In the wake of the debt ceiling negotiations that paralyzed Washington for weeks and the ensuing last-minute deal that has been criticized by many on the right for failing to change the way Washington spends money, it looks like Republicans supportive of pending natural gas subsidy legislation are eager to avoid shining too much light on the bill – which makes sense considering it distorts the energy market by using taxpayer money to pick winners and losers in the natural gas industry.

Last Wednesday, the House Ways and Means committee abruptly cancelled a scheduled hearing on the NAT GAS Act. From Politico’s Morning Energy:

NOT ON TODAY’S AGENDA
House Ways and Means has postponed its hearing on energy tax policy, putting off a potentially testy intra-Republican squabble over the NAT GAS Act to subsidize natural gas vehicles.

What is the NAT GAS Act? Well, it’s right in line with the Obama Administration’s overreaching regulatory agenda, but because some Republicans favor it the blame can’t be laid at the foot of Obama and the Democrats. From an earlier post on Washington’s war on businesses:

-An item that’s technically legislation, not regulatory rulemaking, but stands to pack the same economically ruinous punch is the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1380) which heavily subsidizes businesses and consumers who switch to natural gas-fueled vehicles directly benefiting billionaires T. Boone Pickens and George Soros at the taxpayers’ expense. The subsidies – ahem, ‘tax credits’ – come in at a whopping $7,500 per passenger car, $64,000 for heavy-duty trucks and 18-wheelers, and up to $100,000 for gas stations installing natural gas pumps.

Referring to government subsidies as ‘tax credits’ is the oldest trick in the book to rally Republican support for a liberal proposal, and in this case it worked. Although some Republicans have pulled their support for the bill, over 70 GOP Members of Congress are on record as still supporting the bill.

So, qui bono?

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Imagine America faces a crisis of malnutrition. Millions of Americans are consuming too many processed foods and too few fresh foods. To stem the crisis, Congress enacts a comprehensive food reform law, requiring food sellers to meet minimum nutritional standards and provide access to healthy foods. The new law makes food more expensive, and many Americans opt out of the food market altogether, choosing to grow their own food instead. The food industry teeters on the verge of collapse. To prevent this collapse, Congress passes another law mandating that individuals buy a minimum amount of healthy food each month. Individuals who fail to buy the minimum amount face a stiff penalty.

Can Congress do this? Does the Constitution give the federal government power to make you buy healthy food? These questions are the heart of the Obamacare lawsuits—merely substitute “health insurance” for “healthy food.” If Obamacare’s health insurance mandate is upheld—as the federal Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in late June—individual liberty is in serious long-term jeopardy.

The rationale behind forcing individuals to buy health insurance versus healthy food is indistinguishable. The Obama Administration contends that, if people aren’t forced to buy health insurance, the market will collapse. Because Obamacare made health insurance more expensive—doing things like forbidding insurers from excluding those with preexisting conditions—many Americans, particularly healthy young people, would have decided to stay out of the health insurance market altogether and “self-insure.” Government must force these people to buy health insurance, the argument goes, to capture their premium dollars and help subsidize older, sicker people, keeping the overall market affordable and viable.

No matter how ardently you believe the health care system is flawed, or how angry you are at insurance companies, you must resist the temptation to let these considerations distract you from the broader and critically important constitutional choice posed by the health reform litigation. At stake are two related constitutional concepts: “federalism” and “limited and enumerated powers.” These concepts aren’t just quaint, outdated relics. They aren’t about “states’ rights.” They are both designed to protect individual liberty by restraining government’s innate tendency toward ever-expanding power.

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Debe Bell will probably never forget Thursday, July 21. It was the day she found herself surrounded by people from her local law enforcement agency, and they weren’t there to help.

Unlike John Dollarhite of Nixa, Mo., and several magicians across the country who’ve been hounded and threatened with massive fines by agents from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Bell had to go face to face with her hare-brained local sheriff.

