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To: Brumar89 who wrote (893948)	10/15/2015 2:33:16 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574059

Taxpayer Pays State Workers To Attend Cuomo Climate Change Event October 15, 2015 By Paul Homewood http://nypost.com/2015/10/14/cuomo-paid-state-workers-to-fill-seats-at-climate-speech/ Gov. Andrew Cuomo wasn’t taking any chances that there might be empty seats at a speech he delivered last week on climate change — so state workers were summoned on the taxpayer dime to fill the audience, The Post has learned. The workers said they left their jobs in the middle of the day Thursday and were paid their full salaries to hear Cuomo at Columbia University announce the state was joining a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “I’d rather be at the park,” said one of the workers, who is employed by the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and who has no connection to climate issues. He explained that he went because his boss “asked me to make some time available in my schedule.” The worker confessed that he didn’t know what the event was about before he agreed to go. A state Department of Health worker told The Post that supervisors offered employees the option of attending the event “instead of working.” If they watched Cuomo, they could go home afterward instead of returning to work, the employee said. He called the practice “AstroTurfing” — an attempt to fabricate grassroots support. “Public employees take an oath that they won’t use their position for their personal advantage,” the employee said. “How can you expect any state workers to take it seriously when the boss isn’t leading by example?” Good-government advocates questioned why state workers were being paid to attend an event designed to bolster an elected official’s credentials. “It’s a questionable use of state resources,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union. They must be getting desperate. https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/taxpayer-pays-state-workers-to-attend-cuomo-climate-change-event/

To: Brumar89 who wrote (893948)	10/15/2015 3:27:29 PM
From: FJB	2 Recommendations Recommended By Brumar89 locogringo Respond to of 1574059

Democrats Say the Economy Stinks The Democrat candidates agree the middle class is suffering after seven Obama years. The end of a two-term Presidency is typically a time for taking credit, celebrating achievements and promising to continue successful policies. So what happened to the Obama Democrats? At Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, not one of the five candidates even attempted to defend the results of President Obama’s economic policies. Instead their blistering critiques of the status quo showed they all agree on at least one point: Today’s economy is a disaster for hard-working Americans. As might be expected, self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders was the Gloomiest Gus. Any chance he got, the Vermont Senator waxed on about the terrible and “rigged” U.S. economy and how bad things are for anyone save those fat cats on Wall Street. “I think most Americans understand that our country today faces a series of unprecedented crises,” he said in one of his many Dickensian riffs. “The middle class of this country for the last 40 years has been disappearing. Millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and yet almost all of the new income and wealth being created is going to the top one percent.” You’d think someone might have taken issue with that, but the other candidates agreed that Americans are in misery after seven years of Obamanomics. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley was nearly as blue as Bernie. “What I’m talking about is this, our middle class is shrinking. Our poor families are becoming poorer, and 70% of us are earning the same, or less, than we were 12 years ago. We need new leadership, and we need action.” New leadership? What does this say about Mr. Obama? Hillary Clinton said she didn’t want to throw out capitalism, but she did say that “I think what Senator Sanders is saying certainly makes sense in the terms of the inequality that we have.” She added that inequality “hasn’t been this bad since the 1920s.” Her solution isn’t to try something new but to emulate Mr. Obama’s policies and then “go further” in raising taxes, imposing more regulations and beating up the drug and insurance companies. Lincoln Chafee awakened from irrelevance to say that he would make also it a priority to “close the gap between the haves and have-nots.” Later he was more specific, claiming that he would soak the “0.6 percent of Americans” at the “top echelon” who are doing fine, to “help the middle class and hard-working Americans,” who are not. All of this amounts to a searing indictment of what was supposed to be a transformational Democratic Presidency. So even as they painted scenes of an economy that could have been ripped from “Les Miserables,” the candidates were at pains to let Mr. Obama off the hook for these results. Mr. O’Malley explained that the President shouldn’t be held accountable for today’s economy because he’s not a “magician.” And no Democratic Party debate would be complete without blaming a Republican Congress for blocking even more Obama spending and regulation, not to mention that old standby, “the Bush tax cuts”—though they were enacted more than 12 years ago and were long ago erased by Mr. Obama’s tax increases. Look past the pro forma Republican bashing, and Tuesday’s message is stark: After nearly seven years of Barack Obama in the White House, America’s working families are struggling in an economy with fewer good jobs, stagnant paychecks, growing inequality and a system that rewards billionaires while hard-working Average Joes are left behind. *And this is the Democratic* talking point. If Republicans want to make the case against Obamanomics, they can start by quoting Democrats.** wsj.com