A few weeks ago we told you about J. Dudley Butler, the former (and future) trial lawyer who spent his career suing the very industry he has been appointed by President Obama to regulate.

He’s currently working in the Agriculture Department as Administrator of the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) and, according to former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, “Butler is actively pushing to expand the scope of the decades-old Packers and Stockyards Act — which will make it easier for trial lawyers (such as Mr. Butler) to successfully sue meat and poultry companies.”

Last week this piece in The Daily Caller looked into the conflict of interest and concluded, “Whether or not J. Dudley Butler is implementing rules that will help him and his friends in their legal cases is something for time to judge. But the fact that he is in a position to do so, to aid his cause and line his pockets when he returns to the private sector, is enough to call for his resignation.”

Conservatives calling attention to the conflict of interest of a liberals Administration’s political appointees is not new, nor is the reverse. But this cause has been joined…

CREW, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the liberal government watch-dog group, has joined the fight.

In a press release Monday, CREW asked “Is a former trial lawyer turned government official making policy decisions at the Department of Agriculture that will serve his future personal financial interests?” We don’t often agree with CREW, but in this case they are correct.

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Texas Senator Dan Patrick has just filed Senate Bill 126, which would require law enforcement officials to check legal documentation of lawfully stopped individuals. Other states will likely follow suit.

Let me confess how this immigration business is especially poignant to me. I teach college students and have every ethnic persuasion imaginable in my class. If S. B. 126 becomes law, I will turn to my black students and say, “If a cop stops you, you will not have to carry papers to prove you’re legal.” I will turn to my Asian students and say, “If a cop stops you, you will not have to carry papers to prove you’re legal.” I will turn to my western European students and say, “If a cop stops you, you will not have to carry papers to prove you’re legal.” But if I turn to Yolanda Garcia (pseudonym), who is legal and came from Spain three years ago, I will have to say to her, “If a cop stops you, you will have to have papers to prove you’re not illegal, or otherwise be fined, if not jailed.”

A New Yorker cartoon depicts this prejudice accurately. It shows a police officer putting a handcuffed man into a police car, warning, “Anything you say with an accent may be used against you.” S. B. 126 will come to this.

There is something downright sick in this prejudicial treatment. Conservatives and libertarians usually champion the supremacy of the individual over the collective. We judge individuals as individuals, not as members of a group. But too many conservatives are now demanding that we prejudicially judge people as members of a group. They have become the collectivists that they supposedly reject.

The Constitution will not help their case. The Framers designed it to protect, more than anything else, the freedom of the individual.

It gets even worse.

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The powerful Energy and Commerce Committee chairmanship is up for grabs.  Former Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver to regain the post.  As supporters of term-limits, we believe new blood and new leadership is essential for democracy.

Upton Memo – E_C Chairman Pledge

Barton is being challenged by more moderate Fred Upton (R-MI).  Rep. Upton has had some questionable votes in his past, but Big Government has obtained a memo that Upton is circulating to his colleagues that makes it clear he has received the message of the election of 2010 and has pledged to govern the Committee with a conservative reform agenda that is sorely needed.

The memo in part states:

1. I pledge to protect the sanctity of life through the vigorous oversight and by passing Rep. Pitts’ Protect Life Act and Rep. Chris Smith’s No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act to ensure that no taxpayer dollars every go to abortion.
2. I will reveal, repeal and replace ObamaCare.
3. I will exert tireless oversight of the EPA and stop implementation of a carbon regulation scheme and other job killing regulations.
4. I will immediately adopt new committee rules to foster spending cuts and eliminate government spending programs.
5. I will prevent the FCC from regulating the Internet.
6. I will ensure all of the Committee’s legislation is consistent with traditional family values.

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From the Associated Press:

Rep. Charles Rangel, once one of the most influential House members, was convicted Tuesday on 11 counts of breaking ethics rules and now faces punishment. The veteran New York lawmaker immediately denounced the verdict as unfair.

