Today, in 1933, FDR signed an Executive Order prohibiting the private ownership of gold. Worse, the order directed private citizens to turn their gold over to the federal government.

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) featured Bernadine Dohrn as its keynote regional conference speaker APRIL 2.   The NLG is a progressive bar association funded in part by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  While the NLG claims to be a civil rights organization, its focus lies elsewhere.  In fact, the NLG’s anthem “human rights shall be held more sacred than property interests” only thinly disguises it’s radical leanings.

Bernadine Dohrn is known for her involvement with the Weather Underground.  At one point, the FBI placed her on its list of 10 most wanted.  Her husband, Bill Ayers, was co-founder of this revolutionary group.   In a 2011 interview with the NY Times, Ms. Dohrn’s husband reiterated,  ”I don’t regret setting bombs…I feel we didn’t do enough.”

As a fugitive, Ms. Dohrn remained a leader in the Weather Underground as it continued to plant bombs at government buildings in an effort to mount a communist revolution.  Three people were killed as a result of the organization’s bomb-making activities in 1970.

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Tabitha Hale of FreedomWorks was assaulted by a union member a little while back during a protest outside of her office. Today, the Media Research Center went to another union rally and spotted the man responsible for attacking Tabitha.

Our own Joe Schoffstall confronted the man and asked if he regretted doing what he did. While he wouldn’t talk about the situation, he also wouldn’t say that he regretted hitting her and walked away.

Here it is:

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Part I here.

The drug sting was going exactly as planned until the moment an undercover police officer from Chandler, Ariz., was shot through the chest.

Detective Carlos Ledesma died a short time later. Two of his fellow officers were badly wounded, and two of the suspects died in the shootout that erupted without warning inside a south Phoenix home in July 2010.

Narcotics detectives from the suburban Chandler Police Department were running a “reverse sting,” a controversial and dangerous tactic in which the police pose as the sellers in high-dollar drug deals. When the sale takes place, the police seize the cash and keep it for their agency’s use under Arizona’s forfeiture law. The expected haul from the operation that night was a quarter-million dollars the suspects agreed to pay for 500 pounds of marijuana.

Reverse stings have long been a lucrative staple for Chandler police.

The operations follow a predictable pattern. They are put together by confidential informants, who are sometimes paid on commission to find people willing to pay cash for large amounts of marijuana. Once a buyer is found, police get the marijuana from the department’s evidence room and pose as sellers. After the drugs and money are exchanged, the agency’s SWAT team moves in to make the arrests and take the money.

Most of the reverse stings run by Chandler police take place far outside the city’s boundaries, most often in Phoenix. Of the 20 reverse stings the agency staged in the year leading up to Ledesma’s death, only four had any connection to Chandler, court records show.

The operation Ledesma died in followed the pattern precisely until the shooting started.

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The Congressional Review Act (CRA) Resolution of Disapproval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 21st illegal Internet power grab, executed so they could then impose Network Neutrality – will be marked up today, and brought to the House floor for a full vote this week.

This is our first opportunity to rein in the Barack Obama Administration’s ongoing, all-encompassing effort to bypass Congress and enact their Leftist policies via executive branch regulatory fiat.

There are thirteen swing-district Democrats on whom pressure has been put by their leadership to stand for the ridiculous and oppressive notion that is Net Neutrality – by voting Nay on the CRA Resolution.

Let’s persuade them otherwise, shall we?

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There are—of course—the Grammys, the Emmys, and the Oscars, but the Sammies? You won’t see Kanye, Rosie, or Bragelina at this year’s Sammies, rather  you’ll see Omid Malekan, Rob Port, and Michelle Minton—all finalists for what our keynote speaker, John Stossel, describes as “an award that matters.”

No one knows the Sammies better than Andrew Breitbart, who rallied the crowd with his keynote address last year, and returns next Friday, April 8th as a judge and presenter.

Andrew Breitbart with Sammie winner John Papola and John’s wife Lisa at the 2010 Sammies reception.

But while those other awards shows are by the industry and for the industry, the Sammies are a breath of fresh air compared to those musty rooms of punch-drunk self-congratulators. The Sammies recognizes citizens who effectively stand up in defense of freedom—the very idea that makes Hollywood cringe and the rest of those awards shows even possible.

