The Obama Administration, once again, is in need of a villain to serve as a political piñata, and it is now clear that Goldman Sachs has been selected to fill the villain void.

Careful observers will note that Team Obama  is never content to argue the potential benefits of their increasingly dodgy legislation (e.g. Stimulus, Healthcare, Cap and Trade).  Obama is no fool; he understands that his wealth redistribution schemes, his desire to grow government, to provide new kickbacks to Unions, and to crush small business growth are so antithetical to most Americans that passage and support require that a villain be found that can be blamed for any and all possible evils.

Already, we have seem Team Obama single out CEOs of automotive manufacturing corporations, financial industries, drug manufacturers, and health insurance companies for special, public floggings.  So, it should come as no surprise that, once again, President Obama has found a convenient, new villain, Goldman Sachs, to be publicly flogged and abused, to help drive support for the President’s complicated, new, financial regulations and bank oversight legislation.

Cynical minds must wonder at the timeliness of the SEC’s charges of fraud levied against Goldman Sachs . Consider the exhaustion of Congress after the recent healthcare reform struggle.  As a result, the legislation for financial reform, among other proposed reforms,  had been lagging and moving lethargically in the Senate.  With another election cycle approaching, legislators were finding it hard to rally interest in, yet another, bloated piece of legislation which did little to address the Wall Street abuses that initially caused the interest in the financial reform.

All 41 GOP senators were united, voicing strong language against a useless, toothless piece of legislation, and their objections began to garner support.  Even Obama apologist,  Paul Krugman, weighed in, saying that no reform was better than the lame legislation currently being considered.

But then, just as Financial reform was crawling on its belly, going off to die, the “crisis” with Goldman Sachs suddenly occurred.  How remarkably convenient!   Suddenly, the financial reform legislation has new life, and a pitchfork campaign to further demonize Goldman Sachs is in full gear.

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Today, in 1775, the American Revolution began with the battles of Lexington and Concord. It was the ’shot heard ’round the world.’

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil fraud charges against Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs. The charges arise from the bank marketing collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to customers without disclosing that a major hedge fund investor, and Goldman client, John Paulson had made a series of bets against the securities. (The SEC did not announce any charges against Mr. Paulson.)

The announcement of the charges comes at a volatile time for the financial industry. With the Senate set to take up its version of a sweeping revamp of the financial services industry, the allegations against Goldman are certain to have a prominent place in the debate.

Appearing this afternoon on Chicago’s WLS radio station, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin seemed downright excited about the allegations:

The timing was perfect. We’re about to take up the financial regulatory reform bill. The banks are saying Oh, this is totally unnecessary. We have everything worked out. Now we find out the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up and charged Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest, with involvement in some trading that really turns out to be very suspicious.

Ah yes, the “timing was perfect.”

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Geoffrey R. Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago and editor of The Supreme Court Review, has a pertinent suggestion: the retirement of Judge Stevens and the impending nomination of his successor should spark “a frank discussion” of “the proper role of judges in our constitutional system” [“Our Fill-in-the Blank Constitution,” The New York Times, April 14]. True to his promise of frankness, he charges “conservative” judges with advancing “disingenuous descriptions of what judges—liberal or conservative—actually do.”

Such men as Roberts and Scalia claim to seek the original meaning of the framers, to serve as umpires who call the plays as they see them, according to the rules. But, Professor Stone charges, they do no such thing.

Such Constitutional phrases as freedom of speech, due process of law, free exercise of religion, cruel and unusual punishment do not define themselves, he remarks; “they did not have clear meanings even to the people who drafted them.” Rather, the framers left such definition “to future generations.”

This conservatives all too eagerly have done. “Fueled by their own political and ideological convictions, they make value judgments, often in an often aggressively activist manner that goes well beyond anything the framers themselves envisioned.” The list of horrors proves long: examples include First Amendment protection for advertisers; prohibition of the regulation of guns; the right of the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters. Meanwhile, liberal judges have upheld Madisonian principle by striking down laws prohibiting interracial marriage, forbidding forced sterilization, protecting the rights of political dissenters and of minority religious denomination, and similarly handsome things. Bad conservatives. Good liberals.

