Oliver Stone’s uber-villain Gordon Gekko is back in the new film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which (surprise!) features greedy capitalists behaving badly. It might remind you of Avatar, Mission Impossible 2 or roughly a zillion other films in which capitalists destroy the environment, concoct killer viruses, harvest organs, and cover up murder in order to feed their lust of profit. Even when capitalism isn’t the primary target, the representatives of commerce are often flat-out repulsive (think Jabba the Hut).

Perhaps it’s ironic that Hollywood filmmakers practice what they preach against. Sure he palls around with socialist dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, but there’s no doubt Oliver Stone hopes to rake in obscene profits with his new flick.

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In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson, Francis Cianfrocca and Ben Domenech talk about the latest housing numbers, controversy in Alaska’s Senate race, the decline of the Clinton political coalition, and who’s going to have Obama’s ear on economic policy with his evaporating policy team. We’ll also chat about a list of the decade’s top movie villains, which shockingly doesn’t include the ship computer from WALL-E. You’re listening to Coffee and Markets, brought to you by the New Ledger, for Friday, September 24th, 2010.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates. We’d also like to let you know that we’ve set up a standalone site at CoffeeandMarkets.com for easier browsing of our past broadcasts.

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Related Links:

Politico: Jim DeMint chides GOP senators for protecting Lisa Murkowski
Morning Jay: Goodbye to the Clinton Majority, Those Lucky Dems, and More!
Strassel: Why Business Bashing Has Flopped
Idler: The decade’s best in film villainy
TNL: 150 Movies You Really Ought to See

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled a second vote on the DISCLOSE Act for Thursday. Rather than address the 14.4 percent unemployment in his home state of Nevada, he wants to regulate political speech through hastily cobbled together campaign finance legislation. This legislation would impose a burdensome new disclaimer and disclosure regime on speakers who seek to exercise their First Amendment right to political speech.

The DISCLOSE Act is a desperate attempt to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Citizens United the Court embraced the First Amendment protection of political speech. Now groups of Americans may stand together and speak, regardless of whether they have sought the protection of a corporate form, labor union, or non-profit organization.

Fearful of how these groups of Americans may exercise this right, Senator Schumer, Representative Chris Van Hollen, and leaders of the Democratic Party sought to create a burdensome new disclosure and disclaimer regime to make it difficult for Americans to exercise these rights. Senator Schumer is hopeful that the legislation will result in fewer political ads being run.

The DISCLOSE Act was crafted behind closed doors with the input of Democratic lobbyists. Labor unions and large special interests groups including the National Rifle Association were afforded special exemptions from various provisions of the bill. This partisan legislation is an assault on the First Amendment, and principled conservative groups like Citizens United were right to oppose it.

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One of the chief responsibilities of the Congress is the provide oversight of the executive branch — a responsibility that the Democrat Congress has punted. The president nominated Donald Berwick to head the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid, a proponent of rationing for the poor and elderly. Not only did the Congress not hold a single hearing about Berwick’s support for a government-run health care system, they never voted on his nomination. Berwick now heads an agency bigger than the Department of Defense without so much as a question being asked about his qualifications and extreme views.

Berkwick’s support for the imposition of a British-style health care system complete with its rationing regime is clear. “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care–the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open,” Berwick said in a June 2009 interview with Biotechnology Healthcare.

In an interview last June, Dr. Berwick said, “NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable, and — importantly — knowledge-building system.” He added that NICE has “developed very good and very disciplined, scientifically grounded, policy-connected models for the evaluation of medical treatments from which we ought to learn.” Moments later, the interviewer asked, “So you are saying that the federal CER [Comparative Effectiveness Research] agency should get involved in cost determinations?” Berwick replied, “You can say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t even look.’ But that would be irrational. The social budget is limited.” NICE is the government agency in Britain that rations care on a daily basis. Professor Mike Rawlins, the chairman the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) who said: “The question is not whether care is rationed but how.”

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As if the $10 billion “public education bailout” wasn’t enough to stomach, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has introduced a bill, titled Education for All Act of 2010, which would spend American tax dollars on education systems around the globe.  It’s S.3797.

