Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Rhode Island is the poster child for how municipal employee and teachers unions have devastated state and local budgets through unsustainable contracts obtained through political contributions.

Rhode Island is drowning in pension promises it cannot meet and benefits it cannot pay. Yet the municipal employee unions have opposed sharing the budgetary pain they created.

The unions have pushed too hard and too far, and politicians are incapable of standing up to them because of campaign contributions and the large municipal employee voting block.

The latest example was the last minute removal of union health care sharing provisions in Rhode Island's attempt to deal with budget deficits, as reported in the Providence Journal, Critics of R.I. Senate panel budget attack union influence (emphasis mine):

But the strongest reaction Friday, as people digested what lawmakers proposed, had to do with what was not in the plan.

Not in the plan was a cost-cutting provision that would have required municipal employees to pay at least 15 percent of their health-insurance premiums in new contracts — a change that local leaders wanted because it would help them absorb cuts in state aid.

The reaction was strong because the provision had been in the deficit-cutting plan as of 4:30 p.m. Thursday, as indicated by House Speaker Gordon D. Fox in an interview at the time. But by 8:30 p.m., when the Finance Committee was voting, it was out.

Word that it was out came after AFL-CIO President George Nee vowed to lobby against the plan, telling a Journal reporter that “this is an election year” and the provision “could be a factor in how endorsements are made.”

On Friday, Nee’s comments prompted many observers to vent their anger at labor leaders and their ties to Democratic lawmakers.

“The unions are running the State House. The unions are demanding what they want in the budget,” said Harry L. Staley, chairman of the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition, which expressed its outrage in a news release issued Friday morning.

“They’re running the state into the ground.”

It's true. Drastic action will be the end result.

Expect the usual "union busting" or "anti-union" epithets to be thrown.

In reality, those of us calling for reform are the true friends of municipal employees because we recognize that the current system is unsustainable. Better to reform now than to break promises which cannot be kept.

The money just isn't there, and the economic base cannot support the current structure. Rhode Island is in an economic death spiral with extremely high unemployment fed by high taxes needed to sustain unsustainable government employee contracts.

Are union contracts the only problem? No, but they are the single biggest budgetary problem, both in the short and long term.

When promises are broken -- which is my prediction of what will happen nationwide if substantial changes are not made -- union members will have no one to blame but their own leadership.

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As far at I can tell, the date of the funeral for Polish President Lech Kaczynski and the others killed in the plane crash has not yet been set.

Undoubtedly, this will be a monumental event with dignitaries from around the world, and millions of people in the streets.

The statement issued by Obama today was appropriate.

Obama needs to attend the funeral for the leader of a nation which has fought beside us in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose people have a special affinity for the United States because of our shared history of opposing communism.

I am not going to politicize this funeral.

I expect Obama to do the right thing as the President of this country. If he can fly to Copenhagen on short notice to try to win the Olympics for Chicago, he can fly to Warsaw to help bury a true friend of the United States.

Until proven wrong, I am going to assume the best.

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Polish President Lech Kaczynski was a great friend of the United States and freedom loving peoples everywhere.

When Kaczynski visited the U.S. in 2007 he made sure to visit Nancy Reagan and to honor the role of Ronald Reagan in securing freedom in Eastern Europe (see my prior post for details and a photo)

Kaczynski also was a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, as described in the Jerusalem Post:

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu who met with Kaczynski in Poland and sat alongside him less than three months ago at the International Holocaust Awareness ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, issued a statement saying: "I knew Kaczynski as a Polish patriot, a great friend of Israel and as a leader who did much for his people and to further world peace and prosperity."

Netanyahu said Kaczynski led an important process to begin a new chapter in relations between Poles and Jews, and between Poland and Israel.

Both Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak also issued statements mourning the loss, with Lieberman saying Kaczynski was a "true friend" of Israel who proved this both in words and deeds. Barak said Kaczynski's death was a "great loss to his people and the entire world."

President Shimon Peres, who had spent a considerable amount of time with Kaczynski in April, 2008 when Peres paid a state visit to Poland for the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, expressed the shock of the State of Israel at the report of the terrible tragedy that has struck Poland, and said that Israel shares in the mourning of the Polish people and the free world.

