Category Archives: News

By Tom Fitton

Documents released today by Judicial Watch reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN), as well as the Obama administration’s decision to shut down a criminal investigation into these matters.

Two specific complaints were filed against ACORN for alleged voter fraud in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively. As part of its continuing investigation into alleged criminal activities of ACORN, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents concerning this matter with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State’s office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of “duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses,” which “put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers’ expense.” Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was $20,000. Likewise, Borges contended that: “The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens…” Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old. By burdening these election officials with fraudulent registrations, ACORN put those who legally registered at risk of not being put on voting rolls at all.

The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.

By contrast, the documents also include records related to a federal investigation of ACORN corruption in St. Louis, Missouri, involving 1,492 allegedly fraudulent voter registration cards submitted by Project Vote, a liberal non-profit organization affiliated with ACORN on voter registration drives, during the 2006 election season. Assistant United States Attorney Hal Goldsmith initiated the investigation with “concurrence” from the Department of Justice and the participation of the FBI. According to a Justice Department memo, Goldsmith “advised he would prosecute any individual responsible for submitting fraudulent voter registration cards.” Goldsmith identified the statute for prosecution: Title 42, USC 1973 (gg), which provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent voter registrations. In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louis office pled guilty to voter registration fraud. Oddly, the FBI document that details the shut down of the Connecticut investigation seems to ignore this legal issue.

Other documents show that the Bush Justice Department failed to prosecute ACORN voter registration fraud of non-citizens in Phoenix, Arizona in 2007 because the allegations that led to the opening of the investigation were “unverifiable.” Notably, the FBI document detailing this questionable decision reveals that a “draft Intelligence Bulletin…concludes that ACORN’s employment practices perpetuate fraudulent voter registration.”

The ACORN documents include internal FBI memoranda, signed affidavits, subpoenas, fraudulent voter registration cards, and publications describing ACORN’s policies and practices. The documents also include details regarding numerous allegations of corruption extending beyond voter registration fraud, to include attempts by ACORN employees to coerce workers to participate in campaign activities on behalf of Democratic candidates.

These documents reflect seemingly systematic voter registration fraud by ACORN. It is unconscionable that the Justice Department has not conducted a fully comprehensive criminal investigation into – and prosecution of – this matter. Given President Obama’s close connections to ACORN, including his campaign’s hiring of the ACORN’s Project Vote organization, it seems questionable at best that Attorney General Holder has failed to seriously investigate these and other alleged ACORN criminal activities.

You can download the documents here and here.

Tom Fitton is president of Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational foundation that fights government corruption.

Ben Sheffner, at Copyrights and Campaigns Blog, has the breaking story:

A state court in Baltimore has dismissed ACORN’s lawsuit against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.com LLC after the plaintiffs failed to serve the complaint on the defendants within Maryland’s 120-day limit.

28218713-ACORN-v-O-Keefe-Docket

It was with great fanfare that ACORN, along with two recently-fired employees of its Baltimore office, sued last September over thesurreptitious taping of the employees advising O’Keefe and Giles on running a prostitution business out of a house. ACORN’s general counsel, Arthur Schwartz, told the Washington Post at the time that the defendants, young filmmakers O’Keefe and Giles, plus Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.com LLC, which disseminated the videos, had committed “clear violations of Maryland law” against audio recording without consent from all parties. But ACORN appears to have lost interest in the case since filing it, confirming my suspicion that it was little more than a press release on pleading paper.

Under Maryland Rule 2-507(b), “An action against any defendant who has not been served or over whom the court has not otherwise acquired jurisdiction is subject to dismissal as to that defendant at the expiration of 120 days from the issuance of original process directed to that defendant.” That’s exactly what the court did March 4, with no apparent notice from the media that covered the filing of the lawsuit. The court’s dismissal was without prejudice, meaning that the plaintiffs could theoretically re-file. But, as I argued shortly after it was filed, the lawsuit has substantive flaws that go well beyond the plaintiffs’ apparent lack of interest in pursuing it.

Grassroots conservatives were rightly up in arms over Senator Corker’s game of footsie with far left Democrat Chris Dodd. The two worked together on President Obama’s effort to impose a massive new regulatory scheme on the American economy. Dodd, of course, is one of the architects of the current financial crisis. His decades long support of ACORN, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act should have disqualified him from these negotiations in the first place.

The word from the halls of the Capital last week was that Corker was still trying to cut a deal with democrats… a bad deal.

But, it looks like Corker bailed after the constant pressure from conservatives this past week…
Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) just backed out of a deal with Dodd and democrats to establish a new federal bureaucracy to regulate the financial industry.
Congress Daily reported:

Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd said today he will unveil legislation to revamp the nation’s financial regulatory system without the support of Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., with whom he had been working to strike a bipartisan deal.

“Over the last few months, Banking Committee members have worked together to try and produce a consensus package. Together we have made significant progress and resolved a many of the items, but a few outstanding issues remain,” Dodd said in a statement.

Dodd said he intends to unveil the bill Monday and hold a markup during the week of March 22 to move the bill out of committee.

“I have been fortunate to have a strong partner in Senator Corker, and my new proposal will reflect his input and the good work done by many of our colleagues as well,” Dodd added. “Our talks will continue, and it is still our hope to come to agreement on a strong bill all of the Senate can be proud to support very soon.”

Corker is scheduled to hold a news conference at 11 a.m. to give his version of the breakdown of the talks.

We look forward to his press conference.

Senator Corker better have a good excuse for turning his back on conservatives.

This morning, the House GOP Caucus adopted a unilateral ban on all earmarks.

For millions of Americans, the earmark process in Congress has become a symbol of a broken Washington. Today House Republicans took an important step toward showing the American people we’re serious about reform by adopting an immediate, unilateral ban on all earmarks. But the more difficult battle lies ahead, and that’s stopping the spending spree in Washington that is saddling our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars in debt. Only then will we have succeeded in bringing fundamental change to the way Congress spends taxpayers’ money.

Newsmax first reported that Organizing for America, the community organizing outfit under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee, has launched a plan to inundate talk radio shows with callers.  The action will occur when a particular radio show is discussing ObamaCare.

This is an extension of OFA’s and Health Care for America Now’s campaign to flood last summer’s town hall meetings with union members and left-wing activists supporting Obama’s government takeover of health care.

The intent then, just as it is now, was to drown out average taxpayers showing up  to voice their concerns or vent their frustrations.  The intent is also to run out the clock on real debate and take a vote on health reform with as little resistance as possible.

HCAN and ACORN were busing non-constituents, some from as far as 200 miles away, to fill the seats and skew the crowd.  It was to give the false impression that constituents really wanted ObamaCare.

But the result was even worse.  HCAN and union members, particularly SEIU, were filling the seats which would have otherwise been occupied by the average person just getting out of work.

So, the campaign now is geared toward achieving the same result: flood different talk radio shows with left-wing activists and ObamaCare apologists.  The OFA’s website has a talk radio du jour with a call-in number and “discussion points” – talking points for the latest version of the Democrats’ plan.

Be aware and be prepared, Talk Radio: The president’s got your number and his foot soldiers are coming for you.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bluffing here when she says:

“Yes,” Pelosi said when asked if she believed the House would end up having the votes to approve healthcare.

“If we took it up today, yes,” the speaker quickly added.

The speaker still cautioned, though, that the timing and actual vote count on the bill couldn’t be entirely set in stone until the final legislative language was finalized and until the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) delivers its score of the bill’s impact.

There is no chance Pelosi has the votes to pass ObamaCare and she knows it. If she did have the votes, she would have already had the vote and wouldn’t need the “Slaughter Solution.”

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday. Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version. Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. “Once the CBO gives us the score we’ll spring right on it,” she said.

The Slaughter Solution has one very large obstacle–the Constitution Article I, Section 7–which states:

All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.  Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

Clearly, this Congress is so desperate to pass ObamaCare, despite the American people’s utter hatred of the bill and everything it represents–including the path to socialism and government control of the people. However, if this Congress continues down this path of violating the Constitution, the “people” will have a viable case, class-action or otherwise, in the US courts because it is going to be extremely difficult for a judge to ignore that the 111th Democrat-Progressive led Congress violated Article I, Section 7 to the most obscene extent.

I have to say, I did not agree with Sen. McCain during the 2008 campaign when he took the Guantánamo issue off the table by endorsing candidate Obama’s call to close it. The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is an ideal place to hold military tribunals for jihadists captured on the battlefield. And it would still be the ideal place to hold Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year old Nigerian jihadist, who tried to blow up his inbound jet in Detroit on Christmas Day.

Claims that detainees were being mistreated there were false. Capt. Pete Hegseth of Veterans for Freedom served at Guantánamo during the time that Newsweek and other liberal sources were spreading false claims that U.S. guards had “defiled” copies of the Koran. These false reports circulated throughout the world and sparked riots among Muslims.

Capt. Hegseth served a year at “Gitmo” with the New Jersey National Guard. He supervised guards at the detention facilities. He set the record straight. The only time their Korans were besmirched was when the detainees themselves threw human waste on their guards. Gitmo was never Abu Ghraib. No photos of abuse by guards ever came out of Gitmo, because there was none.

But if, after all is said and done, sensible voices in Congress do not prevail, then I have a recommendation for where the detainees should be held and tried. Adak was an important naval installation throughout the Cold War. It’s an island in the central Aleutians, that thousand-mile chain off Alaska.

Adak has many facilities that were in use by the Navy that could be retrofitted now for detainee trials and long-term detention. Adak’s climate is severe. It’s cold. It’s overcast much of the time. During some snowstorms, “whiteout” conditions prevail. Then, it’s dangerous for any personnel to venture outside of buildings unescorted.

A number of U.S. Senators are pressing the administration for the names of political appointees to the U.S. Justice Department who previously served as counsel to the Guantánamo detainees. We deserve to know who those public officials are. We deserve to be assured that none of these lawyers are involved in the decision to close Gitmo or to give civilian trials to jihadists.

This is not suggested in spite. As Lincoln said, “I shall do nothing in malice.” The business he was in was too weighty for that. That should be our watchword, too.

For our military guards and their families, there is this consolation. Many of the Navy families who spent two-year tours on Adak recall their time there with fondness. The severe weather conditions and the remoteness of the island station bred a real fellowship among the hardy folk who called Adak home. We owe these self-sacrificing Americans our respect and our gratitude. Adak would not be a punishment assignment for them.

Adak’s primary virtue is its remoteness. As with Gitmo, the American people would not have to worry about any escapes. It’s five hours behind Washington. One of the most pressing concerns is that jihadists whom we are holding should not be permitted to inflame other prisoners among our U.S. prisoner population.

Finally, we do not want any jihadists to attack U.S. prisons, even on a suicide mission, because this administration unwisely brought them to the mainland. Adak, like Gitmo, could be secured from such attacks.

Once again, we should not close Gitmo. But, if the Obama administration takes this unnecessary and expensive step, Adak, would be a good alternative.

While most of the public is consumed by the health care-death-march spectacle, Senators Bob Corker and Chris Dodd are making serious progress on the Senate’s “financial services reform” legislation. The legislation was dead just a couple weeks ago, but Sen. Corker thought he could snag a seat at the grown-up table and stepped forward to ‘cut a deal.’

As is the new DC operating procedure for major legislation, there are almost no firm details on the current language. We know there will be a large new federal bureaucracy, somewhere within government, to provide “consumer protection” for financial products. We know there will be a $50 billion tax on banking customers to provide a permanent bailout fund, or as Sen. Corker would describe it, a “wind-down” fund. Unfortunately, we also know that the bill will do nothing to reform Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, who continue to drain billions from the U.S. Treasury.

We’re told the Corker-Dodd Bailout Bill is a necessary response to the financial melt-down triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble. But, if it doesn’t take even small steps to reform Fannie and Freddie, then, simply, it isn’t a serious proposal. Its like rebuilding the porch on a house, while ignoring it’s cracked foundation.

Washington politicians would rather ignore this, but the housing bubble was the result of very explicit government policy. Throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s, officials from both parties became addicted to forever pushing homeownership rates higher than the laws of economics would otherwise allow.

If you want to identify the roots of the homeownership-cult among elected officials, fire-up the way-back machine and check out a little report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in the early 90’s. Under the leadership of Richard Syron, then-President of the Boston Fed (more on him later), the report was the result of discussion among the bank’s staff and the usual collection of academics and professional activists. It was to make recommendations to the nation’s bankers on addressing alleged discrimination in mortgage lending.

Boston Fed

Most of the report is innocuous pablum; a kind of cross between a Hallmark Card and corporate-ese. But, a few of the report’s recommendations are, in hindsight, more ominous. And while they were just ‘recommendations’, they were being made by one of the Fed banks, which carries a certain, shall we say, weight with bankers. From the intro:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston wants to be helpful to lenders as they work to close the mortgage gap. For this publication, we have gathered recommendations on “best practice” from lending institutions and consumer groups. With their help, we have developed a comprehensive program for lenders who seek to ensure that all loan applicants are treated fairly and to expand their markets to reach a more diverse customer base.

As far as it goes, fine. But, consider this:

Obligation Ratios: Special consideration could be given to applicants with relatively high obligation ratios who have demonstrated an ability to cover high housing expenses in the past. Many lower–income households are accustomed to allocating a large percentage of their income toward rent. While it is important to ensure that the borrower is not assuming an unreasonable level of debt, it should be noted that the secondary market is willing to consider ratios above the standard 28/36.

Got that. Banks should use their normal risk-based underwriting standards, because low-income people can carry more debt than families with higher income. Oh, and wink-wink, the secondary market will consider higher risk ratios. In other words, go ahead and underwrite the mortgage and you can probably sell it off. More:

Credit History: Policies regarding applicants with no credit history or problem credit history should be reviewed. Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor. Certain cultures encourage people to “pay as you go” and avoid debt. Willingness to pay debt promptly can be determined through review of utility, rent, telephone, insurance, and medical bill payments. In reviewing past credit problems, lenders should be willing to consider extenuating circumstances. For lower–income applicants in particular, unforeseen expenses can have a disproportionate effect on an otherwise positive credit record. In these instances, paying off past bad debts or establishing a regular repayment schedule with creditors may demonstrate a willingness and ability to resolve debts.

Nothing can go wrong there. But, this is one of the more interesting items noted in the report:

Institutions that sell loans to the secondary market should be fully aware of the efforts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to modify their guidelines to address the needs of borrowers who are lower–income, live in urban areas, or do not have extensive credit histories.

Boy, would Fannie and Freddie ever modify their guidelines. While the Boston Fed Report was being written, Fannie and Freddie were implementing their first congressional mandate to increase their holdings of mortgages to low-income buyers. From the Village Voice:

[Andrew]Cuomo’s predecessor, Henry Cisneros, did that for the first time in December 1995, taking a cautious approach and moving the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the “very-low-income.”

At some point, the supply of low-income buyers who meet conventional loan standards is going to run out. It would be impossible for Fannie and Freddie to meet their federal mandate if they only bought conventional mortgages. So, by the end of the decade, Fannie, at the urging of elected officials and activist groups, purchased its first sub-prime mortgage. From the New York Times, September 29, 1999:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

By the time the bubble burst, Fannie and Freddie were imploding under the weight of hundreds of billions in sub-prime and other risky mortgages.

A few more excerpts from the Boston Fed Report:

Even the most determined lending institution will have difficulty cultivating business from minority customers if its underwriting standards contain arbitrary or unreasonable measures of creditworthiness.

And,

Unintentional discrimination may be observed when a lender’s under- writing policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower–income minority applicants.

And,

management should be directed to review existing underwriting standards and practices to ensure that they are valid predictors of risk. Special care should be taken to ensure that standards are appropriate to the economic culture of urban, lower–income, and nontraditional consumers.

And, finally, a section that, seen in hindsight, gives me a headache:

The Board may also wish to encourage management to work with the public sector to develop products that assist lower–income borrowers by using public money to reduce interest rates, provide down payment assistance, or otherwise reduce the cost of the mortgage. The Board should also encourage management to work with special secondary mortgage market programs designed for lower–income homebuyers.

To be sure, there were a number of causes that inflated the housing bubble. The Fed’s policy of, essentially, free money in the early part of the decade sloshed money across the financial system and allowed credit to be widely available to anyone with a pulse. Ever more exotic financial products that few understood ingrained themselves into bank balance sheets as little ticking time-bombs.

But, the scope of the crisis would have been far less severe, if it hadn’t been accompanied by explicit government pressure on banks to loosen their lending criteria. Leftist activist groups like ACORN and the Center for Responsible Lending exerted complementary pressure through the media. With nearly-free money, entities like Fannie and Freddie eager buy up even the riskiest loans and near-universal predictions of forever increasing house prices, it is little wonder banks bowed to the outside pressure and loosened their standards. The rest is history.

Oh, about that Richard Syron, who headed up the first Fed report urging banks to loosen their lending standards. He became CEO of Freddie Mac at the end of 2003. He certainly put our money where his mouth was. In the final years of the bubble, 2005-2007, 40% of the loans Freddie took onto its books were junk loans.

Sometimes pablum leaves a mark.

The other day I exposed the fact that Harry Reid switched the language in the House-passed H.R. 3590 Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009 and inserted the Senate version of the healthcare bill via a manager’s amendment in order to meet the requirement that all legislation raising taxes must originate in the House.

The Senate passed the revised bill with the healthcare language in it, and now the House must revote on the deceptively gutted changed bill because, according to the Constitution, the identical bill must pass both the House and Senate in order to be signed into law.  And, once the Senate Health Care bill pass the House, President Obama will sign it right away.

The threat of reconciliation in the Senate is hollow. There isn’t going to be any reconciliation.

On January 31, 2010, before the House was set to take up the Senate bill, WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” stated:

“If the House would take up the Senate bill then that bill would go to the president’s desk,” Gibbs said.

For further confirmation, here is the audio of that exchange.  Listen from about 4:20 to 5.00 and you will here Gibbs confirm that once the House passes the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill, it’s a done deal.  No talk of reconciliation here, because reconciliation is not needed at all.

Let me be clear, if the Senate healthcare bill passes the House, it goes to directly to the President for his signature.  No reconciliation, no conference, no more negotiations, nothing.  Why?  Because they don’t have to; the healthcare takeover will be completed.  There is no more incentive for the Senate to keep its promise to the House.  And with this Congress the end definitely justifies the means.

The fact that Gibbs confirmed that Obama would sign the Senate version of healthcare bill as is should signal to Americans that he inherently doesn’t have any problems with it–even with all the bribes and abortion funding–as he has also been a huge supporter of this version.

There are still so many people talking about reconciliation.  Reconciliation of the bills is not needed for the House to pass the Senate bill. All the talk of reconciliation is to convince wavering House Democrats will soon…we promise, we swear, cross our hearts…fix all the provisions that give House members fears of November.

Stupak and the pro-life Democrats are fooling themselves–especially Kildee–who is now a confirmed “yes” vote on healthcare due to his satisfaction on the abortion language.

Once the House approves the Senate bill, all the talk of reconciliation will evaporate. The Senate health care bill provides the foundation for a government takeover of health care. Do you really think Senate Democrats are going to prolong the health care debate for weeks on end to strip abortion funding from the bill? Again, I can’t be more clear:  this is the Code Red alert for the final vote to pass healthcare.

If you ask people on the street (outside of Chicago) if they have ever heard of ShoreBank, the answer would likely be “no.” While ShoreBank isn’t a Goldman Sachs, a Bank of America, or a JP Morgan, to the Progressives, this “little” bank is in many ways every bit as big and important as the aforementioned “large banks.”

Why?

One of the core components of President Obama’s fundamental change for America is to create clean energy jobs, also known as “green jobs”.  During his campaign and as recently as his State of the Union Address, President Obama continues to talk about the need “green” jobs. In fact, during his State of the Union 2010 speech, the President stated, “We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities –  and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. “

In a speech given by the President in Virginia on Dec. 15, 2009, he said, “The simple act of retrofitting these buildings to make them more energy-efficient — installing new windows and doors, insulation, roofing, sealing leaks, modernizing heating and cooling equipment — is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest things we can do to put Americans back to work while saving families money and reducing harmful emissions.”

In the  stimulus package last year, President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his plan for building a new green-based economy.

Retro-fitting older homes to save money on heating and cooling costs is a great idea; but in today’s economy, how many people can afford to spend that kind of money up front? And if people aren’t buying green building materials, like replacement windows, how will any of this create green jobs?   If there isn’t an increase in green jobs, then the billions spent in stimulus money would be a waste — and the President can’t let that happen.

Enter ShoreBank.

ShoreBank has been active in helping homebuyers with making their homes more energy efficient for years.  In 2005, then-governor Rod Blagojevich “announced a $10 Million Homeownership Initiative to Revitalize Homes in Chicago’s South and West Sides.”  This venture was administered by ShoreBank, which also provided homebuyers with education on “how to choose energy-efficient products…..”

ShoreBank’s own website states, “In Chicago, borrowers are rated on types of windows and light bulbs used, and a free energy audit is often required before a loan is granted.”

Recently, ShoreBank received $35 million in “new market tax credits” to finance green buildings and other projects in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland – the communities it serves.

Now what if you just had a product that needed to be made by green jobs that could be sold by a bank?  Enter Serious Windows, made by Serious Materials.

Serious  Windows took over the Republic Windows and Door Factory in Chicago. They make energy efficient windows which have been selected by the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County to be used in their low-income multifamily dwellings that qualify under the Illinois Home Weatherization Assistance Program.  This Assistance Program was awarded $242.5 million in the ARRA stimulus money.

Serious Windows must be important windows in the Obama Master Plan. The company has been singled out (in speeches made by the administration) as being the best windows in America.  And Serious Materials received $548,100 in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for clean energy manufacturing projects – while no other window company received this same credit.

Now you have all the pieces in place to put together a plan to create green jobs. You have a window manufacturer (Serious Windows) receiving government money. You have a weatherization project, also government funded, awarded to the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County.  And then there’s the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, which recommends Serious Windows, trains energy auditors and develops certified contractor lists.  And finally, there’s ShoreBank, a bank with long ties to the Progressives that has also received government money.  ShoreBank requires that an energy audit be completed before a home loan is approved.  (Oh, and did I mention that one of the board members for Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance works for ShoreBank?  Joel Freehling is the Manager of Triple Bottom Line Innovations at ShoreBank, whose  “… primary task is the creation of innovative financial products to promote energy efficiency and green development in urban markets, such as ShoreBank’s Homeowners’ Energy Conservation Program.” )

If ShoreBank can loan money to people to buy homes and recommend Serious Windows (which creates green jobs), it will be a win-win for the green jobs stimulus project.  Is it any wonder that Senator Dick Durbin and Rep. Jan Schakowsky are applying pressure as they ask for a $100 million bail out of ShoreBank?

As Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are working on a Senate version of comprehensive immigration reform and it includes a very controversial idea.  There is a provision in the draft bill to force all Americans to possess a biometric ID card.  Sources on Capitol Hill confirm to Big Government that the idea of a national ID card is part of the comprehensive immigration reform bill being negotiated between Graham and Schumer.

Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal reports:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the pre-text of halting illegal immigration, Congress may consider forcing citizens to carry an ID card as a condition of citizenship.  For those who mistrust big government and treasure freedom, this idea should be revolting and a shocking example of a bad idea run wild.  American citizens’ freedoms have been eroding over the past few years, yet this idea is much more than an erosion of rights.  It is an all out assault on the idea that Americans have a natural right to be free of government monitoring.

The Wall Street Journal further reports:

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.  The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

Adding the national ID cared idea to the mix will cause both the right and the left to band together against this provision forcing all Americans to carry an identification card containing fingerprints and other biometric information.  To say this is an invasion of privacy is an understatement.  There is no provision in the Constitution that grants the federal government the power nor the right to force Americans to be fingerprinted and to carry an identification card against their will.  This is not a new idea

Senator Schumer stated at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration, on July 21, 2009 that any employer identification system needs to include a means to “authenticate the employee’s identity by using a specific and unique biometric identifier. This identifier could be a fingerprint, an enhanced biometric picture or other mechanism.”  Schumer went on to say that “any new biometric-based employment system must have extensive checks at the beginning of the system to prevent illegal aliens from creating a false identity to enter into the new database. And, as I mentioned before this, we need to do this with the entity administering the new employment-verification system — will have access to public records, government databases, to ensure that the person seeking to enter the new employment-verification system is, in fact, the person they claim to be, and the person has legal status.”  Schumer supports the creation of a new government bureaucracy to monitor your work status and to audit you if a government bureaucrat decides that your status is suspect.  In essence, you are guilty of being an illegal immigrant, until you can prove otherwise.

This is the same federal government that has a hard time maintaining an accurate No-Fly list. The No-Fly list has prevented members of Congress from flying and is known to be riddled with errors, yet we are readying a database containing all American citizens.  CBS News reports today

Current and former intelligence, counterterrorismand U.S. government officials provided The Associated Press a behind-the-scenes look at how the no-fly list is created. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.  Despite changes over time, the list remains an imperfect tool, dependent on the work of hundreds of government terrorism analysts who sift through massive flows of information. The list ballooned after Sept. 11 and has fluctuated in size over the past decade. In 2004, it included about 20,000 people. The standards for getting on the list have been refined over the years, and technology has improved to make the matching process more reliable.

The immigration bill is proving to be a heavy lift for Schumer and Graham, why they would add a national ID card to the mix defies logic.  More from the WSJ:

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

Clearly the Obama Administration recognize that this is a controversial issue that is incidental to the debate on immigration reform.  Forcing all Americans to carry ID cards will cause may libertarian leaning liberals, who would usually support a reform effort, to have second thoughts about an immigration reform effort.  No matter what you think of comprehensive immigration reform, this issue may prove to be an issue that could take down the bill.

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

I would contest that assertion in the WSJ report and say that the biggest objections come from average everyday citizens who don’t want any further freedoms taken away in the name of stopping illegal immigrants from working in the United States.  Both conservative and liberal groups will line up against this idea, because it is a frontal assault on basic freedom.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”  Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. “We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

The American Civil Liberties Union will line up with conservative groups against this idea.  Groups like Gun Owners of America will rightly see this as a first step toward national gun registration and privacy groups will see this as a first step toward the national ID card being used for more than merely proving to an employer that you are a citizen.  Right and left have been on record in the past as being against the idea that all Americans have to carry identification cards as a condition of citizenship.

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

E-Verify seems like a reasonable alternative to forcing all Americans to carry an ID card, yet business groups and immigrant advocacy groups resist the system’s universal implementation.  E-Verify is a government run Internet based system where an employer to electronically verify the eligibility of an employee.  This seems like a much less invasive way to take care of the problem than a national ID card.

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.

The Brits seem to have it right.  If you are a foreign worker or student, a biometric card makes sense, but the federal government does not have the right to force citizens to carry ID cards.  The federal government derives power from the consent of the governed and any strong arm attempt by the federal government to impose a card on citizens ignores the nature of our constitutional democratic republic.

A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.

Does this sound like the way citizens should be treated in a free nation?  Mandatory fingerprinting or scanning the hands of all Americans is a scary idea.

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

This idea by Senator Schumer would allow the federal government to have your biometric data.  Furthermore, if you have to go to a state Department of Motor Vehicles, then the state you work in will have your fingerprint and other mandatory biometric data.  This is a crazy idea and hopefully it does not get past the idea stage.  The fact that his is a bipartisan idea should strike fear in the hearts of all those who mistrust big government.  Our elected officials in Washington, D.C. seem to more and more out of touch with the average American citizen every day.

From The Hill:

Democrats are set to unveil a new jobs initiative Wednesday that will provide grants to local governments to save or create jobs.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) will join other lawmakers and mayors to announce a $100 billion program to support jobs initiatives in local governments and municipalities.

“Our goal is to retain or create a million jobs,” Miller said during an appearance on CNBC Wednesday morning. “There’s some very serious concern that the small, good news we’re getting right now on the unemployment figures could be wiped out by what’s going to happen in local governments, if they don’t get some assistance.”

The latest jobs bill will be the latest but arguably the largest jobs initiative Democrats will have undertaken over the past few months, during which they’ve moved several bills in order to spur job growth.

The proposal Miller will unveil will be structured on the existing infrastructure of the community development bloc grant program. Mayors or local leaders will submit grant proposals in the program for funds to save or create local jobs, or to create work-training programs for city workers. The $100 billion allotted by the legislation would fund those local jobs programs.

Read the whole thing here. It is increasingly clear that the Democrats can only grasp the economic forces necessary to create public sector jobs. It is, after all, a pretty simple equation: 1. raise money through taxing or borrowing and 2. give it to other politicians. Easy.

But, not sustainable. Private sector employment produces tax revenue (and tangible things of value), while public sector employment simply consumes tax revenue. Eventually, the Democrats simple math falls apart.

We noticed with amused curiosity, reports of an email circulating the digital halls of Congress warning staffers not to visit the Drudge Report for fear of viruses.

Senate Staffers Warned to Stay Clear of Drudge Report

The Senate’s official gatekeeper, said the Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregator, and whitepages.com “are responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate,” according to an e-mail to the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Drudge responded that his millions of other satisfied customers have had no complaints. He also revealed the following statistics:

“The site was seen 149,967 times since March 1st from users at senate.gov and 244,347 times at house.gov. [10,825 visits from the White House, eop.gov]” the Drudge Report wrote.

We made some very rough calculations and arrived at the following analysis:

149,967 Hits to Drudge from senate.gov since March 1 = 16,663 hits per day

244,347 Hits to Drudge from house.gov = 27,150 hits per day

If one spends just 30 seconds scanning headlines, that’s 139 hours per day of scanning headlines in the Senate. That requires 17 Senate staffers putting in a full 8 hour day.

In the House that’s 226 hours spent scanning Drudge, requiring 28 Staffers working 8 hour days.

What’s the total cost of government labor expended reading The Drudge Report in Congress? It depends on who’s scanning the headlines.

The Average Legislative Assistant in The House gets $37,321 Per Year (approximately $18.66 per hour). In The Senate the average is  $48,276 (approximately $24.14 per hour) *these numbers assume a paid 2 week vacation. (Averages available here)

Estimate cost of Senate Drudge surfing:  $3355
Estimate cost of House Drudge surfing: $4217

Estimate total cost of Congressional surfing of The Drudge Report:  $7572 per day

As far as the White House goes, how much it costs depends upon whether a man or woman is scanning the Drudge headlines:

The White House logged 10,825 hits since March 1 which works out to 1203 Hits per day. At 30 second scans, that totals 10 Hours per day.

The average Female White House Staffer earns  $72,956 per year ($36.48 per hour) while the average Male White House Staffer earns  $82,346 per year ($41.17 per hour). *these numbers assume a paid 2 week vacation. (Averages available here)

A female Staffer earns $365 per day scanning Drudge.
A male Staffer earns $412 per day scanning Drudge.

That means if President Obama ordered only women White House Staffers to scan Drudge headlines, he could shave $17,155 off the Executive Branch’s Drudge budget per year. (as of July 2009)

Total cost per day of Legislative and Executive Branches in scanning Drudge Headlines:  $7937

Estimate total cost of Congressional and Executive Branch labor devoted to reading the Drudge Report in the first 9 days of March 2010: $71,433**

At that pace, the Congress and White House will spend roughly $2.8 Million in tax payer dollars to surf The Drudge Report in all of 2010.

**(Conservatively estimated – all numbers double if the reader spends an average of 60 seconds reading Drudge)

Capitol Confidential and Jim Hoft have done an excellent job laying out concerns with the potential “compromise” bill that comes out of Sen. Bob Corker’s negotiations with Chris Dodd.  But when it comes to the destructive provisions that could come out of a Dodd-Corker deal, they may have just scratched the surface.

In addition to the troubling new powers for a new nanny-state consumer agency and possibly the Federal Reserve added to the prospect of billions more in bailouts for reckless financial firm, the bill may also contain the sneaky  “proxy access” power grab for unions, radical environmentalists, and other groups on the Left. This rule, inspired by Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, is contained in Dodd’s “discussion draft” bill from late last year.

As I detailed in BigGovernment last week, “proxy access would federalize and override decades of state law governing the structure of corporations and force publicly-traded companies to put shareholders’ nominees for a board of directors on a company’s proxy ballot along with the firm’s own nominees for those positions.” Many shareholder groups that are pushing this are union pension funds, the radical Tides Foundation, and other progressive groups — from animal rights to anti-Israel — who place their own political agenda items at the expense of ordinary shareholders.

Even if these groups’ nominees do not get elected as directors, they could use the threat of a campaign – which the company and other shareholders would be forced to subsidize – “as a lever to force U.S. companies to bow to the Left’s wish list on every policy from “card check” that would end secret ballot for union elections to cap-and-trade rationing of electricity to a silencing of conservative voices by small group of ideological shareholders who would have veto power over the content of a media company.” Indeed, proxy access could also serve as a type of Fairness Doctrine-rule in which progressive shareholders of media companies attempt to block conservative content, as now-disgraced New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi did when Sinclair Broadcasting was going to air the “Stolen Honor” documentary critical of John Kerry.

As I documented in the article, proxy access has its roots in the “proxy tactic” that community organizer Alinksy outlined in his Rules for Radicals. In that handbook, Alinsky called for progressive groups to utilize shareholder proxies as “the razor to cut through the golden curtain that protected the so-called private sector from facing its public responsibilities.” Alinsky admitted that this tactic “will result in diminished dividends” for middle-class investors, but said that it was necessary to fool the middle class to “build power for change.”

But on the debate on health care and other issues pushed by progressives, the middle-class is showing that it isn’t fooled as easily as Alinsky and his followers though they could be. It remains to be seen, though, whether the proxy tactic will fool Corker, or whether he will be educated on this and other forms of “corporate jujitsu”(Alinksy’s own words) by the legions of savvy middle-class investors and entrepreneurs.

On that note, I am happy to report that leaders of 17 groups representing a broad spectrum of the Center-Right coalition  — from my organization Competitive Enterprise Institute and Americans for Tax Reform to the Christian Coalition of America  — have sent a letter to Dodd, Banking Committee Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Corker expressing objections to proxy access.  Such a rule, the letter states, “would benefit special interests with political agendas at the expense of ordinary shareholders” and “would allow … activists to achieve through the board nomination process what they have been unable to accomplish through the political process.” The letter is printed below and also available here.

And as previous BigGovernment articles have noted, you can share your thoughts with the office of Sen Bob Corker at (202) 224-3324.

proxy access letter 2009 –

Based on the Recovery.gov data, more than two third of the 594,754.3 jobs “created or saved” with the stimulus funds were “created or saved” in the Department of Education (see chart).  Basically, what the administration meant by shovel ready projects was funding for your next door teacher.

Now, let’s recap some of findings and news of the previous weeks.

1. Most jobs are created in the Department of Education

2. In 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private-sector employees (7.4 million) despite there being five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.

3. A third of all union jobs are in Education

4. 33 percent of the education industry is unionized

5.  The union boss, Andy Stern, was appointed to be on the president’s debt commission.

It all makes sense, doesn’t it?

Now, what do you think the chance are that the stimulus funds for education will be made permanent?

(Cool chart and data here)

One of the more extreme proposals floated early in the national health care debate was the idea of taxing soda and other sugary beverages. That trial balloon was almost immediately shot down by the American public, but the Obama administration is attempting to achieve, by subterfuge, soda taxes and a lot of other ways to micromanage our lives in the name of public health—whether or not ObamaCare passes. The mechanism is buried in last year’s $862-billion-and-counting stimulus bill, and works by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars that should be promoting economic growth to instead pay lobbyists to push for higher taxes and nanny-state controls over our lives.

It’s on pages 66 and 67 on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created a $1 billion “Prevention and Wellness Fund.” Of that, $650 million went to Kathleen Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services and has been used to start a new program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” (CPPW).

Where does that giant pot of grant funding under the CPPW go? What it calls “MAPPS Interventions for Communities Putting Prevention to Work.” MAPPS stands for “Media, Access, Point of decision information, Price, and Social support/services.” In other words, strategies for changing our behavior, for social engineering on a large-scale, and, it seems, circumventing the normal democratic process. In a 14-page guidance for grant applicants, the CDC details tactics that grant applicants should include in their plans. It includes “counter-advertising” against targeted products, complete tobacco usage bans, limiting “unhealthy food availability” (the really bad stuff like “whole milk, sugar sweetened beverages, high-fat snacks”), and of course taxes (or in CDC lingo: “changing relative prices of healthy vs. unhealthy items”).

A supplemental document explains in more detail what the targets are, including restricting availability of soft drinks “in homes, schools, work sites, and communities.”

It also recommends local zoning changes to put fast food restaurants out of business, trans-fat bans, salt regulation, and food taxes. They even suggest a TV ban of sorts, recommending: “specific regulations/policies that limit television and other screen media.”

The first $120 million of funds has already been awarded to the states, and local grant recipients are expected to be announced soon. In Wisconsin, for example, we already know that the state department of health submitted a grant to use federal stimulus dollars to hire lobbyists to push for bans on flavored tobacco programs at the local level.

Although the grants under this program are supposedly restricted from funding lobbying activities, there is imply no way these objectives can be accomplished without major legislative changes at the state and local level. Our federal stimulus dollars are being used to hire lobbyists to push for these taxes, bans, restrictions, rules and regulations on what we eat, drink, smoke, and do for recreation. It’s a sweeping micromanagement of our lives that we didn’t vote for, made even worse by the fact that it’s being funded by stimulus money that was supposed to put people other than lobbyists back to work.

This week, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s tourism minister, was nominated to head the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC). Van Schalkwyk is a former apartheid operative who bartered his way into the black majority government by helping it smear its democratic opposition. He is a statist bureaucrat who is one of the most unpopular political figures in the new South Africa. He is just right for the job.

There is no one better to put in charge of the entire political enterprise of climate change as it is collapsing amidst failed negotiations and accusations of fraud. Van Schalkwyk will be sure to hasten the end. He did the same when he took over the rump of South Africa’s National Party, the party of apartheid, and led it to crushing defeat. He gave up and joined the African National Congress (ANC) government in return for his ministry.

That was bad news for South Africans, as Van Schalkwyk encouraged other politicians to defect from the country’s leading opposition parties to join the corrupt and hegemonic  ANC. (An angry public began referring to those who crossed the floor for political favors as “crosstitutes.”) But it is good news for critics of the UN climate change bureaucracy, who now have a target who personifies everything there is to dislike about the system.

The worldwide “consensus” on climate change is unraveling amidst mounting evidence that the UN and senior scientists manipulated the data to suit their predictions of rapid warming and their prescriptions for drastic intervention in the global economy. It is, of course, true that carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” that helps warm the earth; it is true that we have pumped more of it into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.

It is also true that there is evidence of increasing average global surface temperatures over the same time period, and reason to believe that trend could continue over the next century. But it is also true that there are other factors affecting global climate, including some that reduce temperatures. And it is also true that our most sophisticated computer models cannot predict how warmer temperatures will affect our climate in the future.

That wasn’t good enough for those eager to create a sense of alarm. They projected worst-case scenarios and tried to convince the world that the potential costs of future warming far outweighed the costs of shutting down whole industries. They never explained whether climate change could actually be reversed; they did not need to, as long as they could scare people enough to avoid having to answer tough questions.

Now, after more than a decade of temperature stagnation that the models failed to predict, and the publication of e-mails suggesting that leading scientists conspired to silence skeptical colleagues, the questions are impossible to avoid. Government-led efforts to control emissions, such as cap-and-trade, “green jobs,” and “weatherizing” homes have also been exposed as rent-seeking cronyism rather than sound policy.

Enter Van Schalkwyk. He was given the ministry of environmental affairs and tourism in 2004 despite having no prior background or interest in environmental science. He has retained his cabinet position and made a name for himself in the international climate change community through his talent as a deal-broker and his shrewd sense of political opportunity. The occult world of climate change negotiations will suit his skills perfectly.

Though ridiculed as a political leader, Van Schalkwyk is among his country’s most competent bureaucrats. Yet even he cannot save the UN’s climate change framework–and he may not care. He may simply follow the example of fellow South African Richard Goldstone, who was appointed to the apartheid bench and later re-cast himself as a human rights icon, leapfrogging up the UN bureaucracy from one failure to the next.

