People are upset that more kids aren't eating taxpayer-furnished breakfasts at government schools. No - really.  According to this LATimes.com blog entry by Mary MacVean, over a million "low-income" children in California who are getting taxpayer-furnished lunches aren't also taking  taxpayer-furnished breakfast. Something called the "Food Research and Action Center" provided the information, of course. Fortunately, the LATimes.com readers who responded were overwhelmingly sensible about the matter (see some of that below).

California ranked 33rd in low-income-student participation in the School Breakfast Program for 2008-09, the same ranking it received a year earlier. In terms of the number of schools that offer breakfast, California’s ranking fell from 35th to 40th, the Washington-based group said.

So what?

In 2008-09, 8.8 million children took part in the breakfast program on an average day; the lunch program served 18.9 million children.

I'm sure that’s a nationwide figure.

"The program is seriously underutilized," center president James Weill said Monday.

Maybe these kids don't need it.

Children have consistently increased their participation since the early 1990s, but "it's not across the board, and it's not fast enough," Weill said.

Not fast enough? They're not becoming dependent on hand-outs fast enough?

"We really think of the School Breakfast Program as a modest miracle of good public policy," he said.

No, the miracle would be teaching the families to be self-sufficient.

The program, which began as a pilot project in 1966 and became permanent in 1975, helps alleviate hunger, improves student achievement and reduces levels of absenteeism, the group said.

Interesting. So all the kids just starved to death before 1975?

One way to improve participation is to "fit the program to the actual lives of children in schools," Weill said.

Again, why not spend that effort helping the families?

"When you serve breakfast only in the cafeteria, 30 to 40 to 50 minutes before school starts, too many kids don’t get there on their school bus or public transportation or they understandably want” to be with their friends rather than in the cafeteria, he said.

Well, yeah. You forgot to add in their public housing. It can't be that the kids are having breakfast at home or elsewhere, or bringing it with them, you see.

In addition to nutrition and hunger issues, the lack of participation in the breakfast program represented a lost opportunity to bring in more federal dollars - because the federal government reimburses the state for meals eaten under the programs, advocates said.

Uhm, does anyone see the problem here? Those dollars are supposed to cover the cost of the program. Lower participation means less money is needed. Shouldn't that mean a loss of dollars? Is the concern here feeding children or grabbing taxpayer money? This is like when government schools fret about enrollment/attendance, because having fewer students means less money. If you have fewer people participation, you need less money!

I have a "solution". Offer housing and dinner on-campus. That way, the kids will be sure to be there for breakfast, where they can take one bite of the sweetest thing on the menu and through the rest of the food away, like so many of them do with the lunch.

The reader comments were interesting. Here are some.

"Mike" wrote December 11, 2009 at 01:53 PM:

I Feel for these kids being a parent of two kids, but the parents of these children should be the one feeding their own children, not the tax payers.

"good for taxpayers" wrote December 11, 2009 at 01:57 PM:

Seriously? Good, I'm glad. They're probably all overweight anyway.

"Dirty Politic" wrote December 11, 2009 at 01:58 PM:

I totally agree that we should expand the program. The government should raise the kids for the low income family so that the welfare money the parents receive can be dedicated on drugs and drinks for the parent.

"KK" wrote December 11, 2009 at 02:10 PM:

Are people milking the system by under reporting their income? That's an awful lot of children in that category but you just don't see the wide spread poverty anywhere.

"blm" wrote December 11, 2009 at 02:16 PM:

Did it occur to any of these people that perhaps the children were getting breakfast at home, even if they do qualify for the program? Perhaps we should add dinner, that way the parents can abdicate more responsibility for their children.

"Ferret" wrote December 11, 2009 at 03:21 PM:

I remember a brief period of time when I was a child, (many, many moons ago). Right after my father passed, and it was just my mother raising my little sister and I, we "qualified" for free lunches. I remember quite clearly that I would rather have gone hungry than to live with the embarrassment and the social stigma of being a "welfare" case...When my mother found out that the method by which my sister and I were getting "free lunches" was through the use of little green "coupons" we were to hand over to the cashier in the cafeteria, she was absolutely mortified. She went out and got a second job that week, so that "her kids" wouldn't ever have to use those disgusting little green "I'm a poor kid" coupons again.

The writer goes on...

