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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Thomas de Waal to discuss the modern Chechnya in a post-war environment where suspicions are high and cultures crash.

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:

Chechens I Used to Know
‘Chechnya’s bin Laden’ Killed by Russian Troops
Clashes in Russia’s Caucasus kill 10 rebels
Thomas de Waal’s The Caucasus: An Introduction
Putin’s czarist vision

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This new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity discusses a proposal to solve Medicare’s bankrupt finances by replacing an unsustainable entitlement with a “premium-support” system for private insurance, also known as vouchers.

This topic is very hot right now, in part because Medicare reform is included in the bold budget approved by House Republicans, but also because Newt Gingrich inexplicably has decided to echo White House talking points by attacking Congressman Ryan’s voucher plan.

Narrated by yours truly, the video has two sections. The first part reviews Congressman Ryan’s proposal and notes that it is based on a plan put together with Alice Rivlin, who served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton. Among serious budget people (as opposed to the hacks on Capitol Hill), this is an important sign of bipartisan support.

The video also notes that the “voucher” proposal is actually very similar to the plan that is used by Members of Congress and their staff. This is a selling point that proponents should emphasize since most Americans realize that lawmakers would never subject themselves to something that didn’t work.

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The Washington Post has a predictable, propagandistic lead Monday editorial — “Climate change underscored: A new report leaves little room for doubt” — that merits a fisking for the prominence given such admittedly non-newsy, if wildly spun and internally inconsistent, repetitiveness (emphases added throughout):

“CLIMATE CHANGE is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

So says — in response to a request from Congress — the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s preeminent institution chartered to provide scientific advice to lawmakers.

Ah, so — the implication is clear — it is a panel of scientists; wait, not just scientists, but climate scientists, and worthy of description as ‘preeminent’. But, then, the piece continues oddly without elaboration on this hint:

In a report titled “America’s Climate Choices,” a panel of scientific and policy experts also concludes that the risks of inaction far outweigh the risks or disadvantages of action.

Well, as Hoover fellow Paul Gregory notes, prompted by similar slop from the New York Times, “Of the first eight names, only one appears to be a climate scientist. The others are engineers, lawyers, and public policy types”.

But of course, we’re used to these gents being railroad engineers (the IPCC’s chief scientist, Rajendra Pachauri) and anthropology teaching assistants (see the IPCC ‘world’s leading climate scientists’). By the next paragraph, however, surely the reader would begin wondering what is such a panel of scientists doing making these recommendations, which are in fact policy calls?

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Over the past month and a half, seven members of Congress–six of whom are members of the Democratic Socialists of America–have written letters to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama on behalf of radical extremists whose homes were raided by the FBI last September.

The raids took place in Chicago and Minnesota, where 23 individuals were targeted by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. The individuals are anti-war and international solidarity activists with possible links to funding Hamas and other terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and the Marxist F.A.R.C. (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

U.S. Representatives and Democratic Socialists of America members; Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), John Conyers (D-MI), Danny Davis (D-IL), Jim McDermott (D-WA), and Keith Ellison (D-MN) have all written letters to either President Obama or Eric Holder regarding the status of the ongoing investigation. Representative David Price (D-NC) has also joined these socialist members of Congress on behalf of the radical extremists.

The letters refer to the anti-war and social-justice activists as “peaceful.” However you can see recent footage of Andy Thayer, one of these so-called “peaceful activists” targeted in the investigation, in the video below. Just this past March, Thayer called for revolution at an anti-war/pro-socialist revolution protest in Chicago. Unfortunately in a time when most Americans struggle to find any adequate representation from their elected members of Congress, these radicals seem to have just the right representatives to turn to.

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In many states, teachers and other public sector employees have no choice but to pay a union in order to have their job.  While they don’t have to be a member per se, they still have to pay a fee for the union to bargain on their behalf.

They’re captives of a system that is stacked in favor of special interest groups, like the Ohio Education Association.

OEA officials will do everything in their power to regain the collective bargaining privileges they exploited for decades at the expense of taxpayers and the state.  Part of their strategy is to unilaterally assess active members $54 (support staff $25) to generate $5 million for a referendum campaign, regardless of individual teachers’ political beliefs or their position on collective bargaining.

OEA officials told the Dispatch that the decision was made by “an overwhelming majority” of an estimated 1,000 delegates who attended the union’s Spring Representative Assembly, but they refused to disclose the vote. So the public will just have to take their word for it.

It’s the same dirty pool in Michigan, where Michigan Education Association executives recently conducted a statewide membership vote to gauge support for “job actions,” including a possible strike, to protest pending education reforms.  But MEA officials refuse to release the vote totals to the public or their members. If they go out on strike, who can say if the teachers really voted in favor of the action?

