We will never know how many, if any, of the major banks would have failed without the TARP bailout package passed a year ago. Several banks were strong-armed into taking the money. We can be reasonably sure that Citigroup and Bank of America wouldn’t be the institutions they are today without some government hand-holding—actually, it is more like continuous CPR while giving blood and donating a kidney.

However, while we can’t know the counterfactual, we can assess how the liquidity infusions have decreased credit risk, lowering the cost of capital, and compare these savings to profits. And the stunning numbers show that up to nearly half of all profits from the top 18 banks are the result of Uncle Sam subsidizing the cost of credit.

Every day financial firms borrow money to conduct business. Just like with individuals and families, there is a cost to the credit in the form of an interest payment or fee. However, with a virtual government guarantee of security, the big financial institutions have been able to borrow at artificially reduced rates. Lenders to financial institutions know Uncle Sam has the back of the big boys on Wall Street. They’re sure to get their money back, based on current White House and Fed policy.

The problem is that this gives large financial institutions a competitive advantage over smaller business. Those smaller firms have to pay more for their credit. They don’t have the government guarantee. They are more risky. And while it is true that smaller firms will always have to pay more money to borrow than the larger firms, the government guarantee has widened the gap between the cost of credit for the smalls and bigs.

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The 2008 election campaign filled me with an eerie sense of déjà vu, as I suspect it did many British people living in America. The hysterical reception accorded Barack Obama was strongly reminiscent of the frothing enthusiasm for Tony Blair in 1997.

 Obama had a more inspiring biography than Tony Blair of course and did sincerity better; nevertheless there were many parallels. Both were relatively young, charismatic men who insistently repeated stirring but vague mantras about change and a coming new era to an exhausted  electorate craving a break with the recent past. Both surrounded themselves with pop stars and other glamorous types, in an attempt to identify with everything that was young and progressive and hip. Of course, this being America, Obama operated on a much grander, messianic scale: Blair never implied that his victory might lower the earth’s water levels for example, and nor did anybody ever faint at his rallies as if he were a faith healer. However when Blair won the election the sympathetic Guardian newspaper did get rather overheated: I recall an article in which the atmosphere in the UK was compared to the relief felt at the end of World War II, thus equating the hapless John Major with Adolph Hitler. That total absence of proportion will sound familiar to anyone who has flicked through the People’s Temple style newsletter that is Newsweek or spent a few minutes watching the risible MSNBC. (In the Guardian’s defence however, none of its writers were ever so feeble-minded as to compare Blair to God.)

Anyway, during the election campaign I would say to those who asked for my thoughts on the Obama phenomenon that perhaps it wasn’t wise for so many people to allow themselves to be so carried away. Obama was only a man; worse still a politician; and even worse- not a very experienced one. I would then suggest that many Americans were setting themselves up for a massive disappointment: that the impossible expectations that Obama and his devotees had aroused would ultimately lead to profound disillusionment, leaving people even more cynical and embittered than if they had never been thus misled. Tony Blair’s career in Britain offered a shining example of this process in action. My listeners would then change the subject and never mention Obama to me again. I understood: they wanted to believe, they were protecting their faith.

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ACORN wants people to register to vote – as long as they’re Democrats. Republican registrations go into the trash.

 Here is a first-hand account of how it happens. In February 2008, Fathiyyah Muhammad of Jacksonville, Florida, heard that ACORN was paying people three dollars for each voter they could register. ACORN paid her three dollars for each voter she registered, but Fatiyyah Muhammad says that the group threw out her votes and fired her when she brought them registrations of Republican voters.

 Fathiyyah Muhammad voted for Obama. “I’m a Republican,” she says, “and this was the first time that I voted for a Democrat since JFK…. I’m one of those rare birds, a black conservative Republican, and actually this is the black conservative capital of the country, Jacksonville, Florida.” She is an entrepreneur and a great American: she makes custom caps for her businesses Bilal’s Custom Caps and Only in America. She and her James have made custom caps for politicians, sports heroes, musicians, and others. “America,” she says, “is the place you can live your dreams if you work at it.” She’s a can-do woman with a great American spirit, and when she saw what was breaking in the news about ACORN, she came forward; I interviewed her Monday morning.