Our State is flat busted, broke. Is it so surprising that we don't have enough money in the Public School system to pay for breakfast and lunch? Not to sound cold-hearted, but we DO have welfare programs, along with Food Stamps and WIC vouchers, to cover this very real, and very serious, problem. Our schools are for educating our children, not for feeding them.

"Jim Q. Citizen" wrote December 11, 2009 at 03:56 PM:

Have you seen these kids and their mom's? They're so obese they have trouble walking! Maybe a little less free chow is in order. These are the same "poor kids" who have plenty of cash to stuff themselves at Micky D's after school. Has this state gone absolutely insane?

"nothing's free" wrote December 11, 2009 at 09:23 PM:

I worked at an LAUSD school for many years. Even though these families look poor on paper, many aren't poor at all. Anyone care to look into how many of them own their own homes? It's true, they collect Welfare...as well as food stamps, Healthy families "free" medical insurance, and many other "free" goodies, including breakfast and lunch (when they feel like partaking of it)...they drive pretty nice cars (uninsured), and their spouses make low wages (nothing the rest of us could live on without assistance), under the table, or with stolen SS #'s (hence, they look poor on paper - no wages, or very little...Those illegal wages, combined with all the freebies make for a pretty good life, and you'd be surprised at how much money gets sent back to their home countries, rather then cycled back into our dwindling economy.

There were a couple of eugenics/let-them-starve comments, and some "don't have kids you can't afford" rants, but mostly comments were from fed-up taxpayers who see that it is the moral obligation of parents to provide for their children before spending money on nonessentials.

Then came this comment rebuking the others, from "David" December 15, 2009 at 05:50 PM:

The cruelty and selfishness expressed by these comments is incredible. My tax dollars are wasted on wars, prisons, over-paid law enforcement, etc. So let's just call it a push.

Here's the difference, David. National defense and law enforcement have been mandated by our Constitution from the beginning as basic functions of our government. Nowhere does the Constitution permit the federal government to take money from someone in one state and use it to pay for breakfast for people in another state. Want a meal paid for by taxpayers? Join the military.

It is cruelty to encourage people to be dependent on taxpayers. It is cruelty to use the force of government to pry money away from those who are working, but struggling, to pay for wasteful programs catering to others.

This sort of thing will end up doing little to help the average citizen, and much to hurt business and taxpayers. It is a classic example of how meddling "requires" more meddling. The federal government should let companies fail without throwing any money into them. The feds should aggressively prosecute interstate fraud and other like crimes. Other than that, they should mostly stay out of the way of business.

The more limitations, regulations, incentives, and disincentives that we have, the move convoluted the system, the more discouraging things are to the average small investor or businessperson. Lawyers and accountants and lobbyists benefit. But what about innovators and producers?

The Associated Press reports about another proposed expansion of federal government.

The Obama administration asked Congress today to give the federal government power to oversee the safety of subways, light rail and other urban train systems.

This might be okay in instances where the system is interstate, but I don't see a desperate need for it.

Currently there are no nationwide minimum standards for rail transit safety, only voluntary standards produced by industry groups.

States and municipalities can set standards.

LaHood also announced the formation of an advisory committee to help develop new safety regulations. The bill would allow states to receive federal transit assistance to staff and train safety inspectors to enforce regulations.

Great - so people who live in states without these systems will be paying taxes to 1) sustain a new federal bureaucracy, and 2) maintain as system they'll never use.

State agencies conducting oversight would be required to be fully financially independent from the transit systems they oversee. At some transit agencies, safety inspectors rely on the systems they oversee for their salaries.

So you'll be paying in your taxes for the oversight, instead of just the people who actually use the system.

The bill would also give the secretary of transportation the option to establish a safety program for public bus systems.

Safety for local buses? How about keeping illegal alien gangsters off of them?

Transit systems carry 14 million passengers daily. That's more than airlines or long-distance passenger railroads, which both get federal safety oversight.

Yes, because those are interstate systems.

Nine people were killed and 70 injured in a subway accident in Washington in June. There have also been recent high-profile accidents on rail transit systems in San Francisco, Boston and Chicago.

There are accidents under federal oversight, too.

One concern is the more than $50-billion maintenance and repair backlog at the nation's seven largest systems, which carry over 80% of rail transit passengers.

So again, let's pay for it by taking it from our neighbors and grandchildren.