A man who loved the United States, freedom for the individual, and the Jewish people. There are far too few such people in the world, and we just lost one of the best of them.

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Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died Saturday along with dozens of others when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia.

Russian and Polish officials offered conflicting death tolls but agreed there were no survivors on the Soviet-era Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Franciszek Gagor, National Bank President Slawomir Skrzypek and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer were also on board, the Polish foreign ministry said.

The pilot was told Smolensk airport was closed because of thick fog, according to the news agency Interfax. He was offered a choice of landing instead in either Moscow or Minsk, the capital of Belarus. But he decided to continue with the original flight plan and land at Smolensk.

The pilot made three unsuccessful attempts to land before the crash. On the fourth try and plane fell apart, Interfax said, citing officials at Smolensk's interior ministry.

Russia's foreign ministry confirmed the cause of the air catastrophe was bad weather. "According to provisional information the crash happened because the plane failed to land at the military airport near Smolensk in conditions of severe fog,' one official aid.

The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, killing many of the country’s top leaders and reviving, for some, the horror of the Katyn massacre.

“It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwas’niewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”

“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.

Former president Lech Walesa, who presided over Poland’s transition from communism, cast the crash in similar historic terms.“This is the second disaster after Katyn,” he told the news channel TVN-24. “They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has also perished. Regardless of the differences, the intellectual class of those on the plane was truly great.”

On January 27, 2010, during a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day held at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, Polish President Lech Kaczyński awarded Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.

During the ceremony, which marked this year 65 years since the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army, speeches were delivered by the President and Prime Minister of Poland, the Prime Minister of Israel, international delegates and figures, and Holocaust survivors. Polish President Kaczyński also awarded decorations during the ceremony to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Director Sara Bloomfield and Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński.

The three decorations were awarded for “eminent services in educational and museum work commemorating the victims of the Nazi German labor camps, concentration camps, and extermination centers, and for their accomplishments in the development of the Polish-Jewish dialogue.”

Definitely a day of F.O.M.S. (fear of missing something). I couldn't hit the blog during the day today because of meetings, and while I was away, the whole world freaked out.

Resignations, arguments, threats, more resignations, and then some:

• Obama debated Sarah Palin on nuclear weapons strategy, which is the sum of all left-wing fears, and worse yet, it was triggered by a question from the MSM. CAT FIGHT!



• Speaking of Palin, a HuffPo blogger lamented that left-wing women are wimps (she said it, not me) in comparison to She who has tunneled into their minds so deeply they are pulling their hair out trying to get at Her.



• Dawn Johnsen resigned from the DOJ position she never had.



• John Paul Stevens will retire from the position he has held on the Supreme Court since we had 48 states, leaving liberals with a no win confirmation fight; best they can do is get another JPS.



• Bart Stupak will retire from the House, after Nancy Pelosi called his bluff and he folded like a wet noodle (I know, mixed metaphor), leading to the best acronym ever, DLTDHYOTWO.



• Alan "You Want People To Die" Grayson crashed a Republican event, exposing his paranoia by claiming the Republicans were following HIM (or something like that), and confirmed why he never should be allowed in the same city as the nuclear football.



• Nate Silver, the perpetual Democratic hopester-pollster says it will be bad, really bad, do not even get out of bed bad for Democrats in November.



• LGF announced that the world would end due to too many people downing "a six-pack of White Castle bacon cheeseburgers and a sack of onion chips with three bottles of Guinness Stout."



• A New Jersey teachers' union prayed for Gov. Chris Christie's death. But I thought prayer was not allowed in school?

See you tomorrow.

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Absolutely, bring it on, via The Independent:

A sport best described as "mounted goat rugby from hell" could soon be transported from northern Afghanistan's dusty plains to the green turf of Twickenham, or even New York's Yankee Stadium, if enthusiasts have their way.

Buzkashi, a game supposedly devised by Genghis Khan, pits men and horses against each other in a ferocious struggle for possession of a headless goat. Now the director of buzkashi at Afghanistan's Olympic committee thinks it is time to unleash this spectacle on the world.

