The collapse continues-----Retiree suit threatens to tip Flint into bankruptcy

Retiree suit threatens to tip Flint into bankruptcy | The Detroit News:
"Flint— Vehicle City has faced its share of setbacks over the years — shuttered factories, dwindling population and urban decay, to name a few — but none has cast as dark a shadow as the prospect of filing for municipal bankruptcy protection.
The struggling Genesee County community may soon be pushed over the financial cliff by a lawsuit.
A group of city retirees is suing the city to stop proposed cuts to their health care benefits — a $5 million annual burden that could force Flint to become Michigan’s second-largest municipality to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, following on the heels of Detroit.
.......Today, nearly one-third of its population lives in poverty.
Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost and about 15 percent of the workforce is unemployed.
And the population — once nearly 200,000, ranking it as Michigan’s second largest city — struggles to stay above the 100,000 mark."

What they've done, in the name of black empowerment, is criminal------Would-be buyers get a peek at vacant Detroit homes for auction

Would-be buyers get a peek at vacant Detroit homes for auction | The Detroit News:
"The next round of properties up for auction range from a three-story brick Boston Edison colonial to a 1,000-square-foot bungalow in the Osborn neighborhood.
About 700 people came to tour the Boston Edison homes on Saturday, officials said.
About 200 turned out for the Osborn event, where homes are smaller and less ornate.
Bidding on all properties starts at $1,000."

Meeting tomorrow!!!-----50% city tax increase?!!!!------Road tax? Muskegon city commission seeking community input on millage and other priorities

Road tax? Muskegon city commission seeking community input on millage and other priorities | MLive.com
"MUSKEGON, MI -- The Muskegon City Commission is bringing hot dogs and ice cream to the people to find out what they want from their city leaders, and whether they would support a property tax increase to improve roads.
The commission is hitting the road to hold a special community relations meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 20, at Smith Ryerson Park at the corner of Sumner Avenue and Wood Street.
It's the first in a series of meetings the commission will hold to help set priorities for the city, and to gauge support for a 5-mill property tax increase to help fix roads that are estimated to need $72 million in repairs."

Read them all fear for our country------Five Times Obama Officials Expressed Outrage at Their Own Incompetence

Five Times Obama Officials Expressed Outrage at Their Own Incompetence
On Thursday, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki told a Senate committee that he was “mad at hell” after hearing of allegations that the VA had been falsifying waiting lists for patients and that some 40 veterans had died as a result.
......President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control.
It’s an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.

Here, then, are the top five times that Obama officials have expressed outrage, sadness, and anger over actions within their purview:

Benghazi: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was tasked with ensuring the security of her staff across the world – and she failed miserably at that task, leaving Americans vulnerable to terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Just a few minutes before exclaiming that it made no difference why those Americans were killed, Hillary expressed her upset over the incident:
I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews. I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.
Then she convened a commission which did not interview her.
We still don’t know where she was during the attacks, or why she didn’t greenlight security or request military intervention.

Left-Wing Grads Who Campaigned to Oust Commencement Speaker Get Chewed Out in the Most Ironic Way Imaginable | Video | TheBlaze.com

Left-Wing Grads Who Campaigned to Oust Commencement Speaker Get Chewed Out in the Most Ironic Way Imaginable | Video | TheBlaze.com:
"Those opposed to Birgeneau’s presence were apparently angry over how he handled a 2011 incident at Berkeley involving the use of force by police at a student protest.
William Bowen, former president of Princeton University, reaches into his pocket to pull a commencement speech to graduates of Haverford College, Sunday, May 18, 2014. (Image source: AP/The Philadelphia Inquirer, Clem Murray)
Now enter former Princeton University President William Bowen — Birgeneau’s replacement — who stepped up to the microphone at Sunday’s ceremonies, ostensibly representing exactly what the protesters wanted.
Perhaps now they’re thinking…be careful what you wish for."