 “This is my first experience” with ACORN, Muhammad said. “This was before Obama got the nomination, long before then….I heard about this group that was paying $3.00 per person, to go out and to get people to sign up to vote. So I went over, I thought that well this is a good way to make some money because I know everybody, you know. I went over there and this guy signed me up and everything, and gave me my little pad, all this stuff.”

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Coincidence? Buffy Wicks ran Obama’s Missouri campaign and two of St. Louis high-profile prosecuting attorneys, both Democrats, threatened to target anyone who dared to spread misinformation about the then-candidate, known as “Obama’s Truth Squad.”

If the NEA conference call is any indication, the answer is no.

Wicks, who works in the Obama White House as the Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement, helped orchestrate, and took part in, the infamous NEA call which asked the artistic community to sell their souls for a partisan political agenda.

You know, in the name of art.

One year ago on September 23rd, KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis reported that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough and St. Louis Circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce joined a high-profile group of law enforcement officials (including Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer) threatening to invoke “Missouri ethics laws” against anyone the prosecutors determined had spread misleading information about Obama.

Said McCullough:

“If they’re not going to tell the truth, somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not the truth. This is the truth.’”

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The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank weighs in on Bertha Lewis’ theatrical show at the National Press Club:

Bertha Lewis, the head of ACORN, is one tough nut.

She came to the National Press Club on Tuesday, ostensibly to report on the community group’s “internal probe” into the ACORN workers who were caught on tape advising people posing as a pimp and a prostitute. But Lewis made it clear that, far from apologizing, she was on a “set-the-record-straight tour” — and a tour de force it was.

The internal review by ACORN’s board, disclosed this week by the Louisiana attorney general, that $5 million had been embezzled from the group rather than the $1 million previously alleged? “This is speculation, completely false and not based on any documentation or any audit or anything other than two disgruntled former board members,” Lewis reported.

Accusations of voter fraud after ACORN workers filled out voter registrations for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys? “An utter fabrication and a work of fiction that was created by the people who wrote it.”

The report by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee that ACORN created a “shell game that funneled charitable funds to for-profit organizations”? “Another stretch of allegations of how to pound on ACORN. . . . It’s just false.”

And, of course, the secretly recorded videos of ACORN workers providing help to people claiming they wished to set up an underage-prostitution business? “These highly edited tapes,” Lewis said, “don’t tell the whole story.” ACORN’s accusers “have to stoop to break the law in order to create something sensational,” she added.

In creativity, the ACORN boss’s denials were matched only by her assignments of blame. She blamed her predecessor: “I don’t think it’s fair to judge me, as I’m cleaning up a previous administration.” She blamed the powerful: “We’ve seen this play before, whether it was the civil rights movement or whatever, when you organize poor people to have real power, what you do is often turned against you.” And most of all, she blamed Republicans: “The RNC . . . because we’ve been inflated as the boogeyman, raises almost $2 million a day, every day, and this form of modern-day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop.”

Assigned only a minor role in this orgy of blame were ACORN and Lewis herself. “My biggest weakness is a certain naivete about folks coming after you,” she said in a moment of self-interested introspection. “I guess maybe others might have known and could have set up some other barriers and could’ve been better with media and PR.”

Read the whole story here. But, first savor this quote. Perhaps one of the best Big Media comments during this breaking saga:

But Lewis, in playing the victim, is her own worst enemy. Forget the film of the pimp and prostitute: Watching a film of Lewis’s performance yesterday would probably be enough to cause lawmakers to cut off ACORN’s federal funding.

October 6, 2009

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released the following statement after the Senate rejected Coburn amendments that would have forced Congress to shift earmark funds back toward vital operations and maintenance. By a vote of 25 to 73, the Senate rejected an amendment offered by Dr. Coburn that would have restored to the troops $165 million earmarked within the Defense appropriations bill’s maintenance and operations accounts for congressional earmarks.