An anonymous Crime Stoppers hotline tip led animal control officers from the Jefferson County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office to descend upon Bell’s one-acre farm at about 10:30 that morning and, before the day was over, remove nearly 200 rabbits from the property. The 59 year old was being accused of 24 misdemeanor charges of cruelty to animals, including charges that she somehow mistreated two meat rabbits already inside her freezer. More on the hotline later.

Bell had purchased the 1.01-acre property 12 miles north of Denver nearly 40 years earlier with plans to raise as much livestock as she wanted. After all, it was zoned for agricultural purposes (“A-2”) and had everything she needed, including a four-bedroom, tri-level home and a 600-square-foot barn. It looked like a great place to raise a family.

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Recently in downtown Los Angeles, NAACP President Ben Jealous held a press conference to kick off his group’s 102^nd annual convention. His remarks came just two days before our newly formed South Central L.A. Tea Party held a major rally to expose the lies and racism of the NAACP. During the press conference Jealous was asked about the black-led Tea Party group and about details of a recent closed-door meeting he and other liberal black leaders had with President Barack Obama.

What you will see in the following video and read from the partial transcript are blatant lies from the desperate leader of an outdated civil-rights group trying to stay relevant by scaring black Americans. In the video Jealous claims the rights of black voters are being threatened and that racial “discrimination 2.0” is holding them back. It’s a shameless attempt to keep black Americans focused on ‘racism’ in order to keep them angry and on Obama’s Democrat plantation.

The NAACP president began by stating:

“The rights of everybody are under attack everywhere all the time. The rights of workers to organize, a women’s right to choose, access to the ballot box itself. In this past year we’ve seen perhaps the greatest attempt to limit access to the ballot box since 1896….”

The NAACP leader compares the tough economic times and high unemployment for blacks to the Rodney King beating:

“…As a Californian it’s hard to forget that this year is the 20^th anniversary of the Rodney King tragedy. And this moment is too much like that. The underlying anxieties of chronic high unemployment are still there, the short-term stress and recession is with us again and our people are even more incarcerated than they were then….”

Jealous explains that the Obama administration is focused on ending what he calls “employment discrimination 2.0” to ensure that people with bad credit, those with prison records, and the long-term unemployed are not being discriminated against:

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Character always matters. Character is the foundation of civilizations, it is the font of understanding a person’s value and values. People of discernment always judge a person based upon their character or want of it. At the core of character is good judgment (and hopefully wisdom). Character always matters except where ideology is concerned.

Character can be understood by a person’s actions and associations. During the 2008 Presidential campaign apparent deficiencies in character – mainly seen through associations with extremists and domestic terrorists, failure to release pertinent personal information and academic writings/grades, and a less than stellar senatorial voting record of “present” were entirely ignored by the majority of the electorate apparently unconcerned with such matters as character.

With falling poll numbers, a disturbingly split and degraded society, and partisans on both sides of the political divide louder than any shrinking rational middle the country now faces a growing economic crisis while fighting multiple wars. The entire world is affected by the precipitous drop in the US financial markets, not only Americans.

The Dow was at approximately -440 when the President, some 40 minutes behind schedule, delivered his partisan-and-blame speech on the economy on Monday afternoon – his most important speech up to this time – whereupon the Dow dropped further to close past -600. The roller coaster markets continued to shake as Tuesday ended up, but Wednesday brought another -520. Instability in the markets translates to fear.

The downgrade by S&P is fundamentally about a loss of trust and faith. Investors at all levels are emotional capitalists trying to gain a profit and also protect their funds in a hostile “irrational market.” In this market “protection of assets” mainly translates to selling as prices collapse.

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Today, in 1942, the painfully beautiful actress Heddy Lamarr was awarded a patent for an early technique of ’spread spectrum’ telecommunications. Wireless communication and Wi-Fi would not be possible without it. Bravo, Heddy! And, shut up Jane Fonda.