27 Smuggled Photos Reveal the Harsh Realities of Life in North Korea - PolicyMic

27 Smuggled Photos Reveal the Harsh Realities of Life in North Korea - PolicyMic:
"North Korea is a country rampant with poverty, censored input and output of information and the worst human rights violations in the world.
But, normally there are only rare glimpses into North Korea's atrocities.
Finally though, there is jarring photographic evidence of the ill-treatment on North Korean citizens.
Photographer Eric Lafforgue was on a mission to visually document daily life in the communist country. After being banned in 2012, Lafforgue is now exposing the forbidden images he captured during his most recent visit to North Korea. 
From malnourishment to child labor to extreme lifestyles, the photos paint a haunting picture of the quality of life North Koreans suffer through."

Job outlook for 2014 college grads puzzling

Job outlook for 2014 college grads puzzling:
"Dear Class of 2014: We regret to inform you that the nation's job market continues to force college graduates to take jobs they're overqualified for, jobs outside their major, and generally delay their career to the detriment of at least a decade's worth of unearned wages.
Good luck on your continued job search.
A job rejection letter to this year's graduates, who are now supposed to be starting their first truly independent adult years, might as well go something like that.
The latest jobs report for April gave grads a puzzling picture.
Employers added the most jobs in more than two years, 288,000.
Unemployment dropped from 6.7% to 6.3%, the first time it was that low since September 2008.
Young adults still face higher unemployment, but the rate for 25-29 year-olds fell from 7.5% in March to 6.9%.
The unemployment rate for those 20-24 dropped from 12.2% to 10.6%.
Still, the portion of Americans 25-34 who were working in April fell to a five-month low of 75.5%, down from 75.9% in March.
"The entire drop (in unemployment) was due to people dropping out of the labor force, in particular young people," says Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist who writes an annual report on the state of employment for young adults for Economic Policy Institute.
And despite the number of jobs added last month, Shierholz calls the gradual improvement "agonizingly slow.""

History for May 19

History for May 19 - On-This-Day.com
Canada: Victoria Day


150th birth anniversary of Carl Akeley (1864-1926), the "father of modern taxidermy."

Birth anniversary of Malcolm X (Malcolm Little, 1925-1965) and Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65).



Happy Birthday! Bill Laimbeer Jr, Archie Manning, Pete Townshend
Francis Scobee (Francis Richard "Dick" Scobee) 1939 - Astronaut, killed commanding the Space Shuttle Challenger



1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail for North America.


1536 - Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII, was beheaded after she was convicted of adultery.

1857 - The electric fire alarm system was patented by William F. Channing and Moses G. Farmer.


1921 - The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants.

1926 - Benito Mussolini announced that democracy was deceased. Rome became a fascist state.


1935 - T.E. Lawrence "Lawrence of Arabia" died from injuries in a motorcycle crash in England.

1935 - The National Football League (NFL) adopted an annual college draft to begin in 1936.

1962 - Marilyn Monroe performed a sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday" for U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The event was a fund-raiser at New York's Madison Square Garden.

1992 - U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the CBS sitcom "Murphy Brown" for having its title character decide to bear a child out of wedlock.

1992 - The 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The amendment prohibits Congress from giving itself midterm pay raises.

Fly the Gadsden Flag, Get Kicked Out of School? Guess Where That Happened

Fly the Gadsden Flag, Get Kicked Out of School? Guess Where That Happened:
"Administrators all over the US are excising power that they do not have over students and other adults. Students are being taught to obey baseless authority and to never question anything. Is that the real message we want to be sending our children, who are the future of this country?
Stoneburner’s wish is that this story will go viral so that people across America can be made aware of this the blatant abuse of power from a principal who took out her anger based on political views on a student whose views are counter to hers. "

Poll: Majority of Americans Favor Voter ID Laws by a Huge Margin

Poll: Majority of Americans Favor Voter ID Laws by a Huge Margin:
"Democrats like to pretend that voter ID laws are some modern-day disenfranchisement efforts. These same Democrats ask for ID at Democrat events, however, so their logic- and I use that term loosely- is flimsy, to say the least.
Apparently, the bulk of America agrees that there is nothing sinister about voter ID laws as a new poll shows that 7 in 10 registered voters are in favor of identification laws for voting.
I suppose they’re all “racists,” too…"