“In a time of war it is unconscionable for members of Congress to divert funds from vital operations to less-than-vital parochial pork projects. I regret the Senate voted today to protect their pet projects at the expense of our troops,” Dr. Coburn said.

The Pentagon has also expressed concern over the excessive amount of earmarks Congress has requested:

“Every dollar that we are forced to spend on things which we do not need requires us to take money from things which we do need. And the people who lose in that trade-off are our troops and the taxpayers,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman. (more…)

(San Francisco, CA) Michael Savage, ’shock-jock’ author of over 25 books with a radio audience of 10 million listeners who was banned from entering the United Kingdom in May by Gordon Brown will argue against the insanity of ‘political correctness’ on Thursday, October 15 at 8:00pm GMT. Savage will appear via internet link to argue his case for freedom of speech.

Quoting Winston Churchill, who said, “You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! -of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic…” Savage will attempt to ’save England from a descent into mental slavery where petty bureaucrats dictate what can and cannot be discussed.” (more…)

Issa Responds to Bertha Lewis Charge that ACORN the Victim of Republican McCarthyism

WASHINGTON. D.C. – House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) issued the following statement today in response to comments made by ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis at the National Press Club where she accused Republicans of ACORN McCarthyism:

“Was it Republicans who embezzled millions from within their own organization and have yet to report the embezzlement to the IRS or Labor Department?  Was it Republicans who conducted the internal review that highlighted the lack of firewalls between their charitable and political activities?  Was it Republicans who hired a man convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy and money laundering to raise funds and register voters in Oklahoma?  The fact that ACORN’s leadership refuses to even acknowledge and accept responsibility for the state of their organization is disturbing and brings into question the sincerity of ACORN’s pledge to reform their organization.”

While ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis addressed the National Press Club, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Republican Staff were reviewing new internal ACORN documents that shed further light on ACORN’s intent to capitalize on the opaque nature of their funding structure in order to fund its partisan political activities.  (more…)

From CBS News:

Bertha Lewis, the chief executive of embattled community group ACORN, told reporters at the National Press Club today that her critics are engaged in “modern-day ACORN McCarthyism” born in part from the group’s history of “going after the rich and the powerful,” the New York Times reports.

While defiant, Lewis did acknowledge that her group had its problems: She said videos showing ACORN employees advising conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute “made my stomach turn,” according to CNN. “It just made you sick,” she added. The group has appointed an investigator to examine why the behavior took place.

But Lewis refused to make apologies for her 40-year-old organization, which she said wasn’t going anywhere. Congress, she said, can’t destroy the group by withholding federal funding: “We didn’t have government funding for years,” she said to illustrate that point, according to Politico. “We may not have government funding in the future.” (more…)

Brian Walsh with the Heritage Foundation has this hilarious, ridiculous, depressing story at the Washington Times:

“You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with – get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

That’s right. Orchids.

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Byron York has a story at the Examiner on the first lawmaker to call for the scalp of Kevin Jennings, “Safe School” Czar (no we can’t believe we just typed that title, either).

Republican Rep. Steve King is sending a letter to the president today calling for the firing of gay activist Kevin Jennings, head of the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. “The totality of Mr. Jennings’ career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality,” King writes. “There is more to safe and drug free shools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.”

In the letter, King points to a foreword Jennings wrote for a 1999 book entitled Queering Elementary Education, as well as Jennings’ work as founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. King also mentions a 1988 incident in which Jennings, then a teacher, chose not to alert any authorities when he learned of a teenage boy, a student, who had become involved with an adult man. Finally, King points to stories Jennings has told of his own drug use. “Kevin Jennings cannot gain the approval of parents who want their children safe and their schools drug free,” King writes.

Full story here. Personally, we’re not so much offended by Mr. Jennings as we are that this position even exists. We don’t believe anyone should occupy this position.

