This week the Department of Education announced that Education Secretary Arne Duncan would be one of the speakers at Al Sharpton’s August 28th protest march.   But wait, according to the Daily Caller there’s more:

The U.S. Department of Education’s spokesperson hung up on The Daily Caller Wednesday when seeking clarification regarding the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s planned speech at an Aug. 28 protest march that the Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network (NAN) are holding to counter Fox News commentator Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally…..

“Newt Gingrich, Reverend Sharpton and Secretary Duncan enjoyed visiting some of the highest performing low income schools in the nation and we look forward to visiting Dunbar High School with the Reverend later this month,” Justin Hamilton, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, said in an e-mail to TheDC, answering a question that wasn’t asked.

Hamilton hung up the phone on TheDC when contacted for further comment, refusing to answer actual questions, including whether Duncan believes the Tea Party is racist or if he believes Beck is trying to “hijack” the American dream, or comment any further on Duncan’s planned participation in the rally……

The NAN’s “Reclaim the Dream” march is an attempt to keep attention off Beck’s highly publicized rally happening the same day in the same city, redirecting the focus to what Sharpton and the NAN say is the real meaning of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “I have a dream” speech. The date, Aug. 28, is the 47th anniversary of King’s iconic speech.

In case you missed today’s Boston Globe Mitt Romney offers up common sense solutions to the economic problems our nation faces and in particular he calls out President Obama for his refusal to embrace free market solutions.

IT’S NOT happening the way President Obama had planned. Unemployment blew past his 8 percent ceiling and hasn’t looked back. Private sector investment in new jobs and capital has languished. Even the head of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, has resigned.

Almost every action the president has taken has deepened and lengthened the downturn. The private sector has retreated, frightened by his agenda and paralyzed by the uncertainty, lack of predictability, and outright hostility he has engendered.

His policies are anti-investment, anti-jobs, and anti-growth. Raising taxes — with a 15 percent hike on certain small business corporations, new taxes to pay for ObamaCare, and an increase on the dividend tax from 15 percent to nearly 40 percent — depresses new investment throughout the economy. Promoting an open-ended cap-and-trade tax dissuades expansion by employers in the energy sector. Bowing to the demands of unions to tilt the table in their favor — with proposals for card check and mandatory arbitration as well as the installation of a labor stooge at the National Labor Relations Board — chills new hiring…..

A pro-job, pro-prosperity government works to create the conditions that enable businesses of all sizes to grow and thrive. These should include aligning corporate taxes with those of other developed economies, eliminating special corporate tax breaks that lobbyists have inserted over the years, and preserving the Bush tax cuts — especially for small business.

To give an immediate boost to jobs and investment, permit businesses to write off in 2010 and 2011 the capital investments made in those years rather than over time. Aggressively negotiate and sign trade agreements with other nations to promote American exports. Adopt an energy policy that will actually eliminate our dependence on OPEC and hostile states. Preserve our balanced labor-management rules and regulators. Rather than raising the tax on investment dividends, eliminate it and the tax on capital gains and interest for all households earning less than $250,000 a year.

Reshape government programs to ultimately put spending in balance with revenues. Restructure entitlements to make them fiscally sustainable, honoring our commitments to seniors. Rather than opening the door to ever-increasing demands from states for bail-outs, take action to enable the states to solve their unfunded pension obligations. And tame the growth of government by limiting the political power of public employee unions.

Nothing like a Hollywood fundraiser to get the truth juices flowing.  And the Hill was on top of it when President Obama acknowledged that he succeeded in passing much of his “progressive” agenda.

President Obama told a Hollywood fundraiser Monday night that he and congressional Democrats have passed the most progressive legislation in decades.

“We have been able to deliver the most progressive legislative agenda — one that helps working families — not just in one generation, maybe two, maybe three,” Obama said……

“This is exactly when you want to be president,” Obama said. “This is why I ran, because we have the opportunity to shape history for the better.”

With polls showing Democrats in serious trouble during an anti-incumbent election year, Obama said that helping Democrats get elected in November is his “focus over the next several months.”

“I hope you understand why we’re here tonight,” Obama told the crowd at producer John Wells’s home. “It’s not to take a picture with the president. We’re here to make sure those who took the tough votes are rewarded.”

In case you missed it, Glenn Beck discusses the limits of tolerance.  There is open mindedness and a willingness to get along with people, but there are limits.  Beck says that there are times to call out monsters:

Sometimes, I’m flippant and I don’t want to be here. I was just telling you how tolerance is the thing that got us into this mess. And what I mean by that is we tolerate stupidity, animosity toward us and our way of life. Sometimes, even total destructive hatred, we tolerate it.

We knowingly tolerated a radicalized Muslim terrorist in the U.S. military at Ft. Hood because people supposedly said mean things to him. He took the lives of 13 soldiers.

We tolerated the attempted Times Square bomber, a Muslim who clearly, obviously, has been radicalized overseas because we didn’t want to seem insensitive. We were told by CNN and others that he had fallen on hard times and even had lost his home.

