Tonight, the RNC elected Reince Priebus as the next RNC Chair. As state chair in WI, Priebus managed to shrink the number of both small and major donors. (There is a reason the GOP is called the stupid party.) Donate money to the RNC at your own peril. We will have news soon about an alternative. Hold onto your checkbooks for now though. There will be a multi-pronged effort to deny donations to the RNC. Stay tuned.

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Today on Coffee and Markets Francis Cianfrocca and I discuss the decay of the movie business, the challenges of running a hedge fund, and the banal business practices of Goldman Sachs.

We’re brought to you as always by 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:

The Banality of Goldman’s Business Standards – CNBC
Clarium Hedge Fund Slumps 90% From Peak After Thiel Has Third Losing Year – Bloomberg
AEI – Liftoff or Cold Shower?
The Numbers – Movie Market Summary 1995 to 2010

Over the last several months, as attention has been focused elsewhere, the Obama Administration and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been waging a quiet war against for-profit schools and universities – educational institutions that offer  job training and degrees in in-demand fields to students looking for an alternative to four-year non-profit schools, or a more accessible price tag.

The Administration has fired a number of rounds at the industry, but recently unveiled it’s secret weapon: a “gainful employment” restriction on federal loan money available to students at for-profit schools. While for-profit schools have had their difficulties, their deficiencies aren’t that dissimilar to those of their not-for-profit counterparts, but this weapon could kill off for-profits as a viable option to not-for-profit education. Essentially, students at for-profit schools that have either a low graduation rate or an unacceptably high number of unemployed, graduated students would be denied federal student loan and grants. As Forbes points out, these schools serve primarily lower-income and minority communities who depend so heavily on student loans, such a restriction could put the whole industry in jeopardy.

Which, of course, is exactly what the Obama Administration would like to see happen. And, from recent news, it seems that they and their network of associates will do just about anything to make sure it happens.

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Pigford v. Glickman was supposed to help black farmers discriminated against by the USDA. Instead, it’s diverted hundreds of millions of dollars to people who never farmed and diverted attention away from the plight of real farmers.

The people helping to perpetuate the Pigford fraud have myriad motivations. There’s the lure of proximity to a multibillion-dollar pile of cash. There are complex ideological reasons related to racial injustice both real and perceived. There are political motivations that balance bringing a stealth stimulus back home to constituents with a lockstep party loyalty. There are personal rivalries and a clinging desire to maintain relevance and minor celebrity. Some mix of all of these motivations exists in many of the personalities surrounding Pigford but whatever the motive, the most aggrieved victims are the black farmers themselves.

But don’t take my word for it. Just ask black farmers like Willie Head and Eddie Slaughter. These Georgia farmers were among the first few hundred to file claims in Pigford before the settlement was hijacked by tens of thousands of people who claimed to have “attempted to farm” and received $50,000 checks using the intentionally low bar of proof that was required.

I’ve been traveling around the South the past month interviewing people close to the Pigford settlement and it’s clear to me that the people who this fraud has hurt the most are hard-working Americans like Eddie and Willie. They have been pressured not to talk about the fraud, in some cases by members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Here, Willie Head discusses how improper claims in the Pigford settlement have hurt him:

There’s proof that Pigford is being sold as reparations behind closed doors while the defenders of the current settlement call critics racist for questioning Pigford.

Eddie Slaughter discusses how members of the Congressional Black Caucus see the Pigford claims as reparations.

America’s public education system is a lot like the Chicago Cubs: both have become so accustomed to failure that it has become an accepted way-of-life.

While there might be something loveable and comical about a continuously lousy baseball team, there is not a single redeeming thing to be said about perpetually bad public schools.

A nation that tolerates bad public schools is a nation with a bleak future.

That is why during the week of January 23 -29, school choice advocates from around the country are joining together to wake Americans out of their complacent stupor.

It’s called “National School Choice Week.”  The goal of these seven days is to raise awareness among our fellow citizens about the need for school choice.  We believe that the only way all American school children are going to receive a quality education is if all families are allowed to choose the school option that best meets their needs.

“National School Choice Week” is not about elevating one school option above any others.  Instead, we want parents to be free to choose from all schooling options: charter schools, religious schools, private schools, virtual schools, traditional public schools. . .whatever works best for the children, that’s what we’re for.

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Comcast and NBC-Universal (NBCU) have been waiting to merge for, well, ever.  Or at least it seems that way.

Mergers of this sort are supposed to be approved within 180 days of applying to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Justice Department for permission.  (As offensive as that may sound – two companies reaching mutually agreeable business terms having to then play Mother May I with the government – that is the way it currently goes.)