Those who still place great store in the UN’s climate change efforts are deeply worried about Van Schalkwyk’s appointment. “The UNFCC post must be headed by someone of integrity, and that’s not a characteristic associated with Van Schalkwyk, thanks to his chequered career as an apartheid student spy and a man who sold out his political party for a junior cabinet seat,” said Patrick Bond of South Africa’s Centre for Civil Society.

The truth is that no scientist or policymaker of integrity would want the job. The science is a mess, and the policy disagreements between developing and developed countries are intractable. President Barack Obama could not solve the UN’s climate change troubles, and neither will Marthunus van Schalkwyk. But Van Schalkwyk will be content to sit atop the rubble as the edifice crumbles. He has done it before–and done it well.

From Daniel Bice, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee police officers sat on their hands for months last year instead of investigating possible voter fraud cases from the 2008 general election.

It’s an incredible claim, but it’s coming from a credible source:

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the Milwaukee County prosecutor responsible for overseeing campaign and election issues.

“Honestly, the Milwaukee Police Department largely ignored your double voter (and other) referrals received in January 2009 for the first six months of 2009,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail to a city elections official on Jan. 26.

Speaking with unguarded candor, the veteran prosecutor said in his note that MPD’s tardy response had a major impact. The cases involve voters who may have cast more than one ballot, felons who may have voted illegally and other cases of possible election fraud.

“Sadly, several probable cases of genuine voter fraud were harmed by that delay,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail obtained through an open records request.

The assistant district attorney was even more pessimistic about the investigation of more than 500 individuals who registered to vote on election day but whose addresses could not be confirmed later by postcard.

“I do not expect them to ever get to the Address Cards,” he said of the Milwaukee cops.

On Friday, Landgraf declined to provide specifics, referring questions to his boss, District Attorney John Chisholm.

Interestingly, Chisholm wouldn’t elaborate on his assistant’s concerns.

“I’ll let the e-mail speak for itself,” he said while praising Landgraf’s experience and knowledge.

Read the whole thing here. Keep in mind, the allegations in this case involve not just voter registration fraud, but actual voting fraud. Actual fraudulent ballots cast in the 2008 elections.

Barack Obama’s money train has steamrolled uncontrollably across the country, compiling record-breaking budgets, deficits, and debt along its path. Now, the train is running out of fuel, and the nation’s retirement money may find its way on board, to keep the train on the tracks.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments began a public discussion on the aim to convert 401(k) saving plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) into annuities and other forms of guaranteed income streams. Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry stated, “the question is how to encourage it, and whether the government can and should be helpful in that regard.” The supposition that the government is looking to be helpful with this proposal should automatically cause alarm.

The rationale for what would ultimately serve as a government takeover of the nation’s private pension system is of the same mold as the position Obama and Congressional Democrats have staked throughout the debate on health-care reform; “trust us, we know better than you”. Their assertion is that a weakened economy and a volatile stock market call for them to protect you and your interests, in this case your retirement money.

Last month, Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara editorialized on the Investor’s Business Daily website:

“The idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years. They will tell you that you are “investing” your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.”

If such a scheme sounds familiar to you, that’s because it is—cue Amos Lee’s I’ve Seen It All Before.

When Obama-mania was sweeping the world, and the then-Senator from Illinois was weeks away from making history, Argentina was searching for a solution to keep its own runaway train on the tracks—in hopes of improving its ability to service the nation’s debt and prevent another national default. Socialist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s solution came in the form of the seizure of the $30 billion Argentines had amassed in their private pension funds and immediate transfer of the money into the nation’s social security system. Unsurprisingly, her administration defended the nationalization of the system as a means to guarantee pensions during a time of global economic uncertainty, and attacked the private system’s administrators who criticized the government’s intervention.

In February, Obama unveiled his budget for fiscal year 2011 which includes a proposal to require small businesses to establish automatic IRAs for employees. With his cronies from the financial services industry by his side, the measure is being marketed as a means to create a nation of savers. But this proposal wasn’t conjured up with your interests at heart. In actuality, the president is licking his lips, with his eyes set on sweetening an already massive lottery jackpot for the government.

As of the third quarter of 2009, Americans held a combined $8 trillion in 401(k) plans and IRAs, according to the most recent retirement market report from the Washington D.C.-based Investment Company Institute. Furthermore, his proposal for health-care reform calls for an extension of the 2.9% Medicare tax to unearned income, which means those annuities and other forms of guaranteed income streams you would receive in exchange for relinquishing the freedom you currently possess over your retirement funds, would be subject to taxation. The American people consistently lose when the government desires to be helpful.

The presidency of Barack Obama is nearly 14 months old, and the campaign-feel good rhetoric waxed about the Change We Need in Washington has materialized into the concoction of a young president channeling his inner-Daley to transform the nation’s capital into Chicago on the Potomac. Now, the citizenry of this nation should prepare for him to channel his inner-Kirchner to provide a taste of Argentine politics.

Unfortunately, it won’t taste as good as the steak.

Knowing that federal and state money doesn’t come from Obama’s stash and does come from our own paychecks and our friend’s and neighbor’s paychecks, I found the 2010 US Census form letter puzzling. Yes, I know that the census is required (but not all forms are completed) and helps allocate federal funds, but this was much more in-your-face and clearly baits the reader with federal funds that they “need” as quoted:

Dear Resident:

About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it in promptly. Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share. Thank you in advance for your help.

Sincerely, Robert M. Groves
Director, U.S. Census Bureau

Go to for help completing your 2010 Census form when it arrives. [Note: this sentence is repeated in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian]

On the web it continues to tell about the 2010 census; this section does not appear on the actual form letter:

ABOUT THE 2010 CENSUS
The 2010 Census is a count of everyone living in the United States and is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Census data are used to apportion congressional seats to states, to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds to tribal, state and local governments each year and to make decisions about what community services to provide. The 2010 Census form will be one of the shortest in U.S. history, consisting of 10 questions, taking about 10 minutes to complete. Strict confidentiality laws protect the respondents and the information they provide.

According to the Constitution the census is to be taken every ten years to count the population to accurately determine how to apportion Congressional Representatives among the states. The census is also used to allocate federal funding to the states. Now, the White House oversees the census and Congress enacts, via law, the questions the 2010 will ask.

In addition, the census process has had to endure a White House power grab making Americans very skeptical of the WH’s true intentions. Moreover, there’s is some inherent distrust of how the census is designed and the information it may yield that could allow for a permanent Democrat-controlled government:

The civil rights community won an important battle today in the fight for a fair and accurate 2010 census that counts every person in the United States as required by the U.S. Constitution.

By voting today for cloture on the Commerce-State-Justice Appropriations bill, the Senate effectively ended debate on the divisive Vitter-Bennett amendment. The amendment, which would have forced the Census Bureau to add questions on citizenship and immigration status to the census form less than six months before the count, is clearly unconstitutional. Under the 14th amendment to the Constitution, the apportionment of members of the House of Representatives is based on a full count of persons – not just citizens – in each state. emphasis mine

Unconstitutional? Not sure about that if the people they are referring to are in this country illegally. But, because the citizenship question is not on the form, illegal residents will be more inclined to fill out the form.

Furthermore, the questions asked are quite intrusive and appear unconstitutional.

Finally, this form letter has all the characteristics of Obama’s “fair share” and ”spread the wealth around” sentiment because, as we clearly know now, he will return the wealth to its rightful owner–and it’s not the ones who earned it–because that wouldn’t be fair.  And it’s disturbing that other people’s money is used as the bait to motivate people to fill out the census form.

The controversy surrounding the accusations and resignation of Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) is a bit bizarre.  When he lashed out at the administration, and particularly chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, it was viewed as a peek beneath the veil of Washington inside baseball.

It’s a veil few have the stomach to look beneath.  Regardless, Massa’s comments were seized upon as proof of what has been said all along about the administrations tactics to do anything necessary to pass ObamaCare.

Is Massa telling the truth?  I don’t know.  It seems plausible.  It certainly seems to fit the matrix of what the administration has done in the past to twist arms and pressure members of Congress to pass its bill.

But I do know Massa took heat last summer when his meeting with a group of liberal bloggers was recorded and put on YouTube.

Massa: So what happens at my town hall meetings, frankly, is important, because I’m in one of the most right-wing, Republican districts in the country.  And I’m not asking you guys to go back to wherever and send people to me, this is a generic statement about ‘what can I do?’ Well, that’s one thing we can do.

Blogger: So if we got your meetings to 60/40 and there was single payer in a bill, you’d vote for it?

Massa: Oh absolutely, I’d vote for single payer.

Blogger: If it was 60/40 sentiment in the room…

Massa: Listen, I tell every audience I’m in favor of single payer…

Blogger: So it there was still 80/20 in the room…

Massa: If there was a single payer bill?

Blogger: If there was a single payer bill…

Massa: I will vote for the single payer bill.

Now, I’m no prosecutor, but this exchange certainly does not seem to jive with what Massa has said in recent days.  Just Monday, he said:

The entire nation has said let’s re-write the health care bill, let’s find what we can agree upon. No, no, no, no. We’re going to ram this down the throats of the American people and anyone who stands in the way of doing that is going to be smeared, and they are going to be kicked out of Congress.

But in that same exchange with the bloggers, Massa also said:

I will vote adamantly against the interest of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to help them. … I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.

So, acting as an amateur prosecutor, I ask Rep. Massa, were you telling the truth then or are you telling the truth now?  I’d like to believe you – I want to believe you – and your accusations against the Obama administration but something just doesn’t smell right.

It appears that the Bailout Bob Corker continues to ignore the pleas of his conservative allies and constituents and is close to reaching a deal on establishing a new consumer regulatory bureaucracy that in the words of Sen. Dodd, will be like one we have not seen before. Corker has told CNBC that the last stick point is not the principle of new regulation — he has capitulated on that point — but “administrative issues.”

The legislation includes Corker’s pet project, a “strong resolution mechanism for unwinding troubled companies.” News to Corker: For over 200 years, America had such a mechanism — it was called bankruptcy. But “unwinding” troubled companies is a code word for BAILOUT. The Federal Government, via the Federal Reserve, would be empowered to break-up, subsidized and bailout companies. As House conservatives warned during the House debate, enactment of the bill would establish bailouts as the official policy of the United States for decades to come. That’s why the House bill authorizes $4 trillion for the Federal Reserve.

Adding insult to injury, Reuters also reports that the Corker “reform” bill does not address the main culprit in the financial crisis — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It does not address the issues associated with Community Lending that encouraged banks to lend to people who could never pay back their loans. It does not address ACORNS. All it does it layer more Washington bureaucracy on top of existing Washington Bureaucracy. Nice work, Bob.

The bill was flatlined and now Corker has revived it. His media fawning work will cost taxpayers for decades to come. It appears that Corker is officially off the conservative reservation.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced Monday.

Two of those charged – Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine – worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies) registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen news release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

ACORN could not be reached for comment Monday.

Also charged were a couple – Herbert Gunka, 60, and Suzanne Gunka, 54, both of Milwaukee – for supposedly double voting in November 2008, once absentee and once at the polls.

Michael Henderson, 40, was charged with two felony counts of being a felon who cast a ballot even though he was still on probation. The Milwaukee man was convicted in 2005 in Rock County with two felonies for bail jumping and one disorderly conduct misdemeanor.

He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

A felony for voter fraud carries a maximum penalty of up to 3 1/2 years behind bars and a $10,000 fine. All five individuals are scheduled to appear in court on April 20.

The charges were brought as part of the Milwaukee Election Fraud Task Force.

Van Hollen’s announcement comes the same day that the Journal Sentinel disclosed that a Milwaukee County prosecutor was accusing Milwaukee police of failing to investigate these cases for the first half of last year.

Read the whole article here.

“A Good Ricochet Point“

The Ricochet parade of governors continues as we are joined this week by Mississippi Governor (and Chairman of the Republican Governors Association) Haley Barbour as well as by John Hinderaker of the Powerline Blog, sitting in for Mark Steyn. We cover health care, Republican prospects for the fall, why governors matter, and if our guest may be thinking of running for a certain higher office.  We also reveal why Morgan Freeman chooses to live where he does and why Rob Long lives deep behind enemy lines. Questions or comments? Contact us at podcast@ricochet.com or become a fan on our FaceBook page.

As a gloomy, snowy February came to a close in the nation’s capital, so did the most recent circus attraction on Capitol Hill.  Several days of congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls didn’t exactly deliver many more facts for Americans but they did leave behind a plethora of speculation and opinion to feast upon.  While the saga now known as GasPedalGate flailed around quietly for several years, it’s suddenly taken center stage and today plays out like a bad made-for-TV-movie, complete with its villain, its victims, and most telling, a very long list of opportunists.

To see the full picture, the story begins in California with the history of General Motors and the United Auto Workers in the 1980’s, and GM’s rescue by Toyota through a little venture called NUMMI.  Today, in 2010, the NUMMI chapter nears its close.  But before it does, the Fremont, California plant and its rank and file workers will serve as unwilling pawns in what could turn out to be an orchestrated blueprint for incapacitating the strongest competitor to Government Motors and one of the most significant threats to labor unions here and around the globe.

Today’s rendition has been so manipulated and so propagandized, the facts have all but been removed from the storyline.  The bread crumb trail of truth has been trampled upon and so broadly scattered about, the trail is almost beyond the point of recognition.

The story that emerges is the collusion of forces in Big Labor, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Litigators and Big Progressive Philanthropy.  And no, I’m not talking Breitbart sites.

The History of NUMMI

When a bankrupt and bailed out General Motors officially announced in June 2009 that it would be pulling out of its joint venture with Toyota, it marked the end of another era.

That era started in 1982 when automakers in California were flailing – GM especially was experiencing dismal losses as it struggled to keep production costs down and suffered through bitter labor disputes. Auto workers repeatedly blamed a “Japanese invasion” for their woes. Competing foreign automakers from across the shores of California had long been practicing the waste-reducing production method of lean manufacturing, a concept unfamiliar to California’s automakers prior to then.  At the heart of lean is a focus on value and the long-term, and on the use of learned information to make decisions, rather than a reliance upon “the way it’s always been done”.  The end result is a streamlined, efficient method of production that is flexible to changing business needs.

In contrast, lean manufacturing and the traditional union model are inherently in conflict with one another – one relies upon a leaner, “work smarter not harder” workforce, while the other breeds an environment of an inflexible, larger workforce – more workers means more union members, which are needed to finance underfunded pensions. During a crucial period in history when manufacturing was modernizing, the UAW drove down profits by bloating salaries and benefits while vehemently opposing change. Like so many others, GM had become complacent.

It was a dangerous mindset.  California’s car industry, which had experienced virtually zero competition for decades, was now seeing its first competitors from overseas.  To survive, it was in need of a rebirth.  But GM and the UAW simply weren’t equipped to competitively deliver that transformation.  And in the wake of dismal profits and hundreds of UAW grievance filings, GM closed its Fremont, CA plant in 1982, placing over 2,000 workers on indefinite furlough.

During that time, it was Toyota that came to the table with a deal to reopen that plant and hire back most of the former GM workers.  In 1984, GM and Toyota signed into a joint venture agreement and created  New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), the first such automotive partnership of its kind ever in the US, which for the next 25 years would go on to enjoy successes and consistently win awards year after year.

While the NUMMI venture in Fremont was hailed by many in the business arena at the time, the deal sparked an outcry from labor leaders who accused the foreign automakers of stealing American jobs. In the end though, the venture proved to be beneficial to thousands of workers, including previously laid off GM workers and UAW members, who passed through the NUMMI plant in its 25 year history as employees, many of whom are still there today.

But all that changed in June 2009, when GM pulled out of the venture and ended its 25 year marriage to Toyota, leaving NUMMI behind and investing its 50% stake instead in “the New GM”. The UAW itself retains a 17.5% stake in GM through the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust. The union was relatively silent about the break-up for two months, until Toyota announced in August that it would close the NUMMI plant altogether and focus on its six other US production facilities. Even then, most of the opposition stayed relatively local to NUMMI’s home state of California.

Until other interests intervened.

Enter Big Labor Opportunists

United Auto Workers

The NUMMI plant is scheduled to close on March 31^st. For months, many NUMMI workers have been angry with UAW leadership, who have refused to focus on the workers’ severance negotiations. Historically, some workers themselves have blamed part of GM’s failures – and now Toyota’s – on misguided union leadership. Those tensions only increased when the UAW retirees fund gained a 17.5% share in GM stock as part of the joint bankruptcy negotiations facilitated by the Obama administration last year. It created a conflict of interest within rank and file NUMMI workers. While UAW is supposed to represent the interests of the NUMMI workers, it’s hostage to an inherent need to protect GM. This essentially leaves NUMMI workers, who pay dues each month, without any effective union representation. It would appear the UAW leadership has been focused on their own greed and self interest, rather than on serving the needs and desires of the rank and file NUMMI workers. As you’ll hear from workers in the video that follows:

• UAW plans to take up to a 3% cut of the NUMMI workers’ severance packages for the International union
• UAW leadership is demanding a $72 million contribution to the union’s supplemental health retirement program, which Toyota has resisted. NUMMI workers say this isn’t even a benefit for them – it benefits only the international UAW
• While the UAW owns 17.5% of GM, NUMMI workers do not. This is a conflict of interest that some NUMMI workers believe violates their charter and they demand officials look at both ledgers
• UAW leadership is violating the union’s constitution by not conducting regular membership meetings in the prescribed manner and not allowing motions to be made at other meetings
• Meanwhile, UAW leaders have been taking lavish trips to places like Palm Springs and not spending time focusing on negotiating settlement packages for NUMMI workers

For months, UAW leaders have persisted in boycotting local Toyota dealers, telling consumers not to buy Toyota vehicles. They’ve also traveled across the country, leafleting crowds and petitioning people at auto shows to keep the NUMMI plant open to save 4,500 jobs.

Meanwhile, NUMMI workers back in California have called their union leadership’s efforts misguided and counter-productive. They’ve been pleading with the leadership to stop focusing on keeping the plant open and instead to tend their severance negotiations. Most recently, Toyota has pledged $250 million in bonuses to go to the departing NUMMI workers, but that offer is dependent upon the UAW; in prior offers, the UAW is said to have represented only the needs of its leadership and not the workers of NUMMI. Workers have tried repeatedly to have their voices heard in the media; the majority of outlets have simply repeated the international UAW’s rendition of the story, which is in stark contrast to the sentiments of 80% of NUMMI workers.

You first met them in my January 28^th post, “Union Boss to Members: Shut the F*%k Up, You Motherf*%kers!“ These are real people, rank and file workers. Let me introduce you to some of them through this video from Labor Video Project, as NUMMI workers explain in their own words their internal struggles with a union leadership that’s lost its way.

With only 20 days left before the plant closing, workers wait it out in flux without any inkling of their severance, while their local leadership, persists with their lobbying to keep the plant open. A state delegation (which includes SEIU/Workers United ally, actor Danny Glover) will soon travel to Japan to demand the plant stay open.

This past weekend at their latest meeting, president of UAW local 2244 Sergio Santos blindly promised workers that the NUMMI plant will stay open on April 1^st.

Workers know this isn’t the case – no inventory is on hand, no supplies, no parts, no vendors…no pipeline exists for production. All the workers have wanted – for nearly a year now – is for their leadership to negotiate their severance and help make their transition easier. Their leadership obviously has its own agenda – one that extends far beyond the scope of NUMMI.

The Takedown Timeline

As the NUMMI closing played itself out, a series of interestingly timed events was occurring in sequence.

June 2009: GM Publicly Abandons NUMMI, Divorces Toyota

GM publicly announces it has decided to pull out of its joint venture with Toyota and forgoes NUMMI, leaving it behind to Toyota so that it can focus instead on “the New GM”.

June 26, 2009:  Justice for Toyota Janitors is Born

A DNS registration for http://www.justicefortoyotajanitors.org is created.  The registration comes from the Reaching Higher Coalition, which consists primarily of Reverends from the Baptist Ministers Conference (a LOT of them), SEIU, and a variety of progressive Consumer Organizations.

August 2009:  Toyota decides it will close NUMMI

Toyota decides to close the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA.  The closing will be scheduled for March 31, 2010.  Toyota indicates it will offer severance settlements to NUMMI workers and assist in transition arrangements over the next 7 months, pending negotiation and approval from the UAW.  While news of the announcement flurried about in June and July, the formal notifications were made in early August. The public press release then announced the news on 8/28.

August 7 – 28, 2009:  SEIU and Justice for Janitors Protest Toyota

An August 7th protest of over 500 people occurred in CA as they marched in protest of Toyota – angry that a contractor of Toyota, GCA Services, has embarked upon a “massive” layoff of 30 people.  They demand that Toyota demand that its contractor hire back the workers.  (a WTF moment)

Additional protests are also held over these several weeks to protest Janitorial cuts, and of course to rally to Save NUMMI workers’ jobs.  (Though I would guess there weren’t actually many NUMMI workers in their presence).

In addition to the UAW, the Change to Win unions, like SEIU, are also workers at NUMMI:

August 2009: The fatal Santee CA crash

A Lexus (Toyota product) on loan from a dealership crashes outside of Santee, CA, killing a California Highway Patrol Officer, his wife and two children.  Accident investigators later determine the pedal became entrapped beneath a mismatched floor mat in the vehicle, causing sudden unintended acceleration.  (Contracted safety consultants trying to bolster litigators’ cases are trying to force Toyota into prematurely stating that it is an electrical or other problem).

September 3, 2009: SEIU and  Justice for Toyota Janitors Picket Toyota Dealers

Like the UAW and Teamsters will do shortly after them, the SEIU and friends start picketing at Toyota dealerships, demanding that Americans stop buying Toyota cars unless the company keeps their members’ jobs.  They picket again on September 23rd and other dates as well.

September 3, 2009: McCune Wright and LiUNA, a Change to Win Union, Homebuilders Lawsuit

The law firm McCuneWright, LLP filed multiple class action lawsuits against eight national home builders on behalf of homeowners seeking the return of their investment from the builders. Those named in the suit happened to be some of the very companies that Change to Win unions – including LiUNA, SEIU, and the Teamsters – have been campaigning against for hiring non-union workers and resisting Project Labor Agreements.

The law firm’s press release stated that the allegations in the lawsuit are based in part on “important research done by LiUNA.” (download report)

Throughout 2009, LiUNA, in concert with its parent Change to Win and partnering AFL-CIO labor unions, had launched a barrage of campaigns and lawsuits against the numerous construction companies and developers being sued, alleging everything from wage fraud, to pension fund shareholder abuse, to unfair financing practices.

It was a familiar pattern that preceded Toyota, but it didn’t seem to relate in any way directly to the Toyota saga at first. But then,

November 5, 2009: McCune Wright and Safety Research & Strategies

The same law firm filed another class action lawsuit – this one against Toyota, charging that Sudden Unintended Acceleration is responsible for recent Toyota accidents. Much like LiUNA provided the reports used in the home builders suit, this lawsuit was also aided by a report from an outside organization, in this instance, Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies.

We know now that Kane later admitted that the report was funded by the law firms suing Toyota, something that wasn’t revealed until last month’s Congressional hearings.

Sean Kane is a familiar name in this game. During a period in time when the United Steel Workers were in labor disputes with Bridgestone/Firestone, Kane teamed up in 1996 with a Texas litigation firm in a tire defect lawsuit against the company. Kane’s former consulting firm, Strategic Safety, had identified 30 cases of tire failure in its report for the law firm. But Kane and the lawyers for whom he was working had decided at that time not to submit any complaint forms regarding the issues to the NHTSA. Kane took a lot of heat for that action, especially since he was more concerned about protecting the lawyers’ monetary awards than protecting lives from known safety hazards.

“Everyone was leery of the agency getting involved with this, because a number of plaintiff lawyers have been burned when an investigation has been opened and closed without finding a defect,” Kane explained.

Firestone was reluctant to issue a recall during a period of litigation, lest it become a direct admission of guilt. But the Steelworkers would see to it that the recall, and plenty more, would occur.

More on Firestone in the next section… The reference is important, because it is a mirror to what we will see today with the Toyota case.

November and December of 2009:  Coordination of a  Skunk Team?

As the UAW continues to conduct pickets at Toyota dealerships – which are not in any way connected with Toyota, other than the fact that they carry Toyota vehicles – something apparently occurred behind the scenes to bring together what would become an apparent Skunk Team, as leaders and organizers from the Teamsters and SEIU began coordinating efforts…along with some old safety and environmental advocacy group friends.

During this period, organizing also begins with Friends of the Earth (which used to be headed by Andy Stern’s ex-wife Jane Perkins).  FOE’s outgoing president Brent Blackwelder has been out protesting with the Teamsters and UAW, while Board Director Clarence Ditlow has been testifying to Congress regarding Toyota as one of the safety experts.

January 6, 2010:  Social Media Attack Sites Are Created

While NUMMI workers were back in California trying to stop their leaders from launching counter-productive attacks, their leaders were out there…well…launching counter-productive attacks. UAW had mid level leaders initiate online social media sites.

Michele Martin, Assistant Major, International UAW sets up a Facebook page under the handle “Save_NUMMI”. Of course, by all accounts, Ms. Martin does not work at NUMMI, nor do NUMMI workers seem to know her.  Another participant is Brad Markell, Servicing Rep, International UAW based in Michigan. (Markell was coincidentally also a contributor to the Apollo Green Alliance Manufacturing Action Plan). Not exactly members in close proximity to NUMMI in Fremont, CA. And as a side note, judging from their salaries, they don’t seem in such dire monetary need to justify a 3% cut of NUMMI workers’ severance packages.

January 12, 2010:  Tweeting to Organizers

The corporate campaign continues with a Tweet, under the same handle.

January 22, 2010:  The Big Tweet, Exploiting Victims

And then, the hard core Toyota slam days later:

January 28, 2010:  The Big Protest -Teamsters, UAW, SEIU/Jobs With Justice, Friends of the Earth, and Sean Kane

Then came the well-publicized protest outside the Embassy of Japan in Washington DC to call on the Japanese government “to hold Toyota accountable for waging an attack on thousands of good-paying jobs in the United States.“ The protest was the joint effort of a few familiar labor unions and advocacy groups:

• the United Auto Workers
• the Teamsters (member of the Change to Win coalition)
• Jobs With Justice (a SEIU-founded action group)
• Friends of the Earth
• Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies

As Sean Kane and labor union leaders were all out there protesting together with their partner advocacy groups, and delivering their threat letter to a foreign Prime Minister, there’s been no mention that some of these very players, most notably Mr. Kane, are working with the law firm involved in the litigation against Toyota as well as some of its other class action lawsuits.

Labor leaders have pension funds invested in GM, and Toyota, its competitor, threatens that security. Labor has also wanted to eliminate this foreign competitor for decades. Currently they fight with Toyota over job cuts and unionization. Anti-corporation groups have been battling Toyota for years over what they say are human rights violations in places such as the Philippines and Burma/Myanmar. Environmental groups have been attacking Toyota because of its opposition to increased CAFÉ standards in CA, new global warming regulation, and Cap & Trade legislation. Safety advocates have fought to nationalize the auto industry for decades.

So, when the departure of GM from its NUMMI joint venture with Toyota prompted the closure announcement of NUMMI, labor leaders went to work on a plan of attack. And when a real crisis – a real tragedy – presented itself as part of the recall issue, it became fuel for the fodder. This collective of union leaders apparently partnered up with its allies to force Toyota into a submissive state until it could all but control it themselves.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to them. In summarizing a February 12, 2010 joint meeting of union leaders, the The Oakland Tribune wrote,

“We will take this fight to every Toyota dealership in California,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said via a videoconference link. “Our message is that Toyota kills American jobs. This comes at a time when Toyota can ill afford another black eye.”

“If they close the NUMMI plant, we union people will not buy another Toyota,” said Bob King, UAW vice president.

“You are going to see an attack on Toyota that is unprecedented,” said Rome Aloise, a top Teamsters official.

I don’t know that it would be an unprecedented attack. Because just like the Firestone campaigns, many of us have seen the pattern before. We’ve just got a sleeping media these days that doesn’t notice such patterns or question any of our labor leaders or advocates.

Up On Capitol Hill

The latest Save NUMMI campaigns and Toyota protests peaked right around the time of the Congressional hearings on Capitol Hill.  To start were the all the media reports,  frenzied about the internal documents that “expose” Toyota’s lobbying in DC, as if automakers aren’t expected to lobby. This Politico article, “Toyota goes into lobbying overdrive” reports,

“Toyota’s tentacles are spread far and wide on Capitol Hill. Senate records show Toyota-related entities spent $4.1 million on lobbying last year — and $35.2 million during the past decade. According to lobbying records, in the last three months of 2009, $1.77 million was spent to sway Congress on a wide range of issues, including financial services, fuel standards, card check, patent reform, hazardous materials transportation rules and foreign taxation policy.”

However, there are two sides to this lobbying picture. It’s certainly no secret that General Motors, even in the face of bankruptcy and a federal bailout, spent more than twice as much as Toyota in comparison- $8.7 million – on lobbying last year alone. Also compare that with the related lobbying expenses of one of Capitol Hill’s largest and probably most overlooked special interest groups – Big Labor. Auto industry related unions, as well as their supporting solidarity unions, are no friends of Toyota, as they’ve been pounding the automaker for years over its opposition to legislation like Card Check and Cap & Trade, and for what labor leaders proclaim to be union busting outsourcing tactics. Add up some of those dollars just from 2009 and you’re looking at over $26 million. Even better, add labor and GM together, since they combine efforts and work as a team for the most part. Then compare it with what Toyota’s up against. Not exactly chump change.

Just imagine if these lobbying totals had included all of the environmental philanthropic organizations, the ambulance chasing profession, and all of those labor union related 527 groups and non-profits spending millions on “safety advocacy”. It would leave most wondering if Toyota’s even got the political chops to compete long-term in this racket anyway.

This brings about perhaps the most egregious element of the story. The hearings indulged the testimony of “experts” against Toyota who each had very obvious biased agendas, and an apparent history of working together – along with the unions – to force a recall or two. It’s shameful that Congress would even allow, let alone rely upon, the testimony of several of such panelists.

Testimony on auto safety was provided by Clarence Ditlow , Joan Claybrook and Sean Kane. All have a long history of using their advocacy groups to advance their progressive political agendas. The sentiment of testimony specifically from Ditlow and Claybrook was so focused on the extremes in auto safety concerns and turned to discussion of creating more bureaucracy, while the reality of today’s statistics simply don’t support those recommendations. A great post over at thetruthaboutcars.com summed it up perfectly:

“As stuck in the past as they are, asking Claybrook and Ditlow for recommendations in the wake of the Toyota recalls was a bit like asking a Soviet central planner for advice in managing the government’s stake in GM: the problem isn’t that they aren’t intelligent, well-meaning people, it’s that their battles have already been waged, and the world has moved on. Driving cars will continue to be the most dangerous activity any of us engage in on a regular basis, and it’s time to stop pretending that this reality can be reduced to something as simple as corporate greed.“

In fact, it’s their biased testimony that draws attention to the fact that their efforts have been so closely co-mingled with the peripheral aspects of not only this Toyota case, but many similar cases that came before it – like the Firestone recalls. Their other activism efforts frequently pair them with many of the usual “social justice” crusaders.

Clarence Ditlow, Executive Director, Center for Auto Safety

Champion behind lemon laws, federal speed limits, laws against distracted cell phone driving; has lobbied for years to nationalize the auto industry and remove it from the free market system. Mr. Ditlow has a long-standing reputation in working with trial lawyers to go after toxic toys, defective products, auto defects and more. It’s safe to say he’s a fan of government regulation. While some of his goals may have been well-intended, and some even sensible, many of his efforts have often been proven to be over-zealous, and in some cases slanderous. A detailed history of Ditlow’s more dangerous advocacy can be read here. Ditlow is also associated with:

• Friends of the Earth (Ditlow is a Director; Brent Blackwalder is outgoing President)Consumers Union, Publisher of Consumer Reports (Board Member)
• And you thought Consumer Reports was non-partisan? Check out some of their sections like their Prescription for Change activism pages on health care reform, and their Activist Summit event.

Joan Claybrook, Outgoing President, Public Citizen; former NHTSA head

While Joan has had a long history with Public Citizen, and an equally long list of accomplishments, her organization is the furthest thing from non-partisan. They lobby regularly with unions like SEIU, such as in their “Bust Up Big Banks” protest, and to push for a Single Payer health system, and they work hand in hand with trial lawyers to push lawsuits against corporations. The group frequently lobbies for increased government intervention and regulation as a way to control corporations and international trade. Last October, Public Citizen sued Texas to force the state to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions, citing the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in which CO2 was classified as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.

David Gilbert, Automotive Professor, Southern Illinois University

Mr. Gilbert testified before Congress about Electronic Throttle Control, offering his view that the Electronic Control Module (ECM) in Toyota’s vehicles does not sufficiently identify all types of sensor and/or circuit malfunctions that could potentially occur. Upon being questioned, Gilbert also admitted that he was paid by Sean Kean, Safety research & Strategies, for his research and demonstration. Mr. Gilbert’s video demonstration of sudden acceleration for Brian Ross of ABC News has now been viewed by thousands. Meanwhile, it was evaluated and challenged by Exponent, a firm with a wide array of engineering capabilities that works with clients like NASA and the US Department of Defense. I expect that much more criticism is on its way.

As an aside, Edmunds.com reminds the public that the unintended acceleration problem occurs with nearly all models of cars and is an issue that’s festered for more than 20 years, when the media first preyed on Audi about the subject. With that in mind, they’ve issued their own challenge to find real answers:
Edmunds.com Announces Million Dollar Prize for Unintended Acceleration Research

Sean Kane, Founder, Safety Research & Strategies

Mr. Kane produced the report that prompted these hearings, and had acknowledged that his services have been paid for by lawyers currently representing the plaintiffs in litigation against Toyota. Kane’s research draws no concrete conclusions as to the cause of Toyota’s sudden acceleration problem, only speculation. The report lists several potential causes:

• Pedal Entrapment
• Pedal Misapplication
• Electromagnetic Interference
• Electronic Problems
• Cracked Throttle Body Shafts

Given that most of these are causes that are already considered and documented in NHTSA complaints for all car models for more than 20 years, the information is hardly as damning as media and legal professionals have made it out to be. However, a keen eye might recognize language in the report that is written around the intent of litigation:

“If the all-weather floor mat is to blame, and pedal entrapment occurs with any frequency, then this is a design problem. And in applying the most recent recall remedies, Toyota has acknowledged this by making significant floor arrangement changes, including shortening the pedal length to allow for more space between the pedal and the floor, removal of padding materials below the floor carpet, and re-designing the floor mats.”

The bolded fragment of the sentence indicates the precursor to establishing acknowledgement of culpability. Kane’s report is filled with such language. It’s also tactically similar to other work he’s produced for product liability law firms, most notably his research for litigators on the Ford Explorer/Firestone tires issue in the late 1990’s – early 2000’s in preparation for litigation against Bridgestone/Firestone. In responding to reporters’ questions about the 2000 recall’s impact on his clients’ litigation, he told the LA Times,

“Any time a manufacturer initiates a recall, it becomes an admission of liability,” said Sean Kane, president of Strategic Safety, a Virginia organization that was one of the first to call upon Firestone to recall the tires. He predicted that Firestone would likely attempt to settle the cases, rather than fight the claims and risk huge jury verdicts.

In the instance of Firestone, there was no recall in place yet at the start of the litigation process. In Kane’s report, there were instances of SUV rollovers, customer complaints of separating tires in specific high-heat/humidity states, and there were speculative causes for the problems, but there was nothing concrete upon which a lawsuit could place absolute blame on the defending party.

But there were others who could help make a recall happen…

UAW-Toyota Battle: United Steelworkers vs. Firestone Playbook?

In 1995, the United Rubber Workers (of Goodyear Tire fame) had just merged with the United Steelworkers (USW), as imports from Asian markets picked up in the US. The USW itself was already embroiled in a bitter labor dispute with Firestone. While the dispute was about labor contracts, it was also about opposition to free trade, a position also shared by environmental groups. In 1996, the union released a scathing report, “Running over the American Dream: A Case Study in Corporate Greed and Irresponsibility“, coordinated with the launch of a damaging national corporate campaign attack against Firestone, that the issue was thrust into the public eye, drawing even more complaints and pressure against the company. By 2000, the pressure had forced the recall of 6.4 million tires. Once that recall was issued, Kane and his clients had their ammunition for additional litigation (and future legislation).

By mid-2000 and into 2001, much of America was then focused on What Did They Know, and When?

Today, Kane’s report regarding the Toyota sudden acceleration, the sequence of events, the pressure to recall, all the peripheral activities with partnering advocacy groups, and even the recall aftermath– it all plays out in near identical fashion as the infamous Firestone case did with the United Steelworkers. Simply replace “Firestone” with “Toyota”, and “United Steelworkers” with “United Autoworkers” and it could be almost the same story.

If you read the case study on the USW-Firestone fight and the subsequent Firestone recall and plant closings, “Out of the Ashes: The Steelworkers’ Global Campaign at Bridgestone/Firestone“, it gives you direct insight into what’s really behind some of these campaigns that surface to the public in the way of consumer safety or environmental advocacy.

When GM negotiated its government bailout and subsequently pulled out of its deal with Toyota, it sparked a chain of events that escalated when Toyota reacted, rightfully so, with a plan to close the plant that gave birth to that joint venture.  An Anti-Toyota campaign was clearly in play, with a network of unions and advocacy groups working together for a common goal, and for their own purposes (this chart is not all-inclusive of every group involved):

Given that the Steelworkers’ global campaign was first aimed at squashing foreign trade with Japan to create more US union jobs, then at unionizing its workers here in the US and globally, it had common goals with other advocacy groups. Once this synergy amongst previously unrelated organizations was realized, a movement of coordinated and collaborative advocacy developed momentum. As the USW case study begins,

“The demonstrations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle in the fall of 1999 brought together a diverse group of trade unionists, environmentalists, and anticorporate groups in a historic gathering. The size and the intensity of the action, coupled with the news and commentary in the weeks that followed, signaled a new and growing consciousness in the American public about economic globalization and its consequences.”

The unions of our parents’ and grandparents’ era fought against American businesses.  If unfair physical labor practices existed, there was a tangible company with a tangible company owner they could stand against and redress grievances.  Today’s unions, while hardly enduring the hard labor and oppression their predecessors did, are now faced with companies that are global.  All the rules and regulations at all levels of government that progressives have come to rely upon as “behavior modification” weapons for nearly eight decades don’t apply to other countries.  That means no rules to exploit or manipulate in order to force a company’s hand, as has been so frequently practiced here in the US.  So what’s a labor leader like Jim Hoffa or Anna Burger or Andy Stern to do when you can’t make laws in country’s that aren’t your own?  You find faults in their products and call them sub-par.  You team up with global advocacy groups and you exploit safety and environmental issues.  You use terms like “eco-apartheid”, “environmental equity” and “environmental justice” and you turn those into issues of human rights.  And then you appeal to the international community and international laws to resolve the issues that will in turn benefit your labor union.  On the surface they seem like such noble efforts to most of the public. But in reality, they sometimes are not.

Drawing attention to a legitimate issue through the power of public persuasion can be commendable.  Doing so under false pretenses, or at the expense of others being used as pawns is not.

Let me close by stating what should be the obvious.  This piece focuses on the role that labor unions and activist organizations may have played in helping to bring about Toyota’s recent issues.  That does not absolve Toyota of any wrong-doing.  As the story comes out and more of the facts are revealed, we will all be anxious, myself included, to understand how much Toyota has known about these issues and when they knew it.  And if there has been wrong-doing, I am confident that the American justice system will adequately deliver to the company precisely what it deserves. There are real victims to consider, and finding the truth should have always taken center stage in this saga.  It is disheartening to see that it has not.

