1. Are Americans Paying Taxes To Organized Crime Syndicates?
2. Legal Questions Raised Over ACORN Allegations
3. St. Louis CBS Affiliate: Gladney family questions delay in town hall assault case
4. Obama Shatters Spending Record for First-Year Presidents
6. Byron York: Inside the numbers: How Obama has fallen
7. CBS News: John Bolton Was Right on Iran
8. Mark Steyn: The Anti-Nativity Scene
9. Obama Will Attend Copenhagen Summit
10. Gore: Obama leading a 'significant' change in US global warming policy
On this day of thanks I am grateful for, among many blessings, the unfolding affirmation of that about which we have been warning policymakers, in lurid detail now confirmed: the global warming industry’s aggressive game of Hide the Baloney.
Here are my thoughts on the matter.
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He strikes the flippin’ mother lode! At least that’s what happened to private investigator Derrick Roach at the National City (San Diego) ACORN office. Yep, Roach scored big-time on the cockroaches of ACORN when he staked out their San Diego workplace.
According to señor Roach via BigGovernment.com, after the release of the San Diego ACORN sting videos—which my daughter Hannah, James O’Keefe, and Andrew Breitbart dropped on the Nation’s head—and following Governor Schwarzenegger’s call for a probe into this batty zoo, Roach took it upon himself to get busy and see if he could ferret out more funky filth from this nefarious gang.
And, as stated, Roach scored more than Dwayne Wade would playing hoops against blind five-year-old, one-legged narcoleptic midgets.
What did Papa Roach come across? Well, my children, it was stuff like …
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Let’s hope the Green dream of ending Turkey Day doesn’t come true.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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Happy Thanksgiving!
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Amidst polls showing flagging public support, the Obama Administration has decided to address the one poll, among all others, that will determine Obama’s political future: the unemployment rate. As Scott Rasmussen points out, the unemployment rate has a lot to say in deciding a President’s popularity rating and election results – which is probably why Obama announced he would hold a jobs summit with small business representatives among others.
Speeches and photo-ops, however, won’t change the fact that Obama’s policies are anti-capitalist and therefore anti-job and anti-recovery.
It’s important to note that the secret to capitalism is not all that secret. It’s right there in the name CAPITALism. Our system relies on:
The Left’s political policies, however, are sworn enemies of that simple and effective economic process.
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Yesterday, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal – for nearly three years – to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “ClimateGate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer codes and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK’s East Anglia University.
All of that material and that sought for years by CEI go to the heart of the scientific claims and campaign underpinning the Kyoto Protocol, its planned successor treaty, “cap-and-trade” legislation and the EPA’s threatened regulatory campaign to impose similar measures through the back door.
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Before Media Matters starts hurling childish invective about how we here at Big Government aren’t “real journalists” because we don’t follow the ridiculous guidelines they set up and then fail to adhere to themselves, it brings me great pleasure to back-up today’s post about “Bon Bon” Hurd with a second source: None other than Roseanne Barr.
Thanks to a tip from “Jim C,” a reader of Big Government, Rosanne’s interview from earlier this year at the Huffington Post reveals that it’s pretty common knowledge within the power structure of ACORN that they did, indeed, work to get President Obama elected:
But, the most impressive thing is that they elected Barack H. Obama through their fantastic organizing skills and knowledge.
I wonder how all of that organizing skill and knowledge to help elect President Obama coincides with ACORN’s use of Federal Funds and their status as a 501(c)3 non-profit. (more…)
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CHARGES WERE FILED TODAY IN THE KENNETH GLADNEY CASE!!
—6 Are Charged in Town Hall Disturbance and Beatings!
They were charged with “misdemeanor” violations for smashing a black man on the cement and calling him n*****.
The Post Dispatch just broke the news:
Six people arrested in August outside a raucous town hall meeting in south St. Louis County have been charged with misdemeanor ordinance violations.
The six, including a Post-Dispatch reporter, had attended a demonstration outside an Aug. 6 forum called by U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, at Bernard Middle School in Mehlville to discuss health care reform.
The charges were filed Tuesday by the St. Louis County counselor’s office, which prosecutes misdemeanor ordinance violations in unincorporated areas. All are to appear in court Jan. 21.
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Now that global warming is being exposed as a gross manipulation of junk science, it is important to remember that this is not the first time in our nation’s history that the Progressive community has used junk science in order to force their social agenda on an unsuspecting population.
