Andrew Breitbart called Jones this in the Daily Caller this morning, and as result has apparently now been banned by the cowardly Huffington Post.

His language was a bit harsh, I’ll grant, but I would add to this that Jones is also a despicable anti-war, anti-American hypocrite. And I don’t make this charge lightly.

You see thanks to the incompetence – or outright bias – of the mainstream media, Jones has never been held accountable for his role in producing and distributing one of the most vile pieces of anti-war, anti-American propaganda produced in the last decade. An album called WarTimes: Report from the Opposition which was narrated by none other than COP-KILLING Mumia Abu-Jamal. In case you missed this when it was first reported here on this blog, here are some snippets:

It’s already indisputable that Van Jones was behind this effort, but take a closer listen to this track. Jump ahead to about the 2:00 mark: is it just me or does that sounds like Van Jones himself rapping “f*ck the government…”?

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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the United Auto Workers’ Bob King thinks he’s just the union boss to make a go of it. With negotiations about to start with the Big Three American auto companies (two of which are UAW-owned), King is ramping up his rhetoric against the CEO of the only automaker that taxpayers did not bailout (Ford’s Mulally), while plotting his strategy for negotiations.

Meanwhile, claiming that he’s fighting for “social justice” and the entire American middle class (as opposed to just trying to save his otherwise failing union), sounding a lot like he is using the model being used to overthrow governments in the middle east, the UAW’s top boss is recruiting global activists to attack UAW-free foreign automakers.

If action is necessary, “we have a new strategy to organize them,” Williams said, which involves mobilizing members, retirees and allies “to expose violations of human rights.”

The efforts fall under the umbrella of the newly created Global Organizing Institute that is training the activists.

“It has the potential to be the largest, sustained consumer action by organized labor,” Williams said. “We have the resources and the people to be successful in this mission.”

In the United States, the Institute has put coordinators in each state to oversee recruits from university campuses and social organizations. An initial group of activists also has been recruited abroad in countries including China, India, Brazil, Japan and South Korea.

This coordinated effort will allow simultaneous protests at a company’s dealerships around the world to press for auto plant union organization in the U.S.

A second wave of eight interns from other countries is wrapping up a visit to the United States, where they interviewed workers at nonunion auto plants in Mississippi and Alabama.

When the UAW picks a company, these young international leaders say they will take action against the target, knowing they have UAW support.

In addition, alliances have been formed with unions in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

Of course, to King and his clan of foreign crusaders, a violator of “human rights” would be any foreign auto company that does not succumb to King’s extortionate version of a “fair election.”

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Over the past month, Google made waves with the announcement that it has tweaked its search algorithms to penalize ‘content farms.’ These are “low quality sites whose main goal is to attract search traffic by piling up (mostly) useless content.” The lesson from Google is simple: no system devised by the mind of man is immune to being gamed by other men. Google’s merit is that it can respond quickly to thwart the gaming. That will, in turn, breed more gaming, but Google will, if it is attentive, not fall too far behind. If it slacks off, it will quickly be overtaken by a more nimble rival.

The same, unfortunately, is not true of society as a whole. J.E. Dyer argued in Commentary that the battle in Wisconsin represented the crisis of progressivism. But that is not all it represented. It also represented a shot in the battle against the problem that Mancur Olsen identified in his remarkable 1982 work on The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities: the tendency of stable societies to build up special interest groups (or distributional coalitions) that frequently fortify their position with government recognition or funding, and in turn reduce the flexibility and growth of the economy as a whole. Dyer refers to this as the problem of “special-interest activism,” but its implications are broader than the problem of over-spending.

Olsen offered his theory, in part, to explain Britain’s economic underperformance from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries. In my judgment, it remains the single most persuasive work on the subject, superior to several better-known books. But it now seems particularly applicable to the United States, which has over the past 65 years — except during a few interludes — been gamed ever more intensely. The entitlements burden, in Olsen’s terms, is the result of the Baby Boomers — who have become a distributional coalition if there ever was one — defending benefits that, because the costs fall on younger, less attentive, and less numerous voters, for many years raised no outcry.

