The Land of Lincoln may still be licking its wounds–and certain real estate transactions–over Chicago’s losing the Olympics to Rio, but the Obama Administration has delivered up a small consolation prize: the state’s very own federal prison for terrorists. Big Government has received  what is claimed to be a leaked DOJ memo that was allegedly sent yesterday from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Memo below:

Thompson memo –

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Professor Peter Dreier, an ACORN apologist who portrays himself as an independent analyst, is really anything but.

As Andrew Breitbart articulated on BigGovernment November 25th, regarding a “study” Dreier produced critical of media coverage of ACORN:

At the end of the piece Professor Dreier offers the following biography: Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.

Why did Professor Dreier choose to leave out the critical information regarding his advisory relationship to ACORN? Isn’t sitting on an advisory committee of ACORN the definition of a conflict of interest in writing a fair and balanced piece on the organization? In fact, Dreier has been shilling for ACORN at least since 2003.

So when Dreier proclaimed ACORN “Not Guilty” in one of his recent columns on TalkingPointsMemo, I must admit I threw up a bit in my mouth.  Some of Dreier’s most pathetic conclusions:

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Just came across some rather grim analysis of the economic impact of massive, ongoing federal budget deficits from a group of prominent economists. It’s a little dated (2004) but still highly relevant considering that the deficit situation has dramatically worsened since then. Some highlights:

Substantial ongoing deficits may severely and adversely affect expectations and confidence, which in turn can generate a self-reinforcing negative cycle among the underlying fiscal deficit, financial markets, and the real economy:

• As traders, investors, and creditors become increasingly concerned that the government would resort to high inflation to reduce the real value of government debt or that a fiscal deadlock with unpredictable consequences would arise, investor confidence may be severely undermined;
• The fiscal and current account imbalances may also cause a loss of confidence among participants in foreign exchange markets and in international credit markets, as participants in those markets become alarmed not only by the ongoing budget deficits but also by related large current account deficits;
• The loss of investor and creditor confidence, both at home and abroad, may cause investors and creditors to reallocate funds away from dollar-based investments, causing a depreciation of the exchange rate, and to demand sharply higher interest rates on U.S. government debt;

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In 2007, the FDIC set up an ill-conceived program for 30 banks to offer short-term loans of up to $1,000, at a maximum APR of 36%.  They thought this “Affordable and Responsible Consumer Credit” program would prove that lenders could make a profit under these conditions while still serving the consumer’s needs.

The results are akin to the hapless ski jumper at the opening of Wide World of Sports, who slips, falls, flails, smashes through a banner, and lands with a resounding thud on the landing pad.

While payday loans are approved in a mere 15 minutes, most of these FDIC-sponsored loans took more than 24 hours to approve — failing consumers who needed their funds immediately; some required direct deposit, credit checks and possibly a financial literacy class or collateral (none of which are required for a PDL); some required a portion of the loan be put on deposit (not part of the PDL process); only a few thousand loans were made because of said inconveniences (compared to 100 million loans annually for PDLs due to their convenience); and none of the institutions actually made a profit while some lost money, even when including an origination fee of up to $50 (whereas PDL’s profitability allows them to be widespread and easily accessible).

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A Stanford Professor has used United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him “inconvenient questions”  during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Professor Stephen Schneider’s assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book.

McAleer, a veteran journalist and film maker, has recently made a documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong’ which takes a sceptical look at the science and politics behind Global Warming concerns.

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As many readers know by now, on Dec 5^th, Senator Max Baucus( D-MT) , the man entrusted with writing the govt. takeover bill of the American healthcare system, was forced to disclose the embarrassing fact that he had nominated his live-in girlfriend as the next U.S. Attorney for his home state of Montana. Senator Baucus did not disclose this fact out of some good-natured rationale; rather a political watchdog group had discovered the link, and the information was coming public, so he tried to get ahead of the story.