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On April 5 the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release urging GOP leaders to “insist” that Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC) withdraw support from the non-profit grassroots advocacy organization ACT! for America. CAIR referred to ACT! for America, one of the largest national security (and pro-American and pro-Israel) citizens organizations in the United States, as an “anti-Islam hate group.”

As we at the Center for Security Policy have reported previously at Big Government, we believe – with the backup evidence to prove it at CAIRObservatory.org – that CAIR has been operating as an unregistered foreign agent, as defined by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).  FARA § 611 (o) states that foreign agents who engage in any activity to “influence any agency or official of the Government of the United States or any section of the public within the United States” must register as a foreign agent and report such activity to the Department of Justice.  Therefore as Rep. Myrick and GOP leaders are “officials of the government of the United States,” CAIR’s attempt to influence their conduct and associations in this way is a clear violation of the FARA statute.

On April 13 CAIR-Tampa echoed the CAIR national office message  with this action alert and directed readers to a petition calling for 5,000 signatures condemning the GOP and Myrick for associating with ACT! for America.  CAIR could only find a single spokesperson to prop up their attack on ACT! For America, a certain Reverend Wilifred Allen-Faiella of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove, FL.  The CAIR action alert quotes from her letter which echoes, word for word, CAIR’s talking points from their smear campaign:

“As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ who preached love for all I am appalled that a Congresswoman can support a hate-filled group such as “Act for America”.  Their statements about Muslims constitute hate speech and no responsible leader of this country founded on the principles that all are created equal should associate herself with such an anti-American group.”

Big mistake in spokepersons, CAIR.

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Being an American citizen is an honor in many ways, but it is a huge millstone around the neck for highly successful investors and entrepreneurs because of an oppressive and complex tax system. This is particularly true for those based in and/or competing in global markets.

Indeed, because the tax system (and regulatory system) is so onerous and because it is expected to get far worse in the future, a growing number of Americans are actually giving up citizenship and “voting with their feet.” The politicians view these people as “tax traitors” and are trying to erect higher barriers to hinder economic migration, particularly in the form of confiscatory “exit taxes” that are disturbingly reminiscent of the totalitarian practices of some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on this issue:

The number of American citizens and green-card holders severing their ties with the U.S. soared in the latter part of 2009, amid looming U.S. tax increases and a more aggressive posture by the Internal Revenue Service toward Americans living overseas. According to public records, just over 500 people world-wide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.  …Others are giving up their U.S. nationality to avoid tax increases in the U.S., as the government struggles under huge budget deficits. The top marginal tax rate is set to rise to 39.6% from 35% at the end of this year. A proposal to tax fund manager pay at ordinary income rates, instead of the 15% capital gains rate, is gaining currency in Congress. “Everybody sees the tax rates are going up. At a certain point, it gets beyond people’s pain threshold,” said Anthony Tong, a tax partner at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong. Unlike most jurisdictions, the U.S. taxes the income of citizens and green-card holders no matter where in the world it is earned.

Perhaps the key sentence in this excerpt is the final one about the United States having a very misguided policy of what is known as “worldwide taxation.” This is the policy of taxing income earned in other nations, even though that income already is subject to all applicable taxes imposed by the governments of those other nations. This policy is a huge competitive disadvantage for American companies trying to compete in world markets (and Obama, not surprisingly, wants to make it more burdensome), but the impact on individual taxpayers is a key factor in the decision by so many U.S. taxpayers to escape the clutches of the IRS. Indeed, it may also be one of the reasons why some highly-talented foreigners – the kind of people who helped make Silicon Valley an engine of prosperity for the entire nation – no longer want American residency.

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I don’t usually engage in snarky posts, but every once in a while, I need a little snark to put a ridiculous situation into perspective.  So please indulge me for the next three minutes…

It’s a good thing the government’s taken over the student loan industry.  Now our precious young college students will receive every opportunity to spend hours learning in the college classroom, enlightening their minds and enriching their lives.

