It’s only been a few days since 45,000 CWA and IBEW members walked off their jobs at Verizon, however, incidents of harassment, sabotage, and illegal picketing have already begun to pile up.

On Tuesday, Verizon obtained an injunction in Pennsylvania and filed for one in Delaware “to prevent ‘illegal’ and ‘reprehensible’ strike activities such as keeping managers out of buildings.”

In one deplorable incident, a foul-mouthed IBEW member in New Jersey put his young daughter in front of a Verizon truck turning into a driveway as he berated the driver using expletives.

[Language Warning]

[Note: After this video of an IBEW striker using his daughter as a roadblock was posted and began circulating the internet, it was removed by the user.]
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Yesterday was the first salvo in the 2012 election. It will be a near-run thing.

The battle for 2012 is on. Find results here. The Unions should win these races, since they have the most to lose. Anything less than total take-over is a loss. We trust the public.

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Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

Last week as Standard and Poor’s (S&P) announced the downgrade of United States credit rating from AAA to AA+ they criticized the discord in today’s political landscape. The press release that accompanied Standard and Poor’s announcement explained their frustration.

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.

Rasmussen is reporting that voter confidence in America’s leaders is at an all-time low. The survey finds that only 17% of likely voters think the federal government today has the consent of the governed. The government has the consent of the governed – a foundational principle, contained in the Declaration has fallen to its lowest level measured yet. Only 8% of voters believe the average member of Congress listens to his or her constituents more than to their party leaders also a new low.

Part of the reason for the low approval of the federal government is negative advertising. Studies have shown that voters hate negative ads but they are still used because, well, they work. But research has also shown that there is a boomerang effect, meaning negative political ads end up tarnishing the image of the candidate the ad is supporting and the candidate’s desired office.

Sadly the news coming out of the beltway that Democratic Party operatives are already planning commercials designed to make personal attacks on candidates of the other party.

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California has among the strictest gun laws in the country, and couple of local politicians are seizing the opportunity created by the Arizona shooting to make them even stricter.

While most states operate under a “shall-issue” concealed carry weapons (CCW) permitting regime, meaning that anyone who passes a basic background check can get a CCW, California uses the “may-issue” rule, which means the decision is left to the sole discretion of the county sheriff. The result? Approximately 0.1% of California citizens have CCWs, which is almost 20 times lower than in the average shall-issue state.

This restrictive climate has led to the emergence of a burgeoning “Open Carry” movement, wherein citizens carry holstered, unloaded weapons in plain sight. California Assemblyman Anthony Portantino calls the open carry exemption in the law a “loophole,” which he intends to close with Assembly Bill 144 (AB 144).

Portantino’s fellow Assembly member Lori Saldana tried to ban open carry in 2010, but the bill failed in the assembly. But this time, AB 144 has gained helpful momentum from an unexpected source: Jared Loughner.

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On June 2, 2011, Judicial Watch released documents that show the Obama FCC’s collusion with a radical leftist organization to seize control over the Internet. This investigation caught the eye of congressional leaders, and now it appears a congressional probe of the matter is in the offing.

According to The Hill:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee pressed the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday for all documentation of the rulemaking process behind the agency’s net-neutrality regulations.

Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) cited reports that FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus attended White House meetings where net-neutrality rules were debated as evidence the FCC rules passed in December were politically motivated.

The representatives also pointed to an investigation from Judicial Watch that unearthed emails from the advocacy group Free Press to aides of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps advocating strongly for net neutrality, which Copps supported. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) termed the emails “collusion” last month.

“These allegations suggest the FCC’s network neutrality proceeding was designed to fulfill a presidential campaign slogan, when it should have been based on an analysis of statutory authority, an economic analysis of the Internet service market, and an examination of the record,” the lawmakers wrote.

“If true, it seems the FCC failed to develop an independent conclusion derived from a balanced fact-based record, which is incompatible with proper rule-making.”

Importantly, that FCC 3-2 vote seemed to be at with odds an April, 2010, federal appeals court ruling that the FCC had exceeded its authority in seeking to regulate the Internet and enforce “net neutrality” rules. (More evidence the lawless Obama administration has as much respect for court rulings as it does the U.S. Constitution — which is to say, very little.)