Rogoff held up a fist-sized, 65-year-old screw that he said was common in Chicago's transit system, forcing trains to travel no more than 6 mph in some locations or risk an accident.

Hmmm, who do we know from Chicago, that beacon of municipal integrity? Yes, I'm sure this is the result of the sales tax being too low in Chicago.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) warned against “a tombstone mentality.” He said that if the government doesn't act until “people die, then it's too late.”

I think we need federal oversight of ACORN. Sure, it hasn't killed anyone (that we know of), but if we wait until people die, then it is too late.

Babies die in abortion clinics every day. Where is the federal oversight?

People die in gang-infested areas every day. There's a better case for federal oversight to deal with that than to regulate buses what should be a private enterprise in the first place.

California regulations are costing 493,000,000,000 dollars and 3,800,000 jobs, according to this interesting entry from Jan Norman that I found on her Orange County Register blog.

That’s an average of $134,122 per California business, $13,801 per household and $4,685 per resident each year.

Scary.

The study parallels a 2005 federal report on business regulations commissioned by the Office of Advocacy within the U.S. Small Business Administration.That report concluded that federal regulations cost $7,647 per employee for businesses with fewer than 20 employees.

This state report is based on data used by Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of state for business friendliness. It does not single out specific regulations that drive up costs.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have counters to this. But if you've ever tried to start or move a business to California - especially one that employs others, you'll be able to decide for yourself.

Among the California conclusions:

The total cost ($493 billion) is almost 5 times the state’s general fund budget and a third of the state’s gross product.

The 3.8 million jobs lost equals 1/10th of California’s population. California has about 14 million jobs, down 1 million from the peak in July 2007.

The total cost breakdown is $266.5 billion in direct costs of various regulations, $210.5 billion lost labor income and $16 billion in business taxes the state would get without the regulations

Beautiful.

One producer of construction aggregates in the state, Vulcan Materials, testified in an Assembly Jobs Committee hearing in June that it 'is not uncommon for the permitting process to involve millions of dollars and in some cases to take as long as 10 years to secure the necessary permits, many of which address duplicative regulatory aspects.'

You can read the entire report here. I don’t know if it takes into account local regulations, too.

If Florida isn't careful, it will become the next California, with people fleeing the state for lower taxes and less government. This is especially true because many people in Florida are refugees from California.

Take it from a Californian - don't become us!

Let's assume for the sake of discussion that it can be demonstrated that Obama's birth disqualifies him from serving as President.

What then?

Someone still has to take action.  Does SCOTUS?  Does Congress?  Does a Democrat-controlled Congress initiate the impeachment process?

What if it can't be demonstrated that Vice President Joe Biden did anything wrong in connection with this?  Does that mean that Obama is removed and Biden becomes President?  (If Biden is removed as well, doesn't that make Pelosi President?)

Are Obama's actions - the bills he signed into law, the Executive Orders he issued - automatically invalidated, only to have Biden or Pelosi restore them?

Does anyone really believe that Obama is going to be removed, and that it will end up making a difference?

I just don't see it.

What I do see are actions that Congress and the President are taking that I find to be troubling, and I would like to see more resources directed at countering or mitigating those things - offering credible alternatives.  Card check, Obamacare, bailouts, porkulous, cash for clunkers, cap & tax, shamnesty... the general expansion of federal government... these are things we can fight against and make a difference.

We need to make the most of our time.

Alana Semuels of the Los Angeles Times has the article.

Two months ago, more than 300 people were employed at the site making engine parts for trucks and heavy machinery for Gregg Industries, which is owned by Neenah Enterprises Inc. in Wisconsin.

But a settlement with the South Coast Air Quality Management District required Gregg to spend $5 million on factory improvements, so the company decided instead to leave the state. Company spokesman Adan Ortega Jr. said Gregg didn't want to make the payment in the difficult economic climate.

Gregg is part of the parade of companies marching out of California. The state lost 79,000 manufacturing jobs between 2003 and 2007, while seven other states with a meaningful percentage of U.S. manufacturing gained 62,000, according to a report scheduled to be released today by the Milken Institute.

What is causing this?

The report blames the state's onerous regulations and high taxes in particular for pushing businesses elsewhere.

But isn't the whole country losing manufacturing jobs?

The state is shedding manufacturing jobs at a faster pace than the nation as a whole, the report said. Though many jobs left the country in the 2002 recession, states such as Arizona, Nevada and Oregon saw an increase in manufacturing employment in 2003.