Back in the early 1900’s, up through World War Two, the progressive movements of America and Europe committed large scale genocide with their progressive Eugenic “science”. In fact the term genocide was coined to describe what the Progressive Eugenic movement did in this country and in Germany.
Not many people understand the crime these American Progressives committed, because public educators and other liberal professors just can’t wrap their rigid minds around the concept that the origins of their current religion are soaked in the blood of their own dark history.
The whole ugly truth about how American Progressives directly inspired Adolf Hitler and his Reich, is contained in a masterpiece of writing by Edwin Black, War Against The Weak.
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Regular readers of Big Government should remember the woman pictured below as the delightfully forthcoming ACORN protestor from the fateful day Andrew Breitbart staged his one-man tea party in the midst of scores of “community organizers” who mistakenly protested in front of LA’s KTTV Fox 11 TV station thinking they were intimidating Fox News. Do you remember the delightful little nuggets of information we caught on taped on our handy-dandy recorder?
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“We never declared because we have to be non-partisan – our national organization. But, it was sort of like under the grapevine we knew we were going to put in Obama.”
When asked if she worked for ACORN, our ever loquacious friend said “No, I am just a member, I am ACORN… No, I don’t work. I’m an organizer.” This suggests that she was just one of those “Rent-a-protestor” who ACORN famously pays less than minimum age for (often, ironically to protest in favor of a living wage). We captioned her picture at Big Government with the amusing phrase: “Have You Seen This Organizer?”
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Media criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.
Professor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier
On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.“ E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”
Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood. For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.
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What is Cap-and-Trade? Cap-and-Trade is a political scheme ostensibly aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of reducing the global temperatures.
With a Cap-and-Trade law in place, the government would set a yearly greenhouse gas emission target (carbon dioxide is the most common man-made greenhouse gas, you are exhaling right it now) and would reduce that yearly ceiling over time. This is the “Cap” of Cap-and-Trade.
The “Trade” part of this scheme comes in when the government (read: politicians) gives out greenhouse gas emission credits, valued at billions of dollars, to favored industries. So, industries with greater credits than emissions would be able to sell their valuable credits (basically, a right to emit greenhouse gases) to those industries (such as the coal industry or the oil and gas industries) which would need the credits to stay in business.
Over time, the government makes money, commodities traders make money, such as those on the Chicago Climate Exchange (yes, it exists, they make money trading carbon dioxide credits), politically favored industries make money (such as those former Vice President Al Gore has invested over $100 million in), and the rest of us get hit with the bill – up to $2,000 per family per year of higher energy costs. Thus, Cap-and-Trade is actually a huge energy tax on working Americans.
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Everything about Sarah Palin is magnified, as the current book tour demonstrates. The book was number one the day it appeared for sale on Amazon. All public figures have a larger than life appearance, but it is far more pronounced with Palin. She is an almost unprecedented media phenomenon. Yet few present her as a truly serious person. Democrats attempt mockery and Republicans damn with faint praise. Those who themselves praise her strongly are cast in a similar light. The great paradox is, on the one hand, the media is driven to her like a moth to flame, yet, on the other hand, they treat her as if she were not worthy of all the attention.
This attitude comes from the same media which takes or has taken Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards, Jon Corzine, and Joe Biden seriously. Admittedly, these are low hurdle comparisons, but that is exactly the point. Yet, to anyone who looks beyond the superficial coverage, it is obvious that Palin knows exactly what image she wishes to portray. Sarah Palin may or may not be a legitimate presidential candidate, (she is, in my opinion); her tactics on this book tour may or may not be helpful regarding future political ambitions (remains to be seen); but she is completely and naturally in command of herself. Yet this seemingly goes unobserved and flies in direct contradiction to the dominant narrative.
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How much do we really owe to China? Will America’s exploding debt hamper the US economy for decades to come? Is there any path out of this? We discuss all this and more on today’s Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.
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Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed
You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
NYT: Mountains of Debt
SNL: Obama and Jintao
WSJ: The Source of Chinese Savings
TNL: The End of Chinamerica?
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Last week, as the national debt topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history, one influential policymaker said, “I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt … that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.”
This analysis was delivered by President Barack Obama, on whose watch “red ink as far as the eye can see” has become the status quo.
While mostly accurate, President Obama’s comments actually miss the fact that our rapidly decaying fiscal situation has already undermined confidence in the U.S. economy. Washington Democrats saw to that with a trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that was supposed to be about creating jobs, but has instead produced countless examples of wasteful government spending while more than three million more Americans have lost their jobs.
