Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

From using Nazi references to adorning the American Flag with political bumper stickers and using it as a poncho, the full extremism of the left was on display in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend.

Rejecting any attempts at conveying a ‘New Tone,’ pro-labor union activists attempt to drown out speakers at the tea party rally at the State Capitol on April 16, 2011.

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Standard & Poors (S&P), the credit rating agency that started in business more than 150 years ago and operates in 23 countries, issued the ultimate in realty checks this week when they downgraded its credit outlook for the United States.  S&P cited a “material risk” that policymakers may not reach agreement on a plan to trim the large federal budget deficit.

While the agency maintained the country’s top AAA credit rating, it said “Authorities have not made clear how they will tackle long-term fiscal pressures.” S&P said the move signals there is at least a one-in-three chance that it could cut its long-term AAA rating on the United States within two years.

What would a credit rating downgrade mean to the average citizen?  Immediately following a downgrade, the interest required to refinance our debt would climb dramatically and the Federal Reserve would have to print more money resulting in a sharp devaluation of the dollar.  If you think $4 per gallon for gasoline is an outrage, try $8 per gallon or higher.  If you think that your 401(k) took a hit in 2009, how about a permanent hit due to the United States currency losing its value?  Food, energy, clothing, housing and all other staples of life will experience sharp and permanent price increases.  Unemployment will also rise as businesses attempt to adjust to a new and uncertain economy.

It should be absolutely clear that the growing national debt and continued federal budget deficits are a threat to our economy and a clear and present danger to our way of life.  President Obama took office with a $10 trillion debt and a $740 billion federal budget deficit.  Two years later the national debt is $14.2 trillion and the federal budget deficit has reached $1.6 trillion.  Mr. Obama and the Democrats insist that we need to keep spending, even though our debt will exceed our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) before the end of this year.  They insist that rolling back the George Bush era tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 per year and reductions in defense spending is the path to a solution.

The truth is that the additional revenue potential from rolling back those cuts would only equal a maximum of $64 billion per year.  The risk to jobs in our economy by increasing tax rates on many small businesses that are taxed as individuals, S-Corporations, is extremely high.  There could easily be a spike in unemployment as those business owners adjust their planning to preserve their net income.

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There’s been a buzz the last few months about the possibility of Donald Trump running for President. You’d pretty much have to be living under a rock not to know that, or know that polls show there is at least serious curiosity about a Trump candidacy, and genuine interest amongst the GOP. The buzz has been fueled mostly by The Donald himself, but others have helped.

One “helper” is Michael Cohen, an employee of the Trump Organization who ABC News described as “Trump’s ‘pit bull.’” But that “pit bull” runs the risk of biting his master, and Trump would do well to muzzle him.

Cohen is a Democrat, a former supporter of President Obama and clueless to the ways of politics. He told ABC about his role in the Trump Organization:

“It means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit. If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”

This interview was this year in a story about his desire that Trump run. While loyalty is to be admired, this is not exactly the smartest choice of words, to say the least.

Being loyal is one thing, being principled is another.

Cohen’s past as a liberal supporter of Obama and other Democrats (he’s donated to Senator Charles Schumer, for example) is not the best, or even a remotely smart way to endear yourself to conservatives.

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I’ve been following the institutional left for years.  While I’m often disgusted, yet always entertained, by most of the radical left’s behavior on camera, I’m never surprised by much.  Until this.

I have to say, when I first got wind of this video yesterday, I laughed.  A LOT.  I thought it was a joke.

The RoaringLiberal and the Gaa Gaa Guy in the video made their bizarre appearance at a Tea Party rally in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday, where Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin were featured speakers.  A number of counter-protesters showed up at the rally to heckle and scream at the speakers from the periphery of the crowd.  Some adorned t-shirts, others held Kochsucker signs, rang bells and blew whistles; in an effort to drown out Palin’s speech, most booed repeatedly and chanted “Go Home”.  (By now, you may have already seen Andrew Breitbart’s response to those counter-protesters).

These two protesters, however…they stood out.  I think you can see why.

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The Fraternal Order of Police isn’t happy that their union brethren in California recently passed a resolution in support of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Now sitting on death row for executing Philadelphia policeman Daniel J. Faulkner, Mumia has become a rallying point for the left.

On April 14, FOP National President Chuck Canterbury issued a scathing letter to American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.  In part, it read:

I cannot understand why the CFT, which like us represents rank-and-file employees, would support a murderer.  In fact, Abu-Jamal’s victim was a rank-and-file law enforcement officer and a member of F.O.P. Local Lodge #5 in Philadelphia.  I can only assume that the membership did so out of ignorance of the facts or that they were misled by this killer’s propaganda machine.  I want to set the record straight and would respectively, yet urgently, request that you and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) publicly reject this repugnant resolution.