Washington DC,
August 10, 2011

Dear taxpayers, we were slightly off in our projections for economic recovery. You may have heard about this. There have been some externalities that even the smartest economists could not account for. The earthquake in Japan really fouled things up for everyone. However, we’ll keep plodding ahead with same proven fiscal policies. Rest calmly, our trusted accountants are already discovering new and exciting ways to increase “intragovernmental transfers.”

We are trying to boost the economy by telling the consumer — that means you — to spend, and to help you spend we’ll print more money and give it you. By the way, we plan to tax that money and the things you buy — expect increases on those items as well. Yes, unfortunately, it will cost money in order for us to give you “free” money. Don’t worry; governments don’t file for bankruptcy even when we are in fact bankrupt. We’ll print more money to spend ourselves out of this. We own the presses and we can do this. So we are good for it. We only ask that you handle the inflation…because in a way we are bankrupt, but like I said, governments don’t file for bankruptcy. Still with me?

We cannot guarantee currency integrity during this deficit spending while substantially adding to our national debt. We don’t have enough gold for that. Besides, there really isn’t enough wealth in the world to cover all the borrowing that is going on world wide right now. So to help cover some of the revenue, we’ll raise taxes on businesses that we are giving benefits to. You see that is how government revenue works.

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The recent media action line regarding the Tea Party is that they are indeed “terrorists”. On top of the media, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) stated, “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.” Vice President Joe Biden quickly followed up with the remarks, “They have acted like terrorists” in regards to the debt ceiling negotiations.

Given the media and some liberal politicians were driving the “terrorists” meme home at every opportunity, Rasmussen asked 1,000 likely voters whether they agreed. Out of the respondents, 29% believed they are, while 71% believed it was an outlandish accusation.

MRCTV’s Joe Schoffstall went to the nations Capitol to see if people were buying into the organized effort to paint them as such.

Here’s what we found:

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I interviewed Congressman Connie Mack (R-FL), via telephone, about his new “Mack Penny Plan,” which is gaining considerable support from both House and Senate Republicans, and even some Democrats.

Congressman Connie Mack did not vote to raise the debt ceiling before the August recess. He was looking for a long-term solution to the nation’s deficits, which are leading to unsustainable debt.

After working with some grass-roots groups, Mr. Mack designed the “One Percent Spending Reduction Act,” or, the “Mack Penny Plan,” which, he says, will cut and cap federal spending, and balance the federal budget in eight years.

In short, the “Mack Penny Plan” would:

• Cut federal spending by 1% each year for 6 years
• Cap spending at 18% of GDP in the 7th year
• Balance the federal budget in the 8th year
• Save taxpayers $7.5 trillion over 10 years

“What’s different about this plan,” the Florida congressman says, “is that it’s pretty simple. We freeze spending at the 2011 level- about $3.6 trillion- and cut 1% of spending for six years- that’s one penny out of every dollar. Everyone has had to cut at least one penny out of every dollar, whether in family or business budgets, so that’s not too hard for the federal government to do.”

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On the morning after Republicans won 4 of 6 recall races and maintained control of the state senate, Governor Walker sat down with the MacIver News Service and shared his thoughts on the Democrats’ failed efforts to win a majority in the State Senate, and what the future holds for his legislative agenda.

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When England banned the private ownership of handguns within its borders, I remember the National Rifle Association (NRA) airing videos of steamrollers rolling over mounds of confiscated weapons and crushing them to bits. I remember seeing videos of containers full of guns – handguns and long guns – being placed in large compactors where they too were crushed beyond recognition.

The NRA’s message was simple: Elect people to Congress and the Senate who are anti-gun and it won’t be long till they’re steamrolling your father’s shotgun or your .38 revolver or your buddy’s Colt .45.

And the NRA warned that once that happened, emboldened criminals would come into our homes and businesses without hesitation: for they’d know that we, as a disarmed citizenry, have no way to turn them back.

That was back in the mid-to-late 1990s, and I still remember how the progressive world, which included Democrat leadership in the U.S., mocked the NRA for using scare tactics to control people and subsequently praised the way England was supposedly saying “no” to the gun lobby and “yes” to fighting crime.  And it was open season on the NRA and the 2^nd Amendment in the college classroom too, where I heard professor after professor recite their talking points on the supposed benefits of gun control during lectures that had nothing to do with guns or control.