Now that ACORN is drowning is an ocean of adverse publicity, its longtime ally the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) claims to have broken with the embattled radical left-wing activist group.

Last week SEIU international secretary-treasurer Anna Burger dropped this political bombshell that has been ignored by the mainstream media.

In response to a question from Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) posed during a meeting of the House Financial Services Committee, Burger casually noted that her union “cut all ties to ACORN.”

In an interview Monday night I asked SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette what Burger meant when she said SEIU had cut all ties with ACORN.

Ringuette replied, “We have suspended all contracts and active work with ACORN,” pending the results of a panel of inquiry looking into ACORN. SEIU boss Andy Stern sits on that supposedly independent panel.

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To which I respond to my unofficial biographer Conor Friedersdorf’s Daily Beast criticism of your’s truly and bigger fish Andrew Sullivan’s two-thumbs-up to it:                             

Andrew Sullivan (left) and Conor Friedersdorf

In the piece you link to and affirm in the Daily Beast, “The Right’s Lesser Press,” Conor Friedersdorf refuses to interview me as he continues to be my unofficial biographer. (I’m VERY reachable, Conor.) He writes opinion pieces on me purporting to be journalism. He doesn’t quote or cite me, he simply assumes and pushes the point of view he thinks I have and makes an argument based on these alleged positions. It’s sloppy and you, of all people, should know better.

Breitbart.com is MOSTLY a news aggregator. It carries the Associated Press, Reuters, even, Agence France Presse, from those dreaded croissant eaters!!!

It even carries the New York Times on its front page — a benefit that even Big Government and Big Hollywood don’t receive.

Big Hollywood is what it is: a counter-voice to the virtually monolithic Hollywood left. How dare I grant a platform, and a means for the defense of those in Hollywood who would dare go against the strident and intolerant Hollywood left.

Big Government, too, is providing an outlet for voices and ideas that are not proportionally represented in the traditional and mostly biased mainstream media.

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From Steve Beatty, investigative reporter for the Pelican Institute:

The brother of ACORN’s founder embezzled $5 million from the organization, nearly five times more than the figure previously acknowledged by the New Orleans activist group’s officials, according to a subpoena served Monday by the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office.

“The exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on October 17, 2008 by (ACORN Chief Executive Officer) Bertha Lewis and (ACORN board member) Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5,000,000,” reads the court document. “It is still unclear if some of the monies embezzled are from state, federal of private funds.”

ACORN 2nd Subpoena –

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Arrogance, thy name is Sen. Dick Durbin. Big Government contributor Bob Gough has a breaking story at his news site, Quincy News.org. It seems Sen. Durbin is upset that a local media outlet informed the public that their Senator was going to be in town to discuss health care.

A spokesman for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has said the senator’s office will no longer send media information to Quincy’s oldest radio station.

Mike Moyers, general manager/vice president of STARadio Corporation, which owns WTAD-AM (930), said Christina Angarola of Durbin’s Chicago office called WTAD on Monday to inform them they would no longer be included on the list of those receiving news releases from the senator when he plans to visit West-Central Illinois.

Moyers said Angarola was not pleased that WTAD chose to make public the time and place of Durbin’s September 4^th visit to Quincy’s Blessing Hospital to hold a meeting on health care with officials from the hospital, Quincy Medical Group and politicians Quincy Mayor John Spring and State Senator John Sullivan (D-Rushville).  

The news release sent by Durbin’s office on the afternoon of September 3^rd said “NOTE: The times and locations of these events are for media planning purposes only and should not be published or aired in any form.”

Angarola did not respond to an e-mail from QuincyNews.org for comment.

Moyers said he believed it was important for the public to have the opportunity to approach Durbin on the health care issue when he was in Quincy, regardless of the directive in the e-mail.

“I’m disappointed the senator and his office have chosen to silence the press,” Moyers said.

Read the full story here.

