At the Washington Cathedral memorial service for conservative icon Jack Kemp last May, many of his loyalists asked the same question: with Kemp’s passing, would his infectious pro-growth optimism also depart our political stage? That profoundly sad day, it certainly seemed possible.

Just eight months later, there is a remarkable potential candidate in the Kemp mold who may oppose – and defeat – uber liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). New York Republican, Conservative and Tea Party leaders are talking up the potential candidacy of CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, a former advisor to Kemp and Ronald Reagan.

For decades, Chuck Schumer has bullied his way to victory at the polls. He’s a prodigious fundraiser, a tough campaigner, and has long been thought unbeatable. But as former New York Assembly Republican leader John Faso noted recently in the New York Post, Schumer’s “image of invincibility has been fed by the failure of Republicans in New York and Washington to aggressively attack his vulnerabilities.”

Many New Yorkers agree: it is difficult to find a federal legislator as odious as Schumer. He is personally responsible for much of the bad policy that led to the economic melt down of the United States. He stands firmly in favor of health care reform that is bad for New Yorkers and he supports a tax on banks that is poison for the Empire State.

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It’s time for your weekly dose of markets and politics with Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, a podcast brought to you by the fine folks at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com, your new home for Conservative podcasts. In this week’s edition, we hash out what’s happening in Greece and the global markets, President Obama’s broken promises on taxes, and what lies ahead for the big entitlement bomb.

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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:

The Daily Caller: Showmanship is Not Leadership

Politico: Obama’s Bipartisan Health Summit

The Daily Beast: An Interview With Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan’s Roadmap

In a surprise move yesterday, Google announced via its blog that it intends to enter the internet service provider space, promising to develop experimental “ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations” across the nation.

The move quickly grabbed the attention of some observers of the net neutrality debate, in view of Google’s longstanding backing of the controversial policy. Internet service providers are among the most high-profile opponents of net neutrality, a position that has seen them along with the Communications Workers of America union, many minority and civil rights groups and others pitted on the opposite side of the debate from Google, President Obama, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski and far-left groups like Free Press. One telecoms policy expert quipped with tongue-in-cheek that if Google was “serious” about the move, those tracking the net neutrality debate could fairly assume that a shift in the company’s views regarding net neutrality would also be forthcoming. “Last I checked, Google was a big company that likes making money. If net neutrality were instituted, internet service provision—including by Google— could end up looking like a loss-making enterprise,” the expert told Capitol Confidential.

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It can be no secret by now that President Obama did not have a signature achievement his first year in office. Of all his major initiatives, health care, cap and trade, civilian trials for terrorists and the “stimulus” bill – only the so-called stimulus bill was enacted. Hardly a success, as more Americans than not know what Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne do not – that it was a bad idea. Worse for the Democrats — none of those efforts have produced a greater consensus or momentum for them or Obama. To the contrary, the Democrats lost key races in 2009, a Democrat House Member defected to the Republicans, the nation is more divided than ever and the Democrat Party is in disarray — as in the Obama presidency.

Not to be out-done by 2009, in 2010, the Obama presidency has endured:

(1) the loss of the Kennedy seat (which is how the Democrats view that race) even though Obama stumped for the Democrats’ candidate;

(2) Obama’s deficit commission was shot down;

(3) The unions are warning the Democrats that they are “going to have a hard time getting members out to vote”;

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Today, in 1809, Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was born.

Americans think most of their tax dollars sent to Washington are “wasted,” according to a Washington Post poll

Most voters think the country would be better off if most members of Congress were not re-elected, according to a new poll

Company accused of defrauding the government by filing bogus receipts, double billing for the same services and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes; A prostitute in Afghanistan was put on the payroll under the “Morale Welfare Recreation” category and the company billed the prostitute’s plane tickets and salary to the government, according to the accusation

The government paid more than $284 million on recruitment, retention and relocation bonuses to federal employees in 2008

California county to spend federal stimulus funds to pay students to make mini- documentaries about professionals whose work the youths find inspiring

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From Sid Burgess:

According to this NewsOk article, a school district of 300 students and about 1000 registered voters really showed their civic pride and sense of duty on Tuesday when 14 voters showed up to decide the fate of a million dollar project that included updating the plumbing, repairing the roof, installing new bathrooms and handicap ramps, and gym improvements. The 1.5% of the voters came out overwhelmingly in favor of the issue with 11 or about 1% of the voting population casting their yeas. The opposition put up a good fight though with fully one third of a percent of the voting population opposing the bond.

Naturally, the school was ecstatic..

“We’re very excited…” – Crutcho Superintendent Teresa McAfee

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We have been poring over our thousands of photos from the Tea Party Convention, and in so doing, we discovered the following shot among our Sarah Palin files.

Founding Bloggers photographer, Michael Kadela, didn’t know it at the time, but he had captured the exact moment Sarah Palin glanced down at her left hand, to read the note she had written there earlier.

