Truly Frightening Chart About Federal Debt

Any reasonable person should be able to look at this chart, which uses CBO data, and understand that we must reform our economic and spending policies. The current spending pattern, fueled by an entrenched entitlement mentality, cannot be sustained.

The delegitimizing and demonizing have begun

This reaction from a Wisconsin union worker to last night’s recall election result tells you all you need to know about the left: If they don’t win, the world is in self-destruct mode, things are off kilter, nefarious methods were used, etc. This is almost the identical reaction the editorial writers of The News & Observer had when Republicans won a majority of the Wake County School Board two years ago. After whining like this guy for a few days, the N&O began deligitimizing the win and demonizing the opposition in stories and editorials. This is not a healthy reaction, in Wisconsin OR North Carolina.

Ominous Development For The Accused On College Campuses

Duke Cheston writes for Carolina Journal about alarming new federal regulations for college disciplinary committees that should give pause to every person who cares about justice.

In April 2011, the Obama administration’s Office of Civil Rights sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges across the country to explain newly created federal rules on dealing with sexual violence. A major change was to lower the burden of proof for colleges to punish students for sexual assault, which ranges from attempts of forced kissing up to and including rape. 

The new rules ostensibly come from a reinterpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that prohibits colleges that receive federal funds from discriminating based on gender — best known for requiring women’s sports to be treated equally to men’s. Arguing that sexual assault is a form of gender discrimination, the OCR decreed a handful of new regulations. 

The most aggressive new interpretation was a mandate that colleges and universities lower the burden of proof when deciding cases of assault. The bar was dropped to the lowest possible standard, a “preponderance of evidence.” In other words, a college disciplinary committee merely needs to decide that an accused individual is more likely than not to have committed a crime. Those deciding the case must be only 50.1 percent sure of guilt. That standard is lower than the one used in criminal cases, which is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and generally thought of in numeric terms as 98 percent certainty of guilt. 

Compensation For Top Directors At Two HUD Offices Exceeds $600,000

Sen. Chuck Grassley wants to know more about this, and he wants the information about HUD compensation packages to be made public.

The request Tuesday from the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee comes a day after the administration announced pay limits for top local housing executives.

The Housing and Urban Development Department imposed pay limits after finding instances of housing agencies in Atlanta and Los Angeles with compensation packages that in 2010 exceeded $600,000 for each of their directors.

Orange County Commissioners Put Transit Tax Hike On November Ballot

The vote was 5 to 2 to put yet another tax hike before Orange County voters. The last sales tax hike recently went into effect. The new tax the ultra liberal commission is salivating over is a half-cent hike to fund a Chapel Hill-focused light rail plan. Commissioner Steve Yuhasz, who voted against it, revealed what’s really happening:

“We’re just putting all of our transit eggs in this basket that really is so heavily weighted to a light rail plan that provides just scraps of the real kinds of transit that we’re most likey to need over the forseeable future,” Yuhasz said. “In the end we’re going to end up with a plan that is too expensive provides too little overall service and I don’t know how we can improve on that at all.”