Instead, we have seen what the special interests have wanted us to see. Photos of children holding signs saying “Toyota Killed My Daddy’s Job” and “Toyota, Stop Opposing Clean Energy.”   Labor leaders prancing the streets with megaphones decrying the injustice of Toyota having benefited from “Cash for Clunkers”.  Consultants publicizing reports financed by trial lawyers, then protesting alongside labor leaders.  Environmental groups blasting Toyota for increasing its carbon footprint by moving jobs from California back to Japan.  Congressional representatives grandstanding on Capitol Hill.

What we should see are the similarities between the way that many of the very same people manipulated into public opinion in the late 1990’s and what they are manipulating today.  We should see it for what it is.  Opportunism.

As a gloomy, snowy February came to a close in the nation’s capital, so did the most recent circus attraction on Capitol Hill.  Several days of congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls didn’t exactly deliver many more facts for Americans but they did leave behind a plethora of speculation and opinion to feast upon.  While the saga now known as GasPedalGate flailed around quietly for several years, it’s suddenly taken center stage and today plays out like a bad made-for-TV-movie, complete with its villain, its victims, and most telling, a very long list of opportunists.

To see the full picture, the story begins in California with the history of General Motors and the United Auto Workers in the 1980’s, and GM’s rescue by Toyota through a little venture called NUMMI.  Today, in 2010, the NUMMI chapter nears its close.  But before it does, the Fremont, California plant and its rank and file workers will serve as unwilling pawns in what could turn out to be an orchestrated blueprint for incapacitating the strongest competitor to Government Motors and one of the most significant threats to labor unions here and around the globe.

Today’s rendition has been so manipulated and so propagandized, the facts have all but been removed from the storyline.  The bread crumb trail of truth has been trampled upon and so broadly scattered about, the trail is almost beyond the point of recognition.

The story that emerges is the collusion of forces in Big Labor, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Litigators and Big Progressive Philanthropy.  And no, I’m not talking Breitbart sites.

The History of NUMMI

When a bankrupt and bailed out General Motors officially announced in June 2009 that it would be pulling out of its joint venture with Toyota, it marked the end of another era.

That era started in 1982 when automakers in California were flailing – GM especially was experiencing dismal losses as it struggled to keep production costs down and suffered through bitter labor disputes. Auto workers repeatedly blamed a “Japanese invasion” for their woes. Competing foreign automakers from across the shores of California had long been practicing the waste-reducing production method of lean manufacturing, a concept unfamiliar to California’s automakers prior to then.  At the heart of lean is a focus on value and the long-term, and on the use of learned information to make decisions, rather than a reliance upon “the way it’s always been done”.  The end result is a streamlined, efficient method of production that is flexible to changing business needs.

In contrast, lean manufacturing and the traditional union model are inherently in conflict with one another – one relies upon a leaner, “work smarter not harder” workforce, while the other breeds an environment of an inflexible, larger workforce – more workers means more union members, which are needed to finance underfunded pensions. During a crucial period in history when manufacturing was modernizing, the UAW drove down profits by bloating salaries and benefits while vehemently opposing change. Like so many others, GM had become complacent.

It was a dangerous mindset.  California’s car industry, which had experienced virtually zero competition for decades, was now seeing its first competitors from overseas.  To survive, it was in need of a rebirth.  But GM and the UAW simply weren’t equipped to competitively deliver that transformation.  And in the wake of dismal profits and hundreds of UAW grievance filings, GM closed its Fremont, CA plant in 1982, placing over 2,000 workers on indefinite furlough.

During that time, it was Toyota that came to the table with a deal to reopen that plant and hire back most of the former GM workers.  In 1984, GM and Toyota signed into a joint venture agreement and created  New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), the first such automotive partnership of its kind ever in the US, which for the next 25 years would go on to enjoy successes and consistently win awards year after year.

While the NUMMI venture in Fremont was hailed by many in the business arena at the time, the deal sparked an outcry from labor leaders who accused the foreign automakers of stealing American jobs. In the end though, the venture proved to be beneficial to thousands of workers, including previously laid off GM workers and UAW members, who passed through the NUMMI plant in its 25 year history as employees, many of whom are still there today.

But all that changed in June 2009, when GM pulled out of the venture and ended its 25 year marriage to Toyota, leaving NUMMI behind and investing its 50% stake instead in “the New GM”. The UAW itself retains a 17.5% stake in GM through the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust. The union was relatively silent about the break-up for two months, until Toyota announced in August that it would close the NUMMI plant altogether and focus on its six other US production facilities. Even then, most of the opposition stayed relatively local to NUMMI’s home state of California.

Until other interests intervened.

Enter Big Labor Opportunists

United Auto Workers

The NUMMI plant is scheduled to close on March 31^st. For months, many NUMMI workers have been angry with UAW leadership, who have refused to focus on the workers’ severance negotiations. Historically, some workers themselves have blamed part of GM’s failures – and now Toyota’s – on misguided union leadership. Those tensions only increased when the UAW retirees fund gained a 17.5% share in GM stock as part of the joint bankruptcy negotiations facilitated by the Obama administration last year. It created a conflict of interest within rank and file NUMMI workers. While UAW is supposed to represent the interests of the NUMMI workers, it’s hostage to an inherent need to protect GM. This essentially leaves NUMMI workers, who pay dues each month, without any effective union representation. It would appear the UAW leadership has been focused on their own greed and self interest, rather than on serving the needs and desires of the rank and file NUMMI workers. As you’ll hear from workers in the video that follows:

• UAW plans to take up to a 3% cut of the NUMMI workers’ severance packages for the International union
• UAW leadership is demanding a $72 million contribution to the union’s supplemental health retirement program, which Toyota has resisted. NUMMI workers say this isn’t even a benefit for them – it benefits only the international UAW
• While the UAW owns 17.5% of GM, NUMMI workers do not. This is a conflict of interest that some NUMMI workers believe violates their charter and they demand officials look at both ledgers
• UAW leadership is violating the union’s constitution by not conducting regular membership meetings in the prescribed manner and not allowing motions to be made at other meetings
• Meanwhile, UAW leaders have been taking lavish trips to places like Palm Springs and not spending time focusing on negotiating settlement packages for NUMMI workers

For months, UAW leaders have persisted in boycotting local Toyota dealers, telling consumers not to buy Toyota vehicles. They’ve also traveled across the country, leafleting crowds and petitioning people at auto shows to keep the NUMMI plant open to save 4,500 jobs.

Meanwhile, NUMMI workers back in California have called their union leadership’s efforts misguided and counter-productive. They’ve been pleading with the leadership to stop focusing on keeping the plant open and instead to tend their severance negotiations. Most recently, Toyota has pledged $250 million in bonuses to go to the departing NUMMI workers, but that offer is dependent upon the UAW; in prior offers, the UAW is said to have represented only the needs of its leadership and not the workers of NUMMI. Workers have tried repeatedly to have their voices heard in the media; the majority of outlets have simply repeated the international UAW’s rendition of the story, which is in stark contrast to the sentiments of 80% of NUMMI workers.

You first met them in my January 28^th post, “Union Boss to Members: Shut the F*%k Up, You Motherf*%kers!“ These are real people, rank and file workers. Let me introduce you to some of them through this video from Labor Video Project, as NUMMI workers explain in their own words their internal struggles with a union leadership that’s lost its way.

With only 20 days left before the plant closing, workers wait it out in flux without any inkling of their severance, while their local leadership, persists with their lobbying to keep the plant open. A state delegation (which includes SEIU/Workers United ally, actor Danny Glover) will soon travel to Japan to demand the plant stay open.

This past weekend at their latest meeting, president of UAW local 2244 Sergio Santos blindly promised workers that the NUMMI plant will stay open on April 1^st.

Workers know this isn’t the case – no inventory is on hand, no supplies, no parts, no vendors…no pipeline exists for production. All the workers have wanted – for nearly a year now – is for their leadership to negotiate their severance and help make their transition easier. Their leadership obviously has its own agenda – one that extends far beyond the scope of NUMMI.

The Takedown Timeline

As the NUMMI closing played itself out, a series of interestingly timed events was occurring in sequence.

June 2009: GM Publicly Abandons NUMMI, Divorces Toyota

GM publicly announces it has decided to pull out of its joint venture with Toyota and forgoes NUMMI, leaving it behind to Toyota so that it can focus instead on “the New GM”.

June 26, 2009:  Justice for Toyota Janitors is Born

A DNS registration for http://www.justicefortoyotajanitors.org is created.  The registration comes from the Reaching Higher Coalition, which consists primarily of Reverends from the Baptist Ministers Conference (a LOT of them), SEIU, and a variety of progressive Consumer Organizations.

August 2009:  Toyota decides it will close NUMMI

Toyota decides to close the NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA.  The closing will be scheduled for March 31, 2010.  Toyota indicates it will offer severance settlements to NUMMI workers and assist in transition arrangements over the next 7 months, pending negotiation and approval from the UAW.  While news of the announcement flurried about in June and July, the formal notifications were made in early August. The public press release then announced the news on 8/28.

August 7 – 28, 2009:  SEIU and Justice for Janitors Protest Toyota

An August 7th protest of over 500 people occurred in CA as they marched in protest of Toyota – angry that a contractor of Toyota, GCA Services, has embarked upon a “massive” layoff of 30 people.  They demand that Toyota demand that its contractor hire back the workers.  (a WTF moment)

Additional protests are also held over these several weeks to protest Janitorial cuts, and of course to rally to Save NUMMI workers’ jobs.  (Though I would guess there weren’t actually many NUMMI workers in their presence).

In addition to the UAW, the Change to Win unions, like SEIU, are also workers at NUMMI:

August 2009: The fatal Santee CA crash

A Lexus (Toyota product) on loan from a dealership crashes outside of Santee, CA, killing a California Highway Patrol Officer, his wife and two children.  Accident investigators later determine the pedal became entrapped beneath a mismatched floor mat in the vehicle, causing sudden unintended acceleration.  (Contracted safety consultants trying to bolster litigators’ cases are trying to force Toyota into prematurely stating that it is an electrical or other problem).

September 3, 2009: SEIU and  Justice for Toyota Janitors Picket Toyota Dealers

Like the UAW and Teamsters will do shortly after them, the SEIU and friends start picketing at Toyota dealerships, demanding that Americans stop buying Toyota cars unless the company keeps their members’ jobs.  They picket again on September 23rd and other dates as well.

September 3, 2009: McCune Wright and LiUNA, a Change to Win Union, Homebuilders Lawsuit

The law firm McCuneWright, LLP filed multiple class action lawsuits against eight national home builders on behalf of homeowners seeking the return of their investment from the builders. Those named in the suit happened to be some of the very companies that Change to Win unions – including LiUNA, SEIU, and the Teamsters – have been campaigning against for hiring non-union workers and resisting Project Labor Agreements.

The law firm’s press release stated that the allegations in the lawsuit are based in part on “important research done by LiUNA.” (download report)

Throughout 2009, LiUNA, in concert with its parent Change to Win and partnering AFL-CIO labor unions, had launched a barrage of campaigns and lawsuits against the numerous construction companies and developers being sued, alleging everything from wage fraud, to pension fund shareholder abuse, to unfair financing practices.

It was a familiar pattern that preceded Toyota, but it didn’t seem to relate in any way directly to the Toyota saga at first. But then,

November 5, 2009: McCune Wright and Safety Research & Strategies

The same law firm filed another class action lawsuit – this one against Toyota, charging that Sudden Unintended Acceleration is responsible for recent Toyota accidents. Much like LiUNA provided the reports used in the home builders suit, this lawsuit was also aided by a report from an outside organization, in this instance, Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies.

We know now that Kane later admitted that the report was funded by the law firms suing Toyota, something that wasn’t revealed until last month’s Congressional hearings.

Sean Kane is a familiar name in this game. During a period in time when the United Steel Workers were in labor disputes with Bridgestone/Firestone, Kane teamed up in 1996 with a Texas litigation firm in a tire defect lawsuit against the company. Kane’s former consulting firm, Strategic Safety, had identified 30 cases of tire failure in its report for the law firm. But Kane and the lawyers for whom he was working had decided at that time not to submit any complaint forms regarding the issues to the NHTSA. Kane took a lot of heat for that action, especially since he was more concerned about protecting the lawyers’ monetary awards than protecting lives from known safety hazards.

“Everyone was leery of the agency getting involved with this, because a number of plaintiff lawyers have been burned when an investigation has been opened and closed without finding a defect,” Kane explained.

Firestone was reluctant to issue a recall during a period of litigation, lest it become a direct admission of guilt. But the Steelworkers would see to it that the recall, and plenty more, would occur.

More on Firestone in the next section… The reference is important, because it is a mirror to what we will see today with the Toyota case.

November and December of 2009:  Coordination of a  Skunk Team?

As the UAW continues to conduct pickets at Toyota dealerships – which are not in any way connected with Toyota, other than the fact that they carry Toyota vehicles – something apparently occurred behind the scenes to bring together what would become an apparent Skunk Team, as leaders and organizers from the Teamsters and SEIU began coordinating efforts…along with some old safety and environmental advocacy group friends.

During this period, organizing also begins with Friends of the Earth (which used to be headed by Andy Stern’s ex-wife Jane Perkins).  FOE’s outgoing president Brent Blackwelder has been out protesting with the Teamsters and UAW, while Board Director Clarence Ditlow has been testifying to Congress regarding Toyota as one of the safety experts.

January 6, 2010:  Social Media Attack Sites Are Created

While NUMMI workers were back in California trying to stop their leaders from launching counter-productive attacks, their leaders were out there…well…launching counter-productive attacks. UAW had mid level leaders initiate online social media sites.

Michele Martin, Assistant Major, International UAW sets up a Facebook page under the handle “Save_NUMMI”. Of course, by all accounts, Ms. Martin does not work at NUMMI, nor do NUMMI workers seem to know her.  Another participant is Brad Markell, Servicing Rep, International UAW based in Michigan. (Markell was coincidentally also a contributor to the Apollo Green Alliance Manufacturing Action Plan). Not exactly members in close proximity to NUMMI in Fremont, CA. And as a side note, judging from their salaries, they don’t seem in such dire monetary need to justify a 3% cut of NUMMI workers’ severance packages.

January 12, 2010:  Tweeting to Organizers

The corporate campaign continues with a Tweet, under the same handle.

January 22, 2010:  The Big Tweet, Exploiting Victims

And then, the hard core Toyota slam days later:

January 28, 2010:  The Big Protest -Teamsters, UAW, SEIU/Jobs With Justice, Friends of the Earth, and Sean Kane

Then came the well-publicized protest outside the Embassy of Japan in Washington DC to call on the Japanese government “to hold Toyota accountable for waging an attack on thousands of good-paying jobs in the United States.“ The protest was the joint effort of a few familiar labor unions and advocacy groups:

• the United Auto Workers
• the Teamsters (member of the Change to Win coalition)
• Jobs With Justice (a SEIU-founded action group)
• Friends of the Earth
• Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies

As Sean Kane and labor union leaders were all out there protesting together with their partner advocacy groups, and delivering their threat letter to a foreign Prime Minister, there’s been no mention that some of these very players, most notably Mr. Kane, are working with the law firm involved in the litigation against Toyota as well as some of its other class action lawsuits.

Labor leaders have pension funds invested in GM, and Toyota, its competitor, threatens that security. Labor has also wanted to eliminate this foreign competitor for decades. Currently they fight with Toyota over job cuts and unionization. Anti-corporation groups have been battling Toyota for years over what they say are human rights violations in places such as the Philippines and Burma/Myanmar. Environmental groups have been attacking Toyota because of its opposition to increased CAFÉ standards in CA, new global warming regulation, and Cap & Trade legislation. Safety advocates have fought to nationalize the auto industry for decades.

So, when the departure of GM from its NUMMI joint venture with Toyota prompted the closure announcement of NUMMI, labor leaders went to work on a plan of attack. And when a real crisis – a real tragedy – presented itself as part of the recall issue, it became fuel for the fodder. This collective of union leaders apparently partnered up with its allies to force Toyota into a submissive state until it could all but control it themselves.

Don’t take my word for it, listen to them. In summarizing a February 12, 2010 joint meeting of union leaders, the The Oakland Tribune wrote,

“We will take this fight to every Toyota dealership in California,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said via a videoconference link. “Our message is that Toyota kills American jobs. This comes at a time when Toyota can ill afford another black eye.”

“If they close the NUMMI plant, we union people will not buy another Toyota,” said Bob King, UAW vice president.

“You are going to see an attack on Toyota that is unprecedented,” said Rome Aloise, a top Teamsters official.

I don’t know that it would be an unprecedented attack. Because just like the Firestone campaigns, many of us have seen the pattern before. We’ve just got a sleeping media these days that doesn’t notice such patterns or question any of our labor leaders or advocates.

Up On Capitol Hill

The latest Save NUMMI campaigns and Toyota protests peaked right around the time of the Congressional hearings on Capitol Hill.  To start were the all the media reports,  frenzied about the internal documents that “expose” Toyota’s lobbying in DC, as if automakers aren’t expected to lobby. This Politico article, “Toyota goes into lobbying overdrive” reports,

“Toyota’s tentacles are spread far and wide on Capitol Hill. Senate records show Toyota-related entities spent $4.1 million on lobbying last year — and $35.2 million during the past decade. According to lobbying records, in the last three months of 2009, $1.77 million was spent to sway Congress on a wide range of issues, including financial services, fuel standards, card check, patent reform, hazardous materials transportation rules and foreign taxation policy.”

However, there are two sides to this lobbying picture. It’s certainly no secret that General Motors, even in the face of bankruptcy and a federal bailout, spent more than twice as much as Toyota in comparison- $8.7 million – on lobbying last year alone. Also compare that with the related lobbying expenses of one of Capitol Hill’s largest and probably most overlooked special interest groups – Big Labor. Auto industry related unions, as well as their supporting solidarity unions, are no friends of Toyota, as they’ve been pounding the automaker for years over its opposition to legislation like Card Check and Cap & Trade, and for what labor leaders proclaim to be union busting outsourcing tactics. Add up some of those dollars just from 2009 and you’re looking at over $26 million. Even better, add labor and GM together, since they combine efforts and work as a team for the most part. Then compare it with what Toyota’s up against. Not exactly chump change.

Just imagine if these lobbying totals had included all of the environmental philanthropic organizations, the ambulance chasing profession, and all of those labor union related 527 groups and non-profits spending millions on “safety advocacy”. It would leave most wondering if Toyota’s even got the political chops to compete long-term in this racket anyway.

This brings about perhaps the most egregious element of the story. The hearings indulged the testimony of “experts” against Toyota who each had very obvious biased agendas, and an apparent history of working together – along with the unions – to force a recall or two. It’s shameful that Congress would even allow, let alone rely upon, the testimony of several of such panelists.

Testimony on auto safety was provided by Clarence Ditlow , Joan Claybrook and Sean Kane. All have a long history of using their advocacy groups to advance their progressive political agendas. The sentiment of testimony specifically from Ditlow and Claybrook was so focused on the extremes in auto safety concerns and turned to discussion of creating more bureaucracy, while the reality of today’s statistics simply don’t support those recommendations. A great post over at thetruthaboutcars.com summed it up perfectly:

“As stuck in the past as they are, asking Claybrook and Ditlow for recommendations in the wake of the Toyota recalls was a bit like asking a Soviet central planner for advice in managing the government’s stake in GM: the problem isn’t that they aren’t intelligent, well-meaning people, it’s that their battles have already been waged, and the world has moved on. Driving cars will continue to be the most dangerous activity any of us engage in on a regular basis, and it’s time to stop pretending that this reality can be reduced to something as simple as corporate greed.“

In fact, it’s their biased testimony that draws attention to the fact that their efforts have been so closely co-mingled with the peripheral aspects of not only this Toyota case, but many similar cases that came before it – like the Firestone recalls. Their other activism efforts frequently pair them with many of the usual “social justice” crusaders.

Clarence Ditlow, Executive Director, Center for Auto Safety

Champion behind lemon laws, federal speed limits, laws against distracted cell phone driving; has lobbied for years to nationalize the auto industry and remove it from the free market system. Mr. Ditlow has a long-standing reputation in working with trial lawyers to go after toxic toys, defective products, auto defects and more. It’s safe to say he’s a fan of government regulation. While some of his goals may have been well-intended, and some even sensible, many of his efforts have often been proven to be over-zealous, and in some cases slanderous. A detailed history of Ditlow’s more dangerous advocacy can be read here. Ditlow is also associated with:

• Friends of the Earth (Ditlow is a Director; Brent Blackwalder is outgoing President)Consumers Union, Publisher of Consumer Reports (Board Member)
• And you thought Consumer Reports was non-partisan? Check out some of their sections like their Prescription for Change activism pages on health care reform, and their Activist Summit event.

Joan Claybrook, Outgoing President, Public Citizen; former NHTSA head

While Joan has had a long history with Public Citizen, and an equally long list of accomplishments, her organization is the furthest thing from non-partisan. They lobby regularly with unions like SEIU, such as in their “Bust Up Big Banks” protest, and to push for a Single Payer health system, and they work hand in hand with trial lawyers to push lawsuits against corporations. The group frequently lobbies for increased government intervention and regulation as a way to control corporations and international trade. Last October, Public Citizen sued Texas to force the state to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions, citing the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in which CO2 was classified as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.

David Gilbert, Automotive Professor, Southern Illinois University

Mr. Gilbert testified before Congress about Electronic Throttle Control, offering his view that the Electronic Control Module (ECM) in Toyota’s vehicles does not sufficiently identify all types of sensor and/or circuit malfunctions that could potentially occur. Upon being questioned, Gilbert also admitted that he was paid by Sean Kean, Safety research & Strategies, for his research and demonstration. Mr. Gilbert’s video demonstration of sudden acceleration for Brian Ross of ABC News has now been viewed by thousands. Meanwhile, it was evaluated and challenged by Exponent, a firm with a wide array of engineering capabilities that works with clients like NASA and the US Department of Defense. I expect that much more criticism is on its way.

As an aside, Edmunds.com reminds the public that the unintended acceleration problem occurs with nearly all models of cars and is an issue that’s festered for more than 20 years, when the media first preyed on Audi about the subject. With that in mind, they’ve issued their own challenge to find real answers:
Edmunds.com Announces Million Dollar Prize for Unintended Acceleration Research

Sean Kane, Founder, Safety Research & Strategies

Mr. Kane produced the report that prompted these hearings, and had acknowledged that his services have been paid for by lawyers currently representing the plaintiffs in litigation against Toyota. Kane’s research draws no concrete conclusions as to the cause of Toyota’s sudden acceleration problem, only speculation. The report lists several potential causes:

• Pedal Entrapment
• Pedal Misapplication
• Electromagnetic Interference
• Electronic Problems
• Cracked Throttle Body Shafts

Given that most of these are causes that are already considered and documented in NHTSA complaints for all car models for more than 20 years, the information is hardly as damning as media and legal professionals have made it out to be. However, a keen eye might recognize language in the report that is written around the intent of litigation:

“If the all-weather floor mat is to blame, and pedal entrapment occurs with any frequency, then this is a design problem. And in applying the most recent recall remedies, Toyota has acknowledged this by making significant floor arrangement changes, including shortening the pedal length to allow for more space between the pedal and the floor, removal of padding materials below the floor carpet, and re-designing the floor mats.”

The bolded fragment of the sentence indicates the precursor to establishing acknowledgement of culpability. Kane’s report is filled with such language. It’s also tactically similar to other work he’s produced for product liability law firms, most notably his research for litigators on the Ford Explorer/Firestone tires issue in the late 1990’s – early 2000’s in preparation for litigation against Bridgestone/Firestone. In responding to reporters’ questions about the 2000 recall’s impact on his clients’ litigation, he told the LA Times,

“Any time a manufacturer initiates a recall, it becomes an admission of liability,” said Sean Kane, president of Strategic Safety, a Virginia organization that was one of the first to call upon Firestone to recall the tires. He predicted that Firestone would likely attempt to settle the cases, rather than fight the claims and risk huge jury verdicts.

In the instance of Firestone, there was no recall in place yet at the start of the litigation process. In Kane’s report, there were instances of SUV rollovers, customer complaints of separating tires in specific high-heat/humidity states, and there were speculative causes for the problems, but there was nothing concrete upon which a lawsuit could place absolute blame on the defending party.

But there were others who could help make a recall happen…

UAW-Toyota Battle: United Steelworkers vs. Firestone Playbook?

In 1995, the United Rubber Workers (of Goodyear Tire fame) had just merged with the United Steelworkers (USW), as imports from Asian markets picked up in the US. The USW itself was already embroiled in a bitter labor dispute with Firestone. While the dispute was about labor contracts, it was also about opposition to free trade, a position also shared by environmental groups. In 1996, the union released a scathing report, “Running over the American Dream: A Case Study in Corporate Greed and Irresponsibility“, coordinated with the launch of a damaging national corporate campaign attack against Firestone, that the issue was thrust into the public eye, drawing even more complaints and pressure against the company. By 2000, the pressure had forced the recall of 6.4 million tires. Once that recall was issued, Kane and his clients had their ammunition for additional litigation (and future legislation).

By mid-2000 and into 2001, much of America was then focused on What Did They Know, and When?

Today, Kane’s report regarding the Toyota sudden acceleration, the sequence of events, the pressure to recall, all the peripheral activities with partnering advocacy groups, and even the recall aftermath– it all plays out in near identical fashion as the infamous Firestone case did with the United Steelworkers. Simply replace “Firestone” with “Toyota”, and “United Steelworkers” with “United Autoworkers” and it could be almost the same story.

If you read the case study on the USW-Firestone fight and the subsequent Firestone recall and plant closings, “Out of the Ashes: The Steelworkers’ Global Campaign at Bridgestone/Firestone“, it gives you direct insight into what’s really behind some of these campaigns that surface to the public in the way of consumer safety or environmental advocacy.

When GM negotiated its government bailout and subsequently pulled out of its deal with Toyota, it sparked a chain of events that escalated when Toyota reacted, rightfully so, with a plan to close the plant that gave birth to that joint venture.  An Anti-Toyota campaign was clearly in play, with a network of unions and advocacy groups working together for a common goal, and for their own purposes (this chart is not all-inclusive of every group involved):

Given that the Steelworkers’ global campaign was first aimed at squashing foreign trade with Japan to create more US union jobs, then at unionizing its workers here in the US and globally, it had common goals with other advocacy groups. Once this synergy amongst previously unrelated organizations was realized, a movement of coordinated and collaborative advocacy developed momentum. As the USW case study begins,

“The demonstrations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle in the fall of 1999 brought together a diverse group of trade unionists, environmentalists, and anticorporate groups in a historic gathering. The size and the intensity of the action, coupled with the news and commentary in the weeks that followed, signaled a new and growing consciousness in the American public about economic globalization and its consequences.”

The unions of our parents’ and grandparents’ era fought against American businesses.  If unfair physical labor practices existed, there was a tangible company with a tangible company owner they could stand against and redress grievances.  Today’s unions, while hardly enduring the hard labor and oppression their predecessors did, are now faced with companies that are global.  All the rules and regulations at all levels of government that progressives have come to rely upon as “behavior modification” weapons for nearly eight decades don’t apply to other countries.  That means no rules to exploit or manipulate in order to force a company’s hand, as has been so frequently practiced here in the US.  So what’s a labor leader like Jim Hoffa or Anna Burger or Andy Stern to do when you can’t make laws in country’s that aren’t your own?  You find faults in their products and call them sub-par.  You team up with global advocacy groups and you exploit safety and environmental issues.  You use terms like “eco-apartheid”, “environmental equity” and “environmental justice” and you turn those into issues of human rights.  And then you appeal to the international community and international laws to resolve the issues that will in turn benefit your labor union.  On the surface they seem like such noble efforts to most of the public. But in reality, they sometimes are not.

Drawing attention to a legitimate issue through the power of public persuasion can be commendable.  Doing so under false pretenses, or at the expense of others being used as pawns is not.

Let me close by stating what should be the obvious.  This piece focuses on the role that labor unions and activist organizations may have played in helping to bring about Toyota’s recent issues.  That does not absolve Toyota of any wrong-doing.  As the story comes out and more of the facts are revealed, we will all be anxious, myself included, to understand how much Toyota has known about these issues and when they knew it.  And if there has been wrong-doing, I am confident that the American justice system will adequately deliver to the company precisely what it deserves. There are real victims to consider, and finding the truth should have always taken center stage in this saga.  It is disheartening to see that it has not.

Instead, we have seen what the special interests have wanted us to see. Photos of children holding signs saying “Toyota Killed My Daddy’s Job” and “Toyota, Stop Opposing Clean Energy.”   Labor leaders prancing the streets with megaphones decrying the injustice of Toyota having benefited from “Cash for Clunkers”.  Consultants publicizing reports financed by trial lawyers, then protesting alongside labor leaders.  Environmental groups blasting Toyota for increasing its carbon footprint by moving jobs from California back to Japan.  Congressional representatives grandstanding on Capitol Hill.

What we should see are the similarities between the way that many of the very same people manipulated into public opinion in the late 1990’s and what they are manipulating today.  We should see it for what it is.  Opportunism.

In the midst of a drive by Washington’s powerful ethanol lobby to expand what critics often deride as an artificially created, and government aided and promoted market for “fuel made from food,” the top administrator from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wednesday testified before the Senate Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, telling lawmakers the agency will make a final determination late summer on allowing higher levels of ethanol to be blended into gasoline.

The ethanol industry is currently petitioning the EPA for a waiver to increase ethanol blends in gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent, in order to create a larger market–and artificial demand–for the fuel source.

Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency’s decision awaits completion of Department of Energy (DOE) tests on ethanol—namely, how higher ethanol blends might adversely affect vehicle engines, a long-running concern of automakers and the marine leisure industry, among others—which she expects to receive by May. “We expect that once we get that additional data, and it will be publicly available, the EPA will be in a position to move toward a final decision on the waiver, late summer in the time period,” Jackson said in response to a line of questioning by ethanol booster Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Co-chair of Ethanol Across America, Nelson recently launched a campaign to browbeat the EPA by offering an amendment to an EPA appropriations bill demanding higher ethanol blends. The amendment failed, but sources say that Nelson and fellow proponents of ethanol remain committed to expanding use of the fuel.  This is despite frequent criticisms of ethanol from across the philosophical spectrum: Fiscal conservatives tend to regard ethanol as a boondoggle tying together the worst practices of pork-barreling and interference with the free market; progressives and some social conservatives have criticized ethanol as environmentally unfriendly, with some also pointing to the impact that using food to produce fuel has on global food prices, and thus hunger and malnutrition in poorer countries.

Once hailed as the “fuel of the future” by Henry Ford in the 1920s, ethanol opponents say that the market has roundly rejected ethanol as a viable fuel source, and emphasize that it is not a new product. Fewer than 2 percent of all refueling stations in the United States currently offer ethanol, despite extensive government subsidies aimed at its production (a 1998 report by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) observed that “the fuel-ethanol industry was created by a mix of Federal and State subsidies, loan programs and incentives. It continues to depend on Federal and State subsidies”).

One critic contacted by Capitol Confidential says that if EPA grants the waiver, it will constitute little more than further de facto federal welfare for the ethanol industry.  Another critic notes that it could also result in a problem for the administration if, as some fear, the warranties of hundreds of millions of cars were voided.

Since its founding, ShoreBank has been a progressive-minded bank focused on community development. However, it soon adopted the progressive commitment to environmentalism after founders Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton were approached in 1993 by Ecotrust, an environmentally-conscious firm focusing on debt for nature swaps in rainforest countries as well as environmental banking in the Pacific Northwest. The partnership of the two firms led to the establishment of ShoreTrust (now ShoreBank Enterprise Pacific) which provided financing, marketing and management assistance to small businesses in the Pacific coastal rain forest area. From there, the rest of the ShoreBank family eventually followed in adopting the green agenda.

For the entire story chronicling the founding of the bank and its move towards its environmental commitment, you may read Alka Srivastva’s dissertation for Case Western Reserve University here>>>.

From there, it did not take long for ShoreBank to incorporate environmentalism into its mission and formalize its commitment to the green agenda. In 1999, ShoreBank’s board of directors adopted a new conservation and development policy requiring the bank itself to reduce its waste and also encourage its customers to adopt more sustainable practices. The concept of environmental health then assumed its place alongside the goals of community development and profitability to form the “Triple Bottom Line” slogan that the company champions today. As evidence of its own commitment, ShoreBank has even addressed its own carbon emissions by purchasing offsets for 450 metric tons of C02 to offset emissions through 2010.

ShoreBank’s environmental advocacy is now prevalent throughout its dealings, both  in how it relates to its domestic banking customers, and in its international development objectives.

Domestically, ShoreBank’s evironmental objectives are readily apparent their website:

How does a banking corporation address environmental issues?

First, by adopting sound conservation principles for its own operations – reducing energy and paper consumption, reducing and recycling its waste and buying products made of recycled materials.

Second, by providing information to its customers that shows how their choices have long-term environmental impact. Homeowners, if they know how, can reduce their electric and gas usage, benefiting their pocketbooks as well as the environment. Businesses, if they know how, can also reduce their energy consumption, waste and potentially their use of toxic chemicals.

Third, by providing financing for physical improvements that benefit the environment. These physical improvements can include building modifications, equipment upgrades and restoring vacant buildings to new economic life. These investments also directly benefit the community by revitalizing its real estate, leading to improved perceptions and higher property values.

ShoreBank has also introduced its EcoDeposits® program where customers can directly support the green agenda. From its website:

Like Development Depositssm, EcoDeposits®, are market-rate, fully insured deposit accounts. They offer customers the opportunity to support the work of ShoreBank Pacific.

ShoreBank Pacific fulfills its goal of creating a conservation economy in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest by lending to local companies that use energy efficiently, reduce waste and pollution, and conserve natural resources.

ShoreBank Pacific CEO Dave Williams takes it one step further, actually questioning new borrowers about their green commitment and maintaining a report card:

We put together a program where we analyze what it means to be sustainable, looking at environmental, business, and community issues. One big question is how are you treating your employees? Are you helping them to generate wealth? Are you improving their wealth, using your stock options to help your employees and enhance your business? For environmental issues, we look at how you use water, how you recover water and clean it, how you use energy, if you produce clean energy, how you manage CO2, whether you are you offsetting CO2 that your product produces, if you are using sustainably produced materials.

All of this goes on a scorecard which we use to determine how they are doing. We find some things upon which they can improve, and make those suggestions. In addition, we talk to them annually to see how they are becoming a more sustainable business.

Even more specifically, ShoreBank Pacific has developed a unique loan scoring system based on the Natural Step Framework, a scientific model to facilitate complex sustainability planning. This system evaluates loan applicants in several specific categories ranging from green engineering to landscape conservation, even managing to include the component of “social equity”.

ShoreBank apparently doesn’t just offer its customers the opportunity to go green; it highly encourages them to do it.

ShoreBank has extended its mission of environmental advocacy into the international community as well. ShoreBank is a founding member of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). According to GIIN’s website:

The GIIN works to increase dramatically the level and effectiveness of capital that is supporting market-based solutions to social and environmental problems. Our goal is to help foster a coherent impact investing industry that channels investment capital efficiently to accelerate the development of solutions to pressing social and environmental problems.

There seems little question that ShoreBank is deeply committed to environmental globalism. We need look no further than ShoreBank Executive Vice President Jan Piercy, a former college roommate of Hillary Clinton who was appointed to the World Bank while a member of the Clinton administration. While working for the World Bank, she explained how she felt banks could become effective at providing “global public goods” in an article she wrote for a public policy conference it sponsored. Her own words lay claim to her commitment to the green agenda:

We know how to build roads. We know how to build a hospital. But how do we deal with tremendously interconnected problems such as water access and quality, or global warming, the magnitude of which threatens to overwhelm us?

She acknowledges her concern for global warming, but what’s even more enlightening is the way she marries the progressive ideas regarding economic justice with the cause of the environment:

One issue the bank is wrestling with, for example, is whether in the forestry sector, the Bank should stick with an absolute ban on logging in tropical moist forests  or — recognizing how much the poor depend on forests for their livelihood — consider selective interventions that allow us to protect the forests but at the same time provide livelihoods for the poor.

So here we see the avenue the environmental cause can be a vehicle in leveling the playing field between the haves and have-nots — and on a global scale.

Finally, while Cap and Trade is not legally mandated, ShoreBank is actively involved in the carbon offset trading market. ShoreBank Pacific is a supporter of YurtCozy, a new international carbon trading website. YurtCozy allows those who feel guilty about their own use of “dirty energy” to voluntarily offset their usage by paying for it. YurtCozy will then will make the funds available in loans through microfinance institutions like ShoreBank to foster international development efforts that produce smaller carbon footprints.

So, where does this leave us as we consider the possibility of ShoreBank receiving a state bailout? Well, as the Washington Times recently acknowledged, recent history has cast grave doubts about the very claims of man-made climate change itself. Therefore, ambitious and expensive measures to address it may need to be reconsidered. However, in the beginning, the bank’s founders chose to pursue its mission in the private sector believing the federal government could not create lasting change.  Given that, we have no reason to question the bank’s objectives. However, the potential of a bailout changes the argument. As taxpayers who would fund it, the risks are not just the bank’s, but ours — and we should question what we are paying for, including whether the claims of the green movement justify our tax money. In any case, it is the height of irony that ShoreBank, having predicated its operations on disavowing government solutions, now seeks a government solution to save it.

Washington is abuzz these days with talk of “reconciliation” a word in our usual lexicon that suggests bringing people together. In this case, however, it is a larceny of language. It is divisive and not conciliatory and it is, understandably, creating anguish and outrage among those who understand the subterfuge at play here. Political mischief is about to run amok as this corruption of Senate rules becomes the strategic center piece President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress will utilize to ram their health care bill into law.

To be sure, the reconciliation process has been used a number of times during the past thirty years, usually without much angst or controversy. It has, essentially, been used in the past to remove legislative stumbling blocks to initiatives with fairly strong bi-partisan support. American tradition as well as old-fashioned common sense has generally dictated that consequential legislation enjoy broad bipartisan consensus and, in fact, the most ambitious reconciliation bills of the past have been, more often than not, popular on both sides of the aisle. In these cases, reconciliation was used for procedural reasons, not to force through a bill that couldn’t get 60 votes. It has, however, never been used to advance legislation that a substantial majority of Americans have said they do not want. Nor should it be.

It was one of the wisest and most respected of Democrats, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who warned his colleagues, “Never pass major legislation that affects most Americans without real bipartisan support. It opens the door to all kinds of political trouble.” It appears that the Administration and the congressional Democrats are, indeed, going to open the door to all kinds of political trouble. To paraphrase Professor Harold Hill who once bellowed in the musical comedy Music Man, “There’s trouble right (there) in River City”…the river now being the Potomac and the city being our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.

To better understand this, we need to take a quick look at the rules of the United States Senate. Back in 1789 both the House and Senate allowed debate to be ended and a vote taken upon the vote of a simple majority when the question was called. That changed during the Jefferson Administration in 1804 when the Senate dropped the rule opting instead for unlimited debate, a practice that in one form or another has been used in other western democracies. This non-stop talkathon is known as a filibuster. The actual filibuster is no longer required. The declared intent to use it is enough under current Senate rules to stop the advance of contentious legislation.

We can always expect sanctimonious protests from either side of the aisle that “a few are thwarting the will of the majority,” when the proponents of contentious legislation are stymied by the 60-vote rule. In practice, however, the opposite is often true. For instance, what is being stymied by the threat of a filibuster in the current health care debate is an extreme makeover of a major segment of our economy that most Americans have said, repeatedly, they do not want.
In 1917 President Wilson, angry about Congress’ failure to vote on certain war measures, convinced the Senate to adopt a rule cutting off debate by a two-thirds vote. In 1975 the required vote was reduced to three-fifths or sixty percent.