Fast forward to 2011 and look at the riots taking place in London, England: the city of unarmed people where crime was long ago vanished via the confiscation and destruction of handguns.

Now that the criminals are confident the citizenry is thoroughly unarmed, they’re going into homes and businesses whenever they wish, taking whatever they want once they go in, and walking (or running) away with a smile on their face.

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Last night was a stunning success for the heroic middle class and for organized labor! Progressives seized control of two Republican state senate seats in Wisconsin–one of the few times in American history that a recall election has been successful, and on so grand a scale!

And that’s just the beginning. We are going to recall that pathetic Koch addict, so-called “governor” Scott Walker, as well! We are on the march to total victory!

True, we lost four of the other six recall elections yesterday. True, we failed to win the third seat necessary to take control of the state senate and begin rolling back Walker’s devastating attack on workers’ rights. True, we spent $30 million, much of it taken from the hard-earned dues of our members. True, we must now rally our exhausted and rather demoralized ground troops to defend two shaky Democrat-held seats next week.

Comrades–these failures point to the far greater victory that we achieved last night! We defended the “middle class” against evil corporations and Tea Party terrorists! We stood up to a tsunami of Citizens United-enabled outside money, and unleashed our own flood of Citizens United-enabled outside money! We rallied a huge crowd of red-shirted thugs at Ed Schultz’s live election coverage on MSNBC, smashing any pretense at objectivity!

Don’t you see what that means? We have sent a clear message to the nation: we are so fanatically devoted to the progressive cause that even losing elections will not deter us! The radical left and the public-sector unions have taken control of the Democratic party, and we are willing to destroy it in order to save it! We, the revolutionary vanguard of the middle class proletariat, have declared war on America–and we will not be defeated!

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First Media Matters, now this.  Two Chicago professors at a Catholic University have been caught using school resources to attempt to shut down a “Tea Party” jobs fair that was being held one block away from President Obama’s birthday fundraiser.

The incident adds more fuel to the fire conservatives have been stoking for years; namely, that many U.S. universities  are just front organizations for Democrat recruitment and far left-wing political activity.  It begs the question: isn’t it time to crackdown on academic institutions that play politics and strip them of their tax-exempt status?

Dr. Midge Wilson, DePaul University

On Wednesday, Dr. Midge Wilson, Associate Dean of DePaul University’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (LAS) and Associate Professor Ann Russo, Director of the Women and Gender Studies Program, used their university email accounts to coordinate a harassment campaign against the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, where a private political event was taking place. The event, “Jobs Bash 2011,” was a call to “people of all political persuasions – conservative, independent, and Tea Party” – to bring their resumes and ask the President to explain the nation’s high unemployment figures. DePaul students and faculty were among those that received Wilson’s 2,000 politicized emails.

In her email, Associate Dean Midge Wilson urged her list to contact the venue and shut down the event. Her subject line? “The Green Mill sucks.”

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In just a few days, a fresh group of teenagers will descend upon America’s college and university campuses, eager to sip from the cup of knowledge and to take their place among the next generation of leaders.

At least that’s the hope.

But a new report from the editors of “Choosing the Right College” and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute finds that students need to be careful about choosing where to study.  A poor decision could leave graduates with more debt than knowledge, and a place in the unemployment line instead of on the fast track to success.

CollegeGuideReport–Final–08.05.2011

The report is titled “Rating America’s Colleges: A Ranking of Academic Excellence and Intellectual Freedom on Campus.” In it, the authors make the case a new approach is needed for assessing the quality of our institutions of higher learning.

They cite a study which finds that corporate leaders are increasingly dissatisfied “with the quality of U.S undergraduate education.” Ninety percent of employers want employees who are skilled in written communication, critical thinking and problem solving, but fewer than 30 percent of applicants meet those expectations.