It isn't just the number and restrictiveness of the regulations.

Part of the problem, Wong said, is that regulations change so often in California that it's difficult for companies to plan. The state enacted an average of 15 changes in labor law each year from 1992 to 2002, four times more than state legislatures averaged nationwide.

It's hard enough to hit the target.  Hitting it while it is moving is that much more difficult.

California also often requires projects to be approved in many different jurisdictions, so that a plan vetted by the state could be sidetracked by the county, Wong said.

It's one thing after another.  In California, in addition to the usual federal, state, and local (County and City) laws, codes, and regulations, there are many for various special districts and commissioners such as the aforementioned AQMD, the Water Quality Control Board, the Coastal Commission, and so forth.

California GDP grew last year despite the global financial crisis, said Brian McGowan, the state's deputy secretary for economic development and commerce. And green-energy jobs in the state have grown at a rate 10 times faster than total job growth since 2005.

You mean taxpayer supported or taxpayer subsidized jobs?  Those don't count.

To evaluate a state's business climate, he said, companies should focus on workforce skill, availability of capital and overall quality of life, rather than just on taxes and regulatory costs.

Well, yes, and when they see the land prices, artificial water and energy shortages, crime rates, graffiti, and the third-world unskilled, uneducated workforce with an entitlement mentality, they are further encouraged to leave or to expand elsewhere instead of here.

To prevent more departures, the study recommends creating incentives for innovation, assisting companies in obtaining capital, investing in workforce development and establishing an office to streamline the regulatory process.

The last one is the key.  The other suggestions are likely to involve more government control and more centralized planning, which is the problem in the first place.  Enough with the convolution system of rewards and punishment.  Let property ownership and free enterprise work.

A financial system overhaul?  Life is sounding more and more like Left Behind every day.  Just for the record - I do expect that Jesus Christ will return and life as we know it will end, but whether that's happening soon after an any-day-now Rapture with the world going to hell under a powerful antichrist world leader, or whether that is happening thousands of years from now under different circumstances - I'm not convinced either way.  (What I am sure of is that we're never guaranteed another day - follow Christ and be prepared to die today or to live to a ripe old age.)  But when I read today's headlines, it is like I'm reading bad rewrite of The Late, Great Planet Earth.  Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn And Martin Crutsinger bring us the story on Obama's plans to "help" the market.

The Obama plan would give new powers to the Federal Reserve to oversee the entire financial system and would also create a new consumer protection agency to guard against credit and other abuses that played a big role in the current crisis.

Great – just what we need.  We need more power to be centralized at the federal level.

So the feds are going to fight "credit abuses" and mortgage problems.  What does that mean?  Making sure that people aren't given credit or mortgages that they can’t afford?  Okay, good.

But then what will happen?  Fewer "poor" people, and thereby a "disproportionate" percentage of minorities, will be getting lines of credit or mortgages.  Obama and others who think his way will see that as a problem.

So what will that mean?  It will mean Obama will be "forced" to help out those people being denied their "dreams".

That will mean the rest of us, through our taxes, will have to be on the hook to provide those people lines of credit and mortgages, and when they default, we're going to have to eat the costs.  Write it down.  This is how it will work out.  How is that different than what is going on now?  Well, it won't be a "voluntary" reaction by Congress and companies any more.  It will be a matter of policy, course, and law.

Lawrence Summers, head of the president's National Economic Council, said that those who believed this power should not reside with the Fed had the responsibility to make the case for some other agency.

Wrong!  Wrong wrong wrong!  It is up to you to show where the Constitution permits this, and why it is necessary.  You aren't allowed by the Constitution to just make up new government agencies to do new things.

The creation of the new consumer agency is aimed at guarding against the kinds of lending abuses which resulted in many Americans being saddled with far more mortgage debt than they could handle.

It is up to the customer to find out what they are buying.  As long as the lender didn't lie to the borrower, the government should stay out of it.

After all, the laws against pot used have certainly stopped teen use, haven't they?  Associated Press writer Jim Abrams has the story on the passage of feel-good "anti-smoking" legislation.

Specifically, the measure for the first time will give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate what goes into tobacco products, demand changes or elimination of toxic substances and block the introduction of new products.

So I guess the Bureau of ATF can now be shortened to AF?

