As expected, I won few friends within the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) administrations by exposing the communist indoctrination that occurred in their respective classrooms.

In response to a threatening letter I received from UMSL demanding that I meet with them for questioning, I submitted a Sunshine Law records request to the University of Missouri system. The emails below constitute UMSL’s reply.

UMSL fix ii

Large portions were redacted under the questionable pretense that they contained privileged communications between UMSL and its attorney.

What I learned from the visible portions was quite disturbing: numerous high-level university officials conspired in an attempt to punish me.

When this strategy proved unsuccessful, they engaged in a smear campaign against me, partly relying on inaccurate liberal blogs as “evidence.” Because senior UMSL administrators refused to take responsibility for their blatant failure of oversight in their labor studies classes, they resorted to maligning the student who spoke out about the unprofessional behavior of his professors. (more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Eric O’Keefe to discuss the Health Care Compact, Medicaid and Medicare reform and the financial danger posed by unfunded liabilities.

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.

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Why Health Care Compact could be solution to Medicaid crisis
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If you thought the union extremists at the National Labor Relations Board were a little…er…extreme, wait until you get a load of this latest example of an agency run amok.

Every week the NLRB publishes a summary of NLRB decisions. In the Board’s latest weekly summary, there was one decision summary that seemed rather unique since it stated:

The Board granted the Acting General Counsel’s Motion for Default Judgment based on the Respondent’s failure to file an answer to the complaint. The Board found that the death of BLSI, LLC’s owner and the insolvency of his estate did not constitute good cause for the Respondent’s failure to answer the complaint.

So, in addition to prosecuting companies for deciding to open new non-union plants, giving union pushers the ability to physically threaten voters, as well as legitimizing sweetheart unions, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board is now prosecuting dead people too. (more…)

SEIU DRAGGED IN BOGUS WITNESS TO SMEAR GLADNEY!

After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating.

On Tuesday, the two SEIU goons who beat Gladney were found not guilty of any wrongdoing.

I wrote about the SEIU’s “surprise witness” from left field. This surprise witness, who is also an SEIU activist, testified on Tuesday that she witnessed Kenneth Gladney “starting the fight” with two SEIU goons who were twice his size.

The SEIU “witness” was not at the scene. She came walking up with a cane after the fight was already broken up.

24th State wrote more about the surprise SEIU witness.

(more…)

One Michigan teacher has discovered that being a Michigan Education Association member is like staying at the Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Andrew Buikema, a music teacher with Grant Public Schools for the past nine years, is tired of being forced to belong to a union that he says doesn’t “stand up for kids” and “always seem(s) to put adults first.”

Buikema expressed his displeasure in a recent email to MEA Secretary-Treasurer Peggy McLellan.

In her response, McLellan wrote, “You’re right that MEA stands up for adults; that’s because it’s the adults who are under attack, not the kids.”

Nice slogan, but leader admits otherwise.

McLellan goes on to argue “that MEA does stand up for our members, but it’s because our members’ working conditions are the kids’ learning conditions.”

A copy of the email exchange can be found on PublicSchoolSpending.com.

(more…)

Phil Christofanelli, the student who leaked videos of a radical “Introduction to Labor Studies” course at University of Missouri-St.Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), has obtained internal emails that reveal UMSL’s attempts to mislead the public and target the whistleblower.

Christofanelli, who had cross-registered in the UMSL course and has since graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, will release the emails later today on BigGovernment.com.

UMSL and UMKC were plunged into crisis on April 25, 2011, when BigGovernment.com published an article about violent union tactics being taught in the course (see related posts below). The post included a video of highlights from the course, as prepared and provided by Insurgent Visuals.

UMSL Chancellor Tom George and UMSL Provost Glen Cope defended the course–which included instructions on how to carry out industrial sabotage and personal intimidation; in-class recruitment by the Communist Party; and pro-union propaganda. George and Cope claimed to have watched all 30-plus hours of course video.

Internal emails reveal, however, that Cope had not even begun to view the videos when she prodded UMKC Vice Provost and Chief Information Office Mary Lou Hines Fritts for the name of the student responsible for “ripping” the videos. “Since the semester is nearly over, we need to act quickly,” Cope wrote to Hines Fritts on May 4.