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Illinois taxpayers are given the option to donate money to charity each year when they file their state tax returns.

Now, America’s most indebted state is raiding those funds to pay for wasteful spending that the Democratic governor and legislature refuse to cut.

As Chicago’s local NBC affiliate reported recently, it’s a form of theft made possible by a law that then-Gov. Rob Blagojevich passed in 2003 allowing “unused” money to be swept into the state’s general fund.

Illinois Tax Return. Source: NBC Chicago

A spokesperson for Blagojevich’s successor, Gov. Pat Quinn, claims the charity money was used to pay for Medicaid expenses, and that without those funds, the state would have lost critical federal funding.

Even some Democrats, including former gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark-Netsch, find such excuses unacceptable. They are outraged at behavior that would likely result in criminal prosecutions, were it to be done by a private company or individual.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Elizabeth Blackney are joined by Craig James to discuss American exceptionalism, the rise of the Tea Party and we’ll ask him whether or not he’s running for the U.S. Senate in 2012.

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:

Craig James and Texans For A Better America
Texans for a Better America
The End of American Exceptionalism?
FATCA: the End of American Exceptionalism or Merely the Next Chapter?
Tea party influence on debt debate stirs heat from political left

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Follow Texans for a Better America on Twitter

Last night, London was engulfed in its third night of violent riots. Strangely, on Twitter, the left is taking some glee in this. We, instead, think of it as an ominous foreshadowing.

Mr. Geithner, please check your crystal ball because it appears to have a major malfunction!  Either something’s wrong with the ball or you’ve got a classic case of “operator error” going on.  You might look into borrowing your good buddy Barack Obama’s.  His crystal ball seems to be shooting fairly straight these days.  “Electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket,” anyone remember this gem?  He could start a 1-800-psychic line with that one!  Hey it might not be pretty, but at least it was truthful.

In an interview with Fox News on April 19, 2011, a little over three months ago, when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked if the U.S. was at risk of losing its AAA rating, he replied:

“No risk of that, no risk…you see the leadership of the United States of America, the President…the Republican leadership…the Democrats…recognizing now that this is the right thing to do for the economy.”

For some time now, the United States debt has been creeping up to the 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) mark.  That’s a disaster just waiting in the wind. It’s reminiscent of 2001 when the Bush Administration warned of potential problems and warned that financial giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could “cause strong repercussions in financial markets.”  In 2003, the White House upgraded the concerns to a “systemic risk” that could spread beyond the housing sector.  But U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D) told the House Financial Services Committee that the housing market was fine, stating, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack are not in a crisis.”

In 2008, the housing market crashed, sending the economy in a downward spiral, from which we have not recovered.  You would think that our “leaders” would have learned their lessons from the past, especially from such a debacle just a few short years ago.  But with the passing of the recent budget hijacking, debt ceiling busting deal that our lawmakers recently compromised on, ignoring the warnings of the TEA Party, it is apparent that the lessons of history were short-lived.  Shortly after the deal was done, the unthinkable happened.  The US debt hit the 100 percent mark of GDP, the market tanked, and the US credit rating was downgraded from its AAA rating, with the real possibility of being downgraded again.

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Don’t you just love it when a political figure opens up his or her mouth and out comes STUPID?

Unfortunately, the blubbering of absolute absurdity happens on the left AND the right, but former DNC chairman Howard Dean, appearing this week on ‘Face the Nation’, barfed up something so ridiculous it spawned many Google searches on my part.

In discussing this nation’s debt crisis, Dean joined John Kerry, Charlie Rangel and even John McCain to some extent, in throwing the Tea Party Conservatives under the proverbial bus, blaming them for the inability to reach better deal on the debt ceiling. Dean’s comment went a little somethin’ like this:

“I think this is [the] Tea Party’s problem. I think they’re totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it,” Dean said …

Smoking tea … Well, call me sheltered (and not many do …) but I certainly hadn’t heard of any such thing … Smoking tea? Do people do that?

And if they do, what kind?

