It's Friday, so you watch our live webcam at frankcam.com!
Our free KKLA Financial Hope Seminar is this Saturday morning from 9am–1230pm, February 19th, at the Glendale Hilton. It's free but seating is limited, so pre-register at kkla.com.
400-408 – Jennifer Lahl, National Director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (cbc-network.org), is also the writer, director and producer of the film Eggsploitation (eggsploitation.com) which we talk about today. Last month, the film won the prestigious Best Documentary at the California Independent Film Festival, it's played at the best universities in the country (Stanford, Columbia, Fordham, Yale, Notre Dame, etc.), and even in over 20 countries.
• Eggsploitation will be playing at Loyola on MON 3/14 600pm, and at APU on TUE 3/15 at 700pm. Both showings are free and open to the public. Go the the website for more info.
(:40) Alexandra's Story. (Pieced together parts of documentary promo from Eggsploitation.)
About Eggsploitation –
The infertility industry in the United States has grown to a multi-billion dollar business. What is its main commodity? Human eggs. Young women all over the world are solicited by ads—via college campus bulletin boards, social media, online classifieds—offering up to $100,000 for their "donated" eggs, to "help make someone's dream come true." But who is this egg donor? Is she treated justly? What are the short- and long-term risks to her health? The answers to these questions will disturb you . . .
Produced by The Center for Bioethics and Culture (Lines That Divide, 2009), Eggsploitation spotlights the booming business of human eggs told through the tragic and revealing stories of real women who became involved and whose lives have been changed forever.
413-423 – Jennifer Lahl
428-437 – Jennifer Lahl
443-452 – Jennifer Lahl,
458-508 – Jennifer Lahl, a caller named "Kara from LA" says she's a Christian, has donated eggs five times, and she's currently in her sixth procedure. Jennifer and Kara engage on the issue.
512-523 – Jennifer Lahl, & Kara from LA, cont.
528-539 – Paul Karpf, Founder and CEO of Financial Recovery USA (financialrecoveryusa.com, 800-385-0745), is just one of ten companies in America certified by the Attorney General as a "Certified Foreclosure Consultant," and he has an "A" rating from the BBB. For the next 2 hours, Paul will waive the usual $250 consultation fee, when you schedule a sit down face-to-face with one of his counselors.
544-554 – Don't think for a moment that what we see happening in Wisconsin and New Jersey will be happening in California with Gov. Brown and the Democrats any time soon. Union members, do you understand that your benefits are paid for by your neighbors? Can you honestly go to your next door neighbor, look them in the face, and say, "You need to pay me more!"? Or, "I refuse to pay for my own pension or health plan, you pay for it!?" That's what's happening in Madison.
•• Larry Kudlow (NRO, 2/17/2011) The Madison Disgrace.
The Democratic/government-union days of rage in Madison, Wis., are a disgrace. Paul Ryan calls it Cairo coming to Madison. But the protesters in Egypt were pro-Democracy. The government-union protesters in Madison are anti-democracy. In fact, Democratic legislators are fleeing the state so as not to vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget cuts.
The teachers union is going on strike in Milwaukee and elsewhere. They ought to be fired. Think Reagan PATCO in 1981. Think Calvin Coolidge police strike in 1919.
Governor Walker is facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and he wants state workers to pay one-half of their pension costs and 12.6 percent of their health benefits. Currently, most state employees pay nothing for their pensions and virtually nothing for their health insurance. That's an outrage.
Nationwide, state and local government unions have a 45 percent total-compensation advantage over their private-sector counterpart. With high-pay compensation and virtually no benefits co-pay, the politically arrogant unions are bankrupting America — which by some estimates is suffering from $3 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
Exempting police, fire, and state troopers, Governor Walker would end collective bargaining for the rest. Unions could still represent workers, but could not get pay increases above the CPI. Nor could they force employees to pay dues. And in exchange for this, Walker promises no furloughs for layoffs.
So, having lost badly in the last election, the government-union Democrats have taken to the streets. This is a European-style revolt, like those seen in Greece, France, and elsewhere. So it becomes greater than just a fiscal issue. It is becoming a law-and-order issue.
• Fox News (2/18/2011) Wisconsin Labor Unrest Could Go National.
// The battle in Madison has become the epicenter of a national fight between newly empowered small-government conservatives and Democrats backed by government worker unions.
// The holdup in the vote is due to the fact that the Democratic members of the Senate are on the lam, denying Republicans a quorum and the chance to vote. The Democrats are holed up at a resort just across the Illinois border, putting them beyond the reach of Wisconsin law enforcement agencies that could otherwise compel at least one Democrat to appear in the Senate so a vote could take place.