Oh wait, no, that’s not how that “free money” is spent.  Why use our hard earned tax dollars for an education when you can waste our money and spend that time instead on becoming a pawn in someone else’s propaganda?  Why not abuse the money that’s been confiscated from our paychecks at a time when we so desperately need it and instead enjoy the benefits of union indoctrination on your college campus?

So let me get this straight.  Students all across the country have suddenly all taken a collective interest in the economic performance of their university’s cafeteria?  So, instead of attending classes like grateful students excited to learn, they’re sitting in the middle of a busy intersection at a red light, arm in arm, donning their SEIU-provided purple shirt, blocking traffic and taking cops away from important things – like responding to emergencies.  And last week, 20 were arrested for doing this at Ohio State University.

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On Friday April 9, 2010, GOP official Allee Bautsch ahd her boyfriend Joe Brown attended a Republican dinner at Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans. When they left this event they were followed from the restaurant by a group of five white men who hurled insults at them calling Allee a “little blond bitch” and calling Joe a “f**king f*ggot.” They brutally beat and stomped on the young Republican couple just blocks from the restaurant.

Allee Bautsch suffered a broken leg from the beatdown outside to the SRLC dinner at Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans. She had her leg operated on over the weekend and it will take her months to recover. Her boyfriend Joe Brown suffered a broken nose, a broken jaw, and a concussion. They were attacked after leaving the Southern Republican Leadership Conference dinner at Brennan’s Restaurant.

(Photo from Jindal’s Facebook Page via The Hayride)

On Saturday, Allee Bautsch’s mother spoke out about the vicious attack. She joined Allee’s friend and said the attackers were leftist protesters.

Yahoo reported:

Allee Bautsch’s mother, Della Berning, has now joined a friend of Bautsch’s in telling Yahoo! News that, contrary to what Brown initially told police, Bautsch and Brown do believe that the attackers were a group of political protesters who followed them after they left the event. Their recollection is not conclusive, of course, and they admit to having no knowledge of the attackers’ underlying motivations.

New Orleans, Louisiana police initially dismissed the savage attack on GOP official Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown in the French Quarter. They reported it as a medical call and did not even interview the couple about the brutal beating until Monday.

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Today, in 1775, Paul Revere–and other riders–alerted colonists of British troop movements.

So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying.

We know that this is a decentralized grassroots movement, with many different voices hailing from many different towns across the country. But the tea-party message comes together in the “Contract from America,” the product of an online vote orchestrated by Ryan Hecker, aHouston tea-party activist and national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.

With nearly 500,000 votes recorded in less than two months, this Contract forms a blueprint of tea-party policy goals and beliefs.

Of the top-ten planks in the Contract, the number-one issue is protect the Constitution. That’s followed by reject cap-and-trade, demand a balanced budget, and enact fundamental tax reform. And then comes number five: Restore fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government in Washington.

Note that two of the top-five priorities of the tea partiers mention the Constitution.

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Big Government Contributor, Charlie Gasparino gives his take on the SEC charges against Goldman Sachs at the Daily Beast:

John Paulson is an interesting guy: He was one of a handful of hedge-fund managers who bet the mortgage-bond market would decline beginning in late 2006, and made billions from that bet. Here is where the SEC charges get interesting: Goldman allowed Paulson to help create the bond and to put some of the most risky mortgages in the portfolio, or mortgages that were most likely to default and tank the investment.

The SEC’s problem with all of this is not that Paulson went to Goldman to create the bond (Paulson wasn’t charged) or even that Goldman even sold the same instruments to investors, but that Goldman didn’t tell investors of Paulson’s involvement. Remember, because of his short position he had every incentive to pack the bonds with the crummiest mortgages that would later default, which they did.

Goldman’s excuse for all this is that it somehow lost money on the whole sordid affair (not sure how that happened) and that the SEC’s case is completely unfounded in law and fact. It left out, of course, that in 2007 Goldman also shorted the housing market like Paulson, and that contributed to its massive earnings that year, not to mention Blankfein’s paycheck which nearly reached $70 million.

