Herman we hardly knew ye. On first hearing about Herman Cain’s candidacy it was exciting.  What a resume, good on the stump, conservative ideals, worked for the federal govt but really became famous as a business executive who turned around companies in trouble…heck he saved Godfather’s Pizza and I love pizza, that alone gave him extra points in my book.

Cain showed so much promise, he was good on the stump and was even better during the first debate, but now his campaign is dead, he may not know it yet but all that’s left is for it to fall over.  The cause of death is the same as so many presidential campaigns before him, known in the Latin as Bardus Superstitiosus Orationes (stupid bigoted statements).

The first hint that Cain’s mouth did not have a self-control switch is when he announced that he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet. Now a president’s cabinet is supposed to act as his closest advisers, and he should be able to pick whoever he trusted most to fill those positions. But making a public claim that he will pick his advisers based on religion even if it were true, showed problem with his brain’s “Warning You Are About To Say Something Really, Really Dumb” switch.
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Seeing the forest through the trees and the practical through the partisanship.

This week, on Monday and Tuesday, an “open meeting” occurred at President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board over the NLRB’s proposal to move toward ambush elections. Though largely a waste of time, since the union appointees running the NLRB have little intent to listen to the practical side of labor relations and will do the unions’ bidding, there is a simple solution to resolving this entire matter that is straightforward, fair and apolitical.

Here’s the background: For the last five years, there has been a bill in Congress that unions have pushed using deceptively biased and flawed data. The hallucinogencially-named Employee Free Choice Act, if enacted, would effectively strip employees of their right to a secret-ballot election on the issue of unionization. With the process known as “card check” as a key component, the job-killing legislation passed the House of Representatives in 2007 but stalled in the Senate, yet has had employers on edge since it was first introduced.

Since card check has laid comatose following the election of Sen. Scott Brown [R-MA] in February 2010, several states have passed amendments to their state constitutions preserving the secret ballot, only to be later sued by Obama’s union appointees at the NLRB. (more…)

More Breaking News: As you may have noticed, the sun rose again today.

The Huge Government crowd always demands ever more regulations of and more taxes on those who do the hiring in the United States – the “evil corporations” who don’t care about anything but “obscene profits.”

The Huge Government crowd is, of course, woefully ignorant about how businesses – and business – work.

The “evil corporations” can’t make “obscene profits” unless they care about something else – what their customers want.

Customers almost always want the same thing from every company – the best possible goods/services at the lowest possible price.

The companies that best deliver this do well.  The ones that do not, do not.

Pretty simple stuff.  But it is stuff that fully eludes the Huge Government crowd.

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For many years, liberals have been gushing with enthusiasm over the prospect of a totally-green planet, one where CO2 emissions are a thing of the past (but wouldn’t that kill green plants?), wind turbines spin like glittering pinwheels in a parade (killing hundreds of thousands of birds each year), and electric cars line the roads (stopping every 40 miles for a recharge). To help ensure this dream becomes reality, President Obama pledged in his 2011 State of the Union address that he wanted to see one million electric cars on America’s roads by 2015.

Of course, the President’s pledge meant taxpayers will subsidize the progressive vision for a clean planet. The day after his State of the Union speech, liberal Democrats proposed creation of tax incentives to encourage people to buy electric vehicles.  What progressives consistently fail to understand is that government screws up each time its big shoes step into the private sector (can anyone say Amtrak?). When it comes to the markets, consumers and the private sector drive it forward or backward, not government. Winners and losers are determined by what people want, need, or desire, and not by what government wants for them.

This was played out recently with the announcement that Green Vehicles, a Salinas, CA electric car start-up company, was closing its doors. Barely two years into its Vision Quest to create an “electric valley” in the state, Green Vehicles ran into problems creating enough capital to survive (translation: nobody wanted to invest in or buy the sewing machine engine scooters). What makes the story most disturbing, however, is that the company’s start up was subsidized by California taxpayers, to the tune of $540K.

If electric vehicles were a winning, money-making idea, someone would have perfected the technology and sold millions of them by now. That’s how capitalism works.

