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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the housing data and the hidden costs of inflation. Then Pej talks about Chuck Schumer’s conference call gaffe.

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:

Housing market: 13% of all U.S. homes are vacant
Home price declines deepen in major US markets
How Low Will Home Prices Go?
Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags
Inflation worries push consumer confidence lower
On a Senate Call, a Glimpse of Marching Orders
Schumer coordinates Dem budget attack on GOP

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According to news reports, Democrats and Republicans are unlikely to reach any sort of budget agreement before April 8, when a short-term spending bill for the current fiscal year expires.

Barring some new development, this could mean a shutdown of the non-essential parts of the government.

This makes both sides very nervous. Democrats don’t want the spending spigot turned off and are worried that voters might conclude that there’s no reason to ever re-open departments such as Housing and Urban Development. Republicans, meanwhile, mostly worry that they might look unreasonable and get blamed if certain parts of the government are mothballed and voters can’t get passports or visit national parks.

Given this state of play, what’s the best strategy for fiscal conservatives, libertarians, and other advocates of smaller government?

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard thinks Republicans should continue with short-term spending bills.

…the incremental strategy is working. Republicans have passed two short-term measures to keep the government in operation since early March while slashing $10 billion in spending. At this rate, they would achieve the target of GOP congressional leaders of lopping off $61 billion from President Obama’s proposed budget in the final seven months of the 2011 fiscal year. There’s every reason to believe the incremental strategy would continue to succeed.

He’s worried that a more confrontational approach, where the GOP passes a take-it-or-leave-it spending bill, might backfire – even though any shutdown would exist solely because Senator Reid and/or President Obama refused to act.

Would a shutdown give Republicans more muscle in negotiating for cuts? …Maybe it would. But it might not. …So long as they control the Senate and White House, Democrats will reject massive cuts. Republicans also want to bar spending for Planned Parenthood, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Mr. Obama’s health-care program. Attach any of these prohibitions to a spending measure and Democratic opposition is certain. Should Republicans insist, we’ll get a government shutdown. This is a big gamble. …Indeed it might discredit Republicans and boost Mr. Obama in the same way the shutdown in 1995 hurt Republicans and lifted President Bill Clinton out of the doldrums. It could alienate independent voters so critical to the Republican triumph in 2010. True enough, the political atmosphere is more favorable to serious spending reductions than it was 16 years ago. …But why take a chance?

I think Barnes is a bit off in his portrayal of what happened in 1995, as I’ve previously explained, but these are all fair points. A “shutdown” fight could be considered uncharted territory.

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Sometimes things are not always what they seem.

I spoke with Andrew Breitbart today about a rally planned on May 1, 2011in St. Louis. Andrew is headlining the event with Governor Mike Huckabee. Andrew shared these thoughts about the event, Van Jones, Color of Change and Mike Huckabee.

Good Cop Killer Supporter – Bad Cop Killer Supporter
Van Jones’ cynical ploy to win Mike Huckabee’s affection.

I don’t ascribe bad motives for Mike Huckabee playing footsie with Van Jones. I just want to draw attention to the fact that this radical left wing agitator has created an organization Color of Change with the sole purpose to isolate, marginalize and destroy those who have effectively exposed the Barack Obama administration’s radical agenda.

At the exact moment that Color of Change got me kicked off the Huffington Post front page he went straight to Mike Huckabee to pretend he’s a gentleman patriot.

This is the first incident in Jones’ 42 years that would suggest civility in this community organizer’s hard-core agitation repertoire. This “cop killer supporting” racist commie punk is playing Huckabee.

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In the wake of undercover evidence revealing Planned Parenthood’s abusive and illegal activity, the America’s biggest abortion business unrolled a massive PR campaign to defend its $363-million-a-year taxpayer subsidies. The campaign included TV, print, radio and online ad buys, a big pink bus rolling
across the country, and numerous appearances and opinion pieces by Planned Parenthood spokespersons and supporters (including this gem by PP vice-president of communications Stuart Schear.

Planned Parenthood has been insisting that they provide invaluable health services to “millions” of America women.

Just a few weeks ago, on national television, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said thisabout Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to defund Planned Parenthood:

“If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are gonna lose their health care access–not to abortion services–to basic family planning, you
know, mammograms.”

Yet this is blatantly false.

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Our MacIver News Service is digging into the costs associated with the recent rukus in Madison. For at least one public employee, the turmoil was quite profitable.

State Capitol Police Overtime Pay Tops $200k for Month of Unrest

One State Capitol Police Sergeant made more than $10,000 in overtime during the month-long protests in Madison, Wisconsin.

From Feb 13 to March 12, 2011, Police Sergeant Dave Horton took home $10, 475.31 in overtime pay, in addition to his $5,627.52 in regular salary.