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On Thursday April 15, two violent leftist infiltrators disrupted the St. Charles Tax Day Tea Party Rally. St. Charles is located just a few miles west of St. Louis. The two men threatened and attacked elderly protesters and shouted down speaker Lt. Governor Peter Kinder during his speech.

One was identified as John Durajczyk, the Secretary of the St. Charles County Democratic Committee.

John Durajczyk’s infiltrator pal, identified as Steve Belosi, attacked an elderly woman at the rally until she started to cry.

It wasn’t the first time.

This goon, Steve Belosi, attacked another woman at the Russ Carnahan town hall event in August. And, he later had the gall to complain to the media about the right-wing violence at the meeting.

So what else do we know about violent tea party infiltrator Steve Belosi?

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The Obama Administration is concerned their takeover of the financial industry is at risk and are offering Republicans a fig leaf to buckle.

First they deny there was a bailout in the legislation. Now they are proposing the removal of a $50 billion fund that oversees future bailouts.

Don’t be fooled — the $50 billion is just a downpayment to administer future bailouts. The funding for the permanent bailouts will come from the Federal Reserve under the Blank Check Bailout bill.

The House bill authorizes the Fed to spent $4 trillion to bailout and “wind down” companies. The Senate bill doesn’t have a cap.

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An eclectic show this week as Rob, Peter and Mark are joined by columnist and author Shelby Steele who discusses Obama and how race and gender are defining his presidency and his quest to redefine America and the world. At the other end of the spectrum, we’re joined by Ricochet contributor and truck driver David Carter who illuminates us with his unique perspective on the world. All that and a little more inside Hollywood POV from Rob Long. Apologies in advance for the audio quality. We’ll try to do better next time. Questions? Comments? Fan us on our Facebook page or write us at podcast@ricochet.com.

The Obama Administration wants Americans to believe the economy is beginning to turn around and that President Barack Obama’s efforts are starting to result in more and more “saved and created jobs.” Ask Rick Misch for his assessment of the economy, however, and you’ll find the economic picture he sees daily isn’t as pretty as the one painted by politicians.

“I know there simply isn’t any real ‘job creation’ taking place,” said Misch, president of Ohio-based Phoenix Research Inc., during a recent phone interview. And he should know.

Phoenix Research is a courthouse research company Misch and business partner Bill Brown launched in November 1997. The company provides on-site criminal records checks for some 750 employment screening companies across the United States by way of a network of approximately 1,500 subcontractors working in almost every county in the nation.

A look at his company’s growth is revealing:

• By April-May 1998, Misch said, the company had hit its stride;

• By 2000, the partners had paid off all of the company’s start-up costs and relocated from Cincinnati to Mt. Orab, 60 miles due east in Brown County; and

• By 2001, Phoenix Research employed nine people, including Misch and Brown, and was handling approximately 3,000 individual criminal history searches per day — including 250 to 350 in Los Angeles County alone.

In addition to providing a decent living for its owners and employees, the enterprise provides Misch a great deal of insight about the state of the economy.

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On Sunday morning, March 21^st, I sent an e-mail to a handful of individuals, including Mike Flynn of Big Government.com, who have been very supportive of my efforts in informing people, family and businesses on Prevention, cost containment and health care reform. The topic was the impending passage of Obama Care and the stripping of Freedom and Liberty from every American which will be the end result.

One of the people I contacted was, Dennis Gartman. One of the nation’s and world’s leading financial analysts, investors and financial public educators through his work in the media.  Dennis is the founder of The Gartman Letter….a daily financial road map for corporations, individuals, investment funds and governments. Dennis asked if he could include my e-mail in The Gartman Letter. Below is Dennis’s article concerning my e-mail.

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GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE CAPITAL MARKETS ON ONE WELL KNOWN DOCTOR’S PERSPECTIVE ON HEALTH CARE:

Our friend, Dr. David Janda, is a nationally well known orthopaedic surgeon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, involved in delivering health care for 29 years.