Nevertheless, even with a reduction to a three-fifths vote the Senate also adopted a new process intended to allow consideration of contentious budget bills by a mere majority pursuant to reconciliation instructions in a budget resolution. The process was further refined by adoption of a rule in 1985 (the so-called Byrd Rule) that explains what kind of fiscal bill is subject to reconciliation. Since that time both parties have invoked the reconciliation process over 20 times, but never on anything resembling such a massive change in the relationship between government and private citizens and never without even a modicum of bipartisan support.

Senator Byrd, considered by many to be the dean of parliamentary law and the man who penned the Byrd rule mentioned above, stated in a written opinion at the outset of the healthcare debate, “I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation. Such a proposal would violate the intent and spirit of the budget process, and do serious injury to the Constitutional role of the Senate.”

Rule changes often push the envelope and test the limits of legislative propriety. In the case of the reconciliation process, who advocates its use depends on whose ox is being gored. Back in 2005 when President Bush’s judicial nominees were being filibustered, making a mockery of the “advise and consent” process, the frustrated GOP majority threatened to invoke reconciliation to get up or down votes on the nominees, a threat which the Democrats named “the nuclear option.” Ironically, the very same Democrats who were so outraged by the Republican threat to use the reconciliation process to allow an up or down vote on judicial nominees now refer to its use as “nothing extraordinary.”

Then Senator Obama said “he [President Bush] hasn’t gotten his way and that is now prompting a change in the Senate rules that really, I think, would change the character of the Senate forever and what I worry about is that you essentially have … two chambers … but you have…absolute power on either side and that’s not what the Founders intended.” No, it certainly wasn’t what the Founders intended, but it does seem to be what President Obama intends now that he is in the White House and not merely in the Senate.

Now comes current Majority Leader Harry Reid, the poster-boy for hypocrisy, who noted back then “the right to extend a debate is never more important than when one party controls both Congress and the White House. The filibuster serves as a check on power [to] preserve our limited government.” Perhaps, someone should remind Senator Reid that limitation on government is particularly important when the people are sending clear messages that they are strongly opposed to what the Congress is doing.

Current Secretary of State, but then Senator, Clinton then called on her GOP colleagues to go to Bush and tell him reconciliation is “a bridge too far” that “you have to restrain yourself Mr. President.” Senator Charles Schumer then spoke of using reconciliation as bringing us to “the precipice of a constitutional crisis” saying to the majority that if “you didn’t get your way 100% of the time [it is like] throwing a temper tantrum.” However, in 2005, a bipartisan group of senators avoided testing the limits of reconciliation by agreeing to an up or down vote on several of the nominees and the issue died down.

Backing away from the brink on health care may prove more difficult. The better part of a year has been devoted to what is seen as President Obama’s signature issue. Moreover, in 2008, the Democrats were handed, by recent historical standards, very significant majorities in Congress. They interpreted this not as a rejection of the exorbitant spending during the Bush Administration or weariness with an unpopular war, but as a mandate to make unprecedented changes to enlarge the role of government in our lives. Then candidate Obama boasted, “We are going to fundamentally transform America.” With regard to health care, the President and the Democratic Congress now propose to take over more than 17% of our economy just at a time when the public has become far more attuned to the enormous danger the country faces as a result of our ever-growing budget deficits and our gargantuan national debt.

Moreover, public opinion polls in the last year, along with several off-year elections, town hall meetings and the growing anti-incumbent sentiment make it clear that the American public does not want the 2,700-page bill now before Congress. In the face of this evidence, however, and because of the election of Scott Brown to the Senate, thereby denying the Democrats a veto proof majority, the majority party proposes to undo over 200 years of Senate procedure to narrowly enact into law a 2.5 trillion dollar measure. It is a proposal of no less importance or long lasting implications to our society than the enactment of Social Security and Medicare…. and it is being pushed down the throats of the American People under the entreaties of the same Democratic politicians who in 2005 railed against expansion of the reconciliation procedure on an issue nowhere near as far reaching. Is it any wonder, Americans have lost faith in their elected leaders?

Leave aside the merits, or lack thereof, of the health care legislation. The use of reconciliation to pass a bill of such magnitude and over the objections of most Americans represents what may be the greatest display of arrogance by Congress in American history. It shows a complete disregard for the Senate’s own rules whenever it suits them. If this process is used, can anyone give us an example of any legislation when it would be improper? Actually, come to think of it we can: whenever Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama find it to their partisan advantage. Does anyone see a resemblance, however, faint it might still be, to Hugo Chavez’s brand of democracy?

To add insult to injury, if the Democrats use reconciliation to advance their health care bill they would also have to engage in other legislative chicanery. The Senate, it seems, would have to pass a new and separate bill containing only amendments to its original bill in order to satisfy the House, which opposes the Senate bill as it stands. The House would then have to pass the Senate amendment bill and send that bill to the president for signature. Then the House would have to pass the first Senate bill and send it to the president for signature. The president would then have to sign the separate amendment into law first and then sign the original bill, in effect enacting into law an amendment to a law that did not yet officially exist. This sleight of hand would cross the eyes of any legitimate parliamentarian. Of course if the Senate Parliamentarian nixes the procedure, Vice President Biden, as the presiding officer of the Senate, can over-rule the Parliamentarian and the proverbial fix would be in.

We would argue that the elites of the liberal left believe they are smarter than everyone else and that the rest of the public simply won’t notice their perversion of acceptable procedure. But, the public does notice and it resents being steamrolled and taken for fools. The entire country ultimately sees and takes into account all the abuses of power that a tyrannical majority tries to get away with no matter who is in power.

Thus, the importance of this arcane little rule may have far more profound consequences than jamming a terrible and unpopular health care bill into law as bad and costly as that may be to the nation. What may very well be far worse is the price we pay in the loss of respect Americans have for their government. For more than two centuries this American experiment has endured, and indeed, strengthened in times of crisis because we trust its basic premise that it is founded on the rule of law. When that trust is stretched to the breaking point, we risk the emergence of even more fringe groups, conspiracy theorists, dangerous demagogues and the emergence of a segment of the population that simply will justify the evasion of what they perceive to be unjust law. Our system, at its core, depends upon the trust of the people. Loss of that trust would free a genie we may never be able to get back in the bottle.
by HAL GERSHOWITZ AND STEPHEN PORTER
Of Thee I Sing 1776

Study this USA Today chart and cry:

According to USA Today:

“Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.”

And let’s just add insult to injury:

“These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

So now when you put your kids to bed and they tell you that when they grow up they want to be a doctor and a veterinarian, your answer should be: “Honey, these are all great choices, but what you really want to be is a bureaucrat.”

Here and here are more arguments to convince your little ones.

We send our young adults to university to be educated in the ways of the world, we all know. Following that well-worn path, young James Schackleford decided on the publicly funded Florida Atlantic University for his edification and boy did he learn a lesson about modern education last week. Mr. Schackleford learned that the FAU administration prefers its campus Islamic terrorist supporters over representatives of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization. He also learned that it’s open season on all conservatives at our American universities.

At the Boca Raton campus Mr. Schackleford determined that his school needed a chapter of YAF, a 40-year-old conservative student organization, and so gathered a few like-minded students to meet with YAF State Director Daniel P. Diaz to discuss how they should proceed on organizing a chapter in the school.

As the few gathered were meeting, university administrator David Blank* burst into the room and demanded that they cease their meeting and vacate the room. According to the YAF press release, Mr. Schackleford asked for an additional 15 minutes to finish and Blank acquiesced to the request. But the 15-minute grant was short lived.

Upon hearing Diaz address the liberal bias on the FAU campus, Blank stopped the meeting again and boorishly ordered the students to vacate the meeting room. Blank the shut off the room lights, tore down the group’s promotional posters, and called the campus police.

It didn’t end there. According to YAF, the campus police arrived and began to harass the students and Mr. Diaz outside as they were in the process of leaving the campus. The police demanded to see student IDs and then menacingly followed YAF rep. Diaz to his car.

Police told Diaz that they were investigating a “possible trespassing charge,” and then loudly joked that Diaz “probably had tea bags hanging out the back of his car” as Diaz prepared to leave.

Diaz says that the whole incident is proof positive of why a conservative group is needed at Florida Atlantic University.

“If we were a Marxist, Socialist or Liberal group they would have let us finish our meeting, but the university officials and police harassed us because we are conservatives. This was the exact liberal bias on campus that I was discussing in the meeting that these future YAFers experienced firsthand. The university is no longer a place of open discussion and freedom of expression, but a breeding ground of intolerance for conservative beliefs.”

One question immediately comes to mind over this incident: did student organizer Schackleford and YAF representative Diaz officially reserve a room at FAU for their informal meeting? I asked Diaz this very question.

Diaz told me that since it was an informal meeting that should have been over rather quickly, Mr. Schackleford did not think that he needed to officially reserve a room through the university staff. In fact, according to Diaz, himself a former FAU student, such unscheduled meetings occur all the time.

No we did not reserve a room. When I was a student at the university when a room wasn’t being occupied one could go in and meet or study, and as long they left before the next scheduled group arrived they would be ok. After asking around that is how it still is.

In retrospect it was an obvious lapse in judgment not to officially reserve a room. Or perhaps they should have met off campus.

However, that small lapse in judgment does not absolve this oppressive, over-the-top reaction that university administrator David Blank exhibited. After all, not long ago Florida Atlantic University hosted a whole slew of Islamic terror supporters on campus. In 2006, for instance, the Muslim students group at FAU hosted an event at which appeared Hamas and Hezbollah supporter, Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan; alleged Neo-Nazi, William Baker; and potential co-conspirator of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Siraj Wahhaj.

Apparently it’s perfectly O.K., as far as the FAU administration is concerned, to have Islamofascist terror given full-throated support on its campus but it is a serious no-no to talk about organizing a patriotic American conservative student’s organization there.

Perhaps Mr. Diaz is right in his contention that a YAF chapter is sorely needed at Florida Atlantic University?

*David Blank appears to be the Event Planning Specialist for the Student Union at FAU. He can be reached at dblank@fau.edu.

Building on a previous post exposing that Harry Reid took the existing House-passed bill, H.R. 3590, entitled the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009 and replaced the existing bill language, via an amendment, with the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill–creating a new H.R. 3590–the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by Senate).

I stand by my assertion that Reid took H.R. 3590–knowing that all bills that raise revenue must originate in the House per the Constitution–as evidenced by the actual bill text dated December 24, 2009 seen here in a screen shot and his trick:

This further confirms that the March 18th House healthcare vote is the final vote for passage; however, there are still many pundits who just don’t comprehend this fact.

And here is the code red alert and why this warning should be taken seriously. As written:

After a measure passes in the House, it goes to the Senate for consideration. A bill must pass both bodies in the same form before it can be presented to the President for signature into law. If the Senate changes the language of the measure, it must return to the House for concurrence or additional changes. After a measure has been passed in identical form by both the House and Senate, it is considered “enrolled.” It is sent to the President who may sign the measure into law, veto it and return it to Congress, let it become law without signature, or at the end of a session, pocket-veto it. emphasis mine

Reid gutted H.R. 3590’s original language and replaced it with healh care bill, so the bill must go back to the House. But, does anyone think if Obama has healthcare legislation that has passed both the House and Senate in identical form that he would not sign it? Furthermore, why would the reconciliation process even come into play–except to be used as the bait for passage by the House. The talk of reconciliation is the deceptive diversion to create outrage, deflect the true intentions, and hide the Reid trick from the American people.

As I’ve stated before, Americans need to understand the devastating significance of the House vote on the Senate healthcare bill set for March 18th. The Democrats have–by design–created the perfect storm to take over the US healthcare system, while providing an ideal distraction–reconciliation.

These deceptive practices, which may seem like everyday occurrences in Congress, can be summed up as the ultimate betrayal by the Democrats against the American people in order to ram through their progressive, socialistic, freedom-stripping policies–all for the Holy Grail of healthcare and the prize of total control of the American people. Healthcare is the basic necessity that will cause Americans to kneel at the almighty throne of the federal government and become completely fearful of not getting proper care, referrals, testing, surgery, and prescriptions, among others.

In addition, I don’t think that the House will hold the bill to work out differences between the two chambers as is being floated. While it may be an optional maneuver, the Democrats need the tax increases to take effect now so they can offset some of their rabid spending. And will the Democrats make good on the promise to fix the problems in the bill as the House and Senate appear to have an inherent distrust?

The House Democrats have a difficult choice of party politics or the will of the American people. The American people have made their will known–kill the bill.

This latest example of mainstream media fraud comes from St. Louis, and features coverage of the so called “Coffee Party”.

The following clip is only 2 minutes long, so watch all of it, and then look at the images below to understand why this video is nothing short of media prostitution for their progressive cause.

This report attempts to paint a picture of a moderate, open minded movement in the process of conducting early, friendly gatherings.

:25 – Brewing yes, but steamed? Well, not if they can help it.

:45 – Leaders of this group say civility is their first priority

:55 – We’re not looking to balance extremes. When we sit down for a cup of coffee, we’re not at each other’s throats.

1:37 – Organizers say they are just volunteers, and invite those with different opinions to join their effort to swallow their pride in the interest of progress.

1:44 – [Organizer] I don’t particularly think it is useful to sit at a table with only people who see things the way I do.

But context is everything, and this report ignores some glaring facts which betray the lies being pushed in this story.

The reporter doesn’t bother to identify it, but the meeting took place in a coffee shop called Mokabe’s. More than one of your Founding Bloggers has been in this establishment more than once. And while the coffee is very good, and they still believe in the freedom of adults to smoke indoors, it is by far one of the most politicized eating establishments we have ever seen.

:44 seconds into the clip, you will see the iconic Barack Obama image hanging on the wall in the background. That’s tame for this establishment.

Below are a couple of snapshots of some of the other political paraphernalia on display, which provide the proper context for the claims of open mindedness being made by the organizers of this event, and parroted by their mainstream lackeys.

Boy, nothing says political inclusiveness like a Cheney/Satan bumper sticker (pictured above).

Either all of this crap was taken down before the meeting, or the “reporter” who covered this PR firm packaged media opportunity has a bit of a political blind spot.

They might as well have conducted this meeting in an SEIU meeting hall, or DNC headquarters.

As anyone who has any recollection of the aftermath of the 2008 election cycle knows, the GOP is hopelessly behind on the internet, cannot possibly marshal any web resources on its behalf because it’s stuck in the 19th century politically and will be eclipsed by the forces of Web 2.0 as surely as Democrats were eclipsed by talk radio.

Or at least, that’s what the Mainstream Media force-fed to people after the 2008 election cycle. Naturally, like most Mainstream Media memes, it was an abject lie, but still, somehow the fear worked its way around establishment GOP circles to the point that a veritable avalanche of hysteria crashed down on party activists. “Why, if the internet swings to the Left,” many supposedly “concerned conservative” commentators opined, “then surely our restrictive, overly ideological makeup will make it impossible for us to attract anyone!”

One can’t blame them for buying an argument which was made with such nauseating frequency. Yet, as recent events since the Obama election have shown, the idea that conservatism cannot capture the internet is not at all accurate. What few people may realize, however, is why this argument was so inaccurate, and more importantly, why it took a Messianic bumbler like Obama to expose its falsehood. With respect, therefore, I must disagree with my fellow contributor’s rejection of youth culture as something irrevocably tainted by liberalism, though I understand his frustration entirely.

However, as I mean to prove, the current youth ethos embodied by internet subculture is fundamentally conservative in character, even if its denizens have not yet caught on to that fact. In order to prove this, I will draw on knowledge that I have gained both as an avid internet user and as a member of a generation for whom digital communication is a second language – knowledge which would require investigating not only the harmless environs of Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, but also the darkest, least talked about nether-regions of the internet – websites which produce 90% of the internet’s cultural references, and yet are so riddled with perversity that their own patrons take it as an unspoken rule never to talk about them.

Not that these sites have gone unnoticed – indeed, some of their less savory exploits are infamous. For instance, on September 22, 2008, National Review blogger Andrew Grossman named one such website in an article dealing with the hacking of Governor Sarah Palin’s email account: “According to reports, one of a group of online delinquents who hang out on a message board called ‘/b/’ on a site called 4chan — they’re known as ‘b-tards’ — discovered that Governor Palin uses Yahoo! for her e-mail. He was able to reset the account’s password using information gleaned from Google searches: Palin’s zip code, her birthdate, and where she met her spouse…After he posted the details of his exploit on 4chan, a slew of forum denizens accessed the account to root through Palin’s correspondence.”

Now, to be sure, there are those among the “b-tards” whom Grossman describes who would no doubt fit the description of “delinquent,” but what no one out there seems to realize is that, were it not for websites like the aforementioned /b/, not only would countless recognizable internet memes not exist, but also, at least one influential political figure would arguably not have nearly the level of recognition he currently enjoys.

I refer to the truest example of an internet mobilizing politician, Dr. Ron Paul of Texas. Though many people only know Paul as a vaguely conspiracy-minded, neo-isolationist anti-Federal Reserve crusader, what they may not know is that one of Paul’s many titles is “President of the Internets,” (WARNING!!! EXTREMELY NSFW)  a title which was bestowed on him early in the 2008 election cycle by the 4chan-affiliated wiki website, Encyclopedia Dramatica. As a result, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica (or ED, as its frequent patrons know it), “Paul placed FIRST (37%) in the MySpace primary, ahead of Huckabee (18%) and Giuliani (16%).” And though 90% of what gets posted on Encyclopedia Dramatica is freely acknowledged by its readers as ironic, intentionally offensive nonsense, when it comes to meticulously documenting the evolution of internet phenomena, it is one of the most reliable sources available, if you can stomach the NSFW images and extremely offensive language.

Alright, you may be wondering, but so what? Even if a bunch of rabid anarchy-mongering internet crazies turned out for Paul, what does that have to do with the GOP’s power on the internet? The answer is that, even if you accept the framing of such sites as hotbeds of craziness and rabid disorder, there is a method to their madness. As for what that madness is, once you get past the persistent ironic glorifications of perversity and take a look at how the people who frequent these sites actually behave, and more importantly, who they target, it becomes abundantly clear that not only are the values of such sites fundamentally conservative, but that their communications strategies, even if toned down for a mainstream audience, are nothing less than the perfect weapons for disassembling the Obama Presidency.

If this seems strange, it shouldn’t. In fact, much as the highly controversial and obscene Comedy Central show South Park gave rise to a populist, pro-National Security, anti-political correctness breed of young Republican in the early 2000s, I would argue that the new decade could see a similar rise of iconoclastic, libertarian, anti-political correctness sentiment among what I would term “4chan Republicans.” There are three reasons why this could easily happen, which I will explore in detail below.

Firstly, as already alluded, the current administration embodies everything internet subculture hates. For instance, some of the most common targets for internet backlash are people suffering from cases of what is termed “unwarranted self-importance.” There is perhaps no term which has been better coined to describe the current President’s outlook on life and governance. Billing oneself as the sole causal factor in reducing climate change and expecting one’s personal preferences to constitute a compelling reason to move the Olympics are hardly signs of humility. Moreover, one element of internet subculture which is persistently invoked is the drive for free expression (often of the most politically incorrect variety possible), unhampered by restrictions of either an economic or governmental variety, and certainly without regard for offended parties.

The Democratic party, dominated as it is by multiculturally-minded quasi-socialists, many of  whom have arguably been long since emasculated by sensitivity training, speech codes and other cornerstones of “progressive” victim-mongering, could not possibly provide a satisfactory home to such people. In fact, judging by the actions of internet goons, some of the Democrats’ most treasured constituencies have already fallen afoul of them.

And who are these targets? Besides the one conservative/mainstream example of Sarah Palin (who has not been pestered since), the answer is that the targets for repeated attacks are, by and large, people who most of wider society considers undesirable, many of whom are shielded from more official criticism by the wall of political correctness. These targets include such revolting examples as feminist bloggers who muse openly about aborting their teenage sons because all men are “potential rapists,” stalking vloggers who draw terrifying cartoon pornography of themselves with female friends, open white supremacists and, perhaps most infamously, the Church of Scientology. While one can disapprove of the tactics used against these institutions/individuals (some of which make the much vilified “enhanced interrogation techniques” look positively benign by comparison), it is worth noting that ultimately, the power of internet goons lies in their ability to enforce social norms against the most flagrantly vile members of society through private sanction – something which conservatives from Russell Kirk and Irving Kristol to Tom Coburn and Dick Cheney have endorsed. What’s more, at the point where their targets/members actually run afoul of the law, these users have historically turned the relevant information over to law enforcement, suggesting a desire to be hard on crime.

In short, unlike previous generations, when all the forms of counterculture have swung to the Left and emboldened the forces of chaos and social subversion, the darkest, most countercultural corners of the internet are possessed of a singular desire for spontaneous and brutally enforced social order. What’s more, their allergy to self-importance and the authoritarianism of victimhood marks them as prime targets for liberalism’s self-appointed multicultural targets, and as potential sleeper cells in the culture war. Given the power of these sites to define internet subculture, rally donations, win polls and crown previous third tier candidates as prophets of an insurgent movement, it seems indisputable that the conservative movement has much to gain if it only learns to speak in their language.

In an interesting turn of events this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced by her caucus to pry Rep. Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) Ways and Means gavel out of his hands and throw Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) under the bus. Then,  she cut Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) loose late Friday afternoon, pressuring Massa to step down just days after allegations surfaced against the one-term Congressman. Rep. Massa will resign his House seat effective Monday, March 9 at 5pm.

Through all of the months of drama of Rangel’s ethics violations, tax evasion, and abuses, Pelosi has stood by Rangel–up to the very end–even being quoted as saying:

After huddling with Rangel for 45 minutes, Pelosi initially said, “No comment” when asked if Rangel remains panel chairman.

She later added, “I guess he is still chair of Ways and Means…”

Although Rep. Rangel has been forced to “temporarily” step down as chair, there have been just about no calls for him to resign his seat. So, what triggered Peolsi’s intolerance to Massa? It appears that she was capitalizing on an event to banish Massa from the House. Could it be that Massa had the audacity to actually represent his constituents and vote Nay on the House healthcare takeover bill?

Keep in mind, Rangel has actually been found to have violated House rules by the House Ethics Committee. The charges surrounding Rangel have the whiff of serious public corruption. And there are even more serious allegations against Rangel still under investigation. It’s interesting to note Pelosi’s silence on these and other ethics charges against other members, to name a few. We don’t even fully know what Massa is alleged to have done and there’s been no announcement of any formal investigation into Massa, much less any findings of fact. According to her own statements, Pelosi only heard about the allegations this week, so why the urgency to force Massa out of office immediately? After all, Maxine Waters and Laura Richardsonand so many others for much more serious ethics violations.

Of course, the other members under ethics clouds are reliable “yes” votes on whatever iteration of ObamaCare Pelosi brings to the floor. Massa was a reliable “no”. But, pushing Massa, obviously, reduces the number of Representatives in the House. Massa’s constituents may no longer have a voice or a say on one of the more sweeping legislative proposals in decades, but, with Massa out, the magic number of votes needed to ram healthcare through and get a bill to Obama’s desk is 216.

We knew Pelosi would ‘pull out all the stops’ to pass health care. It seems she’ll pull out her own members too.

Last Thursday, February 25th, the Obama Administration staged a ‘Health Care Summit’ at Blair House. It was to be the President’s President “Moses Moment,” when e would part the seas and bring the Republicans, Democrats and Our country together and get everyone on board his “much maligned” Federally Run Health Care Program. (ObamaCare 2.0). His approach would be to “Listen,” particularly to The Republicans and Independents, and then part the Seas of Conflict and pass through to the Promised Land of a compromise. Well, it was over, finally over, after 7 hours of heavy winds. The event showed Obama less like a Moses parting the Red Sea, and more like a deadly tsunami poised to wreak havoc on American shores.

On his walk from The White House to The Blair House earlier in the morning, Mr. Obama declared he was going “to listen.” He listened, but not so much. When the meeting was over it turned out that his soliloquy lasted over 122 minutes, The Democrats spoke 135 minutes, and The Republicans were “allowed” to speak for 111 minutes (30% of the entire meeting). So it is official, he is not The Listener in Chief. When asked about his lack of listening ability and his penchant for wanting to listen to his own voice, Mr. Obama responded, “I don’t count my time because I am…The President.” This is the official 2010 version of “Let Them Eat Cake.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, the week’s health care rollout did not start off well, when on Monday he posted a new ObamaCare 2.0 on The White House website. This Plan was eerily similar to a “worst of” compilation of excerpts from the House and Senate Health Care Plans. This Plan did not have any input from Republicans or Independents. Isn’t it odd that ObamaCare 2.0 was posted on the site — without a Press Conference? This Administration has a Press Conference when he sneezes, but no such fanfare for what the Administration claims is the most important domestic issue. The teleprompter must have developed Swine Flu, or maybe Mr. Obama held off on the press event because he would have to answer questions on HIS health care plan from that pesky press.

If Mr. Obama were sincere about input from The Republicans and Independents at “The Parting of The Seas Meeting,” why not wait until after the meeting and incorporate some of their ideas in HIS plan? Because, of course, the meeting was merely a media spectacle designed to give the illusion (a poor one at that) of potential compromise.

ObamaCare 2.0 is troubling on many fronts. ObamaCare is a combination of the House and Senate Bills, which takes control of every American’s health care life. This plan would not improve the current system, and is fatally flawed because it:

• Rations and denies access to healthcare. Denying access to healthcare is the most inhumane and unethical means of cutting costs;
• Costs $1 TRILLION ( $100 Billion more than The Senate Bill) ;
• Creates over 110 Federal Agencies, commissions and boards;
• Creates The Health Insurance Rate Authority….a direct violation of States’ Rights;
• Establishes a “ Comprehensive Database” on Americans;
• Establishes Individual and Employer Mandates ( Mr. Obama’s own Chair of Council of Economic Advisors has stated that this alone would cost 5.5 Million jobs….more unemployment. );
• Institutes $748 Billion in new taxes;
• Cuts Medicare by $500 Billion, over a period when 30% MORE Americans will be added to Medicare rolls, (You do the math…);
• Imposes $136 Billion in tax hikes on working families making LESS THAN $250,000 (Americans for Tax Reform Analysis);
• Ends Medicare Advantage Program for Seniors and forces them to a more expensive plan with less benefits;
• Applies Medicare Tax to unearned income;
• Increases Medicare Payroll Tax from 2.95 to 3.8%; and
• Increases unfunded mandates on every State.

To make matters worse, when The Congressional Budget Office was asked to review and “score” ObamaCare 2.0, its response was: “The CBO can not score or evaluate the plan due to a lack of detail.”

In the final five minutes of “The Parting of The Seas” Meeting , Mr. Obama looked to the Republican and Independent side of the room and implied that if they did not sign on to ObamaCare 2.0, He and The Democratic Majority would “get it done without them.” In other words, he would resort to Reconciliation, jamming it through Congress on a procedural gimmick. The Democrats cannot even win the issue with their own dominant majority, for a very good reason. They cannot even convince their own Democrat rank and file that they know best, when the American Public has made it clear that they do NOT want this Plan.

The meeting turned out not to be a Parting of the Seas event, but appears to have been the prelude to a tsunami that could damage our country, wash away our rights and liberties, and adversely impact every American. He seems determined, come hell or high water, to ram his way through. Let’s move to higher ground.

In the midst of the radical social atmosphere of the 1960s, a group of Chicagoans, Ron Grzywinski, Milton Davis, James Fletcher, and Mary Houghton, came together to found South Shore Bank in the 1973 with a goal to provide loans to minority owned small businesses.

Ron Grzywinski had banking experience with Hyde Park Bank. Milton Davis was a University of Chicago employee and the Chicago leader of the Congress of Radical Equality (CORE).  James Fletcher had previously worked in President Johnson’s administration as part of the internal transition team and with the Citizen’s Action Program in the Office of Economic Opportunity.  Mary Houghton, at that time, was running a daycare program for low income families.

These four individuals had often met to discuss ways in which they could help the needs of urban society by becoming a financial intermediary for social development and community actions. These discussions led to the creation of a minority lending program at Hyde Park Bank. With the influence of Al Raby, a Chicago black rights leader, they looked for the next step to continue their goals of providing loans to small businesses in neighborhood development. Grzywinski stated, ” community-based organizations appeared to be the only organizations in society that cared about the broad range of needs that exist in urban communities”.

In 1969, Grzywinski left Hyde Bank to pursue this goal while the other three individuals continued working with the Hyde Bank initiative.   In the early 1970s, the South Shore National Bank on the South Side of Chicago was disinvested. In the 1960s, the primarily white South Shore neighborhood had transformed  into a 70% black neighborhood as whites left for the suburbs. Along with this racial transformation, banks left the area, leaving only 3 banks to serve 78,000 people.  South Shore Bank was one of these banks and appealed to be moved, but their request was denied.  Grzywinski formed the Illinois Neighborhood Development Corporation (INDC), and he and fellow investors began to raise the needed capital to purchase the South Shore National Bank in August of 1973. INDC purchased the bank, with its $38 million in deposits, for $3.2 million. It later became known as Shorebank Corporation in 1986. Davis and Houghton left the Hyde Park Bank to work with the new bank while Fletcher stayed a few more years at Hyde Park Bank to run the minority lending program.  Stanley Hallet was also instrumental in laying the ground work for the early stages of the banks. Hallet was very active in community organizing and urban planning, working with both Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King, Jr.

First Decade (1973-1983)

The bank’s first few years were largely seen as a failure. The holding company, INDC, lost money in the first 10 years of operation, and the bank itself lost money in its first year. The bank began earning a profit in 1975, and in the 1970s, the founders began to feel that the bank was not sufficient to create community development. Two other organizations were created to facilitate community development in 1977: The Neighborhood Institute (Shorebank Neighborhood Institute), a non-profit entity providing education, job training and tenant services and City Lands (Shorebank Development), a real estate development business. Fletcher left Hyde Bank to head up the Neighborhood Institute.  During this time, founder Grzysinski spoke before Congress advocating for the Community Reinvestment Act, aimed at preventing discriminatory practices of banks and encouraging them to lend to low and moderate income individuals.  President Carter nominated Grzysinski to his National Consumer Bank Board of Directors in 1979.

The 1980s brought increased success for the bank. It expanded to other Chicago neighborhoods and provided consulting work for the Southern Development Bancorporation in Arkansas with the financial backing of Winthrop Rockefeller Corp. and the political support of then Governor Bill Clinton. The Arkansas project established rural development banks in Arkansas and another set of two-pronged non-profit and profit entities aimed at economic and real estate development. The 1980s also brought about a time of vast expansion for the bank.  It established a commercial banking center, and their Neighborhood Institute and development business completed housing projects in 1981-1982. In the 1980s, the bank became part of the Small Business Association’s list of Preferred Lending Programs and a Certified Lender.

Second Decade (1983-1993)

In 1983, Shorebank extended its influence overseas with INDC providing consult to Grameen Bank, a bank providing microfinancing to the rural poor in Bangladesh.  The corporation also began administering funds to small businesses in Poland in 1990, which then became the launch pad for further international work under Shorebank Advisory Services.

The corporation also continued to provide consultation services in America with the Southern Development Corporation in Arkansas and opened other branches in different Chicago neighborhoods.  In 1991, the bank began to partner with Northern Michigan University to create Northern Economic Initiatives Corporation as well as a for profit arm, Shorebank BIDC, to provide assistance to local businesses.  In 1993, Shorebank began to work with Ecotrust, a Pacific Northwest environmental organization.

Third Decade (1993-2003)

With an increased emphasis of the Community Reinvestment Act under President Clinton, the bank raised $7-9 million in equity capital. Founder Grzywinski, who was instrumental in assisting then-Governor Clinton with the development of rural development banks in Arkansas during the 1980s, was present when Clinton signed the Community Development Financial Institutions Act in 1994. The bank expanded its influence throughout the country with Shorebank Cleveland and its nonprofit counterpart founded in 1994-1995. This bank began to achieve profitability in 2001. Shorebank Detroit was formed in 1998 following initial work done by the Detroit Development Bancorporation and the two non bank contributing affiliates: Shorebank Development and Shorebank Enterprise.  Following their work with Ecotrust in 1993, Shorebank and Ecotrust founded Shorebank Pacific in 1997 to provide services for businesses in the Pacific Northwest rain forests.  In 1995, Shorebank merged with Indecorp, a large, minority-owned bank holding company.

Abroad, the bank’s influence spread via its work through Shorebank Advisory Services (SAS). To date, SAS has provided services to Russia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, India, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Northern Ireland. Shorebank worked with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to provide small business loans in Russia and the Bulgarian-American Enterprise Fund to provide loans in Bulgaria. In 1997, the bank was awarded a $15 million contract from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide loans in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

In 2001, Bob Nash, who later worked as Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager during her 2008 presidential run, became Vice Chairman of the bank.  In the early 2000s, the bank began to re-brand itself, changing its mission statement to “let’s change the world” and calling all non-profit entities ShoreBank Enterprise (with the exception of Northern Enterprise).

The Most Recent Years (2004-Present)

In 2004, ShoreCap Exchange was launched, which provides overseas technical services to areas that receive financial services from ShoreBank. ShoreCap exchange has client banks in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Uganda, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, Gambia, Cambodia, and Mongolia. In 2008, its international influence expanded to Belarus, acting as a partner in opening the Belarusian Bank for Small Businesses. Also, the International arm of its operation raised $26.2 million in debt capital to provide microfinance loans in Tanzania, Uganda, and Southern Sudan.

This most recent era also brought the mergers of the Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago branches. In 2006, Shorebank Advisory Services was renamed Shorebank International, Ltd. The Center for Financial Services Innovation, a non-profit entity, began offering services for underbanked consumers and loans to promising businesses. In 2007, Shorebank Enterprise Pacific merged with Cascadia Loan Fund, becoming Shorebank Enterprise Cascadia. This enterprise was awarded $40 million in tax credits from the stimulus bill for low income and developing communities in 2009. This allocation was one of three such awards between 2004 and 2009.

The Midwest bank acquired the Greater Chicago bank, spreading its influence to the Latino community in 2006. The next year, the bank began to refinance subprime mortgages through its Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Loans and increased the number of branches throughout the Chicago area. The MacArthur Foundation provided funds to support the risk of its loan funds.  In 2008, even amongst the failing of many banks, ShoreBank increased capital by more than $30 million.

In May 2009, Shorebank received $35 million in New Market Tax Credits for green building projects. In July of 2009, Shorebank was slapped with a cease and desist order from the FDIC and Illinois Department of Banking because of delinquent loans. In August, the bank was given more than half a million dollars to help provide microloans to nonprofit community businesses.  In November, CEO Joseph Hasten resigned, and George Surgeon took his place.

As recently as February 2010, Shorebank had reported more than $50 million dollars in losses. Such losses have prompted Congressional representatives to ask the state to essentially bail out the flailing bank, which possesses only a one star rating on bankrate.com.

For more information on the history of Shorebank, see here and here.

This week (March 3, 2010) was the deadline Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) set for Mark Crisson, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association (APPA), to explain why APPA is urging Senators to support Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Congressional Review Act resolution to veto the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The Senate may vote on the Murkowski resolution as soon as next week.

Now, aside from the merits of the issue, which I’ll get into in a moment, Waxman and Markey’s behavior is out of line. Waxman and Markey (W/M) are Members of the House of Representatives. What business is it of theirs if the APPA lobbies Senators about a bill pending in the Senate? Senators can conduct their own inquiries without any assistance from W/M. And why didn’t W/M copy Sen. Murkowski or at least Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) on their Feb. 25 letter to Mr. Crisson? Failure to “cc” any of the principals in the Senate flouts one of the most basic rules of legislative courtesy.

Besides being busybodies, Waxman and Markey are bullies.

In their letter to Crisson, Waxman and Markey demand that he “clarify exactly APPA’s position on EPA’s scientific finding,” and either “provide the scientific basis” for disputing it, or explain why APPA is urging Senators to disapprove the finding if it has no scientific “bases” for disputing it.

There is in fact a strong scientific basis for disputing EPA’s endangerment finding. Peabody Energy presents the evidence in exquisite detail in their petition for a reconsideration of the endangerment finding. The basis that eludes Waxman and Markey may be summarized in one word: Climategate.

EPA’s endangerment finding relies heavily on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Scientists at the heart of the Climategate scandal include several lead authors and contributors to the IPCC reports. They massaged data to produce pre-determined conclusions, ignored data that did not fit into a “nice tidy story line,” conspired to bias the peer-reviewed literature by preventing “skeptics” from publishing, and violated freedom of information laws to prevent critics from checking their data and methods.

These behaviors produced a secretive, agenda-driven process that flouts EPA’s own standards of “transparency and openness,” making the IPCC reports unsuitable as a basis for EPA policy decisions.

However, although the scientific shortcomings of EPA’s endangerment finding are serious, Mr. Crisson need not engage in this debate, because the Murkowski resolution does not take a stand on EPA’s “science” one way or the other.

W/M would like nothing better than to spin the Murkowski resolution as a benighted attempt to determine scientific truth by voting. Ironically, W/M do much the same by continually invoking the alleged “consensus of scientists,” as if a head count could settle scientific controversies. But that’s a topic for another day.

My free (and unsolicited) advice to Mr. Crisson – and anyone else debating opponents of the Murkowski resolution – is to clarify what the resolution is and isn’t. It is not a referendum on EPA’s “science.” Rather, it is a referendum on whether bureaucrats with a vested interest in expanding their power, aided and abetted by trial lawyers and eco-pressure groups with no political accountability to the American people, should make climate and energy policy for the nation. It is a referendum on the constitutional propriety of EPA dealing itself into a position to implement regulatory policies Congress never approved when it enacted and amended the Clean Air Act.

A bit of background is in order here. If allowed to stand, the endangerment finding will compel EPA to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. That, in turn, will automatically make carbon dioxide (CO2) “subject to regulation” under the Clean Air Act’s pre-construction and operating permit programs. As even EPA acknowledges, stretching those programs to include CO2 would lead to “absurd results” manifestly contrary to congressional intent.

For example, EPA would have to apply pre-construction permitting requirements to tens of thousands of previously non-regulated small business, and operating permit requirements to millions. The permitting programs would crash under the own weight, freezing construction activity and thrusting countless businesses into legal limbo during the worst recession in 50 years.

The endangerment finding is also precedent for economy-wide regulation of greenhouse gases under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program. Logically, EPA would have to set the NAAQS for CO2 below current atmospheric levels. Even a global depression lasting several decades would not be enough to bring America (and the world) into attainment with such a standard, yet the Clean Air Act obligates states to attain “primary” (health-based) NAAQS within five or at most 10 years.

To have its cake and eat it (regulate CO2 without hammering small business and igniting a political backlash), EPA proposes in its Tailoring Rule to exempt small sources of CO2 from the permitting programs. This breach of the separation of powers may or may not survive judicial scrutiny. But even if it does, EPA’s proposed small business protections would terminate in six years. Moreover, the Tailoring Rule in no way reduces the threat of NAAQS regulation. The Murkowski resolution, on the other hand, would nip all this mischief in the bud.

How? The Murkowski resolution would veto the endangerment finding’s “legal force and effect.” And that is all it would do. It takes absolutely no position on the scientific validity of EPA’s reasoning or conclusions, as anyone can see who actually takes the trouble to read the text, which is only one sentence long.

And, just in case you’re wondering, Sen. Murkowski is not a global warming skeptic, nor is she opposed in principle to greenhouse gas regulation. She simply believes that climate policy is too important to be made by anyone except the people’s elected representatives.

It is thus a complete misunderstanding to claim, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and others do, that the Murkowski amendment is equivalent to Congress voting to overturn the Surgeon General’s report in 1964 finding that cigarette smoking causes cancer. The Surgeon General’s report was simply that – an assessment of the scientific literature. It had zero legal force or effect. In fact, the Surgeon General proposed no remedies at all. It was Congress, not the Surgeon General or any executive agency that, in 1965, required cigarette packages to carry a health warning, and that later prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio.

If the endangerment finding were simply an assessment of the scientific literature, the Senate would have no business voting on it. But it is much more than that. It is the setup for EPA to take control of vast portions of the economy. It is the trigger for a cascade of regulations potentially more costly than any climate bill or treaty Congress has considered and either rejected or declined to enact or ratify.

