Hey, remember that one time — like a couple days ago — that we recapped some of the craziest things the National Labor Relations Board wants to do? Well, today, it announced a massive campaign to rewrite the rules on how union bosses can try to organize employees.

The rule changes would include: electronic voting, which may open up fraud, as well as coercion and intimidation of voters who no longer have the protection of private ballots; rushed elections so employees don’t have time to inform themselves about having to pay union dues, live and work by union rules, and support a vast leftwing political machine; the inability for employers to challenge the validity of voting employees until it’s too late; and giving digital readouts of the home address and contact information for all the employees the union is targeting.

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“It’s an uncomfortable fact that sending a message of solidarity with our NATO allies is more important than sending a message to President Obama.”

It’s tempting to cut off funds immediately for President Obama’s ill-conceived Libya offensive.  But it’s not the right course.  For the sake of our allies, Congress needs to be patient in using the power of the purse to correct Obama’s misadventure.

The policy is indeed a mess.  Even if the ongoing air attacks chased Muammar Qadhafi from power, he might be replaced by a radical Islamist regime.  We have no good intelligence on what the rebels would establish if they took over.

Obama’s ham-handed approach has been an insult to Congress’ constitutional role “to define and punish . . . Offences against the Law of Nations,” as specified in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.  Obama failed to make any meaningful consultation with Congress before he committed American forces, much less obtain any type of actual approval.

Yes, it’s tempting for Congress to “teach him a lesson” by voting to cut off U.S. funding immediately for Libyan operations.  The power of the purse is their strongest counter-balance to the President’s role as commander-in-chief.

But the countervailing argument is that our NATO allies—a key component of America’s national security—have been pulled into the Libya fray based on assurances and urgings from the Obama Administration.  Those may have been improvident, but they are real.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech discuss the recent McKinsey health insurance survey, the inability of children to gain access to medical care through Medicaid, and the costs that program has shoveled upon states.

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 McKinsey Health Insurance Survey Was Rigorous, After All
New England Journal: Two-Thirds of Medicaid Children Denied a Doctor’s Appointment, vs. 11% for the Privately Insured
Children on Medicaid Shown to Wait Longer for Care
Auditing Access to Specialty Care for Children with Public Insurance
New Study: Medicaid’s Access Problem With Dentists and Clinics
Medicaid’s Access Failure
States Battle Over Medicaid Eligibility
Reform Medicaid

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Has the Obama White House stolen a few pages from the Clintons’ well-worn campaign fundraising playbook?

According to last week’s  New York Times, recent secret meetings with Wall Street executives inside the Obama White House are more than raising eyebrows:

A few weeks before announcing his re-election campaign, President Obama convened two dozen Wall Street executives, many of them longtime donors, in the White House’s Blue Room.…

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash — in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

Of course the Obama White House response was predictable: “Nothing to see here.” Politico reported White House Press spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One, “What needs to be made clear is, contrary to suggestions otherwise, this was not a fundraiser.”

Really? Nothing wrong with the meeting? Then why was there no mention of it on the President’s public schedule?

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From the Associated Press:

Labor regulators are set to propose sweeping new rules Tuesday that would dramatically speed up the time frame for union elections, a move that could make it easier for struggling unions to organize new members, and cut the time businesses have to mount anti-union campaigns.

A copy of the planned rules, to be announced by the National Labor Relations Board, was obtained by The Associated Press. The proposal is expected to irritate Republicans and business groups who have complained about the board’s pro-labor actions.

Most labor elections currently take place within 45-60 days after a union gathers enough signatures to file a petition, a time many companies use to discourage workers from unionizing. The new plan could cut that time by days or even weeks—depending on the case—by simplifying procedures, deferring litigation and setting shorter deadlines for hearings and filings.

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General Motors (GM) continues apace its government-backed conversion from a company existing to manufacture automobiles for money – into a fully-formed, Leftist ideological entity working as another wing of the Barack Obama Administration’s fundamental transformation of America.

