Flying Pig Alert

"the enemies of freedom – censorship and conformity"  -Michael Bloomberg

Former NYC mayor, The Little Dictator himself Michael Bloomberg must have made the Lefty Professor's sphincters eat holes in their chairs during a commencement address at Harvard University on Thursday, by unexpectedly implying they are a bunch priviledged  politically homogeneous repressionist: 

WSJ

"Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League.

In the 2012 presidential race, 96% of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama. Ninety-six percent – there was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there is among Ivy League donors. That statistic should give us pause.

When 96% of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should offer.  A university cannot be great if its faculty is politically homogenous.

When tenure was created, it mostly protected liberals whose ideas ran up against conservative norms. Today, if tenure is going to continue to exist, it must also protect conservatives whose ideas run up against liberal norms.

Great universities must not become predictably partisan. And a liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism. The role of universities is not to promote an ideology. It is to provide scholars and students with a neutral forum for researching and debating issues—without tipping the scales in one direction, or repressing unpopular views.

Requiring scholars—and commencement speakers, for that matter—to conform to certain political standards undermines the whole purpose of a university. This spring, it has been disturbing to see a number of college commencement speakers withdraw—or have their invitations rescinded—after protests from students and—to me, shockingly—from senior faculty and administrators who should know better.

It happened at Brandeis, Haverford, Rutgers, and Smith. In each case, liberals silenced a voice—and denied an honorary degree—to individuals they deemed politically objectionable. That is an outrage and we must not let it continue. Censorship and conformity—the mortal enemies of freedom—win out...."

New Orleans’ Last 5 Government-Run Public Schools Close

Difficult as it is to believe, hardcore Big Labor supporters were actually okay with keeping kids trapped in failing schools as long as it kept the dues dollars rolling into union coffers.

Charter schools – independently operated public schools – have proven so popular with New Orleans parents that they’ve driven traditional, government-operated public schools out of business. During the just-completed school year, an estimated nine of 10 New Orleans students attended a charter. As a result, New Orleans’ last five government-run schools closed their doors for good this week. The city will be the first in the nation to have a school district comprised entirely of charter schools.

The Washington Post:

“An all-charter district signals the dismantling of the central school bureaucracy and a shift of power to dozens of independent school operators, who will assume all the corresponding functions: the authority to hire and fire teachers and administrators, maintain buildings, run buses and provide services to special-needs students.”

New Orleans officials turned to charter school operators to help recreate their broken school system in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm, the city’s public schools were widely viewed as the worst in the nation – not only because of poor academic results for students, but also because of widespread corruption and incompetence among school leaders.

The new school district was called the “Recovery School District,” and it was designed on the premise that parents should have the option of where their children attend school, instead of simply assigning them to the neighborhood public school.

“We’ve reinvented how schools run,” charter school advocate Neerav Kingsland told the Post. “If I am unhappy with service I’m getting in a school, I can pull my kid out and go to another school tomorrow. I don’t have to wait four years for an election cycle so I can vote for one member of a seven-member board that historically has been corrupt.”

It turns out “Recovery” was a good name for the new district. Graduation rates today are 23 percent higher than they were before Hurricane Katrina. And from 2007 to 2013, students’ grade-level competence in math and reading has increased 34 percent,

Despite the undeniable success, teacher unions and other public school apologists still have a laundry list of complaints against charters. They claim the alternative schools are “undemocratic” (because their leaders are appointed instead of elected), “unaccountable” to taxpayers, and cause hardship for parents who have to figure out how to shuttle their kids back and forth to school.

But the real reason the unionists hate charters is because educators in many of the alternative schools don’t belong to teacher unions, and the great thing about charter schools is that officials can shut them down if they’re not meeting academic expectations. That’s a quality control measure no government-run school district has ever faced.

I have plenty of reasons to criticize our Governor Booby Jindal, especially over the privatization of the charity hospital system set up by Huey Long in the 1930's, but in the case of public education reforms, he fought Washington and incompetent teachers and their union tooth and nail and helped make reforms such as New Orleans happen. 

*Big Central Government Utopian Liberals Heads Explode*

BREAKING NEWS: Rev. Al Sharpton to be Appointed Interim White House Press Secretary

(MFNS) Washington DC - Middle Finger News has learned  from deep cover operatives within the White House, that Rev. Al Sharpton will be appointed as temporarily replacement for the resiging Jay Carney as spokesman of the Ministry of Truth on Monday. 