// The efforts to block access to the state Senate and disrupt debates have been described as "mostly peaceful," though union groups have expanded their protests to the homes of individual lawmakers.
// The measure would increase the contributions of public employees to their own retirement and medical benefits. The plan, put forward by new Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisc., would have public workers make equal contributions to their retirement funds (teachers currently contribute $1 for every $56.94 from the state) and increase workers' share of health insurance premiums to 12.6%. Teachers in most districts currently pay less than 5% of their insurance costs. The national average for workers is 27%.
While the increased contributions are a sore spot, the greatest anger among demonstrators is over the portion of the bill that would strip public workers of the right to bargain for higher wages, benefits and changes to job duties. Pay raises for public workers would be subject to voter approval. Under the law, the state would also stop withholding union dues from government paychecks and make due payments strictly voluntary.
•• Peggy Noonan (WSJ, 2/18/2011) Where the Leaders Are: In a time of crisis, two governors show Washington the way.
(1:59) Christie. (NJ Gov. Chris Christie gives a speech at The American Enterprise Institute @ 2/16/2011.)
Mr. Christie covered similar territory in a way that was less aerial, more on-the-ground. He spoke of making change in Jersey.
Pensions and benefits on the state level, he said, are the equivalent of federal entitlements. They have powerful, "vocal" constituencies. He introduced pension and benefit reforms on a Tuesday in September, and that Friday he went to the state firefighters convention in Wildwood. It was 2 p.m., and "I think you know what they had for lunch." Mr. Christie had proposed raising their retirement age, eliminating the cost-of-living adjustment, increasing employee pension contributions, and rolling back a 9% pay increase approved years before "by a Republican governor and a Republican Legislature."
As Mr. Christie recounted it: "You can imagine how that was received by 7,500 firefighters. As I walked into the room and was introduced. I was booed lustily. I made my way up to the stage, they booed some more. . . . So I said, 'Come on, you can do better than that,' and they did!"
He crumpled up his prepared remarks and threw them on the floor. He told them, "Here's the deal: I understand you're angry, and I understand you're frustrated, and I understand you feel deceived and betrayed." And, he said, they were right: "For 20 years, governors have come into this room and lied to you, promised you benefits that they had no way of paying for, making promises they knew they couldn't keep, and just hoping that they wouldn't be the man or women left holding the bag. I understand why you feel angry and betrayed and deceived by those people. Here's what I don't understand. Why are you booing the first guy who came in here and told you the truth?"
He told them there was no political advantage in being truthful: "The way we used to think about politics and, unfortunately, the way I fear they're thinking about politics still in Washington" involves "the old playbook [which] says, "lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election." He'd seen a study that said New Jersey's pensions may go bankrupt by 2020. A friend told him not to worry, he won't be governor then. "That's the way politics has been practiced in our country for too long. . . . So I said to those firefighters, 'You may hate me now, but 15 years from now, when you have a pension to collect because of what I did, you'll be looking for my address on the Internet so you can send me a thank-you note.'"
It can be a great relief to turn away from Washington and look at the states, where the rubber meets the road. Real leadership is happening there—the kind that can inspire real followership.
•• WSJ (2/18/2011) Athens in Mad Town: A seminal showdown between public unions and taxpayers.
• Rich Lowry (NRO, 2/18/2011) The New Wisconsin Idea: The cradle of American progressivism might yield the solution to states' budget woes.
// Walker supports denying public employees — with the exception of police and firemen — the ability to engage in collective bargaining over anything but wages. This would make it harder for unions to boost compensation with ever-more-generous benefits that, in the near term, don't seem to cost anything. And he wants to end the practice of the state deducting union dues from the paychecks of its employees. Unions would have to collect dues themselves, and state employees might opt not to pay dues at all. Walker, in short, wants Wisconsin to stop participating in a conspiracy to fleece itself. //
•• Peter Wehner (Commentary, 2/18/2011) The Unrest in Madison.
Here are a couple of predictions related to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's relatively modest requests of government unions (asking many of the state's public employees to start contributing to their own pension and health-care benefits and limiting their collective bargaining rights to negotiations over pay rather than benefits) and the massive, angry protests they have elicited.
