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Today we’re giving you a special advance preview of Monday’s Coffee and Markets with an interview with Elliott Abrams, a former senior national security adviser to George W. Bush and assistant secretary of state for Ronald Reagan and a leading expert on politics and the Middle East. We’ll ask him about what the future holds for Egypt, whether President Obama has had the right response to the crisis, and whether other nations will soon follow.

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:

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

In my town of Claremont, CA, the FBI just arrested a man for sending “threatening letters containing a powdery substance” to multiple government offices in Los Angeles County.

Here’s how the FBI describes it:

Claremont Man Arrested for Sending Threatening Letters to L.A. County Dept. of Child and Family Services

LOS ANGELES—Special Agents with the FBI and the United States Postal Inspection Service arrested a Claremont man this morning on federal charges of sending threatening letters containing a powdery substance to multiple offices of the Department of Children and Family Services and the Los Angeles County Children’s Courthouse over a period of approximately 18 months.

Martin Calvin Yarbrough Jr., 48, was taken into custody at his residence this morning without incident after being indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday. The indictment charges Yarbrough with 13 counts of making threats and hoaxes.

The arrest of Yarbrough was announced by Steven Martinez, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI in Los Angeles; B. Bernard Ferguson, Postal Inspector in Los Angeles; and United States Attorney André Birotte Jr.

According to the indictment, Yarbrough sent a series of envelopes through the United States Postal Service to various offices of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court in Monterey Park. Each letter contained either a white powdery substance or a bluish granular substance that was determined to be a chemical poison. Mailed between November 2008 and May 2010, the letters were sent to DCFS offices in Covina, Lancaster, El Monte, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, Santa Fe Springs, Pomona and Monterey Park.

Steven Martinez, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, said: “Using threatening letters and hoax powders to convey discontent is a serious crime and, as evidenced with the arrest of Mr. Yarbrough, has significant consequences. The major law enforcement response generated every time such a letter is received is time-consuming and accomplished at the expense of costs taxpayers. Furthermore, the painstaking field and lab testing takes precious time away from Hazmat experts and public health officials whose time would be better spent investigating legitimate threats.”

…

If he is convicted, Yarbrough would face a maximum statutory penalty of five years in federal prison for each count.

Yarbough’s father is Claremont resident Martin Calvin Yarbrough Sr., a poll watcher and fan of the Rev. [sic] Jeremiah Wright. Here’s what the father wrote about Wright on a Chicago Sun Times story in 2008. Wright’s conspiracy theories have, in other words, real consequences.

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Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke launched a second round of Quantitative Easing (QE2) in October, following over a year of growth in the economy at a robust rate of over 3%. Most analysts pooh-poohed QE2 as an insufficient economic stimulus to create enough inflation to reduce unemployment. I warned that QE2 was like pouring inflationary lighter fluid on the world and then lighting a match. With food inflation now running at 15% in poor countries, the Middle East is just the first area to burn, but fire is smoldering in much of the world and other fires will break out soon.

QE2 is a program by the U.S. Federal Reserve to inject $600 billion of U.S. dollars in the financial system by repurchasing an equivalent amount of U.S. Government bonds. Once the money is paid to the former bondholder, they deposit the cash in banks. Banks take deposit dollars and leverage them by 6 to 10 times creating $3.6 to $6 trillion in credit. Given that the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. economy is only about $14 trillion annually, it would impossible to immediately purchase 25-40% of the entire economy. Consequently, the reality of Quantitative Easing is that the money will be invested in the stock and commodity markets. The theory is that the financial assets rise on the huge inflows of QE cash, investors will feel wealthier and go to the malls and the car dealerships to “shop till they drop”.

The problem with theory is that QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

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Protests continue to grip Egypt. This probably won’t end well.

In stark, bitter contrast to his indifference to the popular Iranian uprising in the summer of 2009, Barack Obama has almost immediately engaged in events on the ground in Egypt, and it’s not good. Obama took no such action with Iran — a jihadist terrorist state agitating in countries all over the world. That was an historic missed opportunity.

In 2009, his silence about the brutal, murderous putdown of its people by the Iranian mullahcracy amount to his tacit support of that putdown, and spoke volumes. Obama became part of the problem, not part of the solution. He gave religious barbarism the free hand. In response, Iranian protestors had a direct message for America’s president: “You’re Either With Us or With Them.”

And since then also, Obama’s most consistent response to Iran (as well as to North Korea’s hostile moves) has been to ignore them and hope that proven evildoers will behave themselves. Wrong. The good cop is off the beat.