A de facto non-profit organization posing as a for-profit car joint.  That seems less and less concerned with designing cars people want, and is instead looking to redesign the nation – with products and policies Americans have time and again demonstrated they don’t want anything to do with.

How else to explain the continued expanded production of the expensive, unprofitable (yet heavily subsidized) and unpopular Chevy Volt?

How else to explain Administration-appointee Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dan Akerson calling for a $1-per-gallon gasoline tax hike?  Which would demonstrably hurt his supposed industry – but is proffered in the perverse hope of forcing people into the Volts they thus far have avoided like the Bubonic Plague?

How else to explain the GM all solar-powered Volt plant?  Solar paneling which cost $3 million to purchase and install – buy only saves them $15,000 a year in electricity.

Let’s do the math, shall we?

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The debt limit increase debate is heating up and conservatives have put together one fascinating proposal as a means to get spending cuts in consideration for a debt limit increase:  The Cut, Cap, and Balance Pledge.  Conservatives seem to be coalescing around this idea, because no other concrete ideas have been put on the table as a precondition for conservatives to allow an increase of the debt limit.  A senior Senate source tells Capitol Confidential that “this is everything.  This is the the big push for conservatives on the debt limit fight.”

The House is controlled by Republicans, yet the Senate is controlled by Democrats.  Divided government makes it hard to pass conservative ideas.  Hard, yet not impossible.

The debate on the Fiscal Year 2011 Continuing Resolution (FY2011 CR) was a case study on how NOT to negotiate with liberals.  The House can pass solid conservative legislation and appropriations bills, yet the Senate can defeat these ideas with inaction.  And they did on the FY2011 CR fight.  Senator Harry Reid (R-Nevada) defeated Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) Continuing Resolution by not scheduling a debate on the measure. The original House passed FY2011 CR contained massive cuts to spending, yet Reid beat it back by not doing anything and awaiting the inevitable panic by House leaders who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  Instead of daring the Senate to just never pass a bill and let the government shut down, the House blinked and sent over short term spending bills, then negotiated a final bill that was bad policy.  The House negotiated against themselves and conservatives ended up with a Continuing Resolution that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, actually increased spending by $3.3 billion.  The leftists over at the Daily Kos made fun of Speaker Boehner for the spending increases in the FY2011 CR.   The resolution of the debate on the continuing resolution for conservatives was an epic failure.

Hopefully conservatives have learned a lesson and will not make the same mistake again.

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Today is the Summer Solstice, the first day of Summer. Enjoy.

Stephen Cox sat down with Reason.tv to talk about libertarian literature and why prisons are the best example of a failure in planning societies.

Cox is a professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, as well as the editor-in-chief of Liberty magazine, which can be read at libertyunbound.com . He is also the author of The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America and The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison.

Topics include: Isabel Paterson; American Prisons; Liberty magazine in detail; and promoting individual freedom.

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Want to hear the sound of people making a difference on the Pigford story?

I mentioned in a previous post that Allen West had voted no on Rep. Steve King’s amendment to stop Pigford funding. This vote struck me as strange because of Rep. West’s reputation as an opponent of wasteful spending.

Talk show host David Webb asked West about his vote today and Rep. West seems to feel that he made an error in his vote. I watched the ‘lightning round’ of forty (40!) or so amendments live on C-SPAN and I can see where an honest error is certainly possible. I accept his explanation and appreciate his straightforward answer.

But listen to what Rep. West as soon as Webb asks him about Pigford – he says he’s answered the question about his Pigford many times. And THAT is the sound of the tide turning. Pigford is clearly getting onto people’s radar, thanks to you. If you haven’t done so, please sign the Pigford Petition.

And blogger The Right Scoop  has another example of West answering a Pigford question.

Here’s Rep. West explanation from his newsletter:

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Emails obtained through the Wisconsin Open Records law indicate former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk emailed all county employees and circuit court judges, including Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi, with a memo announcing her intention to file suit against Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill.

In response, Falk received three responses from court employees.  Kathy Melzer and Elaine Creager responded with encouraging notes.  Peter Anderson replied with “doubts about the appropriateness of sending a message about filing a legal action to the judges of the circuit court where the action is likely to be filed.”

