News

California Democrat paid $800,000 to manage city of 38,000 people

1 Comment

UPDATE: Rizzo and a bunch of other Democrats have been arrested!

Excerpt:

Today, eight city council members were arrested in Bell, California for what Los Angeles County District Attorney labeled “corruption on steroids.” Thus far, every major news outlet that has reported on the story has omitted the fact that all eight individuals arrested are Democrats.

These glaring omissions come only weeks after NewsBusters reported that of the 351 stories on the then-brewing controversy, 350 had omitted party affiliations, and one had mentioned they were Democrats only in apologizing for not doing so sooner.

ABC, CBS, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and the San Francisco Chronicle all reported on the arrests today without mentioning party affiliations.

Here’s the previous story about the salaries.

Story here from Bloomberg News. (H/T ECM, Hot Air)

Excerpt:

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.

It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 — with annual 12 percent raises — and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work.

City Attorney Edward Lee said the council members couldn’t discuss salaries in public without advance notice. The council then adjourned for a private session. About an hour later, the council members returned, and Hernandez read a statement saying the city would prepare a report on the salaries and seek public comment at the next council meeting, scheduled for Aug. 16.

Residents shouted in protest. Lee said he would have the room cleared if people continued to speak out of line. Police Chief Randy Adams said the fire department wanted to end the meeting because the crowd outside was blocking the door.

Here’s something I found on my own while searching for his party affiliation.

Excerpt:

Authorities discovered a methamphetamine lab at a Bell home owned by the city’s mayor early today and arrested two men, officials said.

Narcotics investigators raided a home in the 3800 block of Bell Avenue about 1:30 a.m. and found a “super lab,” capable of producing 20 pounds of methamphetamine at one time, said Deputy Guillermina Saldana of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The investigators were part of a multi-agency state task force.

Saldana said two men were taken into custody, and two young children, ages 2 and 3, were placed in protective care. The suspects’ identities were not immediately available.

The home, one of three units on the lot, is owned by Bell Mayor Oscar Hernandez, who said in a phone interview that it was one of several properties he owns and that he rented it out to a young couple in their 20s. He said the husband was one of the men arrested. Hernandez said that although his son and daughter live in one of the units, his family knew nothing about the lab and had nothing to do with it.

“Nobody smelled nothing. I never got any complaints, and it’s a small community and the houses are close to each other,” said Hernandez, who runs a corner grocery store down the street and has been the city’s mayor since March.

I guess it goes without saying that he’s a Democrat. Not that any news stories will mention that he is a Democrat. But he is a Democrat.

News

Journalists conspired to spike the Jeremiah Wright story

1 Comment

Story here in the Daily Caller. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

The mainstream news media is not objective. They’re Democrats. They vote Democrat. They give money to Democrats.

Videos

Undercover video of Planned Parenthood selling abortion with misinformation

1 Comment

A new undercover video has been released by Live Action. (H/T The BlogProf)

Details:

The youth-led pro-life group Live Action released a new undercover video today showing staff at an Indianapolis Planned Parenthood clinic using manipulative and medically inaccurate counseling to convince a young woman to have an abortion. This is the third undercover video Live Action has released showing abusive counseling practices at Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

When the woman, purportedly 10-weeks pregnant, asks the clinician, named “Sarah,” when her baby’s heart begins to beat, Sarah replies, “It’s around I think the 8th or the 9th week that you can hear the heartbeat.” The heart actually begins beating 3 weeks and 1 day after conception, according to Moore and Persaud’s well-known textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. The Planned Parenthood clinician also insists, “It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus,” which, she claims, is “not like a person.”

In the video, Sarah assures the woman that “having an abortion is safer than carrying to term.” The woman asks, “The abortion won’t hurt me from having more kids in the future, will it?” and the counselor replies, “Nope.” But a 2009 study from the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey recently found that a previous abortion increased a woman’s risk of pre-term birth by 20%, and a 2003 report from the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research notes a 55% increased risk of future miscarriages for women who have abortions.

Lila Rose, UCLA student and president of Live Action, says the new footage places Planned Parenthood well outside the medical mainstream. “Planned Parenthood’s counseling is based on its abortion-first mentality rather than the medical facts that women need,” observes Rose. “Planned Parenthood gives vulnerable women misinformation to sell them the abortion.” Indiana informed consent state law requires that women receive accurate medical information before undergoing an abortion.

And remember, Planned Parenthood is supported by the Democrats. The Democrats make sure that abortion stays legal and that Planned Parenthood is adequately supplied with taxpayer funds. Planned Parenthood even has massive surpluses that they can use for political contributions to Democrats to make sure that their ghoulish business stays legal. Although more than a billion of that taxpayer money has gone “missing”.

You can see the other two videos here.