Whoa…the Libya situation might be more complicated than originally reported. Personally, we just want to figure out how to spell the tyrant’s name. Why is that so hard?

From Accuracy in Media’s Ben Johnson:

Have you ever been taken hostage by an 86 year old white haired lady in pink glasses?  I have.  I am lucky to be alive today and writing this after my near death experience with the terrorists of the Tea Party in Waco, TX.  AIM present’s to you, the face of evil in America.

With elected officials scrambling for a cross to hang their economic failure upon, the Obama administration has declared open season on the Tea Party.  This is our generation’s form of McCarthyism.   Witch-hunting at its finest.  Attack, blame and demonize the Tea Party for all of America’s troubles.  Never mind the fact that the TP has never acted violently and is packed with veterans who served our country and sweet old ladies who love America.  The administration is enthusiastically joined by a chorus of vitriol and hate by the likes of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and every on camera personality at MSNBC.

I guess innocent American citizens are an easy a target for Washington when policies fail.

(more…)

Every time we turn around these days President Obama is touting the idea that the “future” of America lies in green energy and one of those greenie ideas is an Obama favorite: electric cars. Not to let him down, Government Motors has obliged by pushing the Chevy Volt as the car of the future. But thus far the future looks a lot like GM’s present; a whole lot of failure leaving a whole lot of questions.

While Obama continues to tout his — meaning our — investment in GM others are not so sanguine. For instance, billionaire Warren Buffet has invested in a Chinese electric car company instead of putting his considerable investment acumen to use with the Chevy Volt. Buffet may be a dolt on taxes, but apparently his investing senses haven’t gotten any spark from the Volt.

One of the reasons that Buffet went for the Chinese company is that some of its technology seems superior to various systems of the Chevy Volt. According to Forbes, Buffet has targeted the company because the, “car can travel 186 miles, more than the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, on a single charge with a top speed of 87 miles per hour.”

Naturally, sales of the Chevy Volt are dismal and have been for quite some time. Sadly, some reviewers are saying that the Volt is overly flashy and techy and isn’t a good value for the money, so no help for GMs sales record there.

Even lefty profs at Berkeley could see that the Volt was a horrible investment. Berkeley physicist Leon J. Schipper, for one, was not enamored of the Volt.

Analyzing the Chevy Volt, the new sedan that is supposed to go 40 miles on batteries and then use a gasoline engine, he calculated that because of inefficiencies in electricity generation, its fuel economy was no better than a Toyota Prius hybrid running on gasoline, while its price was roughly double that of the Prius.

“Does the extra $20,000 justify the overall fuel and possible carbon dioxide savings?” he asked. “If two drivers switched to Prius, the overall savings of oil likely would be larger than one driver switching to a Volt, for the same money.”

So, why should the American people sit idly by while GM pumps even more money into the Volt, a car consumers don’t want? Maybe because wealthy environmental activists think it’s wonderful and seem to imagine that sales will grow up from the ground as if by magic.

Great, isn’t it?

(more…)

As a grumpy libertarian, I routinely get agitated about taxes, spending, and regulation. As far as I’m concerned, much of government is a racket that uses coercion to reward interest groups with unearned wealth.

But there are degrees of evil. So if you asked me to pick the most reprehensible thing that government does,  “asset forfeiture” might be in second place (hurting poor people to benefit rich people is at the top of my list).

Asset forfeiture occurs when government seizes property that is associated with a crime. That sounds reasonable – and it is reasonable if someone is convicted of, say, bank robbery and the government confiscates the stolen cash and any loot purchased with that money.

But it is not reasonable (or moral, or just, or appropriate) when government seizes assets without a conviction. And it is downright disgusting when the government steals (and I use that word deliberately) the assets of innocent parties.

I’ve already written about this issue (including an example from my county) and highlighted how asset forfeiture gives government bureaucracies a perverse incentive to steal.

Now we have a story from the Wall Street Journal that confirms our worst fears.

New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway. An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto’s money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm’s parent company. He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted criminals as well as people never charged with a crime. …The forfeiture system has opponents across the political spectrum, including representatives of groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union on the left and the Heritage Foundation on the right. They argue it represents a widening threat to innocent people. “We are paying assistant U.S. attorneys to carry out the theft of property from often the most defenseless citizens,” given that people sometimes have limited resources to fight a seizure after their assets are taken, says David Smith, a former Justice Department forfeiture official and now a forfeiture lawyer in Alexandria, Va.

What’s really amazing is that government officials want to expand this reprehensible practice. The use of “civil forfeiture” is particularly worrisome, as illustrated by this passage.