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Today, 1976, Hank Aaron hit his 755th, and final, home run.

From the Associated Press:

Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default.

The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and it stood in contrast to rising support at the White House and in the Senate for a late stab at bipartisanship to solve the nation’s looming debt crisis.

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Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is no stranger to fights with party leadership. And he’s not holding back in his criticism of the so-called “Plan B” that’s being developed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). In an exclusive interview with The Heritage Foundation this afternoon, DeMint didn’t hold back:

It seems to be a cover-up to me. It’s like I’ve said, it’s like leaving the door to the federal vault open, looking the other way, and saying we had nothing to do with the robbery. The debt limit is set up to keep us from increasing our debt without Congressional action—hopefully to reform the spending process.

He blamed President Obama for politicizing the debt-limit debate rather than seeking a consensus.

“I’m convinced the president has not been negotiating in good faith. He’s got a bad economy. His policies have made it worse. And he’s hoping this debt-limit debate will allow him to blame Republicans.”

The interview runs about 4 minutes. Hosted by Rob Bluey and produced by Brandon Stewart, with help from Hannah Sternberg.

They say, sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand words. In order to offer more perspective on the campaign against Sodexo, we’ve come up with a presentation on the SEIU smear-campaign against Sodexo. The object is to expose the underlying mechanics at work behind the campaign, to show how grassroots movements in universities in America are in reality financially and rhetorically linked to a major international union and expose the underlying architecture of actors in this campaigns.

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The Battle For Brooklyn, a documentary about one man’s fight to stop a private developer from using eminent domain to take his home, recently opened in select theaters in New York City after a successful film-festival run.

In 2003, billionaire real estate developer and New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner decided to move the team to Brooklyn, with the intention of building an arena, an affordable housing project, and bringing desperately needed jobs to the borough of Brooklyn. Ratner’s friend and fellow billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, enthusiastically put the weight of top-down government planning behind the project. That included using the city government’s extensive powers of eminent domain, despite the fact eminent domain is supposed to be used only in cases where development is for public uses such as schools and roads. And despite the fact that the construction of what became known as the “Atlantic Yards” project would displace many thriving businesses and homes.

Graphic designer Daniel Goldstein fought for nearly seven years to keep his home out of the hands of Ratner’s company, Forest City Ratner. Goldstein’s quixotic struggle is the centerpiece of The Battle For Brooklyn.

Reason.tv sat down with co-directors Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley to discuss eminent domain abuse and political perceptions of their film. Galinsky and Hawley insist their film is not a polemic, but rather an all-too-common story of a single person fighting an injustice against figures whose power and influence drawf his own.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher. About 4.40 minutes.

Go to http://reason.tv for downloadable versions, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new material goes live.

Related video: Billionaires vs. Brooklyn’s Best Bar: Eminent Domain Abuse and the Atlantic Yards Project.

The visual I found on the official website of U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) at 9:42 a.m. Central today seems an appropriate metaphor for the way the longtime congressman-turned freshman senator and members of his staff have rushed to the aide of Nixa, Mo., resident John Dollarhite.

Two months ago, Dollarhite contacted Senator Blunt for help in fighting USDA fines of up to $4 million in fines for selling too many bunnies. The senator replied with an electronic letter in which he said, among other things, that “Eliminating the option of humanely reducing the horse population may lead to even greater suffering on the part of these horses.” In other words, Dollarhite said, the senator’s staffers weren’t much help and his interaction with them left him “pissed off.”

Now, fast forward to the present day, and things aren’t looking much better.

On the Facebook group page, USDA Bunny Tyranny of the Dollarhite Family, the head of the Dollarhite household posted the following status update early this morning:

Roy Blunt is for BIG Goverment….. I called Roy’s office in Springfield & Jefferson City today. They are supportive of the USDA and I should NOT have the right to own any animals of any kind because I did not have a license…… Please protest Roy’s Offices.