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Project Vote has been causing mischief in the Midwest since before President Obama was their community organizer, but this last decade has seen an evolution in the number and sophistication of state cases.  We start in Michigan, where  The Secretary of State Project (SoSP) has endorsed progressive Jocelyn Benson for Michigan Secretary of State.  The following is how the endorsement should read:

“Progressive scholar and DNC organizer Jocelyn Benson is running for an open seat to replace Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, who prevented us from adding unsupervised provisional ballots to your elections.  In 2004, Benson ran a voter ‘protection’ campaign in 21 states for the DNC, deploying 17,000 starving lawyers at minimum wage to coerce low-income voters.  In Michigan in 2008, Benson helped lead the progressive fight to stop Secretary of State Land from cleaning the voter rolls.  We plan to sue the state of Michigan no matter who wins, but it will hurt less if she is elected.”

At least that is how I read their endorsement, but maybe I am getting ahead of myself.  Let us go back to June 16, 2004.

A directive issued by the Michigan Director of Elections established provisional ballots would not be counted for (1) first-time voters who register by mail and who cannot provide identification on election-day, and (2) voters who vote at the wrong polling place.  Provisional voting is required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), and applies to an individual that does not appear on the official list of eligible voters for the precinct in which that individual wants to vote.  HAVA allows for “voter registration procedures established under applicable State law,” in regards to compliance.  In fact, much of HAVA allows for states to establish the procedures necessary to implement the policies.

Of course, we know that progressive contempt for state law and practice is only surpassed by progressive contempt for well-run elections.

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As a member of a very successful Tea Party in Quincy, Illinois it is my distinct honor and privilege to offer my thanks and congratulations to this astroturf response to the tea parties. This hard hitting website has taken the MSNBC format to a new level. Hit us again guys, because while you spend never-ending union dollars attacking Tea Parties, we are repairing the change you said we could believe in, one candidate at a time.

This tiny group of Tea Bashers says its mission is “To prevent the Tea Party’s dangerous ideas from gaining legislative traction.” You might want to watch something other than the mainstream media. In case you haven’t heard, we have already gained legislative traction, which I’ll venture a guess that this was the reason for the emergency birth and delivery of your premature website.

We can’t think of a better way for organized labor to spend its time and money. I am so thrilled with your approach I may donate to your cause myself.

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Arianna once again has her panties in a bunch, and I’m the libertarian brave enough to reach in and fix them.

Yes, it’ll drive Huffington into spastic frenzy.  But, this is not a reason to subsidize the minimum wage.  David Shuster will tunnel ever deeper into his rabbit hole of despair.  Sadly, neither is this a reason to subsidize the minimum wage.

Unemployment is somewhere between 6.3-17.3%, and that is why we need to allow small businesses to pay employees a couple bucks an hour and have unemployment make up the difference.

Don’t jump to conclusions here, please read my plan through.  This isn’t an off-the-wall proposal.  Republicans can reach across the aisle to Obama with an idea Paul Krugman himself supports.  Presenting this as a “no-cost jobs bill” and “free stimulus” is exactly the kind of reform judo conservatives need.

Overall, as Cato points out 6.3% – 17.3% of America is unemployed depending on your definition of unemployment.  In December 2009:

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The global warming scandal keeps getting worse. Revelations over the last few weeks show that many important assertions in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were based on misquotes and false claims from environmental groups, not on published academic research as originally claimed. This is on top of the recent mess regarding data, where the three most relied-on data series used by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 assessment report still not been released. Other information indicates that data have been systematically biased to produce a rise in measured temperatures when actual temperatures were falling or flat.

Take some of the false claims in the 2007 IPCC report.

– The IPCC claims that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035. The forecast was based on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999, and the Indian glaciologist who was interviewed, Syed Hasnain, says that he was misquoted, indeed he had provide no date. Professor Hasnain discovered the mistake in 2008 when he read the IPCC’s published report, but he said: “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report. . . . My job is not to point out mistakes. And you know the might of the IPCC. What about all the other glaciologists around the world who did not speak out?”

Even more disturbingly, Rajendra Pachauri, the U.N.’s climate chief, first denied that he knew about the error before the Copenhagen global warming conference. He only admitted that he knew about it before the conference when a writer for the journal Science, Pallava Bagla, pointed to email correspondence that he had with Pachauri last fall.

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Chevron oil company is being sued in Ecuador for $27 billion. It’s a big number. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Ecuador in 2008 was $54 billion. So $27 billion is 50% of the GDP of the entire country. And the $27 billion claim is sheer fantasy. The damage claim against Chevron is based on a gigantic scam.

Donald Moncayo (yellow shirt) of the Amazon Defense Coalition (the named financial beneficiary in the case) assisting the court's “independent expert” Richard Cabrera (leaning on tree) during a site inspection.

It goes back a while. Between 1965 and 1990, the old Texaco company developed oil concessions in Ecuador. (Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001, hence Chevron is now in the dock.) Between 1977 and 1990, Ecuador progressively nationalized Texaco assets, and transferred them to the state oil firm, Petroecuador.