(more…)

Really? An earthquake in DC? And a possible hurricane this weekend? Sheesh…

Last week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and a number of other Congressmen with states who rely heavily on energy production for economic stability, sent a letter to EPA head Lisa Jackson expressing some concerns over her agency’s impartiality. At the heart of their complaints, a series of backdoor regulations the EPA has put into place in recent months: regulations that are not only harming American energy industries, but which are actively destroying jobs in a already troubled economy.

Now, the EPA doesn’t seem to mind that it wields extensive power that it’s using to change the very fabric of the American financial system, but residents of states whose economies are dependent on energy job growth – and the leaders of these industries – are starting to see a problem.

Before, it might have just been industries that environmentalists considered “problematic,” but a recent EPA rule is about to put a wrench in the operations of nearly every carbon-dioxide-expelling creature or industry on the planet. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone, part of the Clean Air Act, currently demands that ozone emissions be limited to 75 parts per billion. That standard was put into place only two years ago, and companies are only now beginning to come into compliance. Instead of allowing industries to meet this standard, though, the EPA immediately moved the goalposts: they are now considering standards that would limit ozone emissions to only 70 or, more stringent yet, 60 parts per billion.

Apart from economic and social context, these numbers seem meaningless. But consider this: if the EPA were to choose the lesser of the standards, 70 parts per billion, only 24% of the 675 US counties who monitor ozone would be in compliance. If the bar were lowered to 60 parts per billion, only 4% of counties would make the cut. All of the areas that didn’t meet the standard would become subject to strict EPA scrutiny, as well as billions in fees and fines. Some of the more egregious offenders might even lose federal highway funding, and find themselves under the never-ending watchful eye of Lisa Jackson’s already-intrusive environmental watchdogs.

(more…)

The three largest California public retiree plans (CalPERS, CalSTRS, and UCRS) that administer pensions of approximately 2.6 million State and Local public current and retired employees have been under tremendous scrutiny since last year’s release of the Stanford University Institute for Public Policy report: “Going For Broke”. The study concluded that California retirement plans liability was under-funded by over $500 billion.

The report blamed most of the shortfall on the pension plan’s expectation of future annual investment returns of 7.75%; versus a realistic expectation of a 4.14% annual return. The cabal of California politicians, bureaucrats, and crony consultants that justified granting lucrative benefits to employees while failing to contribute enough to support the true pension costs; solemnly dismissed the Stanford report as unsophisticated reflections by academics. But now that a swarm of local governments want to abandon the floundering retirement trusts; the State plans are only willing to credit a 3.8% expected return. If the California State pension plans adopted the same 3.8% rate they are only willing to credit when participants want to leave; their published $288 billion in pension shortfall would metastasize into an $884 billion California State insolvency.

It doesn’t take a Stanford MBA to realize producing consistently high investment returns since 2007 has been a difficult in the extreme. The California State pension plans that currently control $432 billion in assets, suffered a $109.7 billion in losses during the 2008 to 2009 recession. Pension plans normally require employers and their employees to mutually increase contributions to make up pension shortfalls. But public pension plans are notorious for not requiring employees to make significant contribution. California police, prison guards, firemen, and lifeguards can retire at age 50, but have never been required to contribute to fund pensions. With headlines that California plans are in big trouble; many government agencies applied to withdrawal from the State plans. But as calculated below; compounding investments at 7.75% grows to more than three times the amount of compounding investments at a 3.8% rate of return.

When I was elected as Orange County, California Treasurer in 2006, I was flabbergasted to discover that the County’s $8 billion of retirement investments was covertly leveraged up by $22 billion of derivatives. I quickly learned that many unions see pension benefits as contracted rights; and pension investing as a no risk crap-shoot for extraordinary returns.

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Scott Conroy from Real Clear Politics to discuss the current field of GOP Presidential candidates, the struggles Mitt Romney may have as this field evolves, and the whole will she won’t she Sarah Palin saga.

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:

Four Republicans Who Could Win Iowa
GOP Powerbroker: Perry Is Iowa Front-Runner
Palin-Bachmann Rancor Heats Up Below the Surface
“Game On!” Palin Says in Iowa Radio Ad
Scott Conroy at Real Clear Politics

Follow Brad on Twitter
Follow Ben on Twitter
Follow Scott on Twitter

Rep. Maxine Water (D-California) recently held a town hall meeting in her home district in which she stated that, “The Tea Party can go straight to hell”?

Well Maxine your anger is quite understandable given the success of the Tea Party Movement as of late. The Tea Party was right to stand against the political establishment in the debt ceiling fight. The compromise many of us opposed led to the downgrading of America’s credit rating by S &P. We turned back a well-funded 30 million dollars effort by your union allies in the state of Wisconsin to recall 6 Republican State Senators. While the tea party has been finding success in our battles against your brand of politics, you and your fellow Democrats have been left to making excuses for the President Obama’s failures as a leader. He and his handlers have been forced to take to the airwaves and blame his policy failures on everything from the Arab Spring in the Middle East to the Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami and bad luck, former President Bush and even technology.

