Freedom Line Blog

Yes, well, the revolution always eats its own after all. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Attorneys for three Occupy Oakland protesters charged with hate crimes for allegedly using a gay slur during a skirmish with a counterprotester said Monday that police were smearing the activists to try to discredit their movement.

Police said the protesters – Michael Davis, 32, Nneka Crawford, 23, and Randolph Wilkins, 24 – stole the woman’s purse during a confrontation last month outside a Wells Fargo bank on Piedmont Avenue and called her a “dyke” during the incident. But attorneys for two of the defendants said the exchange had turned ugly only after the counterprotester used a racist epithet against their clients.

Well, what do you know? It turns out that enlightened left-wing activists can be just as bigoted and ugly as they imagine conservatives are. And now they’ll be prosecuted under the hate crimes laws that are their legacy.

This case underscores how ludicrous those laws are. What makes this trio of miscreants reprehensible is that they stole a woman’s purse — not that they stole a gay woman’s purse. Does their victim deserve more protection under than law than a middle-aged white man would have if this same group had stolen his wallet? Of course not. But the left has attempted to systematically disassemble those principles of equality before the law over the past several decades. Don’t look now, but that boomerang is spinning back around.

Here’s a story that serves as a great response to people who say there’s no difference between the Tea Party and Occupy movements.  The Tea Party in Richmond, VA, got a business license, rally permits, and paid $10,000 for the privilege of exercising their First Amendment rights to speech and assembly.  The Occupy Richmond mob, on the other hand, squatted on public property for days without jumping through any of the legal hoops that ensure the health and safety of a civilized society.  When the Tea Party complained, the City of Richmond sent them an audit claiming the group failed to pay excise taxes for its events.

What hypocrisy!  Lawbreakers are allowed to devalue public goods like parks while law-abiding citizens who follow the rules are sent an extra bill to pick up the tab.  If local government officials aren’t careful they are going to teach all Americans that the rule of law only applies when you want it to.  If that’s the governing philosophy going forward, it’s time to renegotiate the social contract.

H/T: Fox News

We’re way overdue for a Chris Christie video here on Freedom Line. Thankfully, the New Jersey governor is back in the saddle and he’s seemingly competing with Newt Gingrich to see who can blister the sitting Commander-in-Chief more thoroughly. This is a thing of beauty:

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

In what can only be described as a stroke of journalistic genius, the folks over at the Daily Caller cross-referenced the addresses of protesters arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests with real estate listings and Google Maps. The results speak volumes. Here are just a few examples of the humble dwellings of the underclass:

Who knew it took this much square footage to fight the man?

H/T: Mollie Hemingway @ Ricochet

Ever since he ran for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut last year, Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff has been a hero to libertarian-leaning Republicans throughout the nation, including to a few of us here at CFIF).

With that in mind, Schiff certainly didn’t have to do anything to further establish his bona fides. Yet this financial titan — a self-identified member of “the one percent” — had the courage to wade into Occupy Wall Street and face his detractors head on. Check out the video below:

Ed O’Keefe reports on the 125^th birthday of the Statue of Liberty.  Here’s his summary of today’s festivities:

The National Park Service is hosting a series of events Friday to mark the Oct. 28, 1886 dedication of one of the nation’s most iconic landmarks. In an effort to recreate some of the original festivities (which included an appearance by President Grover Cleveland), the U.S. Coast Guard plans to sponsor a flotilla of vessels, the New York Fire Department fireboats plan to provide a water spout display and the Park Service is hosting a morning concert.

Later, in a nod to the 21st century, officials plan to unveil a new “torch webcam” providing viewers with views of New York Harbor and the statue from within Lady Liberty’s torch.

Of course, Lady Liberty has also hosted some famous speeches, including this memorable 4^th of July jewel from Ronald Reagan 25 years ago.

As the Occupy fill-in-the-blank mob-ocracy exposes our great cities to squalor, let Reagan’s speech and today’s festivities remind you there is an alternative.

Troy Senik, former presidential speechwriter and Senior Fellow at CFIF, discusses the double standard applied by the media with respect to the Occupy Wall Street rallies versus the Tea Party movement, and the Obama Administration’s double standard regarding presidential war powers.

Listen to the interview here.

If you’re a regular Fox News viewer, you’re probably familiar with Lanny Davis, the longtime Democratic political hand and former Special Counsel to President Clinton. On television, Davis can usually be seen defending Democratic orthodoxy with vigor.  He’s taken a recent turn in print, however, that shows he’s unafraid to gore one of his party’s most sacred cows: opposition to charter schools. From the piece:

The deal is this: The contract, or “charter,” allows the outside entity to operate the school free of the uniform rules applying to curriculum, teaching salaries, hiring and firing and other operating details that are applicable to all public schools; but in return, the charter school must deliver on pre-agreed goals, such as performance measured by standardized tests or graduation rates.

What does this achieve? A lot. First and foremost, it busts monopoly power, where one organization, such as the school district, has a captive group of customers, i.e., public school students, who have no choice but to be subject to the monopoly. And it provides the benefit of competition — students have choices, and if the charter school doesn’t work, they (i.e., their parents) can vote with their feet. And perhaps more importantly, the public school system is no longer a monopoly — they must do better or they will lose more students to charter schools within the public school system.