Understandably, the Republican Party among others are calling for an investigation into what seems to be clear conflict of interest in his dealings and a serious lapse of judgment. Considering his current girlfriend Melodee Hanes started working in Senator Baucus’ office as early as 2002, and the divorce to his current wife was not announced until early 2009, it would seem to be more than just a possible legal and political transgression he was making with Ms. Hanes. (more…)

So let’s say you’re stuck in a house that the bank says is worth half a million, but the market says it’s worth only a quarter of that. What if it turned out you could walk away from it and rent not just another house, but a bigger house, for less money? What if four million of your friends figured this was a good idea, too? We’ll discuss this and more on today’s 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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Related Links:

WSJ: Rethinking the American Dream
Bond Buyer Update
Dow Jones: Downgrades on Illinois Debt

Imagine if a Bush administration official had said this:

“For most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.”

That was the Obama administration’s “special envoy for climate change”, Todd Stern. Now, the Industrial Revolution is generally accepted as having begun in or about 1850. And of course Svante Arrhenius famously posited the greenhouse effect hypothesis in 1896 (and as a very beneficial thing, incidentally). So, it’s fair to say that this claim is somewhat off.

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In March 2000 the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) organization of Massachusetts held its 10 Year Anniversary GLSEN/Boston conference at Tufts University. This conference was fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Safe Schools Program, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and some of the presenters even received federal money. During the 2000 conference, workshop leaders led a “youth only, ages 14-21″ session that offered lessons in “fisting” a dangerous sexual practice. During the same workshop an activist asked 14 year-old students, “Spit or swallow?… Is it rude?” The unbelievable audio clip is posted here. Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings is the founder of GLSEN. He was paid $273,573.96 as its executive director in 2007. Jennings was the keynote speaker at the 2000 GLSEN conference.

Unfortunately for GLSEN, undercover journalists with Mass Resistance recorded these outrageous sessions at Tufts University. The audio was later leaked to a local radio station. This created such an uproar that GLSEN leaders were forced to apologize for their disgusting behavior.

Despite the controversy, Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings and his GLSEN organization did nothing to clean up their act. In fact in 2001 activists handed out “fisting kits” to the children and teachers who attended the GLSEN conference.

But that’s not all. The children who attended Kevin Jennnings’ GLSEN 2005 Conference also left with their own “Little Black Book – Queer in the 21st Century”.
Here’s one page from that Black Book for teens:

The entire Little Black Book is posted here.

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Today, in 1971, the Libertarian Party was founded.  Almost every year, for nearly 40 years, we’ve been told that we’re on the cusp of a “libertarian moment.” Alas. Saying it doesn’t make it so. Still, it was a good idea:

The Senate is debating the future of American health care, yet one very important issue has yet to get a full and fair debate.  Is the individual mandate that forces citizens to purchase health care insurance a constitutional power of the federal government?  When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) was asked this question, she answered with the non sequitur “are you serious?”  Conservatives who respect the idea that the constitution maps out a federal government with limited powers would answer with a loud — “Hell No.”

The Heritage Foundation and the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) recently released legal analysis calling into serious question the constitutionality of the Congress’s plan to force all citizens to purchase health insurance.  These conservative institutions argue that the unprecedented idea, a mandate that all Americans be forced into a contractual agreement with a private party for health insurance, is not a constitutionally permissible activity by the federal government.  My sources tell me that this issue will be raised during the Senate debate on ObamaCare very soon and may open another front in the war against ObamaCare.  (more…)

Martini bar, puppet shows, and research on the sex drive of rats among the recipients of federal stimulus funding

All aboard the stimulus gravy train! $54 million of stimulus funds for a California “wine train” and $2.2 million for a golf course being threatened with closure

Congressional Republicans trumpeting their efforts to rein in federal spending have tucked thousands of pet projects costing more than $1 billion in the $446.8 billion omnibus appropriations bill expected to be passed this week

$500,000 National Science Foundation grant studies how people use Facebook

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Today, Politio reported the the Congressional Democrat Leadership will increase the debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion. There was a time, in Democrat land, that Robert Rubin was thought to be an oracle. During the Clinton years, the Treasury Secretary was so highly regarded that his economic plans were dubbed Rubinomics.

Mr. Rubin, you see, despised long term deficit spending because he believed that it led to higher interest rates over time and therefore a bad economy.  It did so, in his view, because deficit spending required excessive government borrowing which adversely competed with and reduced private borrowing which, in turn, led to higher interest rates and “crowded out” private borrowing and investment.