U.S. Rep Nita Lowey (D-CA) has introduced similar legislation as H.B. 5117.

I think Washington has officially lost its marbles.

While no dollar amount is contained in the legislation, the bill states, “Credible estimates indicate that approximately $16,000,000,000 per year of financing assistance is necessary for developing countries to achieve universal basic education by 2015.”

Is Sen. Gillibrand really proposing to spend an additional $16 billion of our hard-earned tax dollars elsewhere?

Does spending money in other countries imply that our system is okay?  Or that it’s on a course of improvement?  Because in case these members of Congress haven’t noticed, our system kind of stinks.

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On September 23, 2010, at a speech by Gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber, a citizen was violently assaulted.

Approximately 10 minutes into the speech the moderator informs the public not to film. The citizen continues to film, stating it is his First Amendment Right. The camera is smashed into his face. This is clearly seen on the video.

In May 2009, the Obama/Holder Justice Department dropped charges in a voter intimidation case against Malik Shabazz, a leader of the New Black Panther Party, despite having already won a summary judgment against him, and his New Black Panther Party colleagues King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson who were video-taped outside polling place in Philadelphia intimidating voters as they arrived on election day, 2008.  In July 2009, when Congress began looking into the matter, someone named Malik Shabazz visited the private residence at the White House.

When news of the visit was released under the auspices of transparency, the White House denied that the Malik Shabazz on the visitor’s log was the same Malik Shabazz involved in the New Black Panther voter intimidation case.  According to Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, the records contained “a few “false positives” – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.”  He specifically cited Malik Shabazz as an example of one of these “false positives”.

At the time, the media did not challenge the White House on the veracity of this claim.  The White House’s position was, basically: “We’re being transparent, here are all the visitor logs, and this guy is not the guy you think he is, TRUST US.”

The great thing about transparency – when there is actual transparency – is that it renders trust unnecessary.  We ask that the White House identify which Malik Shabazz visited the White House residence on July 25, 2009.

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If you love the Constitution, Robin Carnahan thinks you are sheep to be led to political slaughter. If you listen to Glenn Beck, she believes she can use that against you to get herself elected.

In this leaked tape made at a fancy, high dollar campaign fundraiser in Santa Fe (a real woman of the people in Missouri, huh?), she explains her cynical election strategy. She espouses an elitist notion that there are enough rubes in Missouri who will vote for anything that says the word “Constitution” such as a Constitution Party candidate.

Another embarassing revelation is the notion that she can help leverage Glenn Beck followers to go along and be part of the 6% she needs. She is clever enough to know that getting 50% of the popular vote is nearly impossible for a hard leftist, especially in a red or swing state heartland state like Missouri. So her path to victory actually relies on 6% of Missourians from Beck supporters to strict Constitutional adherents to vote third party, for her, or not at all so that she can sneak away with the anti-Constitutional remainder of the vote. She elaborates in the tapes that her strategy is to invite debates with the third party candidates to build momentum for their followers to vote for them and chip away at Roy Blunt’s wide margins.

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Most of the media will obsess over Steve Colbert’s stand-up routine today before a House Subcommittee. More interesting testimony will be given by Christopher Coates before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. We include his testimony here.

christopher_coates_testimony_9-24-10

Pajama’s Media is live-streaming the testimony here.

A new survey released Thursday revealed a majority of Americans oppose the Federal Communications Commissions proposed overhaul of the nation’s broadband regulatory regime.

The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates, found that a full 75% of Americans nationwide believe the internet is “working well.” The survey also found that 55% of respondents believe that the government should have no hand in regulating the internet.

But for senior FCC brass, the heartburn does not end there: The poll of 800 likely voters found that a plurality of respondents conceded having voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, signaling to Mr. Obama’s White House that it may yet be losing Independent voters on another regulatory issue.

That the FCC’s proposed Net neutrality rules rates even lower than many incumbent Democrats — in an election cycle where political handicappers maintain that GOP’ers stand a good chance of retaking the House and an outside chance of wresting control of the Senate — should give pause to anyone Administration official still pushing for the measure’s adoption.

