Today, President Obama  signed legislation to provide urgent fiscal relief to school districts across the country to maintain our education system, and to enable 160,000 teachers to keep their jobs.

The 160,000 figure is nationwide. Nevada’s share is 1,400 teachers.

I assume that a portion of those 1,400 teachers will be here in Nye County.

The question is: “Will those Nye County residents that are concerned about Obama’s ‘big government spending’ rise up  in protest, demanding the federal money be rejected?”

By the way, Senator John Ensign voted No (to reject the money) and Senator Harry Reid voted Y (to take the money). [Congress.Org]

[Source: White House]

Harold Wasserman wrote a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun. Harold wrote:

Recent editorials and letters to the editor have taken the Republicans to task for fighting extensions of unemployment benefits and financial reform. This obviously falls on deaf ears within the Republican Party because it is to the GOP’s political advantage to keep unemployment high and have people with short memories dissatisfied so they will blame their problems on the current administration.

The Republican Party has shown time and time again its disdain for the average working person. It also has shown how easy it is to get the uninformed voter to consistently vote against his or her best interests.

The Ugliness of Race

[Shirley Sherrod]

The squabble between the Tea Party and the NAACP over racism has evolved into a firestorm.

How it began

The NAACP has accused the Tea Party of having a racist element in its organization. The Tea Party accuses the NAACP of being racist.

Now hold that thought a second.

Shirley Sherrod  is the Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA. She was federally appointed to her job. She gave a speech last March at a NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner. Her father was murdered by a white man when she was a young girl. She was explaining to her audience how she overcame her feelings against white people.

There is a fellow named Andrew Breitbart who writes a blog called Big Government.

Breitbart got a video of Sherrod’s speech. He posted two clips from it on his blog.

Clip 1

Clip 2

Breitbart didn’t cover Sherrod’s lesson on how she overcame her racism as a young girl. He wrote on his blog:

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

It went viral

Boy did it ever. [See Huffington Post]

The NAACP condemned her remarks at the banquet.

USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook phoned Sherrod who was driving and told her “the White House wanted her to resign because her comments were generating a cable news controversy.

Cook wanted her to submit her resignation on her Blackberry. She did.

Later, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, stated it was he, not the White House, that had wanted her to resign.

The White House confirmed it had not sought her resignation. The NAACP, after learning the full story, reversed itself and is asking for her reinstatement.

President Obama has stated he will support Vilsack’s decision.

Breitbart still contends the NAACP is racist and so is Sherrod.

What do I think?

I think President Obama and Vilsack are making a mistake. They should reinstate her. Breitbart can go pound sand.

President Barack Obama flies to Las Vegas to stump for Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid.

Obama calls Sharron Angles ideas “old worn out” theories.

See the video on the Las Vegas Sun.

Remember that last week President Barack Obama met with British Petroleum’s CEO.  When they parted company BP agreed to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate victims of the oil spill.

Next day the BP CEO and top executives appeared before a House Committee on which sits Republican Joe Barton of Texas.

Barton said he was “ashamed that a private company would be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown.” Nobody was twisting Barton’s arm to make the apology either.

Yesterday, Thomas Frank, wrote an opinion in the Wall Street Journal:

The remark was morally inverted but it was not, as Mr. Barton said, after being pressured to recant, a “misconstruction.” Instead, it was a glimpse into the soul of a certain sort of conservative, a reminder of just what kind of government we can expect if the reinvigorated right recaptures Congress this fall.

Today Republicans defeated Democrats’ showcase election-year jobs bill, including an extension of weekly unemployment benefits for millions of people out of work more than six months. [CBS News]

The 57-41 vote fell three votes short of the 60 required to crack a GOP filibuster.

The rejected bill would also have provided $16 billion in new aid to states, preserving the jobs of thousands of state and local government workers and providing what White House officials called an insurance policy against a double-dip recession. It also included dozens of tax breaks sought by business lobbyists, and tax increases on domestically produced oil and on investment fund managers.

The demise of the bill means that unemployment benefits will phase out for more than 200,000 people a week. Governors who had been counting on federal aid will now have to consider a fresh round of budget cuts, tax hikes and layoffs of state workers.

Also today Republican Bobby Jindal was railing about resuming deep water drilling for oil in the gulf because of the need for oil jobs and oil.

Republican Sharron Angle is complaining about payment of unemployment to the lazy unemployed.

Photo: MARK SMITH / PVT
Leslie Stovall, left, is acting as a special prosecutor for Nye County District Attorney Bob Beckett, at right, with wife Jodee. Stovall and Beckett addressed the issues surrounding the DA’s arrest during the Thursday news conference.

Nye County District Attorney, Bob Beckett, and the Nye County Sheriff’s Office are arguing over validity of embezzlement allegations pending against Beckett.

The Sheriff’s Office began an investigation after being approached by Nye County Treasurer Gary Budahl, who asked for help in auditing the district attorney’s Bad Check Program bank account because Beckett allegedly wouldn’t comply.

The bad check program contains funds recovered from bad checks. It is run through the district attorney’s office, and Beckett had control of where to distribute the funds, police said. Officers obtained a search warrant and are examining the account. Financial records were seized during the search. The account at Bank of America was frozen.

[Read more →]

Is off-shore drilling for oil worth it? I have my doubts.