A night at the blacklisted Beverly Hills Hotel

A night at the blacklisted Beverly Hills Hotel | New York Post:
What’s gone unnoticed in most coverage is the shadow protest underneath this one: 
The Beverly Hills Hotel and its sister, the Hotel Bel-Air, are among the few non-union ones left in LA. 
This does not sit well with UNITE HERE Local 11, the city’s hospitality union, which has been battling to unionize The Beverly Hills Hotel since the ’90s.
Last year, the organization tried to gain traction by aligning the ­hotel with Brunei’s appalling rec­ord on LGBT rights.
They got no press.
“Stories need a hook,” Local 11 spokeswoman Leigh Shelton told BuzzFeed.
“I just don’t think it had a hook at the time.”
.....It’s the working men and women of the hotel, the bartenders, chambermaids, waiters and waitresses, who are suffering — and with unemployment in California at 8 percent, their anxiety is only mounting.
“This place may be non-union, but everyone here is very happy,” a staffer told me.
“The health ­insurance is excellent. The hotel is paying comp wages out of its own budget.
This is the hotel ­everyone wants to work at — you feel its energy.
It’s special.”

"We might as well abolish the civil service. What we’ve got now is a one-directional Spoils System, with tenure.": Emails Reveal Federal Agency Ignored Conservative Media Inquiries.

Instapundit » Blog Archive » OUR PARTISAN BUREAUCRACY: Emails Reveal Federal Agency Ignored Conservative Media Inquiries.
A series of emails disclosed this week indicate that officials at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) don’t particularly like conservative reporters and in at least one case told a scientist to lie in order to avoid answering questions.
The Daily Caller discovered this after being subject to one of the federal agency’s “freeze-outs.”
The right-wing website was skeptical of a CDC study that purported to show obesity rates in 2- to 5-year-olds dropping by 43 percent, and of subsequent claims that First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign played a role in the decline. 
"We might as well abolish the civil service. What we’ve got now is a one-directional Spoils System, with tenure."

This Is The Video Obama Doesn't Want You To See: How Dems Stole The 2012 Election

This Is The Video Obama Doesn't Want You To See: How Dems Stole The 2012 Election:

An analysis of the Judicial Watch documents show a collusion—a conspiracy—between the IRS and congressional members to decimate the Tea Party, so that what happened in the 2010 mid-terms didn’t happen in the 2012 presidential election: That is, making sure Barack Hussein Obama won the election no matter what—even if he had to STEAL the election!

Richard Nixon’s articles of impeachment included this misuse of the IRS.
But Barack Obama’s use of the IRS to destroy his political enemies goes far beyond what Nixon did."

Why China Will Implode: Its A Monumental Building Aberration, Not An Economy

Why China Will Implode: Its A Monumental Building Aberration, Not An Economy | David Stockman's Contra Corner:

In fact, China is a grotesque economic aberration that bears no relationship to prior economic history or any conventional economic models-–not even to the export-mercantilism model originally developed by Japan, and which has now proven itself wholly unsustainable. 

Instead, China is a nation that has gone mad building,speculating and borrowing on the back of a credit bubble so monumental (and dangerously unstable) that its implications are resolutely ignored by observers deluded by the notion that China embodies a unique economic model called “red capitalism”.

But when a nation’s debt outstanding explodes from $1 trillion to $25 trillion in 14 years, that’s not capitalism, even if its red. 

What it represents is monetary madness driven by the state.

Occasionally a picture is worth a thousand words, and here’s one buried in a Financial Times story on China’s rapidly deteriorating housing market. 

It seems that during the two-year period 2011-2012, which was the peak of China’s much praised “aggressive” stimulus response to the Great Recession in the DM world, China consumed more cement than did the United States during the entire 20th century!