W/M need to chill. Whether anyone – the APPA, other trade associations, or Members of Congress – agrees or disagrees with EPA’s “science” is irrelevant. Do W/M support politically accountable policymaking or bureaucratic end runs around the democratic process? Do they think EPA should be allowed to amend the Clean Air Act and violate the separation of powers to avoid the political fallout from regulatory excesses (“absurd results”) that the agency’s “science” would unleash on the American economy?

Finally, do W/M favor establishing NAAQS for CO2?  If not, just how do they propose to avoid this “absurd result” if the endangerment finding is allowed to stand?

Too bad W/M get to ask all the questions and don’t have to answer any. Their questions are designed to bully and intimidate – and distract public attention from serious threats to our economy and our democracy, threats the Murkowski resolution would remove.

A study released Tuesday by the American Consumer Institute contains some bad news for proponents of net neutrality. Whereas advocates of “open internet” rules often argue that the institution of the policy is necessary to preserve innovation and would benefit consumers, the study finds that “new Internet regulations, including those now under consideration by the FCC, would restrict technology advances, innovation and job growth.”

The study further notes that “broadband network providers are a leading source of both innovation and new investment in Internet infrastructures.” Innovation and investment are often seen by tech policy observers as integral efforts that will help ensure that a broader base of consumers benefits from high-quality broadband service.

Study co-author Larry F. Darby explicitly tied proposed net neutrality regulations to a likely diminution in “motive” that would, under present circumstances, propel Internet companies to innovate and invest. Said Darby, “All indications are that these well intended regulations would dampen both incentives and opportunities for firms in the Internet ecosystem to continue to invest and to embed new technologies in core networks on which downstream applications and content providers depend.”

A recent study by Entropy Economics also indicated that contrary to assertions by “open internet” advocates, net neutrality would not increase jobs. Analysis of the effect of proposed net neutrality regulation comes as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski continues to pursue its implementation.

My late father had a phrase to describe the arrogant intellectuals unacquainted with real life who foist their insane ideas on the “unenlightened” rest of us: The phrase was “educated idiots.”

Sadly, today his words ring ever truer. To witless:

(In what is rarely a good sign) a New York Times blog reports the Harvard-based Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has determined fuel prices must rise significantly to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.  Thus, in the name of discredited Leftist psuedo-science, your gas prices could reach $7 a gallon.

In this tepid spat of Think Tanks vs. Gas Tanks, we glean two things: these researchers have recession-proof jobs; and they are unconcerned you don’t.

How else to explain these researchers’ cavalier demand that your shrinking family budget must get smaller and your job must become more tenuous all so Goddess Gaia can keep her cool?

In our real world, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2009 annual summary reports that unemployment rates rose last year in all regions, divisions, and states.  And nowhere is the pain of this recessed economy deeper than in my Michigan, which had the largest increase in unemployment percentage from last year (5.3%); and has held the nation’s highest unemployment rate since this recession began (at times exceeding 15%).

In Michigan and across the country, hard-working Americans cannot afford a government-dictated increase in fuel prices or any other energy source. This simple fact is lost upon the educated idiots who egotistically believe they can control the weather by hiking your taxes and cost of living; taking your job; and dictating your life.

Ergo, the inaugural Educated Idiots Award goes to the Harvard-based Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. While you can still afford to do so, feel free to honk your displeasure at them as they segue into work.

To nominate the next Educated Idiots Award, please visit www.mccotterrocks.com or emailnominate@mccotterrocks.com.

Instapundit points to this video interview of a Berkeley student representative explaining why it’s okay for students to riot in the streets in the name of their cause.

We posted the raw video of the rioting here.

What’s so interesting about this interview is that during two separate moments, the student representative displays an astounding level of liberal-Progressive hypocrisy.

We have taken the liberty of transcribing these two sections below.

Moment number 1 – (2:00)

HOST: Describe to me what exactly what you guys are going through that just absolutely causes this outrage.

STUDENT: Absolutely. Well um in the fall the UC regents voted in a %32 fee increase to over 10000 a year for in-state tuition. This at a time that they are cutting classes, letting in fewer student from in-state and more students from out of state. Um, so effectively we are closing off the campus, making it less accessible to people, and those who are here are getting less out of their education.

That complaint doesn’t sound too immigrant friendly. Is she saying that Berkeley students only want immigrants from other states and countries just as long as they go to private schools?

Moment number 2 – (3:45)

HOST: Do you have to necessarily resort to violence? I mean in some way your message that you’re trying to send to the regents to an audience out there kinda gets tarnished by the fact that violence has now erupted out.

STUDENT: Well, I think that uh, nobody planned what happened uh early morning on Friday. That that something like that just isn’t even something that becomes planned. But that anger erupts when this situation has been building so long, that that’s what happens. I would really back away from trying to seperate good protesters from bad protesters. It really divides the movement. and um it hurts us trying to get to our final goals.

Just so we have this straight. Tea Partiers peacefully rallying in support of smaller government…those are Nazi racist bigots.

Progressive liberals rioting in the streets of California…that’s acceptable, and shouldn’t be used to paint the whole movement in a negative light.

Change. Hope.

Let’s be clear, the creation of a federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) is a liberal’s dream.  The agency would have the power to regulate businesses of any size. The House passed legislation, authored by Barney Frank, would as Rep Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) put it in remarks before the House Financial Services Committee “create a brand new, large draconian federal agency with new sweeping powers.”

The bill came to the Senate where Senator Shelby stood strong on principle and won. Negotiations broke down and the Democrats’ big government dream was all but dead. No new agency and (on this issue at least) no new vast government powers.

Then Sen. Corker entered the fray and took it upon himself to negotiate a deal to revive the CFPA with the master of the financial crisis Sen. Dodd.

Before Corker got started, Shelby spokesperson Jonathan Graffeo warned that “Republicans on the committee have several principles upon which they’ve tried to negotiate with Dodd, to no avail” and that “If (Corker) adheres to those principles, he will likely find himself at an impasse as well.”

But now we suddenly hear that Corker and Dodd are nearing a deal. Apparently Dodd wants the agency to be independent but knows such a proposal would never get 60 votes.  His compromise with Corker is reported to move the regulatory super agency to house it in the Federal Reserve.

Conservatives are asking themselves, what difference does it make where they put the desks? And why are we even negotiating to have desks? What portions of the CFPA House bill were so important and critical that Corker felt compelled to revive it? And perhaps more perplexing, what Democrat proposals were so good that he felt the need to revive the bill and give it to them. After all, a deal means that both sides get at least some of what they want.

Corker’s staff issued a carefully spun statement today denying that he supports the bailout provisions or that he supports the House passed bill.

There’s a lot of bad information floating around. Senator Corker is NOT working on legislation with Congressman Frank, and he does NOT support the bill the House of Representatives passed last year. Sen. Corker’s proposal would NOT provide $4 trillion to bail out Wall Street. For nearly a year, Senator Corker has been working to end the notion that any company is “too big to fail.” His premise is that if a company fails, it should fail and not be propped up by taxpayers. The bill is still being crafted in the Senate, but please know the substance will be very different than the House bill.

Well, of course he isn’t negotiating with Congressman Frank…he is, after all, in the Senate. This is classic misdirection. However, it is good to see that Sen. Corker now thinks companies who fail shouldn’t be ‘propped up’ by taxpayers. Too bad he didn’t think that when there was an actual vote to, you know, prop up companies who failed with taxpayer funds. At the end of 2008, he was a solid vote in support of the TARP-bank bailout.

But, I’m glad to see he is now against the very proposals he once supported. OK. So, if he doesn’t support those bailout parts of the bill, then what does he want?

Corker’s staff claims that his interest centers on the “too big to fail” provisions of the bill. It is apparently so important to him that he told the Wall Street Journal that he was “absolutely willing to be the only Republican vote” for financial reform.

Even if you believe that the Corker-Dodd deal can pass without the bailout piece, (which sources say will likely be added back in conference committee) the indisputable fact remains that the bill to create a “brand new, large draconian federal agency with sweeping powers” was all but dead. But now thanks to Bob Corker, they almost have a deal to give government exactly those powers and create just such a bureaucracy.

So apparently, what Corker supports and his solution to the “too big to fail” provisions, is almost exactly what the Democrats wanted in the first place—a vastly powerful new government agency.

How is reviving a bad bill to create vast new government powers not the same thing as openly advocating for more and larger government? It is in the real world.

When you take out the congressional doublespeak, it sounds exactly like what it is—more of the big-government Republicanism that got Republicans tossed from the majority in 2006. It’s hard to see how this will help Republicans in November.

This is the “what” of Corker’s recent actions. On Monday, I’ll talk about the “why”.

It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!

This week, Hynes announced that “no criminality has been found” after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

(They got a choice of government loans: Phat Fannie Mae, Prince Freddie Mac or Barney Fresh Daddy Frank … aka “Sir Fix-A-Lot.”)

I’m just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough “investigation” first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I’m not a lawyer — oh, wait, yes, I am — but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

In a “Eureka” moment, ACORN Employee-of-the-Month Volda Albert identifies for O’Keefe and Giles the problem they had been having getting a mortgage:

Albert: Um, is it legalized? Is prostitution legalized in New York state?

O’Keefe: It’s not. It’s not, unfortunately.

Albert: Well see, that’s your problem.

As ACORN employee Milagros Rivera said, “You can’t say what you do for a living because of the law.” But displaying ACORN’s can-do attitude, she explained: “Honest is not going to get you a house.”

ACORN employees helped concoct a scheme to hide from the lender the source of O’Keefe and Giles’ down payment money. Albert suggested that O’Keefe “pay a down payment — or (Giles) can transfer to somebody else, who is not in that business … a close friend, then (Giles) can transfer that, and then he can give you, like, a gift to purchase.”

Under New York law, hiding the true source of down payment money from a lender constitutes mortgage fraud. Also, using the proceeds of criminal conduct in any banking transaction is money laundering.

Does anybody need a flow chart at this point, or should I continue?

To help Giles hide her income from turning tricks, ACORN employee Albert advised Giles to open two banking accounts, depositing no more than $500 per week in each one. (This would not only enable her to conceal her illegal earnings, it would also qualify her for free checking.)

But Albert’s most inspired idea was that Giles get a “house with a backyard. You get a tin can … and bury (your money) down in there, and you put the money right in, and you put grass over it, and you don’t tell a single soul but yourself where it is.”

Back when I was in Louisiana, we advised people to put their illegal money in the freezer, but that didn’t work out so well. And I guess putting your money in a mattress isn’t advisable if you live in a whorehouse.

Anyway, Albert was particularly detailed on the tin-can-in-the-backyard investment plan: “Keep thinking: ‘I have a yard. I have a house.’ You gotta start coming out with, like, plants and you start doing — so it won’t be suspicious. You start buying plants for the backyard in pots and what have you, and you mark a spot.”

She later told Giles: “You are not paying Social Security, so you’ll have society, all right? You are not getting a pension, so you need to save that money for in later years.” ACORN: Helping Plan Your Financial Future.

If only shady lawyers advised clients to bury money in cans in their backyards, instead of putting it in tax shelters, we wouldn’t have all those attorneys clogging up prison cells!

The ACORN employees also stressed that Giles should do nothing to attract attention to her prostitution money. Albert said: “You can buy a decent car for yourself, no big fancy thing to attract people, all right?”

In Albert’s defense, this could have been common etiquette advice. No one likes a showy hooker.

Even after Giles explained her plan to house a “slew” of 13-, 14- and 15-year-old girls from El Salvador for her prostitution business, Rivera simply responded: “So you guys ready to schedule that (mortgage application) for the summer?”

Rivera clearly missed her calling — she should be pushing vacation time shares in Boca Raton beach condos.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of advancing prostitution if he: “knowingly … aids a person to commit or engage in prostitution (or) … engages in any other conduct designed to institute, aid or facilitate an act or enterprise of prostitution.”

It is a class D felony (up to seven years in prison) if the prostitute is under 19 years old — as the ACORN employees knew Giles was — and a class C felony (up to 15 years in prison) if the prostitute is under 16 years old — as Giles stated the El Salvadoran girls were. (And if she’s under 15 years old, Eliot Spitzer may be involved.)

If none of the advice given by ACORN on those videotapes constitutes conspiracy or aiding or abetting a crime, see this column next week for my opus: “10 Detailed Plans to Kill George Soros and Why This Might Be Right for You.”

I grew up in Kentucky where every boy who ever played baseball knew the name of Jim Bunning. He is the Hall of Fame pitcher who threw a perfect game for the Philadelphia Phillies and knew how to play hardball long before the tingly-legged Chris Matthews co-opted the name for his decidedly softball show.

If you are anywhere near being a fiscal conservative you have to absolutely love what Senator Jim Bunning did this week. This week Senator Bunning showed Senator Harry Reid, and a few Senate Republicans how to throw one high and tight. His one man play at fiscal responsibility has the Washington “in” crowd crying foul and showing their hypocrisy.

In case you missed it here is a brief rundown. A few weeks ago the Congress passed a bill known as “Pay-Go,” a fluffy piece of nonsense posturing. On its surface Pay-Go seems to be fiscally responsibly, if you want to spend some money you need to show where it is going to come from. Senator Bunning knew the bill was hogwash because any spending could avoid being subject to Pay Go if it was “an emergency.” He didn’t vote for the bill for that reason. He also saw another flaw in the bill, a single Senator could hold up the whole Senate if they wanted to.

This week when Senator Reid tried to push through an extension to unemployment benefits Senator Bunning played a little chin music for the Majority leader and put the breaks on the additional 10 billion in spending. Senator Bunning invoked his right to stop the bill and call for the application of the Pay Go rule. When members of the media hounded Senator Bunning for a comment he showed them the door, of the elevator he was taking. Nice added touch!

What followed was supreme political theater and posing by the left. Senator Reid could have simply called for closure on the bill and gathered eighty votes, which were there for passage and the poor unemployed whom he, a parade of progressives senators and fellow traveler Bernie Saunders of Vermont cried crocodile tears for would have had their additional handout from Uncle Sugar. Oh my, oh my thousands would soon be starving and homeless due to this heartless conservative! Cue the beating of breasts and gnashing of teeth and much wailing! None of that could have been further than the truth but as conservative talk show host Larry Elder says, “Facts are like kryptonite to toe tag liberals.”

Senator Bunning gave up his stand after a few days and I think that’s too bad. After watching the parade of phonies decry Senator Bunning’s actions I was wondering what the average American who doesn’t live with an hour of LA, D.C. or New York thought of this tough guy making a stand. It’s my feeling that if a national poll were held on who they supported in this standoff, Senator Bunning or Reid, Senator Bunning would have another win on his record.

Those liberals, reformers, good-government types, New York Times editorial writers and Albany Times Union reporters who were toasting the conviction of long time New York Republican Senate Leader Joe Bruno, will soon have the smile wiped from their elitist faces. Joe Bruno has committed no crime and his exoneration will likely come from the U.S. Supreme Court.

I speak from the point of view of an attorney with a passion for the protections of the law.

In 1770, a rowdy mob of Massachusetts colonists accosted and provoked British soldiers until they responded with lethal force and committed the Boston Massacre.   The soldiers were arrested and placed on trial where their convictions seemed imminent out of sheer populace outrage.  One bold lawyer rose in their defense, John Adams, who in his closing argument reminded the jurors that “the law no passion can disturb.  Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger . . . it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace.”

Today the populace is clamoring at Joe Bruno.  They protested – protested! – His recent defense fund fundraisers, and blogs, abound with smug joy at the Senator’s conviction.  Meanwhile, the facts and flaws of the case have disappeared into the ruckus.   Nary a soul concerns itself with the serious constitutional misgivings of a law that has floundered through the federal circuit courts because no knows what it means.  Consider the helpless inquisition of Judge Jacobs in the Rybicki case, now Chief Judge of the Second Circuit – the same federal circuit hearing the Bruno case:

How can the public be expected to know what the statute means when the judges and prosecutors themselves do not know, or must make it up as they go along?

Or consider Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who says that “it is simply not fair to prosecute someone for a crime that has not been defined until the judicial decision that sends him to jail.”

Joe Bruno’s case abounds with the consequences of these concerns.  According to the prosecution, the crime revolves around the purity of one’s motive behind the act in question, and robbing the public of the ability to fully assess a legislator’s motives constitutes, on some imaginary planet, fraud.  Meanwhile, the jury decided that some of Senator Bruno’s consulting fees were unearned and therefore amounted to gifts, which we then are permitted to assume were given in return for legislative favors.  And then came the jury instructions.  The judge instructed that a conviction need not require the finding of an actual conflict of interest; a finding of its mere appearance would suffice.  In other words, if he looks guilty, he is guilty.  This is shocking.

And it is happening because the statute is constitutionally flawed.  It violates due process of law for failure to give adequate notice of that conduct the law is rendering criminal.  The absence of notice invites legal invention.  No one knows what the test for honesty is, and even worse fraudulent intent is not even required.  Even if the senator did not act out of self-interest, but only created its ethereal appearance, however happenstance, the rest of the crime can somehow just be presumed as a legal inference and the need for actual proof is dismissed.

It’s no wonder the law consumes almost one-fourth of the Supreme Court’s current docket.  The law clearly needs tinkering, if not a swift death.  If Antonin Scalia is telling us that the rights of a criminal defendant are being violated, which occurs only cosmically, it’s a clear sign that there is a constitutional flaw at work because Justice Scalia normally has little patience for due process to begin with.  If even he finds it unfair, we should all take note.

So protesting Senator Bruno’s well-attended fundraiser rises to the absurd in light of the valid legal ground upon which the Senator stands.  If Joe Bruno is being prosecuted under an unconstitutional law, no matter how guilty one might think he is, he must be exonerated.  Protesting his right to defend himself offends justice, especially when this case has only really just begun.

Contrary to public belief Bruno is not a wealthy man. He has resigned from his job to fight to clear his name. This prosecution will cost Bruno $3 million or more in legal fees, threatening to ruin him financially. The first trial was a foreordained exercise and why the Judge, who was clearly biased, did not dismiss or delay the case on any number of respectable legal grounds, is especially confounding given the high court’s assumption of the matter.

In all probability, the Court may require the finding of the commission of an underlying state crime upon which to base a federal honest services prosecution.  Attorney General Cuomo has found no such crime in Joe Bruno’s case.  Therefore, let the histrionic din die down and allow the Joe Bruno his full constitutional protections.

Now that most of twelve California wind turbines retrofitted for Minnesota winters are finally operational, several cities have acknowledged to the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota that the $5 million project may be more suited for generating PR—both good and bad—than producing significant quantities of power.

The wind power project involves utilities in eleven cities scattered across the state from the metro area to East Grand Forks in a consortium called the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA). Each of the eleven member cities received one turbine, and the twelfth was given to the MMPA owned and operated Faribault Energy Park in Faribault. It was supposed to be a step toward meeting the state renewable energy mandate that requires 25 percent of Minnesota’s power be from renewable energy sources by 2025.

It turns out, however, the twelve wind derricks will produce power for perhaps several hundred homes, hardly making a dent in the MMPA’s 57,000 household and business customers.

“They’re basically for public relations, educational purposes. They’re just not feasible for any significant amount of electrical generation,” said Dan Voss, Municipal Utilities Director for the City of Anoka.

The idea of a green energy public relations campaign is acknowledged up front in what’s called the Hometown WindPower project’s criteria for the turbine site selection on member city North St. Paul’s website. The document states the turbine must have “prominent visibility from major roads” and serve to “show each community’s commitment to clean renewable energy.”

The turbines succeeded in attracting publicity from the start, drawing national attention for all the wrong reasons, when the frigid Minnesota temperatures shut down the turbines before they ever got going.

“The original purpose was to help meet our 25 per cent requirement,” said Wally Wysopal, City Manager of North St. Paul. “The other objective is to get people to understand this is going to be a tough objective to hit and these are symbols of that.  And I think you can see they’re not easy to get going sometimes.”

At $417,000 per wind turbine, it’s an expensive campaign fueled by federally subsidized Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBS). The revenue or cost savings from the renewable energy are utilized to pay off the bonds over an average of 15 years.

“The CREBS bonds made it reasonable. It is subsidized, it is available, and we took that opportunity,” Wysopal added. “Otherwise, we would not have done it.”

In 2007, MMPA envisioned installing 300 foot tall turbines that would generate as much as 1.5 megawatts of electricity, providing a greater portion of the cities’ daily energy use. But last fall MMPA began installing turbines less than half that height at 115 feet and with about one-tenth of the capacity at 160 kilowatts.

The estimates of how much power will be produced varies: North St. Paul’s website estimates that 110 homes will receive power when the turbines operate at full power; Anoka’s estimate is at 35-40 homes. At least one city utilities director hopes the controversy focuses attention on the danger of over-relying on wind power to meet the state’s renewable energy mandate.

“One fifth of the arable land would have to be taken up by wind turbines to meet the mandate,” Dan Voss said. “It’s just not a good policy and it’s not sustainable and unfortunately, there’s no interest in it until the lights go out.”

Check here for coverage of another controversial wind power project in Minnesota.

The Constitution and the Second Amendment are in the spotlight this week on two fronts.  First is that oral arguments are being held in the McDonald v Chicago case to possibly apply the holding in Heller to the states.

In addition, Senators are beginning their evaluation of the judicial nomination of Berkeley professor Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a vote that will tell a great deal about Senator Reid’s adherence to Constitutional principles such as those specified in the Second Amendment.

Senator Reid has a terrible record on judicial nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.  In DC v Heller, there were four dissenters from the holding that the right to bear arms is an individual right.  Harry Reid had a chance to vote on three and he voted for each one – Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.  Harry Reid has a chance to vote on four of the majority justices, and he voted against three of them – Thomas, Alito and Roberts.  If Harry Reid had been successful in defeating any of these three, Heller would have been in jeopardy.  That’s six out of seven bad votes on the Supreme Court.

Four of those bad votes were cast in his very first term, when my primary opponent Sue Lowden was his loyal contributor.

There will be hearings on professor Liu, but I am specifically interested in a particular book he co-authored on jurisprudence entitled “Keeping Faith with the Constitution.”

Ominously, early in its text, the book contains an statement that lacks credibility in our current context.  Liu writes:

“Throughout our history, political leaders have taken seriously their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”

Unfortunately, that is something that isn’t true today.  We are experiencing a historic time when entire industries are propped up by government seemingly arbitrarily and secretly picking winners and losers.  Some industries are in danger of socialization, such as health care.

In “Keeping Faith,” Liu attempts – unconvincingly in my opinion – to argue that there is some middle ground between judicial activism and a judicial philosophy of attempting to interpret the Constitution with deference to original intent..  Ironically, he calls the middle ground “constitutional fidelity.” As if the title makes it true.

Liu writes:

“We use the term constitutional fidelity to describe this approach. To be faithful to the Constitution is to interpret its words and to apply its principles in ways that sustain their vitality over time. Fidelity to the Constitution requires judges to ask not how its general principles would have been applied in 1789 or 1868, but rather how those principles should be applied today in order to preserve their power and meaning in light of the concerns, conditions, and evolving norms of our society.  In this book, we develop a different approach to interpretation that respects the endurance of our written Constitution and explains how its text and principles retain their authority and legitimacy over decades and centuries.”

Professor Liu’s constitutional fidelity philosophy seems to be rooted in the idea that proper interpretation of our constitution requires a continual updating of its meaning for the purpose of achieving ‘authority’ and ‘legitimacy.’  That’s sort of like changing your children’s bedtime so they don’t question your ‘authority’ and ‘legitimacy’ as a parent.  Establishing your legitimacy and authority is a function of sticking to your rules.  In government, it is moving those rules without legislative action that leads to illegitimacy and eventually, tyranny.

Professor Liu continues:

“Preserving the document’s meaning and its democratic legitimacy requires us to interpret it in light of the conditions and challenges faced by succeeding generations.”

Again, I could not disagree more.  If each generation gets to re-write our Constitution based on the challenges they face, then which generation is in charge in any given point in our society?  My generation, or my father’s generation?  Which generation’s interpretation is to determine how our society is to be governed?  That sounds like a political decision to be settled by elections and legislative debate – not the unelected judiciary.

The underlying current of Liu’s text is that there is very little enduring about the Constitution, rather a generational redefinition that continually changes.  I disagree – I believe that Justices must strive to identify the original intent in the United States’ founding document as specifically that part which is most enduring.

Why?  Because as Constitutional conservatives, we see America as a country of destiny, just as in our faiths we sense a destination for ourselves – we sense something fixed and tangible and which is good.  We don’t run from our destination, rather as people we seek to discern it and chase it down.  There are things that endure in this world.  There is right and there is wrong – and there is truth.

In the Bill of Rights, these enduring truths are made explicit.  There are certain God-given inalienable rights that are enumerated, such as the right to free speech and to assemble, and the right to bear arms in self-defense and against tyranny.

Having established his “generational test,” Liu goes on to explain the historic Second Amendment rights decision Heller as itself a product of judicial “interest-balancing.” This is his most troubling reasoning – one that sets up Heller for eventual reversal.

In his analysis, Liu first acknowledges the Constitutional debate in Heller:

“The majority read “the right of the people” to refer to a right possessed by individuals acting on their own, akin to the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures.” And it read the phrase “keep and bear Arms” to refer generally to the possession and use of weapons, including for hunting and individual self-defense.

“The dissenters, by contrast, read “the right of the people” to protect individuals engaged in collective action through participation in the militia, akin to the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble,” which also protects a collective activity. And it construed “keep and bear Arms” as a reference to military use of weapons.”

But after a discussion of the court’s supposed “receptiveness” to other gun laws – laws which were not squarely under review – Liu retreats to a new position.  He argues that the majority decision was really just a balancing of modern day societal interests.

Although the majority and the dissenters ultimately disagree on the validity of the District of Columbia handgun ban, the difference between the two sides is not that one engages in interest balancing while the other does not. It is that one side does so “explicitly”

Professor Liu essentially puts the essential holding in the case – that the right to bear arms is an individual right – on a moving ice floe and pushes it out to sea at the mercy of societal tides.  He knows exactly what he is doing as he does so.  He is setting it up for reversal.

This is just one example from his book.  If you read it all, you will see that Liu’s text repeatedly seeks to degrade judicial philosophies of restraint, in an attempt to give license to judicial activism, by saying essentially “everyone does it.”  Even the majority in Heller.

As a candidate for U.S. Senate, I would take this sort of writing into account in my questioning of any judicial nominee.  I look forward to hearing what professor Liu has to say at his confirmation hearings. Absent a confirmation hearing that essentially reverses the premise of this writing in defense of judicial activism, I would certainly expect Senator Reid to protect the Constitution and to vote no on this nomination.

Do Republicans Not Get It? Did they not pay attention to the thousands of tea parties this past year? Did they not see the hundreds of thousands of tea party protesters across the nation? Did they miss the million protesters who marched down the streets of Washington DC on September 12th?

(Photo via Instapundit and Mary Katharine Ham)

Are the Republicans really that blind? Do they Not Care? Even awful Speaker Pelosi is warming up to the Nazis tea party protesters.

After all of the posturing and preening and shouting and yelling and marching and tea party protesting, America is about to get the whole Democrat agenda shoved down our collective throat. Barack Obama announced today that Democrats are going to use reconciliation to jam Obamacare through Congress and essentially nationalize one-sixth of the US economy. And now, Republicans are about to offer them the rest of the American economy on a silver platter thanks to Senator Bob Corker. Congress is currently working to create a whole new consumer protection division within the Federal Reserve. This new division will give the Fed more power and focus on consumer protection. And, a Republican, Bob Corker, is for some reason leading the charge to create this whole new bureaucracy. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Several senior Republicans have joined negotiations with Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) over how to construct consumer-protection rules, potentially bringing more Republican votes to a broader revamp of finance rules—if Democrats can stomach more concessions.

“We’re very, very, very close to a deal,” Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) said in an interview.

The development came after a closed door meeting Tuesday night between Mr. Corker and Sens. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), Richard Shelby (R., Ala.), Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), and Mike Crapo (R., Idaho).

The meeting was called after a Wall Street Journal story Tuesday said Messrs. Corker and Dodd were near an agreement on a compromise to create a new consumer protection division within the Federal Reserve…

…On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett met with consumer and public interest groups and said new consumer protection rules would be formidable.

At the meeting, Mr. Geithner said it was an “empty argument” that safety and soundness regulation couldn’t be separated from consumer protection, someone familiar with the meeting said. Treasury officials also said they would only support new rules if the agency had an independent leadership, budget and decision making powers, and the power to set rules and enforce them.

Grassroots conservatives are rightly up in arms over Senator Corker’s game of footsie with far left Democrat Chris Dodd on President Obama’s effort to impose a massive new regulatory scheme on America’s economy. Dodd, of course, is one of the architects of the current financial crisis. His decades long support of ACORN, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act should have disqualified him from these negotiations in the first place. But, this is Washington, after all, and apparently Bailout Bob was willing to look the other way and turn the other cheek.

This was even after the House of Representatives passed a similar bill in December, but it received no Republican votes. Close to two dozen Democrats voted against it.

The House passed financial reform bill, crafted by none other than Barney Frank (D-MA) contained a permanent bailout fund for banks and Wall Street firms and created a new agency of government that would be allowed to regulate any and all business in America. It received no Republican votes and close to two dozen democrats opposed the legislation. But, it is alive today thanks to Bob Corker.

The ironically named Consumer Financial Protection Agency will pile a new bureaucracy on top of an existing bureaucracy. It will spend hundreds of millions of dollars imposing job killing regulations on small business. It will have the power to strip consumers of their freedoms and restrict credit opportunities for small business. And, there’s more. Also tucked in the bill is a clause that gives the Federal Reserve the authority to bailout businesses to the tune of an astonishing $4 trillion.

The bill seemed to be dead until Corker decided to grab favorable headlines from the New York Times. According to news reports, Corker’s solution to the problem is to move the new regulatory agency to the Federal Reserve as opposed to leaving it a stand alone agency. Corker is misleading his colleagues and the public by telling them that this will some how save money.

Let’s be clear, the bill contains bailouts for big banks and Wall Street firms and new red tape nightmares for main street businesses. What difference does the location of this new uber-regulatory bureaucracy make? The only thing this bill will save is jobs, paychecks, yachts and third vacation homes for Wall Street bankers and irresponsible CEOs.

The fact is we need to reduce the size and scope of government not allow a government takeover of the financial sector of the economy.

The word from the halls of the Capital is Corker is still trying to cut a deal. But, honestly, what can conservatives possibly get from such a deal? If you strip out the bailouts and the new Washington bureaucracies and regulations, there is nothing left. So, any deal will be a bad one. A quick look at Corker’s financial contributors leaves one wondering whether Corker supports Wall Street more than Main Street. He is giving those at the top a handout while giving the middle class the bill. And as far as the tea party movement. Corker will forfeit any political ground conservatives have gained back recently.

Call Bob Corker and tell him to Stop the Madness. (202) 224-3344

On the path to 9/11, many of us National Security wonks were intensely studying and tracking China and its activities before the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11. Just as so many had our eyes too focused on a single ball then, it is a necessary exercise of experience and wisdom to ensure the same mistake is not made again, simply in the reverse.

We cannot afford to be – neither as a National Security community nor as a society – so critically focused on our terrorist enemies as to lose sight of an equally determined if even more patient strategic competitor. Though the Chinese are much less overt than our terrorist enemies, their grand strategies and ambitions are hardly invisible. One need simply look for them and recognize them when seen.

In a Reuters article, “China PLA officer urges challenging U.S. dominance,” there is a wake-up call for those perhaps needing it.

From the Reuters article:

The call for China to abandon modesty about its global goals and “sprint to become world number one” comes from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel, Liu Mingfu, who warns that his nation’s ascent will alarm Washington, risking war despite Beijing’s hopes for a “peaceful rise.”

“China’s big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the top power,” Liu writes in his newly published Chinese-language book, “The China Dream.”

“If China in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannot become the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that is cast aside,” writes Liu, a professor at the elite National Defense University, which trains rising officers.

His 303-page book stands out for its boldness even in a recent chorus of strident Chinese voices demanding a hard shove back against Washington over trade, Tibet, human rights, and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.

“As long as China seeks to rise to become world number one … then even if China is even more capitalist than the U.S., the U.S. will still be determined to contain it,” writes Liu.

This new book, written by a Peoples Liberation Army senior colonel, is the next logical progression (and strategic expression) from an earlier book from PLA colonels, Unrestricted Warfare, from the early 1990’s. It was written by two officers in China’s People’s Liberation Army and was the Chinese strategic reaction to the effortless and highly technical American obliteration of the world’s fourth largest standing army, Saddam’s Iraqi army in the Gulf War. The world – even including most Americans – was stunned at the alacrity with which America swatted a massive but technologically inferior foe. In many respects, the Iraqi army resembled China’s own PLA: Massive yet inferior. American dominance was undeniable.

For the terrorist enemies we are focused on today, their reaction then was similar to China’s.  Terrorist groups and their state sponsors reacted to the humiliation of the world’s largest Arab and Muslim army by convening emergency meetings in Sudan, hosted by Sudanese President Hassan al-Turabi. Good friend Tom Joscelyn aptly called al-Turabi “The Pope of Terrorism,” as the Sudanese leader urged attendees following Saddam’s American drubbing to lay down their Islamic ideological differences and unite to fight the greater common enemy: America.

In attendance to these regular strategy sessions were both Sunni and Shi’a terrorist groups – and their state sponsors. Hizballah, Hamas, Osama bin Laden (who resided in Sudan at the time) and what would eventually become al-Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, Syria and others. They recognized that they must adjust in order to defeat a dominant America. And defeating America was the primary shared mission. Disparate groups with their own internal rivalries and differences determined to cooperate and focus on America. With 9/11 less than a decade away, the cooperation among terrorist rivals commenced.

Likewise, China’s Unrestricted Warfare explained to Chinese military and civilian leadership after the shock of the Gulf War that in order to compete and defeat the unrivaled American military machine, it must defeat America on all fronts – including economic, legal, social and international relations. It must do all things necessary to blunt the American edge, including corporate espionage and stealing American technology (especially nuclear) through exploiting military and technological exchange & cooperation programs.

The PLA officer’s book laid the path to Chinese parity with and eventual dominance over America: Warfare on all fronts with a level of patience and foresight foreign to most Americans.

This latest book, The China Dream, is the next logical strategic progression. It appears to put attainable goals and means directly ahead for China – affirming the long term strategic vision while targeting immediate gains and victories that can and must be attained from and against America in the shorter term. Meaning now.

America would do well to pay attention to this strategic expression of “the Dragon,” which supports our enemies (ie, Iran and many others) while holding massive, critical amounts of influence-wielding American debt in the form of bonds. It’s expansion of international influence into areas largely ceded by America in comparison (Africa, South America and anywhere energy can be found) must be challenged. We also must not be diverted away from a dominant conventional force while counterinsurgency dominates the immediate needs and landscape of American military needs and structure.

To recover losses ceded to an ever-patient China, as it grows with a goal of rivaling and then defeating America, requires a robust economy. Investments must be made on all fronts. Whether convenient to recognize or not, war has been both declared and prosecuted on all fronts – except for the front America currently dominates: militarily. A floundering and shrinking economy cripples the ability for an already pre-occupied America to react effectively. And the Chinese can be counted on to make economic moves in the future to ensure America’s economic distress is at a level that best serves China’s long-term strategic vision. It holds enough of our debt to do that in many ways.

It is time to pay closer attention to China’s actions – and do so through the Chinese lens of Unrestricted Warfare, not a lens most comfortable for American eyes. It serves no American security purpose to view China and her actions in a light other than the light she herself uses to guide her own path.  Colonel Liu’s The Chinese Dream is itself the logical progression of the Unrestricted Warfare view.

Many were asleep to al-Qaeda while focusing almost singularly on the very real rising threat of China on 9/11. That was a mistake then, and the inverse is a mistake now. While we prosecute our war against international terrorism on all possible fronts, we must not become so singularly focused as to miss the warning signs now coming from China as we likewise did with al-Qaeda and others on the path to 9/11.

Yesterday, The Weekly Standard reported that President Obama hosted 10 Democrat House members at the White House last night:

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Apparently, Obama thinks that Matheson’s brother is qualified to become a federal judge:

“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said. “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering. I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.”

Matheson’s background reads:

Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006. He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990.

While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah. In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission. He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989. Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.

Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn. He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.

Seems that Matheson is hurdling a few career steps to become a judge. Wonder how his brother will vote now. After all, he did vote “no” the first time around on health care and the House is just not that fond of the Senate bill.

We all know what the words “debt,” “taxpayer,” and “interest” mean, but how many people know what the words “jizya”, “dhimmi” and “Grameen” mean? In order to understand the precipice of disaster that the banking system is resting upon today, one must understand all these words, and then some. No solution can be found by only understanding the first three. Only an illusion of understanding exists until the latter, and more, like “jihad” and “Sharia Law”, are considered.

The jizya amounts to a tax paid by Non-Muslims to Muslims in order that they may live in peace. A fair comparison is money paid by business owners to neighborhood thugs in order to gain protection. Think Mob. Engaging in this endeavor creates the status of dhimmi – a willingly subservient protected group of third class subjects. Let’s just call this what it is – extortion based slavery. Let us also understand that this is an endgame of this thing called “jihad”.

From the Koran:

(9:29) – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

(30:39)  And whatever you lay out as usury, so that it may increase in the property of men, it shall not increase with Allah; and whatever you give in charity, desiring Allah’s pleasure– it is these (persons) that shall get manifold.

(3:130) O you who believe! do not devour usury, making it double and redouble, and be careful of (your duty to) Allah, that you may be successful

(2:275) Those who swallow down usury cannot arise except as one whom  Shaitan has prostrated by (his) touch does rise. That is because they say, trading is only like usury; and Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the admonition has come from his Lord, then he desists, he shall have what has already passed, and his affair is in the hands of Allah; and whoever returns (to it)– these arc the inmates of the fire; they shall abide in it.

You get the idea.

Notice this is not an out-of-context rant demonstrating Islamophobia. This comes from the Koran itself. It is quotes like these that form the basis of Sharia Law.

Before we move forward, take a moment to watch this video outlining some important points about Sharia Law and its influence in the American banking system:

So now let’s take a look at the terms which were introduced above.  First is “Grameen“ – just what is it?

Well, it is a banking movement supposedly for the poorest among us. A proposed mix of capitalism and social responsibility, created by a man named Muhammad Yunus,  that accommodates the religion of Islam at the expense of everyone else.  It is banking based on making risky, Sharia-compliant loans to those least able to repay and financed by those with the most ability to do so.  (Notice the hint of Karl Marx there? – From those according to their ability to those according to their needs.)

Heralded by so many corners, like the United Nations, the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the progressive left in this country, Grameen banking is to be the solution to all the world’s ills. Sound familiar?  It should. Think about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, think ACORN, think home loans, think about Clinton’s almighty forecasted surplus. Think about Obama stimulus claims, cash for clunkers and economic justice. Think Van Jones.

In order to spin the situation and muddy the waters of understanding, a new word was manufactured. Microfinance.  Here is the ‘nuts and bolts’ of microfinance, microcredit, microdebt, or whatever one wishes to call it: One set of rules for you, who is not bound by the Koran and the Sharia Law it creates, and another set of rules for those who are. So much for equality, huh?

Imagine this situation. You have a bank savings account with a balance of a hundred thousand dollars. You also hold a home mortgage of about the same amount. Your bank leverages your money fractionally and then makes Sharia compliant loans abroad for nine hundred thousand dollars, set beside your mortgage. You pay all interest on that mortgage, while your savings earns next to nothing, but as it pertains to the rest of that cool million – not so much.  So what is the big deal?

Well, here is the big deal. That bank finds itself over-leveraged as a result of it’s attempted social engineering and unable to meet the demand for withdrawals. Remember that hundred grand you have saved? Well, you have decided to pay for your grandson’s college instead of seeing him saddled with student loans. In order for your bank to cover your withdrawal, it requires a taxpayer funded bailout so it doesn’t fail.  Do you see it yet?