According to documents obtained by the MacIver News Service, from the start to finish of the massive protest rallies in Madison, Capitol Police spent an extra $214,260.32 on personnel expenses.

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Today, in 1867, the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia for $7 million. The media at the time called it “Seward’s Folly,” after the Secretary of State who negotiated the deal. Seems like a good investment to us.

Last week, The Blaze posted two audio recordings of Stephen Lerner, an SEIU boss who was lecturing an audience on how to bring down the American economy. While Lerner had reportedly been fired from the SEIU last year, it turns out that that may not have been the case.

During the audio, Lerner was introduced as being “of SEIU.” Moreover, former ACORN founder, Chief Organizer of ACORN, and all-around community organizing SEIU offical, Wade Rathke stated Friday on his blog:

Lerner has not been “fired” by SEIU as they report.  He was placed on paid leave last fall to think through his contribution to the union, but was certainly present at the recent international executive board meeting.  He’s in a curious position no doubt, but it’s something like being an “injured reserve” in the NFL and waiting for the team to find a place to bring him back on the roster.

Then, just to affirm that Lerner is still affiliated with the SEIU is Lerner’s bio on a piece posted this afternoon which reads:

Stephen Lerner serves on the Service Employees International Union’s International Executive Board and is the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign. Lerner is a frequent contributor on national television and radio programs and has published numerous articles charting a path for a 21st-century labor movement.

More information about Stephen Lerner

So, why is this important?

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When I went to a meeting last fall about the new virtual school in our county, I publicly praised the local school superintendent for embracing digital education.

I should have held my tongue.

Or so at least says a new report written by Michael Horn and Heather Clayton Staker of the Innosight Institute.  The report, “The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning,” catalogs the exponential growth in the number of U.S. students taking at least one course online – from roughly 45,000 in 2000 to three million K-12 students by 2009.

In addition, the report describes the incredible potential that digital education promises for America’s future.  “Online learning has the potential to transform America’s education system by serving as the backbone of a system that offers more personalized learning approaches for all students,” write Horn and Staker.

So, why should I have held my tongue?

Because the report also warns that much of the promise of digital education could be thwarted if public school systems seek to squeeze new technologies into old frameworks.

“There is a significant risk that the existing education system will co-opt online learning as it blends it into its current flawed model—and just as is the case now, too few students will receive an excellent education,” Horn and Staker write.

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It’s been established that when the Obama administration can’t get part of its agenda legislated; they simply turn around and push it through the web-like bureaucracy at their disposal. Last year’s failed pro-union legislation was no exception; when ‘card check’ met a dead end in Congress, obscure government agencies like the National Mediation Board (NMB) put rules in place to ensure that unionizing elections swung in the unions’ favor anyway.

The NMB was created by that union-hating, capitalist pig Franklin Delano Roosevelt to oversee union elections in the air and rail industries. Under Obama, the board made its first pro-active rule in over 75 years of existence, changing the way union votes are counted to enable an entire workforce to be forced to unionize by a minority of votes.

The House has an opportunity to pass legislation that will turn back the clock on the administration’s overstepping of its boundaries, and send a strong “game over” message to the union bosses counting on the Democrats to line their pockets. Namely, the FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act, which includes a provision to overturn the NMB’s new rule and re-instate the system that has worked for decades.

The airline workers want this, and with a Republican majority in the House it should be a sure thing, right? Well, it’s not that easy. A handful of House Republicans, largely in union-heavy districts, are clearly more concerned with their re-election than with the mandate of fiscal responsibility and smaller government that put them in power in the first place.

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The Obama administration, principally the president and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, are now routinely making public statements which are leading to one conclusion: instead of fixing American education, we should dumb down the standards.

According to the Associated Press, President Obama “is pushing a rewrite of the nation’s education law that would ease some of its rigid measurement tools” and wants “a test that ‘everybody agrees makes sense’ and administer it in less pressure-packed atmospheres, potentially every few years instead of annually.”

The article goes on to say that Obama wants to move away proficiency goals in from math, science and reading, in favor of the ambiguous and amorphous goals of student readiness for college and career.

Obama’s new focus comes on the heels of a New York Times report that 80% of American public schools could be labeled as failing under the standards of No Child Left Behind.

Put another way: the standards under NCLB have revealed that the American public education system is full of cancer. Instead of treating the cancer, Obama wants to change the test, as if ignoring the MRI somehow makes the cancer go away.

So instead of implementing sweeping policies to correct the illness, Obama is suggesting that we just stop testing to pretend it doesn’t exist.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Matt Lewis to discuss Obama’s Libya speech, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and more.