But precisely because the U.S. has been so stable, we are burdened with many more such coalitions, most of them not explicitly centered on spending, and some supported only indirectly by the state. In academia, the professoriate defends the traditional apprentice system, even though that system is profoundly dysfunctional for the younger generation. In higher education, the elite design the admissions systems at which their children excel, which must over time reduce social mobility. In arms control, as Richard Pearle noted at The Heritage Foundation the week before last, we have an activist cottage industry that appears to be incapable of recognizing how much times have changed since its so-called glory days of the 1970s.

It is not surprising that all of these groups pose as liberal — even radical — while being at the same time deeply conservative in their attachment to the self-serving status quo.

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Ever since Obama was sworn in, obscure federal agencies have been churning out pro-labor, anti-worker rulemakings in an attempt to reverse declining unionization numbers. Indicative of this unionization through regulation strategy is the National Mediation Board’s (NMB) minority rule decision promulgated in 2009.

The NMB is a three-member board comprised of one Bush holdover and two Obama appointees—both of which are former union officials—tasked with overseeing union-employer relations in the transportation industry. The makeup of the board effectively gives the pro-union board members fiat to enact whatever policies or regulations they see fit. Unsurprisingly, the NMB’s first major decision was a move to facilitate unionization in the transportation industry.

Overturning seventy-five years of precedent and two Supreme Court rulings, the NMB ruled that a majority of voting members were required to certify a union, not a majority of all members of a workforce. For two years now, conservative activists and Members of Congress have written letters and introduced legislation attempting to annul this blatant federal overreach. These efforts have finally culminated in tangible legislation, Title IX of the FAA Reauthorization bill, which would overturn the NMB’s minority rule decision.

Barely making it out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Democrats, at the behest of organized labor, offered an amendment to remove Title IX from the FAA reauthorization bill. Republicans managed to quash this amendment by the razor thin margin of 30-29, losing three Republicans in the process.

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Once again, the headline on a financial story reads: unexpectedly. At what point do we conclude the economists relied upon for these projections are worthless, as they never appear to expect what’s going to happen?

US factory orders drop unexpectedly

Lower demand for machinery and defense equipment prompted a fall in US factory orders in February, the Commerce Department said Thursday, dashing hopes for a rebound after start-of-year blizzards.
New orders for big-ticket items — such as planes, computers and cars — fell 0.9 percent during the month, led by a 4.2 percent drop in machinery orders.

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Barack Obama really knows how to pick them. It’s not often that one person plays key roles in two — count ‘em, two — trillion-dollar disasters but Jamie Gorelick is one. She helped to bring us 9/11 and the collapse of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Ms. Gorelick is on the presidental short list to be the head of the FBI.

As  Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997 Jamie Gorelick wrote the memo that created the now infamous “Gorelick Wall.” A 1995 memo she wrote, stated explicitly that they would “go beyond what is legally required, [to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.”  These rules were, shortly after their creation, expanded to regulate such communications in future counter-terrorism investigations. It set a procedure where various intelligence operations could not share information with each other.

Jamie Gorelick’s wall barred anti-terror investigators from accessing the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, already in custody on an immigration violation shortly before 9/11.

At the time, an enraged FBI investigator wrote a prophetic memo to headquarters about the wall

‘Whatever has happened to this — someday someone will die — and wall or not — the public will not understand why we were not more effective in throwing every resource we had at certain problems…..especially since the biggest threat to us UBL [Usama bin Laden], is getting the most protection.

Here’s another “fun” Jamie Gorelick story.  She was a member of the 9/11 commission but did not share her “wall memo” with anyone until, Attorney General John Ashcroft was blasted for the “wall” while he was testifying before the 9/11 commission and said:

“Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review,” he said. “Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission.”

OOPS! Hey She forgot to share that memo. I am sure she is sorry.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Portugal’s need for a bail out, then Captain Neta Gerri of the Israeli Defense Force talks about the possibility of a new Gaza war, the conflict with the Palestinians, 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:

Portuguese Parliament Rejects Government’s Austerity Plan to Trim Deficit
Portugal PM Jose Socrates resigns after budget rejected
Durable Goods Orders Plunge; Jobless Claims Edge Lower
Israel Police on high alert in wake of deadly Jerusalem bombing

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From CNN Politics:

CNN has exclusively learned that Rep. Michele Bachmann will form a presidential exploratory committee. The Minnesota Republican plans to file papers for the committee in early June, with an announcement likely around that same time.