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Today, in 1783, the last remaining British troops evacuated New York City. The event, known as “Evacuation Day” took place three months after signing of the formal treaty ending the American Revolution. George Washington made a triumphant return into the city.
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Last weekend Democrats in the U.S. Senate took another step toward passing their government run healthcare legislation. The more we have come to learn about this legislation, the more we all have cause to be concerned about this plan. It fundamentally does not focus on patients or on quality care. In fact, it is a fiscal albatross for our already ballooning federal budget deficit.
This proposal will cost taxpayers up to $2.5 trillion, create a massive new entitlement, raise taxes, add to the federal deficit and fail to solve our nation’s health care crisis. It is the kind of big government answer that we have come to expect from Democrats, particularly my opponent, Barbara Boxer. It is the same answer that has proven to fail this country time and time again.
Among the many problems with this legislation, of significant concern is the impact it will have on the ability of doctors and individuals to make decisions about care, particularly for women. Last week a government appointed panel issued a set of recommendations regarding mammograms and self-exams for women in their 40s and 50s. Specifically, this panel discouraged women from self-exams, said women in their 40s should not get annual mammograms as is currently advised, and recommended women in their 50s get mammograms just every two years. As a breast cancer survivor who found my own cancer through a self-exam just two weeks after a routine mammogram, I was alarmed. To be honest, if I had followed these recommendations I am not sure what my own prognosis would have been.
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On August 6th Kenneth Gladney attended the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in south St. Louis County. Kenneth was there to make some money selling freedom flags and buttons. After the meeting Kenneth was assaulted, beaten and stomped by angry SEIU thugs who were upset that a black man would be selling anti-Obama merchandise. Gladney was taken to the hospital following the attack.
Ken Gladney is pictured here after his public beating by SEIU thugs. Kenneth Gladney attended this protest against SEIU violence in August in St. Louis. He was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters after the town hall meeting earlier that week. St. Louis County officials have yet to press charges.
It’s been over 3 months and still St. Louis county officials have not met with Kenneth Gladney to discuss the case nor have they press charges against the SEIU thugs who beat him.
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This week, the US federal debt surpassed the $12 Trillion threshold.
Congress will vote in December to extend America’s indebtedness above $12,100,000,000,000, necessitated because our national debt grew last year by more than $1,400,000,000,000 and will grow this year by $1,400,000,000,000. According to the Obama White House estimates, the national debt will continue to grow by more than $1 trillion for the next nine years. Except it won’t…because it can’t. There just isn’t $9 Trillion to borrow.
For years we’ve heard about the immorality of putting this debt on our grandkids. Forget the grandkids, our economy is at grave risk of collapse right now!
The dollar is in free-fall. The Ponzi scheme Congress calls Social Security is about to collapse. Foreigners are beginning to balk at loaning the US government more money. That grave economic turmoil our debt and deficit will cause in the future? It’s here now.
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Every year, ACORN hosts a “Year End, Year Begin” (YEYB) meeting for its organizers. We’ve obtained the detailed agenda for the YEYB conference for 2007. Special dinner speakers for the conference include Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice-Presiden of SEIU and Mark Ernst, CEO of H&R Block. As you can see, the conference covers all aspects of ACORN’s or its affiliate’s work. And, that could be a problem for ACORN.
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As part of its strategy to build membership from the ground up, ACORN often first focuses on very local, neighborhood issues. ACORN correctly recognizes that if people can successfully organize for change in their own neighborhood, they will be more willing to organize for greater change in the overall community. A manual it provides its organizers suggests focusing on items like speed bumps, street lighting and vacant lots, as examples.
The manual provides a bit of background on the issue, some suggested actions and, helpfully, identifies “targets” for these actions.
Basic Issue Development for Organizers –
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Give credit where its due, ACORN builds its organization from the ground up, with old-school hard work and shoe leather. Its organizers are instructed to spend at least three hours a day going door-to-door in neighborhoods, recruiting members and–importantly member dues. ACORN even provides its organizers with a very illuminating and well-though-out manual on “doorknocking basics.” The document is below
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ACORN’s San Diego office isn’t the only place its been careless with sensitive documents. Late last year, ACORN abandoned an office in Oklahoma. In its haste to vacate the office–and skip out on the landlord’s claim of back-rent–ACORN abandoned piles of documents, as well as a computer. Below is a copy of ACORN’s “Oklahoma Power Plan,” a long-term political plan to reshape politics in the Sooner State.
