THIS IS YOUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKING CARE OF YOU:

DC PUBLIC SCHOOL SERVES RAW ONIONS FOR SNACK

Students at Southeast's Turner Elementary were fed raw onions on Tuesday, instead of the zucchini slices the school's food provider, Chartwells, said it would serve as part of a federal initiative to provide healthy food to young learners.

When Trevor Rill picked up the snack bags from the cafeteria for his third-grade class, he found bundles of raw scallions - also known as spring onion - usually reserved for cooking.

"I asked the cafeteria workers, 'Are you serious?' and they said, 'This is what they sent us,'" said Rill, one of nine City Year corps members assigned to Turner. "So I held them out and said, 'This is what we have,' and the kids went nuts. Two of them ate it in front of me and said, 'This is disgusting.'"

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

Turner Elementary is one of the District's 53 public elementary schools participating in the Federal Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. Under the 2008 Farm Bill, the District received $1.2 million this school year to serve students a vegetable or piece of fruit outside of breakfast and lunch hours. The program is likely to expand to more schools next year as funding increases to $1.7 million.


They can't even get a school snack program right for the District of Columbia, and yet they tell us they can administer a healthcare program for all Americans across fifty states - yeah RIGHT.


Sergeant-Major LocloMancil of 5th Special Forces Group was a full-blooded Payute Indian who served in MACV-SOG in Vietnam. He once told me, "If you expect the Federal Government to take care of you, then take a look at what happened to the American Indian."

The Nez Perce War, 1890

STORMBRINGER is not a political blog but I am a conservative and I will not stand by blind-deaf-and-dumb as the Democrats and their willing lackeys in the LLMM - Left-Leaning Liberal Mainstream Media - do everything in their power to turn this country into what I've seen first hand in Europe AND in the country of my birth, Australia; it is called S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M and believe you me, we do NOT want it here.

The T-E-A in Tea Party stands for Taxed Enough Already and the Tea Party is for less of this kind of Government encroachment in our lives.

Today's Bird HERE


.

AT THE DMV

Waiting in line all day at two different government bureaucracies . . . all because I need a Pennsylvania state driver's license, so I won't be a VIOLATOR . . .

"Do you have two forms of ID?"

"Yes, here's my passport, and here's my US military ID."

"US military ID is no good."

"W-H-A-A-A-?-?-?"

"Because you don't have to be a US citizen to become a member of the US military."

"I know that - I wasn't a citizen when I signed up. But you can't be in twenty-plus years and make it to retirement without becoming a US citizen, and this is a RETIRED US military ID.  And anyway, this is a US PASSPORT, right here."

"Sorry, you will need your Social Security card, to get a Pennsylvania state driver’s license."

"My SOCIAL SECURITY CARD ? ? ? I haven't seen hide nor hair of THAT thing since before I joined the Army! And it doesn't even have a photograph on it, signature, nothing. Come to think of it, you don’t need to be a US citizen to get a Social Security number, anyway. I wasn’t, when I got mine. Besides, this US military ID card has my Social Security number ON IT."

"Sorry, sir; but you can join the US military without being a US citizen . . ."

Next stop, the Social Security Administration. That actually wasn't so bad - once you get over the government propaganda being transmitted over a 65-inch plasmatron, and the WAITING. They had The Social Security Story going in a fifteen-minute loop, so I got to watch of how FDR and Social Security saved America from the Great Depression about eight times over. This makes me wonder, of course, if putting people on the government dole is what it takes to get an economy out of the doldrums, then why don't we put EVERYBODY on the government payroll - we'll be back on track to being the greatest, richest, most powerful society in the history of the world, times ten million. Funny thing is, I thought World War II had something to do with it, and of course there was no mention of Social Security being a giant Ponzi scheme - but what do I know? I'm a philosopher, not an economist.

Back at the DMV - wife TigerLily is going nuts: "HEY! Our numbah neary rup, an dey CHANGE-A NUMBAH! I go up there, ask 'em whatta hell go on heah?"

"You got get 'em, TigerLily! Give 'em that angry Oriental routine!"

Guy in front of me turns around. "Man, I've got my passport, my Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps . . ."

"That ain't good enough, man. Military means nothin' to these people."

"I'm nobody special or nothin', but its like four generations of my family served in the military - one of 'em a Medal of Honor recipient."

"You better not tell them THAT, they'll treat you like a second-class citizen!"

"NUMBER 369!"

"Oh that's us honey, let's go up there."

"Are you Mrs. TigerLily Stormbringer?"

"Yes."

"Please look into the eye exam machine.  What color do you see?"

"Red."

"And what does red mean?"

"Red mean Stop."

"What color do you see now?"

"Green."

"And what does green mean?"

"Go."

"What color do you see now?"

"Yellow."

"And what does yellow mean?"

"Yellow mean . . . GO FASTER."

"Very good, Ma’am. Now sign here, and here. Now go over there and have your picture taken. NEXT!"

.

INDUSTRY TALK

This latest Obama move practically guarantees to screw things up:


CAN THE GOVERNMENT FORCE CONTRACTORS TO UNIONIZE?