First, Governor Walker — if he holds shape and doesn't back down (and I rather doubt he will back down) — will eventually benefit from this collision. Government unions, on the other hand, will suffer badly. The hysterical reaction to Walker's reforms — comparing the governor of Wisconsin to (take your pick) Mubarak, Mussolini, or Hitler — is going to go down very poorly with the citizens of Wisconsin. Many of the public-employee protesters come across as pampered, childish, selfish, and overwrought.
Second, President Obama's intervention in this matter — declaring that what is going on in Wisconsin is an "assault" on unions — will be about as successful as his interventions in other state and local matters, from the Arizona immigration law, to the mosque controversy in New York City, to the statement that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" in arresting Harvard Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates. Which is to say, not successful at all.
What is happening in Madison would have been significant on its own; it is, after all, emblematic of the reforms and cuts that states have to make in order to avoid insolvency. But the intervention by the president into this fray has now raised the stakes enormously. He has made this fight his fight.
President Obama's intervention also occurred during a week in which he released his own deeply irresponsible budget — one that avoids any of the difficult decisions that are necessary given our nation's unprecedented fiscal imbalance. It is as if Mr. Obama, having proved he's fundamentally unserious about fiscal issues on a national level, now wants to impede chief executives who are acting responsibly on a state level. It's quite amazing, really.
This will, I think, be a battle that liberals will come to rue, and it may even be seen as a key moment in the larger debate about re-limiting government and restoring fiscal sanity. If you're looking for historical parallels — and none is ever exact — think August 1981, when Ronald Reagan fired thousands of unionized air-traffic controllers for illegally going on strike, an event that marked a turning point in labor relations in America. Once again, labor groups will incur significant damage — but this time, so will the president.
• Ron Prentice (California Family Council, 2/18/2011) Message from Ron Prentice.
// The people of Wisconsin knew what they were getting when they voted last November to bring Governor Walker to lead, and the people also gave power in both houses of their Legislature to conservatives. The people spoke, but like California, that didn't matter to many of the elected representatives of Wisconsin.
Without a miracle, the majority of California's legislators would never bite the hand that feeds them, i.e., the public labor unions. In a March 2010 report, the Fair Political Practices Commission stated that the California Teachers Association (CTA) had spent nearly $212 million on political activities in the previous 10 years, more than any other organization. The second highest amount of giving to California's political activities – such as candidate campaigns, legislative lobbying, and ballot measures – came from the California State Council of Service Employees, the state affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), with contributions of over $107 million.
In 1978 then-Governor Jerry Brown signed into law collective bargaining rights for unions. Many observers have since proclaimed that united bargaining by collective groups of unions has made government employees the single most politically influential constituency in our state. Now, Governor Brown speaks of the need for public employee unions to make concessions to their pay and pension agreements, but human nature is the same in California as it is in Wisconsin.
Regardless of strategies that citizen-led ballot measures may take in the future to decrease the money and power of the public employee unions, significant labor opposition will fight any attempts to lessen their stronghold. And although many union members strongly object to use of their dues to promote anti-life and anti-marriage forces, in the 2008 general election the California Teachers Association alone directed a $450,000 donation against the passage of an initiative to mandate parental notification prior to a minor's abortion, and $1 million against Proposition 8. //
558-608 – John Wurts, owner of John Wurts Financial, has been a KKLA supporter since 1991, and in his 30 years as a Certified Tax Preparer, he's earned his reputation as "The Deduction Finder." No client is too big or too small for John. Call him at (818) 223-8288.
612-623 – • MSNBC (2/18/2011) Mom sells kids' toys on eBay as punishment. Parents, right move or wrong move? What was your toughest punishment, as either the parent who gave it, or the kid who got it? Now that you're an adult, were your parents too lenient or too strict, and will you be adjusting accordingly with your own kids?
628-639 – Calls
644-656 – Calls
(:18) Forfeit. (Alan Best with the Iowa High School Athletic Association answers a question from the media after the tournament @ 2/17/2011.)
• CBS News (2/17/2011) Iowa Wrestler Defaults Rather than Face Girl. Calls: Did the male wrestler do the right thing? Are there certain sports that should not be integrated? What is the solution when there is no separate league for females?
• Washington Post (2/16/2011) Single motherhood still rejected by most Americans, poll finds. Time to brag about your great single mom! Single moms, how can the church help meet your needs?
• Michelle Malkin (NRO, 2/18/2011) Apocalypse Now: Wisconsin vs. Big Labor – In bankrupt and near-bankrupt states, fiscal discipline can't wait.
• Jonah Goldberg (NRO, 2/18/2011) Liberty, 21st Century–Style: The notion that we all crave personal liberty is fairly new.