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Today, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state education segregation in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. The unanimous decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and was a giant step towards greater liberty.

From the Associated Press:

Two leading makers of lighting products are showcasing LED bulbs that are bright enough to replace energy-guzzling 100-watt light bulbs set to disappear from stores in January.

Their demonstrations at the LightFair trade show in Philadelphia this week mean that brighter LED bulbs will likely go on sale next year, but after a government ban takes effect.

The new bulbs will also be expensive — about $50 each — so the development may not prevent consumers from hoarding traditional bulbs.

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Recently immediately after Congressman Darrell Issa finished giving a speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, I caught up with him for his most recent comments on the investigation into the ATF gunwalking scandal known as Projects “Fast and Furious” and “Gun Runner.”

The California Congressman, as many of you know, is Chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating the DOJ’s role in the selling of assault weapons to known drug cartel members.  Below is an excerpt from the interview.

You Tube: Issa with the latest from his investigation into the ATF gunmwalking scandal.

“The good news is the dedicated men and women of the ATF and DOJ are breaking ranks and coming in as whistleblowers.  We’ve had numerous voluoluntary interviews that have given us an understanding of what went wrong and an understanding that a decision was made far above their level…”

“Two Border Patrol Agents are dead…this (1,800 weapons sold to drug traffickers) has resulted in an accumulation of hurt and killing that will go on for years…”

“…One of our objectives in the investigation is we have to put confidence back in the system on both sides of the border that U.S. law enforcement does not allow weapons to walk…President Calderone of Mexico is the most cooperative partner on the war on drugs that we have had in years and the Mexican government has called this ‘an active war’.”

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What else can one say about this?

Governor Christie to Talk Global Climate Change with Scientists

Governor tells NJ Environmental Federation his original doubts were due to not having a “fully formed opinion.”

The Republican governor, who caused a stir when he told a town hall meeting he was unsure about the science of global warming, plans to sit down this week with a couple of climate change scientists recommended by the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

As I have noted, translated, the latter means a Castro toady and some of his pals.

Wait, lemme guess: his doubts arising from an unfully formed opinion have evaporated under further scrutiny, making this the first time further scrutiny led to siding with the global warming movement?

Er, maybe. There’s another option, and that’s that he’s seen the New Hampshire Senate fold like a cardboard suitcase on withdrawing from the RGGI regional cap-n-trade energy tax and has decided to throw in with the go-along-to-get along crowd. In his defense, and not much of one, one could say as Andrew Dice Clay once did about a famous painting I won’t mention here as it would make the gag’s crudeness too obvious: he needed the money.

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This video explains how quickly we’ve reached the latest debt ceiling and why a debate is taking place right now regarding what to do next.

The unsightly film on our “clean” dishes had become a source of great frustration in our household.  Dish washing was the job of my daughter and she was evidently was really slacking off.  We worked with her on critical strategies like pre-washing, proper loading technique and the importance of rinse aids.  Still, we found that the dishes usually had to be washed at least twice and with increasing amounts of detergent.  In this lousy economy and runaway food and fuel inflation, I was using 50% more Cascade detergent and running twice as many loads.  This deal worked out great for the the water and electric utilities, and especially for P&G (Proctor and Gamble) but not so well for us.

As a conservative, I believe there is a right way and a wrong way to do just about anything from how to install toilet paper to what ingredients are key to a product.  That makes me a consummate label reader. So one day I noticed that Cascade was “phosphate free”.  That struck me as really odd because I dutifully inject that naturally occurring element into the ecosystem every time I use my Miracle Grow “Bloom-booster” plant food.  So how could something that is good for plants be evil for the environment?

I asked my friend Kat, who is a full time environmental activist and I challenged her. I am now using at least twice as much water and electricity, not to mention time as I spent before on clean dishes.  She toed the party line, that too much phosphates in sewer systems somehow creates too much algae which disrupts ecosystems.

So I explained my situation and the fact that a huge corporation about which she should be suspicious of before me, was making out like bandits. I asked her, “Do you realize you are working for the man?”  “What?” She asked. The irony was quite amusing.

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Texas is generally regarded as a conservative state, but you would not guess that based on some of its legislators’ pursuit of a California-style effort to hike taxes by targeting out-of-state, online-only retailers with no physical presence in the state.

Last month, the Texas House passed HB 2403, which attempts to enable the Texas Department of Revenue to force such companies to collect and remit to Texas sales/use tax on goods sold to Texas customers in broad circumstances.  Friday, that bill was also passed by the Texas Senate.