The majority of the American People are clearly seeing that President Obama’s Brand of Hope and Change (Keynesian Economics) simply doesn’t work. It is real hard to sell the American people on the myth that you are working so hard on our behalf, when we continue to get photo-ops of the you on the golf course or on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.

Rep. Waters, Americans are suffering and all President Obama can do is offer up another (already disproven) plan that will lead to more massive governmental spending/borrowing and calls for shared sacrifice (which reality is more of the same class warfare made famous by the believers of Keynesian Economics) just like the failed stimulus package, the same mislabeled job bills before it as well as the new focus tested statement that, “Food stamps are a direct government funded stimulus.”

Food Stamps are direct stimulus, who outside of Washington D.C. would have considered that?

Rep. Waters, you and your fellow politicians in the Washington Establishment have tried to throw every political attack that you can muster at the Tea Party Movement (from the every card in the race deck to labeling us a fringe movement), yet we remain fighting trim at every turn in our ability to take our arguments directly to the American people. It is has been said, “If politicians in Washington D.C. are complaining about you, then you must be doing something right.” While Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Progressive activists continue to try deal from the worn out deck of race cards, the Tea Party gathers even more mainstream appeal with each passing day. I also remain fully aware that you are seeking to reenergize the coalition that propelled President Obama to victory in 2008, but the same coalition of Blacks, Women, Hispanics and young people would be hard pressed to admit that they are better off today than they were 2.8 years ago. Trying to blame the Tea Party is not going to make it any better because it was not the Tea Party that made promises of Hope and Change, but President Obama. The pictures of the Congressional Black Caucus’s job fairs and town-halls in places like Atlanta and Detroit speak volumes to who have been hurt the most and show why the Tea Party has been so right about President Obama and his allies in Congress all along.

Rep. Waters, you might want the Tea Party Movement to go straight to hell or simply disappear, but the reality of the matter is that the Tea Party Movement is made up of common sense every day Americans. If this is the tactic that the Congressional Black Caucus and other Obama supporters are going to depend on in 2012, it simply is not going to fly with those who have and continue to suffer the most under his Presidency.

The members of the Tea Party Movement believe that real hope and change comes at the voting box, coupled with term limits for those like Rep. Maxine Waters have been in Washington too long with no level of real accountability. This is why she want us to go straight to hell. The jig is up and it could be another generation before you are able to sell failed Keynesian Economics to the masses.

Any day now, the U.S. Department of Labor, under former Big Labor treasurer and now Obama’s current Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, intends to announce a new definition for the term “Employer” that will protect her union boss friends.

When the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) passed, Congress defined the term “Employer” very broadly as “any employer or any group or association of employers engaged in an industry affecting commerce … an employer within the meaning of any law of the United States relating to the employment of any employees.” (Emphasis added)

Pretty broad definition: “any law of the United States;” and yet, John Lund, the union labor consultant who heads OLMS, intends to exclude all labor unions from the definition of employer, no matter how many employees the union has.  There is one exception to DOL’s proposed rule, and that is that if the union is trying to organize employees of another union or influence its own employees, then the word “Employer” would pertain to union bosses.

Why the change? Because John Lund wants to exclude himself and other union labor consultants from the onerous new “Employer” and “Labor Consultants” regulations that DOL is currently proposing.  If union bosses were covered by the ‘Employer’ definition, then Big Labor law firms like the NEA’s Bredhoff & Kaiser would be required to file the new reports in order to comply with its new regulations. This Employer definition change will effectively eliminate union bosses from ever having to disclose timely details of their payments to Justice for Janitors, Interfaith Worker Justice, or any other Big Labor front groups participating in their labor persuader activities.

So while Obama’s Labor Department claims to want employees to be made aware of who is trying to influence them, they are actually helping hiding this very type of information from employees regarding all of Big Labor band of rogues who create chaos at the work site, for vendors, City Halls, and Capitol Buildings. (more…)

The pre-weekend Air Force raid at the Citadel Gun and Safe shop in Las Vegas, NV has been drawing extensive media and blogosphere scrutiny. The operation was led by Special Agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), assisted by law enforcement officials from various federal, state, and local agencies. Many of the concerns I’ve read about deal with the issue of the Posse Comitatus Act. But there is much more to the story that needs to be told.

Let me say up front that I am as far right as they come, so my perspective on this is tempered by my hardcore conservative beliefs. If I sniffed even a whiff of a Constitutional issue, I’d be the first to throw a flag on the field and call the military out for a violation. But nothing untoward occurred in Las Vegas.