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I recently attended in Washington, D. C. an insightful debate, “How to Interpret the Constitution.” I asked each of four panelists to opine on the constitutionality of the individual mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health care beginning 2014.  Two thought the mandate constitutional; two did not.

John Yoo, a former official at the U. S. Department of Justice and presently a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that the U. S. Supreme Court would rule “5 to 4” against the constitutionality of the mandate.

Stephen Markman, now Justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, did not make a prediction, but implied hope that the mandate would be ruled unconstitutional.  He argued that never in its history has any federal court ruled that the Commerce Clause permits the government to regulate economic inactivity and to require all individuals to buy a certain private sector product or service.

Mark Hall, professor of law at Wake Forest University and a conservative, predicted that Justice Antonin Scalia would rule the individual mandate constitutional.  He based his view on what he had learned in taking a law class from Scalia and on Scalia’s position in the Raich case (2005).

Angel Raich argued that she grew marijuana in her own back yard for personal medical use only.  Nonetheless, Scalia sided with the majority against Raich, concurring that her personal, noneconomic, noncommercial activities, “taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce” and therefore can be regulated by the Commerce Clause.  If others grew marijuana, in the aggregate commerce in the future would emerge.

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Citing massive irregularities and gross taxpayer funding abuses, federal investigators are recommending that government funding for ACORN’s still operating housing affiliate be cut off immediately.

Investigators must have felt it was necessary to urge the funding cutoff because the federal government’s prohibition on funding ACORN isn’t a permanent ban. It exists at the whim of lawmakers and runs out at the end of this month. This is the finding of an analysis by Capital Research Center (which has been tracking ACORN since 1998).

Investigators may also have wanted to remind the public that ACORN is still alive. Reports of ACORN’s demise continue to be churned out by misinformed journalists who  amplify the zombie group’s lies. In recent days the Washington Post incorrectly described ACORN as “a dead NGO,” and Slate said ACORN has “stopped existing.” More on this in a moment.

The Sept. 21 report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General found that ACORN Housing, which changed its name earlier this year to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHC), may have concealed fraud by destroying or failing to produce records.

ACORN violated federal rules on how grants are to be used. The group charged the government salary costs for employees after they were terminated, the report said, and violated federal procurement standards.

The report suggested ACORN corruptly funneled taxpayer dollars to its affiliates and engaged in money laundering. ACORN has taken in more than $19 million in housing counseling grants since 1995 from HUD. NeighborWorks, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, gave ACORN $25.9 million. ACORN Housing has received more than $27.3 million from other federal and non-federal sources, the report said.

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Yesterday, the United States watched as a crazy dictator took the podium at the United Nations in New York City. He proceeded to say a bunch of really crazy sh*&. Afterwards, he no doubt enjoyed the best of the Big Apple and retired for the evening at a five-star hotel. He never once had to worry about being punished for what he said. Would that the rest of the world were that way. Would that we stopped thinking we had to apologize for anything.

The Obama-Pelosi Regime took control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy when they passed their nationalized health care bill and signed it into law in late March. The bill was never popular but Democrats persisted and rammed the bill through Congress. Now, there are even reports that the Obama Administration sat on damning information and hid it from the public until after their bill was passed into law.
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Results from a report released a month after the health care vote were troubling. The report released by Medicare and Medicaid actuaries showed that medical costs will skyrocket rising $389 billion 10 years. 14 million will lose their employer-based coverage. Millions of Americans will be left without insurance. And, millions more may be dumped into the already overwhelmed Medicaid system. 4 million American families will be hit with tax penalties under this new law.

Of course, these were ALL things that President Obama and Democratic leaders assured us would not happen.

Via Special Report:

Six months after democrats voted to take over the nation’s health care industry and force Americans to purchase their government plan the administration has already missed several deadlines. Here are a few stats on this awful bill:

–4,103 – Pages of regulations issued on the health care law through Sept. 17, 2010
–12 – Number of final regulations not subjected to public scrutiny before taking effect
–5 – Missed implementation deadlines to date.

Rep. Michael Burgess M.D. (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Regulations called for Secretary Sebelius to come before the committee and explain some of her troubling comments and the flawed bill.