Those 180 days expired sometime around Thanksgiving.  Yet here we are halfway through January – and Comcast and NBCU are still awaiting the FCC’s blessing.  The delay is just another example of the incredible and incredibly damaging sway Media Marxist and Leftist grievance groups have with the current Commission.

The delay has dangled Comcast-NBCU like a piñata, allowing these PIGs (“Public Interest” Groups) to beat shakedown concessions out of them and feed at the trough into which they fall.

We previously pointed out that a racial grievance group – the National Coalition of African-Owned Media (NCAOM) – is demanding that Comcast set aside 50 channels (10% of its capacity) for exclusively African American owners.

In June 2010, California Democrat Representative Maxine Waters and others were obnoxiously voicing their disapproval of the merger.  (Yes, the same Maxine Waters who said she wanted to nationalize the entire oil industry.)

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The latest dinosaur media meme involves a comparison of two speeches given within hours of one another on the Tucson shootings- Sarah Palin’s video and President Barack Obama’s in a Tucson Basketball stadium.

Obama’s speech is lauded as showing him to be ‘a formidable figure’,'unifying a nation in its grief’, ‘conciliatory’ and ‘calling for anew era of civility in American politics’.

Sarah Palin’s is branded as ‘a missed opportunity’, ‘defiant’, symptomatic of ‘grievance-based’ and ‘urgent and defensive’.

I can appreciate why Sarah Palin’s political enemies would want to compare these two speeches..but it’s an exercise in absurdity.

No one accused President Barack Obama of being directly complicit in mass murder, and no one in Sarah Palin’s camp orchestrated a campaign to do so. If they had, we might have heard a very different speech from one of the most thin-skinned presidents in modern times.

It was not President Obama who was receiving death threats from the right calling for ‘payback’ for the Tucson murders, and no one suggested that the killings were ‘Obama’s fault’.

President Obama was in Tucson to conduct a memorial service for the victims, and he did so.

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Samuel Adams, writing in a letter to James Warren in February of 1779, said, “If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved.” Our nation needs to heed these words and continue to remain informed and engaged. The tragedy of the Arizona shootings by a sick human being has provided Mr. Obama and his supporters a wall shielding the past two years of abusing power and ignoring the will of the people.  A call for civil discourse is no more than code for “moving on” and not challenging the bad legislation that was forced on the American people by single party rule. The people must recognize this and keep the 112^th Congress focused on repealing legislation that threatens our liberty, regardless of how civil the discourse.

Obama Care is more than another expensive entitlement program that will bankrupt our nation and put future generations under heavy financial risk, it changes the fundamental view of the role of government in the lives of the American people.  This legislation places the most private aspects of a citizen’s life and liberty into the hands of the government.  The over reach of the law is far more that its constitutionally challenging provisions for forced purchases of insurance and potential for rationing, it legislates a dominant position for a central authority over the well- being and eventually the actual existence of the individual.

There was no civil discourse when this law was being debated.  Mr. Obama himself, in referring to the outcry of the American people at town hall meetings with their elected representatives during the summer of 2009, said. “The people should just shut up!” Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House during the debate, proclaimed, “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” The American people were called “Nazis” and “dangerous” and worse.  All the American people were doing was simply demanding that their government follow their will. The people were ignored. Now, those who committed the atrocity want us to forget what happened and simply move on all in the name of civil discourse in honor of those slain by a criminally insane individual.

The only way to properly honor the victims of the Arizona shooting is to do what they were doing at the time of that terrible event – engage in the political process and demand that our elected representatives understand what the people want and to legislate based on that understanding.

Repealing Obama Care and replacing it with free market solutions to lowering the costs of health insurance is only one legislative correction necessary.  Focusing on the run away authority of unelected agency heads and commission members, as well as the unconstitutional regulations they have been writing for the past two years is also a necessary corrective step for the 112^th Congress.

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Fashioning good legislative policy (so that laws that we enact garner maximum respect from the public) requires, as we have seen from its absence in the prior Congress, patience and compromise.  A party with electoral control over both chambers of Congress and the presidency can probably pass a bill into law, but you rarely can get everything you want if the goal is to maximize a national consensus.  Mr. Obama and his Democratic majority claim to have gotten much of their agenda through, but until the president was forced to engage in coalition building in the lame duck session, as a result of the November 2 “shellacking” taken by his party, most of the bills supported only by the far left are under attack by the new Congress and the courts.  And even if the GOP cannot either dismantle the monstrous health care and financial “reform” laws that were passed or be successful in court challenges, we will be left with years of anger, recrimination, and confusion arising out of multi‑thousand page laws that no member of Congress even read.

