On November 30^th, the same day the Food and Drug Administration was scheduled to issue a statement regarding the long-used plastics additive Bisphenol A (BPA), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editors urged the agency with the headline “Get on with it!”  They charged that “the agency blew its own self-imposed deadline for issuing a ruling on the safety of the ubiquitous chemical,” and went on to complain that “The FDA is taking more time to have its scientists analyze studies of the chemical’s effects.”

The Milwaukee newspaper, along with the Los Angeles Times health blog, called on Congress to ban the product.  Then, on December 14, the examiner.com reported that Democrat Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand had proposed a bill outlawing the use of BPA in food container linings for infant and toddler food.  Washington, with its Senate vote on Friday, is the latest among several states that are not waiting for federal bans.

But as reported here, in the fall, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) had announced the award of $30 million in research grants, $14 million of which represents Obama administration stimulus money, to study BPA further.

What might account for such odd behavior?  There are enough peculiarities and strange connections to suggest that the media, the academy, and liberal political forces are working together to pursue an ideological agenda—with the help of stimulus funds.

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Today, in 1881, Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle died. These days are an interesting test of Carlyle’s beliefs.

Later today Scott Brown will be sworn in as the 41st Republican in the United States Senate.
He is on his way to Washington DC right now with certificatation in hand.

One of the many players who contributed to Scott Brown’s victory is Ken Pittman from WBSM in Massachusetts. Ken interviewed Democrat Martha Coakley the week before the Massachusetts election. It was during this interview that Martha told Ken that if you object to abortion and are a devout Catholic then…

“You probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.”

That was the wrong answer.

Ken sent me this article last night that he wrote on this historic Massachusetts election:

America Chose the Pickup Truck Over the Prius

In what has to be the most important non-presidential election race in many decades, Scott Brown won a most unlikely race in the state bluer than Frank Sinatra’s eyes, Massachusetts. So much weighed on the outcome outside of our state that the RNC finally heeded to the desperate cries for help from those of us here who have fought behind the enemy lines, praying for the cavalry for a half century.

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Despite what Congress and the current administration would have the people believe, the inconvenient truth is that fiscal conservatives are the dead center of American politics. Amidst accusations of extremism, Americans are responding to a message of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and less taxation. In a recent interview, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey said this:

“This is the broad center of American politics. Look at the polling data, Right now, the Tea Party polls higher than the Republicans and the Democrats, and it is becoming increasingly clear to the electorate out there and they’re expressing their understanding… we have a Democrat majority in Congress and a President that’s on the liberal fringe, and we are in the center.”

Despite differing messages on various social agendas and battles over the role of government in our everyday lives, most Americans understand the necessity of fiscal responsibility – which is even more apparent in the midst of a struggling economy. As the government battles “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and takes on country-altering legislation in the form of Cap and Trade and the Health Care reform bill, unemployment sky rockets and Congress raises the debt ceiling yet again.

Americans are concerned with jobs. They are concerned with Federal spending. The President’s State of the Union proposal to place a spending freeze on an already swollen base line is not convincing them – only 9% believe that it will reduce the deficit significantly.

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Late in the afternoon of December 4th of 2006, laboratory staff of the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Health Services (VAPHS) based on an order from Dr. Mona Melhem, the associate chief of clinical services, a few minutes earlier – in less than three hours destroying a unique collection of legionella and other isolates that had been collected by two prominent infectious disease researchers over their nearly three decades of research.

So starts a report by the Science Sub Committee chaired by Congressman Brad Miller of the 13th District of North Carolina into a strand of legionella that was destroyed by the Pittsburgh VA and with it thirty years of research by Dr. Victor Yu and his partner Dr. Janet Stout.

This report and its conclusions began a series of events that climaxed with this news broken on in January by Walter Roche of the Pittsburgh Tribune about the same Pittsburgh VA.

A top Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs physician, who got her job back temporarily after congressional intervention, is about to be terminated from her position as the head of radiology in the Pittsburgh facility.

VA officials have issued a formal notice of termination effective Jan. 25 to Dr. Anna Chacko, who has been on administrative leave from the University Drive facility since October.

What, one might ask, does an investigation into a destroyed strand of legionella have to do with the firing of the chief of radiology at a hospital nearly two years later? In reality, the two probably have little do with each other, except in the mind of Congressman Brad Miller. Because Miller made a connection, the events of one lead directly to the events of the other.

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[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

Massachusetts senior U.S. Senator John Kerry provided a letter on Senate stationery that supported constituents who participated in last December’s anti-Israel, pro-Hamas Gaza Freedom March, led by President Barack Obama ally Code Pink.

Democrat Representative Andre Carson of Indiana’s 7th District also provided a letter of support for participants in the so-called Gaza Freedom March.

Kerry is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was the Democratic Party’s 2004 presidential nominee.

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The new budget from the White House contains all sorts of land mines for taxpayers, which is not surprising considering the President wants to extract another $1.3 trillion over the next ten years.