Unfortunately, we'd probably mess it up with our Western imperialist political correctness which disrespects native cultural rituals:

How easy it will be to export buzkashi to countries with vocal animal rights lobbies is something Mr Rashid is grudgingly aware off. A previous experiment to stage a match in the US foundered when his American partners began introducing changes to make the game more palatable.

According to Mr Rashid, the Americans training as chapandazan said: "We should not have a real goat, we need a false one." They said there should be no whips because that was cruel. The problem was "then it was not the real game", Mr Rashid sighed.

I'd pay a lot to see Obama throw out the first headless goat carcass, while wearing his Chicago White Sox cap, of course.

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Item No. 1. Obama hailed the new spirit of cooperation between the United States and Russia on a host of international issues, including Iran, through the signing of a nuclear arms reduction treaty:

"This ceremony is a testament to the truth that old adversaries can forge new partnerships," Obama declared. "It is just one step on a longer journey."

Item No. 2. No sooner had the treaty been signed, then the Russians promptly stated it would be null and void if the U.S. developed a missile shield to protect the U.S. and our allies against Iranian missiles:

... even as the agreement was sealed, Russia gave warning that an expansion of America's planned missile shield would derail the deal, which is the result of months of tense discussions

Item No. 3. No sooner had the treaty been signed, then the Russians stated that the signing of the treaty did not mean cooperation in strong sanctions on Iran:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told President Obama privately on Thursday that there remain limits to his country's support for sanctions on Iran, even as the move for united action to restrain Iran's nuclear ambition accelerates.

Item No. 4. As the treaty was being signed, a Russian-engineered rebellion in Kyrgyzstan resulted in a pro-Russian provisional government whose first priority is shutting down a U.S. base vital to resupply of our troops in Afghanistan:

Kyrgyzstan's self-proclaimed new leadership said on Thursday that Russia had helped to oust President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and that they aimed to close a U.S. airbase that has irritated Moscow.

Their comments set Wednesday's overthrow of Bakiyev, who fled the capital Bishkek as crowds stormed government buildings, firmly in the context of superpower rivalry in central Asia.

No sooner had presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed an arms reduction pact in Prague as part of an effort to "reset" strained relations than a senior official in Medvedev's delegation urged Kyrgyzstan's new rulers to shut the base.

Oh, by the way, How's That Iran Negotiation Going?

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of the British election has let Prime Minister Gordon Brown have it, via The Telegraph.

LGF and TPM are searching for a Tea Party connection, Andrew Sullivan thinks Palin had something to do with it, Paul Krugman considers it an incitement to violence, Count Frankula is convinced there is racism involved (Brown likes Obama, therefore), and on and on and on.


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Barack Obama has given the go ahead for the "targeted killing" of al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki, who happens to be a U.S. citizen.

I don't have a problem with it. The fight with al-Qaeda is war. Al-Awlaki is trying to kill Americans, and if the only way to stop him is by killing him, so be it.

The question is, whether the Spanish judges who have sought the arrest and prosecution of Israeli military and political officers under a theory of "universal jurisdiction" also will come after Obama.

After all, the Spanish judges tried, unsuccessfully, to go after Bush administration officials at the urging of American leftist groups.

I called attention to the possibility of prosecution of Obama over drone attacks long ago. With the clamor on the left that Obama's current order is illegal, the issue is front and center.

Will American leftists clamor for a prosecution of Obama in Spain if there is no prosecution in the U.S.? And will the Spanish judges be as bold in going after Obama administration officials?

If they do, then I'll be on Obama's side. But I'll never have to get there, because Obama isn't Israeli and he isn't Bush.

Update: A compendium of articles and news reports on "universal jurisdiction" in numerous countries is here. A reader points out that Spain narrowed its law last year (in November) after abuse, although it is not clear whether the changes really would be effective at curbing politicized prosecutions. The issue would be whether there were a sufficient connection to Spain and the perpetrator were found on Spanish soil, as expained in this article (at p. 9). If I were a former Bush administration official involved in the interrogation cases, I would not travel to Spain regardless of the narrowing of the law.

In an ultimate irony, the most aggressive of Spanish judges, Baltasar Garzón, now is on trial in Spain for abusing power during "universal jurisdiction" investigations.

The problem exists elsewhere. A British judge issued a warrant for the arrest of former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, and Israel officials are cautious as to which countries they travel.

