THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

 

† There's No Such Thing As Free Healthcare: An analysis of federal data by The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit healthcare policy think tank, finds that premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have risen faster than incomes in every state, confirming the results of similar surveys (click here for related article), The Washington Post reports:

 

The District of Columbia had the highest annual total premiums, including both the employer’s and the worker’s share. In 2010, they averaged $5,644 for a single policy and $15,206 for a family version — a rise of 51 percent and 41 percent, respectively, since 2003.

 

But the costs were significant even in states with some of the lowest average rates, such as Alabama, where a single policy averaged $4,571 in total premiums and a family version reached $12,409. Maryland and Virginia were roughly in the middle of the pack. …

 

Across all states, total premiums now amount to a sizable proportion of typical incomes. In 2003, 13 states had annual premiums that comprised less than 14 percent of the median income. In 2010, there were none. And 62 percent of Americans now live in a state in which health insurance premiums equal 20 percent or more of median earnings for adults younger than 65.

 

† SOTU = Stuff Our Taxes Underwrite (updates second item on page): In the two years before it went belly up, executives of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra and the company’s biggest investor, “aggressively asserted themselves” by “making demands [and] striking tough bargains” – for instance, pushing Energy Secretary Steven Chu “to visit the company’s headquarters to help it raise private money” – The Washington Post reports. Having noted that “Energy Department officials as more concerned with appearances than with sound business decisions,” they coerced them by threatening to file for bankruptcy if their rescue plan was rejected, according to e-mails released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee:

 

“The DOE really thinks politically before it thinks economically,” a Solyndra board member wrote in December to George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser whose family funds owned a third of the company.

 

At another point, an investment adviser to Kaiser wrote in an e-mail: “DOE is willing to accommodate Solyndra … but they appear to be concerned about ‘looking bad.’ ”

 

[A] December e-mail to Kaiser from Steven Mitchell, who was managing director of Argonaut and a member of Solyndra’s controlling board. Mitchell wrote that the Energy Department shot down Argonaut’s plan for the agency to rescue the company from a liquidity crisis, so “we politely moved the conversation toward” how to file for bankruptcy.

 

“To me it was clear the DOE folks were somewhat caught off guard that we weren’t going to bail out the company,” Mitchell wrote. A senior Energy Department staffer responded by suggesting that if Argonaut and other investors contributed an additional $75 million to keep the company afloat, they would be placed ahead of taxpayers for repayment if the company went under, the e-mail said.

 

A version of that deal was later put in place, and Republicans have questioned whether the agreement violated federal law.

 

The pressure to prop up Solyndra went in both directions. To avoid embarrassment just before the 2010 mid-term elections, the Energy Department pressed the foundering solar panel manufacturer Solyndra to delay announcing that it needed to downsize (related article, fourth item on the page). Consequently, the company sat on its internal memo to employees that it would lay off 40 workers and 150 contractors and shut down its original factory from October 28 to Nov. 3, 2010 – the day after the election, The WaPo reports:

 

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt. …

 

E-mails describing the events were released … as part of a House Energy and Commerce Committee memo, provided in advance of Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s scheduled testimony before the committee’s investigative panel on Thursday. As a result of the 2010 elections, that committee is now controlled by Republicans, whose aggressive nine-month investigation into Solyndra has focused partly on whether politics played a role in the company’s selection to receive a federal loan.

 

Appearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Energy Secretary Steven Chu tried to characterize Solyndra’s failure as being due to an unexpected “tsunami” of subsidized Chinese competition, which caused the price of solar panels to plummet 70 percent over three years, but, The WaPo isn’t buying the spin for one second:

 

In fact, the administration knew, or should have known, of these threats to Solyndra’s business model before the loan closed in September 2009. The Office of Management and Budget warned about them in an Aug. 31, 2009, e-mail to President Obama’s staff.

 

But the real scandal is the loan guarantee program itself. The United States needs alternatives to oil, for reasons ranging from climate change to national security. Shoveling taxpayer dollars into profit-seeking manufacturing companies is not the way to develop them.