One of the worst proposals targets American companies that compete in foreign markets. Under current law, the “foreign-source” income of multinationals is subject to tax by the IRS even though it already is subject to all applicable tax where it is earned (just as the IRS taxes foreign companies on income they earn in America). But at least companies have the ability to sometimes delay when this double taxation occurs, thanks to a policy known as deferral. The White House thinks that this income should be taxed right away, though, claiming that “…deferring U.S. tax on the income from the investment may cause U.S. businesses to shift their investments and jobs overseas, harming our domestic economy.” In reality, deferral protects American companies from being put at a competitive disadvantage when competing with companies from other nations, and therefore protects American jobs. This video has the details.

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Where to cut the spending? Obama has told us we have to make some tough choices. Yup, it wasn’t easy, but they decided to keep in the $2.5 million for a Census ad during the Super Bowl. That’s just a part of the $132 million we will spend to tell people to fill out and mail in their census forms.

We’d get a better bang for our buck by gambling it in Vegas. No matter what Obama says about the town, at least there we would have a chance to win big.

I understand that our constitution requires a census every ten years, but it does not require we waste our money advertising for it.  You don’t turn it in – you’re not counted. Next!

Here are some of the proposed cuts listed on the White House blog as  ”tough choices” for 2011:

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For the Tea Party movement, 2009 was about coming together, meeting our brothers and sisters in arms, and standing athwart socialism, yelling, “Stop!”  It worked. President Obama entered office promising socialized medicine, card check, and cap and trade all before the August recess.  He went 0 for 3 thanks a grassroots uprising that came together like spattered quicksilver.

In our desire to fix things, we also launched a lot of legislative initiatives.  These initiatives included various sovereignty amendments in the states, petitions for Constitutional Conventions, petitions for redress of grievances, petitions of right, and state laws exempting states from any national healthcare legislation.  Each of these was a bold and important step, and such laws, amendments, and petitions should continue.  Next year.

Let’s not fool ourselves. While the Tea Party movement has been very effective, it has been effective only when focused on a very narrow set of compelling causes.  Our quick responses to card check and cap and trade convinced the White House to suspend those initiatives until we weren’t looking. Our overwhelming attack on ObamaCare took the last bit of energy and time from each Tea Party patriot.  We left it all on the field.

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Reporting yesterday on Big Government, I reiterated the fact that interim Senator Paul Kirk should have resigned his Senate seat after the election. However, Kirk certainly has no option but to vacate the MA Senate seat once Brown’s election is certified–all based on Massachusetts state law and Senate rules. In following-up the story it is being reported by The Hill that Senator-elect Brown will be sworn in about 5PM Thursday, February 4th.

In learning this information, I wanted to confirm when Senator Kirk was going to resign his interim Senate seat. Staff at Kirk’s office said that he would step down once Brown was sworn in.

In case Kirk needs a reminder of the changed Massachusetts law that allowed for his appointment by Governor Patrick as the interim senator, here it is:

Chapter 92 of the Acts of 2009
AN ACT RELATIVE TO FILLING A TEMPORARY VACANCY IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Section 140 of chapter 54 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2008 Official Edition, is hereby amended by adding the following subsection:–

(f) Upon failure to choose a senator in congress or upon a vacancy in that office, the governor shall make a temporary appointment to fill the vacancy; provided, however, that the person so appointed shall serve until the election and qualification of the person duly elected to fill the vacancy pursuant to subsection (a) or (c). Approved September 24, 2009. Emphasis mine.

The original MA law can be found here.

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I have looked over the Penn State University’s report issued yesterday, “RA-10 Inquiry Report: Concerning the Allegations of Research Misconduct Against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Department of Meteorology, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences”. Below are eight points addressing my initial impressions, in the order they appear in the report (with one bracketed exception from page 4, moved up slightly in order of appearance here].

Findings_Mann_Inquiry –

My take-away, to spoil the ending for you, is that the panel revealed most of what we need to know about the ability of this internal inquiry to credibly assess charges of misfeasance, by limiting their evidentiary pursuit outside of select blogs and media reports to speaking with Mann, aided by a supportive NAS report (to the exclusion of the Wegman Committee report, inexplicable including for a factor cited, below) and one panel member interviewing ex parte two Mann supporters.

In my opinion, by this approach they did not do, and will in hindsight not be deemed as having done, themselves or their institution any favors.

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Today, in 1789, the Electoral College unanimously elected George Washington as the first President of the United States. (Yes, we understand there were a few other “presidents” preceding Washington, but he was the first President under the U.S. Constitution.)