The oil from the BP spill is now onshore leaving much devastation in it’s wake. Wildlife killed indiscriminately. Nature’s food chain broken, perhaps irrevocably.

The fishing industry along the gulf coast decimated.

The oil spill keeps flowing—and has for the past three weeks. Take a look at at the photos on Huffington Post. Makes the Drill Baby Drill cry sound so empty.

President Obama has put a hold on offshore drilling. Governor Schwarzenegger has withdrawn his support for offshore drilling along the California coast.

Mankind is destroying the earth we live on.

We just never seem to learn.

Nye County District Attorney, up for re-election, has been arrested and being held in jail.

News 3 has confirmed that Nye County District Attorney Robert Beckett has been arrested.
He is facing numerous charges including embezzlement and misappropriation of funds. His bail has been set at $207,500.
According to the Nye County Sheriff’s Office, Beckett operated a “bad check program” through his office.
It has been alleged that an audit revealed Beckett made numerous donations with funds collected through this program to numerous organizations throughout the community, some of which directly benefited his family members.
One donation is alleged to have been made to help a friend pay off a loan.

Update May 6, 2010: Las Vegas Review-Journal. Some additional information has been publicized in the Review-Journal:

Beckett, who was arrested without incident, has said the investigation was the result of political enemies.

“They don’t have their facts straight,” Beckett said Wednesday evening. “They misinterpreted the law, and then they took exceedingly inappropriate action.”

Beckett, who was arrested in a bizarre DUI incident in California more than a year ago, seeks his fifth term and is in a heated race that includes Ron Kent, his former chief civil deputy; disgraced former Clark County Family Court Judge Nicholas Del Vecchio; and Brian Kunzi, a senior deputy attorney general.

Beckett was released by midafternoon on his own recognizance. Because he is the district attorney, a special prosecutor will be named to handle the case, DeMeo said.

DeMeo denied the heated election was behind the arrest.

“This wasn’t motivated by politics,” he said.

Beckett has been charged with more than 40 counts, including 20 counts of fraudulent appropriation of property, 20 counts of misconduct of a public officer, one count of malfeasance of office and one count of embezzlement.

DeMeo said he was unsure how much money is involved because the account “was rapidly depleted” and had about $15,000 left.

“One thing that was interesting is we found evidence a car payment was made for a family friend,” DeMeo said.

“That’s not true,” Beckett said. “I never used that account to pay off anything for family or friends.”

Beckett said the funds were given to charities, but DeMeo said it doesn’t appear the money was used for “altruism.”

The bad check fund had never been audited in 13 years, Beckett said.

DeMeo was unsure whether that was accurate, but he said Nevada law spells out that such accounts must be audited by county treasurers.

Beckett reportedly had skipped several meetings requested by Nye County Treasurer Gary Budahl and Dan McArthur, the county’s independent auditor.

The bad check fund receives its money from people charged with writing bad checks. The money is supposed to be used to reimburse victims of bad checks. Bad-check writers also must pay fees on top of their reimbursements.

DeMeo said he did not know how many people were fully reimbursed.

Beckett last week said the fund was being phased out because “people aren’t writing bad checks anymore.”

He said he would call a news conference “once I sort through this mess. Until then, I can’t say anything else.”

Contact Doug McMurdo at dmcmurdo@reviewjournal. com or 702-254-5512.

After nearly a month of national ridicule, Lowden’s campaign manager’s (Robert Uithoven) outrageous comments while discussing health care reform and BarterGate on Face to Face culminate with he and Lowden being named Worst Persons in the World.

Last Friday Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed an illegal immigration bill into law. The new Arizona law requires immigrants to carry alien registration documents at all times. It also requires the police to question people if there’s reason to suspect they are in the United States illegally. Governor Brewer sad:

“There’s no higher priority than protecting the citizens of Arizona. We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life. We cannot delay while the destruction happening south of our border — our international border — creeps its way north. We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act.”

President Obama called the law “misguided.” Protesters in Arizona and critics across the country are afraid that this law is going to give police license to conduct racial profiling and possibly lead to harsh crackdowns on illegal immigrants in other states.

The bottom line here is how would a law enforcement officer identify somebody who they suspect is an illegal immigrant?

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. . . .”

The United States Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1 Chief Justice Warren wrote:

“No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.”

Justice Warren cited “what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.” Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 222 (1960). “The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967).

What Obama characterizes as “misguided” and the concern of critics of the Arizona law is whether or not application of the new law in Arizona conflicts with the Constitution of the United States.

The new law targets illegal immigrants. But how can one tell the difference between a legal and illegal immigrant?

In Terry it was argued, the police should be allowed to “stop” a person and detain him briefly for questioning upon suspicion that he may be connected with criminal activity.

The issue directly addresses the question of just how much freedom from governmental interference does a person have in the United States? If the policeman sees a person that looks like a Mexican can he stop and detain that person to ask for his documentation? Does looks constitute probable cause to stop and detain? Does mere curiosity whether the Mexican is legal or illegal constitute probable cause?

Another overriding legal issue involved is whether or not Arizona, can pass and enforce the new law, while the state remains bound by the United States Constitution? Jurisdiction over the international border rests with the federal government, not state governments.

Then, what if the federal government fails to secure the border? Does a state have the right to secure the border because of the failure of the federal government?

These are fundamental constitutional questions which will undoubtedly wind their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide.

It will be interesting to watch what the Supreme Court does with the matters in the 20th century.