You pay interest on the front side of loans that you take on, and now you pay taxes on the backside to fund a bailout because your bank used your money to make social engineering investments that do not provide enough returns to sustain it’s own chosen activity. This so that do-gooders can “spread the wealth around”. Many avenues to accomplish this spreading have been developed. Think “green”. Environmentalism is the ultimate social engineering tool useful in every branch of government to the ends of controlling private business.

To be sure, this issue has permeated the entire banking industry and by extension every other industry. Combining environmentalism and banking is a wicked marriage. Endless control is created and Liberty itself is on the chopping block.

From your fifty dollar bank account to the Bill Gates fortune, this parasitical idea of Sharia complaint banking financed on the backs of interest and tax paying Americans is eating prosperity alive. Where do we begin to even understand so we can rid ourselves of this epidemic? Sometimes, you just have to plop down somewhere in the middle of it all and start there.

ShoreBank is great place to start. Truly amazing is it’s history and undeniably profound are the generational ramifications of it’s activities.  The more you read about it, the more open your eyes become, the more moments of insight you will experience. Of this, there is no doubt. The web of ties that are exposed when reading about ShoreBank is shocking.

Why are community-based banks, like ShoreBank and its affiliates,  financing projects in Kenya?

Why does the United States send seemingly endless amounts of taxpayer dollars to Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and others in the form of “military and economic aid”?

Why does the United State’s government force the purchase of oil and natural gas from Muslim and socialist dominated-countries by legislatively or judicially disallowing access to resources found here in our own neck of the woods?

Why did Al Qaeda attack the World Trade center — twice?

Why did the United Nations refuse to relinquish control over Saddam’s Iraq and it’s oil revenues?

How is our own government managing to gain access to control over the smallest of life’s decisions like what vehicles we drive or where we set our home thermostats?

What is really wrong with the banking industry and what is it going to take to fix it?  What is the real cause of the so called “meltdown”?

Ponder these questions deeply and then seek out honest answers. Prepare yourselves for the facts you will be faced with and what those facts mean. Political correctness need not apply for this job because actual correctness, absent that qualifier, is required.

As Tim Geitner tries to offer every explanation besides the real one concerning AIG, maybe there exists at least one courageous elected official who will ask him directly to explain Grameen banking, microfinancing and how the progressives drove the American Economy into the ground by bowing the American’s economy to Islamic law via the guise of political correctness known in the form of “environmentalism” and “social justice.”

Are those Fightin’ words?  Yep,  that is one thing that happens when a nation is engaged in war and Patriots actually fight back with the most powerful weapon that ever existed.  Truth.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias sought to blunt a potentially damaging political issue today about questions regarding his involvement in his family’s struggling bank, which he said he expects will likely fail in the coming months.

But questions were still left unanswered following a more than 70-minute meeting with the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board. Among them were exactly what Giannoulias knew about convicted bookmaker Michael Giorango’s criminal past when he received loans from Broadway Bank, and how many of the bank’s troubled loans were made while Giannoulias was working there.

Giannoulias also sought to explain nearly $70 million the bank paid out in dividends to him and his family in recent years, saying $29 million of that was taken out of the bank to diversify the family’s investments.

Giannoulias said he didn’t see the bank’s financial situation getting better as the election progresses.

“It’s quite likely that the bank will fail,” he said. “I hope I’m wrong. I hope they can raise the capital to keep the bank going and they’re fighting hard to do so but it’s tough out there for a lot of banks of which Broadway Bank is not immune to these same challenges.”

He said he would be willing to help the bank but also estimated that any money he could provide would be “under $1 million.” The bank must raise $85 million by April, according to a consent order with state and federal regulators.

Read the whole article here.

Controlling obesity is all the rage now in America as, indeed, it should be. Feeding the American appetite with too many of the wrong kinds of calories is exacting a terrible toll on the health of Americans of all ages. Obesity, like cigarettes, kills. In recent years, Congress, along with a compliant President Bush and now with an enthusiastic President Obama, has been appeasing another kind of appetite with reckless abandon. The toll this fiscal obesity will exact from America and our people is incalculable and Jenny Craig will be of no help.

Clearly, most Americans do not want to be force fed programs they haven’t asked for and that they know neither they, their children nor their grandchildren can possibly afford. People throughout the country are beginning to dig in their heels and a growing number of congressmen and senators know it. Seventy years ago, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is quoted, following his successful and deadly attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” It appears that the American electorate, long apathetic and used to acquiescing by default to reckless government spending may be awakening from its long slumber. Let’s hope so, for it is the last best hope we have to rein in the destructive behavior of so many of our elected representatives of both parties in Washington and the White House strategists who lead them on.

As we noted in this column two weeks ago, Moody’s has fired the first warning shot over the bow of our ship of state. The international credit-rating agency warned that America’s AAA credit rating would be in jeopardy (given our spiraling debt) if economic growth does not keep pace with the projections made by the Obama Administration. China and Japan, our largest sovereign creditors, fired two more warning shots at last week’s treasury auction when they decreased their purchases of U.S. debt. But is anyone in Washington listening?

Let us stipulate that our concern is not that America is in danger of defaulting on its ever-mounting debt as Greece and, perhaps, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal might very well be. We will always pay our bills: even if we have to print the money with which to meet our obligations when they come due. Should our creditors here in America and those abroad, however, begin to worry that they will be paid back with dollars that are worth a lot less than the dollars they loaned us, they will demand a higher rate of interest to offset that risk. If our creditors, to whom we are more beholden than ever before, were to decide they want a substantially higher rate of return on their money than we currently pay (approximately 3.6% for 10 year maturities and 4.6% for 30 year maturities) every segment of our society could be drastically affected.

Of equal if not greater concern, however, is that the dollar’s continued position as the world’s reserve currency is no longer certain. As our deficit widens and our debt grows nations on whom we depend are beginning to explore alternatives to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This should be causing many sleepless nights for those in Washington who are responsible for the health of our economy. The loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency would not merely be a loss of prestige. Such an occurrence would cause the dollar’s purchasing power to plunge and affect the standard of living of nearly everyone. A reserve currency is the currency nearly all nations hold in order to transact all international business (such as for commodities) that are priced in the reserve currency of the day. Think oil, gold, copper, etc. In many instances it is the currency nations use to settle their debts as well, and it is also the currency nation’s hold for the proverbial rainy day. A transfer of the world’s reserve currency status from the dollar to, say, the Chinese renminbi would cause a run on the dollar as sovereigns began trading their collective trillions in dollars for renminbis. Loss of reserve currency status could represent a crisis of unimaginable proportions causing a sudden and precipitous drop in the value of the dollar. Far fetched? No, not at all. In fact, there is a serious move among a number of nations, including China, which during this century will become the world’s largest economy, to begin preparing for such a development. Nations on whom we depend for trade, loans and investment are eyeing developments in Washington with alarm. Again, we ask, is anyone in Washington listening?

While few people can really predict when and if such an adverse event might occur, there is no question that the odds go up as our national indebtedness goes up. And it is going up exponentially.

Our total debt is now as large as our entire economy, if we include what we owe here in America (to domestic holders of treasury obligations) and what we owe to China, Japan, the Saudis and an assortment of oil-supported sheikdoms and other smaller foreign creditors as well as what we owe to our own Social Security and Medicare trust funds and our collective state and municipal obligations. Greece, the basket case of Europe, has total debt of 108% of its economy. Our total debt stands at just a fraction under 100% (98.2% to be exact) of our entire economy ($14 trillion of total debt vs. $14.25 trillion of total economic output. While we suppose we can always cancel some (or all) of that portion of our debt that is the result of what our government has borrowed from the so-called Social Security and Medicare trust funds, this is not a pretty picture.

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, economists at the University of Maryland and Harvard, respectively, in their recent book with the tongue-in-cheek title, “This Time is Different: A Panoramic view of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises,” sound an ominous alarm. They note that every time an economy begins precipitously to run up debt, various, so-called, experts are always there to provide comforting advice that “things are different” and we needn’t be concerned about the debt “this time.” The authors then go on to demonstrate, convincingly we think, that this invariably has been, and continues to be, just plain wrong. They found that, even in a developed economy, once public debt reaches 90 percent of economic output, it begins seriously to stifle economic growth. While we make no pretense of being qualified to attest to the findings of these accomplished economists, we get little comfort from the reassurances of the Obama Administration’s economists that, “this time it’s different.” We fear that it is not. We are spending with abandon and exaggerating (outrageously, we think) what this spending is accomplishing. “Hail Mary” passes rarely work in football and certainly never work as economic policy.

We have now spent (or committed to spend) nearly a trillion dollars to “stimulate” the economy (exclusive of the TARP bailouts and new stimulus proposals) and all we really have to show for it is the fastest increase in our deficit in history. Claims of jobs saved are fatuous. How do we even begin to assess the cost of a trillion dollars being vacuumed out of the capital markets by the government instead of being available for private investment and job creation in the private sector?

Harvard economics professor Robert Barro, writing in the Wall Street Journal last week took serious issue with Christina Romer’s (Chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors) estimates of the multiplier effect of government stimulus dollars. Professor Barro’s analysis indicates that, over five years, the President’s stimulus package trades $600 billion of public spending for $900 billion of private expenditure. It is, he notes, a bad deal.

Given that 77% of the stimulus money was still sitting in Washington at the end of last year, the notion that the stimulus program was putting people to work (net of jobs that otherwise would emerge in the private sector) in any significant way was patently absurd. As Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, one of the more respected and analytical members of the Senate, said when announcing his decision not to seek re-election, “if I could create one new job by working in the private sector, that would be one more job than Congress has created in the past six months.” Notice how no one mentions, “shovel-ready jobs” anymore. It was an empty sales line a year ago, and it’s an empty sales line now. But this time everyone knows it. We know that roughly 50% of the stimulus money will be directed to existing government agencies such as Health and Human Services and the Department of Education. Again, a tremendous increase in spending to existing government agencies disguised as economic stimulus. Worse yet this added spending will become the baseline for future budgeting.

It would be wrong and unfair to lay this gathering storm at the feet of President Obama. The storm clouds began gathering long before President Obama became president, indeed, long before President Obama was even old enough to vote. But President Obama came to office promising change and has governed, instead, by greatly compounding the errors of his immediate predecessor and most other democratic and republican administrations of recent decades.

It would take a courageous and masterful leader and a magical moment to say to the American people, “the government has made entitlement promises to you that we can’t keep…that we can’t afford, and that we can’t place on the shoulders of our children. We’re going to have to establish a “means test” for Social Security and Medicare and even the age at which our people will be eligible to begin receiving benefits. We’re also going to have to eliminate hundreds, maybe thousands, of programs that are wasteful or redundant or that we can do without. Henceforth, there can be no programs that are ‘untouchable.’”

It seems we will have to wait for such a leader and such a magical moment. We can only hope he or she arrives in time.

On Monday, Politico reported that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was in negotiations with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and transfer the terrorist detainees to a prison in Thomson, Illinois. With all due respect to the Senator, there are some particular details about Illinois facility he should know.

On January 6, 2010, three prisoners escaped from the Tri-County Detention Center in Ullin, IL. Local schools were immediately closed and communities were put on alert, as the federal prisoners were considered “armed and dangerous.” It seems these three prisoners are still free and on the run.

Yet, just two months prior, Illinois liberals in Congress were pushing to move Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Thomson, Illinois. With three inmates escaping from a federal prison in the same state, one would think that it would make the Thomson prison deal radioactive.

If this issue isn’t radioactive now, it should be.

Press reports about the Thomson facility note repeatedly that it is in “rural” Illinois. What they don’t mention is the Thomson prison is just 25 miles away from a nuclear power plant. Worse, the prison is only 50 miles away from one of the largest military arsenals in the United States.

I could think of a few better places to put Al-Qaeda terrorists.

I know that politicians like to jump into things without thinking about it first, especially when federal dollars are involved, but we as citizens should have a few questions answered before they decide to put terrorists within 25 miles of a nuclear plant.

First, Guantanamo Bay is almost impossible to get to. If one were to actually break out of the facility, there is just about nowhere to go. Still, we should know if there have been prison-break attempts. Have allies of the terrorists tried to organize a strike against the facility? Why does it make sense to move terrorists to the middle of America, where there is easy access and open country to flee into?

Second, Kansas and Michigan chose to turn the same deal down. What was their reasoning for their rejection of Gitmo North? What information were they given that made them turn down the claimed 3,000 high-paying jobs? After all, isn’t Michigan’s economy much worse than that of Illinois?

Third, why is Illinois selling the prison to the feds at a fraction of the cost of its worth? Especially during a time when Gov. Quinn is releasing prisoners due to overcrowding. Aren’t we going to have to build another prison to fix the overcrowding problem? How much will that cost?

Furthermore, the politicians have coated this proposal in honey, by promising 3,000 high paid jobs. Providing 3,000 jobs is going to cost a lot of money. The median pay for a federal prison guard is around $30,000 a year. That means that this plan is going to cost taxpayers over $90 million a year to house terrorists on our own soil.

Even more, according to a public memo released from Congressman Don Manzullo’s office, the 3,000 jobs will not be given out to locals or people in the surrounding area. In fact, it is estimated that 1,500 of these jobs will be filled by the U.S. Army. The politicians are also not telling the public about the special requirements needed to be a federal prison guard. Instead they act like these jobs are going to be handed out like candy at the Fourth of July parade.

Last, how will transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Illinois, make our country safer? Is a name and location change going to make our enemies hate us less? Even if Guantanamo Bay is erased from history, Al-Qaeda terrorists will still be busy recruiting more and more terrorists to attack America.

In a recent statement, Rep. Phil Hare, my opponent in November, smeared me for choosing “fear mongering” over a promised 3,000 jobs. Am I fear mongering? I guess you could call it that. I fear putting a terrorist prison next to a nuclear power plant and a massive military arsenal. I fear surrendering one of our state prisons to the feds could result in more criminals being turned loose because of overcrowding in other facilities. And, I fear for my ten children and wonder what kind of America they will inherit from my generation.

It is sad to note that some politicians are more concerned with making a headline about bringing jobs, rather than our own security.

Bottom line: even if the promised 3,000 jobs actually materialized, it is not worth the thousands of lives we are putting at risk by bringing Al Queda terrorists onto our turf.

Again, Sen. Graham, please stop trying to negotiate away our security in Illinois. In return, when I’m elected to Congress in November, I promise to not try to move terrorists to Charleston.

While the media and most of the public are consumed by the health care death march, the Senate is deep in negotiations to pass a sweeping re-regulation of the financial sector. As the public knows, ObamaCare is an attempt to regulate 1/6th of the US economy. The financial ‘reform’ proposal, though, will impact the other 5/6ths of the economy. In many respects, the financial services ‘reform’ is much more damaging to the economy and our future competitiveness. Worse, its passage is being aided by Bob Corker.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his complete capitulation and total surrender on the Financial Services bill.  The bill, passed by the House with a $4 trillion bailout provision, making bailouts the permanent policy of the United States government, was on it’s last legs until Corker came to the rescue.  Now the Washington Post and other are reporting that Corker and ethically-challenged, retiring Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are on the verge of a deal to breathe life back into the regulatory and bailout scheme.

Let’s be clear – the President and the hard left want this bill. David Reilly of Bloomberg described the measure as Barney Frank’s $4 trillion gift to the banks. Reilly wrote:

Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank’s handiwork:

– For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery.

– Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

– Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can’t authorize these funds unless “there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back.” Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well.

– The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms’ debts. Bondholders can sleep easy — there are more bailouts to come.

– The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis.

– Don’t worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on “whether setting up an electronic database” would be a help. Maybe they’ll even get to use that Internet thingy.

Sources in the Senate have made conservatives aware of a sleight of hand that Sen. Corker and Dodd may use to try to get this bill through the Senate. The discussion draft contained the infamous bailout provisions. But we have been warned that the “compromise” may take the bailouts out so they can be inserted back into the bill through the House Senate conference committee.

Does this sound like a bill a senior Republican Senator should be trying to revive? Since when do Republicans believe in more government, more bureaucrats and more Washington red tape?

Bob Corker’s Senate office number is 202-224-3344.

While the media and most of the public are consumed by the health care death march, the Senate is deep in negotiations to pass a sweeping re-regulation of the financial sector. As the public knows, ObamaCare is an attempt to regulate 1/6th of the US economy. The financial ‘reform’ proposal, though, will impact the other 5/6ths of the economy. In many respects, the financial services ‘reform’ is much more damaging to the economy and our future competitiveness. Worse, its passage is being aided by Bob Corker.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his complete capitulation and total surrender on the Financial Services bill.  The bill, passed by the House with a $4 trillion bailout provision, making bailouts the permanent policy of the United States government, was on it’s last legs until Corker came to the rescue.  Now the Washington Post and other are reporting that Corker and ethically-challenged, retiring Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are on the verge of a deal to breathe life back into the regulatory and bailout scheme.

Let’s be clear – the President and the hard left want this bill. David Reilly of Bloomberg described the measure as Barney Frank’s $4 trillion gift to the banks. Reilly wrote:

Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank’s handiwork:

– For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery.

– Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

– Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can’t authorize these funds unless “there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back.” Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well.

– The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms’ debts. Bondholders can sleep easy — there are more bailouts to come.

– The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis.

– Don’t worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on “whether setting up an electronic database” would be a help. Maybe they’ll even get to use that Internet thingy.

Sources in the Senate have made conservatives aware of a sleight of hand that Sen. Corker and Dodd may use to try to get this bill through the Senate. The discussion draft contained the infamous bailout provisions. But we have been warned that the “compromise” may take the bailouts out so they can be inserted back into the bill through the House Senate conference committee.

Does this sound like a bill a senior Republican Senator should be trying to revive? Since when do Republicans believe in more government, more bureaucrats and more Washington red tape?

Bob Corker’s Senate office number is 202-224-3344.

The recall of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez took a step forward yesterday with a promising oral argument in New Jersey state court.  The New Jersey Constitution expressly provides for the recall of members of Congress representing the state in a provision adopted by a 75% favorable vote of the people in 1995.  The New Jersey state legislature then expressly provided by statute for the procedures for such a recall.

The Committee to Recall Robert Menendez filed papers for the circulation of their petitions to begin last September.  But the Secretary of State, who has no authority to issue rulings on constitutional questions, nevertheless refused to approve them on the grounds that her own New Jersey state constitution must be unconstitutional under the federal constitution, which she said did not allow such recalls.

The three judge appellate panel considering yesterday whether the recall should proceed expressed reluctance to declare a provision of their own state’s constitution duly adopted by the people null and void.  They also seemed receptive to the argument by the recall committee that they were only asking the court for an order for the circulation of petitions to proceed, and there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits that.  To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution protects the political expression involved in signing a petition calling for the recall of an elected official, and the petitioning of government for the redress of grievances.

If the recall committee gets the required signatures from over a million citizens calling for the recall of Senator Menendez, and the majority of citizens vote to recall him in a recall election, and the Senator decides to thumb his nose at the will of the people anyway, then the issue of whether state recalls of members of Congress are constitutional under the U.S. Constitution would be presented to the courts.  But until then all that the New Jersey recall committee is asking for is the freedom of political expression involved in gathering recall petition signatures, and the U.S. Constitution protects rather than prohibits that.

Based on the oral argument yesterday, the recall effort in New Jersey stands a good chance of getting the go ahead for now.  That could have a powerful political effect in Washington right away.  The law in 9 states provides for the recall of members of Congress, and those states include 12 incumbent Democrat Senators who are not otherwise up for reelection this year. So if the New Jersey courts allow the recall there to proceed, that means all 12 of these Democrat incumbents could be added to the ballot this year, putting majority control of the Senate even more in play.

That could cause Congressional Democrats to be more reluctant to follow Barack Obama off a political cliff.  The 12 Democrat Senators potentially on the hook for a recall election will be more likely to decide they better spend more time listening to their voters than to Barack Obama’s ideological entreaties.  That could be the final straw that stops Obamacare, in accordance with the will of the people.

In the category of least surprising, and therefore most anti-climatic, decisions of all time, Jerry Brown announced that he is running for Governor of California. He did so through an Internet video. Certainly I realize how fashionable the Internet is for candidates – but Brown’s choice of venue to announce his campaign was probably less hip than hiding – much like his virtual absence from the campaign trail the last few months.

Quite frankly, the former media-hound Brown has been hiding because he has nothing relevant to say. Indeed, the most important issues of the day all run counter to Jerry Brown’s current policies. Let me count the ways . . .

1. The Budget/Taxes.  In this perennial saga, California has yet another $20 billion+ budget deficit. The Democrats and their Union patrons want more spending and higher tax rates. The Republicans, including their statewide candidates and Brown’s Republican opponents, want less spending and lower tax rates. The California voters, according to the Field Poll (never known to lean to the Right), want lower spending not higher taxes. What’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Other than saying he will leave it up to the voters to raise taxes (the so-called leader is asking to be led), he has remarkably little to say – and that is one reason he avoids the press and limelight so assiduously – including campaign announcements devoid of those annoying press questions like – would you veto a Democrat sponsored tax increase bill?

2. Jobs. Nevada is the Nation’s #1 business development State. California is either last or second to last when it comes to being employer friendly because of high tax rates and the nation’s most onerous regulatory burden. See the correlation anyone? California, like the nation, faces a simple choice: government jobs or private sector jobs. Government jobs cost money California does not have. Private sector jobs require tax relief and lower regulations. Brown can’t advocate more spending very well and he can’t seriously claim he will go against the unions and the Democrats in the legislature when it comes to taxes and regulations. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

3. Central Valley Water Crisis. We all know that the Obama administration does not want to use the word “terrorist” lest they offend someone. Instead they use the ludicrous euphemism: “man caused disasters.” Well, if ever there was a man caused disaster, the government imposed disaster on the Central Valley qualifies for that. Politicians and a Judge have sided with an imported bait fish, i.e. whose job it was to be eaten, over people and farms causing depression level unemployment and business losses. The solution is simple and rational: elevate human dignity over a bait fish and turn the water back on. Brown can’t advocate that because he and the Left (if they are not one in the same) don’t believe in supporting people over planned-obsolescent fish. The problem is, as Paul Rodriguez has pointed out at length, fish don’t vote. That’s a problem this time for the Democrats and Jerry Brown. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

4. Global Warming. Jerry Brown is a big fan of AB32 – California’s job stifling version of a global warming bill. Trouble is – voters are cooling to that bill even faster than the drop in world-wide temperatures – except on the far Left. Unfortunately for Jerry, he can’t go against the Left. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

5. Voter ID. There is likely to be a Voter ID initiative on the ballot this fall. Over 70% of the voters want Voter ID in California – just not Jerry. He has done all he can to keep it off the ballot. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

6. Universal Healthcare. The great debate of the day finds California with its own Universal Health Care bill that is projected to cost way over $200 billion dollars per year. That stunning figure is almost 250% of existing revenues. The far Left wants it – as did Jerry Brown during his failed 1992 presidential campaign – but the voters clearly do not. So what’s the current version of Jerry Brown to say under those circumstances? Remarkably little.

It should be pretty obvious by now that Jerry Brown’s policies are on the wrong side of every major issue of the day facing California – according to the voters – not just Republicans. Rather than buck his patrons on the Left, Jerry Brown has ducked the voters and press. He is proving once and for all that he is not capable of being a leader in difficult times – and there can be no more relevant issue than that.

In a further attack on the housing market, the New York Times recently reported that President Obama may be amending his loan modification program to make it even more difficult for defaulting homeowners to be foreclosed upon.  The Times states:

The Obama administration, under intense pressure to help millions of people in danger of losing their homes, is considering a ban on foreclosures unless they have first been examined for potential modification, according to a set of draft proposals.

That would raise the stakes from the current practice, which strongly encourages lenders to evaluate defaulting borrowers for a modification but does not make it mandatory.

Meg Reilly, a Treasury Department spokeswoman, said Thursday that the proposed foreclosure ban was “one of the many ideas under consideration in the administration’s ongoing housing stabilization efforts.” The proposal was first reported by Bloomberg News.

To be fair, the effects of this program may be minimal, with some interpreting the ban to be more about PR than anything substantive:

Laurie Goodman, a senior managing director at the Amherst Securities Group who has been highly critical of the government’s modification program, said even if the proposal came to pass, it would not be “a major change. We think there is a large public relations element to this.”

…The Mortgage Bankers Association said its members were already doing what the administration was considering.

“Lenders generally go to foreclosure as a measure of last resort, after all other options, including loan modification, are exhausted,” said John Mechem, the trade group’s vice president for public affairs.

Any enhancements the government made to the modification program would be unlikely to stem many foreclosures, said Howard Glaser, a prominent housing consultant.

Regardless of the impact however, this potential loan modification addendum adds insult to the injury of an already wrongheaded and destructive policy, and will only prolong the pain in the housing market.

The reasons for the woes in housing are quite simple.  Banks extended mortgages to borrowers that were poor credit risks, and many borrowers took out mortgages that they shouldn’t have either out of speculation or profligacy.  That the depression is throwing people out of work and keeping many jobless exacerbates the problem, in that unfortunately many who could have reasonably expected to afford their homes now cannot given their lack of sufficient cash flow.  Of course, truly prudent buyers might have saved to purchase their homes outright with cash.

In any event, to fix the housing market requires these folks to be foreclosed upon.  Keeping homes off the market artificially suppresses supply, propping up prices that already necessarily needed to fall, as house prices rose to unjustifiable levels due to the Fed’s pump priming, the CRA and the surge in demand these two factors engendered.  To keep people in homes they cannot afford besides creating moral hazard and distorting banks’ balance sheets also has the effect of keeping worthy buyers from purchasing homes at decreased prices.  It further prevents apartment owners from renting out their excess inventory to underwater and/or insolvent former homeowners.  The effects of the government intervention in the housing market are amplified significantly when one considers the volume of securities backed by mortgages not being adequately serviced.

Government has no business in throwing this market into disequilibrium.  But President Obama believes otherwise.  In campaigning for Harry Reid and while announcing a further imprudent measure to provide $1.5 billion in mortgage relief in five states hit acutely by the downturn, Obama had this to say about the housing market:

“Now, government has a responsibility to help deal with this problem. Government can’t solve this problem alone. We got to be honest about that. Government alone can’t solve this problem. And it shouldn’t…It can’t stop every foreclosure, and tax dollars shouldn’t be used to reward the very irresponsible lenders and borrowers who helped bring about the housing crisis. But what we can do is help families who’ve done everything right stay in their homes whenever possible.”

This is typical Obama.  He knows how to frame the issue so that while what he is saying sets a dangerous precedent, he comes off as pragmatic.  He uses his rhetoric to appease those being taken advantage of by his policy, while spinning nicely the fact that he is going to screw them over. It is akin to when he defended himself as an “ardent defender of the free market” while touting his massive intervention into all aspects of the economy at the recent “Business Roundtable.”

Every single time he addresses an issue, you can bet that it will follow the same formula: “on the one hand [insert rational, conservative argument], but on the other [insert emotional/generally bleeding heart, liberal argument].”  It allows him to come off as a moderate and practical leader while he obfuscates the public by saying nothing.  His true stripes only show when he speaks in front of his people.

At the end of the day, the man should be judged by his actions and not his words, and his actions in the housing market are illustrative of his overall view of government’s role in the economy.  Wherever market forces are working to correct the imbalances and malinvestments of a 70-year credit expansion, this President is going to implement policies to prevent the market from working and perpetuate an illusory economy.

Factor in his foreign policy and treatment of our war with Islam, and you get the sense that this President is intentionally trying to hurt this country.  Somewhere, Jeremiah Wright is smiling.  Ironically, for all of President Obama’s apologies for our arrogance and destructiveness, as he helps sully our preeminence and power with his own policies, he remains the most arrogant and destructive American of all.

Recently the Obama Administration cut funding to Upward Bound, a successful educational program with a proven track record. Upward Bound provides support to participating students in their preparation for college entrance. Upward Bound serves high school students from low-income families and high school students from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor’s degree. 95% of Upward Bound graduates have entered post-secondary education and are four times more likely to earn a college degree than students from similar back-grounds who do not participate in the program. The Obama Administration will cut funding for this successful educational program.

Radical Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings will get a fat raise in funding this year.

At the same time, despite the runaway federal spending and record budget deficits, Barack Obama is including $410 million in the 2011 budget for his “safe schools” czar Kevin Jennings. This is an increase of $45 million over last year’s budget. Obviously, some things are more important than others. These funds ought to buy a whole mess of fisting kits, leather bar guides and child porn books. And, the money will come in handy for the sexual indoctrination of teens and pre-teens.
Citizen Link Blog reported:

So want does Jennings intend to do with this money?

For starters, he says he’s going to make “school climate” measurement a top priority—and, in fact, he’d love for “school climate” to eventually be made part of the “Common Core” national standards movement! He plans to begin with “a new grant program coming out of this department where we’ll be providing possibly as much as $70 million for investments in school climate projects.” (He revealed all this and much more in this month’s Phi Delta Kappan magazine. Scroll down to the “Safe at School” title.)

So at this point, you might be wondering, What on earth does “school climate” really mean? I think it’s best to take that definition from Kevin Jennings–based on his record as the longtime founder and leader of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network).

Under Jennings’ leadership, GLSEN has provided students with a “school climate” continuum measurement tool. This tool reveals a lot about Jennings’ true goals: A positively rated “inclusive school,” for instance, is defined as one where “LGBT themes are fully integrated into curricula across a variety of subject areas and grade levels.”

I.e., Jennings and GLSEN want homosexual, bisexual and transgender themes taught in every subject at every grade, all the way down to the kindergarten level, maybe even preschool.

In other words Jennings will be using millions of taxpayer dollars to promote “inclusive schools” where LGBT themes are fully integrated across a variety of subject areas and grade levels. This may appear innocent enough until you take a closer look at the radical GLSEN agenda.

Kevin Jennings, the founder of the GLSEN organization, has a long history of promoting sexual material in classrooms including books that describe sex between first graders and books that promote S&M. The GLSEN group also pushes books that romanticize child rape and books that show men having sex with boy scouts in the background. Jennings’ GLSEN group also organized student-teacher seminars where instructors held fisting lectures. He sounds like just the person who deserves a fat $45 million raise, huh?

Last week, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a crime syndicate dedicated to tightening the Democratic Party’s grip on America, dissolved its national structure.  Too much of ACORN’s corruption had been exposed to public scrutiny for it to run its vote fraud and extortion rackets effectively.  So, ACORN activists will have to soldier on in state-level organizations, such as New York Communities for Change and New England United for Justice in Massachusetts.

ACORN does indeed operate like the Mafia, but it more closely resembles another organization that began as an affiliate of the Democratic Party, the Ku Klux Klan.  Aside from intimidating some bank executives, ACORN does not engage in violence, but like the KKK it has vote fraud as a top priority.

There have been two distinct organizations known as the Ku Klux Klan.  The modern-day KKK, with whom most people are familiar, was spawned in 1915 by the Hollywood epic Birth of a Nation, premiered at the White House by a Democrat president, Woodrow Wilson.  Cross-burning and other rituals were actually inspired by the movie.  The Klan came to dominate the Democratic Party so thoroughly that the 1924 Democratic National Convention was known as the “Klanbake.”

It is not so much this Klan 2.0 that ACORN parallels as the original version.  Established in 1866, Klan 1.0 was an affiliate of the Democratic Party during the Reconstruction era.  Named for “kuklos,” the Greek word for “circle,” the Ku Klux Klan waged war against the Republican Party in the former Confederate states.  Goofy titles for its commanders such as Wizard and Cyclops were intended to disguise the fact that the KKK was a paramilitary organization.  In some areas, leadership of the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party were indistinguishable.

Democrats used the Klan to suppress their political opposition, with vote fraud and intimidation and violence.  Klansmen aimed at African-Americans, nearly all Republicans in those days, and at white Republicans who tried to help them.  Once threatened by the KKK, Republicans could in many cases save their lives only by publicly swearing allegiance to the Democratic Party.  According to a southern governor, “Few Republicans dare sleep in their houses at night.”

“The suppression of enough GOP votes could ensure a Democratic victory,” wrote one historian.  “There’s no question that Klansmen closely watched the polls” – easy to do before the secret ballot was introduced in the United States in the 1880s.  All too often, Republican ballots were not even counted.

Like ACORN, the Ku Klux Klan operated with impunity until Republican politicians and journalists sounded an alarm.  In 1869, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the KKK’s Grand Dragon, ordered the Klan disbanded.  Why?  The national organization was getting too much attention, so Klansmen would have to soldier on in state-level organizations, such as the Red Shirts in South Carolina and the Men of Justice in Alabama.   Nonetheless, most members of these spin-off groups considered themselves to be Klansmen.

A congressional investigation reported that “the operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party.”

In 1871, the Republican-controlled 41st Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, and a Republican president, Ulysses Grant, signed it.  Until overturned by the Supreme Court twelve years later, the law effectively banned the KKK.  Federal troops crushed Klan uprisings in South Carolina and Louisiana, while hundreds of Klansmen were convicted in federal court.  Law enforcement played a role in eliminating the Ku Klux Klan, but primarily the Klan disappeared because after Democrat regimes replaced the Reconstruction state governments there was no need for Democrats to suppress Republican opposition by covert means when government authorities could do so openly.

Back then, Klansmen had to contend with a Republican administration, but now, with a Democrat in the White House, ACORNistas know that the federal government is on their side.  With Eric Holder’s Justice Department condoning polling place thuggery [pictured] and other illicit activity against the GOP, there is less incentive for Democrats to suppress Republican opposition by covert means when government authorities are doing so openly.

The Democrat-controlled 111th Congress has made ACORN spin-off groups eligible for billions of taxpayer dollars.  Once an insurgency, community organizers are now part of the establishment.  To the victors go the spoils.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear McDonald v. Chicago, in which the Court will decide whether the City of Chicago can disarm its citizens by forbidding them from owning handguns, or whether gun ownership is a “privilege” of citizenship protected by the U.S. Constitution.  In doing so, it will reconsider whether courts should play a more robust role in the protection of the basic liberties of the people.

Such a statement may seem counterintuitive.  Of course courts protect rights; it’s their job to interpret the Constitution to do just that.

But the practice of constitutional law has unfortunately long since been about more than the simple application of the plain text.  That’s because the Constitution—the point of which is to limit government power—is a rather inconvenient roadblock when government wants to do something without restraints.  Courts, in many cases, have abandoned their responsibility to apply the clear commands of the Constitution and have become extremely deferential to legislatures, especially with regard to progressive policy goals the judges themselves often share.  It seems crazy that we would let legislatures determine when laws they themselves create violate the Constitution.  But that is exactly what has happened.  We’ve let the fox guard the henhouse.

Some call this judicial “restraint,” but increasingly, a more accurate term would be judicial abdication.  And judicial abdication is every bit as dangerous as judicial activism, and arguably even more so because it allows politicians to disregard whatever constitutional limits they find inconvenient, which leads to unchecked expansion of government power.

A glaring example of judicial abdication is the 1873 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court known as the Slaughter-House Cases—a case that legal scholars from every political persuasion believe was wrongly decided.  Slaughter-House involved a government-created butcher monopoly in the City of New Orleans.  If butchers wanted to work, they had to pay to use a single government-sanctioned private slaughterhouse.  Naturally, those whose rights were being violated by this action sued, arguing the recently adopted Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment protected their right to pursue the occupation of their choice free from illegitimate government regulations.

The Supreme Court, however, disagreed.  In a 5-4 decision that remains controversial to this day, it concluded the Privileges or Immunities Clause—against all evidence—protected only a few basic rights inherent in national citizenship, such as the right to travel across state lines and the right to petition the government.  In doing so, it eviscerated a clause of the Constitution meant specifically to protect the liberties of the people—particularly newly freed black slaves and their white supporters—from state and local government infringement.

The 13th Amendment brought a legal end to slavery.  But the 14th Amendment was enacted to ensure that the freedom of the former slaves was meaningful.  Thus, no government could deny the multitude of “privileges or immunities” inherent in citizenship.

There was a general consensus that the term “privileges or immunities” protected important rights necessary to live a decent and productive life, such as own property, earn an honest living, participate in politics, and own a gun for self-protection.  But the term was left open-ended to protect against the many newfangled ways racist governments could deny opportunities to newly free black and their white supporters.

It’s not surprising that the chief legacy of Slaughter-House is Jim Crow, and the century of oppression suffered by blacks at the hands of unjust laws that denied them real opportunity.  But that legacy extends to all Americans, especially those who’ve suffered—like the butchers in New Orleans—from unreasonable regulations and licensing schemes that deny them the right to earn an honest living.  Ask nearly any small businessperson one of the most difficult challenges they face and you will get a common response:  big government regulations—like those that find their roots in Slaughter-House.

Thus, McDonald is more than a gun case.  McDonald represents an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the Privileges or Immunities Clause and abandon its tainted history of judicial abdication.  Once again, the Court could take seriously its vital role of enforcing the Constitution—all of it—against the continued onslaught of government power.

To ensure that we live in a nation characterized by islands of government in a sea of liberty—and not the other way around—it is imperative that the Court take advantage of this all-too-rare opportunity in McDonald to overturn Slaughter-House and restore itself as an engaged and co-equal branch of government when it comes to the protection of our rights.

Last week, with eyes glazed to the tube and hands filled with overflowing tubs of popcorn, the nation watched as the most powerful man in the world temporarily stepped down from his post to serve as a mere committee chairman of the bipartisan health care summit.

The Chairman-in-Chief spoke condescendingly, counted everyone’s minutes except his own, and ultimately watched his team get thoroughly embarrassed on national television in a political Stupor Bowl.

For nearly the past year, Congressional Democrats have run around like chickens with their heads cut off, ignoring the opposition to the president’s legacy-making initiative, and feverishly making deals which each other so enough support could be garnered to get a bill passed—any bill.

In their haste to make history, it’s unfortunate that the manufactured-crisis of health-care reform has unnecessarily dominated the national debate while a real, alive-and-well, housing crisis has continued to manifest itself.

Last year, the president’s signature housing program, Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), was supposed to stem the tide of foreclosures. In the words of his Treasury Secretary, the initiative would “show results quickly”, but homeowners, mortgage companies, and legislators all questioned its effectiveness. For a few months, foreclosures were down, until December, when filings had its first month to month increase since July.

Was the increase a sign of things to come?

In a word, yes.

On Christmas Eve, while the nation was more engaged in holiday festivities than the day’s news cycle, the president calmly and coolly signed an executive order that issued a blank check to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to cover their losses from the reeling residential real estate market.

Freddie Mac had to be ecstatic; after all, it posted a $7.8 billion loss in the year’s Q4. But CEO Charles E. Haldeman, Jr. proclaimed we’re far from being out of the woods of the housing crisis.

“We start 2010 with some early signs of stabilization in the housing market, with house prices and home sales likely nearing the bottom sometime in 2010. We expect that low mortgage rates, relatively high affordability and the homebuyer tax credit will help continue to fuel the recovery. Still, the housing recovery remains fragile, with significant downside risk posed by high unemployment and a potential large wave of foreclosures.”

The president’s administration already has a solution to the potential large wave of foreclosures coming down the pike; banning foreclosures altogether. This past week, Bloomberg reported that the administration is hoping to convert HAMP into the ultimate authority on foreclosures. The program’s bureaucrats would have the power to screen and reject foreclosure attempts.

Coming from a president who purports to not be a proponent of big government, I’m absolutely shocked, and by shocked I mean I’m not surprised at all.

People shouldn’t be given the ability to remain in homes they can’t and won’t be able to afford. It’s only furthering their misery and allowing Freddie Mac to celebrate a decrease in losses on its balance sheet.

This nation needs a leader who understands that until individuals and businesses accept responsibility for their actions and take the subsequent losses as a result, the economy can’t possibly recover because there won’t have been any sort of correction to allow it to do so.