Obama failed, and the consequences of his failure have begun to be made manifest now in Egypt. I cannot understate the importance of Egypt to American interests and Israeli security. Egypt is arguably the second-most important country to the US in the region. Mubarak has been a U.S. ally for decades. We send three billion dollars a year to Egypt. And Egypt made a peace deal with Israel.

But knowing Obama, he will throw another ally under the bus.

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Now this is a bold move. Going onto the airwaves of a state that just raised their taxes and trying to lure away their businesses. Bold:

For me this tactic brings two questions to mind.

Why don’t more states do this? I mean if you’re the governor of a state with relatively low business taxes why wouldn’t you advertise in near by states with higher business taxes? Sounds like a good idea doesn’t it?

Then again will this really work? Is an ad on the radio going to convince responsible business owners to leave their current state and move to another? Probably not.

I suspect the more likely scenario is that the businesses that are going to relocate outside of a high tax state like Illinois have already made that decision. In that case perhaps the real goal of an ad like this is to direct those businesses into a state like Jersey. In other words something like this is probably going to be successful in directing the tax weary defectors to the desired safe haven rather than creating any new defectors.

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Yes, the Democrats killed it (can we still say that) and I’ve been calling out the party of good will, kindness, caring, and tolerance Democrats for more than a year about their shameful and deliberate actions.  And now, it’s game on:

The speaker, along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., on Wednesday plans to introduce legislation to revive a controversial program that provides private-school vouchers for kids of low-income parents in Washington, D.C. Boehner has long been a supporter of that program, which started to wind down in 2009, but is devoting some serious political capital to the cause this week.

[snip]

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, as it is known, was launched in 2004 as the first federally funded program providing K-12 education grants. Though supporters say it gives poor students an alternative to the city’s underperforming public school system, teachers unions and other opponents say it draws sorely needed money away from the public system.

Lawmakers opposed to the program succeeded in eliminating it after Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. — who could not be reached for comment Tuesday — attached an amendment to a 2009 spending bill. President Obama stepped in and agreed to allow students currently enrolled to graduate. But the program is no longer accepting new applicants.

To recap, the Omnibus appropriations act of 2009 defunded (roll call vote here) the successful program–effectively eliminating any opportunity for poor DC schoolchildren to escape the horrid DC public schools.  The Democrats, namely Dick Durbin, claimed that the program funding would take away from the money the DC public schools needed.

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Here is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demonstrating what real moral clarity sounds like at a speech at the American University in Cairo in June 2005. Watch:

(transcript of full speech is available here):

Rice is not the most dynamic speaker, but I believe this speech will ultimately be viewed as much more historically significant than Obama’s own turgid 2009 speech in Cairo. The spinmeisters in the White House are already shamelessly attempting to re-write history, but for all practical purposes the Administration abandoned the campaign to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East upon entering office.

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Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn in Egypt 2009/2010.

“We hope the Egyptians get so annoyed they just want to get rid of us.” Jodie Evans, Cairo, December 29, 2009

Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans meets with President Barack Obama weeks after meeting the Taliban, Oct. 15, 2009.

One year ago, Big Government reported the anti-American global left, led by Code Pink, traveled to Egypt to undermine the blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

President Barack Obama funder and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, accompanied by Obama’s Hyde Park friends and neighbors –  the former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn –  organized an inside-outside game of political theater to bring pressure on the Mubarak regime to allow the aid for Hamas to be delivered though Egyptian checkpoints.

On one hand, Evans and Code Pink lobbied Mubarak’s wife for assistance, as well as the U.S. embassy in Cairo. On the other hand, the group led hundreds of Western leftists in challenging the Egyptian government with boisterous street protests.

Code Pink was not shy about its support for Hamas. The group bragged that Hamas terrorists guaranteed their safety in Gaza.

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For a brief shining moment, the rule of law prevailed in Illinois. On Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court put a swift end to that, overruling the Appellate Court and determining that, notwithstanding the actual law, Rahm Emaneul is eligible to run for mayor. The law, it seems, is merely a ’suggestion’.

The Great Depression has been a deeply contested subject from the very beginning. After John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory became sacred writ for most mainstream economists, Keynesian interpretations generally prevailed, notwithstanding pockets of resistance among older economists, in general, and Austrian school economists, in particular. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s monumental Monetary History of the United States eventually helped to displace Keynesian interpretations with a monetarist interpretation, especially after the stagflation of the 1970s worked to discredit Keynesian macroeconomics.

