Before his speech at The Heritage Foundation last week to discuss his new book, Andrew Breitbart sat down with us to discuss the power of the media and the continued influence of the Tea Party. Throughout the book, Breitbart relays his experiences dealing with a largely hostile media, something he discussed in the interview. “I have friends at ABC, and CBS, and NBC. Some of them are conservatives, some of them are just decent people and they tell me it’s impossible to pitch an idea that goes against [the network's] view. It’s impossible.”

When asked about his optimism for conservatism in the future, Breitbart said he was “beyond optimistic.”

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A tremendously important story has gone virtually untold by the media, ignored by our political leaders, and unknown to the American public. Despite the extraordinarily high price they have paid, America’s severely wounded veterans are enduring humiliating financial hardships of epic proportions. Home evictions, utility shutoffs, car repossessions, and foreclosures are commonplace.

“The Armed Forces Family Aid Concert” seeks to benefit those families suffering severe financial hardship.

The concert is scheduled to take place April 29th through May 1st on a 40 acre farm outside of Dayton, Ohio. Bands from across America and of all music backgrounds (rock, country, rap, blues, etc) will be performing, including Congressman Thad McCotter (R-MI) and his band, The Flying Squirrels!

Yours Truly will act as one of the Emcee’s.

Rep. McCotter

A Congress that thinks nothing of spending trillions on bailouts and stimulus packages has mostly turned a deaf ear on our severely disabled vets. Often times spouses of returning veterans have to give up their jobs to become caregivers, cutting family incomes in half. Most disabled vets receive much less in compensation and benefits than they did while on active duty, reducing family incomes even further. Many are too dysfunctional to hold a meaningful job, if any, because of the devastating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Some time ago I interviewed one such vet and his spouse, Mr. and Mrs. Kim Tanner. Mr. Tanner worked as a truck driver while serving with the Army, often driving 12 to 14 hours a day delivering weapons and supplies throughout Iraq. The effects of numerous blasts from exploding roadside bombs has left him suffering from severe PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. Today he lives with memory loss, speech impairment, and hearing loss. He is unable to work long periods of time at his part-time post office job. (more…)

Today, Texas Congressman Ron Paul is expected to announce another campaign for President. Things are definitely getting weird.

After months of denial that healthcare reform would involve rationing of healthcare for those who are the most vulnerable, the senior citizens who depend on Medicare, the President has come up with a proposal to decrease healthcare costs and guess what….it’s rationing.

Under Obamacare, a 15 member panel known as the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) was created to ‘oversee healthcare costs’. This panel consists of individuals appointed by the President and confirmed by Congress – two ingredients that make it highly unlikely that they would be truly independent. In addition, there is no requirement that members be practicing physicians which is a recipe for cuts that are highly likely to affect the delivery of quality individualized patient care.

Under his deficit reduction plan, the President proposes to expand the power of this unelected entity to increase the GDP growth per capita cut from the current 1% to 5%. In addition, under his proposal Medicaid payments to states would also be tightly controlled and access to drugs would be limited through spending on prescription drugs.

There are two things that make this proposal doomed to fail if the goal is to decrease health costs while providing quality care:

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This past tax day I wrote an article examining whether the government might soon be coming after content creators like Google or Netflix.  Such a notion would leave many in complete befuddlement after the past two years have seen the pro-Net Neutrality camp deeply entrenched in spreading concerns of impending doom that would be headed to the Internet if we continued even one more day without a regulatory regime placing its grip over the network.

One must understand that the heart of the much of the Network Neutrality debate has been the fear that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like that of Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T would begin charging content creators to receive prioritized connections to the Internet.  If they were to do this, then the pro-regulation crowd suggests that this would create an unfair advantage for large or established web companies and that small startup companies would not have the capital to pay these fees or “taxes” for faster, prioritized service and would therefore be at an immediate disadvantage.  Therefore any present day suggestion that any governmental agency or program should place a taxation on content as a right of way to exist on the Internet seems contrary and ironic to the goals and concerns that have been much of the fight for the pro-regulatory side of the debate.

At a February 23rd Congressional Internet Caucus panel, Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA) who notes themselves as being “the voice of rural telecommunications” said that, “We would really like to see the FCC also grapple with the contribution side of the equation as well.”

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Earlier today, Big Government brought you video footage of a disturbing college course from University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). In the course, Professors Judy Ancel and Don Giljam instruct students on how fear, intimidation and, even, industrial sabotage are important and, often, necessary tools for union activists.

In this new video, the professors make clear that they aren’t just speaking in theoretical terms. Union official Don Giljum recounts several anecdotes where he, or other union officials, used threats to strengthen their negotiating positions (or simply get two-weeks paid time off work). Professor Ancel recounts favorably a tactic used by a friend of hers in a union protest in Peru. (Her story will be particularly interesting to any cat lovers out there.)