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:

Obama’s Libya Speech: What Worked; What Didn’t
Tim Pawlenty Winning The ‘Matt Lewis Primary’
Newt Gingrich’s ‘Lake’ Analogy Doesn’t Hold Water
Matt Lewis’ Blog at the Daily Caller

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On Tuesday night, March 22^nd, two planes landed at Washington, DC’s Reagan National airport (DCA) without proper tower clearance.  As it happened, the air traffic controller, a career-veteran supervisor with decades of experience, had fallen asleep.  Despite radio hails and phone calls, the controller couldn’t be roused from his slumber, and the planes landed (without incident).

Ironically, earlier that day, NATCA, the air traffic controllers’ union, had started its annual safety conference.  Their reaction was predictable:  what is needed in the tower are more (presumably unionized) employees—someone whose job would be, one supposes, to keep the other person awake for the half-dozen flights that land at DCA between midnight and 6am.

If keeping tower staff awake is our primary concern, a $10 alarm clock, set to go off at regular intervals, would suffice just fine in this regard, and we can forego the tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary and benefits for the second man.  We could also co-locate other non-tower flight operations to the tower for the overnight shift.  But to focus on the number of overnight controllers or why people are falling asleep on the job ignores the bigger, and more important, picture.  This event underscores a deeper problem—one of security, and not safety.

In the days following this incident, a recording surfaced of a fellow air traffic controller operating in Warrenton, VA and in regular communication with the flights into DCA.  In that recording, Warrenton blithely tells the pilots of the plane that he has tried calling the tower at DCA to no avail.  And that’s it.

Considering that the airspace surrounding DCA is considered to have the highest security priority in the nation, encompassing as it does the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, the CIA, and just about every other essential federal agency.  This is the reason DCA was shut down immediately following the September 11^th attacks, and why the airspace remains among the tightest restrictions in the nation.

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It’s back to business on our investigation of the Pigford story – the ongoing fraud that needs your help and attention to make it stop. The mainstream – with a few exceptions like John Stossel – are ignoring the story of the one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history because it doesn’t fit their narrative. The good guys are the real farmers who faced discrimination at the hands of the UsDA and the people, mostly conservative at this point, trying to bring their story to light. The bad guys are the trial lawyers, politicians, race hustlers and those inside the USDA who profit by lying to the public about how the Pigford settlement is a ‘victory’ for black farmers.

In this video, we introduce you to Lucious Abrams, a Georgia farmer who was one of the seven original claimants. Abrams has spent years working for justice only to be betrayed by people like the Congressional Black Caucus.  Now Lucious is speaking out and speaking truth to the power structure that doesn’t speak for him.

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“Never before has such a low bar been set for certifying such a gargantuan class”
Judge Sandra Ikuta writing in her dissent against class certification of the Walmart lawsuit in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Walmart is getting sued by 6 women for sex discrimination; this despite the fact that most of the employees are women. The ambulance-chasing shysters fomenting this case succeeded in getting “class” status for their few plaintiffs from the notorious 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the primary tests for certifying a lawsuit as a “class” is for the court to determine whether the named plaintiffs are sufficiently representative of the class. Additionally, the court must determine if actual discrimination occurred and that this discrimination was likely to be widespread and effect a large class; in this case, a half of million female employees.

This sad case began with a few hapless women who couldn’t qualify as managers, but wishing they were managers. These people are rolling the dice with their litigation lottery scam. These women ended up telling sad stories of how they didn’t get their promotions to manager due to discrimination (yes, it’s true, Walmart has a strict policy against promoting morons). This is not a tort, unless those people can show, with evidence, that they were passed over because they were a woman. In the Walmart case, the attorneys for the plaintiffs used a combination of sob stories, anecdotal evidence and statistics. The statistics showed nothing.

The Walmart case, filed in 2001, against the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer by six female workers who claimed the company paid women less than men and gave them fewer promotions. Their evidence? They said that 65 percent of Wal-Mart’s hourly employees were women, while just 33 percent of the company’s management team is female. So what? These statistics are not proof of wrongdoing. They’re the same sort of phony statistics that feminists and their media echo have used for years saying that women only make 70 cents of the dollar compared to men. That’s baloney.

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Chandler police Detective Carlos Ledesma was sitting at a card table when the drug bust went sour. He did not even have time to stand before being cut down by four rifle shots to the chest, and he died a short time later.

When the carnage ended, two other Chandler narcotics detectives lay bleeding on the floor of the home in west Phoenix last July. One suspected drug peddler died by the front door, another a short distance away in the back seat of a getaway car.

Officers from the suburban Arizona police department were not after drugs when the undercover operation went terribly wrong. They were after cash – a quarter million dollars that the violent and heavily armed men they were dealing with had agreed to pay for 500 pounds of marijuana the detectives said they could supply.