Instead our elected leaders have left it, largely, to unelected bureaucrats appointed by the current Administration to write detailed regulations to determine how to interpret and enforce the so‑called “will” of the same Congress that never read or understood what they passed.  We have seen alarming portents of this in recent pronouncements by regulatory agencies as to their intent when final regulations are promulgated.  The regulations, as we have seen from the  public pronouncements show no real effort to determine that intent but rather are designed to enact the agenda of the far left which the Democrats, even with their large congressional majority, could not pass.  The common thread is to transfer more control of the private sector to the government, to redistribute wealth and dismantle or exercise unprecedented control over the industries that are in their crosshairs.  This is not alarmist rhetoric; it is simply sad fact.  For them the ends justify the means.

Take this example.  Because of alarm that Sarah Palin’s so‑called “death panels” would scuttle the healthcare legislation; end-of-life counseling was dropped from the health care bill.  Frankly, we think the term “death panels” was overheated rhetoric and an allegorical stretch even for politicians, and that counseling terminally ill patients who are in pain about their right to refuse “heroic” but probably ineffective measures to prolong life a while longer, is totally appropriate.  However, in order to pass the law, Congress compromised and dropped the end-of-life counseling provision.  Before the end of 2010, however, Medicare issued a regulation restoring the provision.  Moreover the regulation was buried among hundreds of other Medicare regulations.  The original Congressional supporter of government payments for such counseling was so delighted by this action that he urged his supporters “not to crow about it” presumably so it wouldn’t get much attention.  Can anyone believe this wasn’t the Administration’s intent all along?  As Charles Krauthammer stated in his December 31 op‑ed in the Washington Post, “For an Obama bureaucrat, … the will of Congress is a mere speed bump.”

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Today, the RNC selects a new Chair. Either Michael Steele, Ann Wagner, Maria Cino, Sal Anuzis or Reince Priebus will lead the party into the critical 2012 elections.

There was a time when Chevy built cars and trucks. The Corvette and Camaro were legendary sports cars, and the Impala offered full size comfort a middle class price. But that was before Change came to town.  The brand that used to compare itself to Baseball, Hot-Dogs, and Apple Pie is no longer content to just make reliable vehicles, it is now as green as a wheatgrass and algae smoothie.

For instance, in the following commercial: Chevy isn’t just building cars anymore, it’s “investing” in windmills, and planting trees.

This is the kind of business model that you get when Leftists take over. Before 2008, GM just tried to make cars that people would buy, for a little more money than they cost to build. Now, they have to plant a forest.

It’s for reasons like this that General Motors is never expected to fully pay back the bailout money. According to the Congressional Oversight Panel, Taxpayers will lose about 19 billion dollars on the General Motors bailout.

That’s a lot of green. You can’t really blame General Motors. When you have an extra 19 billion to play with, why not plant windmills and trees? It seems like the corporate suites, are working on a bigger Buzz than the one they hired to do the voice-over. A more rational voice might ask about the forest that had to be cut down to print all that money.

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As he sits behind bars awaiting trial, Jared Loughner is undoubtedly relishing every moment of the ruckus that he managed to stir up with his deadly rampage in Tucson.  In addition to murdering six innocent human beings and wounding more than a dozen others in an act of sheer evil, the deranged gunman has set off a media and political frenzy that refuses to abate.

By various accounts, this is precisely what Loughner was hoping for. As his close friend Bryce Tierney told Mother Jones, “I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what’s happening.” Ironically enough, then, many of those now engaged in the shameless finger-pointing are inadvertently advancing the goals of the madman, by fulfilling his desire to create an environment of mayhem in society.

Deploying the most acerbic members of its verbal firing squads, the left has launched volley after volley of vitriol in recent days in an effort to score some political points and paint conservatives as extremists.  But in so doing, they are merely extending the damage inflicted by Loughner into the sphere of public discourse, thereby undermining the very same foundations of civilization that the gunman himself was targeting. (more…)

From The Economist blog ‘Democracy in America’:

Still, freakish death is profoundly unnerving and facing its immunity to reason tends to aggravate rather than soothe our cellular fear of disorder and death. Far from leading us to resignation, the inscrutability of a sui generis disaster sets our minds in mad motion. We desperately and pathetically grope for some blameworthy failure of foresight, some forward-looking lesson, some food for prudence. It doesn’t matter if there are none to be found. We’ll make it all up if we have to.