Nevertheless, in part because mainstream macroeconomics never settled into a fixed orthodoxy for very long, competing interpretations of the Great Depression continued to attract adherents and to incorporate new elements of analysis during the past thirty years. The Austrians, once again attracting young economists to their ranks from the 1970s onward, persisted in waging guerrilla warfare against Keynesian, monetarist, New Classical, and other varieties of interpretation of the Depression.

With the onset of the current economic troubles—what some call the Great Recession—the debate about the Great Depression flared up anew, because many commentators began to compare these two episodes of exceptionally subpar overall economic performance. In 2008, an article by Gauti Eggertsson, “Great Expectations and the End of the Depression,” was published in the leading mainstream journal, the American Economic Review. This article advances a variation on one of the leading themes among mainstream economists, attributing the U.S. recovery after 1933 to a regime change associated with the New Deal’s abandonment of the gold standard and its commitment to active intervention in the private economy, allegedly in sharp contrast to the Hoover administration’s hands-off policy stance.

Steven Horwitz has taken issue with Eggertsson’s article in an important critique published in 2009 in the online journal Econ Journal Watch, edited by Daniel B. Klein. Eggertsson replied to Horwitz’s critique in 2010. Now, Horwitz has rejoined this back-and-forth in a new contribution to Econ Journal Watch titled “Unfortunately Unfamiliar with Robert Higgs and Others: A Rejoinder to Gauti Eggertsson on the 1930s.” No one will be surprised if I recommend Horwitz’s original critique and his follow-up piece as important contributions to this highly significant debate.

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There was BIG news in Washington yesterday:

Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), have introduced the Secret Ballot Protection Act.

Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) introduced the Secret Ballot Protection Act (SBPA), legislation that will guarantee the right of every American worker to have a secret ballot election on whether to unionize. The bill would guarantee workers the opportunity to cast a secret ballot before a union can be organized.

Seventeen cosponsors have joined DeMint to introduce the bill including Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi), Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), John McCain (R-Arizona), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), James Risch (R-Idaho), Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), John Thune (R-South Dakota), David Vitter (R-Louisiana), and Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).

“Last Congress, union bosses and their Democrat allies tried their best to deny workers their basic American right to a guaranteed secret ballot election,” said Senator DeMint. “Secret ballot voting is a basic American value that we must protect. This bill ensures every American worker gets to cast a secret ballot vote without pressure and fear of retribution from union organizers and coworkers looking over their shoulder. No American should be forced to join or pay dues to a union just to have the opportunity to work and provide for their family.”

Why the Secret Ballot Protection Act?

For the last five years, unions have spent hundreds of millions of dollars, taken from their members’ dues, to pass a bill that effectively eliminates employees’ right to a secret-ballot election on the question of unionization. Through the delusionally-dubbed Employee Free Choice Act’s ’card check’ provision, unions have sought to mandate that employees would automatically become unionized once a union secured 50% + 1 of employees’ signatures on authorization cards (or other form). However, after the Employee Free ANTI Choice Act passed the House in 2007 (it was later stalled in the Senate), more people began to take notice of the union threat to their right to choose (or not choose) unionization in the workplace.

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School Choice Week is here, and there are a lot of people trying to spread the good word about the benefits of increasing educational freedom.

But what benefit of choice is best to focus on?

You can make at most a few points in an oped or on talk radio. On TV, and even in print reporting, you’re lucky to get one point across. And with friends and family, and even politicians, you need to keep the focus where it will do the most good.

So, should you focus on how horrible inner-city schools are, how many lives are destroyed in a failing government system? Maybe. Depends on the person, certainly.

But the evidence suggests that the best message overall is one that focuses on the financial benefits of school choice (and this is even before the financial crisis). People think about vouchers and education tax credits differently. And be careful trying to pull at Democratic heart-strings with arguments that choice will increase educational equity for poor kids . . . there’s evidence that it backfires!

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Attorney General Eric Holder and others within the U.S. Department of Justice prevented members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from conducting a complete and thorough investigation of the department’s decision to drop charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for their 2008 election day actions in Philadelphia.

Members of the commission issued what should be regarded as a stinging indictment of AG Holder and the Justice Department in one paragraph of a news release issued today about the investigation trying to answer the question of whether DOJ practiced race-neutral enforcement of the law:

Although such testimony supported the need for thorough investigation, DOJ continued to withhold relevant documents and preclude relevant officials and supervisors from testifying. The Commission was thus limited in its ability to complete a final report. As a result, the Commission has issued an interim report that describes the evidence that has been collected up to this point and the lack of cooperation by the Department of Justice.

