism like Dick Cheney’s native Wyoming and George W. Bush’s Texas.
Corbett’s budget also “articulates a philosophy of regulation that makes the hair stand up for many concerned about the burgeoning natural gas industry,” calling for expedited permits for the industry. Why isn’t Corbett asking the environmentally destructive fracking industry to pay its fair share? Maybe it’s that he received “a whopping $ 835,720 from oil-and-natural gas interests, including his largest single contributor — Marcellus Shale driller Terry Pegula and his wife Kim, who gave $ 305,000 to the Republican’s campaign.”
As Hypocrisy Watch PA summed up, “the juxtaposition was stunning in the budget plan [Corbett] released yesterday. It was a dream come true for Big Business – with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks including a new 35% cut in one major corporate tax. Meanwhile, working families got hosed: programs to prevent foreclosure and make housing affordable were eliminated; K-12 public school cuts of over $ 1 billion…and unprecedented higher education cuts.”
As we’ve been documenting, several conservative governors have been asking their middle- and lower-income to bear the brunt of deficit reduction in their states, while simultaneously cutting corporate taxes and handing out new tax breaks to favored industries. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) yesterday was the latest to unveil a budget that guts important investments in education to pay for tax cuts that the state can’t afford:
In education, Corbett’s budget would wipe out more than $ 550 million in basic funding – a 10 percent cut from this year – and an additional $ 260 million in grants to school districts for prekindergarten, full-day kindergarten, and class-size reduction in kindergarten through third grade…All together, education advocates say, basic education funding would be reduced by more than $ 1 billion. […]
In other areas, the administration is proposing to resume the phaseout of the capital stock and franchise tax, a levy on companies incorporated in Pennsylvania.
“It’s even worse than I thought it would be,” Ron Cowell, a former state legislator and president of the Education Policy and Leadership Council, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Corbett also said that he will ask public employees to take pay and benefit cuts, and proposed a pay freeze for Pennsylvania’s teachers. But while asking his state’s public employees, teachers, and students to sacrifice, Corbett let one big Pennsylvania player off easy — the state’s gas “fracking” industry:
But there’s another group that’s tapping into big-time wealth — a buried treasure right here in Pennsylvania — that isn’t facing those kinds of tough decision that causes a pay-frozen schoolteacher’s family to cut back on groceries or cancel a weekend down the shore.
That would be the economically booming, mostly out-of-state natural gas companies and their multi-millionaire CEOs, who continue to rapidly expand their aggressive form of drilling known as hydrofracking, or simply “fracking,” across large swaths of upstate Pennsylvania. The companies take in hundreds of millions of dollars without paying any dedicated Pennsylvania tax — even as such levies are imposed in the other 14 of the top 15 gas-producing states, even in red-state bastions of free-market libertarianism like Dick Cheney’s native Wyoming and George W. Bush’s Texas.
Corbett’s budget also “articulates a philosophy of regulation that makes the hair stand up for many concerned about the burgeoning natural gas industry,” calling for expedited permits for the industry. Why isn’t Corbett asking the environmentally destructive fracking industry to pay its fair share? Maybe it’s that he received “a whopping $ 835,720 from oil-and-natural gas interests, including his largest single contributor — Marcellus Shale driller Terry Pegula and his wife Kim, who gave $ 305,000 to the Republican’s campaign.”
As Hypocrisy Watch PA summed up, “the juxtaposition was stunning in the budget plan [Corbett] released yesterday. It was a dream come true for Big Business – with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks including a new 35% cut in one major corporate tax. Meanwhile, working families got hosed: programs to prevent foreclosure and make housing affordable were eliminated; K-12 public school cuts of over $ 1 billion…and unprecedented higher education cuts.”
Last fall, newly-elected Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME) told the citizens of his state that he pledged to enact “new ideas to get Maine working.” He also promised to defend “the traditional Maine values that have created strong communities and strong families across the state.”
It now appears that LePage is ready to abandon Maine’s strong communities and families with a very old Bush-era idea that has repeatedly failed to get people “working” — gutting necessities for hardworking Main Street Mainers to finance tax cuts for some of the richest in the state. In his budget that was released yesterday, the governor has unveiled a slew of tax cuts, cutbacks in public services, and the gutting of public employee benefits and pensions.
Included in the budget is a provision that would raise the retirement age of public workers from 62 to 65, cut Maine’s prescription drug and health coverage for working parents program, end $ 400 of property tax relief for more than 75,000 middle-income Maine households, and freeze cost of living adjustments for state employee retirees — which already provides a meager average pension of only $ 18,500 per year.
Yet at the same time, LePage is pushing through hundreds of millions of dollars of tax cuts. While most Mainers will receive a tax cut under the governor’s plan, the lion’s share of the cuts will go to the wealthiest of state residents. The Maine Center for Economic Policy notes that the average tax cut for most working families in Maine will be a measly $ 83, while upper income earners will take home an average of $ 874, and those who earn more than $ 363,438 — just one percent of the population of the state — will take home a whopping extra $ 2,770, on average:
And while Millett and business groups gave the tax cuts high marks, the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a liberal think tank, said the cuts give the rich much better benefits than the poor. “Where’s the sacrifice that’s being asked of Maine’s wealthiest residents?” said Garrett Martin, associate director of the center.
The think-tank estimates that the average income tax break for families that earn between $ 28,139 and $ 48,050 would be $ 83 in 2013. That jumps to $ 874 for those who make more than $ 199,783 and to $ 2,770 for those who earn more than $ 363,438, according to the center.
While unveiling his budget, LePage said that “if you want prosperity, you have got to make sacrifices.” Yet this chart of his proposed tax cuts from the Maine Center for Economic Policy shows that it appears that the richest Mainers aren’t sacrificing at all:
There is reason to believe that Mainers are not going to take such an unfair deal lying down. As a part of a wider Main Street Movement, hundreds of Mainers marched on the State House this past week in support of Wisconsin workers. “The governor proposes largely balancing the state budget on (state workers’) backs,” said Ginette Rivard, vice president of the Maine State Employees Association, who has threatened to lead opposition to LePage’s budget.
Rand Paul isn’t sure they do:
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took aim at the newly released House GOP budget, saying it falls far short of what needs to be done to deal with the federal deficit.
“It’s really not going to touch the problem,” Paul said. “There’s a disconnect between Republicans who want a balanced budget but aren’t maybe yet brave enough to talk about the cuts to come.”
Video:
Sadly, I think Paul’s assessment of his fellow Republicans is largely correct, and that he’s going to find the Senate a very lonely place before long.
Truthiness.
Talk show host Bill Maher once again displayed his ignorance for America’s history and founding by telling Tea Partiers that the Founding Fathers would have “hated” their “guts.” As you’d come to expect from Maher he constantly referred to members of the Tea Party as “teabaggers” – which would probably be an insult coming from […]
It’s not just us – it’s everybody.
American Thinker Blog
A sizzlin’ piece of red meat for a slow Sunday afternoon. […] Read the rest »