This year the Sammies is “redrawing the lines”—better yet, the Sammies is honoring those who redrew the lines on the American political landscape in 2010. These great Americans erased the “Rs” and the “Ds,” challenged the traditional left-right trap, and took on the political establishment who has been running the show for too long.

In the mold of other awards shows, the Sammies offers prizes in several categories, including the “Watchdog,” the “Reformer,” and the “Modern Day Sam Adams.” Among the finalists this year is Tim Eyman who successfully used initiatives in Washington to challenge tax increases and Toby Marie Walker whose Tea Party propelled her from local grassroots activist to national pundit.

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The President was on record last week saying that he has no plan to suspend deportations for illegal aliens. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. So Judicial Watch is going to court — again — to try to force the truth out of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Judicial Watch filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the DHS to obtain records detailing the Obama administration’s alleged plan to grant legal status to illegal aliens without going through Congress, a strategy commonly known as “stealth amnesty.”

On July 2, 2010, Judicial Watch sent a FOIA request to the DHS to obtain the following information: “Any and all records of communications between the Department of Homeland Security and any of the following entities, concerning ‘deferred action’ or ‘parole’ to suspend removal proceedings against a particular individual or group of individuals for a specific timeframe; as well as records of communications concerning ‘selective reprieve’ to the segment of the population holding expired visas: The White House; The Executive Office of the President; any third parties.” We’re also after internal DHS communications regarding “deferred action or parole.”

Then on August 30, 2010, Judicial Watch followed up with yet another FOIA request to DHS looking for the following information:

• Any and all records of, and/or records concerning, Department of Homeland Security briefings regarding a systematic review of pending immigration cases against suspected illegal immigrants in Houston, Texas.
• Any and all records of general guidelines issued to Department of Homeland Security attorneys, allowing dismissal of pending immigration cases.
• Any and all records detailing the determination and implementation of a systematic review of pending immigration cases against suspected illegal immigrants in Houston, Texas.
• Any and all correspondence with non-governmental organizations…concerning the process for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to give consideration of possible dismissal of pending immigration cases.

The DHS acknowledged receipt of the FOIA requests. However, to date the agency has failed to provide a single document.

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Obviously, the team here at the The Bigs has spent a lot of time covering the Pigford scandal and we plan to give you a lot more coverage in the coming weeks. But I’ve noticed something that’s come up a number of times in comments and I’d like to take the chance to address it; the idea that the Pigford case is an unwinnable fight that’s over and done with.

This just isn’t true. Pigford is a battle we can win and the consequences are potentially huge.

First, let’s address the issue of money. Between the first and second Pigford settlement about $2.5 billion dollars has been allocated. About half of that money has been sent out as payments for Pigford I and it’s highly unlikely that any of that money is recoverable.  That’s the bad news.

On the other hand, the billion and a half dollars that has been misallocated by President Obama for the Pigford II settlement has not been sent out yet. In fact no checks are expected to be written until 2012 at the earliest. That means that there’s still time to get an investigation going that will stop those checks – most of which we believe our investigation will show are scheduled to go to people who never farmed a day in their life —  from ever being cut.

One thing that the advocates of Pigford absolutely do not want is an investigation. In fact as Georgia Democratic Congressman Sanford Bishop told a group of farmers, “If they investigate Pigford, they’ll shut this thing down.” You can also see this same attitude coming from the panicked responses of the “professional Pigford class”; those people like Thomas Burrell and Dr. John Boyd who run organizations that profit from the continuation of Pigford fraud.

Just as important, I still believe that there’s a chance to get justice for the actual farmers who face discrimination. However I think that this will only happen by first shutting down Pigford fraud and getting an investigation going.

So, how do we help get investigation started in Congress?

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The Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, will be unveiling his FY2012 budget tomorrow. Not all the details are public information, but what we do know is very encouraging.

Ryan’s plan is a broad reform package, including limits on so-called discretionary spending, limits on excessive pay for federal bureaucrats, and steep reductions in corporate welfare.

But the two most exciting parts are entitlement reform and tax reform. Ryan’s proposals would simultaneously address the long-run threat of bloated government and put in place tax policies that will boost growth and improve competitiveness.