Lipton? Nestea? Celestial Seasonings? Herbal?  Green tea? Will a Target generic brand suffice? I just had to find out exactly what would happen if one did actually fire up a tea doobie instead of steeping and drinking tea (I’m a journalist … don’t knock me for being curious.).

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After pleading guilty to voter fraud in Las Vegas in April, ACORN will be sentenced Wednesday for participating in a massive conspiracy.

The organized crime syndicate, which used to employ President Obama, may be fined as little as $1,000. Because ACORN, the shell corporation that ran the corrupt ACORN network, is in bankruptcy, it may end up paying nothing at all.

ACORN was convicted of felony-level unlawful compensation for registration of voters. With the full knowledge of upper management, ACORN illegally offered cash bonuses to its voter registration canvassers in a scheme called “Blackjack.” Canvassers received extra money if they hit the magic number of 21 registrations in a day.

Senior ACORN executives Amy Adele Busefink and Christopher Howell Edwards were also convicted for their roles in the scheme. ACORN cared so little about the conspiracy that its voter fraud division, Project Vote, put Busefink in charge of the group’s national get-out-the-vote drive in 2010 while she was under indictment in Nevada.

Mickey Mouse, Mary Poppins, and various celebrities living and dead have been registered to vote over and over again precisely because ACORN has been allowed to get away with polluting the nation’s voter rolls for so long.

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Just when you thought the Progressive Movement could be more deeply invested in denial, now comes the absurd notion that somehow, the TEA Party Movement, whose pinnacle tenet is fiscal responsibility; which has devoutly insisted that the federal government cease the practice of spending beyond the tax revenue it gleans from taxpayers, that somehow it is the TEA Party Movement and their affiliated members of Congress who are responsible for the downgrade in the US credit rating by S&P and not the glad-handing spendthrifts of the big government, nanny state Progressive Movement.

“Bottom up, top down…inside out.”

Shameless partisan, Chicago Progressive operative and former senior advisor to Pres. Barack Obama, David “Say Anything, Lie, Cheat and Steal to Win” Axelrod is quoted as saying, “The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade.”

US Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who, it was revealed during the 2004 General Election, was fast and loose with the truth about his service in Vietnam, parroted Axelrod’s talking point, saying, Standard & Poor’s decision was “without question the Tea Party downgrade” because Tea Partiers held bipartisan lawmakers back from a bigger deal. This, even though the facts bear out that it was in fact Democrats who refused the deal, demanding almost a half trillion dollars in additional tax revenue be added to the mix.

And Howard Dean, Progressive ideologue extraordinaire, who has devolved into irrelevance since losing both his ill-fated presidential bid and the leadership post of the DNC, said, “I think they’re totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it.”

One has to be impressed with the coordination it must take to ensure that all the political operatives in the Progressive Movement are using the exact same talking points during each and every interview almost at exactly at the same time. If one were of a curious mind the question of who is at the helm of the USS Propaganda would come to the forefront. Of course, we shouldn’t expect to find inquisitive minds of this nature within what used to be referred to as the mainstream media…they get their Cliff Notes from the same source.

Only from the minds of the Progressive Movement can we find a converse-reality in thinking so striking, so absurd, that it would condemn as being the cause of repercussions for fiscal irresponsibility those who are demanding that deficit spending come to a halt; that those who are demanding fiscal responsibility are responsible for fiscal irresponsibility.

Night is day and day is a tree.

Yet, even as the cancer of disingenuous, partisan, Progressive ideological madness comes “fast and furious” to the American people via the usual suspects in the alphabet media, it would appear that, increasingly, the American people are beginning to see through the political propaganda of the Far-Left.

A new Gallup poll – and we point out that Gallup leans Left – has concluded:

“Americans’ political ideology at the midyear point of 2011 looks similar to 2009 and 2010, with 41 percent self-identifying as conservative, 36 percent as moderate, and 21 percent as liberal.