 

You can call it crony capitalism or venture socialism –but by whatever name, the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program privatizes profits and socializes losses. It’s an especially risky approach in the alternative-energy space, where solar energy is many years from being cost-competitive with fossil fuels for most uses – and history is littered with failed government attempts to back the next big thing.

 

Here’s a scary thought: In 2010 an OMB staffer sent out an internal e-mail admitting that that “What’s terrifying is that after looking at some of the ones that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better. Bad days are coming.”

 

† She Wants To Live, Dammit!: Ignoring the pleas of breast cancer patients, the Food and Drug Administration formally revoked Avastin's approval to treat metastasized breast cancer, The Associated Press reports:

 

Avastin is hailed for treating colon cancer and certain other malignancies. But the Food and Drug Administration said it appeared to be a false hope for breast cancer: Studies haven't found that it helps those patients live longer or brings enough other benefit to outweigh its dangerous side effects. …

 

Avastin remains on the market to treat certain colon, lung, kidney and brain cancers. Doctors are free to prescribe any marketed drug as they see fit. So [breast cancer patients] could still receive it - but their insurers may not pay for it. Some insurers already have quit in anticipation of FDA's long-expected ruling.

 

However, "Medicare will continue to cover Avastin," said Brian Cook, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The agency "will monitor the issue and evaluate coverage options as a result of action by the FDA but has no immediate plans to change coverage policies."

 

Including infusion fees, a year's treatment with Avastin can reach $100,000. …

 

"For those not fortunate enough to be on Medicare or an insurance plan that covers it, it's a death sentence," Christi Turnage of Madison, Miss., said of the FDA's decision. Her breast cancer had moved into her lungs before she began Avastin three years ago and the spreading stopped, but Turnage said her insurer is ending coverage and she will seek financial help from Genentech's access program.

 

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: In a rare show of bipartisanship, the House passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 by 272-154, with 43 Democrats crossing party lines to support the bill requiring states that issue concealed-weapons permits to honor such permits from other states to enable licensed gun owners to travel more easily from state to state (related article, tenth item on the page). The legislation “is not expected to be taken up by the Democratic-led Senate. A similar measure failed in the Senate in 2009, although it won support from 20 Democrats,” reports the Chicago Tribune:

 

Opponents saw a conflict with another GOP priority – states' rights. They argued that the proposed law would override state laws that determine who should be allow to carry a concealed weapon. …

 

Proponents said the move was merely an attempt to bring clarity to a complicated system of permit reciprocity – a move similar to requiring that state driver's licenses be recognized in all states.

 

Forty states already allow some form of concealed-weapons permits reciprocity, advocates said.

 

In an op-ed published by The Washington Times before the vote, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) explained why they sponsored the bill:

 

H.R. 822 would allow any person with a valid state-issued concealed-firearm carrying permit or license to carry a concealed weapon in any other state. It would not create a federal licensing system but merely would require states to honor one another's carry permits, just as states recognize one another's driver's licenses. Concealed-carry permit holders would have to obey the concealed-weapon laws of the state they enter, just as drivers must obey speed limits and basic safety laws of whichever state they are driving in, regardless of where they are from.

 

The ideas proposed in this legislation are not new. In fact, hundreds of reciprocal agreements exist between many states across the country. The problem lies herein: Many of these reciprocal agreements don't match up, and law-abiding gun owners are left with a confusing piecemeal system in which states recognize permits from some states but not others. …

 

American citizens have had the constitutional right to bear arms since the founding of our nation. We think no law-abiding American should be forced to give up this right at the state line. This simple and straightforward legislation is a long-overdue reform that will allow Americans who already carry firearms in a safe and responsible manner to protect themselves and their families when they travel across the United States - nothing more and nothing less.

