Budgetary meltdowns in states and municipalities throughout 2011 have made one thing abundantly clear: the Blue Model is slowly bankrupting America at all levels of government. It isn’t just rust belt cities with public unions that are feeling the pain: not even the Pentagon is immune. From the New York Times:

Many who are more worried about cuts, including Mr. Panetta, acknowledge that Pentagon personnel costs are unsustainable and that generous retirement benefits may have to be scaled back to save crucial weapons programs.

“If we allow the current trend to continue,” said Arnold L. Punaro, a consultant on a Pentagon advisory group, the Defense Business Board, who has pushed for changes in the military retirement system, “we’re going to turn the Department of Defense into a benefits company that occasionally kills a terrorist.” […]

One independent analyst, Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan policy and research group in Washington, has calculated that if military personnel costs continue rising at the rate they have over the past decade, and overall Pentagon spending does not increase, by 2039 the entire defense budget would be consumed by personnel costs.

The answer, in the Pentagon and elsewhere, can’t just be to cut wages and benefits. There have to be productivity enhancements: municipal governments and the defense bureaucracy have got to get more done with fewer hands. In both kinds of organization the ‘teeth to tail’ ratio is part of the problem: how much of the workforce is getting the mission done as opposed to how much does support and supervision.

Read More at The American Interest By Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest

We’ve all heard about crazy lawsuits and 2011 was no exception when it came to the filing of frivolous – even ridiculous – lawsuits.

A lawsuit by a kidnapper against his victims for not helping him evade police tops the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform’s (ILR) survey of the Top Ten Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2011, released today.

“While these lawsuits vary from the outrageous to the humorous, abusive litigation is hardly a laughing matter,” said ILR President Lisa Rickard. “ILR’s annual poll of ridiculous lawsuits helps to remind us that abusive lawsuits affect real people and real businesses, and can have harmful results to lives, jobs, and even our economic growth.”

ILR announced the top ten vote-getters from among those chosen throughout the year by visitors to the FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org website. The lawsuits were selected from those featured in the website’s monthly polls for 2011. The Faces of Lawsuit Abuse campaign is ILR’s public awareness effort created to highlight the impact of abusive lawsuits on small businesses, communities, and individuals.

The top ten Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2011 are:

•Convict sues couple he kidnapped for not helping him evade police

 Read More at Yahoo! News Yahoo News!

While the establishment news media brought plenty of bad economic news in 2011, the real story hasn’t been adequately told.

The true rate of unemployment and inflation and the real state of the U.S. economy, which is far worse than reported, tops WND’s annual list of the 10 most “spiked” or underreported stories of the last year.

At the end of each year, many news organizations typically present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories of the previous 12 months.

WND’s editors, however, long have considered it more newsworthy to publicize the most underreported or unreported news events of the year – to shine a spotlight on those issues that the establishment media successfully “spiked.”

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has sponsored “Operation Spike” every year since 1988, and since founding WND in May 1997, has continued the annual tradition.

Read More at WND

By Western Center for Journalism.  Contrary to what Ron Paul says, Bradley Manning is neither a hero nor a patriot. He is a traitor who has placed our fighting men and women in great danger. He is also deeply disaffected and confused homosexual who has serious misogynistic tendencies. He can’t stand women. The Army’s folder of reports about his conduct proves it.

A source quoted in militarycorruption.com who has attended his treason trial in Fort Meade Maryland, says Manning thinks of himself as a woman in a man’s body, and even created his own female persona he calls Breanna Manning. Moreover he is given to fits of hysteria and is prone to violence toward female supervisors. The official records include a description of Manning having punched his female supervisor in the face.

In spite of his flighty and unacceptable conduct the army’s poster boy for ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was put in charge of 700,000 sensitive and secret files pertaining to our military’s plans in Afghanistan and other theaters of war. How did this happen? Who looked at this maladjusted little twerp and said, “Oh boy THIS is guy America should trust her secrets to!”?

During the time Manning was in charge of America’s secrets, he sent up one red flag after another. Jihrleah Showman the female supervisor Manning punched recognized he was unstable and therefore untrustworthy early in their professional relationship. She has testified to specifically explaining what she was seeing in Manning’s irrational conduct to her superior Sgt. First Class Paul Adkins and Adkins’ seeming indifference to her concerns. Now Adkins has taken the 5th Amendment when questioned under oath about why he left Manning in place with his hands on our future.

These facts raise several questions about Adkins and the unit Manning was working in.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at Western Journalism