“If this pattern continues, 2011 will be the third straight year that conservatives significantly outnumber moderates — the next largest ideological bloc. Liberalism has been holding steady for the past six years, averaging either 21 percent or 22 percent…”

“Among Republicans, conservatives currently outnumber moderates by nearly 3 to 1, 72 percent vs. 24 percent, while very few are liberal (4 percent)…

“Conservatism among independents increased fairly sharply in 2009, from 30 percent to 35 percent, largely explaining the expansion of conservatism nationally at that time, and it has held at that level since then.”

Meanwhile, a new Rasmussen Reports poll indicates that:

“…just 17 percent of likely US voters think the federal government today has the consent of the governed. 69 percent believe the government does not have that consent. 14 percent are undecided.

“The number of voters who feel the government has the consent of the governed — a foundational principle, contained in the Declaration of Independence — is down from 23 percent in early May and has fallen to its lowest level measured yet.

“Perhaps it’s no surprise voters feel this way since only 8 percent believe the average member of Congress listens to his or her constituents more than to their party leaders. That, too, is the lowest level measured to date. 84 percent think the average congressman listens to party leaders more than the voters they represent.”

So, with the Progressives and Democrats holding the Executive Branch, half of the Legislative Branch and just under half of the Judicial Branch (which, in and of itself has become increasingly useless in the eyes of the electorate), and with the overwhelming majority of American voters believing that the federal government does not have the consent of the governed, and with a mass movement of independents toward the Conservative political line of thinking – not to mention a move within the Democrat Party away from their fringe Progressive Left – is it a wise political move to continue jamming the disingenuous stick of non-factual propaganda into the political hornets’ nest that is the TEA Party Movement?

The American people have been awakened to the need to divine fact from fiction where the management of our country is concerned. This truth is self-evident in the results of the 2010 Mid Term Elections. That said, the only ones who seem to be in denial about the realities facing our country appear to be elected Progressive elitist politicians who would rather bankrupt the country while degrading its chances for recovery, all in the name of social engineering and social justice.

In times past, better men would have identified this behavior as treason. Perhaps it is time for those who identify with the principles of the TEA Party to “take the gloves off”; perhaps it is time for the American people to “downgrade” the Progressive Movement to its proper place…the rotting garbage heap of failed political ideology.

What do you think about that, Mr. Kerry? You had better go check with your puppet master for a response. Run along now.

Today, in 1945, a second atomic bomb was exploded in Japan. The city of Nagasaki was left in ruins, as was the Japanese Imperial dream. Within days, Japan would unconditionally surrender.

Racism! That’s what is to blame, comrades, for Standard & Poor’s dastardly downgrade of America’s credit rating. Don’t be fooled by the benign appearance of “AA+”. Those A’s are meant to make us feel better. But we know when we’re being graded on a curve just for the sake of affirmative action. We hear the racist condescension in that “plus.”

What S&P really meant to say was “F”–to which, comrades, we must declare: “F you, too!”

Decades of reckless federal spending and expanding government–and now the rating agencies have a problem with it?

Robert Henderson, Jr. said it best at The Grio–NBC’s segregated, er, special section for black opinion and commentary: “…America’s credit will have been downgraded for the first time, with a black man in the White House, potentially reinforcing the stereotype that black people are poor money managers.”

Could the racism be any more obvious? The moneylenders and their media–yeah, I said it!–have put up with the profligacy of irresponsible white presidents forever.

Every single white president for generations has raised the debt ceiling over and over again. George W. Bush declared war on the world at a cost of trillions of dollars we simply didn’t have. Along comes a black president–and look what happens. Panic! Downgrade!

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“By the middle of the 21^st century, the output of China and India will account for almost 60 percent. The US and Europe by then will each account for 10 percent. It will be a very different world in terms of economic power.”

Michael Spence, Nobel Prize winner and professor of Economics at NYU, discusses the factors that led to the United States’ rise to power, and the causes of its economic and political downfall. Michael Spence argues that growth in the developing world is no longer an economic issue, but a governance issue.  And despite China’s rapid state-led growth, he asserts that “democracy is still alive.”

How will the US respond to rising powers like China and India? In The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World, Michael Spence predicts that the US will lose its dominance but will persevere, much like the British after the Industrial Revolution. Global power is not a zero sum game.

To learn more about the future economic and political power of the US, China, and India, watch the full interview below.

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