 

† CNBC Debate Reveals The Only Republican Challenger Obama Can’t Talk His Way Past: Two new polls suggest that a surge in Tea Party support has enabled former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to crack the 20 percent mark for the first time and he is nipping at former MA Gov. Mitt Romney’s heels (click here for related article). New York Times columnist Ross Douthat takes a crack at figuring out – and explaining to the rest of us – how an uber-establishment candidate like Gingrich could have suddenly captured the fancy of a growing segment of disestablishmentarian Tea Partiers:

 

In a sense, this is a baffling turn of events. The whole theory of the Bachmann-Perry-Cain merry-go-round has been that Tea Party voters are desperately seeking a candidate less ideologically compromised than Romney. But as conservative commentators from Jennifer Rubin to Michael Brendan Dougherty have pointed out, Gingrich has a long record of ideological compromise as well. …

 

Yet this logic misses the secret of Gingrich’s current appeal. The former speaker is less a traditional conservative than he is a kind of right-wing futurist, most at home rhapsodizing about computer revolutions and brain science breakthroughs. But whereas most right-wing futurists tend to be libertarians who take a somewhat jaundiced view of partisan politics, for Gingrich civilization itself hangs in the balance in every election cycle. The glittering future he descries can only be won through a confrontation with the enemies of progress – namely, liberal Democrats.

 

[F]or conservative primary voters who don’t want to nominate a mere technocrat for what they consider an era-defining election, Gingrich’s willingness to go “up a couple of levels” and frame 2012 in Manichaean terms is a selling point, not a liability. And after the implosion of so many alternatives, his Churchillian posturing might be all the reason they need to embrace him as the anti-Romney, even if doing so requires overlooking his various ideological deviations.

 

But political junkies are holding their collective breath wondering whether Gingrich will self-destruct, as he is wont to do, The Washington Post reports:

 

[W]hether he will become an actual threat to Romney, or just another fleeting phenom, will depend largely on two things: Gingrich’s ability to keep in check the impulses that have been his undoing in the past, and how well he deals with the criticism and scrutiny that go with being a real contender.

 

“Newt has to remain uncommonly disciplined – totally focused, no hissy fits – and continue to be the adult that he has been during the election season so far,” said Ken Duberstein, a chief of staff in the Reagan White House and a friend of Gingrich’s for more than three decades.

 

Many of those who know Gingrich are doubtful he will be able to do that. “The worst in Newt comes out when he is doing well,” said a Republican former House colleague, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be frank.

 

Gingrich allowed that self-control has not exactly been his strong suit in the past.

“That’s true,” said the man who once accused President Obama of having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. “Hopefully, I’m going to be more disciplined.”

 

His remarkable – for him – discipline will be sorely tested in the coming weeks as his activities since leaving public office are scrutinized and questioned.

 

† The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II: Audrey Hudson of Human Events reports on a new Congressional report that characterizes the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as a bumbling behemoth that “suffers from bureaucratic morass and mismanagement”:

 

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an ineffective bureaucracy of nearly 140,000 workers that has failed to detect any major terrorist threat since September 11, 2001, including the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, the Times Square Bomber and the Toner Cartridge Bomb Plot, according to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

 

“TSA's operations are outmoded—the primary threat is no longer hijacking, but explosives designed to take down an aircraft,” the report said.

 

“The U.S. has avoided another successful terrorist attack primarily through the actions of passengers and crew, foreign intelligence agencies, and Customs and Border Protection, along with good luck,” the report says. …

 

“The agency needs to properly refocus its resources on assessing threats and intelligence, instituting appropriate regulations, and auditing and adjusting security performance. TSA cannot do this effectively as a massive human resources agency,” the report said. …

 

The report also cites numerous operation and technology failures that it says totaled $57 billion in taxpayer dollars, including $39 million for portals to detect explosives called “puffers,” which were unable to actually detect explosives.

 

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says that “the agency has become a backwards-looking dinosaur that seeks employees through pizza-box advertising and struggles to detect actual terrorist threats.”

 

† What Our Treatment Of Trig Palin Says About Us: It’s heartbreaking to learn of special needs children being bullied at school or on the bus and school officials doing nothing to stop it. It is shocking to learn that some “educators” not only do not stop psychological or physical abuse of these helpless kids but actually engage in it themselves. Two disturbing cases – one from NJ and the other from OH.

