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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Charles Lipson to discuss why democracies don’t fight one another and how trust and transparency allows democracies to make credible promises to one another.

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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Dr. Charles Lipson at the University of Chicago
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has basically been shut down thanks to the Senate Democrats addition to pork. 4,000 FAA employees have been furloughed until further notice. 70,000 construction workers must now sit on their hands as all airport construction has halted. And the federal government is loosing $200million a week in airline ticket taxes because they are not authorized to legally collect the tax.

What has led to this massive shut down? Senate Democrats refusal to curb a wasteful government subsidy of $200 million known as the Essential Air Service (EAS) program.

As of last Friday, the FAA has lost its authorization to spend money and levy fees because Congress couldn’t come to an agreement on a transportation bill. House Republicans are currently purposing a temporary transportation bill to last through September allowing time for the two parties to come together on a larger agreement. Included in the bill is a provision that would curb the EAS program.

The EAS program was originally created in 1978 as a subsidy to help out small and rural airports as the government stepped back from regulating routes and fares. The program was intended to last 10 years. Over three decades later, the program is still in existence serving over 140 airports; its budget keeps exploding and now the program functions only to subsidize routes that would have been abandoned year ago.

The EAS program subsidizes a rural airport in Lewistown, Montana. In 2007, that airport reported that it averaged .6 passengers per flight. Last year, an EAS route between Atlanta and Macon made many flights without a single passenger on board, which resulted in an annual per-passenger subsidy of $464 to keep that route running. And in Kansas, EAS pays three airports in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal to remain open. All are within 75 miles of each other.

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Well, apparently I’m a terrorist.  At least according to the definition of a wide number of Congressmen, reporters, television personalities, and even – so it’s reported – the Vice President of the United States himself.

What did I do to earn this appellation?  Insist that the government live within its means and support politicians who believe likewise.  That’s it.

And for this, I am labeled – by officials of the United States government, no less – a terrorist.

Every dictionary I have consulted within the past 24 hours has defined terrorism as the use of “force” or “violence” to achieve political ends.  Nowhere have I seen terrorism defined as “the peaceful negotiation of budgetary issues through lawfully elected representatives.”  But there you go.  Liberals have never met a definition they wouldn’t defile; never met a word they wouldn’t distort to suit their own twisted ends.

Actual terrorism?  Understandable reactions to the racist imperialism of the warmongering West.   Insisting that the government not spend more than it takes in?  Unforgivable criminality.  Welcome to Liberal Land; watch your step coming through that looking glass.

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It appears the Boehner/Reid debt fix, which was really no fix at all, did what most legislation does nowadays: it extended the power of the government while doing very little to solve the problems for which it was designed. Thus, while Obama was doing “victory laps” around the White House following the bill’s passage in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid and the rest of his comrades were trying to figure out how to load the new “Super Congress” in their favor.

What is the “Super Congress” you ask? It’s a creation of the Boehner/Reid plan: a Congress-within-a-Congress which the Senate cannot filibuster nor the Speaker of the House control.

In other words, by design it is superior to either legislative body set forth in the Constitution (which means it is but one loony Democrat away from being a rogue congress, bent on usurping every right Americans have enjoyed since our Founding).

If you think I’m engaging in hyperbole here, consider this – once the debt bill had passed and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was trying to calm conservative nerves about the limited scope of the newly created congress, Reid was standing at a microphone saying: “[On the ‘Super Congress’] there are no constraints….They can look at any program we have in government, any program. … It has the ability to look at everything.”

Did you catch that folks? The “Super Congress” can look at any program and “at everything.”

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Publisher’s Note: The article below is one person’s subjective opinion and not endorsed by this site. During one of my first and most memorable speaking events at the Reagan Ranch Center on behalf of Young America’s Foundation I spoke after my friend and outspoken lesbian Conservative activist, Tammy Bruce. I wholeheartedly endorse Young America’s Foundation. I am proud to speak at its events and to the young leaders who go through their programs. I would not associate myself with a group that had bigotry of any form on its agenda or in its leadership. Upon further investigation, there is no evidence to suggest that Young America’s Foundation removed from their lists or silenced anyone, or that the ACU vote is reflective of Young America’s Foundation policies.

Andrew Breitbart

***

I recently heard about CPAC’s refusal to allow GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives, to participate in the conference. I couldn’t help but remember the days when I eagerly volunteered and promoted organizations such as the American Conservative Union, Young America’s Foundation, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, among others.