David’s a clinical researcher in Prevention and Health care cost containment and he founded The Institute For Preventative Sports Medicine which is the only health care cost containment organization of its kind in North America. According to the Federal government, one of his studies has lead to the prevention of 1.7 million people from being injured every year in the U.S. and saved $2 billion in health care costs per year.

David also wrote a bestselling book….The Awakening of a Surgeon…… featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and it’s been referred to as a “Weapon of Mass Instruction” as it tells people and families how to take control of their health care and to free themselves from the insurance companies, from the HMO industry and most importantly from federal bureaucrats.

That being said, David wrote to us last evening as the health care legislation was making its way to the House floor. He’s told us in the past about the ills involved in this legislation, but now it has passed and it has come to this. We believe David’s thoughts, as a physician of some renown to be worthy of our clients’ collective attention, He wrote:

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Sec. 199. AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.

Sec. 200. If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason, because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James the first, in his speech to the parliament, 1603, tells them thus, I will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from a tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king doth by the contrary acknowledge himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of his people, And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he hath these words, The king binds himself by a double oath, to the observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to protect as well the people, as the laws of his kingdom; and expressly, by his oath at his coronation, so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in framing his government agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with Noah after the deluge. Hereafter, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease while the earth remaineth. And therefore a king governing in a settled kingdom, leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws, And a little after, Therefore all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws; and they that persuade them the contrary, are vipers, and pests both against them and the commonwealth. Thus that learned king, who well understood the notion of things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public, the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will and appetite.

Sec. 201. It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper only to monarchies; other forms of government are liable to it, as well as that: for wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was nothing better.

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Despite praise as a civil libertarian and liberal advocate, Justice Stevens’ real friend was government.

Justice John Paul Stevens, retiring before the United States Supreme Court’s fall term, has long been considered the leader of the liberal’s intellectual bloc on the Court.  While praise from the Left for Stevens will continue throughout the summer, the Obama administration has made it clear it plans to replace the Justice with a “like-minded” liberal.

Stevens penned the majority opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), concerning the Bush Administration’s treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees after 9/11.  He held that the administration’s conduct violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.  He was also influential in establishing the privilege of habeas corpus for suspected terrorists in Boumediene v. Bush (2008).  For his role in these cases, many liberals and civil libertarians have held Stevens in high regard.  In addition, Stevens joined the conservative bloc of the Court in Crawford v. Washington (2006), overturning years of bad law regarding the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment and providing bright-line protections against out-of-court statements used against the accused at trial.  With government intrusion and involvement already secured and guaranteed, Stevens frequently voted to scrutinize government procedure and broaden protections for the accused.

Stevens, however, was not so friendly to the cause of freedom and the protection of individuals from such interference.  Stevens was skeptical, sometimes fearful of individual rights, consistently deferring to government power and tolerating its expansion into private lives. (more…)

“Conservatism is America’s longest-dying political movement” claims R. Emmett Tyrrell in his newest book “After The Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road To Victory.” Yet, says the old warrior, it is also poised and fated to ultimately win the culture war.

As one would expect from the one and only RET, it’s quite a read.

He details the obituaries: the 1950s (when the movement was just coming together), 1964. 1974, 1992, 2006, and 2008. As long as conservatism has been growing, it has repeatedly been pronounced dead. Next he notes that just before 2006 it was the Liberals who were having obituaries written for them–in 1994, 2000, and 2004—a little noted fact.

But, as Bob quotes from the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer, “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” By the Bush years the pols were spending wildly and giving only lip service to true conservative principles. Some conservative media darlings were too often merely opportunists, mouthing our principles whilst looking for the next lucrative gig.

In its’ infancy, “conservatism” was but a small group of erudite and engaging intellectuals with a beef. It was far from a racket. It was a great cause focused squarely on limited government and personal liberty. Always this cause has been up against the statists, the so-called liberals (who are not, in fact, very liberal at all). So Tyrrell designates them Liberals–large L. And because said Liberals dominate our media and political culture, they have been in a great position to publicly declare our doom.

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