1. The long-run fiscal threat to America is entitlement spending. Ryan’s plan will address this crisis by block-granting Medicaid to the states (repeating the success of the welfare reform legislation of the 1990s) and transforming Medicare for future retirees into a “premium-support” plan (similar to what was proposed as part of the bipartisan Domenici-Rivlin Debt Reduction Task Force).

2. America’s tax system is a complicated disgrace that manages to both undermine growth and promote corruption. The answer is a simple and fair flat tax, and Ryan’s plan will take an important step in that direction with lower tax rates, less double taxation of saving and investment, and fewer distorting loopholes.

One potential criticism is that the plan reportedly will not balance the budget within 10 years, at least based on the antiquated and inaccurate scoring systems used by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation. While I would prefer more spending reductions, I’m not overly fixated on getting to balance with 10 years.

What matters most is “bending the cost curve” of government.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the differing unemployment statistics, and the consequences of long term unemployment benefits.

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:

Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Rate at 10.0% in March
Coffee & Markets: Friday’s discussion of unemployment numbers
Jobs and Wages

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The Tea Party held a rally outside the Capitol Building last week to demand that congressional Republicans demand significant cuts in federal spending. The outlook is bad. House Republicans are fighting to hold on to the $61 billion in spending cuts they approved in February, a mere rounding error in a budget totaling about $3.8 trillion.

This most recent rally shows how the Tea Party has continued the fight to make itself heard in Washington. But in Ohio there’s a new focus: local politics.

“I have no expectation of anything coming out of congress that’s going to be very close to what I’d like to see happen,” says Chris Littleton, president of both the Cincinnati Tea Party and the Ohio Liberty Council, which is an umbrella group of 65 Tea Party and other activist groups in the buckeye state. “But we can have a greater degree of effect at the state level.”

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Three Dane County Democratic lawmakers want to charge a free market think tank more than $7,500  to comply with open record requests for correspondence regarding one legislative initiative.

In a letter to several state lawmakers, dated March 24th, The MacIver Institute requested:

“Copies of all correspondence you have received or sent, (including, but not limited to, letters, emails, voice mails, records of phone calls, and logs of in-person meetings) regarding the subject of changes to Wisconsin’s collective bargaining laws for public employees. This request covers such correspondence received or sent between January 1, 2011 and March 23, 2011.”

In an email response dated March 30, Representative Mark Pocan (D-Madison) personally alleged it would take two staffers, working full time, two weeks to comply with the request.

“A quick review of our office files pertaining to collective bargaining laws for public employees, 2011 SSSB 11, 2011 SSAB 11, and 2011 Wis. Act 10 indicates that there are over 8,000 documents that would meet this search criteria,” Pocan wrote. “Our office anticipates that copying costs for this request will be a minimum of $1,500 and that fulfilling this request will require approximately 80 hours of staff time, which if pro rated for staff salaries, would cost approximately $2,600.

Mike Murray, a member of Representative Joe Parisi (D-Madison) staff offered a similar response via email one day earlier.

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The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes.  It is very easy to say yes.

-Tony Blair

Much focus has been on the National Government since the election of 2010.  Of course, the real story of that election remains the overwhelming victory of Republicans in the state legislatures.  88 chambers had elections with Democrats dominating 52-33 (2 equal and 1 non-partisan), and now Republicans dominate 53-32 (2 equal and 1 non-partisan), picking up nearly 700 seats.

The importance of these legislators lies in the fact that they represent the first crop of tea party candidates that will reform the political process from the bottom up.  Yes, there are tea party candidates nationally, but the access to our state legislators makes it easier to maintain influence.

Missouri remained red, but with term-limits, many new legislators have come to office.  The Senate has a veto-proof majority, and the House is near veto-proof.  However, the influx of tea party influence has not been all roses and butterflies.  Leadership, especially on the House side, seems more intent on horse-trading politics than accommodating the new tea party mentality.

On the other hand, 4 state senators seem to get it.  Senators Jim Lembke (R-St. Louis), Brian Nieves (R-Washington), Rob Schaaf (R-St. Joseph) and Will Kraus (R-Lee’s Summit) have taken a principled stance on a number of issues, but one in particular has earned them the ire of Missouri’s establishment media and Democrat governor.