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If you are wondering why some folks are starting to question whether a college education is worth the cost, the video below goes a long way towards explaining it. Recently, the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) sponsored two college courses: Introduction to Labor Studies and Labor Politics and Society, to be taught simultaneously through a video conference between to two campuses.

The Professors are Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC and  Don Giljum, business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers at Ameren UE in St. Louis. (Bonus: he is a member of the Communist Party.)

In the class, the Professors not only advocate the occasional need for violence and industrial sabotage, they outline specific tactics that can be used. As one of our colleagues pointed out, its the matter-of-factness of it all that is so disturbing.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Francis Cianfrocca is joined by David Malpass, economist former Reagan administration official and founder of Encima Global to discuss the Fed, raising the debt ceiling and how the government is a “silent partner” in American business.

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 Weak-Dollar Threat to Prosperity
How the Fed Is Holding Back Recovery
Near-Zero Rates Are Hurting the Economy
David Malpass on CNBC: Letter To Bernanke: Stop QE2
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Would it surprise you to learn that Obama believes it is his “prerogative” to ignore the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law when it comes to appointing czars? That’s essentially what he said recently.

Here’s the scoop according to Politico:

President Barack Obama is planning to ignore language in the 2011 spending package that would ban several top White House advisory posts.

House Republicans tacked on language to the contentious spending bill to cut the salaries for four so-called czars — policy advisers appointed to assist the president on health care, climate change, autos and manufacturing, and urban affairs.

But in a signing statement issued Friday, Obama said he’s not obligated to comply.

“The president also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it,” the statement said.

The president added that the ban on czars would undermine “the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” (Did you catch that? Obama is telling us he must ignore the Constitution to protect the Constitution. Many Obama administration czars have not been subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate as required by the Constitution.)

Unfortunately for Republicans, the four czars they listed in the bill are no longer serving in their czar positions and will be unaffected by the legislation. (The Obama administration keeps shuffling the deck, moving people in and out of positions of power thereby making them difficult to track.) Still, the main point here is not the fates of these particular four czars, but rather the Obama administration’s willingness to thwart the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Constitution and install unelected, unconfirmed bureaucrats into positions of power with no oversight whatsoever!

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From MarketWatch:

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

According to the IMF forecast, whomever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

Most people aren’t prepared for this.

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There hasn’t been much good economic news in recent years, but one bright spot for the economy is that the United States is a haven for foreign investors and this has helped attract more than $10 trillion to American capital markets according to Commerce Department data.

These funds are hugely important for the health of the U.S. financial sector and are a critical source of funds for new job creation and other forms of investment.

This is a credit to the competitiveness of American banks and other financial institutions, but we also should give credit to politicians. For more than 90 years, Congress has approved and maintained laws to attract investment from overseas. As a general rule, foreigners are not taxed on interest they earn in America. Moreover, by not requiring it to be reported to the IRS, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have effectively blocked foreign governments from taxing this U.S.-source income.

This is why it is so disappointing and frustrating that the Internal Revenue Service is creating grave risks for the American economy by pushing a regulation that would drive a significant slice of this foreign capital to other nations. More specifically, the IRS wants banks to report how much interest they pay foreign depositors so that this information can be forwarded to overseas tax authorities.

Yes, you read correctly.

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There are number of factors that could lead to the Pigford scandal becoming a political issue in Iowa, of all places. The state’s demographics – about 95% Caucasian – might make this seem unlikely but it’s very interesting how many of the major political players in the Pigford scandal are from the heartland state.

1) One of the major Senate proponents of Pigford is Republican Chuck Grassley

2) The major political opponent of Pigford is Republican representative Steve King

3) USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, is also the former governor of Iowa who also served in the state legislature with Steve King. Vilsack has made Pigford a priority in his administration and has opposed any efforts to investigate fraud in the settlement.

4) Vilsack was also the fall guy in the forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod; Mrs. Sherrod has stated publicly that she believes the White House was behind her firing because she was told this by USDA Undersecretary Cheryl Cook. Vilsack has denied White House involvement. The White House and the USDA both had good reasons for not wanting publicity about Pigford and Mrs. Sherrod; she, her husband Charles and the New Communities farm that she helped manage were by far the largest single recipients of Pigford money, getting over $13 million.

5) Vilsack’s USDA also did an end run around the court decision and created their own expedited process to give money to women and Hispanic farmers — and significantly, women and Hispanics who claim to have attempted to farm. This “attempted to farm” distinction is exactly what led to significant fraud in Pigford.

6) Sec. Vilsack and Sen. Grassley have both praised “Dr.” John Boyd and have advocated using Boyd for outreach in the Pigford, women and Hispanic farmers cases. For more on John Boyd watch the segment from my documentary Pigford Blues.

