Tens of thousands of TSA screeners to receive government bonuses, including millions of dollars paid to more than 10,000 who have been rated poorly

Government bailout watch: Despite receiving $5.5 billion in stimulus funds, Government Services Administration’s backlog of deferred maintenance projects now totals $8.8 billion and the agency is proposing billions of dollars in new projects

As stimulus money doubles Wisconsin’s weatherization budget, a review finds weatherization work done on hundreds of low-income homes failed to meet federal standards; Inspectors found projects done in a way that could threaten the safety of residents or did not save enough energy

Stimulus funds pay to replace “unattractive” streetlights; The new lights “aren’t especially energy-efficient, and the old ones work”

Federal Reserve tries theater ads to improve its image

Las Vegas’ $4.1 million housing plan built on federal stimulus money stalled over squabbles about how to hand out the money and to whom

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President Obama is heading to Copenhagen, Denmark empty-handed as he tries to lead the world to a global warming solution without having accomplished any policy solutions in the U.S. With the recent exposure of emails indicating that the global warming books were cooked, the president ought to expect rough skies ahead.

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On August 6, 2009 two Service Employee International Union (SEIU) leaders and a volunteer for Organizing for America (OFA) assaulted Kenneth Gladney outside of Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town hall meeting on health care.  The perpetrators were arrested at the scene of the crime, and three months later charges have finally been filed.

Much has been said in the past three months about this incident.  Here at Big Government calls have been made for justice, for formal charges and mostly for the mass media to follow the story and delve into the government’s role in this violent attempt to intimidate and silence dissent.  We can no longer wait for the establishment journalists to connect the dots and bring to light the insidious relationships between the SEIU, OFA, Russ Carnaham’s office and the Obama Administration.

Was this assault merely a flare up of tempers during a heated exchange of rival political camps?  Or was it a coordinated attempt to silence the scores of protesters who had been so effective at swaying public opinion against the President’s health care scheme?  Today, Big Government will bring to light documents that read like an instruction manual for the SEIU forces in St. Louis the evening of August 6^th.  We will also show that on the very same evening of the St. Louis assault, an almost identical scene played out in Tampa Bay, Florida.  Also involving SEIU and OFA.  Also resulting in hordes of union members shouting down and physically evicting protesters from a U.S. Representative’s Town hall meeting.  Finally, we will introduce all of the various players in leadership roles at these organizations, what they said in instructing their members in how to fight back against the Town hall protesters, and how these individuals all connect to each other and to the Obama Administration.  As I said, we’ve been waiting for the “Real” journalists to do this, we’ve waited long enough.

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Now that we are learning prominent leaders of the global warming movement destroyed the data they claim to have used to construct their climate models, and only the most rabid environmental fraud deniers still cling to the authenticity of their “science”, a serious moment of truth is fast approaching.

That moment is Copenhagen, which has always been about much more than so called “man-made global warming”. Copenhagen has always been about striking a “Global New Deal”.

Last month, we compiled and posted extensive evidence of years-long Democratic party coordination with the Party of European Socialists (PES). Click here to see our detailed examination of this special relationship, including then Party Chairman Howard Dean’s full address to the 7th Congress of the PES.

If you do not have the time to examine the detailed account linked above, just take a look at the video below for a quick and horrifying taste of what the global Progressive movement has been cooking up for Copenhagen. It’s a promotional video for the “Global Progressive Forum”, an event created and organized by the PES.

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Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.

Below is a page from ACORN’s 2005 Annual Report. In it, they tell the story of how one of their employees teamed up with NBC Dateline to do a ‘video sting’ on tax-preparer Jackson Hewitt.

Pages from 2005-ACORN-Annual-Report-web -

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Two-thirds of registered voters who responded to a recent survey say the federal stimulus packages has not resulted in the improvement of the Western Illinois economy

The poll, commissioned by QuincyNews.org, was conducted by We Ask America on November 22 between 4:30 PM – 6:30.  In all, 15,000 random residential phone numbers of registered voters in the 17th Congressional District were dialed, resulting in 1,278 people taking the poll. The numbers dialed were randomly selected.

The results have a margin of error of ± 2.74 %.

Of those who responded, 66.7 % say the stimulus package hasn’t improved the economy. Just under 22 percent said there had been an improvement while 11.5 percent were not sure.

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The hidden-camera videos by James O‘Keefe and Hannah Giles detailing the inner workings of the taxpayer-funded leftist racket known as ACORN have set off a storm of journalistic controversy, but not in the way one might think.  Rather than engaging the substance of the stories first made available on Big Government and later on Fox News – that ACORN, to put it generously, seems to be staffed by an inordinate number of employees blithely willing to aid and, if possible, abet criminal activity – the dinosaur media has reacted not by investigating the message but by attacking the messengers, all in the name of “journalistic ethics.”