Unfortunately, in November of 2008, the electorate of the greatest nation ever known to man chose the handout president, who’s determined to control the nation’s resources and provide its citizenry with what he feels it needs. The never-ending gifts of housing, unemployment benefits, expansions of already existing entitlements, and creations of new entitlements will expand the societal underclass and perpetuate its dependence upon the government for its way of life.

This is not the American dream; he’s not The One.

A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the supposed quandary of how crime rates could be falling during periods when prison populations were expanding. A number of critics sarcastically explained that crimes rates were falling because bad guys were behind bars and invented the term “Butterfield Effect” to describe the failure of leftists to put 2 + 2 together.

We now have a version of the Butterfield Effect in tax policy. Recent IRS data show that rich people earned a record amount of income in 2007 and also faced their lowest effective tax rate in almost two decades. Proponents of soak-the-rich tax policy complain about these developments, but they seem oblivious to the Laffer Curve insight that rich people earned more income in part because tax rates were lower. This video explains how the Laffer Curve works.

Liberals don’t understand that if they penalize the rich with higher tax rates, as President Obama is proposing, they will be disappointed to discover that they collect considerably less revenue than predicted for the simple reason that wealthy taxpayers will respond by earning less taxable income. This Bloomberg excerpt is a good example. The leftist quoted in the article assumes that income is a fixed variable and successful taxpayers will passively endure higher taxes.

The 400 highest-earning U.S. households reported an average of $345 million in income in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier, IRS statistics show. The average tax rate for the households fell to the lowest in almost 20 years. …The statistics underscore “two long-term trends: that income at the very top has exploded and their taxes have been cut dramatically,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research group that supports increasing taxes on high-income individuals.

As an aside, it’s also worth noting that the IRS tax-rate numbers in the Bloomberg article are very misleading. The tax burden on the rich has dropped largely because of lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains. But when the IRS says upper-income taxpayers had an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, this does not include the other layers of tax that are imposed.

The corporate income tax is 35 percent (just counting the federal level), for instance, so the actual average tax rate on these forms of income is far higher. Double taxation is counterproductive to growth and competitiveness, though, which is why the correct tax rate on dividends and capital gains is zero.

A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the supposed quandary of how crime rates could be falling during periods when prison populations were expanding. A number of critics sarcastically explained that crimes rates were falling because bad guys were behind bars and invented the term “Butterfield Effect” to describe the failure of leftists to put 2 + 2 together.

We now have a version of the Butterfield Effect in tax policy. Recent IRS data show that rich people earned a record amount of income in 2007 and also faced their lowest effective tax rate in almost two decades. Proponents of soak-the-rich tax policy complain about these developments, but they seem oblivious to the Laffer Curve insight that rich people earned more income in part because tax rates were lower. This video explains how the Laffer Curve works.

Liberals don’t understand that if they penalize the rich with higher tax rates, as President Obama is proposing, they will be disappointed to discover that they collect considerably less revenue than predicted for the simple reason that wealthy taxpayers will respond by earning less taxable income. This Bloomberg excerpt is a good example. The leftist quoted in the article assumes that income is a fixed variable and successful taxpayers will passively endure higher taxes.

The 400 highest-earning U.S. households reported an average of $345 million in income in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier, IRS statistics show. The average tax rate for the households fell to the lowest in almost 20 years. …The statistics underscore “two long-term trends: that income at the very top has exploded and their taxes have been cut dramatically,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research group that supports increasing taxes on high-income individuals.

As an aside, it’s also worth noting that the IRS tax-rate numbers in the Bloomberg article are very misleading. The tax burden on the rich has dropped largely because of lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains. But when the IRS says upper-income taxpayers had an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, this does not include the other layers of tax that are imposed.

The corporate income tax is 35 percent (just counting the federal level), for instance, so the actual average tax rate on these forms of income is far higher. Double taxation is counterproductive to growth and competitiveness, though, which is why the correct tax rate on dividends and capital gains is zero.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown seems to be getting a lot of reminders from his gubernatorial challengers Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman about his failed governorship of the state from 1975-1983 when Californian’s endured high unemployment, home foreclosures, large scale labor strikes and fuel shortages at the gas station. Recognizing the failed policies of then Governor Brown, California voters revolted and passed Proposition 13 which is a landmark initiative that limited politician’s ability to arbitrarily raise taxes on California residents.

Over a week ago, Attorney General Jerry Brown got yet another reminder, this time coming from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” focuses public attention on AG Brown’s failed investigation of ACORN. While some of Brown’s gubernatorial challengers talk of the need for a California Governor to have a spine of steel, AG Brown has instead crumpled like an aluminum can cowardly hiding behind state bureaucrats and a wall of state agencies.

On October 1, 2009, Jerry Brown publicly announced that an investigation had been opened concerning undercover videos that were obtained by citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles who videotaped ACORN employees at two California offices. ACORN employees were filmed providing advice regarding tax evasion, prostitution and human smuggling of underage girls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was informed by AG Brown in a letter that he had “opened an investigation of both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped.” Since that announcement, AG Brown has found himself at the center of a controversy surrounding the mismanagement of the investigation as well as a potential scandal due to a double standard involving one of his own state employees secretly recording conversations with reporters.

Shortly after ACORN had been alerted to the immanent investigation as a result of AG Brown’s public announcement, ACORN employees at the San Diego, CA office were caught engaging in a massive document dump on October 9, 2009. Those records were retrieved from an unsecured shared public dumpster where they had been thrown revealing sensitive personal, financial and banking information for both clients and employees in addition to revelations about the political inner workings of ACORN’s relationship with major U.S. banks and labor unions.

Just a few days later, David Lagstein, ACORN’s head organizer in San Diego, was caught on an audio tape bragging how investigators from the Attorney General’s office had visited the local ACORN office that day and that communication from the Attorney General’s office indicates, “the fault WILL BE found with the people that did the video – not ACORN.” Mr. Lagstein appears to have been speaking with greater knowledge and authority than he has led people to believe since my investigation revealed that in addition to being ACORN’s head organizer, he is also married to Clare Crawford who is a National Political Director for ACORN and who has ties to ACORN’s head office in Chicago, IL.

First Clip: Attorney’s General Office Visits ACORN

Second Clip: Fault Will Be Found With Filmmakers

On November 22, 2009 while on KFI 640 radio with Andrew Breitbart, the story broke that I had over 20,000 documents ACORN unceremoniously threw into a dumpster in advance of Attorney General Jerry Brown’s visit to the local San Diego office. The following day, in a rambling statement on a Los Angeles radio show, AG Brown spoke about ACORN’s “right to privacy” of their trash. Californians quickly saw an Attorney General shift into political “duck and cover” mode rather than show the leadership that is expected from California’s top law enforcement official.

After being granted access to the documents, photographs and recordings that I obtained, investigators from the attorney general’s office stated in a written letter dated December 7, 2009, “California Teachers Association (CTA) paid California ACORN Special Projects nearly $140,000 in April-May, 2009 to conduct what CTA reported as “voter registration,” yet, according to documents found in the ACORN trash…it is apparent that ACORN workers solicited voter support for Proposition 1B.”

My investigation clearly showed that ACORN’s support of the ballot initiative was done with resources provided by the CTA and their explicit approval that specifically solicited partisan support from Democrat voters in California. Proposition 1B was a California ballot initiative during the May 19, 2009 special election that earmarked $9.3 billion for schools and was supported by CTA. The letter further states, “Because the issues raised by Mr. Roach’s claim seems most appropriately handled by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), we are referring this matter to you.” The FPPC is a state agency consisting of two republicans and three democrats that investigate violations of California’s Political Reform Act. On December 30, 2009, Roman Porter Executive Director for the FPPC responded to the referral by the Attorney General’s office stating in a written letter, “There is no evidence of a Political Reform Act violation.”

ACORN – FPPC Ltr 12-30-09 –

In the wake of Jerry Brown alerting ACORN to an investigation that was to be conducted by his office, ACORN’s actions of dumping records into a dumpster in what appeared to be possible obstruction of justice, statements from ACORN officials that some interpret as possible collusion between ACORN and the Attorney General’s office and a referral of an investigation to another state agency in what appears to be an abdication of responsibility and the equivalent of a political passing-of-the-buck now comes new allegations that ACORN did in fact violate multiple California state and federal laws.

On February 19, 2010 Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49) stated on nationally syndicated The Roger Hedgecock Show that documents from the San Diego office of ACORN were vital in showing a pattern of fraud, waste and abuse. The documents also showed that ACORN and the California Teachers Association were directly involved in California elections without the proper firewalls that are legally required to distinguish non-profit from political activities.

Congressman Issa also referred to the recent report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” which was released by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 18, 2009. The report finds, “There is no distinction between ACORN and any of its affiliates. Affiliates share staff, funds, office space, responsibilities, and common controls-there is no real separation between the parts, making it impossible to consider them as truly separate organizations.”

Documents obtained from the San Diego ACORN office included information about Citizens’ Consulting Inc which the report found is “an arm of ACORN that commingles funds from ACORN’s non-profit organizations and transfers this money to organizations to use for political purposes.” Documents that I provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also showed a relationship, not only with the California Teachers Association but with the local chapter of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The findings in the congressional report found that, “SEIU and ACORN are not only financially but also politically codependent” and that “ACORN directly runs two of the most prominent SEIU locals.” ACORN and SEIU were also found to share offices in nine cities across the United States utilizing staff and resources to advance both organizing and political goals.

Documents obtained from the San Diego ACORN office included financial records for Whitney Bank located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The congressional report that was released found that ACORN maintained nearly 700 bank accounts at Whitney Bank alone not to mention numerous bank accounts at other banks including Bank of America. It was revealed that ACORN had ownership interest in Whitney Bank. The report findings shockingly revealed that Whitney Bank inexplicably wired several million dollars to an ACORN Bank of America account in San Francisco and that money has not been accounted for.

It is astoundingly amazing that with video evidence obtained by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, documents that show an undisputed pattern of political activism by a “non-profit” organization, millions of dollars that have been unaccounted for and a congressional investigation that has documented a pattern of criminal activity that has deprived the State of California from desperately needed tax revenues; that California Attorney General Jerry Brown has yet to show any real sign of leadership or fortitude necessary to protect the citizens of California or seriously investigate ACORN.

Instead he is hiding behind a state bureaucracy hoping that nobody will notice his lack of leadership until after the next election. It is no wonder that Democrat elite are quietly whispering in their inner circles that Attorney General Jerry Brown failed California as Governor and is once again failing to show any signs other than that of a washed up politician who is once again trying to become Governor before heading of to retirement to enjoy his family’s trust fund. Perhaps it is time to investigate those in Sacramento for their ties to this corrupt organization.

Al Gore emerged from his undisclosed location and took to the op-ed page of the New York Times:

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Read the whole piece of performance art here. No doubt Al Gore believes that the really important thing here is that the ‘global consensus’ remains unchanged. For him and other climate-profiteers, science has been flipped; it is the conclusion, not the premises, which is set in stone. If some facts fall apart, they’ll just find some new ones to prop up their proposals.

Al Gore emerged from his undisclosed location and took to the op-ed page of the New York Times:

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Read the whole piece of performance art here. No doubt Al Gore believes that the really important thing here is that the ‘global consensus’ remains unchanged. For him and other climate-profiteers, science has been flipped; it is the conclusion, not the premises, which is set in stone. If some facts fall apart, they’ll just find some new ones to prop up their proposals.

I was invited to speak on 21st century missile threats and defenses at the recent 7th annual Jerusalem Conference, 2010, held at the Regency Hotel on Mt. Scopus, in the city of David, but I was pleased as well to hear a wide variety of experts (speeches are delivered in English and Hebrew with convenient wireless earphone translation headsets).

This gathering is rooted in historic Zionism, the meaning of the land of Israel, and the spiritual meaning of Jerusalem. Many Israeli statesman and American political leaders come to address current security crises, as well as existential questions ever-present for the Jewish state still facing war.

The Palestinian Front

On the Palestinian front, many now believe that the idea of a small PLO state within the 1967 borders, to include Gaza, major parts of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, has lost its appeal within Araby.

Radical Islamism, unrealistic expectations, and daily incitement against Israel in mosques, the media, and madrassas, have all added up to another era of Palestinian intransigence and irredentism.

Unfortunately, the drive for Palestinian independence has not been equated with responsible state building leading to the kind of sovereignty that would help the Palestinian people themselves.

Palestinians universally wish to cast Israel off their shoulders, but this does not mean they support a fair division of land, or a desire to live in peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state in the middle east.

Israeli journalist and commentator Ehud Ya’ari stated that the Palestinians have now fully collapsed into the unwilling arms of the Israelis, and that Israel must urgently solve the seemingly unsolvable.

Israel is today faced with a reverse annexation: It is the Palestinians who have decided to annex Israel, because Israel did not annex them first.

A notion: Palestinians have long been suicidal, both metaphorically, and in recent years, of course, practically. They simply never stepped up to accept the responsibility of accepting a 2 state solution. Not in 1947, when offered a state by the United Nations, and not since.

Israel’s real interest, of course is in a peaceful neighbor, responsible and productive, even a trading partner. But, can Israel force Palestinians into democratic sovereignty? In fact, is any permanent agreement now possible since Gaza has been lost to Hamas, radical Islamic fundamentalists whose charter calls for the genocide of the Jews?

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords and the signing in Washington, D.C. of commitments, Israelis have seen their nation shrink, and their hopes dashed, by the failure of Palestinian society to reciprocate their moves for peace. Israelis have marched and sang for peace, and unilaterally withdrawn from major portions of the West Bank, completely from Gaza, and from their security buffer in Southern Lebanon (and before that from the Sinai desert and other areas).

Israelis now do not even visit their holy Temple Mount, because Muslim rule denies Christian and Jewish access.

A better idea: pathways to parallel statehood on the same territory. Forget about drawing borders and solving for all time the land dispute. No complex borders and tricky transportation connection between a somehow artificially contiguous Gaza and the West Bank. Just citizens with different passports. Jews with Israeli, Palestinians with Jordanian. All living together in a shared economic region.

Would that this have been the path. Instead, since Israel told the world and the Arab community that it questions its own legal and moral rights to its land, it has suffered a dramatically declining strategic position.

The middle east is far worse off for Israeli territorial concessions, which only served to inflame radicals. Hezbollah and Hamas now run Lebanon and Gaza, respectively. Israelis are terribly disunited and a post-Zionism has captured much of its academic community. Israeli quantitative and qualitative military edges shrink over time due to Arab oil wealth and the relativization of power due to the spreading of technology.

Israeli peace moves were met with bloody intifada, and with Iran now funding and training the terror attacks against Israel.

The good news is that Israel’s security fence (opposed 14-1 by the International Court of Justice by the way — the U.S. was the sole supporter early in the decade), has dramatically reduced daily terror attacks and given breathing space to both Israeli economic growth, and any hope for Israeli – Palestinian dialogue.

The bad news is that Israel’s foes just send mortars, rockets and missiles over the fence.

The United Nations’ purposefully hostile Goldstone report on Israel’s 2008 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, in defense against thousands of rocket attacks on civilians over years, received strong condemnation at the Jerusalem Conference for its lack of objectivity and methodology, as did international media and academic blood libels, attempts at de-judaizing Jerusalem’s history, and repeated calls to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel, including by leftist churches (World Council of Churches, Sabeel, and Presbyterian Church USA),

The diplomatic climate for Israel has darkened at the United Nations, and perhaps the worst recent offenses are the British arrest warrants issued for Israeli politicians.

A recent keynote speaker at NYU Law School’s Hausner dinner was none other than Richard Goldstone. One pauses to ponder: Were there any pro-Israel donors in the crowd, and if so, do they have any idea of Goldstone’s nefarious role in serving the anti-Israel cause?

The NGO Monitor organization documents the formal 2001 Durban Conference strategy to use “lawfare” to demonize Israel through well-funded non-governmental organizations, which claim to be human rights organizations but are instead highly politicized and controversial, selectively using the mantle of international law to single out Israel for condemnations, investigations, and trials.

Repeated rebuttals to unsubstantiated and ideological attacks on Israel, including false claims of Israeli violations of humanitarian laws of war in Jenin and Gaza, in recent years, do not seem to slow the crowd which does not focus on Hamas or Hezbollah terrorism, but instead wails about Israeli disproportionate response in defending its tiny population. Israel sent warnings to civilians before hitting terror targets in Gaza. But the world condemns not the violation of the laws of war by Hamas, and Hezbollah, which hide amongst civilians, but Israel, which roots out terror only after years of suffering from it.

Fortunately, most Americans, who would not stand for 5 minutes any mortars, rockets, and missiles raining down on them from across our Canadian or Mexican borders, still believe in notions of self rule and self government, and not transnational law with the disgraced United Nations and biased NGOs as arbiters of sovereignty, security, or sensible defensive operations in response to terror wars.

Post 1948, within Judea and Samaria, there were no Jews before 1967, but still no peace. So “settlements” cannot possibly be the reason for terrorism, economic warfare against Israel, and incessant rhetorical / ideological war against the existence of a Jewish state, no matter it’s (tiny) size and borders.

Has the Palestinian Authority removed illegal weapons, outlawed terror organizations, or stopped incitement and hate education in mosques and schools and websites and in the media?

Even the “moderate” Palestinian Authority leaders Mr. Fayyad, and Mr. Abu Mazen, defame and vilify Israel. Israel is trying to join the OECD, a major economic organization, and a non-political one. Why do these Palestinian leaders continue the war and incitement against Israel? Fatah’s latest conference concluded with a call for more Armed Struggle, emphasizing that the Fatah constitution still refers to the end of Israel.

The Iranian Front

But the major focus of the Jerusalem Conference 2010 was the arrival of Atomic Iran.

There is a long history of positive Jewish-Iranian relations, and the people of Iran are not the enemy.

But the Iranian regime’s repeated threats against both world Jewry and Israel are matched by now well publicized military oppression if its own citizens. Positively, european leaders such as President Sarcozy of France are aggressively confronting the tyranny, terrorism, and nuclear threat presented by the Iranian Revolutionary Republic and its Revolutionary Guard Council.

Noteworthy, Ayatollah Sistani, who supports democracy from his own base of Iraq, is opposed to the IRGC. Many Iranian Mullahs as well would prefer to remain outside of political rule. Unlike Sunni Islam, many Shiite clerics do not prefer to be involved in statecraft and politics.

Ambassador Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, outlined how the entire middle east region is affected by Iranian pressure and proliferation. By crossing the nuclear threshold, Gold argues, Iran would provide an umbrella under which Islamist terrorism proceeds, less fearful or deterred by western response and defense.

Iran supports Hezbollah, which has perhaps more capability than al-Qaeda even to create mass casualty attacks on the United States and our allies. The marriage of terrorism and nuclear cover is today’s state of concern. For example, it confronts India, which faces Pakistani terror attacks under the protection of a Muslim bomb.

Iranian influence in the western hemisphere received special attention. In Central and South America, from the bombing of the Jewish center in Argentina in 1994 to today’s flights from Tehran to Chavez’ Venezuela, financial and ideological enemies of the United States are collaborating.

Raids on Caracas’ hebraic jewish club, day school, and synagogue, Chavez’ rhetorical assault on the Jewish community after the Gaza war, and his intimidation campaign against Jews, has caused many to leave.

The Response to Iran

Will Sanctions work ? Iran has exploited the process, with the EU 3 having failed to deter or slow Iranian proliferation. President Obama’s commitment to multilateralism, using the UN, gives veto power to China, dependent on Iranian oil.

Will Deterrence work ? The Policy of the United States has been: Iran must not get nuclear weapons. But if they do, of what value are western threats and complaint going forward in the nuclear age ?

Iran’s regime is ambitious, seeking regional hegemony, restoration of the caliphate, return of the 12th Imam, and pre-eminence of Shia Islam over Sunni. No amount of rhetoric or hand wringing by western diplomacy seems to slow them down.

The Iranian revolutionary regime lied all along about their nuclear program, including the recently revealed Qom facility, and now boasts a new generation of centrifuges, with enrichment of uranium to 20 % purity, followed by taunts about the price the west would pay for any effective sanctions.

The Jerusalem Conference is non-partisan within Israel, (and vis a vis U.S. politics as well), but President Obama, while rarely mentioned by name, aroused deep skepticism and concern.

His appointments of Chas Freeman (rejected Arabist U.S. diplomat and Saudi client) and Hannah Rosenfeld, (the anti-Semitism Czar who blasted Israel’s Ambassador to the United States), and his advisors on Muslim affairs, and to the Organization of Islamic Conference, and even to counter-terrorism positions within the administration, are all troubling left-wing ideologues. They are apologists for radical Islamism and far out of the mainstream.

Obama’s infamous Cairo speech, his deep bow to the Saudi King, the engagement with Iran and weak response to the stolen June 12th election, the beating up of Israel over 2nd story apartments, and the administration’s friendly approach to the United Nations and its Durban II planning conference and (anti) Human Rights Council are just a few of the wild and weak Obama approaches to U.S. middle east policy.

When Obama told the 2008 AIPAC conference that he support a unified Jerusalem, and then recanted the very next day, bells should have gone off. The President who was mentored by radicals in academe, who opposed Israel’s security fence and who disdainfully stated “you don’t have to be pro Likud to be pro Israel” has clearly picked a fight with the people and government of the Jewish state.

The Islamic War on the West

When Israeli officers enter battle, they pronounce: After me. Israel itself faces battles that eventually come to all who share its values of democracy, pluralism, women’s rights, and Judeo-Christian civilization. The Jihad rejects western ideas not only in its midst, the middle east, but the caliphate is meant to spread globally, and to conquer.

Many western policy makers mis-understand Islam, and Islamic self identity, and assume Islamic beliefs, traditions, processes, and motivations are the same as ours.

Legendary scholar of Islam Bernard Lewis explained that some thousand years ago, Arab theory stated that the essence of magnanimity is to spare your enemy when you have him completely vulnerable, but don’t try to befriend him now. He wants to battle those who do not submit. Islam means submission, and all must convert to Allah, submit to Islamic rule, or die. Temporary truces and practical accommodations are possible, but the world of Islam, Dar al Islam, must be brought to the world of war, Dar al Harb, meant for conquer and conversion.

The Arabic Salaam is close to Hebrew Shalom. But the greetings of Salaam are meant for peace to be upon those who are not infidels, kaffirs, non-believers. When President Obama used the explicitly Muslim greeting, in Cairo, to a large Muslim audience of believers, many within the Islamic world took that to indicate his choice to join them in their religion. This is a betrayal of the west’s belief in itself, its own identity, values, and beliefs, and only encourages the Jihad to sense more western weakness and incomplete dedication to its own tradition and meaning.

Mr. Obama further humiliated himself and the United States with his wrong and bizarre interpretation of President Jefferson’s having a Koran. Jefferson studied the ways of his enemy, the barbary pirates. He was an opponent of Islamic war against the infidel, not a fan.

The Christian notion of church-state separation has no similar parallel in Islam. The mosque is a mere building for worship and study. The mosque is not a complete institution like the church is.

Islam and the state itself are not separated. The entire state is Islamic, only and solely.

Moses never made it to Israel. Christ died on the cross and his followers were scattered. They are profoundly inspiring, of course, to Jews and Christians around the world.

But Mohammed founded a state that became an empire in his own lifetime. A glorified prophet who inspires as if he were here today. The 7th century is very much alive and motivating for Islamic Jihad.

The Final Threat

There were no Palestinians before 1948 (except as the term did refer to the resident Jews). Arabs rejected Palestine as a British creation, as artificial and cut off from Araby. The creation of a Palestinian people and conscience has been a political pursuit. Judea became Palestina, under Roman rule, but it was not an Arab entity. Greater Syria, Iran, Egypt are all much more important historical homes for Muslims. Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran.

But the goal of Islamism is to reject the Jewish Abraham and his covenant, and the promise of God to his people and their land. And to reverse Christ’s eternal theology of love and oneness, and promise of salvation. Prophet Muhammed’s truth is the final one. Therefore, to resist the infidel is to exist as a Muslim.

Jihad uses guerilla, asymmetric, and unconventional warfare, by both state and non state actors, and it is networked, lethal, alert, and mobile. IEDs, the use of civilians as human shields, and homicide/suicide terror all are means for Jihad.

Defending against modern terror requires new tactics of intelligence and renewed commitment. But modern western populations are distracted, tired of war, and unsure what constitutes winning. The war of ideas starts with understanding why we believe in our lives, our security, and our liberty.

Israel’s enemies have decided they cannot defeat her with tanks, planes, and masses of soldiers. So they have adopted the technology of missiles, which fly 24/7, are launched with the push of a button, are all weather, and can disrupt an economy, or the rallying of reservists. They are potentially anonymous.

And even when the source of launch is identified, through heat signature or satellite reading, for example, responding to first strike leaves the defender liable to complaint that he is using disproportionate response when the attacker hides amongst civilians, in schools and hospitals.

And, in an age of missiles, everything is faster. Israel’s margin for error is now measured in mere minutes and seconds.

The middle east is a region that favors power, strong horses and winners. But the western mind rejects the idea that others think, plan, and act based on ancient battle plans and a different tradition’s notion of humanity.

Israeli missile defense, against short, medium, and longer range missiles, with interceptors and lasers, layered and eventually meant to strike in the boost phase, over enemy territory, is the correct response to enemy proliferation.

But, in the final analysis, even hitting the enemy’s missiles over his own territory may not deter through fear of mutually assured destruction. Martyrdom and the purposeful coming of the final conflagration excite the true believers. Getting the warhead launched against Jerusalem is worth any risk of pre-emptive attack or second strike Israeli or American retaliation.

Without a liberation of Araby and the Muslim world from their political tyrants, and then the joining of the religious Muslim world with modernity, there is no settlement of claims, no final peace accord, no comprehensive agreement to be made. Diplomats think they can negotiate the solution to a clash of civilizations with the right code, compromise, or cajoling. But the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a rubics cube with a solution. Only fools who think they are wiser than history assert they know the secret.

The Jewish state of Israel is a small country with big dreams and accomplishments, but it faces a big threat. Both ancient and cutting edge, modern Israel is still spiritual but bloodied.

May the stones of Jerusalem remain a strong foundation for the deeper wisdom required by its leaders, citizens, allies, and supporters.

President Obama signed the renewal of the Patriot Act in the quiet of a slow-news Saturday–the Act was set to expire Sunday, February 28–as reported by The Hill.

Photo Credit: AP Photo

The reauthorization did NOT include any reforms to the current Patriot Act–an odd display of agreement and submission to Bush-era policy–even though the Democrats had the numbers to reform the Act. The continuance of the current Patriot Act signals that Democrats are fearful of further controversary in light of American’s distrust and poor approval ratings of the Democrat-controlled Congress. From the Hill:

The House approved the bill 315-97 on Thursday, a day after the extension passed the Senate.

The provisions, including roving wiretaps, records access and tracking terror suspects not affiliated with any group, were set to expire on Sunday. Democrats opposing the extension were unable to add desired civil-liberties protections.

The Patriot Act was first passed by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a defense mechanism against terrorists.

The House and the Senate, behind the scenes of the healthcare fervor, quietly passed this bill with little oppostion and outrage. Democrats could have modified the Patriot Act, but didn’t.

Apparently without Bush, the Patriot Act is no longer Orwellian as Michael Moore would have it and the ACLU is now quietly voicing its differences. Even Obama criticized the Act’s compromise in 2006, but had no issue, as President, signing the identical Act he wanted reforms on.  In 2006, Obama stated on the Senate floor:

So, I will be supporting the Patriot Act compromise. But I urge my colleagues to continue working on ways to improve the civil liberties protections in the Patriot Act after it is reauthorized.

The Democrats had the numbers to make changes, but another civil war would have ensued.  In addition, it appears that when these controversial legislative pieces are passed by the Democrats, it makes it all better.  No more outrage from the MSM and the far-left, because the rules of war and engagement are clearly different because, you know, the Democrats are in charge.

Today is the one year anniversary of the Tea Party Movement in Chicago. In some cities the one year mark is a cause for celebration, but in Chicago it’s just depressing, because there is no Tea Party movement to speak of here at Obamamania ground zero.

The internet is a pretty big place, so it’s possible that we have simply been unable to locate any info pertaining to the Chicago Tea Party, but so far, it looks as thought the movement in the Windy City is a defunct corpse.

Whoever organized the original set of Chicago Tea Parties has clearly abandoned the movement for other pursuits.

Is this the future of the Tea Party movement nationwide, or is this a failure specific to the Chicago organizer(s)?

For a flashback to the first Chicago Tea Party from one year ago today, please see the video below:

During his campaign for Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli committed himself to acting with an aggressive conservative agenda. He promised voters that he would the office to aggressively fight governmental overregulation and interference wherever he could find it.

In other words, he pledged to use the office of Attorney General for good, rather than evil. After just over one month in office, he’s off to one hell of a start.

Last week, AG Cuccinelli boldly petitioned the EPA to convene a proceeding to reexamine their “Endangerment Finding” which claims that human activity has increased atmospheric greenhouse gases to a point that people’s lives are at risk. As such, they claim, the federal government must impose new caps on emissions and other climate protection policies in the energy sector.

Cuccinelli believes, rightly, that regulations based on the findings of the EPA in this sketchy case would be both legally questionable and detrimental to Virginia’s economy. (Much of the research that the EPA has based these findings upon has come from the questionable climate-gate materials). Accordingly, the AG also has petitioned a federal appeals court to review the EPA’s findings.

Keep an eye on this guy. He means business. And by picking these kinds of necessary fights, he’s certainly going to need backup.

In a post here Wednesday, under the headline “Can This Possibly Be True?,” I called attention to a “new” logo being used by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) on the grounds that it bore a disconcerting resemblance to an amalgamation of the Obama campaign’s logo and the symbols of Islam, the crescent and a single star.   It turns out the answer is “no,” it isn’t true that the MDA’s logo is exactly new or, apparently, that it reflects an Obama-directed redesign.

We have since learned that the logo has been used at the MDA website since at least October 2009.   Matters are made more confusing by the fact that the agency continues to use its older shield-like logo for online and other purposes.  The contract for a complete rebranding for MDA was let in 2007, during the Bush administration, although much of the work appears to have been done in 2008 in follow-on contracts during the presidential campaign in which the Obama logo was much in evidence.

It has also been observed that – rather than embracing the symbolic crescent and star, they could be interpreted as the targets of the intercepting swoosh in the MDA’s latest logo.  If so, the 2009 design would presumably be offensive to Islamists, rather than evidence of submission to them.

For these reasons, I am content to have the question posed in the last post be answered in the negative, and I regret any confusion caused by my suggesting otherwise.  The other criticisms I leveled at the Obama administration in connection with its serial and indisputable assaults on the Pentagon’s missile defense programs and capabilities – which the Missile Defense Agency is responsible for building – stand.   Here’s an example:

Visit  the Missile Defense Agency website for this extraordinary video of the successful February 11, 2010 Airborne Laser Testbed  (ALTB) firing of a High Energy Laser, destroying a threat-representative ballistic missile.  It’s a real-life example of what the old MDA logo – and okay, yes, the new MDA logo – represent in our missile defense systems: in this case, our nation’s only program capable of providing a near-term ability to intercept ballistic missiles early in their flight (i.e., the boost-phase).

Yet in the proposed 2011 budget, the Airborne Laser Testbed will never see production.  As SpaceNews reports, “The MDA at one time had plans to field operational versions of the ABL for boost-phase missile defense, but the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has scaled back the program. Plans now call for using the experimental ABL platform as a test bed for research on directed energy weapons.”

After years of effort, the MDA achieved a  breakthrough success two weeks ago.  The administration should reverse their plans to defund the Airborne Laser Testbed.  Build on success – don’t punish it.

The Hill reports a major win for Republicans and the CIA on a Democrat ambush on the agency and its agents. The Democrat sneak-attack unfolded as the healthcare summit took the national stage, but the GOP was watching.

Democrats inserted an 11-page addition into the bill late Wednesday night as the House Rules Committee considered the legislation.

The provision, previously not vetted in committee, applied to “any officer or employee of the intelligence community” who during interrogations engages in beatings, infliction of pain or forced sexual acts. The bill said the acts covered by the provision would include inducing hypothermia, conducting mock executions or “depriving the [detainee] of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care.”

The language gave Congress the discretion to determine what the terms mean, and it would have imposed punishments of up to 15 years in prison, and in some cases, life sentences if a detainee died as a result of the interrogation.

Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-MI) called out the Democrats:

“This will fundamentally change the nature of the intelligence community by creating a criminal statute governing interrogations,” said Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-Mich.).  [This] had appeared “out of nowhere” in a manager’s amendment.

“Would someone on the other side please explain the rationale behind this and why the majority was unwilling to have hearings on this issue?” he said.

“Republicans brought this to the attention of the American people, who were rightly outraged that Democrats would try to target those we ask to serve in harm’s way and with a unified push we were successful in getting them to pull the bill,” Hoekstra said in a statement. “The annual intelligence bill should be about protecting and defending our nation, not targeting those we ask to do that deed and giving greater protections to terrorists.”

The language was pulled from the bill.  However, this latest development makes you want to ask, “Who’s side are the Democrats on?” And the next question is, “How can the CIA recruit exceptional talent and additional agents under these conditions and threats?”  Neither one, though, is rhetorical.

Its been another week that I’m certain the Democrats in DC are happy to put behind them. Happy too, probably, that another snowicane slammed the Northeast. Anything to distract any part of the populace from what can only be described as a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week.

A few weeks ago, the Democrats loudly proclaimed they would “pivot to jobs” and public concerns about spending. But, their addiction to ‘comprehensive health reform’ proved too powerful, culminating in one last, ‘we really mean it this time’ effort to pass a proposal opposed by a majority of the public. Yesterday’s surreal six-hour gab-fest/lecture on the topic was almost too bizarre to invite further comment. I mean, the spectacle speaks for itself. How did this ever seem like a good idea, even on paper. Giving the GOP a national platform to talk intelligently on health care is certainly an interesting strategy to pass ObamaCare. Clearly, too brilliant for me to understand.

As if the ’summit’ debacle weren’t enough for Democrats to welcome the weekend, we now get the revelation that, according to the House Ethics Committee, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) did in fact violate House ethics rules. (Shock!) Of course, simple facts aren’t really a problem for House Speaker Pelosi. If they are inconvenient, she’ll just pick some new ones. From today’s The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’s once again sticking by embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) — at least for now.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a Friday press conference that she had not yet read the full report from the ethics committee, which admonished Rangel, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for improperly accepting reimbursement for two trips to the Caribbean.

“All I saw was the press release where they said he did not violate the rules of the House,” Pelosi said. “And I think that’s an important statement that they made.”

Fine except, you know, he did violate the rules of the House.

From the Ethics Committee’s official statement:

“The Report further finds that Representative Charles B. Rangel violated the House gift rule by accepting payment or reimbursement for travel to the 2007 and 2008 conferences.”

I’m not certain what press release exonerating Rangel Pelosi is referring to, but shouldn’t she be paying just a tad bit more attention to alleged ethical violations by one of the most powerful members of her caucus. We are talking about the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, perhaps the most powerful committee on the hill. I would hope Nancy “drain the swamp” Pelosi might do a bit more than just glance at a press release on the matter.

Then again, it has been a pretty bad week for her side. Perhaps she’ll just move to Australia.

Its been another week that I’m certain the Democrats in DC are happy to put behind them. Happy too, probably, that another snowicane slammed the Northeast. Anything to distract any part of the populace from what can only be described as a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week.

A few weeks ago, the Democrats loudly proclaimed they would “pivot to jobs” and public concerns about spending. But, their addiction to ‘comprehensive health reform’ proved too powerful, culminating in one last, ‘we really mean it this time’ effort to pass a proposal opposed by a majority of the public. Yesterday’s surreal six-hour gab-fest/lecture on the topic was almost too bizarre to invite further comment. I mean, the spectacle speaks for itself. How did this ever seem like a good idea, even on paper. Giving the GOP a national platform to talk intelligently on health care is certainly an interesting strategy to pass ObamaCare. Clearly, too brilliant for me to understand.

As if the ’summit’ debacle weren’t enough for Democrats to welcome the weekend, we now get the revelation that, according to the House Ethics Committee, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) did in fact violate House ethics rules. (Shock!) Of course, simple facts aren’t really a problem for House Speaker Pelosi. If they are inconvenient, she’ll just pick some new ones. From today’s The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’s once again sticking by embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) — at least for now.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a Friday press conference that she had not yet read the full report from the ethics committee, which admonished Rangel, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for improperly accepting reimbursement for two trips to the Caribbean.

“All I saw was the press release where they said he did not violate the rules of the House,” Pelosi said. “And I think that’s an important statement that they made.”

Fine except, you know, he did violate the rules of the House.

From the Ethics Committee’s official statement:

“The Report further finds that Representative Charles B. Rangel violated the House gift rule by accepting payment or reimbursement for travel to the 2007 and 2008 conferences.”

I’m not certain what press release exonerating Rangel Pelosi is referring to, but shouldn’t she be paying just a tad bit more attention to alleged ethical violations by one of the most powerful members of her caucus. We are talking about the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, perhaps the most powerful committee on the hill. I would hope Nancy “drain the swamp” Pelosi might do a bit more than just glance at a press release on the matter.

Then again, it has been a pretty bad week for her side. Perhaps she’ll just move to Australia.

After the conclusion of yesterday’s nationally-televised health care “summit” hosted by President Obama, in a video for YouTube’s Citizen Tube I answered five health care questions submitted and voted on by the You Tube community.  The questions posed on You Tube are the same questions and concerns I hear from Americans across the country.  They want to us scrap the current bill and start over with common-sense, step-by-step measures that lower health care costs.  And they want to know why Congress insists on passing massive bills that no one in America has time to read or understand.  My Republican colleagues and I agree a different approach is needed – not just to health care reform, but to the way Congress works on every issue.

In the video, I respond to citizens’ questions about health care reform.  On one question, for example, about whether I believe that health care is a right, I said that, “I believe that freedom is a right, and that any health care bill that takes away Americans’ freedom is wrong.” I also answered questions about my support for health care reforms aimed at lowering Americans’ health care costs, such as medical liability reform and allowing Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines, and pledged I will insist on smaller, simpler bills and implement a mandatory 72-hour online reading period for all bills if Republicans are entrusted with the majority.

Over the past year, Republicans have used new media tools to interact directly with the American people.  Whether on Twitter, where House Republicans outnumber their Democratic counterparts two-to-one, or YouTube, where eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, House Republicans are listening to and learning from the American people.  Below is full text of my answers to You Tube:

“Hi, I’m Congressman John Boehner.

“First let me thank the YouTube community for submitting some very thoughtful questions and comments.  My colleagues and I believe the best ideas come from you, not from bureaucrats here in Washington.  This effort is just one more example of that.

“Before I get into your questions, I want to also make sure you know this isn’t the only chance you have to weigh in on the issues that are important to you and your family.  Visit GOPLeader.gov to send me a message, or follow and reply to GOPLeader on Twitter.  With your help, direct media is making government more transparent and accountable.  Forward this video to your friends, and let’s work together to make sure Washington listens to the people.

“The first submission is from ‘Blinn’ in Illinois.  Blinn says ‘All people voting on these bills should be required to personally read the entire bill before being allowed to vote on it. It is ridiculous that these bills are thousands of pages long. Bills should be written in clear language.’

“Blinn, Americans have the right to know what is in these massive bills before Congress votes on them, and if I become Speaker of the House, we’ll run the House differently – differently from the current majority and from past Republican ones. And if I become speaker, there will be a 72 hour reading period before any bill is brought to the floor.  It’s part of our congressional transparency Initiative – you can check it out at GOPLeader.gov/ReadTheBill.

“But in addition to that, we don’t need to have these really big bills.  We can keep these bills smaller, more targeted, so that people actually can read them and understand what they’re voting on before they come to the floor.

“Next, ‘C. Rodgers’ from Lincoln, Nebraska asks ‘Why not quit artificially limiting the market? Stop tying health insurance to employers and increase the market dramatically. Allow insurance providers to sell across state lines and increase it even more. The larger the market the lower the price.’