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Today is the six-month anniversary of the passage of President Obama’s signature legislation, what has come to be known as ObamaCare.  The White House is feting this semi-anniversary, but few Americans are in a mood to join the celebration.

Obama, who can be thin-skinned when people disagree with him, was downright irritated when the early polls showed that a majority of Americans opposed his health care “reform” bill.  On April 1, he criticized the polls as premature, saying “So before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place.  Just a thought.”

The problem with his argument is that the more Americans find out what is actually in this monstrosity of a bill, the less they like it.  Polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports show that 55 percent of the public supported the repeal of ObamaCare on March 25, just two days after its passage.  Today, a half-year later, the number of those favoring repeal has grown to 61 percent.

I am not one to call the President a liar.  I have too much respect for the office held by giants like George Washington and Ronald Reagan for that.  But I do believe that much of what Obama has said about his own health care bill is simply not true.  He claimed in Maine that people could keep their own health insurance, in Maryland that people could keep their own doctors.  In Washington, DC, he promised that his plan would cut costs but would not lead to the rationing of care.  He has consistently claimed that it would not fund abortions, and that its “end-of-life visits” would not lead to euthanasia.

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President Obama still gets overwhelming support from black, largely Democratic voters. His support hovers around 90 percent despite the economy and high unemployment.

But a new poll out hints that Obama might have lost black voters on policy . . . Obama’s position on education vouchers and merit pay for teachers has no significant impact on black opinion.

Question-experiments in the yearly Education Next/Harvard poll allow us to compare support and opposition to various education reforms when respondents are just asked in the standard way to their levels of support when they are told what President Obama thinks about the issue.

In 2009, informing respondents that Obama supports merit pay for teachers increased the margin of black support for the policy by 30 points. Obama’s opposition to vouchers dampened the margin of black support for them by 26 points. But this year, mentioning that Obama supports merit pay actually decreases the black margin of support by a couple of points and Obama’s opposition to vouchers increases the margin of black support by a few points.

In other words, even core supporters don’t seem to trust President Obama on policy.

The intersection of race and politics is a complicated place; a jumble of socio-economic, ideological, and Party differences. Black Americans are predominantly Democratic, are more liberal than the general population on many issues (although more conservative on some), and on average have lower incomes. All of these characteristics have a major impact on an individual’s political opinions, and they are highly correlated with race in America. What this confluence of correlations translates into is overwhelming support for Democratic Presidents in general and President Obama in particular; 88 percent approval compared to 54 percent from Hispanics and 38 percent from whites.

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Today, California is set to exceed its own prior record with regard to budget tardiness, as it heads into its 85th day without a budget.

Legislative leaders flew to Los Angeles Wednesday to meet with an ailing Arnold Schwarzenegger, who places blame for the impasse with the Legislature, whose Democrats have a budget proposal of their own—one packed with tax hikes.

Here are just some of the increases the Democrats are seeking:

• A $1.8 billion middle-class tax increase focused on personal income taxes and car tax to be accomplished via a “tax swap”;

• A $1.2 billion business tax hike to be accomplished via the delay in use of business Net Operating Loss deductions and “Carryback” provisions;

• An $842 million tax increase on oil production.

California Democrats are also reportedly looking to incorporate a provision into the budget whereby out-of-state, online retailers who advertise with websites based in the state would be forced to collect and remit California sales tax.  This is despite their prior attempt at getting such legislation passed– which some experts say could have been done more simply outside of the budget– having failed, and despite such a tax plan being unconstitutional.

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Remember the Coffee Party? Yeah, me neither.

But don’t worry. You haven’t missed your chance to hang with some of the mellowest, most laid-back-est, nicest political activists who ever strummed an E-A-B chord progression on the old six-string or crooned “The Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind” around a Duraflame 20” electric fireplace.

That’s because the Coffee Party—all twelve or so of its lukewarm membership—is convening this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Let your eyes gently glaze over as you listen to Michael Brook’s soothing acoustic guitar accompanying the YouTube ad for the upcoming Brew-haha in Louisville: