In my last post, I explained the best way to end unemployment is an Ebay / Paypal style solution to auction off the “Man Weeks” of our unemployed:

1. All registered workers are guaranteed an income of $10,400 per year, at least $6 per hour.  The minimum bid is $1, and the government uses current Unemployment Insurance I monies to add up to $5.
2. Current UI ends after 90 days.  To receive any extra aid of any kind (food stamps, Section 8, energy assistance, etc.) able bodied workers must register in this system. They receive a Debit Card where their pay is deposited every Friday.  They can choose to earn less, but they cannot decline to work and get GI.
3. We are all allowed to bid on any worker’s Man Week, as long as we have first deposited the money to cover the bid in the system; no credit will be extended.  This bid covers employer taxes, workers compensation, everything soup-to-nuts.

Below you will find the pay schedule I’m suggesting, but first I want to talk about a gorgeous side effect of this plan: it ends illegal immigration.  In fact, it actually causes current illegals to deport themselves.

The reason is simple: When farmers can bid $4.00 per hour to have unemployed American citizens pick the grape crop, they will no longer hire illegals.  You get the drift?  Immediately, there will be no jobs open to illegal immigrants.  Since (in this $4 case) the government is adding $3.50 per hour, the US citizen is earning $7.50 ($15,600 per year).

We’ll leverage the extra pay provided by the government (money we spend anyway) to end demand for non-citizen workers.

Notice that we don’t need to staff up the Immigration Department to chase down coyotes; we don’t need to raid companies looking for illegal immigrants; we don’t need to build a wall across Mexico; we don’t need to waste time passing harsh laws.

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We are navigating through truly uncharted political and economic territory.  Members of the financial cognoscenti have freshly alluded to the notion of the ‘government bubble’ as the next blow to the world economic order.

Since 2008 we have seen the housing, financial, and insurance markets hit on a global level, one after the other.  At one point, they all burst because they were unsustainable.  You don’t have to be a politico to know that the sovereign debt crisis is real.  Just look around.  As European countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Belgium) reshuffle hundreds of billions of dollars to lighten rising government deficit and debt levels, Republican appropriators here at home futilely attempt to get our books in order.  Ladies and gentleman, something is afoot.

The recent crisis in Egypt has only intensified discussion on the stability of the world economic order. No one knows what’s going to happen.  In an ideal situation, a peaceful transition of power will re-stabilize what has triggered a sell-off in equity markets and posed more geo-political uncertainty in the region as energy commodities are poised for gains based on fear.  And the bad news just keeps pouring in.

According to Reuters,

Adding to Cairo’s financial woes, ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the country’s debt rating on concern the Mubarak regime may spend more to placate protesters.

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From Reuters:

A judge in Florida on Monday became the second judge to declare President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law unconstitutional, in the biggest legal challenge yet to federal authority to enact the law.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, ruled that the reform law’s so-called “individual mandate” went too far in requiring that Americans start buying health insurance in 2014 or pay a penalty.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications,” Vinson wrote.

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[Ed Note: Part 1 of the series is here. Part 2 is here.]

What is a sane immigration policy you ask?

Well it starts with a simple and straight forward process for immigrating here, procuring a work visa, obtaining residency and finally becoming a citizen. What we have now is a highly political and difficult to navigate hodge-podge of ever changing rules that are meant to help fulfill some type of social engineering ideal. Currently it takes a lot of time, money, connections and luck to make it through, and that’s if you’re from a “preferred nation”. When I say time, I mean decades! If you’re from a country like Mexico with high demand to immigrate, you’re looking at a wait of over 130 years. No wonder people take their chances making a run for the border. This idea of “take your spot in the immigration line and you’ll get there someday” is a mirage. If someone told you the line at the DMV was 130 years long and others randomly get to jump in front of you, what are the odds that you’ll just drive without a license?

We used to have a simple path to citizenship that gave people who had endured so much to come here a long term stake in this nation. They wanted it to be excellent because they felt like it was now their home too. And generationally immigrant’s kids tend to be more upwardly mobile than their parents were. They also are more educated, speak English as a first language and culturally are as American as apple pie.

We need to get rid of the whole per nation quota system.

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With the recent anniversary of Roe v. Wade it is the perfect time to highlight the fact that the millions upon millions of federal tax dollars that have gone to fund the abortion mill organization Planned Parenthood is a defacto abortion tax levied on the American taxpayers.

In 2008 alone, Planned Parenthood received nearly $350 million in federal funding. By Planned Parenthood’s own reckoning, this funding went to eliminate babies for more than 324,000 women that year.

The organization DefundPlannedParenthood.org reports that Planned Parenthood has received some $3.9 billion in federal funds since 1987. Pro-life supporters should go to www. DefundPlannedParenthood.org and add their voice to eliminating federal funding for abortions.

With the House in Republican hands, this would be an excellent time to invest efforts to defund abortion. Bills such as Mike Pence’s Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (HR 614) should be revisited. And the House Republicans haven’t ignored this area. They’ve introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (HR 3), an act that will “prohibit taxpayer funded abortions and to provide for conscience protections, and for other purposes.”

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John Holdren, Obama’s top science adviser, when asked how to deal with climate change skeptics said it’s an “education problem” and “we have to educate them”. Secondly, he said human activity, particularly fossil fuel burning, is overwhelmingly likely to be the primary cause of the “changes we’re experiencing.” Keep in mind this is coming from a man with some questionable and radical views.

What exactly are some of his radical views? For one, he wrote forced abortions and mass sterilization is needed to save the planet. He also said we should use Cap and Trade taxes- if it were passed- and give it to other countries.

So essentially not only does he advocate for the destruction of the American economy during a down period, but then taking those taxes and just handing them away to other nations. Hmm.

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The time is now and the moment is at hand.  We must deal with the run-away spending of our federal government before our compounding debt drives us all into forced servitude for generations to come.  There is little doubt that our growing indebtedness is a clear and present danger to our liberty.

The events in Tunisia and Egypt are warnings to us in the United States that prolonged unemployment, few opportunities for achievement and over taxation to support the excesses of government are the precursors to chaos.  We are seeing that for an educated people who have played by the rules and have the burning desire to prosper, such conditions are exactly what Thomas Jefferson described to the Virginian historian Samuel Kercheval in his July 12, 1816 letter, “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

Jefferson went on to describe the choice that the people must make between “Economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.” He continued with,

“If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the miss-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence.”

Jefferson’s conclusion read with the backdrop of recent events in Northern Africa should shock us all into reality, “Then begins, indeed the bellum omnium in omina.” His Latin phrase means “the war of all against all.” Our nation is on the brink and I will explain.

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Last year I wrote in Big Government about ACORN”S most successful criminal enterprise, the New  York Working Families Party. Linked directly to voter fraud in New York State, ACORN quietly changed it’s name in the State and it’s chief political honcho quietly “retired”, when prosecutors starteed examining their activities. But don think the vote stealing and voter fraud by the WFP has stopped.

AP reported last week -

“TROY, N.Y. — A Troy Democratic councilman in Troy and the Democratic elections commissioner for Rensselaer County face charges that they forged absentee ballots in a Working Families Party primary in 2009. A county grand jury has accused Councilman Michael LoPorto and Commissioner Edward G. McDonough of participating in a scheme in which dozens of bogus absentee ballots were submitted in the names of unsuspecting Troy residents.LoPorto and McDonough were arraigned Friday and are now free on bail. Special Prosecutor Trey Smith began investigating after the Times Union, of Albany, interviewed a number of people who were surprised to learn that their names had appeared on ballot applications.”

The two men pleaded not guilty Friday to a combined 116 felony counts alleging they falsified dozens of  absentee ballots.  The ballots not only involve clearly forged signatures, but also, falsifying excuses for not being present to vote  and registering individuals who no longer live in the area. In some cases a false promise of a trip to a Las Vegas casino was used as an inducement to fill out absentee applications. WFP leaders and their Democratic allies have no qualms about forging absentees to keep control of their political arm.

The WFP has been proven to be nothing more than a front for ACORN and its left-ward agenda.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca and Eliot Abrams, former senior national security adviser to George W. Bush and assistant secretary of state for Ronald Reagan to discus the unrest in Egypt.

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:

Abrams: Bush Was Right About Freedom in the Arab World
Abrams: Lessons of January
Hamid: Obama Got Egypt Wrong
Muravchik: Three Scenarios in Egypt
RS: Egypt Approaches the Abyss
Abrams: Pressure Points Blog
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This past fortnight has delivered us citizen uprisings against the (to varying degrees) totalitarian governments in the Muslim-majority nations of Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen.  It now appears that the Ba’athist Syrian regime also sees something coming their way.

Flashback to 2009 and we had what historians may look upon as The Beginning – the Green Revolution in Iran.  (Which is at least for now a bit misnamed – the Mullahs still rule the roost in Tehran.)

There are several common themes undergirding all of these land born mutinies.

One major one is the Internet.

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Dictator-weaved cloaks of ignorance have for decades enshrouded these populaces.  The more mis- and un-informed you keep a people – the easier it is to dominate them.

It has led to a ceaseless stream of patently absurd stories being sold by the regimes – and bought by the people over whom they lord.

Many of them are aimed at Jews, Israel and/or the United States.  Knowing that if these despots create Boogey Men to blame for their peoples’ horrendous lives, these poor peoples won’t notice that their plight is actually the fault of the Boogey Men creators themselves.

A magician’s misdirection – wave around and denounce the right hand while the left one holds everyone down.

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“Twitter, Facebook, and various instant messaging platforms (SMS, Skype, Google Chat, etc.) act as force-multipliers for revolutionary movements…” — Jeffrey Carr

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As the world watches Egypt crumble into chaos, with over 100 dead and 2000 injured, the Obama administration continues to be somewhat and rather curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, on Friday, Vice President Biden came to the defense of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying that he shouldn’t step aside. Yet, on the same day, the Telegraph (ala Wikileaks) reported that the U.S. had planned “regime change” for the “past three years” while both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton demand that internet be restored to the Egyptian protesters. This morning, Secretary of State Clinton again clarified the United States’ official position, ”We do not want to send any message about backing forward or backing back.”

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

If it is indeed the case that the Obama administration, with help by private-sector companies and the union movement has led an “internet revolution” in the middle east and toppled two governments within a month, the longer-term ramifications for U.S. relations with other allies such as Saudi Arabia and certain other Arab monarchies, could prove to have much more far-reaching consequences. (more…)

Tom Vilsack and the USDA have made the point over and over again that there have been only three convictions for fraud in the 18,000 or so paid Pigford settlements — a very small amount, it would seem. In this video interview, Vilsack makes the point around 50 seconds in that only three case were found to be “marginally questionable.”

Oh, really?

In the below exclusive interview, I talk to Paul Pinkham, a reporter for the Florida Times Union, who was in court for the three Pigford fraud convictions that happened in Jacksonville.

What you’ll hear is that the fraud convictions actually pointed to many, many more crimes because there was testimony that there was a fraud ring that taught people how to file a false claim. Furthermore, convicted fraudster Emma Brooks said that the fraud ring told her the payments were restitution for slavery.  It’s clear that these three convictions aren’t isolated cases of fraud and the government, apparently, has never actively pursued the fraud ring.

In the coming weeks, Big Government will reveal evidence that proves conclusively just how easy it is to commit fraud in Pigford and will settle once and for all the question of whether these fraud rings exist. (more…)

Today, in 1876, the United States ordered all Native Americans to move onto reservations.

“If the average citizen understood economics as well as it was understood by economists 200 years ago, most of the nonsense that’s done in Washington would be impossible politically.”

Our Uncommon Knowledge all-star guest, economist Thomas Sowell, joins us to talk Basic Economics.  He argues that Congress cannot help the economy recover, but instead needs to “let the economy recover.”  The so-called financial crisis wasn’t a financial crisis at all.  It was a housing crisis that overflowed into the financial world.  Congress’s meddling, by making new rules to increase homeownership and access to mortgages, was a primary reason that the housing crisis even existed at all.

Sowell goes on to discuss the disaster that is the Federal Reserve, the irrefutable truth that tax cuts lead to tax revenue (therefore invalidating the “we can’t afford tax cuts” argument), and the misconception that our health care system pre-Obamacare was broken.

He expresses frustration at the lack of articulate Republicans (although seems to be quite the Chris Christie fan!) and little belief that the US will maintain its status as the world’s greatest economy.

Watch the full episode below.

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Sometimes I wonder why the Republicans wanted to win in 2010 so badly.  I hope it wasn’t in a quest for job security because if they’re really serious about putting the country’s fiscal house in order they are not going to have a happy electorate come 2012…Tea Party small-government rhetoric notwithstanding.

Sure, the majority of Americans claim to be for reducing the size of the state to get our fiscal house in order, but do they really understand just how drastic an impact reverting back to a more laissez-faire market-oriented national model would have on their lives?  Certainly, if the transcript of the SOTUS I skimmed through yesterday is any indication – and, most revealing, where the applause breaks are noted – I think we have a way to go yet.

Consider:  One out of six Americans now receives some form of government assistance.  [U.S.A Today.]  Fifty million are on Medicaid, a record high.  Food stamp enrollment now stands at 40 million, or one in seven people. Ten million Americans receive unemployment benefits, and 4.4 million get direct cash assistance.  And these numbers are from only four of the more than seventy welfare programs funded by the federal government!  These figures are not anomalies caused by a recession, but a reflection of the trend towards an entitlement culture that has been growing steadily since the 1960s “Great Society” pipe dream.

This is a recipe for doom yet no politician, from the President on down, Democran or Republicrat alike, will ever muster the courage to address the meat and potatoes of our spending suicide…so they will whip up ire aimed at the parsley garnish like private jets and federal salaries instead.  So a tipping point is at hand.  Almost 50% of Americans pay no income tax, yet so many in this country suckle up to the government teat in one form or another courtesy of the American taxpayer that I see no possibility of this entrenched political system of careerists doing a necessary ‘reset’ to bring us back to a sustainable, market-driven model.  Rather it will be the eventual verdict of raw and unfeeling mathematics that imposes what we refuse to do voluntarily in the form of defaults, declining and eventually disappearing government services, and reduced if not eliminated entitlement benefits.

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Last year Big Journalism chronicled Occidental College professor Peter Dreier, who served on the Obama campaign’s urban policy task force and as an adviser to ACORN, using his position with the university to recruit operatives for the “battle with conservative ideas” (new tone, anyone?).  According to an email obtained by BigGovernment.com, Dreier is at it again, this time drafting activists to protest a meeting headed up by conservative businessmen Charles and David Koch.

He also encourages people to attend a panel discussion before the protest featuring, among others, UC Irvine Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, U.C. Berekely Professor and former Obama adviser Robert Reich, and Van Jones.

The top activists on the left aren’t just confined to Soros-backed fringe groups like Code Pink or Media Matters; they’re often the professors we pay thousands to teach our children.  And it’s from their perch atop the ivory towers of academia that they recruit and reeducate the next crop of activists.

dreier pdf 2 –

Everyone knows the hypocrisy of the environmental movement runs very, very, deep. When it comes to the kings of hypocrisy, none do it better than the limousine liberals in Hollywood.

In this video directed by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, who produced and directed Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria, Robert Redford is exposed as the typical Hollywood elite whose actions don’t quite match up to their words.

People like Redford believe they are exempt from the notion of following your words with actions, because they’re doing such good deeds by going around and preaching the evils of corporations and ‘saving our planet’ from “man-made global warming.” They abide by the mentality of “do as I say, not as I do.” After all, if you ask them, they are better than you. Not only are they ‘morally superior’, they’re practically saving you from catching on fire.

Of course, this is nothing new.

Essentially it boils down to this: Robert Redford is opposing an eco-village near his property in the Napa Valley whilst quietly selling $2 million lots in the Sundance Preserve for luxury vacation homes. Take a look.

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Co-authored with Bill Zettler

There has been much talk regarding the unsustainable fiscal mess most states are mired in.  Some are even discussing the creation of legislation that will allow states to declare bankruptcy.  The largest component of the mess is the unsustainable pensions for public sector employees.  If a contest were held to select the poster child for the pension debacle, Illinois would win hands down.

Today, Illinois’ unfunded pension liability is estimated to be $78 billion. How did we get here?  Let’s call it the “Four Rules of Too” for public employees whose salaries are too high; contributions are too low; plans are too bloated; and retirement is too early.  As the following chart regarding the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) shows, over the last decade teacher salaries have risen by 7% per year or 96% compounded and the pension cost (Pension Benefit Obligation) taxpayers are responsible for has gone up 116%.

If we look at the rest of us who are locked into the Social Security system, our salaries increased by an average of 3.65% or 43% compounded, less than one half of the teachers’ increases. Thus although our income has gone up less than half as fast as teacher salaries and pensions, we have had to pay more taxes out of our lesser incomes to fund the promises made by union bosses and politicians.  This model could be applied to other state workers as well.  For instance, 35% of Illinois State Troopers make more than $100,000 per year with top salaries of $185,000.

And the future doesn’t look any brighter.

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Our Capitol Hill Insider Elizabeth Letchworth is keeping us up to date with Congress’ attempts to give the President an Internet kill switch.  Tea Party Nation’s Judson Phillips is warning against it.  From the Honorable Elizabeth Letchworth of GradeGov.com:

“The Senate Leader introduced this bill as a placeholder for the 112th Congress. He wants to use it to push Judiciary, Commerce, and Homeland Security committees to write cyber security legislation. Don’t be surprised if the Senate has a vote on this soon to show that cyber security is important to Congress, especially given the Egypt situation and the closing down of the internet. As always, the devil is in the details and S. 21 is vague to say the least.”

In an effort to resolve the rules impasse that stalled the opening day house-keeping organizational resolutions in the U.S. Senate, the two Senate leaders engaged in a colloquy (formal discussion or conference) on Jan. 27, 2011. In this colloquy, the two leaders conceded the following:

Senator McConnell:

“And, in my Caucus, I have many Senators who have complained that the Majority Leader has abused his ability to “fill the amendment” tree, preventing Senators from offering and debating amendments that they believe are important, especially when a matter has not gone through committee or cloture is filed too quickly.”

Senator Reid:

“As we have discussed, in the interests of comity and more open process in the Senate, we have agreed that we should use these procedural options of filling the amendment tree and filibustering the motion to proceed infrequently.  And, we’ll do our best to ensure that other Members of our caucuses respect this colloquy, as well.”

It is with this colloquy in mind that the Senate could see more bills introduced that will have the same bland tone as was included in the text of S. 21. The text states the obvious, outlines a serious national problem, but doesn’t address any resolution to that problem.

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