But a source close to the congresswoman said that Bachmann could form the exploratory committee even earlier than June so that she could participate in early Republican presidential debates.

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I recently met with a conservative Texas Congressman. I will not reveal his name because he did not give me permission and because it’s not the first time I have heard what he told me concerning the disappointing performance of Republican House Leadership since they were returned to power.

“What is it about the November election that Republican leadership doesn’t understand?” That is the first question I ask any Republican elected official who works in Washington. Each response from the numerous conservative Congressmen has been some variation of “they just don’t get it.” The Congressman who I met with said basically what I already knew, “House leadership has no plan to cut spending, repeal ObamaCare and is not conservative.”

Beyond that, the Congressman reported that he’s even heard Speaker Boehner speak derogatorily of the tea party behind closed doors. I’m not surprised. I have often said the Republican elite would like to see the tea party movement go away much more than the Democrats. I spoke last month with another Texas conservative Congressman who reported that Boehner has surrounded himself with “yes” men who are not conservatives and, if they once were, have sold their souls for leadership positions. Do you hear me Jeb Hensarling?

It’s this simple, the House Republican leaders have no plan to cut real federal spending or to repeal ObamaCare. Repealing or defunding ObamaCare was the ONE priority Americans sent the Republicans to do when they were returned to power in the House. I began to sense how things would be when Republicans pledged to cut spending by only $100 billion. $100 billion? Wow. Veni, vidi, durmi! I came, I saw, I yawned! We have a $1.65 TRILLION deficit this year alone! And, of course, Republican leadership has already retreated from the $100 billion to a measly $51 billion. You have to hand it to Republicans, they never fail to disappoint!

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March 23, 2011

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I have read your letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate dated March 21, 2011 concerning your order that United States Armed Forces attack the nation of Libya. You cite the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and your “constitutional
authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

The Constitution clearly and unmistakably vests Congress with the sole prerogative “to declare war.” Your letter fails to explain how a resolution of the United Nations Security Council is necessary to commit this nation to war but that an act of Congress is not.

The United Nations Participation Act expressly withholds authorization for the President to commit United States Armed Forces to combat in pursuit of United Nations directives without specific Congressional approval. The War Powers Resolution states that the President’s power to engage United States Armed Forces in hostilities “shall not be inferred . . .from any treaty heretofore or hereafter ratified unless such treaty is implemented by legislation specifically authorizing the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities…”

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In the wake of the unconstitutional action in Libya, NATO is fracturing. What the Cold War couldn’t accomplish, Obama has achieved. Hope and Change!

First Lady Michelle Obama hopes to curb childhood obesity by teaching children about nutrition and exercise. “There’s no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue,” she says.

But local government officials around the country have already adopted a more forceful tact, whether it’s New York’s salt assault, San Francisco’s frown at Happy Meals or, most recently, South LA’s all-out ban on new fast-food restaurants.

Reason.tv spoke with Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, one of the architects behind the ban, who argues that “in order to force choice into the market, we have to limit one that is overconcentrated and attract others that provide other options.”

Reason Magazine editor in chief Matt Welch is skeptical of “the idea that you can create more choices by reducing choices,” and fitness consultant and documentary filmmaker Chazz Weaver—who ate McDonald’s for 30 days and lost body fat—points out that consumers can eat fast food in moderation and still stay healthy. Reason.tv also spoke with the co-owner of The Burger Stand in South Los Angeles about why he thinks that banning new fast-food restaurants is bad for business and bad for his community.

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Your tax dollars at work…
The EPA is now paying the American Lung Association to attack Republicans

The ALA put up four billboards like this one near Rep. Fred Upton’s office in Michigan. Upton is the House Energy and Commerce Chairman. (PlowShareGroup)

The Environmental Protection Agency is paying the American Lung Association to run attack ads against Republican members of Congress.

JunkScience.com reported:

“The American Lung Association has targeted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton for his efforts to stop U.S. EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions by placing billboards within sight of his district offices linking climate change with increased childhood asthma,” reports E&E News PM.

But as we reported last week in “EPA owns the American Lung Association,” the EPA has paid the American Lung Association over $20 million in the last ten years, and has paid the ALA many more millions in a symbiotic relationship going back to at least 1990.