Government researcher Reginald Little, 47, who said he swiped his first cigarette from his grandfather at age 15, thought regulation was needed "because you don't know exactly what's in it."

Yeah, scary ingredients listing on other products have sure stopped people, haven't they?

The thousand health and consumer groups that endorsed the bill say that, combined with other anti-smoking efforts, it can significantly reduce the 400,000 deaths and $100 billion in health care costs attributed every year to smoking in the U.S.

Aren't these bogus numbers?
See
HERE
HERE
HERE
and http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/1555/Lies_Damned_Lies_400000_SmokingRelated_Deaths.html
and http://www.junkscience.com/jun99/levy.html

Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest tobacco company, came out in support of the bill, saying it was behind tough but fair regulation. Its chief rivals were opposed, saying that FDA restrictions on new products would lock in Philip Morris' share of the market.

Surprise, surprise!

Kids who some should be warned: maybe they'll end up being President!

Obama is set to issue limits on "Wall Street" executive pay, according to this article by Associated Press Writer Jim Kuhnhenn.

The Obama administration will give a new Treasury official power to reject executive pay packages at firms that receive government assistance and wants legislation that would seek to tame compensation across the corporate world, an administration official said Wednesday.

You, perhaps this great idea should be extended to other areas.  Many films made by major film studios lose money, and yet various state and local governments offer incentives to attract or retain film production.  How about we go to all of those studios and production companies and place limits on pay?  Some of those stars are paid tens of millions of dollars a picture, after all.  Isn't that "excessive"?

Ah, "climate change".  Hold on to your wallets and bow to D.C. five times a day.  Ayesha Rascoe has the Reuters story on the ramp up to this part of the War on Prosperity.

A portion of the revenue from any U.S. system capping carbon emissions must go toward softening the impact of higher energy prices on consumers, a White House official said on Wednesday.

How about we just not bother with capping carbon emissions in the first place?  And who is going to cap Mother Nature's carbon emissions?

Joseph Aldy, special assistant to the president for energy and the environment, said building a clean energy economy will not be easy.

No, of course not!  We'll need a massive expansion of government to do it.  Funny how that fits right in with the "grow government" philosophy of the Left.

"There will be those who are going to be vulnerable as we make this transition and ... we need to actually target the allowance value and revenues to those households, communities, and businesses," Aldy said at an Energy Information Administration forum.

Bait and rebate.  The more the government meddles, the more it sees a need to meddle more.

Obama's proposal would use most of the revenue generated from the sell of carbon permits for tax breaks, offsetting costs for consumers.

Yeah, somehow that kind of stuff never quite works out evenly.  This is just another way to centralize control of our lives in D.C., and will provide more chances for fraud and skimming and elitist backscratching, and to reward some people and punish others, independent of them doing things right or wrong – all while administrative overhead costs are generated by bureaucrats.

This paranoia about "climate change" is going to eventually look as silly as it would have been if someone insisted we needed to build a safety fence along the edge of the world so nobody would fall off.

Obama issued an executive order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls.  Due to equal access and protection/nondiscrimination laws, shouldn't this necessitate a White House Council on Men and Boys?

"The purpose of this Council is to ensure that American women and girls are treated fairly in all matters of public policy," Obama said.

Great!  So adult women who engage in sexual activity with underage boys will be prosecuted and sentenced just as if the sexes were reversed?  So women who kill their partners or their children should expect the same treatment men get?  So when a couple gets in a physical fight, she'll get taken away to jail, too?  So we'll spend as much money on educating men how to respond to domestic violence as we do women?  So we should expect federal prisons to have just as many women as men?  So there will be just as much federal funding for diseases prevalent in men as there is for diseases prevalent in women?  So women will have to register for Selective Service?  

Oh, wait.  He used the word "fairly", not "equally".  That gives them wiggle room.

The new council will work to ensure each government agency is directly orientated to improving the economic status of women and to try to frame policies that establish a balance between work and family.

In other words – bigger government that micromanages more.  How about government create as even a playing field as possible by prosecuting coercion and theft and otherwise getting out of the way?  Outcomes are not going to be equal for everyone, but that's the nature of life.

It will also work with the vice president's office and the Justice Department to seek ways to halt violence against women in the United States and abroad, and work to improve women's healthcare.