I started my young activism back in 2007. I first attended the Conservative High School Leadership Conference with the Young America’s Foundation (YAF) that summer in Washington D.C. Everyone at YAF was excited to promote their ideas in hopes that a seed would be planted, or in my case, nurtured. Speakers discussed the values of Ronald Reagan, limited government, the importance of church and state and the nuclear family.

As a young conservative, these unabashed speakers ignited a fire in me. I was not used to hearing discourse I agreed with. I grew up in a very liberal household where abortion was encouraged and redistribution of the wealth sacrosanct. Thus, I was enthralled with the opportunity to spread conservative values and I aligned myself closely with the principles that YAF was promoting. Well, most of them! I disagreed with their obsession with the “radical homosexual agenda” and the assumption that all homosexuals were sadistic perverts. My dissent was largely in part because I knew I would never fit their mold of a conservative leader. I am a lesbian.

Learning that the leaders of Young America’s Foundation and the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute (CBLPI) were actively involved in getting GOProud removed from CPAC did not surprise me. What they might be surprised to learn is that I am no more or no less a conservative activist because I am a lesbian. I was obviously not too perverted to enthusiastically be used a poster child for their programs prior to my coming out.

Despite knowing that I wasn’t the conservative ideal described by CBLPI and YAF, I still passionately supported the organizations that gave me a platform to express my political views. After my first summer YAF conference, I immersed myself in as many activism opportunities as possible. I wrote op-eds to local newspapers expressing my views, founded a 9-11 “Never Forget” committee at my high school, commemorated the anniversary of 9-11 with a memorial of 3,000 American flags, started the first Young Conservatives Club at my school, established an Adopt-a-Soldier Fund, honored veterans by organizing community outreach programs, protested local campus showings of the ridiculous Vagina Monologues, and attended as many conservative conferences as possible. I volunteered for local campaigns and even worked on several national GOP 2008 election campaigns. I spoke to audiences in my community, radio stations, newspapers, and numerous times on television about the importance of political activism at any age.

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INTRODUCTION

I. Whoever Controls “The Narrative,” Controls the National Political Conversation

When it comes to most of today’s mainstream media we are no longer talking about an entity that reports truth or facts. Everything about the MSM is now about The Narrative. Even though they’re supposedly made up of separate and competing newsrooms, there’s a very good reason why the MSM as a whole is usually covering, emphasizing and amplifying the exact same stories. This is what The Narrative is and its usefulness to the MSM is how it pushes particular stories to the forefront of public awareness in order to further a political agenda — an agenda that 90% of the time is meant to aid the Left and damage the Right.

Another part of The Narrative is what the MSM chooses NOT to cover; what they willfully ignore.

You can see The Narrative at work as I write this. The same MSM that assured us that when it came to Barack Obama, the church he attended for two decades didn’t matter, is now obsessing over a church Rep. Michele Bachman’s hasn’t attended in over a year. Here you have two separate (and wildly hypocritical) narratives at work: one meant to protect a Democratic presidential candidate, the other meant to damage a GOP presidential candidate.

On the other hand, you can also see The Narrative working by what’s NOT being covered today. The same MSM that obsessed over the Valerie Plame non-story is currently all but ignoring Obama’s brewing “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal –mainly because it’s exactly the kind of scandal that can swamp a presidency into paralyzing, under-40 approval ratings.

II. How Alternative Media Created the MSM’s Need for a Media Matters for America

Prior to the rise of the Internet, the Left almost completely owned the narrative. The simple truth is that before Al Gore’s invention was fully realized, other than a few esteemed columnists, the media had no serious ideological competition from the Right. The rise of the Internet, however, changed all of that as citizen journalists — many of whom are motivated by the MSM’s liberal biases — found this new tool invaluable when it came to both debunking the MSM’s latest lie (the most famous being RatherGate) or reporting on stories the MSM chose to ignore for ideological reasons.

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Today, in 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain in search of a western route to India. We ended up discovering North America.

Our country is in crisis. Not the kind of crisis liberals invent out of mid air but the kind that results from the implementation of their policies and brings a country to its knees (and proves the president a rank amateur and many of the legislators unsuited for office). We are in debt, we have an energy crisis, we have high unemployment, and we’re more worried about whether our enemies think we’re nice that we are with crushing them with our military might.