Now, when a “journalist” – I prefer the days when we called ourselves “reporters” – starts lecturing his readers about the saintly nature of “journalism” you know that the entropic, self-referential MSM has just about hit bottom.  Long gone, apparently, are the days of the old Front Page, the 1928 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur – filmed four times – that lovingly limned the street-smart, ink-stained wretches (in the late Herb Caen’s famous phrase) who would stop at nothing to Get The Story.  For decades – and certainly when I started in “journalism” in 1971 – this was model of the enterprising reporter: check your conscience at the bar, get the story, go home, go to bed, get up the next morning and do it all over again.  These guys were our heroes:

Not pursuing a legitimate news story, as James Rainey and the rest of the Pecksniffian  bien-pensant staff of the once-great Los Angeles Times seem intent on doing, because the young reporters are “agents provocateurs” and “political guerillas,” is bad enough.  Who cares what they are?  It’s like saying Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns are scum-sucking bottom feeders who would steal milk bottles from babies and nickels from newsboys if they thought it was a Page One story; a badge-of-honor insult those old-school newshounds would have worn with pride, alongside the egg stains on their ties and the lipstick on their collars.

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Smoking, fast food, giant inflatable blue gorillas-no matter what it is, chances are some nanny wants to ban it. And this past month was no exception.

Reason.tv’s October 2009 Nanny of The Month Award went to New York State Sen. Jeff Klein for his efforts to rid the Empire State of fish pedicures.

Who is the Nanny of the Month for November 2009?

The runners up include the California Energy Commission for banning big-screen TVs unless they conform to stringent new energy standards and the Food and Drug Administration, which is waging war against caffeinated booze drinks.

But only one can be Nanny of the Month, and this time it’s …

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So, how was Black Friday for you? For retailers, it was a time to go looking for small reasons for optimism, but the comparison to 2008 is essentially flat. How will the markets react, and what’s the deal with Dubai? We’ll discuss it all on the latest edition of 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:

LATimes: Black Friday Recap
AP: Wall Street’s Big Week
Ferguson: Obama’s Indecision on Economy Hurting America

Remember in 2003 when Secretary of State Colin Powell dramatically held up the vial of anthrax before the United Nations Security Council and exclaimed, “there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more?”

It was that argument – that Saddam Hussein was attempting to increase his capability for Weapons of Mass Destruction – on which the Bush Administration hung its credibility and sought to build the public support for an invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As American forces swept across Iraq in an impressive fashion, the cold hard evidence of Powell’s assertions was difficult to find.  And in the following years, the Bush administration’s credibility for its reason to go to war suffered.

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Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.

Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (center) with ACORN ally Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (left), and former California Gov. Gray Davis (right).

But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.

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Today, in 1874, Winston Churchill was born. (There is no way we can improve on that sentence.)

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Jonathan Swift were also born on this day. This day is truly blessed. Enjoy.

At the Thanksgiving dinner table we sat back, sated with turkey and all the fixins’. And as is our custom, we began reminiscing of times gone by, family members who have passed on, and others we’ve not seen for a time.

The discussion around the dinner table this year was no different. Over coffee and pie, we talked of old times, fond memories, laughter, wistfulness, future prospects, and hope mingled with thanks for our blessings, past, present and future.

The conversation turned to news of an elderly relative, a self-made man whose manner and behavior had changed markedly over the past few years. Now well into his years, this man had always been a rugged sort, a man of the earth who made a living by the sweat of his brow and the brawn of his muscle, tending his large farm and considerable holdings. His thriftiness is legendary among relatives and friends who joke that he still has his first dollar. He worked long hours from sun-up to sundown, so his financial conservatism was understandable and in many ways laudable.

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Last week,  the Federal Government Ivory Tower trumpeted important news.  One of its illustrious Task Forces has decided that women in their 40’s would be the first to experience “Medical Darwinism.”

The United States Preventive Services Task Force, comprised of 16 appointees, decreed that:

1.       Women in their 40’s no longer need routine yearly mammograms

2.       Women aged 50-74 are to have mammograms only every other year

3.       Self breast exams are no longer to be done at any age

Of note, this Task Force does NOT have even one member who is a cancer specialist or oncologist, let alone a breast cancer specialist. This panel based its recommendations NOT on comprehensive new clinical studies or research, but rather on computer projections of certain data points.  A review of previous recommendations by the same Federal Government reveals that these recommendations are diametrically at odds with recommendations made just six months ago. So, what changed in six months?

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Harris Himes, the minister who witnessed Kenneth Gladney’s beatdown at the Russ Carnahan town hall in August, cannot believe that only misdemeanor charges were filed against the SEIU thugs last week. The Russ Carnahan union supporters beat, stomped on and kicked black vendor Kenneth Gladney.