Beyond that, according to Rubin: “ongoing deficits may severely and adversely affect expectations and confidence, which in turn can generate a self-reinforcing cycle among the underlying fiscal deficit, financial markets, and the real economy.”  On the other hand, by eliminating deficits, the economy will improve because of lower interest rates, increased confidence and investment.

Following his lead, the Democrats raised tax rates which (a) led to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 because they all stood against tax increases, and (b) led to the highest tax burden in US history, and therefore (c) led to the recession of 1999 – which ultimately led to (d) lower revenues.

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The third step in Robert Creamer’s ten-step plan for imposing universal health care on America, according to his prison memoir, is to attack the private insurance industry: “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”

Accordingly, Creamer’s spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky—whose campaigns Creamer has assisted through his Strategic Consulting Group—declared at a rally for health care reform in April 2009 that she would “put the private insurance industry out of business.”

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Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well?

Through a series of legal decisions handed down over the past century, the Supreme Court has gradually held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights apply to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Second Amendment, however, has been glaringly absent from this process, leaving state and local governments free to systematically violate gun rights.

Until now.

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Here’s something to consider for those who wondered why the usual suspects flew up in arms earlier this week over reports that ‘Circle of Commitment’, countries including the U.S., were seeking to wrest control of the Kyoto revenue mechanism to the World Bank (there’s no such move afoot, incidentally; that was merely an overwrought reaction to said suspects finding something that they hadn’t been allowed to write).

That of course would have implications for the “global carbon offset market” if Kyoto II ropes us in and finally begins chugging down the tracks, next stop “Oil for Food on Steroids”.

Today’s Open Europe press briefing includes the following item (in bold in original):

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What does the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai and ACORN have in common?  Both of them have some bankers on Wall Street worried.  When brokers and traders returned to work after the Thanksgiving Holiday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went on a wild rollercoaster ride dropping as much as 233 points during the trading session due to an announcement that Dubai would be rescheduling the repayment of $3.5 billion in bonds.  This unexpected announcement was not what Wall Street wanted to hear on Black Friday when retail sales were already down by 8% compared to the prior year and Cyber Monday sales were less than robust with individual online purchases being 2% less than they were last year.  All of this at a time when brokers, traders and economists across the country are watching to see if cash strapped consumers are going to bailout retailers from what is shaping up to be a dismal retail Christmas season.

It is understandable why Wall Street would be concerned about Dubai.  Why would they be concerned about ACORN?  On October 24, 2009, Biggovernment.com revealed that the San Diego office of ACORN dumped thousands of documents into a dumpster in advance of an investigation into the organizations activities by California Attorney General Jerry Brown.  I retrieved the documents from a shared public dumpster located behind the local ACORN office.  The documents that were retrieved filled the back of my Suburban.  Much of what was retrieved was truly trash, items such as banana peels, coffee grounds and marketing materials. After sorting through the documents, though, the 20,000 documents that were retained included sensitive personal information, financial records and documents outlining the internal and political workings of ACORN.  One of the documents obtained by Biggovernment.com shows that ACORN had business relationships with 28 major financial institutions for the purpose of assisting homeowners whose mortgages were in foreclosure.

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In March 2000 Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the keynote speaker at a controversial youth conference at Tuft’s University . This conference sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) was fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Safe Schools Program, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and some of the presenters even received federal money.

An undercover journalist with Mass Resistance was at the conference and recorded a number of workshops. During one of the conference workshops an activist asks 14 year-old students, “Spit or swallow?… Is it rude?” This audio clip segment is posted here.

But that’s not all. The adult leaders also promoted fisting during the “youth only, ages 14-21″ session.

Margot Abels led the workshop, “What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex and Sexuality in Health Class: Workshop for Youth Only, Ages 14-21. “During the session she praised the homosexual practice of ‘fisting’”–widely condemned by medical authorities as dangerous–saying that, “It often gets a bad rap.” (Wolcott)

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So before jetting off to accept his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, President Obama went on a sales run for his jobs package idea — and he came back empty handed. Why do the left and the right both hate this idea for spending TARP funds? We’ll discuss this and more on today’s 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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LAT: Obama Jobs Plan Draws Fire from Left and Right
Politico: GOP Concerns on Jobs
FNC: Special Report on Jobs Package