ACLU?s Holiday Message Labeled ?Suspicious Activity? By Tennessee Counter-Terrorism Officials
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 26th, 2010 5:37 am by HL
ACLU?s Holiday Message Labeled ?Suspicious Activity? By Tennessee Counter-Terrorism Officials
Tennessee’s state counter-terrorism officials at the Tennessee Fusion Center maintain an open-source internet map which identifies “terrorism events and other suspicious activity.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee found its way briefly onto the map earlier this month, after the civil rights group penned a letter to school superintendents encouraging “schools to be […]
Tennessee’s state counter-terrorism officials at the Tennessee Fusion Center maintain an open-source internet map which identifies “terrorism events and other suspicious activity.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee found its way briefly onto the map earlier this month, after the civil rights group penned a letter to school superintendents encouraging “schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.” The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports what happened next:
The Fusion Center’s Internet map is part of a national map maintained by globalincidentmap.com. Information is provided by agencies across the U.S. It includes various blinking icons. The map’s label originally was titled Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity.
Near Nashville, a blinking hexagon-shaped symbol with an exclamation point read “ACLU cautions TN schools about ‘observing one religious holiday.’” The hexagon symbol, when clicked on, originally stated “suspicious activity.” But it later was changed to say “general nonincident terrorism news” after inquiries by reporters.
Mike Browning, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Homeland Security, acknowledged that listing ACLU’s letter as a terrorist incident “was a mistake.” ACLU-Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg responded, “I will take at their word that they made a mistake by posting it under terrorism activity…[but] I have not heard a good explanation for why school resource officers, who have a very important job in schools, would at all be interested or need to know about the letter we sent to local school superintendents about the need to keep holiday celebrations all inclusive.”
Rick Scott?s Economic Advisers Manipulate Research To Claim Unemployed Are Lazy And Don?t Try To Find Jobs
Rick Scott, the corrupt and fraudulent former health care executive who is soon to be Florida’s next Governor, received a report from his economic transition team this week that recommended he needs to crack down on the unemployed. Scott’s economic team, headed by the state’s most affluent business leaders, quoted research by former Obama administration […]
Rick Scott
Rick Scott, the corrupt and fraudulent former health care executive who is soon to be Florida’s next Governor, received a report from his economic transition team this week that recommended he needs to crack down on the unemployed. Scott’s economic team, headed by the state’s most affluent business leaders, quoted research by former Obama administration official Alan Krueger to claim that the unemployed are lazy and need to be driven off unemployment benefits:
“According to [former U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan] Krueger’s research, the amount of time people on UC spent looking for a job averaged only 20 minutes a day! Within 2 weeks of UC ending, that increased but to only 70 minutes a day,” states the document, noting that the median duration of unemployment benefits receipt has increased nationally from 10 weeks to 18.7 weeks.
The team’s recommendations: tighten job-search requirements for people getting benefits, cut off assistance for those who don’t comply and assign community work for those who don’t get a job in 12 weeks. Goals: increase employment and reduce the payout of unemployment benefits, as well as the unemployment compensation tax burden on businesses.
Krueger, who is a well-regarded professor of economics at Princeton University, took issue with the characterization of his research.
First, he said, the research — which was conducted during the stronger economic period of the mid 2000s — actually shows that the average amount of time spent job-searching is double what the report says — more than 40 minutes a day, not 20.
Secondly, “the unemployed in the U.S. devote more time searching for a job than unemployed workers in other countries,” Krueger wrote in an e-mail, “yet they [Scott’s team] make it seem that the unemployed put little effort into finding a job.”
And lastly, he added that the real problem faced by the unemployed today “is lack of jobs, not overly generous benefits.” The team, he said, “misspelled my name and misused my study!”
Unemployed Floridians reacted with disgust when told of the Scott team’s assertion. “That’s stupid,” said Freddy Pacheco, an unemployed 61-year-old woman. She told Tampa Bay Online that she spends about four or five hours a day, three days a week, looking for work. Unemployed Florida resident Laura Mroczko also dismissed the report. “Look around,” she said, pointing at a line of people at the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance jobs agency searching for work. “These people are here looking for work. You can’t survive on what unemployment pays you.”