Hines Fritts could not provide Cope with any direct evidence. However, she and her staff quickly singled out Christofanelli for his political views. She sent Cope a list of links about Christofanelli, highlighting his leadership of the Washington University Young Americans for Liberty, as well as his conservative opinions. (more…)

Republicans in Congress are hewing to the best traditions of the founders of the nation, and the founders of their own party, in their effort to keep a lid on federal borrowing. The idea that there is some constitutional bar to their refusal to raise the debt limit betrays Democratic desperation.

The Constitution was established so that a stronger Union would be able to pay its debts. The Confederation government had already defaulted on its Revolutionary War obligations. Thus the new government assured its creditors in the new Constitution, which provided that “All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.” The Federalists and their successors paid off the entire national debt by the 1830s.

After the Civil War, the American people settled permanently the possibility of repudiating the national debt. Section four of the Fourteenth Amendment simply says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law… shall not be questioned.” Thus the Republicans foreclosed the possibility that, should the Democratic party return to power, it would repudiate the war debt—or pay the Confederate debt.

While other provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment provoked intense debate, section four did not. “I need say nothing of the fourth section,” said Representative Thaddeus Stevens, “for none dare object to it who is not himself a rebel.”

(more…)

Today, in 1789, French citizens stormed the Bastille. It was a leftist revolution run amok.

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) supposedly voluntary guidelines for marketing food products to children, if adopted, would undermine free speech, seriously hinder small businesses, consumer choice, and could adversely affect rates of childhood obesity.

The guidelines, put forth by an interagency working group with members from the FTC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stipulate that producers of food and drink products who market to children between the ages of 2 and 17 voluntarily make sure those products contribute to the government’s recommended daily nutritional requirements and do not contain high levels of added sugar or salt.

While the guidelines are touted as voluntary, the power these five agencies wield over the industry would almost certainly make them a de facto mandate, as few members of the industry would risk running afoul of government entities that can issue licenses, fines and sanctions, ban products, and file lawsuits.

The goal of the guidelines, as stated in the Agencies’ report is to address “high rates of childhood obesity” over the next five years. To accomplish that goal, they want to modify the nutritional makeup of foods that are heavily marketed to children so that only foods that make “a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet” are advertised to kids and teens.

(more…)

As states around the country continue to face ongoing projected budget deficits, many elected officials are advocating consumption tax hikes in an effort to close budget holes (see Dayton, Mark and Democrats, Minnesota).  However, New Hampshire recently cut its cigarette tax in a move to increase revenue and now Michigan—the state generally regarded as having the worst economy in the country—may follow suit.

Senate Bill 517 would roll back the $2 per pack cigarette excise tax, among the highest in the nation, and reset it at $1 per pack.  It would be partnered with budget cuts including an option that would tighten up Medicaid restrictions, loosened by the previous Democratic administration.

As with New Hampshire, experts believe the move could enable Michigan to become more competitive vis a vis neighboring states with higher cigarette taxes, encouraging consumers to purchase their cigarettes within the state rather than elsewhere.  In addition, the move could reduce the attractiveness of smuggled cigarettes illegally sold without tax being levied.  Studies by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy have estimated that nearly 35 percent of all cigarettes consumed within the state were purchased outside its borders, in Indiana, Ohio and even Kentucky. The estimated tax-induced smuggling in Michigan, which increased steadily as the taxes on cigarettes also increased, was a hefty 16 percent, the fifth highest in the nation.

(more…)

The criminals at ACORN, President Obama’s former employer, never stop ripping off American taxpayers.

The massive conglomerate ACORN Housing Corp. and its subsidiaries owe an eye-popping $162,813 in back taxes, according to the Nexis public records database.

The money is owed to the IRS, California, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, the city of Philadelphia, and the California counties of Fresno and Santa Clara. (The 106 tax liens are listed at the bottom of this article.)

Like a con artist trying to escape his past, ACORN Housing legally changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America Inc. (AHCOA).