President Obama announced he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington to be chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America. Big Government readers will remember that “the Corporation” assumed a prominent role on the infamous NEA Conference call, where ”the Corporation’s” Nell Abernathy joined White House and NEA officials to nudge artists to produce works supporting the Obama Administration’s legislative priorities.

Although the charity Corvington works for, Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, has granted funding to ACORN during his tenure, it is unclear if Corvington has ties to ACORN.

Nonetheless, Corvington is part of the same cluster of organizations that provides financial and other support for ACORN which is a longtime fixture in the activist community.

Since 2001 the Annie E. Casey Foundation has pumped at least $1,705,500 into the ACORN network, according to philanthropy database information.

Of the $1,705,500, at least $850,500 was earmarked for ACORN operations in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the ACORN branch office first shown in the recent undercover videos that debuted on BigGovernment.com. Those videos show James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles pretending to be a pimp and a prostitute and receiving mountains of advice on evading laws pertaining to tax evasion and prostitution (among other things).

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a major funder of other groups on the left.

Looking at just the first letter of the alphabet, its grant recipients are labor federation AFL-CIO, abortion rights think tank Alan Guttmacher Institute, and liberal policy shop the Aspen Institute.

Although most of its grants go to groups on the political left, the foundation has funded at least one think tank on the political right. It has provided a few grants to the American Enterprise Institute.

Even for those not paying very close attention to the news in recent months, this headline from today’s “Climate Wire” may strike you as a tad incongruent:

MILITARY: Coastlines plumbed for ancient data in Pentagon climate study

Possibly the Pentagon’s advice on this matter will find favor in the White House.

The hook for the $5.5 million boondoggle is “how rising seas and strengthening storms could affect coastal bases, perhaps causing facilities to be abandoned or moved over the next century.” Of course, the idea of shrieking press releases (and headlines soon thereafter) of a “Pentagon study predicts inundation” never entered anyone’s mind and are nothing we should look forward to, if history is any guide.

Yet, outside of certain hysterical quarters, sea level rise is not that great a mystery: it rises between coolings, particularly glaciations (ice ages) which we fortunately find ourselves in between. It does so at a fairly constant rate of about 8 inches per century. That remained true following the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid 19^th century until today, with no statistical change in the pace since then (unless you count the most recent years; read on). Then it falls. When things cool, as has been the case in recent years, sea level rise plateaus and even reverses depending on how great the cooling. Indeed, the satellites we already pay so much for – and which, like those measuring the (cooling) atmospheric temperatures, are being ignored – tell us that sea level rise peaked in 2005 (wow, this guy works fast!).

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Stern’s New Big Labor Same as the Old Big Labor

For the past four years, the highest profile Big Labor Boss was Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern.  Stern has deliberately parlayed his controlling style as that of a New Labor Boss, and he has painstakingly worked on the SEIU “purple brand.”  And yet, Stern and the SEIU union have failed to live up to the New Labor Boss identity that he claimed in his New York Times Magazine and CNN/Fortune Magazine articles.

Stern tried to separate himself from the herd of “old-styled” labor bosses in several ways, most noticeably with his dress.  He conscientiously wore his beloved SEIU purple with its slight pinkish hue.  Apparently, Stern is trying to replicate for his union what brown does for UPS.

Stern’s limitless purple attire led some to refer to him as the Lavender Labor Leader.  And recently, SEIU’s Anna Burger looked very chic in her purple suit as Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) grilled her about SEIU’s relationship with ACORN.

Whatever color of scarves, suits, or hats Andy Stern decides to wear, you cannot deny his influence with the White House, U.S. Congressional King Pins, the Democrat National Committee, and ACORN among others.  But, has Stern’s smash-mouth organizing and relationship to ACORN begun to turn SEIU’s purple into black and blue? You bet it has!

Clearly, ACORN’s partnerships with SEIU and other Big Labor outfits has begun to drag down SEIU’s image.  SEIU has decided, now that ACORN is damaged goods, to cut ties for now.  But, that will be very difficult because ACORN and ACORN’s training programs are totally interwoven into the purple fabric that makes up SEIU.  

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