Anderson is Sumi’s colleague on the bench.  He’s a judge who felt it was inappropriate to give the judges a heads-up that this lawsuit was coming.

There was no similar statement from Sumi.  Instead, with this knowledge in hand, she moved quickly to agree with Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne’s suit to void the budget repair law.

Was this all a set up from the beginning?

The end result, of course, was that Sumi’s ruling was ridiculous and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported, “The court concluded that Sumi exceeded her jurisdiction, ‘invaded’ the Legislature’s constitutional powers and erred in halting the publication and implementation of the collective bargaining law.”  The Supreme Court reinstated the budget repair legislation, including the curtailment of collective bargaining privileges.

Ozanne was quoted by the AP as saying, “We’ve done the best we can…it looks like we’ve lost.”

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Andrew Breitbart and ACORN critics everywhere have been vindicated yet again.

That’s because the U.S. Supreme Court denied an ACORN appeal, effectively ruling that Congress was absolutely entitled to cut off federal taxpayer funding of ACORN. Earlier today the high court denied the petition for certiorari in ACORN et al. v. United States (docket 10-1068) without comment.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had asked the high court to review a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit which found that the funding cutoff enacted in 2009 was not a “bill of attainder” forbidden by the Constitution. ACORN had advanced the novel, nonsensical argument that Congress had no power to stop funding the group unless it could prove it had done something wrong.

As I write in my new book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, the ACORN network has taken in an astounding $79 million in federal funding, not just the $53 million figure previously reported.

At least 54 individuals associated with ACORN have been convicted of voter fraud. ACORN itself was convicted of felony voter registration fraud in Nevada in April, the book reports.

ACORN became well known nationwide in 2009 for its advocacy of brothels for pedophiles. Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe caught the group on undercover video offering advice on tax fraud and on importing underage illegal alien sex slaves from El Salvador.

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Patent Reform legislation is being championed in Congress by liberal Pat Leahy (D-VT) in the Senate and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in the House. Its disturbing that Smith seems to have gone native – going so far as to write editorials with Leahy – the man who savaged Clarence Thomas and dozens of conservative judicial nominees before his committee.

There is nothing conservative about Patent Reform and Leahy knows it. Too bad Smith doesn’t. In fact, Smith is pushing the House to vote on Leahy’s bill this week.

The legislation is a direct affront to American constitutional values and precedents, violates the Constitution and contains massive giveaways to big banks and the other Wall Street finance companies – each of them TARP recipients.

The House Leadership – flush with corporate cash – appears willing to turn their back on Tea Party principles in order to reward their K-Street benefactors.  The legislation has some stalwart conservative opponents but some Republican Study Committee members appear to be sitting on their hands – or worse.

HR 1239 Turns American Patent Law into European Patent Law

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From CNN:

The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and firearms is expected to resign amid the ongoing controversy over the “Fast and Furious” operation, two senior federal law enforcement sources told CNN.

Straw buyers were allowed to illegally purchase large numbers of weapons in the operation, some of which ended up in the hands of cartels in Mexico.

Acting Director Kenneth Melson may resign in the next day or two, the sources said.

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One of the tax increases buried in Obamacare was an onerous and intrusive “1099″ scheme that would have required businesses to collect tax identification numbers for just about any vendor and then send paperwork to the IRS whenever they did more than $600 of business.

o Send one of your sales people to New York for a couple of nights? They would have to get the tax ID for the hotel and submit a form to the IRS.

o Buy a printer for the office? The printer company would need to provide a tax ID and the purchaser would have to submit a form to the IRS.

o Have a retirement dinner for somebody in the accounting department? Get the restaurant’s tax ID and submit another form to the IRS.

This system was seen as a nightmare, even leading to rather amusing cartoons mocking the law and showing how it would expand an already abusive IRS. And in a rare fit of common sense, the 1099 requirement was repealed earlier this year.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that an international version of Obamacare’s 1099 scheme also was enacted early last year. But since the burden is largely falling on foreigners, there’s no groundswell among voters to repeal the law – even though it will impose far more damage on the American economy.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the impending debt ceiling deadline, Mitch McConnell bowing to the Democrats, and how Francis would solve the problem.