Don’t fumble a financial windfall: Plan a strategy

Don’t fumble a financial windfall: Plan a strategy:
"According to a 2012 Vanderbilt University study, 70 percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt. Additionally, the more money they receive, the more likely it is they'll go broke.
The statistics as they relate to the NFL are even worse.
Granted, most NFL careers are barely two years long.
Yet it's still shocking that, according to Sports Illustrated, an amazing 78 percent of NFL players will eventually file for bankruptcy or endure severe financial hardship.
These statistics speak to simple human nature:
The bigger the bowl of candy, the more you're likely to eat."

Retired military leaders fret kids will be ‘too fat to fight’

Retired military leaders fret kids will be ‘too fat to fight’:
"The Army says more than three-fourths of 17- to 24-year-olds today are not eligible to join the military because they aren't fit enough or don't meet other basic requirements, such as having a high school diploma or being able to read or write properly."

Here’s What Jay Carney told TheBlaze About the Newly Released IRS E-Mails | TheBlaze.com

Here’s What Jay Carney told TheBlaze About the Newly Released IRS E-Mails | TheBlaze.com:
In light of the new e-mails, obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, White House press secretary Jay Carney is sticking with the president’s assertion in the pre-Super Bowl interview. But added, he has not seen the newly released e-mails.

“Our position hasn’t changed, and I certainly haven’t seen any facts to suggest otherwise,” Carney told TheBlaze. “But I haven’t seen the report that you mentioned.”

State tax revenue falls $616M short of estimate; shortfall could affect transportation funding

State tax revenue falls $616M short of estimate; shortfall could affect transportation funding | Crain's Detroit Business:
"As lawmakers work to complete the state budget by early June, they now have more accurate — but not better — numbers with which to work, as state officials announced today that tax revenues are down $299.1 million more than anticipated.
Officials at the state revenue estimating conference are also projecting a decline of $317 million for the current fiscal year.
The estimates for the current year will shrink the size of the roughly $1 billion surplus lawmakers were told they had in January, so the revision will not need to result in cuts.
But it does mean there is less available to carry forward into the next fiscal year.
 Because there is projected to be less state revenue generated next year as well, that is $616.1 million less that lawmakers had been hoping to spend in a variety of ways, namely increased funding to transportation."

Obama supporters call for ObamaCare czar to avoid another rollout disaster

Obama supporters call for ObamaCare czar to avoid another rollout disaster | Fox News:
The White House acknowledged Saturday being open to a proposal for President Obama to appoint a chief executive to oversee the Affordable Care Act -- an ObamaCare czar -- following the Department of Health and Human Services handling last year’s disastrous rollout.
The idea is being proposed by a group of healthcare experts that wants a new chief executive officer to oversee the ObamaCare online health-insurance exchange and to ensure the overall program is ready before the next open-enrollment period, which begins in six months.
“We are working to make sure we learn from implementation and the turnaround of HealthCare.gov,” White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo said.

The Democratic Party Makes War On Free Speech

The Democratic Party Makes War On Free Speech | Power Line:
"The proposed amendment is astonishingly radical.
It would allow Congress to ban any spending on federal elections, which means that a challenger could beat an incumbent in only the most extraordinary circumstances. (Campaign finance regulation has always been mostly about incumbent protection.)
Or Congress could ban all contributions or independent spending by individuals or corporations in excess of, say, $10, while allowing unlimited expenditures by unions. 
This would guarantee that if the Congress is once controlled by Democrats, the Republicans could never win it back.
If candidates and their supporters can’t spend money to get their messages out, that means that voters will learn about candidates only through the prism of the press. 
Since the press is almost 100% controlled by the Democratic Party, Harry Reid and his fellow donkeys would like that just fine."

Rep. Van Hollen Pushes For $50 Billion 'Federal Green Bank' | CNS News

Rep. Van Hollen Pushes For $50 Billion 'Federal Green Bank' | CNS News:
"Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is turning to the web to drum up support for the creation of a Federal Green Bank that would create $50 billion in debt in order to offer loans for clean energy projects.
In a video posted on YouTube this week for the Safe Climate Caucus, Van Hollen says even though several states have created their own “green banks”, the federal government still needs to get involved."