Not likely.  According to PublicSchoolSpending.com, an AFL-CIO spokesperson said the union had no plans to respond to the FOP letter.  The AFT had no comment as of 12:30 pm ET after repeated attempts.

Maybe Canterbury is beginning to understand just how far-left and radical the AFT is.  How sad for the police officers.

The FOP letter ended ominously:

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Does anyone out there know where we can find a copy of the full recording of His Presidency’s comments to donors in Chicago, made accidentally over an open mic?

We have only been able to find select “heavily edited” moments from the recording.

CBS broke the story by releasing the following short clip containing just Obama’s comments about the Republicans thinking he is stupid, and His Presidency’s comments on Paul Ryan:

Click image to see video

But where is the audio of the section where the President of the United States of America referred to some Americans as “slugs?”

He did opine that some employees “are slugs and not trying to do their job. But that’s true of any large institution.”

If His Presidency of the United States referred to a group of Americans as “slugs” and it was recorded, that is news and we deserve to hear it. At least so that we might judge for ourselves just how much insight his comments provide on his assessment of the American people. For all we know, it sounds better than it reads, but it reads pretty bad.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Francis Cianfrocca are joined by Dr. Arthur Laffer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Laffer Center to discuss Paul Ryan’s budget plan, deficits, taxes the economy 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:

The 30-Cent Tax Premium
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It’s becoming clearer that the “public service” mentality is quickly slipping way from government employees, if it didn’t hit the exits a long time ago.

Instead of government employees serving the public, it’s clear now their belief is that the public exists to serve them.  And if the public doesn’t step up, there will be hell to pay.

Why else would a government union president threaten to “weaponize” the jobs of his members?  At the latest union protest in Lansing, Michigan, AFSCME president Herb Sanders explained to the Lansing State Journal:

If necessary, we will use the valuable public service jobs that we perform as a weapon and shut this state down.

You can just feel the love and appreciation for the privilege to suckle at the public teat, can’t you?

There needs to be a real, straightforward way to deal with such behavior.  One of the signs that I laughed at most in Madison was “I am irreplaceable.”

No, you’re not.  Everyone is replaceable.  Everyone can become a liability when their perceived value outweighs reality.

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John Hawkins of RightWing News recently interviewed Andrew Breitbart about his new book.  It’s a fun interview and a great read!

I always find it fascinating when people who used to be liberal say they turned to the right. That happened with you. Can you tell us about it?

Well, it’s a cliché from the left to the right. And it’s usually a story of opportunism in those few cases where the people move from the right to the left. It’s almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible. It was go-along to get-along social. It was living in Los Angeles, being young, and single, and flowing with the trendy liberal crowd.

When I started to work in Hollywood at a fairly low level delivering scripts around town, listening to AM talk radio, I at first listened to it as a novelty. But I started to have certain things in my life going on such as living in a rent controlled apartment, having listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, the OJ Simpson trial — I just started to see trends in my personal experiences that ran so contrary to what the media narratives were. At first I was flummoxed by it and then I just started to listen to certain people on the radio who were more clear thinking than the professors that I had in college.

I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose high lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense but I thought that was my problem. So when I started to listen to conservative thinkers and to read conservative thinkers, there was a clarity of thought. It wasn’t muddled. It wasn’t confusing. It started to make sense at an intellectual level and tie into the values that my parents gave me when I was a young kid that I diverted from when I was in high school.

So it was basically a reconnecting with everything that my parents attempted to instill in me in my youth. It has made me sleep a lot better at night, being centered and oriented with human nature as opposed to living in a world of self loathing nihilism, trying to undo human nature, and trying to create a path towards an unrealistic utopia.

Now, you were recently banned from the front page of The Huffington Post….

Oh, the tragedy of my life.

(Laughs) It is, it is. Apparently you made some sort of ad hominem attack on Van Jones and The Huffington Post has a policy against that. It must have been in place for at least two minutes or so before you were banned. Can you talk about that?

Read the entire review at RightWing News.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Literally.

Perhaps the grammatically incorrect name was a factor.

A 2011 Chevy Cruze (unfortunately, sic) was tooling down the highway at 65 miles per hour.  In it was a grandmother, her daughter and her 19-month old grandson.

Suddenly, the steering wheel just fell off the steering column – left dangling only by a small patch of wires.  Thankfully, the trio somehow managed to swerve to a stop just inches from the roadway guardrail.

All told, about 2,100 Cruzes (Cruzae?) have been recalled for… shall we say – overly tilt-steering.

This mechanical problem serves as a structural metaphor for General Motors (GM)’s ongoing decline.  Which is now becoming entrenched under the government stewardship of federal Car Czar – I mean Chief Executive Officer – Dan Akerson.

And this was all, sadly, quite predictable.