Imagine that: an institution that has to face consequences for failing its consumers. At at time when the folks over at Occupy Wall Street are casting their lot with the teachers unions that trap children in failing schools, it’s nice to see at least one liberal who realizes that “sticking up for the little guy” means defending the students, not indulging big labor.

Our friends at Human Events confirm the money trail between Leftist billionaire George Soros and the Occupy Wall Street movement attracting communists, socialists and anarchists to its ranks.

The nonprofit organization at the receiving end of Soros’ largesse, Alliance for Global Justice, is managing donations benefiting the communists, socialists, anarchists and hippies now occupying Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.  As of Oct. 19, OWS had taken in a grand total of $435,000 from all sources, including donations made by individuals online and in person, according to reports.

And how’s this for a business model?

Alliance for Global Justice is a “fiscal sponsor,” which means that it serves as a financial clearinghouse for radical causes that haven’t filed papers to incorporate themselves as nonprofit organizations.  Donors give money to the Alliance and are then able to deduct the donations from their income tax even though the cause they are funding isn’t recognized as tax-exempt by the IRS.  Fiscal sponsors take a percentage of donations as management fees, and then pass on the rest to the cause favored by the donor.

As with all things Soros, the irony here is rich.  A Hungarian who fled Nazism and communism sets up a “shadow party” to move America closer to a state-run tyranny.  A decrier of capitalism’s excesses, he made his name manipulating England’s currency and imperiled a nation through an act verging on financial terrorism.  Now, he’s a billionaire hedge fund manager who props up a nationwide anti-Wall Street protest.

However her presidential campaign turns out, Michele Bachmann deserves continued credit for speaking the truth no matter what the forum.  During question time after a speech in the liberal haven of San Francisco, the conservative firebrand made these distinctions between the “occupy” movement and the Tea Party:

“The tea party picks up its trash after it has a demonstration, so there’s a difference,” the Minnesota congresswoman quipped during a question-and-answer period after her speech to the Commonwealth Club of California.

On a more serious note, the two movements have “two different views of how to solve the problems” our nation faces, she said. Occupy activists believe in “government-directed solutions based on temporary gimmicks,” she said, while tea partyers believe in “permanent solutions driven from the private sector.”

Amen, sister.

H/T: San Jose Mercury-News

The ‘Occupy’ protests that have been springing up around the nation aren’t particularly well-defined. As best I can tell, there’s a visceral aversion to capitalism, accompanied by an endless array of non sequitur liberal causes (one protester’s sign at Occupy Los Angeles read “end heterosexism”).  In truth, however, this seems to be first and foremost an aesthetic movement aimed at recapturing the grimy romance of the halcyon years of protest in the Vietnam era. As such, it defines itself primarily by its opposition to institutional power, capaciously defined.

That’s why it’s so ironic that the movement now has the backing of one of the most powerful — and malign — special interests in the nation. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The California Teachers Association jumped on the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon Thursday, throwing the weight of 325,000 state teachers behind the movement for “tax fairness and against corporate greed.”

About that last bit: the CTA, which is one of the most nation’s destructive teachers unions, knows a thing or two about big money. It’s spent over $210 million in the course of the last decade to influence California state government — more than “big oil”, “big tobacco”, and “big pharma” combined. The results? Defeats for school voucher propositions, teacher accountability measures, and paycheck protection for educators. Not to mention that California — formerly a national leader in the classroom — now ranks among the bottom five American states in most education metrics.

Corruption, nest-feathering, and sticking it to the little guy. Sound familiar, Occupy protesters? Don’t look know, but you just got in bed with The Man.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino contrasts the “Occupy Wall Street” protests with those of the Tea Party and highlights the mainstream media’s double standard in its coverage of the two.

Well, sort of. One of the most common complaints from the unwashed masses gathered in urban centers throughout the nation has been the astronomical cost of their student debt. And they have a point. As Jenna Johnson notes at the Washington Post:

Two-thirds of the Class of 2008, graduated with debt and an average of $24,651 in student loans. Since then, graduates have faced some of the worst job markets in recent history. In August 2010, the amount of student loan debt ($829.785 billion) outpaced credit card debt ($826.5 billion) for the first time.

The cost of a good college education is probably never going to be cheap. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be as expensive as it is now. The dilemma for the union-backed, government-expanding protesters, however, is that it is precisely those two forces — organized labor and big government — that have driven the inflated costs of a college degree. As Conn Carroll writes at the DC Examiner

[The] University of California chapter of the American Federation of Teachers is doing all they can to make it harder for the state to lower tuition by blocking the development of online courses:

“We believe that if courses are moved online, they will most likely be the classes currently taught by lecturers,” reads a brief declaration against online education on the website of UC-AFT, the University of California chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, “and so we will use our collective bargaining power to make sure that this move to distance education is done in a fair and just way for our members.”

More convenience, less cost, better professors (otherwise you’ll just take a different course with a more capable instructor), and theoretically limitless access. What’s not to love? Plenty, if you’re tenured mediocrity is on the line. No word yet on any concern for the students from the AFT.