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As we have opined in the recent past, we believe the Ryan budget plan is still a work in progress and not a panacea for the nation’s budget, deficit and debt woes.  It is, however, the first serious congressional attempt to identify most (not quite all) of the structural issues that play havoc with the integrity of our national fisc, and advance serious steps to reform these fiscal time bombs that are ticking loudly and rapidly. We believe almost everyone now hears the ticking, except those who live and work in the isolation of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

President Obama seems to have his eyes focused like a laser on the rapidly advancing 2012 election season, and has responded to the Ryan budget proposal with campaign-crafted rhetoric that unblushingly stakes out political battle lines rather than serious alternatives.  His twofold objective is to try to cut Ryan off at the knees before too many people rally behind the Wisconsin congressman’s approach to budget reform, while simultaneously staking out for himself a strong populist position for the upcoming election.  Keep in mind that Ryan proposed a detailed framework for the 2012 budget.  Obama not only did not make a Presidential proposal, he made a campaign stump speech.

Sadly, this is no time to be playing politics with the budget.  Last week, April 18^th, Standard & Poors put the U.S. Government on notice that it risks losing its AAA credit rating unless policy makers agree on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt.

“If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns,” New York-based S&P said in a report that maintained its top rating on U.S. long-term debt while lowering the outlook to “negative” for the first time.

The Treasury Department scoffed at the S&P outlook complaining that the rating agency “underestimates” U.S. leadership. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee also rejected the S&P’s negative outlook, calling it a “political judgment” that he said doesn’t deserve “too much weight.”  Well, given that Standard and Poors has determined that the U.S. fiscal profile is meaningfully weaker (emphasis added) than that of peer AAA sovereigns, we wouldn’t be quite as dismissive as the Administration’s folks at Treasury and the Council of Economic Advisors.  The S&P forecast is based on an experienced and independent view of today’s sovereign bond markets and can’t be brushed away with the back of the hand.

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Today, in 1917, Ella Fitzgerald was born.

Our current administration and swarms of socialists for decades before it have repeated the dogma that the rich get rich on the backs of the poor.  This fallacy deserves no place in genuine political discourse.  In fact, the opposite will be true given the policies that come from such a premise – all of society will get poor on the backs of the ‘rich’ chained by government.

First off, if a rich person can only get rich by bilking the poor person, this implies that there is a finite amount of wealth in an economy.  This defies all logic.  There is an infinite amount of wealth because there are an infinite amount of ideas that can be converted into goods and services, the competition of which increases quality, decreases cost and spreads the wealth to all of society.  The imagination of the entrepreneur is boundless, and the transformation of ideas to tangible wealth can only be constrained by taxes, regulations and the economic uncertainty generated by a political class responding to constituents who seek to use the law to benefit themselves at the cost of others.

Taking a step back, when those like Barack Obama speak about the “rich,” they never define who these heartless souls are.  The term ‘rich’ as regards tax policy is a misnomer.  It is the highest earners that are the rich; it is the highest earners in society that provide the disproportionate amount of wealth that the government forcibly takes and redistributes.  This is not a static class.  People can move from high income brackets to low income brackets at any time in a free economy.  Only in a socialist economy do the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor at the whim of the political class, whereas in the free economy it is determined by how much society values one’s services.

Which brings us to the fact that when Obama and his comrades speak of the ‘rich’ in derisive terms, there is never any discussion of how the high earner becomes the high earner.

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Some people think that marriage is the most absurd institution ever invented by man. But those that think so are ignoring what is truly the most idiotic, paradoxically absurd practice in all of human history: government. Yeah, yeah, necessary evil and all, but still there is nothing that exemplifies human folly better than politics and Washington State has uncorked a doozie for us.

From coast to coast and all over the world liberals are mindlessly going gaga for green. Anything that smacks of greenism is, with religious fervor, promoted and revered. The electric automobile, for instance, is one of the left’s dream modes of transportation. Pursuant to that dreamy green dream, liberals have made sure that all sort of tax breaks are lavished upon those citizens who dutifully jump up to their necks into the unprofitable and technologically untested world of electric cars. Washington State is no exception to this mania.

… and hilarity ensues.

The Associated Press is even a bit snarky about the whole mess.

After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation’s first electric car fee.

Yes, that’s right. After giving them tax breaks to waste their money on electric cars, now Washington State wants to raise new taxes on those very same buyers. If that isn’t a bait and switch, what is?

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When Sarah Palin asked America if they really wanted a community organizer as president, some Obama acolytes posited that Jesus was a community organizer.  In addition, these self-proclaimed theologians stretched it further by stating that the man who ordered Jesus to be crucified, Pontius Pilate, was a governor like Sarah Palin (see Representative Steve Cohen(D-TN)).

Others counter that Pontius Pilate tried to free Jesus.  He gave a crowd what should have been an easy choice:  free Jesus or free an infamous murderer Barabbas.  Upon this offer of freedom for Jesus, several community organizers incited the crowd to yell: Crucify Jesus!  Free Barabbas!  These people argue that these community leaders acted like Acorn-styled community organizers like the organizers in Wisconsin and other states. (more…)