In a separate paragraph, appearing on page iii of the interim report addressed to President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), Commission members highlighted the dilemma they face as a result of the DOJ’s obstruction:

The Commission, by a separate 5-2 vote breaking down along the same lines, found that although its statute authorizes the Commission to subpoena witnesses and written material and requires federal agencies to cooperate fully with its investigations, its authority to seek legal recourse when the Attorney General refuses to enforce Commission subpoenas, as has occurred repeatedly during this investigation, is unclear.

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In a Department of Justice (DOJ) legal brief in the case of the “State of Florida v. The Department of Health and Human Services,” the Obama Administration argues the individual mandate (requiring Americans to buy a government-approved insurance plan even if they can’t afford it) is a constitutional exercise of Congress’s power to collect taxes.

But recently, when asked at a Ways and Means Committee hearing examining the impact of the Democrats’ health care law on the economy and the nation’s employers, an Administration Cabinet official gave a different answer – not only about whether the individual mandate was a tax, but the witness went so far as to challenge whether the 10 percent indoor tanning tax was actually a tax.

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The House of Representatives moved quickly to pass legislation to repeal the President’s Health Care Reform measures but for breast cancer patients, repeal might not come soon enough.

Breast cancer patients are among the initial victims of the ObamaCare mindset where cost of treatment trumps the effectiveness of treatment. Thanks to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the life-extending drug Avastin may no longer be an option for breast cancer patients – despite evidence of its effectiveness and testimony of women—and their doctors– who believe they survive solely because of the drug.

The FDA seems intent on “de-lableing” the drug – a move that would allow insurance companies and Medicare to deny coverage for the drug. Even though the FDA is not charged with considering the cost of a drug when determining its availability, it is apparent they did. Jean Grem of the University of Nebraska explained her anti-Avastin vote by observing, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”

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The one good thing about sitting through the painful lies and propaganda of Obama’s State Of The Union address was seeing the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner, in Nancy Pelosi’s seat. Seriously, you know it was killing her. I am sure they had to pry the gavel from her stone cold hands.

As for Obama’s speech, don’t make me laugh. That was not a State Of The Union Address as much as it was a campaign speech. Obama will do what he needs to do to get elected and that’s it. Period. Listening to this collectivist laud individualism was insulting. He was stealing my material, which is more than OK, but in deed, my good man. In deed. Do it.

His solution for the incomprehensible 14-trillion-dollar debt is more debt. More stimulus. More enslavement of free men. And, of course, the political fraud of more environ-mentalism, aka “clean” energy. It is insanity to create massive unemployment, destroy whole industries, make rich annihilationist jihad nations and bankrupt America in pursuit of a hoax. All these nature lovers should move out of technologically advanced nations and start their own society in nature. There are plenty of unpolluted places; let these self-made savages move there.

Foreign policy is a disaster. Look around; the world is descending into chaos. Ambassador John Bolton tweeted, “With no foreign policy victory of his own & many failures, bizarre that Obama would take credit for restoring America’s leadership in world.”

Bizarre and worse than bizarre.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss gambling on the NYSE, GDP and conflicting reports of what started the financial crisis.

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:

The NYSE Gets Funny
Q4 GDP Advance Report: Up 3.2%
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Dissenting Statement
What Caused the Financial Crisis?
Phil Angelides: Financial crisis ‘didn’t need to happen’
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Dissenting Statement – Wallison, Burns
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Last week, California Democratic Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner announced the introduction of fresh legislation to force out-of-state, online retailers to collect California sales tax– legislation that critics charge amounts to an effort to introduce a new tax in what is arguably already the most heavily-taxed state in the nation.

The move replicates others pursued in years past by Democratic colleagues of Skinner– but notably avoided by Gov. Jerry Brown in his recently announced budget– and by all accounts seems to ignore the overwhelming likelihood that such a scheme would prove unconstitutional if challenged in court (by virtue of the the Quill v. North Dakota decision).

However, Skinner’s legislation is also being challenged on the basis that it would not, contrary to backers’ assertions, help put a substantial dent in the state budget deficit or eliminate or minimize the need for deep budget cuts in order to close it.  In fact, using Skinner’s own numbers, it appears that the institution of a so-called “Amazon tax” would strip away a mere 1.1 percent of California’s budget deficit:

(image via Americans for Tax Reform)

Critics say even the minuscule prospective “help” that might be afforded by the institution of Skinner’s new tax with regard to closing the Golden State’s budget gap may represent a “best-case” scenario: Were the new tax instituted, online retailers could well end their affiliate programs, thereby denying affiliates a revenue stream that enabled them to contribute over $100 million to California’s coffers in 2009.

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