ACORN Housing grew out of crime: trespassing and breaking and entering. It emerged from a 1982 squatting campaign in which ACORN built a squatters’ tent city behind the White House. Rampaging ACORN activists routinely break in and illegally occupy property already owned by others – and your tax dollars subsidize this criminal activity, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

(more…)

“I couldn’t beat them; I didn’t have the resources they had. They had all the money in the world and the backing… I’m just an average man.” — Kenneth Gladney

The trial of the two men who beat Kenneth Gladney almost two years ago came to a close Tuesday afternoon. After two days of testimony, the jury deliberated for forty minutes before Perry Mollens and former St. Louis mayoral candidate, the Reverand Elston McCowan, were found not guilty. McCowan and Molens were members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) when the attack occurred.

On the first day of the trial, Gateway Pundit noted that union supporters were out in force to intimidate Gladney. In the courtroom, the defense planned to turn the court fight into a he-said, she-said because the prosecution did not have video of how the fight started. The defense also argued that McCowan and Molens had a right to self-defense, but that rests on the belief that Gladney instigated the confrontation.

The implication that Kenneth Gladney started the fight is simply absurd. McCowan and Molens are each over six feet tall and weigh north of 200 pounds. Gladney is a cancer survivor who’s about 5′ 6″ and weighs about 130lb. Furthermore, Gladney was there selling buttons. He wanted to make a few bucks. In April of 2009, he was selling Obama paraphernalia. Like most merchants, he sells what the people want and he doesn’t pick fights with his clientele, so it’s absurd to assert that he instigated a fight with McCowan.

(more…)

The current issue of The Economist contains a must read special report on the future of the news industry. While there is little in the way of groundbreaking news developments in the report, The Economist’s series of articles provides a condensed overview of the current and future states of the news media; an article of interest to everyone here at BigGovernment.com.

“Bulletins from the Future” celebrates the emergence of “’crowdsourced’ journalism,” which has “turned the news industry upside down, making it more participatory, social, diverse and partisan.” In “How Newspapers are Faring: A Little Local Difficulty,” the writers point out that the decline of print media is mostly an American and Western European phenomenon and in “Reinventing the Newspaper” they examine the new business models that “are proliferating as news organizations search for novel sources of revenue.”

“The People Formerly Known as the Audience” looks at the rise of social media and the impact they have on the news business. “The Foxification of News” partly bemoans and partly celebrates the ideological compartmentalization of the news business.”

A few thoughts. The series makes several references to Arianna Huffington but none of the proprietor and editor of this site. This is unfortunate not because she’s a liberal and Andrew Breitbart and Mike Flynn are conservative/libertarians. Rather, failing to explore what Andrew and his team have accomplished in terms of breaking real stories represents a missed opportunity. Taking nothing away from Ms. Huffington’s tremendous accomplishment, her website is really a highly SEO-ed liberal celebrity site with some reporting, most of it horribly biased, some of it good. Andrew and Mike have moved the needle on key stories and have forced “real reporters” to follow their lead.

(more…)

The Pigford “Black Farmers” settlement isn’t just a massive fraud that funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to people who never farmed a day in their life. No, the perversion of Pigford goes far beyond that because the way the settlement is structured it’s actually more difficult for legitimate farmers to collect than it is for an “attempted to farmer”.

Got that? Adding insult to injury, bona fide farmers are less likely to collect a $50,000 check then someone who meets the incredibly low standard by claiming that they attempted to farm.

This is one of the reasons that so many legitimate, hard-working farmers oppose the Pigford settlement and another reason that Congressman Darrell Issa needs to hear from you right now. Remember, Issa voted to keep funds flowing to Pigford when Representative Steve King (R-IA) tried to stop them a couple of weeks ago. And Rep. Issa is the person who should be pushing for investigations. Issa’s Washington phone number is 202-225-3906.

(more…)

It took more than two years and two trials, but disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was finally brought to justice on Monday, June 27. He becomes the state’s fourth governor, and one of at least 79 Illinois public officials, to be found guilty of a crime since 1972, proving that Illinois has certainly lived up to its reputation as a cesspool of corruption.

According to CNN:

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted…on 17 of the 20 public corruption charges against him related to his attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat held by Barack Obama before he resigned to become president.