An ethics panel of eight House peers deliberated over two days before delivering a jarring blow to the 20-term New York Democrat’s career. Rangel was charged with 13 counts of financial and fundraising misconduct.

The conviction also was another setback for Democrats who lost control of the House to the GOP in the midterm elections.

Rangel, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, is not expected to resign. He is 80 years old and remains a dominant political figure in New York’s famed Harlem neighborhood.

He was forced to step down last March as Ways and Means chairman when the House ethics committee, in a separate case, admonished him for taking two Caribbean trips paid for by corporations.

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Much has been written about the House GOP Leadership’s plan to ban earmarks for two years. The praise they have received from conservatives is justified, because it seems, at least for the time being, that their proposed moratorium doesn’t have the weaselly wiggle-room sometimes employed by politicians. It is also likely that their stance pushed former earmarker-extraordinaire Sen. Mitch McConnell into supporting a similar ban in the Senate. Who knew the ‘road to Damascus’ veered past the Potomac?

So far, so good. The ban on earmarks may be largely symbolic as it won’t, on its own, lower federal spending, but symbols are important. They only take you so far, however. While House GOP Leadership have tipped their hats to the tea party movement with the earmark ban, other actions they are taking this week behind the scenes will neuter the movement and consign the incoming freshman to the back of the Congressional bus.

This week, the GOP caucus will finalize committee assignments. Committees are the workshops of Congress, where legislation is debated, tweaked and finalized. Legislation emerging from committees is the legislation that comes to the House floor for a vote. (The Democrats by-passed this process, but the GOP is expected to return to committees to their traditional legislative function.)

But, not all committees are created equal. The House has a group of committees called the “A” committees, through which all significant legislation must pass. These committees are so powerful, there is even a limit on how many of these committees a member may serve.

Big Government has learned that the House GOP Leadership has made it clear; no freshmen need apply for these committees. They are reserving them for the existing members, thank you very much.

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From SignOnSanDiego.com:

The Transportation Security Administration has opened an investigation targeting John Tyner, the Oceanside man who left Lindbergh Field under duress on Saturday morning after refusing to undertake a full body scan.

Tyner recorded the half-hour long encounter on his cell phone and later posted it to his personal blog, along with an extensive account of the incident. The blog went viral, attracting hundreds of thousands of readers and thousands of comments.

Michael J. Aguilar, chief of the TSA office in San Diego, called a news conference at the airport Monday afternoon to announce the probe. He said the investigation could lead to prosecution and civil penalties of up to $11,000.

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Last week on the show I criticized former Senator Santorum for his comments regarding Tea Party candidates. When he asked for equal time, and we were happy to oblige him. The Q&A might surprise you.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by former US Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum. We’ll discuss how he matches up with the values of the Tea Party, his opinion on the runaway TSA, and whether or not he’s running for president.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

GOP is urged to avoid social issues
Rick Santorum: No real tea party candidates in 2012 mix

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John “Don’t touch my junk” Tyner is an American hero. Airport security ejected him from the San Diego airport after he refused the choice between a naked body scan and a crotch grab – and he recorded the whole affair on his cell phone. John Tyner’s confrontation calls into question the entire Transportation Security Agency (TSA) apparatus.

The TSA believes that it must view your naked body with a scanner or place a hand on your private parts to safeguard the flying public from terrorists. I have advice for the TSA: you can spend a trillion dollars to make air travel safe and it won’t work. Islamists will simply board an aircraft originating in a nation with weaker security or go after a school or a bus or a subway. By incurring unending costs and eroding our freedoms, the terrorists win and we lose just a bit each day.

We can’t defend everything – and certainly not using processes drawn from the bureaucratic-industrial complex. Consider this: no TSA employee has ever caught or stopped a terrorist but alert passengers and intelligence has. This says volumes about the nature of the threat and our ham-handed response to it.

