Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) has trouble remembering his roots as Pennsylvania’s state treasurer and auditor general. During his Senate campaign, he claimed to be a fiscal hawk and to have saved Pennsylvanians $1 billion of taxpayer money.  Casey is and always has been a big government progressive and will finally no longer be able to use the conservative, fiscal hawk meme with the introduction of the $165 billion union pension bailout bill, coupled with his rubber stamp approval of every plank of Obama’s agenda, Casey is now fully exposed.

Let’s review some of Casey’s recent steps.  Casey met with the Teamsters union back in March 2010 and the “Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010” bill’s branding became apparent:

Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, explained that his legislation is important to protecting pensions and saving jobs. It’s also important to keep promises made to retirees, he said.

“We have to fulfill our obligations,” Casey said. “Pensions are a basic commitment to workers and their families that they will be there for them.”

The bill will strengthen the trucking and other industries. It will change the pension funding rules so employers won’t have to make payments that could force them into bankruptcy. Employers can use their savings to hire and retain workers.

In addition, according to the press release, Teamsters Local 776 shop steward Dave Wolf added:

“It was fraud and corruption on Wall Street that caused the crash,” Wolf said. “Now working people are losing their jobs and their pensions because of it.

John B. Taylor, professor of economics at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution would disagree with Wolf on the cause of the crash citing the federal government as the leading cause of the crash.  There are many others who would agree with Taylor as well.

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Last week, Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves said to Fox News that you can “trust 2010 Census data.” What our director fails to tell us is that the two software applications have operational problems that will ultimately lead to inaccurate data. Just spend a day working in PBOCS, the Paper-Based Operational Control System which processes enumerator questionnaires from the field, or MARCS, the Matching Address Review Coding System which shows a data capture of every questionnaire that was scanned at the Baltimore Data Capture Center and you will see the poor quality of work.

Thousands upon thousands of questionnaires are being scanned that show conflicting or incomplete data such as: vacant housing units with a population count, incorrect enumerator IDs, occupied housing units with no demographic information and the list goes on.

During the peak of the non-response follow-up (NRFU) phase of 2010 Census operations (around mid May), the Census switched to a shipping application built off a PeopleSoft/Oracle interface in order to take the load off PBOCS. Although this was a good thought in theory, the application allowed questionnaires to be shipped that were not even checked in PBOCS. In the final closeout days of the operation, PBOCS claimed many questionnaires were not checked in even though enumerators fervently claimed they turned them in.

Fortunately some of those were found in MARCS having been received at the data capture center but never scanned for shipping nor checked in. However because there was such a bottleneck sometimes it was few weeks between the time they were shipped and scanned; some questionnaires that never showed in MARCS were re-enumerated. Sometimes PBOCS would just revert some cases back to not being checked in. In a mad dash to finish and meet deadlines enumerators submitted second versions of questionnaires with little or less than accurate data replacing what may or may not have been originally submitted. Immediately after offices finished NRFU, headquarters closed the PBOCS to the local census offices to prevent further glitches.

As it has been mentioned time and time again, the Census never made it clear what constituted a completed questionnaire.

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Illinois Governor Pat Quinn made it official: Illinois will have a special Senate election just for the lame duck session.  Thus Illinois joins Delaware and West Virginia (both having special elections) as the three states whose winners on election day will—barring a disputed election result—be seated for a lame duck session in December.  A fourth, Colorado, is less clear but may also be in play.

The lame duck session looks increasingly likely—and increasingly ambitious.  Sen. Kerry continues to stress that cap-and-trade will be on the agenda, and Sen. Harry Reid (who may be a lame duck himself after Election Day) confirmed it to the Netroots Nation audience, saying: “We’re going to have to have a lame-duck session, so we’re not giving up.”

Along with cap-and-trade, a lame duck will likely consider the recommendations of Obama’s deficit commission — a package that will include enormous tax hikes and could draw the support of some departing Republicans like Judd Gregg of New Hampshire George Voinovich of Ohio, and Robert Bennett of Utah.

And organized labor, seeing the lame duck as their last chance for a legislative return on their political investments for years, will also demand lame duck action.

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From The Hill:

Democratic leaders and major party donors plan to hold a lavish 80th birthday gala for Charles Rangel at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan next month, despite 13 ethics charges pending against the veteran lawmaker.

Lobbyists and other party donors received invitations this week to join Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and New York Gov. David Paterson at one of New York’s finest hotels to celebrate Rangel’s birthday.

Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are also listed as featured guests, according to an invitation viewed by The Hill.

Some potential guests received the invitation a day after the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct issued a report accusing Rangel of multiple ethics violations.

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Uh O. You know His Excellency Presidency is in trouble if people are driving around the streets of Chicago with the messages seen in the photo below.

Of course, according to the ever post-racial Shirley Sherrod, this might as well be a KKKlan mobile.

Note to other “post-racial” racists: People don’t object to His Excellency Presidency because Obama is black. They oppose Obama because he is red.

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Robinson, Long, and Lileks are joined by conservative thinker, writer, climatologist, Obama Administration Czar, and some TV game show thing he does on the side, Mr. Pat Sajak. In fact, we’ll skip the traditional summary and rundown this week and just say that If you’ve never heard Pat talk about the issues of the day, you’re in for a treat.

Questions? Comments? Join the conversation at Ricochet.com or write us at podcast@ricochet.com.

Let’s go back to those hopey-changie days of the Obama campaign for president when he railed constantly against all those “special interests” and evil lobbyists that he claimed were ruining the political process. Let us recall that once elected he claimed he’d have the “strictest ethics rules” of any president ever.

Obama has made sure that his message has been anti-special interests, anti-lobbyists, anti-business-as-usual… heck just plain anti-business, for that matter. It’s all been quite a show. Unfortunately for all the talk his actions speak to the opposite of his spin — more on that in a moment. But even if President Obama was serious about his anti-lobbyist rhetoric his party has utterly ignored him on the issue.

A recent Bloomberg report reveals that lobbyists have raised $1.5 million for Democrat campaign funds during the first six months of the Obama regime despite Obama’s constant anti-lobbyist refrain. That is far more than the GOP has been able to raise.

As much as Obama rails against the influence held by lobbyists in Washington, candidates rely on them to help fund increasingly expensive campaigns. Reports released today show lobbyists also personally contributed to Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Bloomberg reports that just two campaign donation “bundlers” have brought in a combined $860,700 into the coffers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since Obama took office. The most successful fundraiser, former Pelosi operative Ryan Rudominer, brought in $716,300 from the electric energy lobby while the second highest fundraiser was Tony Podesta. Podesta represents BP oil, among others and brought in $144,400.

Apparently the party at which Obama sits as headman isn’t paying much mind to the boss’ entreaties. More likely, they all know it’s just hokum and hopey-changie jaw-jaw and not really meant to be taken seriously.

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Today, in 1912, Milton Friedman was born. Few have done as much to advance the cause of liberty. Happy Birthday, Milton!

Our latest guest is Ambassador Charles Hill, former advisor to Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz.  Mr. Hill claims that US Presidents over the past two decades have been completely inept in foreign policy.  Bush 41 and Clinton tried to get international issues off their back in order to regain control of the news cycle and stake their claim as domestic policy presidents.  As a result, we lost our focus and understanding of our position in the world, completely missing the rise of Islam and now, failing to strategically face it.

Islamists are just like Communists, Hill argues, hoping to spread their way of thinking to the world, overtake the present world order, and set in place their values and structures.

Many will agree with Hill’s accusation that President Obama has no appreciation for American exceptionalism, meaning Mr. Obama must not actually understand America.  Everything about the history of the United States, its promotion of individual freedoms and democracy, is exceptional.

Hence Hill suggests a reading list for the President.  He insists the President read Virgil’s Aeneid, saying “Obama is like Aeneas – things happen to him, he doesn’t make things happen.”

Watch the full video below.

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In the early stages of the Shirley Sherrod controversy, the media began to craft the narrative Shirley Sherrod was the embodiment of the term “post-racial.” Then on July 22^nd on Anderson Cooper 360, this happened:

SHIRLEY SHERROD: I think he [BREITBART] would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That’s where I think he would like to see all black people end up again. And that’s why…

COOPER: You think — you think he’s racist?

SHERROD: … I think he’s so vicious. Yes, I do.

Cooper, dumbfounded by Sherrod’s comments, did not muster any type of a challenge to Sherrod.

Flash forward to yesterday, and AC360 went on record to admit that he had erred by allowing Sherrod to deliver such provocative remarks unchecked, and said that he’d handle the situation differently if he had the opportunity again. Still, a good-faith Nexis search indicates that Cooper has not adequately alerted his viewership that Andrew Breitbart had in fact granted Shirley Sherrod her redemption in both the originally released footage of her speech to the NAACP audience and in his write-up that accompanied the video. We would appreciate it if he would broaden the contextual frame of the story to include that bit of information that has not been adequately conveyed by the media up until this point. (more…)

American Thinker offers some interesting background on Shirley Sherrod.

The Thinker quotes from veteran Democrat Pol Willie Brown on her firing by the Obama Administration:

“This past Sunday, in his weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘Willie’s World,’ veteran black politico Willie Brown confirmed that ‘there is more to the story than just [Sherrod's] remarks.’

‘As an old pro,’ Brown acknowledged, “I know that you don’t fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place.’ Brown observed that Sherrod had been a thorn in the USDA’s side for years, that many had objected to her hiring, and that she had been ‘operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN.’ Although Brown does not go into detail, he alludes to a class action lawsuit against the USDA in which she participated some years ago.”

Thirty years ago, a group of mothers who had lost children to drunk drivers organized a group called MADD. They had a legitimate beef. There were too many drunks on the road.

To Americans at the time, drinking and driving was a national pastime. We would routinely take risks that are unheard of today. More than one state would actually allow you to have an alcoholic drink in your hand while  you were behind the wheel. (The joke was that in Texas, it was mandatory.)

The MADD lobbying and national awareness effort was quite successful, and within a few years, drunk-driving accidents had been reduced. Terms like “designated driver” started to sweep the national zeitgeist. The comedy boom of the eighties (where I cut my chops) was fueled in part by the crackdown, since comedy made it possible to be entertained in a bar, without becoming profusely incoherent.

But then something strange happened. The Mothers didn’t stop being mad. Rather than celebrate their happy victory, they cracked down even harder. They promoted seat belt laws and roadblocks. In 2000 they lobbied to get the legal blood alcohol down to 0.08% ; a level that most competent drinkers could handle safely. Comedian Doug Stanhope once joked that he was a better driver at 0.08% than his grandmother was completely sober.

Meanwhile the percentage of drivers getting arrested kept increasing, to the point where the stigma of a DUI conviction was no longer negative. At cocktail parties, people will sometimes play a strange version of Liars Poker, where they compare each other’s court recorded BAC, to see who has the highest.

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In this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about the latest GDP numbers, Fannie and Freddie, and the challenges facing small businesses with Congressman Kenny Marchant of Texas. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates.

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Related Links:

TNL: The New New Economics
BusinessWeek: The Schizophrenic Economy
TNL: CBO’s New Report on Deficits
WSJ: The Democratic Fisc
Bloomberg: Few Solutions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
TNL: Risk and Regulation

Every successful revolutionary movement starts with an act of defiance – as ordinary people stand up against the tyrants who are ruling them. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 is an iconic example, as colonists dumped a shipload of tea into the harbor rather than acknowledge the right of the British Parliament to tax it. The tea party, of course, helped spark the American Revolution as its message of “no taxation without representation” gave voice to deeply held resentments throughout the American colonies.

The media have made much ado about the political Tea parties, started in 2009, that have had some level of success in protesting the government expansions under the Obama administration. Unfortunately, that movement – for all its many good points and despite the clarity of its Taxed Enough Already moniker – represents a mish-mash of ideas and has been plagued by factional disputes. The most successful mini-revolutions take place when the People are unified around a simple and clearly understood theme.

One of the best recent representations of that old defiant spirit can be found in the past couple of weeks in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, a poor mostly Latino city of about 37,000, where about 2,000 city residents showed up and forced the resignation of worthless city officials after they learned about the way they had enriched themselves at the expense of city taxpayers. As one Bell resident said after a council member gave a self-serving justification of her $100,000 part-time salary (council members typically earn about $8,000 a year): “You were a crook yesterday, you’re a crook today, and you’ll be a crook tomorrow.”

That’s a simple idea most of us can rally around! The crooks are ripping us off.

The Bell situation garnered national attention because of the level of plundering. A city manager, Robert Rizzo, earned $787,000 a year from the impoverished burb – a place that has been cutting services and where 10 percent of the budget went to Rizzo, Police Chief Randy Adams ($457,000) and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia ($357,000).

Rizzo – who lives in fancy digs in Huntington Beach and has a horse farm in Washington state – boasted that he could have easily earned as much in the private sector, which is a load of nonsense and something that all city managers claim. Yet these managers, who typically make nearly $300,000 a year in California, manage basic city tasks in a bureaucratic monopoly environment. They do not run the equivalent of private, competitive firms.

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16 seconds into the video below, Marxist “Community Organizer” Carlos Garcia of the Marxist community organization “Puente” openly talks about people planning to get arrested while protesting in Arizona.

Does this sort of thing ever happen at a Tea Party? I can’t think of one Tea Party protest, anywhere, that has involved the premeditated tactic of breaking the law and getting arrested.

Yet it is the Tea Parties that are a smeared by Democrats as a violent threat to national security?