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Banks, businesses and organizations like ACORN who receive individual’s personal financial records are bound by strict federal and state laws to protect that information. The law is chiefly enforced through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLB), which was a previous attempt by Congress to restructure the financial sector.
While chiefly focused on banks and financial institutions, GLB also covers groups like ACORN who are “non-bank mortgage lenders, loan brokers, some financial or investment advisers, tax preparers, providers of real estate settlement services, and debt collectors.”
We know ACORN provide tax preparation and other financial counseling. We leave to others whether or not ACORN falls under the letter of GLB. They certainly fall under the spirit of what legislators were trying to achieve. At the very least, the were trying to prevent credit reports, for example, from being thrown away in a public dumpster:
ACORN – Credit Report _Redacted_ -
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Dumping 20k sensitive documents in a public dumpster isn’t anyone’s idea of smart. Even though the Attorney’s General office was about to visit the ACORN San Diego office, ACORN employees should have taken some steps to protect the information they were dumping. There are extensive federal and state laws in play here, with very serious civil and criminal penalties.
But, one shouldn’t take this to mean that ACORN is always and everywhere incompetent. You don’t build an international organization with offices in hundreds of US cities through incompetence. Part of ACORN’s secret is that it is really shrewd politically. Below is a plan for a 2-year ACORN campaign to repeal California’s Prop 13. That initiative, passed in 1979, restricts government’s power to increase taxes. One of its toughest provisions requires a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to raise taxes. ACORN, naturally, wants to scrap that.
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Big Government’s first post about the San Diego Document Dump showed a bank authorization to automatically pay monthly membership dues. That particular individual committed to paying ACORN $10 a month. Thousands of California residents have made similar commitments, adding up to substantial monthly revenue for ACORN. How an organization chooses to spend its members money says a lot about that organization.
Below is a monthly credit card statement for ACORN employee David Lagstein’s corporate credit card:
ACORN – Credit Card _Redacted_ –
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Since the first undercover ACORN video was released two months ago, ACORN’s few remaining defenders have fallen back on the talking point that, whatever the misdeeds of some of its employees, the organization provides important services to poor and low-income families. Without ACORN, we are told, many underprivileged families would lose an important voice for their needs.
Really?
Below is one family’s application for food stamp benefits that ACORN threw out with its trash, in advance of a visit from officers of the Attorney’s General office.
ACORN – Food Stamp _Redacted_ –
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Everyone knows that things in Springfield, Illinois are broken. Everyone knows that the government of the State of Illinois is inefficient and corrupt. That’s all true, however, to truly understand the problems in Springfield, we must look at the structure of the legislature.
By its design, the legislature in Springfield consolidates all power in the hands of four people: Tom Cross, Christine Radogno, Mike Madigan and John Cullerton. Those are the Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. Power is consolidated through the process by which bills see the light of day. In the Illinois legislature, there’s only one way for a bill to be heard and debated: the rules committee. Not surprisingly, each of those four folks are head of the rules committee for their side in the House and Senate. As such, the head of the two rules committees have carte blanche over what bills will and won’t see the light of day. So, if any legislator wants their bill to get a hearing in the House, Michael Madigan must approve. You can see how such a process could corrupt, and does.
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SEIU has made a good living off the law of unintended consequences. Or so the labor union would have you think. The reality is, there’s nothing unintended about the consequences they reap. And when it comes to local, state and federal lawmaking, SEIU banks on the propensity of the American people to respond to emotion rather than logic, and orchestrated concern that becomes a popular mantra. Even some SEIU members (those brave enough to say so) plead for the public to investigate the union’s true intentions. But if you’re just an average citizen disengaged from the issues, before you know it, you’re ignoring the consequences staring you right between the eyes.
This past September Lisa Snyder, a 35 year old Michigan mother, made the news when she received a disturbing letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services. In it, the letter warned her that she was in violation of the law. Her offense? Watching a handful of neighborhood kids each morning for about 20 minutes as they waited at the end of her driveway for the school bus to arrive, with the blessing of their parents. State law in Michigan prohibits the home supervision of unrelated children for more than four weeks in a year without a child care provider license. Turns out a neighbor had complained and the Michigan Department of Human Services, the watchdog for home child care licensing, intervened by sending the warning letter. In Michigan, state employees for the DHS are represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union. Coincidentally, the union that represents the state’s home child care workers? Also the UAW.
AFSCME: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
FCC: Family child care | FNN: Family, friend and neighbor
” Building a Union of Family Child Care and FFN Providers”
by SEIU & AFSCME members to the National Women’s Law Center
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