This is despite the fact that the Supreme Court’s decision in Quill Corp v North Dakota clearly establishes that a state cannot require this, given the content of the US Constitution’s Commerce clause, unless a corporation is physically present in the state.

That leads experts to say that what HB 2403 seeks to do is very likely unconstitutional, and if it becomes law, it will likely provoke a constitutional challenge that will cost the state of Texas a great deal of time and money to litigate.

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The following is a video shot at a Tucson, Arizona school board meeting. The lady within the video is reading excerpts from a book in the Ethnic Studies curriculum. Yes, the following is actually being taught to children.

As Moonbat Tracker writes:

A law, authored by AZ Attorney General Tom Horne, would ban separatist and racist “Raza studies” (particularly in the out of control Tucson schools), and has been met with virulent protests from the far-left reconquistador crowd.

Last week, a woman read  excerpts from a book in the Tucson Ethnic Studies program at a school board meeting.

These outrageous and toxic books teach kids that the United States is an institutionally racist  system filled with “bloodsucking capitalists” and Anglos who “rape Hispanic culture”.

Here are a couple of quotes from the book in which the lady recites:

“Hard drugs and drug culture is an invention of the gringo because he has no culture.”

“We have to destroy capitalism and we have to help 5/6 of the world to destroy capitalism in order to equal all peoples’ lives.

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In an unannounced Friday news dump, the Department of Health and Human Services quietly posted newly accepted waivers to 221 businesses and two entire states exempting them from damaging provisions of ObamaCare, bringing the grand waiver total to seven entire states and 1,372 businesses. I have one simple question for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: Where’s MY Waiver?

There’s a good argument that every American is about to be harmed by ObamaCare, whether through the $500 billion in tax increases, the $500 billion in Medicare cuts, the individual mandate forcing citizens to purchase health insurance, the myriad of one-size-fits-all regulations, and the mountainous debt it creates. In the land of equal protection under the law, shouldn’t we all be equally protected from ObamaCare’s harm?

Of course, the only way to guarantee that no harm is done is by repealing the law in its entirety, which can transpire at the earliest in 2013 if Republicans take back the Presidency and the Senate. In the meantime, Secretary Sebelius has a moral responsibility to treat us all equally with regards to the two areas in which she is currently granting waivers: the medical loss ratio requirement and the limited benefit restrictions.

To date, she has utterly failed to do so.

Sebelius has already denied waivers to 79 businesses from the limited benefit restrictions that rendered illegal the mini-med plans they formerly offered employees. Worse, she arbitrarily decided not to allow individuals and families to apply for these same waivers. Folks that were only able to afford mini-med plans suddenly found them illegal and unlike businesses and states, have no recourse available.

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Presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich was on Meet the Press yesterday. When asked about Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal to reform Medicare, Gingrich called it “right wing social engineering.” Interesting positioning for a GOP primary race.

From CNN:

Real estate mogul Donald Trump will not run for the Republican presidential nomination, he said in a statement released Monday.

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From KMSP Minneapolis:

Your home is supposed to be your castle. That is, until the government needs to buy it for a road project. So, what’s the fair price for your property when it comes to eminent domain? Maybe less than you think.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech and Francis Cianfrocca are joined by ExxonMobil VP Ken Cohen to discuss the ExxonMobil’s earnings, the need for more drilling and why gas prices are so high.

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:

Where do your gasoline dollars go?
CNBC: Light sweet crude price history
ExxonMobil’s earnings: The real story you won’t hear in Washington
CNN Poll: Support for increased offshore oil drilling on rise
Ken Cohen at ExxonMobil Perspectives

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One thing I love about tea party activists is their commitment to government transparency and accountability.  When they see the media speaking no evil, hearing no evil and seeing no evil, they do the media’s job for them.  Citizen journalists are quickly showing the media to be biased and growing irrelevant.

The tea party activist to receive the gold star this week is Lennie Jarratt of Grayslake, Illinois.

In the Grayslake, Illinois School District 46, three tea party members decided to take action by running for three available seats on the school board this spring.  I wish more would do the same thing.

Their opponents were two incumbents with strong teachers’ union ties. One of the incumbents, Mary Garcia, also serves as the teachers’ union president in neighboring District 30. The other, Susan Fecklam, reportedly ran a coordinated campaign with Garcia.

The incumbents were obviously concerned about the presence of the tea party candidates on the ballot, and what they might do to the union agenda if they were elected.

So what did the incumbents do? They allegedly broke the law, or violated school policies, by using school email accounts to promote their campaigns, and by bribing 18-year-old students to register to vote, on the presumption the kids would vote for them.

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