Police were running a “reverse sting,” a controversial and high-risk tactic in which undercover officers pose as sellers of large quantities of marijuana or other drugs.

In a traditional drug sting, the cops pose as the buyers and show up with the money. If successful, they walk away with nothing but suspects and evidence.

But in a reverse sting, the police get to keep the cash they seize under Arizona’s forfeiture law, which allows them to take property they say has been used in certain crimes and keep it for their own use. Police can spend the money to buy equipment, build new buildings, travel, or hire outside help. They can even use it to pay for more police to bring in more money.

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Today, in 1886, Dr. John Pemberton brewed his first batch of Coca-Cola. Take a pause to refresh.

In June 1972, political and covert operatives broke into the Watergate Hotel during President Richard Nixon’s bid for re-election. When it happened, the reasoning behind the crime was unknown but has since become clear: Republicans wanted to uncover dirt on Democrats in a bid to help Nixon win a second term. What was clear then, and has remained clear to this day, was that Nixon didn’t authorize the break-in, nor did he know about it when it initially took place. His only crime was that he covered up the Watergate incident once it was brought to his attention. (If you went to a public school for your education, this is probably news to you.)

The result of Nixon’s cover-up was the infamous Watergate Scandal, which spawned a move toward impeachment in the House of Representatives and finally, Nixon’s resignation of the presidency in August 1974.

For the record, no one died during Watergate or as a result of it. Yet Nixon’s character was maligned, as the mainstream media – the only media that existed in the 1970s – distorted the facts about Watergate in their favor, in order to bring down the man who had campaigned against the left’s counter culture movement and had actually tried to win in Vietnam.

In late 2009, various operatives in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) began an operation code-named “Gun Runner.” This operation entailed okaying U.S. gun sales to people with suspected ties to the Mexican Cartel, and then allowing those guns to be illegally carried into Mexico in order to give BATF agents an idea of where illegal guns were flowing in Mexico.

The number of guns sold is estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,500: many of which were assault rifles and some of which were .50 caliber sniper rifles.

In case you’ve never seen a .50 fired by someone who knows what they’re doing, just keep in mind that a general effective range for a .50 is 2,000 meters (but it’s even further for a specialist). And since the Rio Grande is less than 2,000 meters wide, I can’t help but wonder how long it might be before someone in Mexico is intermittingly picking off Americans who are traveling near the border on I-10 or just walking down a side street in El Paso, TX?

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In Citizens United v. FEC the Supreme Court rejected the idea that the government may determine whose speech is worthy of protection under the First Amendment. As a result of the decision, individuals, small businesses, corporations, labor unions, and non-profit organizations may all engage in political speech. It is not the bailiwick of government bureaucrats to judge and determine who should be allowed to speak. As Chief Justice John Roberts has remarked: “We don’t put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats.” Citizens United appropriately limited the government’s ability to regulate and prohibit speech.

Another case that questions the ability of the government to regulate speech is currently before the Supreme Court: Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett. This case deals with Arizona’s “clean elections” campaign financing system.

There have been many attempts to create systems where the government subsidizes campaigns. Most label these systems “public financing,” but in reality they are anything but. The truest form of “public financing” is a system in which citizens can voluntarily contribute to those candidates which they support. Each and every government subsidized system undermines the sovereignty of the American people.

The most recognizable of these systems is the presidential financing system, which allows individuals to make a voluntary contribution to help finance presidential campaigns when filing their annual tax return. Once a candidate agrees to participate in this financing system they must adhere to guidelines established by the federal government. As the flaws of this system have become more apparent, even liberal politicians like Barack Obama have opted out of the system. In seeking to trim waste from the federal budget, Republican Members of Congress have attempted to curtail this misguided program.

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Last week, while passing through Sin City (aka Washington, DC), I had the opportunity to attend a screening of Atlas Shrugged, Part One at the Heritage Foundation.

As one whose life took a remarkable turn nearly two decades ago, in part due to Atlas Shrugged, waiting for a movie version of Ayn Rand’s novel to hit the big screen has been an effort at exercising endless patience. However, that patience has paid off with this movie.

Despite the novel being published in 1957, in an era of looters seeking to devour producers—from the White House in Washington to the streets of L.A.—Atlas Shrugged is a movie that speaks to the issues of today. And, just as importantly, it is a faithful adaptation of the novel that Americans surveyed describe as the second most influential novel in their lives (after the Bible).

Following the screening, and in light of all that is going on in Madison and elsewhere, Harmon Kaslow (one of the producers) stated that he would release one of the scenes in which the heroine, Dagny Taggart, confronts the union boss.

Below, courtesy of “The Strike” Productions, Inc., is a first-look at the scene Dagny confronts the union*.

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