And make no mistake, this is an operation of America’s Progressive Democrat Left.

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Today the Institute for Justice filed opening briefs in our fourth case to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.

IJ’s first trip to the high court came in 2002 and resulted in a landmark victory for school choice.  We also won our second U.S. Supreme Court case, defending the American ideals of economic liberty and unfettered interstate commerce by striking down a ban on the direct shipment of wine.

Our third case changed America forever.  A local government in Connecticut decided to bulldoze an entire neighborhood and hand the land over to a politically connected private developer.  The law was stacked against the property owners in favor of the powerful special interests.  IJ, defending the property owners, lost in a controversial 5-4 ruling.

This was the infamous Kelo case, and it resulted in an explosion of outrage and grassroots activism all across the country.  Ed Morrissey recently wrote at Hot Air that it arguably set “the stage for the all-out eruption of Tea Party activism a few years later.” This epic battle to protect private property rights, ultimately vindicated by grassroots activists just like you, is one that will never be forgotten:

And now, as children nationwide get ready to begin a new school year, the Institute for Justice is defending Arizona’s innovative scholarship tax-credit program before the highest court in the land.

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During a campaign stop in Inglewood, California this past weekend, Barbara Boxer’s disrespectful attitude toward our armed forces was on full display when she equated the experiences of Members of Congress with the experiences of those who have put their lives on the line serving our country in uniform.

Boxer said this, at an event during which she was supposed to help break ground on new housing for homeless veterans:

“We know that if you have veterans in one place where they can befriend each other and talk to each other. You know when you’ve gone through similar things you need to share it. I don’t care whether you are a policeman or a fireman or a veteran or by chance a member of Congress. Maxine and I could look at each other and roll our eyes. We know what we are up against. And it is hard for people who are not there to understand the pressure and the great things that go along with it and the tough things that go along with it.”

She followed this up by appearing later in the day at a campaign fundraiser featuring none other than “Hanoi Jane” Fonda.

Barbara Boxer has never been loved by the military, veterans, their friends or family.  She has a history of voting against troop funding and opposing military missions undertaken abroad.  She voted against condemning MoveOn.org’s disgraceful, full-page New York Times ad that attacked the integrity of General David Petraeus.  More recently, of course, she dressed down a brigadier general on national television, insisting that he call her “senator” instead of “ma’am.”

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Somewhere lurking in the hot, putrid halls of Congress this summer is a union bailout bill of epic proportions and long-term ramifications.   Whether or not Democrats can ultimately push it (or something like it) into passage is yet to be determined. However, with rumors that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) signed on as a co-sponsor on Thursday, it would appear that the union bailout is quietly creeping along.  If it passes, though, its ramifications surpass the mere $165 billion-plus price tag, as it will influence the political landscape for decades to come.  In sum, Democrats need the bailout desperately and Republicans should shun it like the plague.

Likely to surpass the touted $165 billion it is estimated to cost, Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act (S. 3157) was introduced on March 23rd by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and is designed to bailout unions’ underfunded pension funds by transferring the liability of those funds onto the backs of the taxpayers.

Under these bills, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) would, at the request of the plans, have the authority to take over the pension obligations of employers who have withdrawn from the plans, and pay the benefits out of taxpayer dollars, says Furchtgott-Roth:

• Once the PBGC shoulders that obligation, it would keep making payments until the last retiree or designated survivor dies.
• Since many multiemployer plans are in financial difficulty, this legislation, if enacted, could dramatically increase the federal deficit, putting even more pressure on the American taxpayer and the economy.
• Depending on events, it might add billions to government spending — current underfunding levels are estimated at $165 billion-bumping up future deficits.

According to a June 24th article published in the Bureau of National Affairs Construction Labor Report (subscription required):

If enacted into law, the bill would convert a private funding shortfall for collectively bargained multi-employer plans into a public obligation, said Brett McMahon, vice president of Miller and Long Concrete Construction and an ABC member.

The legislation would transfer a portion of multiemployer pension funding obligations to a new insurance program that would be operated by the PBGC and paid for with taxpayer dollars instead of employer-paid premiums, F. Vincent Vernuccio, a spokesman for the trade group’s advocacy organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said during the call.

At the heart of the union pension problem are companies that, in many cases, agreed to put retirement money for union workers into “multi-employer plans” but have since gone out of business. As the unionized workers in multi-employer plans are still entitled to a pension, the remaining employers are left funding the pensions of workers who, in many cases, they never employed.

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Today, in 1866, the Democratic government in New Orleans ordered a raid on a racially integrated meeting of the Republican Party. 40 people were killed and 150 were injured. Remember.