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We have twice already looked at the debacle that is General Motors (GM) under the TARP-bought, government-sponsored guidance of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dan Akerson.

It’s been terrible.  And it’s getting much, much worse.

What we are witnessing is what always happens when the government tries to run something – completely ignorant incompetence that leads to terrible decisions and horrendous results.

Social Security?  Broke.  Medicare?  Broke.  Medicaid?  Broke.  The Post Office?  Broke.  Amtrak?  Broke.

The government even lost money running the famous Mustang Ranch brothel.

The feds couldn’t turn a profit selling sex.

And now they’re trying to sell cars.  And their cardboard cut-out man for the job – Akerson – is simply not up to the task.  And – more devastating to the endeavor – will put into practice whatever dreadful mandate that is handed down by his D.C. masters.

Akerson’s short-term thinking – in the long-term thinking auto industry – has thus far really poorly served GM and its shareholders.

Who are – again – We the Taxpayers.

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Today, in 1949, NATO was founded. With the Libya operation, we may soon be able to mark the day of its end. It went out with a whimper.

Few seem to be.  At least not in the Administration they aren’t, nor among the spenders in Congress or the government-employee unionists who are manning the barricades (in some cases, quite literally) in state capitals throughout the country.

What would you think if George Soros were organizing his fellow anti-American, globalist, neo-Marxist “thought leaders,” in pursuit of globally governed banking and finance, in a second Bretton Woods conference?

Would you consider that their goals include dragging American influence and incomes down, while confiscating much of our personal finances and giving them to other nations (and yes, the age-old financier network behind them) in the name of “communitarianism?”

Would you find their goal is to replace the bad influences of the IMF and the World Bank, with a much worse, more powerfully controlling, post-American global apparatus?

What would you think, if that meeting were being held this April 8th through 11th?

I got an email, last week; it was Tuesday the 22nd.  It was from George Soros.  To hear as straight from the dragon’s mouth as feasible, I had subscribed.  In this emailed article, he lamented the inequities of wealth among the nation-states of Europe, under the strains of their continuing insolvency crisis.  He warned of the dangers of national interest.  Rather, he proposed, not surprisingly, a further blowing of the global insolvency bubble, so the more indebted European nations may get along owing, while their lending nations get along being owed — all the while, blending and worsening the  financial and monetary crises and spreading this yeasty recipe further throughout the world, especially to America.

That was quite provocative.

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A new study from the Adam Smith Institute in the United Kingdom provides overwhelming evidence that class-warfare tax policy is grossly misguided and self-destructive. The authors examine the likely impact of the 10-percentage point increase in the top income tax rate, which was imposed as an election-year stunt by former  Gordon Brown and then kept in place by his feckless successor, David Cameron.

They find that boosting the top tax rate to 50 percent will slow economic performance. And because of both macroeconomic and microeconomic responses, tax revenues over the next 10 years are likely to drop by the equivalent of more than $550 billion. Here’s a key paragraph from the executive summary of the new study.

The country is suffering from a 50%-­plus marginal tax rate which even its architect admits was imposed without economic purpose. Now our analysis shows that the policy is set for failure: at best leading to flat growth for a decade and £350bn of lost revenue. The Chancellor should seize the occasion of the 2011 budget to reverse this disaster promptly, for the benefit of public revenues, economic growth, the government’s standing with domestic wealth-creators, and the UK’s reputation with world business.

The authors urge Prime Minister Cameron to reverse this disastrous policy, but the odds of that happening are very slight. I hope I’m wrong, but I have repeatedly noted that Cameron almost always makes the wrong choice when deciding between liberty and statism.

President Obama wants to impose similar policies in the United States and there is every reason to expect similarly poor results. I’ve already posted evidence from IRS data showing that the rich paid much more tax following the Reagan tax cuts, so it shouldn’t shock anybody when the reverse happens if Obama is successful in moving America back toward a 1970s-style tax system.

To emphasize these critical points, let’s close with two videos. This first video explains the Laffer Curve and why politicians are foolish if they assume that there is a fixed linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue.

This second video debunks the notion of class-warfare tax policy.

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