By Jim Garrettson

March 29, 2010

Executive order 13502 from February 2009 garnered relatively little attention when it was issued. It reads, “in order to promote the efficient administration and completion of Federal construction projects,” executive agencies are allowed to require contractors working on federal construction projects to implement “Project Labor Agreements.”

This order applies to any construction, renovation or rehabilitation project that costs over $25 million, and encompasses all agencies but the GAO. The order also rescinded Bush’s Executive Order 13202 from February, 2001, which prohibits the government from requiring contractors to abide by these agreements, or discriminating against contractors for “refusing to become or remain signatories or otherwise to adhere to agreements with one or more labor organizations, on the same or other related construction project(s).”

Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) require all employees working on a specific project to abide by the same collective bargaining agreement. This enables the hiring of non-unionized contractors, but typically requires them to pay into multi-employer union pension plans, putting non-union contractors at a financial disadvantage because they must pay for the union plan and for their existing company plan, according to the Associated Builders and Contractors. Another problem for contractors is that many union pension funds are underwater, according to this recent article in the Washington Times. Employers bound to collectively bargained agreements are forced to cover costs for underfunded union pensions when other contractors drop out.




All this wouldn’t be troubling to government contractors (apart from construction firms, green building specialists, electrical engineering firms, etc.) but for the recess appointment of H. Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Despite the failure of the Employee Free Choice Act (aka Card Check) to gain much political momentum in Congress, Becker, a former lawyer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has authored several writings that suggest many of Card Check’s provisions could be implemented administratively, without congressional approval.





Mark Mix, of the National Right to Work organization, writes that in 2007 alone, Mr. Becker’s litigation forced 63,000 California workers to pay union dues after rejecting union membership. Also, he supported “home visits” by union backers to pressure workers into signing public union-organizing petitions. Unions were “formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition. . . . Their actions necessarily involve coercion,” Mr. Becker once explained.


Defending America's workers from the abuses of compulsory unionism since 1968.



Mr. Becker also writes that a “core defect in union election law . . . is the employer’s status as a party to labor representation proceedings” and that “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.”

It’s worth noting that government contracting expert Jacques Gansler linked the current push for insourcing to union concerns when ExecutiveBiz interviewed him last year: “[Insourcing] is strongly influenced by government worker unions. Congress, as we all know, has been passing laws against competitive sourcing. Congress is stating that you will no longer have competition between public and private sectors — that’s clearly to satisfy the unions.”

Also, because of the government contracting industry’s unique position (working primarily for the government), the government gets to mandate how the industry treats its employees, something it can’t do for other industries. Take the Franken Amendment, for example, or Executive Order 13494, an Obama order that prohibits contractors from taking action to prevent their employees from unionizing.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation Council hasn’t yet issued a final ruling on the PLA order, which might be why it hasn’t received much attention. In fact, Brett McMahon of the Associated Builders and Contractors told the Washington Times “because the executive order was crafted so poorly, it has raised a lot of legal questions.”

However, with the appointment of Craig Becker to the NLRB, we might not have to wait much longer for clarification of these orders.


We are beginning to see way too many echoes of the 1930s, as national socialist and Marxian socialist thugs try to drive competing political views off the streets. The worst offenders so far have been the Service Employees' International Union, which has repeatedly sent its members out into the streets to beat up anyone who isn't toeing the Obama line on issues like socialized medicine.




You know what this means to me? More government intrusion means all the more reason NOT to hire employees. My company has NO employees - I subcontract EVERYTHING. The lawyers and accountants make a little more business off me, and the little people suffer; that's how it works when government butts in. - Sean Linnane



.

WHISKEY REBELLION

Today - September 24th - marks the day in 1794 when President Washington ordered the militia out to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion.


The Whiskey Insurrection was a popular uprising that had its beginnings in 1791 and culminated in an insurrection in 1794 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Monongahela Valley. During George Washington's presidency, the government decided to tax whiskey in order to pay off the national debt. This infuriated the citizenry and led to the Whiskey Rebellion.

The militia force of 12,950 men was organized, roughly the size of the entire army in the Revolutionary War. Under the personal command of Washington, Hamilton, and General Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee, the army assembled in Harrisburg and marched to Bedford, Pennsylvania the site of Washington's headquarters, then on to western Pennsylvania (to what is now Monongahela) in October of 1794.

According to Jefferson, the rebels "could never be found," but the militia expended considerable effort rounding up 20 prisoners, clearly demonstrating Federalist authority in the national government. The men were imprisoned, where one died, while two were convicted of treason and sentenced to death by hanging. Washington, however, pardoned them on the grounds that one was a "simpleton," and the other, "insane."

George Washington

This marked the first time under the new United States Constitution that the federal government used military force to exert authority over the nation's citizens. It was also one of only two times that a sitting President personally commanded the military in the field; the other was after President James Madison fled the British occupation of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.

Alexander Hamilton; Banker, Federalist, and second-rate duelist

"Lighthorse Harry" Lee, Revolutionary War hero and father of Confederate General Robert E. Lee