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The on-again, off-again “Gang of Six” has come back on the scene and is offering a “Bipartisan Plan to Reduce Our Nation’s Deficits.”

The proposal is quite similar to the one put forth by the President’s Simpson-Bowles Commission, which isn’t too surprising since some of the same people are involved.

At this stage, all I’ve seen is this summary (A BIPARTISAN PLAN TO REDUCE OUR NATIONS DEFICITS v7), so I reserve the right to modify my analysis as more details emerge (and since I fully expect the plan to look worse when additional information is available, the following is an optimistic assessment.

The Good

o Unlike President Obama, the Gang of Six is not consumed by class-warfare resentment. The plan envisions that the top personal income tax rate will fall to no higher than 29 percent.

o The corporate income tax rate will fall to no higher than 29 percent as well, something that is long overdue since the average corporate tax rate in Europe is now down to 23 percent.

o The alternative minimum tax (which should be called the mandatory maximum tax) will be repealed.

o The plan would repeal the CLASS Act, a provision of Obamacare for long-term-care insurance that will significantly expand the burden of federal spending once implemented.

o The plan targets some inefficient and distorting tax preference such as the health care exclusion.

The Bad

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As uncertain and unruly and disheveled as the debt-ceiling debate may be, there are still good grounds to reach a deal. It could help the economy. It could keep the policy ball moving in the direction of smaller government. It could add a key business tax incentive for economic growth. And it could even stabilize the dollar.

There really are two problems here: First is raising the debt ceiling to avoid default. (That’s a real good idea.) Second is stuffing enough spending and deficit reduction into the deal to accommodate the newly militant demands of S&P and Moody’s, who want roughly $4 trillion in cuts over ten years in order to keep our AAA rating.

But here’s the tricky part for me: What kind of numbers are we talking about in the event of a last-minute deal? So many of these numbers are phony, and they often reflect baseline fiddling and out-year budget cuts that never materialize.

But the credit raters are on the war path. The small deal offered by Senator McConnell would raise the debt ceiling in three parts. But with only $1 trillion in so-called cuts, this “Plan B” won’t pass the S&P/Moody’s test. The number is too small.

Then there’s the grand design for President Obama’s big-picture deal. It is over $4 trillion, but it includes taxes that look to be off the table from the Republican standpoint.

But this has me thinking.

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Imagine my surprise to receive, within the span of minutes, both the following news story in Energy &Environment Daily — ” EPA: Jackson summons top aides for budget pow-wow as GOP sharpens knife: In the face of drastic funding cuts and a hostile political environment, U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has told her top deputies to rank which of their programs they deem to be essential and which could fall on the budgetary chopping block” — and the following invitation, just circulated around EPA headquarters.

Just keep this in mind when the results of this “pow-wow” — ritual demagoguery and a lot of talk about children, seniors and the poor — pop in the next few days.

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Government unions are suing the State of Illinois for not issuing what would have been their third round of raises in just seven months. Last week, members of AFSCME took to the street to demand “fair pay.”

Do Illinois state workers suffer from unfair treatment? My group, the Illinois Policy Institute took a closer look at the issue, and found that government workers enjoy generous pay and perks – often far beyond what many outside of the public sector could ever hope to receive. Consider the findings:

• The average compensation for an Illinois state government worker was $69,500 in 2008. The average private sector compensation? Just $56,500.
• In real terms, private sector compensation (wages plus benefits) in Illinois declined 2 percent over the past 15 years, while state worker compensation increased by 17 percent.
• Over a 40-year career, the average Illinois state worker will receive about 510 more paid vacation days than the average private sector worker.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Aaron Blake from the Washington Post to discuss the latest quarter of 2012 fundraising numbers, the importance of Iowa and the grueling GOP primary calendar.

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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Mad Men – Did you enjoy the Fuhrer’s birthday?

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Here’s a new video from the Cato Institute that looks at the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” proposal, and analyzes that budget reform in the broader context of the debt-limit fight and America’s looming fiscal crisis.