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One year ago today President Barack Obama signed into law government controlled health care. It was a punch in the gut to a majority of Americans who had passionately pleaded that this legislation be thrown in the dumpster. How many times did millions of people travel to Washington D.C., call and email our congressman, or attend Town Hall meetings and demand they, “kill the bill?”

We were readily dismissed and slandered by the Democrats in Congress; accused of being astro-turf and even racists. This diversionary tactic was cleverly employed to conceal the fact that Congress was, through calculation and deceit, forcefully imposing their ultra-liberal agenda on the American people.

Let’s make no mistake about it.  This is socialized medicine that will cost us trillions of dollars that we DO NOT HAVE, but don’t worry…we will print the money to cover the bill. Even better, Congress and the President have decided your liberty means very little to them if it means more control for Washington, so the IRS will now force you to enter into an insurance contract against your will.

When was the last time we had 28 states suing the federal government? When was the last time you had a million people take to the streets in opposition to the actions of Congress? When was the last time we saw such a sweeping sea-change in a congressional election cycle? We are beyond angry. We want the insanity to stop in Washington D.C.

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Indiana resident Scott Womack understands the effects of Obamacare on small-business better than most. As the owner of 12 IHOP restaurants in Indiana and Ohio, Womack employs nearly 1,000 full- and part-time employees and he already offers health insurance to his management staff.

The Heritage Foundation recently interviewed Womack for the latest installment of our “Impact of Obamacare” series and found what he had to say further evidence that the law won’t fix the problems it’s supposed to solve—but, instead, will create new ones.

Take just one example. The new health care law will require him to provide insurance to all full-time employees beginning in 2014. Womack would like to be able to do that—but he simply doesn’t know how he’ll be able to generate the revenue. He estimates the cost of the law to his company to be 50 percent greater than his company’s earnings—in other words, beyond his ability to pay. That means Womack will have to make other changes to compensate for his increased costs—changes that might affect the number and quality of jobs he’s able to offer.

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In the wake of changes to government employee unions’ power in Wisconsin and elsewhere, The Communist Party USA is working in conjunction with national labor unions and other left wing political groups to organize protests in Madison, Wisconsin and across the nation on April 4th.

Scott Marshall, Vice Chair of The Communist Party USA said his organization is working with the likes of MoveOn.org, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO and others to make April 4th, the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a national day of action.

“Support is beginning to grow,” said Marshall in an online meeting earlier this month. “A bunch of organizations already are hyping the idea of massive demonstrations on April 4th.”

The Community Party in particular has benefited from the recent debate over Wisconsin government employee unions’ power to collectively bargain, using the opportunity to build their ranks.

“In this struggle, the question of building the Left and building the Party has to come to the fore,” Marshall said. “Recruiting has picked up, more people are joining the Party and the broader left is getting bigger.”

The Communist Party USA leader said his members cannot just participate alongside other organizations, however. They must continue to join and help lead them.

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It doesn’t take a soothsayer to know that if ObamaCare and the push toward government-run health care continue, America will begin to ration drugs and treatment for the sick and the elderly.

In fact, it may be too late.  Rationing is creeping into the system already.

The Wall Street Journal highlights the latest efforts to “end the cost curve,” this time in Washington State where bureaucrats could decide whether it is “too expensive” to treat kids with diabetes. The Journal in a critical editorial notes:

In 2006, Washington created a board to scrutinize the cost-effectiveness of various surgeries and treatments, known as the Health Technology Assessment program. At a hearing today, the panel will debate glucose monitoring for diabetic children under 18. In other words, the board is targeting the fundamental standard of diabetes care that has been the established medical consensus for at least three decades.

This state issue deserves far more scrutiny, if only because ObamaCare and the stimulus devoted billions of dollars to comparative effectiveness research. As President Obama has so often put it, the idea is to pit Treatment X against Treatment Y and find out “what works and what doesn’t.” In theory, it sounds great. But the Health Technology Assessment is an example of how comparative effectiveness will work in the real world, as the political system tries to find ways to restrict or limit treatment to control entitlement spending.

Of course, Washington State’s effort to reduce the cost of health care is the tip of the rationing iceberg.

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