Republicans celebrate St. Patrick's Day with own breakfast

Call it Southie, or something like that, but who says Democrats are the only ones to have fun on St. Patrick's Day?

"How many people we got here, a couple hundred, white Republicans and we have one Latino guy from Columbia, so we are doing pretty good, we are expanding our roles here, we are very diverse," joked Republican State Senator Bob Hedlund, who was emceeing the state party's St. Paddy's Day Breakfast in Scituate.

This year is the fourth year in a row for what you might call  the alternative breakfast, never mind that bloated roast in South Boston.

"We Republicans are also celebrating St. Paddy's Day, and this is the Irish Rivera, here in Scituate, so why not," laughed organizer Janet Fogarty Kelly.  Why not is right.  So we will need some jokes.  Let's start with Gabriel Gomez, the former  Navy Seal of Columbian heritage who is hoping to become a U.S. Senator.  "Now I think we need to get super tough on border security...but let me tell you why, " said Gomez, "because I am already here," he joked.

Michael Sullivan, who has always been here, is a funny man too.   He got into the race late, had to get those signatures to be on the ballot in a real hurry.  "In fact Holly Robichaud sent me a bill for $300,000, and I said what's this for, she said $10 a vote, that's the going rate, that's what the other guys are paying," said Republican Candidate for U. S. Senate, Michael Sullivan, a former U. S. Attorney.

"A lot of people in this room helped get me on the ballot so I am indebted and grateful for that effort, and I mean this is really the energy of the party, it is really the base," said Sullivan.

Gomez is confident this WAS the breakfast.  "You know you gotta ask Democrats why they didn't invite us, I think it is because maybe they thought we were gonna go there and show them up," said Gomez.  "I am happy to come by and say a few words, see a lot of old friends and make new ones," Sullivan said.

One candidate for that John Kerry Senate seat, didn't make the trip this year, state rep. and former judge Dan Winslow, who decided to crash the South Boston Breakfast instead.

Elections 2013: US Senate - Special Election

The special election required to fill the seat given up by former US Senator John Kerry (D-MA) is now underway.  Two democrats, congressmen Edward Markey and Steve Lynch are seeking their party nomination.  Former US Attorney Mike Sullivan, State Representative Dan Winslow and former Navy Seal Gabriel Gormez are competing for the Republican nomination.

The party primaries will be held on Tuesday April 30th.  The winners of the Democratic and Republican primaries will face off in a final election scheduled for June 25th.

Each of the three republican contenders are seeking support from the local Town and Ward
Committee members for their grassroot efforts in reaching out to voters.  All members of the Medford Ward Committees are urged to volunteer for the candidate of their choice.  For information on the candidates, please go to:
                                        http://www.mikesullivanforsenate.com
                     
                                        http://www.danwinslow.com

                                        http://www.gomezforma.com

Homosexuality and Marriage

 It's all about taxes and benefits because no one stops you from living together

  by Carolyn Moynihan
If two lesbians can marry why not two susters?

Click here to read full article.

Obama Proposes Taxpayer-Funded Pre-School Ed

The Aministration seeks to Educate Your Toddler no Matter the Evidence

President Obama and his technocrats like to claim they're guided by "the science," but then what to make of his State of the Union call for taxpayer-funded preschool for "every child in America"?

A threshold cost-benefit question: if the regular public schools aren't working - the President also proposed a new program "to redesign America's high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy" - does it make sense to layer on another defective education level, except earlier in life?  But never mind.

Mr. Obama claimed that "study after study" showed every dollar of pre-Kindergarten "investment" saves seven dollars later on, through better student performance, graduation rates and the like.  Keep this man away from a stock portfolio, let alone the social sciences.          

In December, Mr. Obama's own Health and Human Services Department released an evaluation of Head Start, the 47-year-old program for low-income toddlers, and concluded that any cognitive gains disappeared by the third grade.  HHS had sat on the legally mandated study for more than a year.

Most other academic studies have also found early educational intervention "fade out" and that these programs rarely achieve what they promise.  Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution wrote Wednesday that the available studies supporting universal pre-K were "thin empirical gruel."  Researches at the Heritage Foundation and the conservative sociologist Charles Murray have come to similiar conclusions.  This is about as close to an intellectual policy consensus as Washington gers.

Through Mr. Obama's universal pre-K agenda seemed to emerge from nowhere, it goes back to his 2008 campaign platform that included a "zero-to-five" education plan that "begins at birth."   It's further proof that liberals measure government success not by results, but by good intentions and how much government spends.

 

Student-loan Delinquencies Soar

"We are not a deadbeat nation, " President Obama famously said during the debt-ceiling fight.  We'll see how long the Treasury can sustain gargantuan deficits.  But at the level of individual borrowers,  and specifically young people with student loans, defaults are spiking at historical levels.    On February 28th the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that a staggering 35% of student-loan borrowers under 30 were at least 90 days late on their payments at the end of 2012, up from 26% in 2008 and 21% in 2004.

These figures exclude kids who aren't yet required to make payments, often because they are still in school.  As they mature and enter the labor market, they are learning how difficult it is to find a job that allows them to repay those loans.

And for those who can't the tab is likely to be pushed onto taxpayers.  The Department of Education became the originator of roughly 90% of U.S. student loans thanks to a provision passed along with the Affordable Care Act in 2010.  With accounting that even the Congressional Budget Office admits is fraudulent because it minimizes the cost of defaults, that the federal takeover was presented as a big cost-saver.

As a Senator and then President, Mr. Obama has also worked to enact a series of laws that expand the options to delay or avoid honoring these debts.  "Income based repayment" plans and eventual debt forgiveness for people who take jobs in government and the nonprofit sector have enablrd more youngsters to avoid paying on time.

 The federal student-loan explosion means that this is the one giant exception to the needed consumer deleveraging that has occurred since the financial crisis.  Americans have reduced their borrowing in most consumer markets.  But U.S. student-loan debt increased 11% last year to $966 billion and has skyrocketed 51% since 2008, according to the New York Fed report.  According to the Wall Street Journal, 43% of the 25-year-olds had student debt in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from about 33% in the same period of 2008.

Talk about creating systemic risk.  The New York Fed also finds that borrowers who are behind on their student loan payments are much more likely to also be delinquent on auto-loan, credit-card and mortgage payments.

All of this was predicted by those who opposed the federal takeover of student loans.  But as with so many promises that government makes, the fun comes early and the bill arrives later and is paid by someone else.

  

US Senate - Special Election...Wording Sounds Familiar

"Sure, I am a Republican, but I am the new kind of Republican," Gomez said.   Obviously as a Republican I hold some conservative views, but I am an independent thinker, and I have no interest in going to Washington to engage in partisian trench warfare."

To read the full story, click below.

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_politics/2013/02/gop_s_gomez_comes_out_swinging?utm_source=Morning+3%2F1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ML+afternoon+1&utm_content=Yahoo%21+mail