 

Julio Artuz, a 15-year-old special needs student with ADHD and emotional issues, couldn’t get his parents to believe his complaints that his teacher, Steven Roth, was mistreating him so used his cell phone to shoot a video that shows Roth calling him a "tard," CNET News reports:

 

His mother, Joyce McCormick-Artuz. told ABC News: "Teachers are supposed to build students up and build their self esteem, not rip it down. You don't scream at them...degrade and threaten."

 

McCormick-Artuz also told ABC News that when she showed the video to the school principal – with Roth present – Roth offered that he'd endured "a bad morning with my wife."

 

The Board of Education of Gloucester County, NJ has put Roth on administrative leave.

 

Meanwhile, an OH couple who got nowhere with Miami Trace district school officials after repeatedly reporting that their 14-year-old developmentally disabled daughter was being verbally and emotionally abused by her special ed teacher and the teacher’s aide -- district superintendent Dan Roberts accused them of lying – wired the girl themselves, The Associated Press reports:

 

In the recording, voices identified as aide Kelly Chaffins and teacher Christie Wilt are heard questioning the girl’s weight and how active she is and making derogatory comments about her character and the character of her mother and the boyfriend.

 

“Are you that damn dumb? Are you that dumb?” Chaffins said. “Oh, my God. You are such a liar. … You told me you don’t know. It’s no wonder you don’t have friends. No wonder nobody likes you. Because you lie, cheat … steal.”

 

In another instance, Wilt apparently talks to the girl about the results of a test before evaluating it. “You know what, just keep it,” she said. “You failed it. I know it. I don’t need your test to grade. You failed it.”

 

In another recording, Chaffins asks the girl if she does chores. When the girl says no, Chaffins responds “Don’t you find that a little ridiculous? … How you gonna do a job? …

 

“You should be embarrassed. I just am in awe. Makes you worthless.”

 

The girl is now a high school freshman at another school where she is doing well. The couple’s lawsuit against the school district, Wilt and Chaffins was settled for $300,000. In addition, Chaffins resigned and surrendered her educational aide permit, which means she cannot work in the state as a teacher’s aide again. The State Board of Education has suspended Wilt’s license as an intervention specialist for one year, but will strike the suspension after she completes eight hours of training focused on bullying awareness and reporting child abuse.

 

† Not Your Father's (Or Your) Sex Education: Chaz (neé Chastity) Bono is involved in a transgender tiff with Stephen Ira (neé Kathlyn) Beatty, who self identifies as a “a gay trans man” over public comments that the former made describing transgender people as having been born with “a birth defect like a cleft palate,” The Daily Mail of London reports:

 

Stephen fiercely disagrees: 'I do not have a birth defect. If you feel like you have a birth defect, fine. That’s how you feel. Go feel that,' he wrote on his blog.

 

He went on: 'Do not put it onto me. Do not define me that way, and do not define other trans people that way unless they claim that label.' …

 

'[Chaz] has appointed himself as the representative of a group of people who are not all like him.

 

'He has said misogynistic... things about gender. I take particular issue with his comments on trans embodiment and on women.' 

Stephen concluded: 'Chaz is a misogynist. He is a trans man who seems to believe that his female-assignedness and his female socialisation makes him immune from being a misogynist, and he is manifestly wrong.

 

'This man doesn’t represent our community...

 

His father, the famous actor Warren, also dated Chaz's mother Cher back in 1962. Beatty and wife [Annette] Bening, who married in 1992, have four children together.

 

The Stiletto knows next-to-nothing about gender confusion, but it seems to her that if Kathlyn can change her gender to become a man and then decide he is a gay man – meaning, before the gender reassignment surgeries Kathlyn would have been your average heterosexual woman – then Chaz has the right to use his preferred metaphor to describe the condition of being convinced your brain is trapped in the body of the other gender (related article, fourth item on the page).