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It is ironic that China is demanding greater control of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, just as the nation’s banking system is about to be devastated by the white hot flames of inflation.
From a distance, China’s economy seems to be the poster child of sustainable growth. Recent government reports show the economy expanding by 9.7%, retail sales up a blistering 17.4%, foreign reserves at $3 trillion, and inflation only 5.4%. But these statistics mask a dark side; Chinese communist authorities have been artificially holding down fierce inflationary pressures by subsidizing consumer prices.

Over the last six months the government artificially restricted increases in retail food prices to 11%, while wholesale commodity food prices have jumped by 35%. In the last two months the government capped retail gasoline price increases at 10%, even as Middle East turmoil caused crude oil prices to leap by over 30%.
Most Americans believe that the secret-weapon of the “China Economic Miracle” has been currency manipulation of Chinese yuan’s exchange rate with the U.S. dollar. In the past two years as Asian economies and foreign exchange reserves expanded dramatically, the yuan gained only 4.6% versus the dollar. This modest rise compares currency gains of 31% for the Indonesian rupiah, 22% for the South Korean won, and 21%for the Singapore dollar. China has subsidized its exporters by recycling its export earnings back into over-valued U.S. dollars. The strategy makes China’s exports more competitive, but at the cost of spiking inflation at home.

The less known and far more important secret-weapon of the “China Economic Miracle” is the absolute control of the banking industry by China’s four largest state-owned banks (“SOB”); Industrial and Commercial Bank, Agricultural Bank, People’s Bank of China and Construction. Since the government does not provide adequate social welfare programs and restricts its citizen’s investment options to bank accounts, about 40% of Chinese household income is deposited in SOBs each month. The SOBs then leverage the deposits by ten times and loan 75% of this massive amount of cash at extremely low interest rates to state-owned-enterprises (“SOE”). The other 25% of lending is allocated to real estate development.

China is no stranger to bankers making risky loans to communist party officials and their crony real estate developers. During the Asian Financial Crisis of the mid-1990s, it is estimated that 40% of all SOB loans were non-performing and most were written off. The Chinese paid for the SOB losses with a 76% devaluation of their currency that crushed the people’s buying-power by 76%. From 1997 to 2004 Chinese frivolous lending was somewhat restrained, but since 2003 the bureaucrats have mandated a massive expansion of lending. In comparison to the U.S. and Europe where bank lending is flat, SOBs have been expanding loans by 25% annually.

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Recently, Portugal officially requested a $116 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. This makes Portugal the third European nation to seek such a bailout in the past year (Greece got $157 billion; Ireland $122 billion). What most people don’t realize is that the U.S. is the largest contributor to the IMF. Therefore, U.S. taxpayers are paying for Portugal’s bailout which – like the earlier bailouts of Greece and Ireland – was caused by too much government spending and borrowing.

Last year, here at BigGovernment.com I warned how the Obama Administration was making a Greek bailout more likely by agreeing in advance that U.S. taxpayers would help foot the bill. Later, the IMF set up a $356 billion bailout fund for European governments with the consent of the Obama Administration– even though the fund will likely cost U.S. taxpayers between $50-100 billion and possibly more – all without a Congressional vote or consultation.

On April 29, 2010, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and I wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warning of the dangers of U.S. participation in a Greek bailout. “The Obama Administration needs to understand that bailing out Greece will not solve Greece’s problems,” I said at the time. “It will only create a moral hazard that gets America more involved in the gathering storm of European bailouts.” That storm has since consumed Ireland and Portugal and others may be on the way.

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Today is the deadline to file federal taxes. (DC had its own public holiday on Friday, pushing the deadline to today.) Good luck!

Since it is tax-filing season and we all want to honor our wonderful tax system, let’s go into the archives and show this video from last year about the onerous compliance costs of the internal revenue code.

Narrated by Hiwa Alaghebandian of the American Enterprise Institute, the mini-documentary explains how needless complexity creates an added burden – sort of like a hidden tax that we pay for the supposed privilege of paying taxes.

Two things from the video are worth highlighting.

First, we should make sure to put most of the blame on Congress. As Ms. Alaghebandian notes, the IRS is in the unenviable position of trying to enforce Byzantine tax laws. Yes, there are examples of grotesque IRS abuse, but even the most angelic group of bureaucrats would have a hard time overseeing 70,000-plus pages of laws and regulations (by contrast, the Hong Kong flat tax, which has been in place for more than 60 years, requires less than 200 pages).

Second, we should remember that compliance costs are just the tip of the iceberg. The video also briefly mentions three other costs.

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GM, Obama’s favorite federally owned car company, was thrilled to report in March that sales figures for the Chevy Cruze helped put the company on the fast track to success but it wasn’t the best news when the wheels began to literally fall off the Cruze causing a recall of GM’s “success” story.