But it is okay for men to get beat up and sick.  "Violence against women" in the Left's parlance can mean anything from telling someone abortion is a bad idea to consensual heterosexual sex a woman later regrets - oh, and actual violence.  But of course it doesn't include transferring an underage girl across state lines, without informing her parents, to undergo a late-term surgical abortion to cover up your crimes.  Even if the abortion kills her, in addition to killing her child.

Why don't we, oh, I don't know, try to reduce unjust violence in general?  I'm not anti-female.  Fully half of my ancestors are female, after all.  I married one.  I'm a parent of one.  I have sisters.  But let's not pretend we're striving for gender equality when we are doing things like creating organizations that are concerned with improving things for women – but not men.

Unfortunately, unless we want a totalitarian government, we can't stop women from choosing to associate with, marry, or get pregnant by abusive, unreliable jerks.  We can’t force them to choose different careers or make different professional decisions.  We can't force them to make good decisions about family life.  We have been told so many times that females don't need a daddy and don't need a man – but many of the same people say females need Big Brother.  For some, that has been the goal all along – make women more dependent on the government, so that it will be easier to grow government.  But to do that, the family had to be weakened, and self-discipline and self-reliance undermined.

Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times has two articles about the latest SEIU shenanigans.  Of course, we all know that the Los Angeles Times is just a right-wing rag, right?  This first article is about a man named James Bryant.

A Bay Area officer of the scandal-clouded Service Employees International Union has collected double salaries, one as a city transit worker and the other from a charity that receives much of its funding from the labor organization and corporate interests, records show.

In addition, the nonprofit paid more than $16,000 in rent for the officer's home in 2007, the most recent year for which the charity's tax return is available, according to his son, who is also on the charity's payroll.

James Bryant, who earned just under $68,000 as a transit station agent in 2007, received about $117,000 that year as president of the San Francisco chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, according to the tax return and the city's Municipal Transportation Agency. He was also paid or reimbursed about $10,000 as an executive board member for SEIU Local 1021, whose political committee he chairs, the union's financial statements show.

And what does the nonprofit do?

The nonprofit's tax-exempt purpose is to promote property rights, voter education and the interests of white business owners.

Oops, I’m sorry.  I played with that a little.  Here’s what the article actually says:

The nonprofit's tax-exempt purpose is to promote civil rights, voter education and the interests of black workers.

Let’s see – I'm sure the "voter education" aspect doesn’t promote voter fraud, or instruct people to vote for socialism and larger government.

Its biggest contributors include Pacific Gas & Electric and other corporate benefactors that have enlisted it to campaign for or against ballot initiatives dealing with energy and land development.

Make sure you pay your utility bill.

The institute's corporate supporters say the nonprofit's campaign work helped preserve funding for social programs and supported the construction of affordable housing.

Ugh.  We know that what "affordable housing" means.  And "social programs" can be just about anything, as long as it doesn't promote traditional values.

He said the charity's rent payments for the house amount to less than half of his father's monthly mortgage bills and are justified because more than 75% of the home is devoted to the nonprofit.

Suuuure.

The charity paid $5,000 to use the house in 2006, he said. It has also rented office space at a San Francisco union hall at the same time it was paying rent on the house, he said. He said the payments for the house continued last year.

Spread the wealth.

The local represents 58,000 city, county and other public-sector workers, as well as nonprofit and nursing industry employees.

Government employees, whose paychecks get dinged to pay the union, which in turn funds political efforts and backs politicians who will expand government, thereby creating more union members.  It's a neat little cycle, isn't it?

Here's Pringle's other article, on Annelle Grajeda.

The Service Employees International Union's highest-ranking California officer has resigned that position and two other leadership posts in the wake of an internal investigation of payments to her ex-boyfriend, it was announced today.

So she resigned?

The union said Grajeda, who could not be reached for comment, had decided to become an assistant to the SEIU's secretary-treasurer in Washington, D.C.

Ah.  She was simply shuffled around.

SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette said the internal probe determined that Grajeda "never stood to benefit" from any money Stephens received.

No, of course not.  How would she benefit from money given to a boyfriend?

Do you know where your union dues are?

Yes, I do want President Obama to fail in his efforts to grow government.  I do not think government needs to be bigger, usurp more power, and be more centralized.  I do not think the irresponsible, the lazy, the envious greedy, and those who failed to plan should be rewarded by punishing those who have produced and planned and have been responsible.

We do not need bigger, more intrusive government.