A father reported that his Islamic son had been radicalized in Africa and wanted to do harm in America, but we did nothing but tolerate it. He tried to blow up his flight to Detroit.

The New York Times just ran a story about the WikiLeaks traitor, a guy who gave up 90,000 secret documents to the press. Oh, but The Times has informed us that he is gay and has had a tough time because people made fun of him as a child. And then, after joining the military, he struggled with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, even though he knew full well that that policy was in when he chose the life of a military man.

We’re all about tolerating. Well, we’re tolerating ourselves out of existence.

Let me show you — let me show you the tolerance of some people, wonderful people in this world. Have you seen the front page of Time magazine? Zoom in, will you? Look at her nose. You notice something is missing?

This is a story of an Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban because she dishonored her family running away from them because they were abusive.

Now, how does this relate to us?

A New Jersey federal judge, this guy, just ruled that a man could rape his wife because he believed his Islamic faith told him he could do whatever he wanted because it was a family member.

Is there a limit to toleration? Fortunately, this ruling from this guy was overturned. How does this guy still have a job? Nothing gives the man a right to rape his wife or anyone. Nothing. That’s unrighteous dominion.

This judge said it was OK because he believed his religion gave him a right. Oh. Oh, well, if God says it’s OK, I’m sure you’ll be fine with Christians that go out and shoot abortion doctors as you always like to publish. The Christians were doing — well, their God said that that was OK.

Would it be OK — Judge, would it be OK if they just raped — married and then raped the abortion doctors? Would that be OK if their religion — by the way, his name is Joseph Charles — Judge Joseph Charles.

Our problem — our problem is not just in Washington. It’s with the courts. And it’s not just with the courts, it’s in here, each of us. We want to get along with everybody. That’s what makes us uniquely American. We’re a melting pot.

Nobody wants to hate somebody because of their religion. Some people do and they’re crackpots.

If they want to build a mosque, I will stand shoulder to shoulder to do that. I will — shoulder to shoulder, I will help you, if you are not trying to erase us.

See, toleration is a good thing, but there is also a time to call out monsters. Look, I don’t agree with Muhammad’s teachings, but I can live side-by-side with a Muslim. I can work with a Muslim. I can be friends with a Muslim. That’s tolerance.

What I can’t do is live side-by-side with monsters of any faith, any nationality or any color.

A new analysis of data by USA Today is out and it confirms what many have long suspected:  the people working in the private sector who pull the wagon make substantially less than the people in public sector who ride on the wagon.  How much less — nearly 50%.

At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year…..

What the data show:

•Benefits. Federal workers received average benefits worth $41,791 in 2009. Most of this was the government’s contribution to pensions. Employees contributed an additional $10,569.

•Pay. The average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000. USA TODAY reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20% more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.

•Total compensation. Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.

Check out WEREADTHECONSTITUTION.COM.  Americans all across the nation are gathering in groups in their backyards, patios, even in the city square and they are planning to read the Constitution out loud on September 18th.

Turns out if you have as few as 6 people it takes less than 10 minutes a piece for them to read it.  Go to the website and let them know that you and your family have joined up.

Desperate Dems do desperate things.  Check out the latest.

There are plenty of losers as a result of enactment of Obamacare.  In today’s Examiner Sally Pipes outlines just how bad seniors will be hurt by the new law.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare will cost at least $938 billion over the next decade. So here’s the big question: Who is going to pay for it? The answer is … drum roll please … senior citizens.

As it turns out, more than half this bill will be covered through cuts in Medicare spending.

Medicare affects an enormous portion of the population. In 2008, it covered more than 45 million Americans. Roughly 38 million of them were 65 or older. The other 7 million were disabled.

All told, the president’s health care bill will cut Medicare by $575 billion over 10 years, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Seniors and the disabled are going to see their costs rise and their quality of care suffer……

Most troubling, the legislation attacks Medicare Advantage, the one aspect of Medicare that’s working particularly well….

Under Medicare Advantage, private insurance companies offer an alternative to traditional Medicare. It’s not difficult to understand why the Democrats targeted this program.

Big-government types detest Medicare Advantage because it outsources to the private sector. Obamacare will cut it by $202 billion over 10 years, according to CMS.

“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period,” Obama declared while campaigning for his legislation. “No one will take it away, no matter what.”

That’s certainly not true for the seniors on Medicare Advantage, who will see many of the benefits they’ve been enjoying vanish — along with their better health outcomes.

Today, over 12 percent of Americans are senior citizens — and that figure is growing rapidly as more and more baby boomers turn 65. Assuming we live long enough, all of us will end up with Medicare coverage eventually.

Medicare is a big, expensive program — and costs do need to be contained. But Obamacare takes the wrong approach. It guts the best parts, exacerbates cost shifting and sets the stage for future rationing.

This is hardly the right way to take care of our oldest citizens.