As we will remember, last November Obama proclaimed GM a great success story, one that justified his raging fever for bailouts. This March GM buttressed Obama’s glowing account by reporting rosy sales figures in which the Chevy Cruze made a big appearance. Then GM reported that the Cruze and the Malibu accounted for “98,950 sales – roughly one of every four Chevrolets sold in the first quarter.”

But let’s not break out the champagne too soon because only weeks after GM celebrated sales of the Cruze, at least one steering wheel popped off in transit. It’s a literal case of the wheels coming off GMs success story.

In one case, a Chevy Cruze owner was driving 65 MPH on a highway when her steering wheel broke right off. With her in the car were her young son and her own elderly mother. None were hurt fortunately.

Now GM is recalling 2,100 cars in hopes of preventing another such unfortunate accident.

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“The Donald” for President? Would any Republican have considered the idea of a “President Trump” six months ago?

On both sides of the political aisle, people are doubting Trump’s “seriousness” as a candidate.

Democrats are snickering and mocking Trump- and not just about his hair. White House adviser David Plouffe touts that he “hopes” Trump is the Republican candidate- kind of in the same way Democrats say they “hope” Sarah Palin is the candidate, implying that both are easily beatable.

The skepticism regarding Trump’s seriousness has been further heightened- in both Republican and Democrat political classes-by Trump’s recent focus on whether the president was born in this country. Both Republican strategist Karl Rove and Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren have openly criticized Trump for bringing the potentially toxic issue front and center once again, asserting that he is simply playing right into the hands of the Democrats.

Pundits claim the only reason why Trump could be running is because the Republican field of candidates is so weak. In fact, this past week’s Public Policy Polling survey, of the national 2012 presidential race, shows President Obama maintaining, or slightly increasing, his share of the vote over his Republican opponent, whether that individual is Huckabee, Romney, Christie, Rand Paul, Gingrich, or Palin. Donald Trump was not included in this survey.

Another recent poll of New Hampshire Republicans, by the same organization, has Mitt Romney as a front-runner among likely Republican primary voters, with 27%, Donald Trump, with 21%, and Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich tied for third place, with 12% of the vote.

And the most recent national Republican poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling, shows Trump in the lead, with 26%, Mike Huckabee, with 17%, Mitt Romney, 15%, and Newt Gingrich, with 11%. Another poll, conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, has Trump tied with Huckabee, at 17%, behind Romney, at 21%, among Republican primary voters.

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This past Friday, the DOJ shut down internet poker titans Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and Poker Stars for alleged violations of the UIGEA.  This bizarre little act of Congress was attached as amendment to the Safe Port Act back in 2006.

The UIGEA did not actually make internet gambling illegal.  Instead, it made it illegal for financial institutions to knowingly process money transfers for online gambling.  Although a few poker sites left the US market at the time, and there have been various hiccups in the processing of deposits and withdrawals from player’s accounts, the UIGEA for the most part had been a non-issue. Poker sites, especially Full Tilt, always found a workaround.  They had set up tons of shell entities to make it appear as though player transactions were being processed for non-gambling goods and services.  So, strictly speaking, the websites are in violation of the UIGEA.  We can’t dismiss that they have been breaking the law.  But with billions of dollars at stake, they understandably took the risk.  Since players themselves were not at legal risk, the system worked just fine.  Until Friday. Then the owners of the websites were charged with a lot of violations of the UIGEA, including money laundering.

Freedom-loving individuals can thank Republicans Rep. Jim Leach, Rep. Robert Goodlatte, Sen. Bill Frist, and Sen. John Kyl for playing nanny-staters to thousands of online gamblers.  However, you can also thank 409 members of the House and every single member of the Senate for passing the bill.  Then again, it was attached to the Safe Port Act – yielding yet another reason why procedure needs to change to forestall the attachment of amendments that have nothing to do with the bills they are attached to.

We usually expect Democrats to place restrictions on our freedom, yet there is this curious sect of Republicans that somehow feel they can legislate morality.   But even the moral argument for the bill makes no sense.  In fact, the moral hypocrisy of the bill is beyond outrageous.  The authors of the bill did nothing about state lotteries – a sad, sick method of regressive taxation that has been proven to harm the poor.  Yet this practice always gets a pass because of the revenue it generates for each of the states.   This made the bill’s passage all the more mystifying.  Why not tax gambling revenues instead and legalize the gaming?

The motivation for the bill literally makes no sense.  As my old math teacher, a devotee of Lewis Carroll, once said, “Worthy of a trip down the rabbit hole!”. Then again, since when does government make sense?

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From Businessweek:

The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund’s board.

The fund, whose $19.9 billion in assets ranked it behind Harvard University’s endowment as of August, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, added about $500 million in gold investments to an existing stake last year, said Bruce Zimmerman, the endowment’s chief executive officer. The holdings are worth about $987 million, based on yesterday’s closing price of $1,486 an ounce for Comex futures.

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