Yesterday we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in regards to the bailout of AIG by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, then Director of the New York Federal Reserve, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

It appears that, through it’s 77.9% control of AIG’s equity and voting rights, the NYFed “sought to accomplish an illegal financial transaction through false means” by creating an “independent”: trust that was in fact not independent, placing it “in violation of federal anti-money laundering statutes (18 USC § 1956).” Here we elaborate a bit further, laying out the issue in the text of a letter submitted to Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP)– as the government takeover of AIG was accomplished using funds provided to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

First, however, some context: Crucially, these facts were discovered while securities litigator David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center was representing Iraq War vet Kevin Murray in Murray vs. Geithner, et al. Mr. Murray is rightfully horrified that the very doctrines of the enemy he faced in combat would be promoted by the US government. Specifically, prior to the U.S. government’s takeover of the insurance giant AIG, the company was the world’s leading promoter of Shariah-compliant finance products and businesses. Bailing out and forcefully (and illegally) taking ownership of AIG put the American taxpayer in the position of advocating Shariah-compliant finance, which is troubling on many levels:

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In looking at four “possible allegations” of research misconduct against meteorology professor Michael Mann, a Penn State University panel has determined that further investigation is warranted for one of them.

The allegations — or “possible allegations” as they put it — stem from Mann’s alleged involvement in the “ClimateGate” e-mails scandal that surfaced in early December and seemed to show evidence of fraud and conspiracy among the research scientists and others whose work formed much of the basis of calls for extreme climate change regulation.

At the center of the scandal was Mann, the inventor of the famous “hockey stick” graph which claimed to show that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures had shot up to their highest level in recorded history. It was made famous in Al Gore’s Academy Award®-winning documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

While this is good news, I suspect panel members are secretly hoping someone else will shoulder responsibility for determining Mann’s guilt or innocence before they’re forced to reach any conclusion(s).

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ACORN founder Wade Rathke has been gloating on his blog about the recent arrest of James O’Keefe in Rathke’s hometown of New Orleans.

Andrew Breitbrat and his www.biggovernment.com site stopped pretending that James O’Keefe, bungler-in-charge, was not his boy, and realized that he needed to stop shouting and start ‘splaining.

Breitbrat?  Zing!  How adult of you, Wade.

Similarly, current ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis issued a statement upon the news:

The recent arrest of James O’Keefe, is further evidence of his disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda. From the day that O’Keefe’s undercover “sting” videos came out, ACORN leadership pledged accountability for its own staff while pointing out that the videos had been shot illegally and edited deceptively in order to undermine the work of an organization that has empowered working families for four decades.

It’s as if O’Keefe’s problem somehow is vindication for the corrupt web of organizations she oversees.

Bad news, Bertha: it’s not.

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Craig Becker is President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and you should be afraid…very, very afraid.

According to the NLRB website, Congress established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the primary law that governs relations between unions, employees and employers in the private sector. The Act guarantees employees the right to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers or to refrain from such activities. The Act, which generally applies to all employers involved in interstate commerce, implements the national labor policy of assuring free choice and encouraging collective bargaining as a means of maintaining industrial peace.

The NLRB has two primary functions: one, to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices, whether committed by labor organizations or employers, and; two, to establish whether or not certain groups of employees desire labor organization representation for collective-bargaining purposes, and if so, which union.

Becker will be the third person on the five person Board and the second Democrat thus giving them majority on the Board. To say that Becker’s views are “extreme” would be an insult. His views of employer-employee relations invites thoughts of hammers and sickles.

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No recent Supreme Court ruling have evoked more liberal fury than Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a campaign-finance case involving government censorship of a political documentary called Hillary: The Movie. The Federal Election Commission prevented the anti-Hillary Clinton film from being shown on television just before the 2008 Democratic primaries, a decision that was upheld by lower courts. Siding with The First Amendment, the Court struck down laws regulating independent political advertising by for-profit and non-profit corporations before an election even as they reaffirmed rules about disclosure and disclosures for ads and against direct corporate giving to candidates.

Critics fear that corporations will now overwhelm the political marketplace with commercials and advertisements that will program citizens to vote for whatever agenda “the corprations” want at a given moment.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann railed against the decision, calling it “a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little democracy is left in this democracy” and comparing it to the notorious Dred Scott decision, which ruled that  had no rights under the Constitution. His fellow corporate media host at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, exclaimed, “If you are a regular person who has ever made a campaign donation before, forget about ever having to do that again. What’s the point?”

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In a previous post on Big Government, I questioned why Senator Paul Kirk has not stepped down as the Senator from Massachusetts, as he should have on January 19th.  Today, the attorney for Senator-elect Scott Brown stated in a letter Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick that Brown wanted the results of the January 19 election certified by 11 a.m. Thursday, so they could be forwarded to U.S. Senate officials for immediate action.

Governor Patrick’s office also issued this statement via email today:

As the Lieutenant Governor stated earlier today, the Governor will convene the Governor’s Council at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning and certify the results. This will ensure that Senator-elect Brown’s request to receive the final paperwork by 11:00 a.m. tomorrow is fulfilled.

This stunning move by Brown and fulfillment by the governor’s office forces Kirk to resign his seat–presenting problems for the Democrats as they move forward with the current Senate schedule, which includes the controversial M. Patricia Smith nomination.

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We’ve been discussing the Democrats’ scheme to shift to a regulatory agenda. Gallup says that might not meet with much approval, as “Americans Leery of Too Much Gov’t Regulation of Business.”

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