In a word: times are crazy.

Yet in the middle of all this, I can honestly say I’m still glad John McCain lost.

If you think I’m wrong, just think back to last week, when we were praying conservatives in the House would stand their ground instead of giving in to the establishment and voting for Speaker Boehner’s bill. For standing on their principles, McCain referred to them as “hobbits” and said that theirs “is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.”

For the record, does he not know how much better off we’d be if Angle and O’Donnell had won? (Who wouldn’t trade ten McCains for one Angle and one O’Donnell?)

Please keep in mind that McCain spent every waking moment of his 2010 Senate re-election campaign appealing to the Tea Party for support, claiming he has always been conservative, and campaigning for Angle and other Tea Party candidates.

Yes – he campaigned for her. (He’s as fake as a Milli Vanilli song.)

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The US Food and Drug Administration recently unveiled nine graphic warning labels that will appear on US cigarette packs in 2012. Some of the more gruesome labels include images of diseased lungs and tracheotomy holes. According to the FDA, these labels are “the most significant advancement in communicating the dangers of smoking and the first change in cigarette warnings in more than 25 years.”

Will the graphic labels reduce smoking? Do Americans really need to be reminded that smoking isn’t good for them?

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The MacIver News Service has reported that more than $11 million in labor union money has been shuffled into Wisconsin to fund third party political advertising to benefit the Democratic candidates. Earlier this week we also reported on a Get Out the Vote Scheme that appeared to run afoul of Wisconsin election law. The group, Wisconsin Jobs Now! was offering food and prizes to voters who then hopped in a van and were shuttled to Milwaukee City Hall to vote early via absentee ballot. (The use of ‘walking around money’ and such inducements for voting may be common in other states but they are illegal in Wisconsin.)

After our report, the group began to scrub their internet history to hide their connection to another liberal activist group, Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

Perhaps it’s because their favored candidate in the Miwlaukee area senate race, Democratic State Representative Sandy Pasch, sits on the Board of Directors of Citizen Action, thus providing a direct line relationship between Pasch and the ‘prize give-a-way’ scheme.

Next Tuesday voters in six state senate districts in Wisconsin will determine whether Republicans here will be able to keep their majority in the upper house of the legislature.

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You might recall this extraordinary press conference on May 31, 2011, when then-Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) called a reporter a “jackass” in refusing to answer questions about his (false) allegation that someone had hacked his Twitter account.

Instead, he wanted to talk about the debt ceiling: “We are, tonight…going to be casting a vote on something has monumental importance to our economy…I want to focus on that.”

Later that evening, a staggering bipartisan majority voted down the “clean” debt ceiling increase that President Barack Obama had wanted.

Until that point, Democrats had been in the midst of a full-throttle “Mediscare” campaign, alleging that Paul Ryan’s new budget proposal would literally kill senior citizens. The left had successfully linked Republicans’ reluctance to raise the debt ceiling to Republicans’ enthusiasm to reform entitlements.

Then Weinergate happened–and Weiner, unwisely, kept it going. And on June 2, in the midst of the scandal, Moody’s became the second credit ratings agency to warn of a possible downgrade of U.S. debt. In April, the White House had dismissed Standard & Poor’s warning of a possible U.S. downgrade. By June 2, that was no longer possible.

Americans weren’t quite paying attention. We weren’t paying attention to “Mediscare” anymore, either. We were watching the Weinergate drama.

But in those crucial few days in late May and early June, the terrain of the debt ceiling debate quietly shifted. Instead of being about Republican stinginess, the debt ceiling issue became connected to the broader problem of Democrat spending.

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Examiner blogger Adam Meister was doing what bloggers do, namely posting the info that “journalists” refuse to write about. In this case, back in March, Meister found that a Baltimore Councilwoman was living in a different district than she claimed she was living in. As a result, the politician tried to sue the blogger for his posts.

City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway filed a lawsuit demanding an idiotic $21 million in damages for Meister’s expose of her true primary residence. But this week Conaway abruptly dropped her suit against the blogger.

Through public records, blogger Meister discovered that Conaway lives in Randallstown and not Baltimore, the city she was elected to represent. Conaway has, though, claimed she lives in an extended-family household in Baltimore.