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Well, why not?

Immigration is an issue on which the U.S. seems incapable of reaching a political consensus, instability on the Mexican border has led to hundreds of deaths and cross-border drug trafficking, and neither the U.S. nor Mexico seems willing to solve the problem.

A solution imposed by a foreign nation may be just what is needed.

After all, when it comes to intractable disputes between Israelis and Palestinians, Obama appears headed towards an imposed solution in order to deal with the Iran nuclear problem:

Despite recent turbulence in U.S. relations with Israel, President Obama is "seriously considering" proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict, according to two top administration officials.

"Everyone knows the basic outlines of a peace deal," said one of the senior officials, citing the agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000 and in subsequent negotiations. He said that an American plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The second senior official said that "90 percent of the map would look the same" as what has been agreed in previous bargaining.

Imposing border changes and population shifts on the Israelis in order to help resolve the Iranian nuclear program is absurd, as Jennifer Rubin points out:

The Obami can’t come up with an effective Iran approach. And now they want to add to their overwhelmed and underperforming foreign-policy apparatus by imposing a Middle East plan? It is apparent that the latter is an excuse and diversion from doing anything about the former. It is also very dangerous.

Iran never will recognize a U.S. imposed solution, and such an imposition would simply be a new ground for hating the U.S. and Israel. And bringing Iran into the equation perpetuates the myth that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is what motives the Iranians.

Getting back to immigration, if we really want to please the Iranians, forget the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Why don't we let the Iranians impose a solution to our immigration disputes. It makes as much sense as letting the Iranians drive our policy on Israel. Once you head down the road of appeasement, there is no reason to stop at our border.

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In 1940, the Soviet Union executed 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia.

The mass grave was discovered in 1943 by invading German troops, but the Soviet propaganda machine create the mythology that the massacre was committed by the Nazis:

In late 1943, as the Red Army began to recapture territory in eastern Poland, the Soviet secret police (the NKVD), cordoned off the Katyn forest near Smolensk to create one of the most elaborate coverups of the war.

After exhuming the bodies from the graves that the Germans had previously uncovered, the NKVD had documents forged to suggest that the Germans had committed the crime. They planted the false documents on the newly exhumed bodies and worked to persuade local people who had witnessed the Soviet crimes to change their stories.

In January 1944, the Soviet authorities went public with their attempt to con the world about the murders. They filmed falsified documents–money, letters, and a postcard written in Polish by a Polish prisoner of war dated June 20, 1941–to show that the Poles had still been alive in 1941. Key witnesses had also been persuaded, upon the threat of death, to withdraw the testimony they had given to the Germans.

Given all the other Nazi attrocities, that mythology was believable at the time, although years later the truth was revealed.

The Katyn Forest massacre has been all but forgotten outside Poland. As a student of Soviet history, I certainly never forgot.

So I was pleased to read that for the first time ever, Poland and Russia will commemorate the massacre together:

In the first joint commemoration of one of the darkest chapters in their history the Russian and Polish prime ministers will pay tribute today to 22,000 Polish military officers massacred by the Soviet secret police in the Second World War.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk are to mark the 70th anniversary of the slaughter in the forest at Katyn. For half a century the Soviet Union blamed the crime on Nazi troops who revealed the mass graves to the world in 1943.

It was only in 1990 that Mikhail Gorbachev, then the Soviet President, acknowledged that the NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB secret police, had carried out the killings on the orders of Joseph Stalin in April 1940.

Mr Putin said in a Polish newspaper article last year that Russians “fully understand the sensitivities of Poles about Katyn . . . Together we must keep alive the memory of the victims of this crime”.

Indeed.

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Elections have been set in Great Britain for May 6, pitting the Labour Party (headed by Obama-wannabe Prime Minister Gordon Brown) against the Conservative Party ("Tories") (headed by David Cameron).

The election is shaping up as traditional nanny-state government (Labour) against less big government (Tories), echoing recent U.S. elections.

While all politics is local, and the election could swing either way based on personalities and non-economic issues, the Tories are campaigning on a platform of tax cuts, opposition to proposed national insurance tax increases on businesses, and greater economic freedom.