In the early 1990s, Texaco and Petroecuador agreed to clean up a number of oil sites. Texaco kept its side of the bargain, and in 1998 the government of Ecuador certified that Texaco successfully cleaned up its share of the operations.

Nonetheless, in 1994 a group of U.S. attorneys sued Texaco in the U.S. They made novel legal claims for “environmental justice.” Eventually, the case was dismissed in the United States and a new case was filed against Chevron in Ecuador.

The Ecuadorean court appointed an “expert witness” to make factual findings and to calculate damages. Turns out that the “expert” is a mining engineer named Richard Cabrera, who has direct financial ties to the plaintiffs and as we learned this week, hidden ties to Petroecuador.

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First, they came for the Babysitter.  Then, they came for the Eagle Scout.   Now, they’ve come for the Crossing Guard.

Warren Eschenbach, an 86-year-old a retired Wausau Water Works employee volunteers his time as a crossing guard at the Riverview Elementary School in Wausau, Wisconsin.  After the Wausau School District built an area just outside an intersection at the school’s location for parents to pickup their kids from the school, the intersection became busier than usual for a short time every day.  So, Eschenbach did a noble thing.  He went over to the school and spoke with parents, kids and administrators, and he volunteered to patrol the area at pickup time to make sure kids got to their parents’ cars and that others crossed the streets safely.  After all, he worked for five years as a crossing guard at the Franklin Elementary School up until three years ago.  He lives two doors down and it’s for a half hour every day.  Who could take issue with that?

Well, apparently union bosses can.

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To the people of Orlando: your long Florida nightmare may soon be over.  Congressman Alan Grayson is up for re-election this year.

But in the mean time, he’s continuing his gasbaggery.  He’s taking up President Obama’s mantle of intimidating the Supreme Court and has introduced several bills so political free speech can once again be squelched.

Grayson has introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at restricting political speech, according to the George Soros-funded Secretary of State Project.  But first, a bit about that group.

SOS was formed to elect Secretaries of State around the country that will be tolerant of ACORN-style voter registration and Election Day shenanigans.  The Minnesota recount debacle – and seating of Al Franken – came courtesy of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, an SOS Project recruit.

So now the Soros-funded SOS Project is pushing Grayson’s package of bills. The interpretations of them come courtesy of SOS, not me:

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After watching the state of the union speech I began to wonder if our country will ever mend its divisions. The president seemed especially partisan when angered and our Senate and House Representatives are either ideologically divided or pathologically attempting to win the next election.

This idea of a seemingly hopelessly divided nation has been gnawing at me quite some time. For example, in my new novel, Rogue Threat, hero Matt Garrett confronts complacency and political infighting as he attempts to stop the surprise reappearance in America of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction mounted on some unmanned aerial vehicles called Predators.

Palin and Brigadier General Tata  after a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center

But then I recalled a day last December when I escorted Sarah Palin through Walter Reed Army Medical Center in our nation’s capitol. In one weekend one of our most conservative governors and some of our most liberal entertainers separately devoted huge chunks of their time to being with our troops and their families. In short, just as 9-11 united us, so do the wounded stemming from that catastrophic event. These bold men and women are quietly serving a purpose beyond their contracts. The sum of the parts, as they say, is larger than the whole. (more…)

Today, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran was completed. Current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that Iran is now a ‘nuclear state.’ Unfortunately, we will probably find out soon what that means.

UP TO $10,000 WILL BE GIVEN AWAY—

Get Your Global Warming Sign in the News and Win Some Cold Hard Cash!

After Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate and the cold hard facts on the ground it’s become obvious that manmade global warming is a scam.

Big government politicians and scientists were hoping they could convince people that their junk science was real. Then they could further control the energy industry through taxation and regulation. Unfortunately, for them the scam is falling apart right in front of their eyes.

So what better time for a contest?

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The White House has just announced its proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, with a projected deficit of a staggering $1.27 trillion.  Last year’s budget estimated a $1.17 trillion deficit, but the actual number now appears to be $1.60 trillion. Applying that same likely growth from projection to actual deficit, we are looking at a federal budget deficit closer to $1.74 trillion this year.

The size of the deficit is unconscionable and unsustainable. As a nation, we now owe more than $12 trillion, a number almost as large as the entire GDP of the United States.  Even worse, we are adding to this deficit at a rate of more than 10 percent of the GDP—an alarming rate that most economists consider dangerous for any economy.

To finance our deficit, we print money and spend it—or we borrow money and spend it.  When we print the money, we set the stage for massive inflation, which will occur as soon as the economy revives. When we borrow the money, we place a lever in the hands of citizens and governments of China and other nations, now our largest creditors (surpassing the 50 percent mark two years ago). It is morally wrong to spend money now and expect our children to pay the price—and it is hazardous to give to foreign sovereigns the tools to destroy our economy if they decide to “call in” their loans.

It is our responsibility and duty to stop this. We must not condemn the next generation to economic ruin because we lack the courage to do what must be done now. As President Reagan famously said, “If not us, who?  If not now, when?”  If we didn’t borrow another dollar, it will still take more than 300 years just to pay back what our country already owes.

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