Meister disputed Councilwoman Conaway’s claim and he posted tax information where Conaway claimed for tax purposes that Randallstown, not Baltimore, was her primary residence.

After the suit was filed Meister called for it to be dismissed based on the information he had uncovered. At the hearing for dismissal Conaway’s attorney, Thomas J. Maronick, admitted that Conaway did sign the paper stating that her primary residence was Randallstown and then said that he was dropping the lawsuit.

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If I had a nickel for every time someone on the far-left likened the Tea Party to terrorists, I might have enough to pull the United States out of its economic turmoil. The entire situation has grown to be far more than just something that foolish people say; it has climbed the political ladder to reach the highest echelons of American government:

From Politico (quoting Biden in reference to the Tea Party):

They have acted like terrorists.

It is one thing when Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania decided to embrace the crazy when he compared the debt ceiling dealings to a virtual hostage situation, with the Tea Party essentially running around the House strapped with C4, waving Ak-47’s at the Democratic Caucus. It is a different story entirely when the Vice President of the United States engages in this type of violent rhetoric. Apparently, Mr. Biden did not receive the memo that terrorism, and those who commit terrorist acts, has never, will never, and can never be a laughing matter.

Is it unreasonable then to ask for the resignation of the Vice President? Mr. Obama suggested that Anthony Weiner resign over allegations (which were later confirmed) that he used Twitter to provide one too many dirty photos to several different ladies over a three year period. Certainly this situation is much more foul, much more divisive, then the one involving a man who seemed incapable of keeping it in his pants. And while Biden will cater to his need to not be overly criticized for his remarks with a “sincere” apology delivered via secretary, it will be some time before those on the Right who associate themselves with the movement, including members of congress, forget what was said during that closed door meeting.

But such remarks can be taken much more personally.

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As I write this it is difficult to hear myself think over the sound of congressional Republicans high-fiving each other over the debt ceiling deal.

They would do well to remember the words of a British parliamentarian uttered during the Revolutionary War. After the British General Lord Cornwallis won a squeaker of a tactical victory in 1781 by losing a quarter of his army, Charles Fox pointedly observed, “Another such victory will ruin us.”

Surely this is the case with the new debt ceiling compromise in Congress. GOP partisans obsessed with political expediency keep parroting the line that the deal which will pave the way for trillions more in spending is somehow a Tea Party “victory.” They have a strange definition of victory.

There is no evidence that this bizarre deal of at least questionable constitutionality (e.g. the “Super Congress”) will actually lead to any real cuts. Nor is there any evidence that it will prevent the U.S. government from losing its long held triple-A credit rating.

There is a promise of spending cuts, but overall federal spending will continue on its upward trajectory because Official Washington operates in the make-believe world of “baseline budgeting.” According to this crackhead accounting, both a cut and an increase may count as cuts.

Confused? You’re supposed to be.

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From The Associated Press:

President Barack Obama has signed legislation to increase the nation’s borrowing authority and avert a potentially catastrophic government default.

Obama signed the bill privately in the Oval Office little more than an hour after the Senate voted final passage. It capped months of contentious and partisan debate. The compromise bill paired an increase in the debt ceiling with promises of more than $2 trillion of budget cuts over the next decade.

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We have discussed – often and at great length – the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s illegal, Congressional end-run power grabs.

On, for example, both the wired (your Ethernet cable) and wireless (your cell phone, iPad, etc.) Internet – so as to impose the absurd Network Neutrality.

The Commission has abused its media merger approval authority – by unilaterally writing destructive “law” into merger agreements, disguised as “voluntarily” acquiesced-to merger “conditions.”

The most recent example being the pages and pages of extra-legal demands forced upon the Comcast-NBC Universal deal.

“Conditions” which included, by the way, a seven-year Net Neutrality requirement.  To which Comcast has to adhere regardless of the almost inevitable overturn – either legislatively or judicially – of the FCC’s Web usurpation.

All of this FCC “law”-writing is well outside its legal purview.  If they want to engage in creating legislation, they need to quit the Commission and run for Congress.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by John Hawkins to discuss Obama’s love of his own voice, the evolution of the Conservative blogosphere and ask if the days of independent blogging have passed.

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 Slow, Painful Coming Death Of The Independent, Conservative Blogosphere
The Slow, Painful Coming Death Of The Independent, Conservative Blogosphere Part 2
Right Wing News

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