The video features my commentary, along with the sage analysis of my Cato colleague Chris Edwards. We make two simple points. First, fiscal reforms are necessary because America faces a Greek-style fiscal crisis if we leave the federal budget on autopilot.

Actually, America’s collapse will be worse since we won’t get a bailout from the IMF. Yet this doesn’t seem to bother President Obama, who apparently views the debt-limit fight as an opportunity for class-warfare demogaguery and transparent efforts to seduce the GOP into a suicidal tax-hike deal.

Second, the fiscal reforms that are necessary should be very feasible since they actually involve relatively modest spending restraint. Genuine spending cuts would be preferable, of course, but merely slowing the growth of spending can put America on a sustainable path.

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Now and then an example of the Left’s sheer hatred for all things conservative presents itself in such a way that we dare not pass up the opportunity to examine it and learn lessons from it. Whether it’s the media’s apoplectic response to President Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” in 1983 or a scene from earlier this year wherein mobs of unionized public employees stormed the Wisconsin Capital to keep Governor Scott Walker from reining in that state’s spending problems, through their actions the Left unwittingly undercuts their claim to tolerance, instead demonstrating with clarity their likes and dislikes, their friends and foes.

And while the Left has made it clear that Sarah Palin is someone they don’t like – someone they count not as a friend but a foe – their pettiness toward her came into sharper focus on July 18^th thanks to the Las Vegas Sun.

According to the Sun, Nevada resident James Linlor tried unsuccessfully to get a personalized license plate that read “GOPALIN” for two years (2009 & 2010). And in the summer of 2010 he also tried to get “PALIN,” “PALIN12” or “PALIN16,” but the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) rejected all three of those as well.

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Republican lawmakers who have expressed concern over the power and influence of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have offered up some compelling proposals. Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), the chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, has for example, said that he considering legislation that would block President Obama’s team of unelected lawyers from revamping union election rules.

That’s a good start, but Congress as a whole must move decisively to reclaim constitutional authority that was surrendered during the “Progressive Era” of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Matthew Spalding, a particularly astute legal scholar with the Heritage Foundation, has testified at some length on the use of czars within the Obama Administration and how this relates back to progressive ambitions. In many respects, the NLRB fits with extra-constitutional schemes the disadvantage the free market and dilute the policy making authority of elected officials.

In June, the three Democrats who sit on the Board proposed rule changes that would curtail the amount of time for private union elections. Brian Hayes, the only Republican member of the board, has been sharply critical of the proposal, but his input has been limited.

If the rule changes go into effect, they would set elections from a current median time of 37 days to as little as 10 days from the filing of an election petition. They would also set pre-election hearings for 7 days after a petition is filed; the rules would also require the employer to respond to a pre-hearing questionnaire raising any legal issues or waive its right to do so. And finally, the new rules would defer a decision on the issues raised at the hearing till after the election, putting an employer at risk if the decision is challenged.

But free market groups have made a concerted effort push back and this is cause for encouragement.

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The Talmud says: “One should not extravagantly distribute more than one fifth of one’s income to charity.” Are the sages saying there’s a ceiling cap on giving charity? Yes they are, because if everyone were to give too much away there would be too many mouths to feed.

If you have been getting information from the mainstream media you may think tea partiers are forcing Republicans in Congress to; cut the budget so much people will be forced to push grandma’s wheelchair off a cliff or, are trying force the country into default guaranteeing Obama won’t be reelected.

Not true! It’s all about not having too many mouths to feed.

The debt ceiling’s the congressionally approved amount the federal government can borrow. The ceiling is currently set at $14.294 trillion. The country’s debt hit that figure on May 16 and we are currently approaching $14.6 trillion in debt. Thanks to some “re-arranging,” the Treasury Department says we won’t “run out of money” until August 2.

The MSM and progressive politicians report if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by August 2, a biblical-type disaster will occur, wrath of God type stuff; fire and brimstone falling from the skies! Rivers boiling! Earthquakes, volcanoes, Human sacrifice, nothing but Dennis Kuchinich speeches on your TV set … mass hysteria (that premise is false)!

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