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Last Tuesday I sent a letter to Rep. Boehner regarding corruption in general and a specific call to reject Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-CA) reported bid to head once again the House Appropriations Committee.

You may recall that Rep. Jerry Lewis has the dubious distinction of appearing on Judicial Watch’s “Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list for 2008.

Here is the letter in its entirety:

Dear Congressman Boehner:

Judicial Watch, Inc. is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational foundation that advocates for the rule of law and against government corruption. We are supported nationwide by hundreds of thousands of Americans and have a sixteen-year record of holding members of both major political parties accountable to the law. You have our congratulations as you take on the high constitutional office of Speaker of the House.

The American people are tired of corruption in Congress, and I urge you to take serious steps to address these concerns.

Accordingly, Judicial Watch urges you and your leadership team to reject Rep. Jerry Lewis’s reported bid to head once again the House Appropriations Committee.

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That’s the new phrase commonly heard (with a nod and a wink) in banking circles when real estate loans are due but everyone knows they will be rolled over for renewal. It simply means the loan will be extended while the lender “pretends” the underlying current value of the property is sufficient to collateralize the loan. Everyone is happy.  The borrower doesn’t want his loan renewal rejected, the lender doesn’t want his balance sheet to take the hit that marking down assets to market value would require and everyone gets to pretend that everything is hunky-dory.

Extend and Pretend, sadly, is not a philosophy that is confined to real-estate financing transactions. Our government has been making a veritable art form out of extend and pretend for a long time.

What better example could there possibly be of the government’s extend and pretend mentality than the housing bubble that came so close to sinking the American economy.   Notwithstanding President Obama’s delight in blaming George Bush and the Republicans for “driving the economy into a ditch” the truth is that Bush 43 (as well as Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton) merely continued a policy hatched by President Jimmy Carter to increase home ownership in the United States at any cost.  So far “any cost” (to the taxpayers who are stuck with the bailouts) is calculated to be in the many trillions of dollars and counting.  How could the aggressive extending of credit to borrowers who were clearly not creditworthy, by any measure, have become the policy of successive administrations, particularly the Clinton Administration where, by executive order, credit history was not to be a critical factor for banks to use in the mortgage approval process? Simple, extend credit and pretend there is no problem.

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Today, in 1914, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opened. An institution that was created to provide monetary stability is, today, undermining it. The best laid plans…

You’ve heard about the passenger who opted out of a full-body scan (a.k.a. “a virtual strip search”) and was subjected to an intrusive and humiliating pat down. “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested,” passenger John Tyner told Transportation Security Administration workers in San Diego.

Well, rest easy, John—and other passengers offended by both full-body scans and hands-on searches.

TSA won’t touch your junk—or your breasts or buttocks. If they begin to strip search passengers as if they’re prison inmates, they’ll do just what correctional officers do: They’ll make you do all the nasty work.

What follows is an excerpt from a training video for prison guards on how to make sure that inmates aren’t hiding contraband.

The video makes for extremely uncomfortable watching and viewer discretion—and outrage—is advised. After all, this may well be the next step in how the TSA, one of the least effective and efficient government agencies of all time, goes about its daily business.

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I support the Los Angeles Police Department. I have friends on the job.  These men and women protect our city and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

So it’s an outrage that the City of Los Angeles uses these dedicated individuals as pawns in an effort to close the city’s enormous budget deficit.  Over the past year, I noticed an anecdotal increase in the number of traffic stops I witnessed on my daily slog through city traffic.  So whenever I ran into an LAPD officer, I asked for a candid, off-the-record answer to this question:

“Have you been directed to increase the number of traffic tickets issued, in either volume, or for offenses you previously might not stop a motorist for?”

The answer, unanimously, was “yes”.

Then I asked if they would rather be actively involved in preventing crime than issuing tickets.  The answer, again, was unanimous in the affirmative.