The 11 women and one man reached the verdicts on their 10th day of deliberation in the trial, which began April 20. As the verdicts were read, Blagojevich turned to look back at his wife, Patti, who dropped into her seat. None of the jurors would look at the defendant as the verdicts were being read.

Technically, Blagojevich could spend the rest of his years in prison due to the compounding charges. However, legal experts believe he’ll serve six-to-ten.

Blagojevich is a colorful character — and a TV star, owing to his appearance on Donald Trump’s program “Celebrity Apprentice.” And he certainly captured an enormous amount of public attention. But lost in all of the pomp and circumstance of his two very public trials is the potentially criminal role that high ranking officials inside the Obama administration — perhaps even the president himself — played in this corrupt scheme.

(more…)

There are three reasons why I’m not very hopeful about the outcome of the debt-limit battle.

1. There is no unity in the GOP camp.

Republicans have been all over the map during this fight. Some of them want a balanced budget amendment. Some want a one-for-one deal of $2 trillion of spending cuts in exchange for a $2 trillion increase in the debt limit. Others want some sort of spending cap, akin to Senator Corker’s CAP Act. Some want to mix all these ideas together in a cut-cap-balance package. Others want Obamacare repeal.  And the latest proposal is Sen. McConnell’s proposal to let Obama unilaterally raise the debt limit.

These are mostly good ideas, but the failure to coalesce around one proposal – preferably one that is easy to understand – has made the Republican position difficult to define, defend, or advance.

2. The fear of demagoguery is high.

As I explained months ago, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are trying to spook financial markets with hyperbolic warnings about a risk of default. This is blatant dishonesty and demagoguery, but Republicans are nervous that this tactic might be successful if there is a high-stakes showdown as the government’s borrowing authority runs out.

For those with short memories, this is what happened with TARP back in 2008. The initial bailout proposal was rejected, leading to short-run market gyrations, and many Republicans panicked and switched their votes to yes.

3. Republicans don’t control the Senate or the White House.

I’m stating the obvious, of course, but people seem to forget that any debt limit increase will need to get through the Senate and get signed by Obama.

Imagine you are Harry Reid or Barack Obama. Is there any reason why you would acquiesce to Republican demands? Yes, you need to at least pretend to care about big government, wasteful spending, and red ink, but why not hold firm and then strike a deal based on make-believe spending cuts. That’s exactly what happened during the “government-shutdown” debate earlier this year.

This post, incidentally, is not an attack on Republicans. I’m very willing to attack GOPers when they do the wrong thing, but I’m not sure they deserve to get hammered in this case.

(more…)

There are a lot of pieces to the debt-ceiling deal. There are the taxes upon taxes, as the Wall Street Journal editors describe it. That’s the roughly $1 trillion in new Obama taxes on top of what he’s already signed into law. It’s an economy and jobs killer.

Then there’s the entitlement piece, which may be more interesting since Obama is apparently open to extending the Social Security and Medicare retirement age and using the so-called chained-CPI, which would lower cost-of-living adjustments (and increase income-tax thresholds). Whether the president is serious about these entitlement measures, no one knows. It’s noteworthy that he’s at least talking about them, although he’s linking them to higher taxes.

But there’s another piece to the debt-ceiling deal that hasn’t yet seen the light of day. It’s the non-entitlement spending piece. That is, domestic and defense discretionary spending plus so-called small entitlements like food stamps, unemployment benefits, and so forth.

Here’s my thought: The public wants deep spending cuts. That’s their first priority and that’s why polls overwhelmingly show opposition to a debt-ceiling increase. So regarding those spending cuts, the only thing that matters is the first-year spending decline. That would be 2012. If the spending baseline is brought down significantly in year one, then the out-years will follow suit. The government’s cost curve will ease down.

(more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Pejman Yousefzadeh and Elizabeth Blackney to discuss Hillary Clinton’s latest comments about Syria’s Resident Assad and ask, is Syria the next Libya?

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.

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Clinton: Syria’s Assad has lost legitimacy to rule
Clinton to Syria: Implement Reforms Now
A Moral Adventure
Obama’s Speech On Libya: ‘A Responsibility To Act’

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