The authors argue that part of the problem is found in the way the nation’s colleges are evaluated. They take aim at U.S. News and World Report’s popular college rankings, and suggest that schools are evaluated by meaningless criteria such as “peer assessment,” “freshman retention and graduation rates,” and “per-student spending.” Those measurements don’t reveal much about what goes on inside the classroom.

The authors of “Rating America’s Colleges” do something radically different: they assess “how well (or badly) a school does at providing the classic ‘liberal education’ suited to a free citizen and a well-rounded adult.”

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Tim Groseclose to discuss the his new book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, and how newsrooms are filled with self-selecting liberals who make it difficult for conservatives to break into journalism.

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:

Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind
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Am I the only one who grew quite tired of seeing John Kerry this weekend on the MSM talk show circuit deriding the Tea Party and what he is proffering as their responsibility for the S&P action Friday?  “This is without a doubt a Tea Party downgrade,” he fumed on Meet The Press. The common narrative being offered by Mr. Kerry et. al. is that the right-wing GOP held the prospect of not raising the debt ceiling—thus forcing a default—like a gun to the head of a hostage government.  They then defiantly maintained their ideological rigidity by rejecting any revenue increases as part of the debt compromise.  Faced with the Scylla of spending cuts with no  tax hike but the necessary debt ceiling increase, or the Charybdis of a default and potential ruin, the Democrats caved and the GOP won a pyrrhic victory while irresponsibly selling the nation’s future down the river to inevitable downgrade.

To all of the 63,239,109 citizens who voted against Kerry’s bid to be president in 2004, I thank you.  One weekend of this man was bad enough.  Only one driven by blind partisanship could blame the Tea Party for a downgrade that was, as economics professor Steve Horowitz rightly pointed out: “50 to 75 years in the making.  Us spending beyond our means, trying to do things we simply can’t do, and not having the revenues to support that spending. Spending that just shouldn’t be there in the first place.”  Indeed, the moment the New Deal kicked in, the clock started ticking.  S&P’s message was clear.  Welfare statism, the kind of pay-as-you go ponzi schemes masked as social safety nets that John Kerry pines for, is a fool’s bargain.  Ask Europe.

How dare Kerry deride representatives for following through with their commitments to their electorate?  The sweep of the House for the GOP in 2010 was as clear a mandate as can be offered by the American public that the reckless spending had to stop—a mandate to which the Tea Party representatives especially remained faithful.  They were sent to Washington to stop the out-of-control spending bus cold.  The entrenched interests like Kerry wanted the bus to continue heading off the cliff at 60 mph.  Yet, because the Tea Partiers did not want to “compromise” and slow the bus down to 30 mph they were labeled “extremists.”  They understand what Europe is learning.  The nanny state experiment that has lasted for a mere three generations is already collapsing under the weight of mathematics as so cleverly encapsulated in Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote…“you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

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A Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesman accused Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus of “tampering” with the vote in last night’s recall election.

“We believe the election in this contest has been tampered with by Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus.

“She’s sitting on votes. We believe that right now, there are severe irregularities in Waukesha County once again. We believe the very fate of the Wisconsin Senate hangs in the balance and is in the hands of a woman who has already shown extreme incompetence.”

“We believe there’s dirty tricks afoot.”

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We have oft-written about the flagrant disingenuousness of very many of the D.C. political class.

What those of us here in the Real World refer to as “lying.”

This serial falsehood-ity is executed in large part to buttress and bolster a Huge Government agenda – which these D.C. Denizens wish to continue implementing, but to which We the People are demonstrably opposed.

How else, for example, to explain the Democrat-led United States Senate defiantly and illegally refusing for more than 800 days to pass a budget?

They would rather shirk a fundamental job responsibility – and break the law doing it – than tell We the People just how much they want to grow the already obscenely obese federal Leviathan.

Which brings us to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Which has – in pursuit of their portion of the Barack Obama Administration Huge Government itinerary – taken serial liberties with the truth.

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