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The Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) cannot shake the New Black Panther Party scandal. Every week new revelations emerge about the racism and political favoritism that are corrupting our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Last week, Judicial Watch released to the public brand new documents from the Obama DOJ that provide further evidence that top political appointees at the DOJ were intimately involved in the decision to dismiss the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

And just like previous documents we’ve uncovered, this new evidence directly contradicts sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political leadership participated in the decision.

Remember this exchange between Perez and the Commission?

COMMISSIONER KIRSANOW: Was there any political leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case any further than it was?

ASST. ATTY. GEN. PEREZ: No. The decisions were made by Loretta King in consultation with Steve Rosenbaum, who is the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

Perez also suggested that the dispute was merely “a case of career people disagreeing with career people.”

Not true.

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A funny thing happened on the way to the voting booth: Americans discovered that most federal “stimulus” funds were being used to stimulate government, not the economy.

I was on the road recently, driving from my home in southeast Louisiana through a long stretch of Mississippi to Tuscaloosa, Ala., then to the outskirts of Birmingham and on to Auburn, Ala., and finally back to my home by way of Montgomery and Mobile. Along the way I was slowed from time to time as I passed by road and bridge repair projects marked with prominent signs indicating they were funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, President Obama’s so-called stimulus bill.

Naturally I was thrilled to see my tax dollars at work, although honesty compels me to report that not much actual work seemed to be going on at any of the sites. Most of the visible workers were just standing around. Of course, such standing around is typical of public construction projects, so I don’t suppose that what I saw was in any way owing to the stimulus funding in particular.

This huge legislative enactment provides for a great variety of increased spending and some reduction in taxes over a period of 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office computed that the net amount of money to be injected into, or not removed from, the economy as a result of the stimulus bill totals about $787 billion.

At the time the bill was being debated and discussed, a common plea in its defense had to do with funding so-called shovel-ready projects to repair or replace public roads, bridges and other structures widely taken to be in a state of decay or disrepair. This plea made an appealing talking point, since most Americans place at least some value on such infrastructure.

Alas, only a tiny proportion of the funds expended so far has been directed to this well-advertised objective.

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In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the wild swing of commodities, a QE2 revolt from investors and economists, the merger of Newsweek and the Daily Beast and the power of tech monopolies.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

E21 Letter to Ben Bernanke
Huge List Of Investors And Economists Pen Open Letter To Ben Bernanke Slamming QE
Newsweek Weds Daily Beast? Good Luck With That
In the Grip of the New Monopolists

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The ethics trial of recently reelected Rep. Charlie Rangel begins this morning. Rep. Rangel will represent himself. The Sunlight Foundation has live coverage of the trial.

111 companies and organizations were granted waivers by Obama’s Dept. of Health and Human Services so that they could get out of having to comply with Obamacare and unions were particularly well rewarded by the HHS with these waivers.

Interestingly, there was no great announcement of these waivers issued to the press. The HHS buried the waiver announcement six layers deep on its webpage and posted them on Friday when they imagined no one would notice. It’s a typical Friday evening document dump so common when an administration wants to avoid the prying eyes of the people. So much for the “most transparent administration in history,” eh?

One thing is sure about these waivers. Obama rewarded his union pals quite well. Som 15 unions and union healthcare or financial fund and insurance providers fill the list of companies and groups that will not have to operate under Obamacare’s destructive rules.

• The Service Employees Benefit Fund
• United Food and Commercial Workers Allied Trade Health & Welfare Trust Fund
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union No. 195
• Asbestos Workers Local 53 Welfare Fund
• Employees Security Funds
• Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 123 Welfare Fund
• United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227
• United Food and Commercial Workers Maximus Local 455
• Service Employees International Union Local 25
• United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1262
• Musicians Health Fund Local 802
• Hospitality Benefit Fund Local 17
• Transport Workers Union
• United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund
• International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (AFL-CIO)

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