Not every general feature of Saturday’s shootings in Tucson has been seized upon. No one is proposing new rules for supermarkets, young white guys, or sun-baked locales. The things we already fear and already desire more thoroughly to control are most vividly salient to us. We seize on those: guns, crazy people. Did Jared Lee Loughner shoot government officials with a gun? Ban guns within 1,000 feet of government officials! Was Jared Lee Loughner detectably crazy? Make involuntary commitment easier! Did Jared Lee Loughner buy a gun while detectably crazy? Tighten background-screening requirements! Did Jared Lee Loughner’s gun sport an extended magazine? Ban extended magazines!

Some of these proposals may have merit, but no more now than on Friday.

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From Reuters:

The House of Representatives will resume debate next week on legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare overhaul, a House Republican spokesman said on Thursday.

The House had been expected to act this week on the repeal bill, but the vote was postponed after a shooting spree in Arizona killed six people and critically wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Debate on the healthcare bill will resume next week, said Brad Dayspring, spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

A vote on repeal is set for Wednesday.

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Last night, minutes before President Obama spoke, at least one of your Founding Bloggers tweeted the following:

@presidentobama please rise to this moment and be non-political. That would hit a home run 4U. More important, it would help heal the nation

He did just that. He didn’t get political except to repudiate those who have tried to assign blame. He was very presidential and healing in this moment, and despite the fact that we think he is leading a tremendously destructive Democratic-Socialist revolution, it’s still nice to see him do the right thing at the right time. We wish he were always like that….and that he weren’t leading a Democratic-Socialist revolution.

One portion from the President’s comments really stood out from all others, and they are worth highlighting:

And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. (Applause.)

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. (Applause.)

Imagine — imagine for a moment, here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that some day she, too, might play a part in shaping her nation’s future. She had been elected to her student council. She saw public service as something exciting and hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want to live up to her expectations. (Applause.) I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. (Applause.) All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations. (Applause.)

Mr. President, that is sincerely inspirational. This was your finest speech. But speeches tend to be your forte, while your follow-through has been widely criticized.

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Just forget about that whole global warming scare that was still in vogue up until just over a year ago before the “climategate” scandal erupted, to say nothing of updated research that interlinks natural forces with warming and cooling trends as opposed to human activity. In fact, over 1,000 scientists from the across the globe have gone on record to question earlier claims advanced through the United Nations that have been used to justify “cap and trade” schemes modeled after the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

Small wonder then that opinion polls now show that alarmist climate projections evoke greater cynicism. However, the regulatory agenda that aims to extend government control over the private sector remains very much in motion, even as the rationale has changed.

This pivot away from global warming alarmism as a sales pitch can be traced back to President Obama’s first State of the Union Address.

“I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy,” he said.  “I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.  But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.  And America must be that nation.”

Get that?

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Unfortunately, those looking for real leadership on the part of Scripps College in the wake of the horrendous shooting of Gabrielle Giffords SC ‘93 will have to look elsewhere than the statements of its president, Lori Bettison-Varga. President Bettison-Varga uses the tragedy of the Tucson shooting to play politics, rather than seek understanding.

President Bettison-Varga does this by trying to connect the perceived rhetoric of some in our country with the actions of a lone psychotic while conveying a false intimacy by referring to Ms. Giffords by her first name, “Gabrielle.” (She went by “Gabby,” as everyone knows.)

Apparently, President Bettison-Varga didn’t take logic, for if she had, she would know that it is a fallacy to assume a rational motive for a non-rational actor.

Let’s go line by line with her piece in Inside Higher Ed, starting with the four paragraph.

From Rasmussen Reports:

Americans have closely followed news stories about the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six others in Arizona on Saturday, and most don’t feel politics was the cause of it.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 28% of Adults say the shooting in Arizona was the result of political anger in the country. Fifty-eight percent (58%) say instead that it was a random act of violence by an unstable person. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The folks who brought us the “Defend Public Education” actions last March in California, Wisconsin, New York and Michigan are planning a new round this year and will be drawing on the “energy” created by the violent, destructive riots in Europe.

The Huffington Post reported last year about college students shutting down major freeways in California.  In Wisconsin, protesters threw “punches and ice chunks” at police after the students were refused entry into an administration building in Madison.

Now, plans are being made for a month of similar actions this year, kicking off March 2^nd.

Some activists have complained that unions are not currently leading the charge because they’ve become too “corporatist.”  But they believe once they make their move, unions will move to “co-opt” the movement.

“Student strikes” will occur in March to fight budget cuts and increased fees for students.  What’s happening in Europe is about to be emulated in America, friends.

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