“This is really one of the centerpieces of our Republican health care proposal.  Marsha Blackburn talked about it today at the summit.  Democrats claim they’ve included it in their bill, but they really haven’t.

What they really are trying to do is say, we’ve got the same thing – buying across state lines – but only  if you go to a government–run exchange with a government mandated health insurance policy that’s going to be designed by the government as well.

“Republicans believe that you should be able to buy any insurance policy across state lines and you can decide for yourself fits the needs for you and your family.

“Up next we have Pat from Chicago who asks ‘Thompson Reuters had performed a study in which they concluded that 40% of healthcare waste was from unnecessary care. Unnecessary care is primarily a result of a fear of being sued, aka malpractice. What is being done to address malpractice?’

“Well Pat, you heard today that medical malpractice is really important.  And it’s not just that we reform this so that we’re not driving doctors out of states and out of communities, it’s also because of the defensive medicine that doctors practice.

“You know it was brought up today a number of times, but we never really got into the numbers.  The Congressional Budget Office says that we would save $54 billion over the next ten years in the government-run programs if we had medical malpractice reform.  PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a report in 2006 that said that we would save up to $125 billion over the next ten years.

“And we’ve got other reports.  One that came out was a Gallup study that was done just six weeks ago, and they interviewed doctors all across the country, and a majority of doctors claimed that 26 percent of the care they give is defensive medicine.  We know that if we can eliminate all of this defensive medicine that’s going on, we can dramatically lower the cost of health insurance around the country.

“Brian, a student, asks: ‘Do you believe that healthcare is a right, or that health insurance is a right?’

“We all know that if you have a health emergency in America, you have a right to be treated.  It’s as clear as that.  Health insurance – I’m not quite sure I’d call it a right – but we would clearly like to make health insurance affordable for more Americans.  And the way to do that is to drive down costs in the current system.

“I believe freedom is a right, and any health care bill that takes away Americans’ freedom is wrong.  I think Americans should have the freedom to choose their own health care, and that the government shouldn’t choose it for them.

“Finally, the number one question based on your votes comes from Chris at the University of Florida.  Chris says: ‘What is the explicit reasoning behind mandating the purchase of healthcare services?’

“Well, Chris, liberals believe mandating health care coverage will lower costs.  I believe that mandating coverage like this for everyone is unconstitutional.  And I think there are better things we can do to lower the cost of health care and make it more affordable for all Americans.

“Well, that’s the last of the questions, but this conversation on health care is far from over.  VisitGOPLeader.gov and reply to me via Twitter at GOPLeader. Thanks for watching.”

After the conclusion of yesterday’s nationally-televised health care “summit” hosted by President Obama, in a video for YouTube’s Citizen Tube I answered five health care questions submitted and voted on by the You Tube community.  The questions posed on You Tube are the same questions and concerns I hear from Americans across the country.  They want to us scrap the current bill and start over with common-sense, step-by-step measures that lower health care costs.  And they want to know why Congress insists on passing massive bills that no one in America has time to read or understand.  My Republican colleagues and I agree a different approach is needed – not just to health care reform, but to the way Congress works on every issue.

In the video, I respond to citizens’ questions about health care reform.  On one question, for example, about whether I believe that health care is a right, I said that, “I believe that freedom is a right, and that any health care bill that takes away Americans’ freedom is wrong.” I also answered questions about my support for health care reforms aimed at lowering Americans’ health care costs, such as medical liability reform and allowing Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines, and pledged I will insist on smaller, simpler bills and implement a mandatory 72-hour online reading period for all bills if Republicans are entrusted with the majority.

Over the past year, Republicans have used new media tools to interact directly with the American people.  Whether on Twitter, where House Republicans outnumber their Democratic counterparts two-to-one, or YouTube, where eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, House Republicans are listening to and learning from the American people.  Below is full text of my answers to You Tube:

“Hi, I’m Congressman John Boehner.

“First let me thank the YouTube community for submitting some very thoughtful questions and comments.  My colleagues and I believe the best ideas come from you, not from bureaucrats here in Washington.  This effort is just one more example of that.

“Before I get into your questions, I want to also make sure you know this isn’t the only chance you have to weigh in on the issues that are important to you and your family.  Visit GOPLeader.gov to send me a message, or follow and reply to GOPLeader on Twitter.  With your help, direct media is making government more transparent and accountable.  Forward this video to your friends, and let’s work together to make sure Washington listens to the people.

“The first submission is from ‘Blinn’ in Illinois.  Blinn says ‘All people voting on these bills should be required to personally read the entire bill before being allowed to vote on it. It is ridiculous that these bills are thousands of pages long. Bills should be written in clear language.’

“Blinn, Americans have the right to know what is in these massive bills before Congress votes on them, and if I become Speaker of the House, we’ll run the House differently – differently from the current majority and from past Republican ones. And if I become speaker, there will be a 72 hour reading period before any bill is brought to the floor.  It’s part of our congressional transparency Initiative – you can check it out at GOPLeader.gov/ReadTheBill.

“But in addition to that, we don’t need to have these really big bills.  We can keep these bills smaller, more targeted, so that people actually can read them and understand what they’re voting on before they come to the floor.

“Next, ‘C. Rodgers’ from Lincoln, Nebraska asks ‘Why not quit artificially limiting the market? Stop tying health insurance to employers and increase the market dramatically. Allow insurance providers to sell across state lines and increase it even more. The larger the market the lower the price.’

“This is really one of the centerpieces of our Republican health care proposal.  Marsha Blackburn talked about it today at the summit.  Democrats claim they’ve included it in their bill, but they really haven’t.

What they really are trying to do is say, we’ve got the same thing – buying across state lines – but only  if you go to a government–run exchange with a government mandated health insurance policy that’s going to be designed by the government as well.

“Republicans believe that you should be able to buy any insurance policy across state lines and you can decide for yourself fits the needs for you and your family.

“Up next we have Pat from Chicago who asks ‘Thompson Reuters had performed a study in which they concluded that 40% of healthcare waste was from unnecessary care. Unnecessary care is primarily a result of a fear of being sued, aka malpractice. What is being done to address malpractice?’

“Well Pat, you heard today that medical malpractice is really important.  And it’s not just that we reform this so that we’re not driving doctors out of states and out of communities, it’s also because of the defensive medicine that doctors practice.

“You know it was brought up today a number of times, but we never really got into the numbers.  The Congressional Budget Office says that we would save $54 billion over the next ten years in the government-run programs if we had medical malpractice reform.  PricewaterhouseCoopers issued a report in 2006 that said that we would save up to $125 billion over the next ten years.

“And we’ve got other reports.  One that came out was a Gallup study that was done just six weeks ago, and they interviewed doctors all across the country, and a majority of doctors claimed that 26 percent of the care they give is defensive medicine.  We know that if we can eliminate all of this defensive medicine that’s going on, we can dramatically lower the cost of health insurance around the country.

“Brian, a student, asks: ‘Do you believe that healthcare is a right, or that health insurance is a right?’

“We all know that if you have a health emergency in America, you have a right to be treated.  It’s as clear as that.  Health insurance – I’m not quite sure I’d call it a right – but we would clearly like to make health insurance affordable for more Americans.  And the way to do that is to drive down costs in the current system.

“I believe freedom is a right, and any health care bill that takes away Americans’ freedom is wrong.  I think Americans should have the freedom to choose their own health care, and that the government shouldn’t choose it for them.

“Finally, the number one question based on your votes comes from Chris at the University of Florida.  Chris says: ‘What is the explicit reasoning behind mandating the purchase of healthcare services?’

“Well, Chris, liberals believe mandating health care coverage will lower costs.  I believe that mandating coverage like this for everyone is unconstitutional.  And I think there are better things we can do to lower the cost of health care and make it more affordable for all Americans.

“Well, that’s the last of the questions, but this conversation on health care is far from over.  VisitGOPLeader.gov and reply to me via Twitter at GOPLeader. Thanks for watching.”

Two weeks ago the U.S. Senate passed new rules that would require new spending to be offset somewhere else in the budget, the so-called paygo rule. They did this because Democrats and Obama got tired of being called big spending socialists and wanted the veneer of fiscal responsibility with which to cloak themselves. It lasted two weeks before the Senate broke its own new Obama-sponsored rule and went headlong for just another big spending program with its supposed jobs bill.

On February 13 President Obama celebrated the paygo rule as a “common sense” rule that would “rein in spending.” Obama then said that the new rule would assure that Congress would be forced to “pay for what it spends, just like everybody else.”

It all sounds so grand. But it wasn’t to last. Maybe that’s why the Senate couldn’t abide by the rule, it was too much “common sense” for them to put up with?

Two weeks ago the Senate Republicans stood against the President’s “common sense” saying that the paygo rule didn’t do a thing to dampen spending but only gave Congress the dispensation to raise more taxes in order to fund the spending levels desired. All 40 Republican Senators voted against the paygo rule two weeks ago, though this week six voted to suspend the paygo rule for the jobs bill, newly seated Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts being one of them.

Regardless, Republicans were flabbergasted that the Senate could pass what was touted as a fiscally responsible rule one week and the next break that very rule.

“I’m just not sure how you vote for this bill when it violates that rule, which you just voted for two weeks ago,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican. “It just seems to be a bit of inconsistency that’s hard even for a political institution to justify.”

The jobs bill is but more fuel for Obama’s big government juggernaut by funding state projects while doing much of nothing for private sector jobs. But what ever the jobs bill is or isn’t on its own merits the fact is after only two weeks of celebration about those “common sense” paygo rules the whole idea was thrown right out the window at the first opportunity.

What this episode shows is that there is no shame at all even in this wondrous age of Obama’s “fiscal responsibility” and “common sense.” No Congress can be trusted to observe even its own grand ideas of fiscal responsibility.

And will President Obama scold this spendthrift Congress for breaking a rule that hadn’t even aged a month yet? One would not expect so.

Perhaps this is why Congress has a disapproval rating of between 65 and 80 percent at this point in time?

Showing complete disregard for the free speech rights of small business owners, the City of Dallas bans businesses from putting commercial signs in the upper two-thirds of any window or glass door, and on more than 15 percent of any window or glass door. Only ineffective signs are allowed by the government: tiny signs placed at people’s feet. The law also bans signs that cover more than 25 percent of a building’s façade. Failure to take down the signs means you are at risk to be hit with a fine up to $2,000.

The law only targets commercial messages. Businesses are free to put anything except a commercial message in their windows. For example, a business could paint a giant Dallas Cowboys helmet on its window—but not advertise that it offers Cowboys merchandise for sale inside. Businesses can paint their windows black or put coolers or other items in front of them. In fact, businesses in Dallas are not even required to have windows at all. What they cannot do is put messages in their windows that tell customers about the products and services offered inside.

Showing complete disregards for the free speech rights of small business owners, the City of Dallas bans businesses from putting commercial signs in the upper two-thirds of any window or glass door, and on more than 15 percent of any window or glass door. Only ineffective signs are allowed by the government: tiny signs placed at people’s feet. The law also bans signs that cover more than 25 percent of a building’s façade. Failure to take down the signs means you are at risk to be hit with a fine up to $2,000.

The law only targets commercial messages. Businesses are free to put anything except a commercial message in their windows. For example, a business could paint a giant Dallas Cowboys helmet on its window—but not advertise that it offers Cowboys merchandise for sale inside. Businesses can paint their windows black or put coolers or other items in front of them. In fact, businesses in Dallas are not even required to have windows at all. What they cannot do is put messages in their windows that tell customers about the products and services offered inside.

Imagine, if you will, that you are living in a changed America, or in President Obama’s words, an America that begged “re-making.”  In this now-changed America, hope is in big government and her closest ally, big science.

Now imagine that you and your spouse give birth to a child in this brave, new America, in a hospital linked by law to the federal citizens database.  Immediately upon your child’s birth, a hospital clerk assigns your newborn with a “Unique Health Identifier” (UHI), a specially coded number, which is then put into a national electronic database, along with your newborn’s fingerprints and any other identifiers the bureaucrats in D.C. have demanded.

Sex.  Weight.  Length.  Race. APGAR score.  Health appraisal at birth, including any disfigurements or handicaps, identifying traits or birthmarks, and DNA markers.   Information about the child’s parents, such as names, age, race, number of prior pregnancies, number of prior births, number of prior abortions, education attained, occupations, finger prints and criminal records, if any, are also stored.  Almost anything can be included in the database for future government needs, whatever those might be.

Imagine that all constitutional safeguards for an individual’s privacy are deemed to have been complied with, when compiling this database, because healthcare is an interstate activity that the Feds can regulate and government access to the information improves the “general welfare.”  Imagine that it is even required that your newborn, before leaving the hospital, be fitted with a surgically implanted microchip, the way babies are now, in many states, required to be vaccinated and blood-typed.  The implanted microchip can then be accessed with a scanner by anyone who has a scanning device, with or without parental consent.

Imagine an America where your Unique Health Identifier (UHI) is required for every access to a nationally controlled healthcare system.  Imagine an America, where you must give your UHI, via a scan of your surgically implanted biochip, to pick up your prescription at the pharmacy and even when you buy over the counter medications.  The number could eventually be required to purchase alcohol and tobacco products, perhaps even to track quantities of bakery goods, chocolates, trans-fats, beef, and even birth control products — or anything else the nanny bureaucrats decide to monitor.

Sound farfetched?  Like a plot from a conspiracy-theory movie?  Like something from a sci-fi novel?

Think again.

The plans to make these very things a reality right here in America are being made in this administration, under the leadership of the president’s science guru, John Holdren.

For the past several months, I have been working with an appointed member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the sub-committee on health and technology.  My contact on the health and technology sub-committee was privy to conversations, which when related to me, literally caused shivers down my spine.

Every single detail in my opening paragraphs of this article were actually discussed in this committee and seen as a good for the future of American society.  Only a scientifically controlled populace, according to these gurus of population and health control, can survive.  These scientists see their mission as one of absolute control over even the most private aspects of human life.

Not since the aftermath of WWII — when the ends of the scientific-progressive state were revealed to the world in vivid pictures of the Nazi death camps — have progressives dared to raise their heads in America to such a degree as they are now, under the leadership of Obama’s science guru, John Holdren.  Holdren, early in his career, declared himself a Malthusian scientist and has, regretfully, never recanted, nor substantially altered his worldview.  In Holdren’s mind, as revealed in confirmation testimony, only his numbers have been off in the past, not his conclusions on the necessity of scientific control as a societal good.

Unfortunately, some of the groundwork for Holdren’s scientist-controlled America was lain in the 1996 passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).  Part of HIPAA legislation was the requirement for the development of the Unique Health Identifier (UHI) for individuals.  As detailed by this White Paper by Department of Health and Human Services:

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) outlines a process to achieve uniform national health data standards and health information privacy in the United States. Enacted with the widespread support of the industry and bipartisan support in the Congress, the law requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopt standards to support the electronic exchange of a variety of administrative and financial health care transactions.

In 2003, privacy rules were enacted that purportedly protect the individual’s right to healthcare confidentiality.  However, a provision of these privacy rules includes a powerful, blanket waiver, which can be used at the discrimination of a “Privacy Board,” acting under HHS.  All privacy rules can be disregarded for research or other “necessary” purpose:

If the covered entity receives appropriate documentation that an IRB or Privacy Board has granted a waiver or an alteration of the Authorization requirement

In other words, American citizens will continue to have the right to privacy and confidentiality between themselves and their healthcare providers, if and only if, the Department of Health and Human Services deems that right justified.  If, on the other hand, the HHS deems the open availability of an individual’s or groups of individuals’ healthcare information to be necessary to the “general welfare,” then a waiver will be granted without the citizen’s consent or even his knowledge.  And this is perfectly legal.

Making something legal, of course, does not make that thing moral or ethical.

A scientist, like John Holdren, along with the support of PCAST and its sub-committee on health and technology, would seem to be nudging Americans towards sublimating their individual needs to the collective, especially in terms of population control and the various side issues, like preventing the births of those they deem unsuitable for their brave new America.

According to my source on the health and technology sub-committee, ultimate biological control of the population is the end goal of the federal healthcare initiative, now being force-fed by the president and the Democratic Party congressional leaders.

Members of this sub-committee were even heard discussing how women’s menstrual periods could be state monitored.  How people’s defecation might be monitored and used to detect broad health concerns through electronic toilet management systems.  How sexual habits could be state-monitored by managing the sale of all birth-control technology through the use of the UHI.

Insanity seems too mild a word to describe the kind of mind that would want to create this sort of world.  These people make Dr. Frankenstein seem like a child playing tiddlywinks in his backyard playpen.

Yet, without passage of one of the current healthcare bills, which provide for the creation of the federal bureaucracies that will be tasked with numbering the whole populace, controlling which medical therapies are given to chosen citizens, and the completion of the electronic medical records system, all of these brave-new-America visions for control will be stymied and postponed indefinitely.

Perhaps this explains why President Obama and his Party are willing to commit political suicide for the passage of this particular healthcare overhaul.  Without it, they may fail in their grand plan to “re-make” America according to their scientific-state, progressive delusions.

With it, nothing else may matter.

Knowledge is power, said Frances Bacon.

And the knowledge of every detail of an individual’s health and lifestyle would be a powerful weapon in the hands of bureaucrats and their political masters.

America, the land of the free and home of the brave?  Perhaps, not for much longer, if the president and his scientific-progressives have their way.  For in their “utopian” world, you and I are nothing much but a number, a stock item, to be controlled for their purposes.

For as Frances Bacon also said, “The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.”

It doesn’t take much more than a casual glance at the downfall of the others who’ve tried this mad-science controlled government scheme to see that it isn’t a winner.  Both the Nazis and the Soviets, who built their own totalitarian regimes on Malthusian scientific themes did fall – albeit only after killing untold millions of their own citizens.

The scientifically controlled state as a vehicle for advancing human progress?  Hardly.   As human beings have tragically learned, over and over again, science without morality can indeed be the most efficient killer.

It’s not hard to believe that big government would want this kind of power over the lives of individual citizens.  What is indeed difficult to believe is that this is happening in America.

The only question now is who will stop it?

Imagine tons of explosives being stolen in Mexico and then transported by truck across the border into the United States. Could it happen? Over the weekend, it did. Almost.

On Friday, according to an article in the Latin American Herald Tribune, 18 tons of industrial explosives were stolen from a cargo container during a robbery along the Monterrey-Saltillo Highway in the northern Mexico state of Nuevo Leon. According to subsequent reports, Mexican officials located and recovered the stolen explosives within hours. The thieves, however, remain at large.

But should Americans rest easy now? Not after this near-miss event.

According to officials with the Mexican industry association, Canacar, thefts from cargo trucks on Mexico’s highways increased 40 percent last year.

North of the border, officials with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are calling upon the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to immediately challenge the legality of the tariffs implemented one year ago by Mexico so that the debate regarding cross-border trucking with Mexico can be shifted from economics to highway safety and security.

In a news release Tuesday, OOIDA officials said Mexico has yet to fully address numerous other issues related to homeland security, criminal activity and its trucking industry.

“Too many safety and security issues have yet to be resolved. Those issues certainly haven’t improved in the past year,” said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the 156,000-member OOIDA. “This is what officials from Mexico should be focused on, and our U.S. trade rep should not be bashful about telling it exactly that way.”

When John Spring was campaigning for re-election as mayor of Quincy, Illinois in the spring of 2009, his primary selling point to the citizens of Quincy was that he had close, personal relationships with people in Washington D.C. (especially Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Illinois and his old high school football teammate, U.S. Rep Phil Hare, D-Rock Island) and he could deliver the goods for the many pie in the sky projects he had in mind for the city.

Spring used a popular former mayor, Chuck Scholz, in his campaign commercials along with the head of the supposedly non-partisan local economic development arm, the Great River Economic Development Foundation.

Spring won re-election by less than 800 votes over a Republican whose lone political experience consisted of a couple of terms on the Adams County, Illinois Board.

So what did those people get for supporting Spring as heavily as they did?

Well, Durbin, who has funneled Spring with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and staff support during his elections, got to see one of his protégé’s get a nice little $5,000 a month lobbying fee from the city over the past few years. The firm, Michael Alexander and Associates of Chicago, has been paid the money to lobby…Durbin, and other Washington types.

City officials say Alexander’s fees (which was handed out in a no-bid manner and without a vote of the Quincy City Council) have been well worth it as he helped the city garner about $800,000 in grant money and will provide further assistance in future funds for Quincy’s proposed multi-million dollar plan to put hydroelectric power plants on Locks and Dams along the Mississippi River.

Is that what the founding fathers had in mind? That one governing body should be using the public’s money to buy access to another governing body? That’s really how it’s supposed to work?

No, but it’s The Chicago Way and Quincy is trending more Chicago by the day.

It gets better. The former mayor, Scholz, is actually a lobbyist with Alexander’s Chicago firm, which now has several Quincy clients, many of the not-for-profit ilk. But it is the city government, where Scholz had his salary nearly double during his 12-year mayoral tenure and which will continue to pay him a handsome pension into his golden years, that gets to continue providing him with a backdoor paycheck .

It’s important to note that at no point did anyone in the city administration bring up the former mayor’s connection with this lobbying firm. As a matter of fact, the city administration never publicly admitted to anyone they had been paying Alexander’s firm until Monday.

Quincy’s mayor ran on a platform of having relationships with people in order to make the city a better place to live.

He just didn’t tell the voters they were going to have to pay a little bit more for those relationships.

Max Blumenthal has an amazing thesis:  All conservatives and Republicans are beneath contempt.  He also has an amazing line of work.  He is underwritten by various media organs to prove his thesis.

In a previous era, Blumenthal and said media organs (Salon, Independent Film Channel, Huffington Post, etc.) were able to get away with this pathetic arrangement.   But now, we are on to Max, the spawn of Sid “Vicious” Blumenthal – he who attempted to ruin Monica Lewinsky’s life by falsely portraying her as Bill Clinton’s “stalker.”

The Blumenthal operation is now under the extremely close scrutiny of a camelid named “Retracto.”

The movement formerly known as the “Tea-Baggers” (with their flip cameras and new media skills) and various conservatives who have had enough with the excessive Alinsky tactics used most egregiously by Max and Sid but representative of main stream media’s odious guilt-by-association, repeat-the-same-lie-until-it-sticks, smear-any-conservative-as-racist-sexist-homophobic skill set, are now fighting back.

If the last two weeks have not humiliated him enough — and this Huffington Post rage-fest from yesterday with its title “Feeling the Hate at CPAC 2010 With Andrew Breitbart, Hannah Giles and the Crazy Mob” suggests they have not – then perhaps this coup de booger will tell him that we say what we mean and we mean what we say.

Max gallivanted around CPAC looking for prey.  He was treated with respect as he sought to make good and decent people look foolish on camera.  He decided he would go after a 20-year-old girl, one Hannah Giles.  And perhaps due to sexism or ageism he underestimated her ability.  Max should have called Bertha Lewis before he went after this young heroine.  Instead, he went to a gunfight with a knife – and a dirty nose.

Ladies and gentlemen, the much awaited, “Max Blumenthal Picks a Booger Out of His Nose at CPAC” video:

Max Blumenthal, this is what you do for a living. I can do it too (**wink **wink** Independent Film Channel).

Salon has already corrected his initial attempt to paint James O’Keefe as a White Nationalist.  They corrected his baseless assertion that O’Keefe planned the “Race and Conservatism” forum held at Georgetown Law Center, but he continues to hold that James O’Keefe is a racist, and that he was in some way involved with the “execution” of the forum.  His source for this claim?  Daryle Jenkins, whose credibility was recently eviscerated by Kevin Martin from Project 21.

He was wrong about Kevin Martin being a last minute addition to the “Race and Conservatism” panel (which Blumenthal describes as a “white nationalist confab”), and he continues to conveniently exclude Mr. Martin’s own testimony that James O’Keefe agreed with his positions AGAINST White Nationalist, Jared Taylor.

He was also caught lying on a video seen by tens of thousands, and yet he chose to edit that part out of his CPAC highlight reel.

Max Blumenthal, you are being Booger-Boarded. Correct, retract, and apologize to James O’Keefe for your slanderous attempt to ruin his life.  And if you do so, we will take this video down.

As Republicans are preparing for the Press Event with Obama on Thursday, I’d like to see a specific point be made with regard to costs.  Something like this:

“Mr. President, our plan removes the barriers to Interstate Insurance sales, so individuals and families can purchase insurance with specific benefits across state lines.  We’re sure you are aware with insurance every new benefit mandated with the force the Federal government, will increase costs for every US citizen’s own policy.

“As such, we’d like to go over this list of Benefits / Services currently mandates by the states:*

Healthcare Mandates _2_

“Mr. President, you’ll note that there are very few benefits that even 25 of our states require, but there are more than 130 potential mandates.  And if all the state plans are forced to cover the same fifty Federal mandates, people won’t actually have any real choice.  Republicans believe there have to be both low cost, bare bone plans and plans that cover specific types of patients.

“Why do mandates happen Mr. President? Largely because special interest groups (good people in a state all suffering from the same condition and their doctors and drug makers) lobby their state government to have their problem covered by everyone, so their own costs are lower.

“Who can argue with: If special education for autism is covered,  why not home healthcare?  If an Osteopath is covered, why not a Psychiatric nurse. If HIV drugs are covered, why not morbid obesity, why not sickle cell, why not an athletic trainer, why not massage.  Mr. President, special interests have succeeded in getting ALL of these covered in different states.  Do you really believe the federal government can be trusted to say NO?

“Mandates pit patients and their doctors against other patients and doctors.   Who’s health is most important?

“Under our approach, each state can impose mandates to serve a specific group, but that is up to them.  And under our plan, citizens in those states will be free to shop elsewhere, so mandates do not turn all plans into Cadillac plans.  And if someone’s own condition is not covered in their state, they can go get insurance that covers them.

“Mr. President, if CBO agrees that our plan without mandates will keep costs lower, even fora majority of those who are sick, are you willing to leave mandates to the states?”

—-

I want this issue raised, because the common refrain from Obama is without mandates, there will be a, “race to the bottom.”

He means healthy (young) people will go buy polices from Alabama where there very few mandates, so their premiums are low.  And as insurance companies start to lose this business from their own state, there will be pressure on other states to lower their mandates or lots of insurance companies will move to Alabama.

This is not true.

The true positive effect: People with a specific condition will go shopping for plans that cover it, this will lead to pools of people with the same condition grouping into the same policies.  So we’ll have very specific alcoholism insurance plans and morbid obesity plans that spread the cost of that specific kind of care over that group of people. This does wonders to properly place prices on lifestyles and still provide affordable plans.

In most cases this means many plans will look like “Basic Coverage + 1.” As in basic coverage + maternity.  So child bearing age policy holders spread the risk of maternity costs amongst themselves.  Yes, some conditions are very expensive to treat, and grouping those patients will lead to very expensive policies.  But it is better to see where the prices come out, actually look at the number of suffers, understand the costs and types of treatment, see what the policies actually cost and then where aid makes sense, subsidize those policies when it is warranted.

This also leads to better comparative treatment and better competition amongst doctors.  Which Osteopath is not going to accept the insurance that covers many of his potential customers?  It is also much easier to show patients with a “Basic + Osteopath” plan the prices local Osteopaths charge, because they don’t have to pour through an online database with all the diseases and doctors – they just see their local Osteopaths aggregated by their insurance policy.   This “price transparency” would do much to encourage people to purchase high deductible, tax-free HSA accounts that grow balances overtime.   This is truly the smartest kind of policy.  It dramatically drives down premiums.  When people can easily price shop, and keep the money, we’ll see savings.

Smart states will require Insurance companies to offer multiple forms of Basic Coverage Plus.  If CA, NY, TX, and FL require insurance companies to offer 130 different policies of Basic Coverage + (name a mandate), we’ll have true price discovery for each condition / treatment within months. So discussion of subsidies can begin honestly.

A year later, we’ll begin to see people moving towards HSA style versions of those polices because it is the best chance they have saving money for themselves.

The alternative to Basic Coverage Plus, is federal mandates picking favorites and driving us towards Cadillac plans for all.

America needs to see Obama be shown this logic. They need to know the answer to President Obama’s “race to the bottom.”  It is wrong.

* Data take from CAHI

I lose things all the time.  Last month I lost my wallet.  Once a week I lose my car keys.  Every day I lose the TV remote.

Thankfully, I’ve never lost a computer.

The Department of Homeland Sercurity (DHS), on the other hand, cannot say the same.

New documents show that component agencies of DHS, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) combined to lose no less than 985 computers in fiscal year 2008.  Along with other component agencies in DHS, well over 1,000 computers were lost.

But the inventories of lost stolen and damaged equipment don’t stop with just computers.  They include radiation detectors, night vision scopes (hundreds of them), night vision goggles, lost vehicles, lost blackberries, computer servers, expensive radios and radio repeaters.

CBP maintains that the computer losses were within acceptable standards for asset management, saying the losses only represented about .5% of their total computer inventory.

2008 CBP w remarks

Also, CBP categorically stated that no sensitive information was on any of the 500-plus lost computers from their component agency.  If that’s true, it makes you wonder what exactly they use their computers for.  Shouldn’t one expect that a CBP computer maintains plans, databases, maps, anything at all, that relates to the securing of the nation’s borders?

2008 ICE LDD w remarks

Click here for the full story.

The Education Action Group Foundation will support Central Falls, Rhode Island school Superintendent Frances Gallo with a billboard dedicated to this public school patriot, smack dab in the middle of downtown Central Falls.

Gallo’s recent decision to push past teachers union obstruction and do what’s best for the district’s struggling high school students is a prime example of the bold actions needed to turn around the nation’s failing schools.

Gallo recommended firing all 74 Central Falls High School teachers after the local teachers union refused to sign off on long overdue reforms needed to save the chronically failing school, which has been on the state’s list of underperforming schools for seven years. Less than half of Central Falls High School’s students graduate and only seven percent are proficient in math, state data shows.

Gallo offered to pay teachers $30 an hour for some of the additional duties, and expected them to kick in a bit of their own time to improve instruction.

Central Falls Teachers’ Union balked, then demanded $90 per hour for the extra work.

We believe the situation in Central Falls is a perfect example of the “me first” teachers union mentality plaguing school districts across the country. Affiliates of the nation’s two largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have long opposed virtually any reforms that bring accountability to the classroom, or affect the union’s bottom line.

We are applauding Gallo’s efforts with the billboard above. It should be on display in downtown Central Falls by the end of the week.

We trust her courageous actions will be supported by the state’s education leaders, who charged her with turning the school around. Hopefully, Gallo’s work in Central Falls will serve as a catalyst for other schools to stand up for their students.

It is about time somebody did.

Superintendent Gallo’s actions are tough but necessary.  The entitlement mentality and the notion that teachers unions have the right to obstruct critical reforms that will benefit children has got to come to end.  Hopefully Gallo’s brave stand will serve as a flash point for other underperforming schools across America.

Virtually every other sector of the economy is being asked to step up, pitch in and help our country through these difficult times.  To have a teachers union with its hand out – and penalizing children on top of it – is particularly insulting.

Hopefully Gallo’s actions serve as a shot across the bow of every teachers union that is putting its interests ahead of the children they purport to serve.

EAGF plans to promote bold reform efforts in other parts of the country with similar billboard messages. We are calling on others with a commitment to transforming the country’s troubled public schools to help toward that end by contributing to our campaign with an online donation at EAGFdn.org.

We are taking a stand.  To stand with us, make a tax-deductible contribution and we will post similar billboards in the community.

Yesterday came the news that ACORN was ‘dissolving’ its national structure, allowing many of its local chapters to go ‘independent’. ACORN’s destruction of its brand had threatened the existence of every ACORN office in the country. Shedding the ACORN brand will give them a chance restart the flow of public money and leftist donors.

Make no mistake, however, that while their names may change, the personnel groomed by ACORN and the tactics they employ will remain the same. To paraphrase a famous verse, “A Rose by any other name…has just as many thorns.”

Below is an invite to New York ACORN’s first ‘re-branding shindig.’ This Thursday, long-time political allies of ACORN and its Working Families Party will host a high-dollar fundraiser for “New York Communities for Change,” the presumptive heir to ACORN NY.

ACORN Relaunch -

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of liberty and freedom loving activists showed up on this?

I bet it would be interesting. Definitely, keep me posted.

I’m sure Ms. Monica Potts, is a delightful person and in polite company never wets on the carpet as some of us are want to do.   And history teaches when a lady speaks ill of me, I surely have earned it.

So I find myself  a bit out of sorts after pouring over her latest screed, at the American Prospect, because no matter how I turn this around in my little mind I reach the conclusion: Monica owes me (gasp) an apology.

Here are a few minor gaffes Monica makes:

• I called for 20% cuts in federal, state, and local employees salaries.  She misread and uses only federal numbers to impugn either my math skills or Google’s Calculator.

• I said we should cut public employee compensation by 20% and future increases should be tied to private wage growth.  Again, Monica appears to have misread.  I didn’t say each worker should receive 20% less, precisely because there is so much obvious inequity in the salary, pension, and overtime public employees receive.  She makes my point by explaining a government cashier earns sixteen thousand dollars more per year than a cashier in the private sector.  NJ’s governor just pointed to a 49 year old pensioner who is to receive $3.3 Milion on a $124,000 contribution.  Please know this Monica:  I don’t want to use a hatchet, I want to use a scalpel to remove 20% from public employee compensation. This doesn’t mean job reductions (that’s for another post), but if for instance a cashier quits in a huff, his eager replacement will still earn less.   And this doesn’t mean furloughs, workers will be expected to earn less and (horrors!) show up for work.

• Monica doesn’t know of any work force that would tolerate a 20% cut in pay. Let me help her here with the aid of the interweb.  Frankly, I’m a bit stunned by her assertion, because most all Americans in the private sector have experienced this kind of wage volatility at different points in their careers… including the UAW.

It has been noted, that Monica’s type of people get a tad miffed when they investigate the minds of my type of people, so quite naturally she’d read imaginary sentences and invent sub-par ideas to attribute to my spectacular failings.

As to restitution, in my own household, when I am so deeply in error, I’m lucky to get away with an hour long foot massage as penance.  Though based on Monica’s notions of real world work, I’ll happily settle for a kiss on my ass.

And Monica, if your lips are pledged to the bottom of another, how about we work through your errors, and my insufferable attitude, with a podcast debate?  Seriously, I’ll set it up, and we’ll both get copies….

Okay, I will admit that I am obsessed with this one particular truth:  The stimulus bill and all the stops that the federal government pulled to save the economy and create jobs didn’t not help the private sector employees. On the other hand, it did show support for its own employees.

Encouraged by Reason Magazine’s founder Manny Klausner, I made this chart this morning based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data that shows the change in employment in the private and the public sectors during the last two years.

Warning: the number of public employees is on the right hand-side of the chart and the private employees are on the left.

Warning 2: This chart is not claiming that public employment was ever higher than private employment.

However, it is showing without a doubt that during the last two year the number of public employees has increased from 22.3 million in January 2008 to 22.4 million in January 2010, after peaking at 22.6 million in July 2009.  Not that impressive you will say. Well, excuse me but it certainly beats being a private employee during that same period of time. The number of private jobs decreased from 115.5 million in January 2008 to 107 million. That’s a lose of 8.7 million jobs in the private sector while the public sector gained almost 100,000 jobs.

The data doesn’t lie my friend. Now, let’s me ask this question again: who are the big losers in this recession and who has ultimately benefited from the big government intervention in our economy?

The University of Basel’s Institute of Governance recently published a map showing the nations most linked to dirty money. What made the map interesting is that only one of the 28 nations listed was a so-called tax haven, thus exposing the left-wing lie that low-tax jurisdictions are somehow hotbeds of dirty money.

A more fundamental question is whether anti-money laundering laws are an effective way of fighting crime.  The evidence is not encouraging. The system costs billions of dollars each year. Banks are forced to set up expensive monitoring systems to snoop on their customers. They are then required to send reports to the government for all large or unusual transactions. Theoretically, these reports are supposed to alert law enforcement to patterns of criminal activity, but since banks are compelled to send millions of reports every year, it is impossible to sift through haystacks of data to find needles of criminal activity. This is why conservatives, such as a former Reagan Justice Department official John Yoder, think the laws do more harm than good. This six-minute video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains why the time has come for politicians to reconsider the current approach.

Libertarians (as well as some honest left wingers) also dislike anti-money laundering laws because they substantially undermine privacy. The Constitution guarantees a presumption of innocence and protection against unreasonable searches. Those freedoms are eroded, though, when banks are coerced into treating customers like criminal suspects and required to share millions of reports on the financial transactions of innocent Americans with the government.

It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. So perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that statist politicians such as John Kerry (D-MA) and Carl Levin (D-MA) want to make money laundering laws more onerous and intrusive. That won’t have much impact on the bad guys, but it will mean less freedom for everybody else.

From the Associated Press:

A bipartisan jobs bill cleared a GOP filibuster on Monday with critical momentum provided by the Senate’s newest Republican, Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

The 62-30 tally to advance the measure to a final vote on Wednesday gives both President Barack Obama and Capitol Hill Democrats a much-needed victory—even though the measure in question is likely to have only a modest boost on hiring.

Brown and four other Republicans broke with GOP leaders to advance the measure. Most other Republicans voted in favor of the filibuster because of strong-arm tactics by Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The bill is likely to enjoy far broader GOP support on Wednesday when it’s put to an up-or-down vote.

The bill featured four provisions that enjoyed sweeping bipartisan support, including a measure exempting businesses hiring the unemployed from Social Security payroll taxes through December and giving them another $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year.

Read the whole article here.

Below is the full length speech Andrew Breitbart delivered to CPAC 2010. We have also taken the liberty of breaking out some of the best soundbites from the speech.

1. Mr. Podesta, we are watching you!
2. What I learned from Kurt Cobain
3. E Pluribis Unum
4. The Frankfort School roots of multiculturalism and political correctness
5. Big Education
6. MSM – You are not on the American team!
7. CPAC cuts Breitbart short

Congressman Steve King, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, made the following statement in response to news reports that ACORN is dissolving its national structure.

“This is not surprising news. ACORN must change its name in order to try and run ahead of the accountability that is catching up with this corrupt organization.

“Even though the one party controlled federal government is using its resources to protect ACORN, entrepreneurial new media investigators and state attorneys general are tightening the noose. Dissolving its national brand does not change ACORN’s faces nor ACORN’s crimes. This organization specializes in subterfuge, but ACORN cannot outrun the wheels of justice that are catching up with this corrupt criminal enterprise.”

Vice President Biden keeps recycling his unemployment speeches – except he keeps confusing the suburbs of his hometown of Scranton:

1.  On October 19, 2009, he used Minooka:

My pop — my grandpop used to say — there was a suburb of Scranton called Minooka. He said, “When the guy in Minooka’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother- in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.”  Well, it’s a depression — it’s a depression for millions of Americans, through no fault of their own.

2.  On October 30, 2009, he used Dickson City:

My grandpop used to have an expression. We’re from Scranton. He’d say — and I mean this literally. It wasn’t viewed as a joke. He said, “Joey, when the guy in Dickson City,” a small town above Scranton, “is out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When you’re brother-in-law is out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.” And it’s a depression for millions of American people.

3.  On December 3, 2009, at the White House jobs summit, he used Throop:

There used to be an expression, and I’m not joking, my grandfather always used it. He was from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He said, “When the guy from Throop is out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law is out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.” And it is a depression for over 10 million Americans…

4.  On February 22, 2010, speaking to Governors at the White House, he used Olyphant:

My grandpop used to have an expression — a couple of you heard me say — when the guy — he was from Scranton — when the guy in Olyphant’s is out of work it’s an economic slowdown — that’s a little town outside of Scranton. When your brother-in-law is out of work it’s a recession. When you’re out of work it’s a depression. It’s a depression for a lot of Americans.

For the record, Harry Truman is the apparent original author of this quote (minus any reference to Scranton suburbs):

“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.” Harry S Truman, in Observer, April 13, 1958