Our sources told us the President believes the savvy Mr. Sharpton's experience with scandals, his grasp of domestic affairs, and powerful command of the English language will help continue getting out the truth to the media and serve the administration well in the upcoming troubled months of elections and investigations. 

Legend in His Own Mind

"On Wednesday, our commander-in-chief stood before some of America’s most selfless men and women. It was an opportunity to inspire these young West Pointers with a speech about national security — and their vital role in a dangerous world. Instead he opted for a campaign speech once again contrasting his own brilliance with a childish caricature of his critics."

"When John Kennedy addressed West Point’s Class of 1962, he told them the burden of defending freedom 'will require more from you than ever before in our history.' ...

How different from Barack Obama’s adolescent address Wednesday. Here the long gray line was reduced to a backdrop for a president shouting to the world: I’m not the weakling you think!" — New York Post Editorial  

Secret Service Call Sign TG1

Inaction and Influx

The Obama Gang is expected to announce more executive-level alterations to American immigration policy in the near future that will bypass congressional approval.  

While many young illegals claim they are coming to America to escape gangs, abuse and violence, they are also entering the country at a time when their presence can open up to special benefits to them such as specific opportunities to bring family members living abroad into the United States at a later date.

While America is, and should be seen as, a place for refuge and boundless opportunity, it should not become an international welfare center. Instead of illegals coming to the United States to have their children here in hopes they will someday become automatic citizens, many illegal children are coming to the United States in the obvious hope that a compassionate America will bestow amnesty on them now and citizenship for them later.

Obama’s brazen willingness to cherry-pick certain laws, enforcing some while bending others has set a terrible precedent and sent a message to the world that says: If America’s president doesn’t enforce his country’s immigration laws, why should we be expected to respect them?

Obama's Idea to Pursue Race-Based Government in Hawaii

This should clear up any doubts about what kind of man

we have sitting in the White House

CATO Institute

In a classic Friday-afternoon news dump – and on the eve of a holiday weekend, no less – the Interior Department issued an advance notice of proposed rule-making (ANPR) to “solicit public comments on whether and how the Department of the Interior should facilitate the reestablishment of a government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community.” (Our friends at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii broke the news; it helps that their weekend starts six hours after Washington’s!)

This would be an end-run around both Congress and the Constitution, marking the first step toward the creation of a race-based government in Hawaii. 

Even setting aside the Fourteenth/Fifteenth Amendment and policy problems with any proposed racial governing body, this brazen executive action raises serious separation-of-powers concerns.

#1 – Where does the Obama administration get the authority to establish such a government without the consent of Congress?

#2 – Would such a racially-based government violate the 14th and 15th Amendments, which protect against the violation of due process and racial discrimination?

#3 – Would this be extended to other racial and ethnic groups?

#4 – Does this just pour gasoline on the fire of Hawaii’s independence movement?

In other words, this seems like a needlessly divisive action by the Obama administration that could have major consequences for the country.

READ MORE

Some Democrats Talking Up ObamaCare On Stump

Candidates Starting to Take More Assertive Stance on Affordable Care Act

Go For it!

Another Great Statistic for Obama to Be Proud of......

The state of free press in the U.S. is bad, according to the 2014 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. The U.S. was ranked 46th among the 180 nations surveyed, falling 13 places since last year. And what would be the biggest reason the "Home of the Free" continues to fall in comparison to the rest of the world?

In 2013, it came to light that the Justice Department had secretly obtained phone logs of Associated Press reporters, monitored the personal email account for FOX News reporter James Rosen in order to discover officials speaking to the press, and subpoenaed James Risen of The New York Times to testify against a former CIA employee accused of leaking classified information. Obama said in May 2013 that he was "troubled" at the possible overreach by the Justice Department and ordered the agency to review its guidelines on dealing with press investigations and quietly pushed the matter into the shadows.

The Obama White House has been accused of shielding the President from the press by not allowing the White House Press Corps sufficient access to photograph and question Obama during his official duties. Tightly controlled press conferences and staged photo-ops are now the norm.
 
New York Times Former Executive Editor Jill Abramson told Al Jazeera America in late January:

"I would say it is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering. The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations, more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It's on a scale never seen before."

The World Press Freedom Index is based on the answers to a questionnaire from partner nongovernmental organizations from each respective country.The questionnaire measures pluralism, media independence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency and infrastructure. 

The very institution that has supported and shielded the Obama Administration at all cost recognizes that the Freedom of the Press is being eroded, yet continue to remain intimidated and like the condemned, blindly carrying the ax to they own execution. 

The Morning Edition