Big Government featured Harris Himes in a report in early November:

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“If Israel attacks…we should expect the worst” – Robert Baer

Even though his attempts to mediate the Syrian-Israeli conflict will likely end in frustration, French President Sarkozy may yet emerge as a more sober leader for the West than Barack Obama,  who took the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s opening to merely descend from on high and digitally address the world, and somehow found a way to neither mention the Soviet Union nor quote Ronald Reagan.  In his speech, President Obama also neglected to mention, for the benefit, say, of the middle school students or democratic dissidents who might have been listening: Margaret Thatcher, the Pope, Gorbachev, or even the word Communism.  Eventually, as we must now aknowledge was not surprising, he mentioned his own life story and election as some sort of metaphorical wall coming down.  Either “full of himself” doesn’t even begin to describe our president, or his speechwriters are literally in love with him – which would be cute, were it not so perilous.

Because the world watches.  In Israel, they watch and they listen and they don’t like the way the “winds of change” are blowing.  They feel america leaving them in the desert.  In Europe, they listen and they must, if their ears are working, hear the news that America will no longer play the bad cop to their good cop.  If Obama’s America, while dreaming of a world without nuclear weapons, allows Iran to attain the ability to strike German cities, what should the Europeans leaders do?  Will the Germans build new weapons of their own?  As this interview with two experts on the region reveals, circumstances are rapidly growing too dire to ignore.

During the Presidential “Media Fest” Campaign of 2007/08, many tried to impress upon the American people that Obama was an empty suit.  Quite simply, he had no significant legislative achievement to call his own.  Heck, as an Illinois State Senator, Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times, according to the New York Times:  “effectively sidestepping” issues.  The point of those who pressed Obama’s lack of executive experience and sidestepping tactics was that we could not afford a President who would do the same.

Ten months into the Obama Presidency, it is pretty clear that Obama is living up to his Absentee Legislator past.  Painful examples abound:

1. Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Criminal Court.  Arguably one of the most detrimental legal and foreign policy decisions of our time, and Obama openly admits it wasn’t his call – it was an underling’s call – Eric Holder.  It was a terrible decision and, as Senator Lindsey Graham pointed out, an unprecedented decision.  While I doubt Obama sat purely on the sidelines on this decision, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone other than Obama has to take responsibility for this decision – good or bad.  And when it goes bad, then Obama will simply dump Holder.  Problem solved.
2. Health Care.  What’s a President to do when he is devoid of any significant legislation to his name?  Allow the most significant piece of legislation in the last 40 years to be written and managed by others.  Literally.   Before us is the biggest makeover of the relationship of the private sector and government since the Great Depression and Obama is merely a passenger on a bus being driven by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  When it fails the American people, and it will, Obama will rightfully claim it wasn’t his bill.  Such is the prerogative of an Absentee President.
3. The Stimulus Bill.  It’s failing.  Indeed, over 3 million jobs have been lost since the Stimulus Bill was passed – a bill laden with pork because its passage was driven by someone other than Obama (not to say he would have passed a trimmed down bill).  Beyond that, we find out that the AIG bailout money was misspent – who would have thought?  Since the President can’t be in charge of such failures, and Obama can’t blame Pelosi or Reid,  the fall guy will be Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – because, in time, simply blaming President Bush won’t be effective anymore.
4. The November Elections.  Even though Obama went and put his personal prestige on the line for New Jersey Governor Corzine, Corzine was soundly beat – as was the Democrat candidate in Virginia – a race Obama wouldn’t touch.  But those results, according to Obama, had nothing to do with him – those were races with local implications not national influences.

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The controversy surrounding the recent mammography guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a recommendation for swift and decisive defeat of efforts to expand federal oversight of health care.  It almost seems as if this was designed as a laboratory experiment to learn exactly what will happen under Obamacare.  The results validate some of the most compelling arguments that opponents have made over the past few months.

When opponents claim that Obamacare will lead to rationing of medical services, defenders counter with an irrelevant but true retort that care is already rationed by insurance companies.  By this logic, everything is rationed by economics.  Housing is rationed by the availability of capital to invest in housing which is a collective market choice.  Cars are rationed in that you can’t just walk into a dealer and drive off the lot.  So, yes, currently the health care market, mostly in the form of third-party payers (insurers and public programs), rations care in that there are finite resources to pay for treatments and everyone cannot have everything any time they wish.

The reason that argument is irrelevant is that the debate here is about government rationing of care, which represents an entire new level of restrictions on individuals.  When the government sets up panels of “experts” to make recommendations of what kind of care is appropriate under what circumstances and those recommendations are implemented in the form of regulations over what care will and will not be paid for by both private and public insurance, it limits the rights of patients to control their care in consultation with their physicians.  It also destroys the market for those excluded treatments which then become either prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable.

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Today, in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the former British protectorate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab States.