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:

Short debt limit hike possible: McConnell
How to Deal With the Debt Limit
Administration wants to send trade pacts to Congress before recess

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This morning, Erick Erickson at RedState issued a much needed salvo against the latest wave of ‘this-time-we-really-mean-it” pledges to cut spending. He focused his ire on the many DC-based institutions and individuals who are peddling this new magic elixir, but I think the problem actually goes much deeper than that. Of course, he is already experiencing significant blowback and complaints. And, also, of course, Erickson is being urged to ‘be reasonable.’ That is always the last line of defense for those without the stomach for a fight.

I stand with Erickson on this one; the time for pledges is over.

For the past several decades we’ve had pledges, commitments, frameworks, understandings, ‘down-payments’ on reform and countless ‘baby-steps’ towards fiscal sanity. And, yet, here we are on the edge of an existential crisis. In addition to a looming fiscal collapse, our government has taken over auto companies, bailed out Wall Street banks, set in motion a government take-over of health care and so overburdened the economy with regulatory red tape that the private sector job engine is permanently stalled.

All these pledges have gotten us what, exactly?

This raises a question that has puzzled me for the last few years. What has the conservative movement been good for?

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By way of law and order and in an effort to protect its citizenry, the state of Georgia has enacted an anti-illegal immigration law similar to SB 1070 proposed by the state of Arizona.

Georgia’s measure seeks to “empower police to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects… punishes people who transport or harbor illegal immigrants in Georgia or use fake identification to get a job.”  The law also “requires many businesses to use the federal E-Verify program to ensure their newly hired workers are eligible to work in the United States.”

It wasn’t long ago that Barack Obama complained about the state of Arizona passing a similar illegal immigration law.  At the time, the President claimed that Arizona’s effort to control illegal immigration abused individuals by unfairly asking for identification even from parents taking children out for an ice cream cone. The president warned:

“If you [don’t] have your papers and you [take] your kids out for ice cream, you could be harassed.”

Despite the deaths of innocent citizens at the hands of marauding interlopers toting guns, not double-scoop ice cream cones, and in an effort to protect aficionados of frozen creamery from undue persecution, the Obama Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law.

Therefore, it was not surprising when the “Anti-Defamation League” together with “Mexico and the governments of several Central and South American countries filed court papers…in support of efforts to halt Georgia’s tough new immigration enforcement law.”

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Following last week’s essay, “The American Dream: Is It Dying a Death of a Thousand Cuts?” a loyal reader of long standing urged, in a thoughtful comment, that we spend more time focusing on the solutions we would propose to the problems about which we write.  We have done exactly that on numerous occasions (see our essay of October 17, 2010 which presented 12 key policy suggestions for improving the efficiency of government at both the state and federal levels, as well as our essay of July 19, 2010 which presented an alternative to the President’s stimulus bill, or our essay of December 17 2009 which was devoted to education in America and ideas for improving it).

Nonetheless, the reader’s prodding suggests that it would be appropriate to reiterate suggestions we have made in many of the nearly 100 weekly essays we have published for resetting the nation’s GPS to an alternate course from the current road to nowhere.

We suggested, that President Obama’s stimulus program would provide little or no stimulus and, in an extensive and detailed proposal, urged as an alternative a three-year 50% consumer tax credit that would offset half the cost of certified retail purchases up to a limit of $7500 in the first year, $5000 in the second year and $2500 in the third year.  The advantage of our proposal, we opined, would be that every dollar of tax break accorded to the taxpayer would have been the result of a prior dollar of “investment” by the taxpayer directly into the American economy.  We wrote that we believed this would efficiently provide the jolt that the economy needed by stimulating immediate capital investment in industrial plant and inventory.

While our proposal may have been ignored by the Administration, it wasn’t because we had it hidden under a basket.  It was widely covered by other public affairs blogs and on-line journals such as “The American”, the on-line journal of the American Enterprise Institute.

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