Poor feds deserve more
In the last week, President Obama has proposed a $60 billion program to give everyone who qualifies a two-year community college education and a $2.2 billion program to give workers seven paid sick days a year. Now, Democrat Gerry Connolly, D-Va., says while we're giving away China's money, why not a 3.8 percent pay hike for federal workers?
Never mind that the average federal worker earns 74 percent more in wages and benefits than the average private-sector worker. The average annual compensation for federal workers, including health care and pensions, in 2013 was $115,524, while the private sector average is $66,357, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Although many workers haven't had a raise since the Great Recession began, Connolly complained federal workers' wages haven't kept up with inflation over the last five years.
The poor federal workers, he said, "have endured a three-year wage freeze, four years without locality pay, higher retirement contributions for certain employees, wage-reducing work furloughs, cuts from sequestration and a government shutdown."
That most private sector workers don't even get such benefits as locality pay or retirement contributions was lost on Connolly, who said "no other group in our country has been demonized, demoralized and asked to sacrifice more."
The congressman must not know anyone in the private sector.
Palestinian-Paris link?
Chalk up former President Jimmy Carter as another politician who doesn't want to blame the recent Paris shootings on Islamic extremists. The 90-year-old, in an interview on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," went so far as to cite the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the spurs for the attacks by French-grown terrorists that left 10 dead in a satirical newspaper office.
"The Palestinian problem," he said, " ... aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now -- what's being done to them."
Thus, apparently, one Muslim's problem is every Muslim's problem -- and license to take action.
Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman took issue with Carter's continuing "bias against Jews and Israel."
"His on-air remarks were highly insensitive to the victims and their families, and his downplaying of the role of radical extremist Islamic ideology in the attack, and suggestion that other external factors were to blame, is divorced from the realities of the anti-Semitic and fanatical anti-Western beliefs of the perpetrators of the attacks in France," he said in a statement. "At a time when Christians are being targeted for violence by extremists in Arab countries throughout the Middle East and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have lost their lives in Syria, President Carter used his appearance on 'The Daily Show' to once again express his ossified perspective."
All better now
The White House has admitted it erred in not sending someone more important to a solidarity showing of world leaders in Paris following the killing of 12 by Muslim extremists last week. Now, in an effort to make up for the slight, Secretary of State John Kerry got 66-year-old James Taylor to sing his 44-year-old hit, "You've Got a Friend," at a news conference in the French capital. No, really.
The make-up game also included Kerry, who said he was in the country "to share a big hug with Paris," laying a wreath at the sites of the attacks and, in fact, giving French President Francois Hollande a hug.
As for the aging Taylor, Kerry said he and the singer are old friends, and Taylor was in the country to promote a forthcoming European tour.
This, of course, is from the same administration that, in 2009, presented a personalized iPod to Queen Elizabeth that included photos from President Obama's first inauguration, audio of Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and audio of Obama's 2009 inaugural address.
Ranking racism
"Lots of research," according to an article in The Washington Post, indicates that white Americans across the country suffer from "unconscious racial bias" against blacks. Sadly, "most don't realize" they're racists.
The article cites "Project Implicit," which claims to have surveyed 1.5 million people with a test that detects "subtle or unconscious racial preferences." A Lehigh University psychologist concluded the results indicate "unconscious racial bias" is higher the higher number of blacks to whites in a state.
The Volunteer State, citizens will be glad to know, is not the most racist state in the union. It's 10th, trailing No. 1 Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Delaware, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey (tied), and North Carolina. At 10th, it's tied with Ohio. The least racist state is New Mexico.