As of now, the Tories are favored to win, as reflected in this map by the Times of London (note: Conservatives are in Blue, not Red as in the U.S., and there are more than two parties):


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The Obama administration's new nuclear policy, to which I alerted readers several days ago and again yesterday, contains a very curious doctrine. As reported by Jake Tapper:

In the [Nuclear Policy] Review, the US government will pledge to refrain from using nuclear weapons to attack any country in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- even if that country has attacked the US with chemical or biological weapons.

Who will decide whether a country is "in compliance" with the NPT? Normally investigation and fact finding is done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which acts under the auspices of the U.N.

So does this mean we have deferred to an international organization the underlying fact finding as to whether we have a right under our own policy to retaliate for a chemical or biological attack?

And who can make a binding declaration as to non-compliance?

The IAEA has made such findings in the past as to "safeguards agreements," but would such a finding be sufficient for nuclear retaliation? Musn't we go to the U.N. Security Council, which normally determines sanctions for non-compliance? Can the President of the United States act unilaterally in finding non-compliance? Who precisely determines non-compliance can be unclear.

What if the country in question disputes "alleged" non-compliance? Shouldn't the people of that country be entitled to some measure of due process?

After all, if due process rights attach to detainees at Gitmo, why not to people who may be the subject of nuclear retaliation based on a disputed finding of non-compliance with the NPT? Shouldn't the people have a right also to judicial review of such findings, under standards at least as rigorous as those afforded Gitmo detainees?

These are all valid questions once we start down the road of conditioning our ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons on a finding of non-compliance with the NPT.

While it seems absurd to think that a dispute as to NPT compliance might deter U.S. nuclear retaliation, such absurdity is a natural progression from a new policy which creates explicit standards and boundaries as to nuclear retaliation for the use of chemical or biological weapons.

Some things are better left unsaid, and the conditions under which we would engage in nuclear retaliation for chemical or biological attack was one of those things.

But for the President who cannot stop talking, not talking is unfathomable.

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The United States does not have chemical or biological weapons. The main deterrent to an enemy using such weapons against us is the threat that we will use nukes.

No more.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the Obama administration was considering changing our policy of ambiguity as to when we would use nukes.

Now it is official. As reported by the NY Times, tomorrow the administration will announce a non-use policy even in reaction to chemical or biological attack:

... the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those adopted by his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the Cold War. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons, or launched a crippling cyberattack.

But not to worry, the policy will be reconsidered if we suffer a devastating attack:

White House officials said that the new strategy will leave open the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reaches a level that makes United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

Sheer lunacy. What doesn't Obama understand about "deterrence." That means that nations which possess chemical and biological weapons will not even think about using them against us because the consequences would be so devastating for them.

Now, a little chem weapons here, a little bio weapons there, and all is good.

The world now is a more dangerous place.

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Wait for it. The next bailout will be for hospitals devastated by cut-backs as a result of Obamacare.

In Rhode Island, the prognosis already is not good for the survival of hospitals already struggling financially, which may be pushed over the brink. As reported by The Providence Journal (emphasis mine):

While some experts are predicting better times for hospitals from the national health-care overhaul, an analysis conducted for the Hospital Association of Rhode Island predicts that the state’s 11 acute-care hospitals stand to lose $465.7 million over the next 10 years.

The study found that any gains from more patients coming through the doors with insurance will be more than offset by cuts in payments the hospitals receive from the federal government, according to Edward J. Quinlan, the association’s president.

Most of the loss, about $400 million, will be in the form of reduced Medicare payments, according to a review conducted for the association. Medicare payments are adjusted annually, but due to changes in the new law, “in essence, you’d be getting less than inflation,” Quinlan said.

One of the many provisions likely to cause problems is the reduction in payment for readmissions of patients:

Medicare will also cut how much hospitals get paid for patients who need to be readmitted, as a way to encourage higher quality care on the first visit.

I highlighted this problem in a post in early September, Throwing Darts at HR3200 - Day 5 (Cutting Hospital Readmissions):

While lowering “excess” readmissions is an admirable goal, penalizing hospitals and excluding individual patient readmissions based on macro-level statistics is a blunt instrument.

When the hospital bailout talk arrives, call it what you want, but just don't call it "unexpected."

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