I am also a retired career OSI Special Agent, having served over 25 years in that capacity. When I retired in 2007, as a Colonel, I was one of the organization’s senior-most agents and Region Commanders. I’ve been involved in many investigations and operations where the Air Force OSI has executed warrants or subpoenas in the civilian community, especially at the offices of defense contractors. It happens quite often, so I can speak with authority about the Las Vegas raid.

The Air Force OSI is one of a handful of Military Criminal Investigative Organizations (MCIOs) that can receive and execute federal subpoena authority from the Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD/IG). The other MCIOs are the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS).

(more…)

Many have wondered why Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former Obama administration official as Ambassador to China, climate-change believer, ally of Harry Reid and all-around anti-Tea Party candidate is running for the Republican presidential nomination.  Were the 2012 Republican primaries your typical RINO race (not that there aren’t abundant RINOs in the current field, at least in this author’s view), it would be clear that Huntsman would be setting himself up as the establishment, “civil,” “grown up” candidate, in the mold of a more liberal Mitt Romney.

However, primaries are determined by the most ardent partisans, which for the Republican party today certainly means Tea Partiers, and conservatives and libertarians who hold similar views to those of the Tea Party.  Given that it is abundantly clear that those who will determine the Republican nominee will never accept a person with Huntsman’s political views, one must wonder why he is in the race.

I believe I have found a plausible answer.  Jon Huntsman Jr. is potentially the key to four more years of Barack Obama, not by running as a Republican but by running as an Independent.  Allow me to explain.

By running to the left of the rest of the Republican field, Huntsman likely has no intention of competing in the Republican primary.  Instead, he may use the Republican primary and his substantial personal wealth to set up for a run in the general election as an Independent — as the “reasonable” candidate in a field characterized by the mainstream media as consisting of terrorist Tea Partiers practicing radical brinksmanship and wanting to take us back to the Antebellum era, and President Obama who has proven ineffective, weak and ever-willing to compromise.

Independents who buy this line thus may look to spend their vote on a more moderate and palatable candidate.  Jon Huntsman would be their man.

(more…)

Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down exclusively with EAGtv and shared the purpose of BigEducation.com, his next website to be launched.

Libyan rebels have thrown off a tyrant. No telling what’s coming, however.

Dr. Moe: “If you stand up for kids, you have to oppose this [collective bargaining]  Schools get organized by the adults on the basis of interests and concerns that have nothing to do with kids. So, why would you expect that system to work?”

As students head back to school, it is a good time to reflect on why education is failing and continues to fail.  Terry Moe, Chairman of the Political Science Department at Stanford, provides a dispassionate and extensively researched book, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, which should become a useful and effective tool for any passionate education reformers.  Dr. Moe states and backs it up with 500 pages of text that teacher unions are the biggest impediment to permanent and effective education reform.

Dr. Moe’s research unquestionably shows that America’s children are risk because of their very own teachers’ allegiance to the NEA and AFT unions rather than education. And, until Big Labor’s influence over education is diminished, reform remains elusive.

In his presentation at the Concerned Educators Against Forced Unionism’s (CEAFU) 36^th Annual Conference, Dr. Moe stated that his research concludes that it is impossible for any effective education reform to occur with teacher unions as partners in reform.  He said that unions have been and will inherently remain the well-financed opposition to education reform.  Professor Moe added that in our political system it is easier to block reform than to bring about reform, giving teachers unions an additional edge in preventing changes. (more…)

[As the Republican nominee begins his opening statement, President Obama reflects.*]

I

Ooooh . . . he speaks, the right’s Orion!

Expel your foul dis-charges—phew!

Could glares steal breath, Paulie Ryan,

‘Bout now you’d be turning blue!

Huh?  Big spending cuts are needed?

Ah, Fed tax rates mustn’t rise.

And these . . . “facts” I’ve not conceded?

Why?  They’re falsehoods, damn your eyes!

II

In the past we’ve had discussions–

“Paul–thanks for coming!”—I must bear

Rants on Market repercussions,

Treas’ry futures, budget snares.

Our job outlook’s pathetic; rarely

Has it been this bad, I think.

Want a deal to face this squarely?

Want emetics in your drink? (more…)

From The New York Times:

Few predict a Republican upset: registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one in the Ninth Congressional District. But it is not uniformly liberal — many Orthodox Jews live there, for example — and even those closest to Mr. Weprin grudgingly describe the contest as uncomfortably competitive.

On paper, Mr. Weprin seems like a sturdy candidate; he is the former chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee and the son of an Assembly speaker. His message seems tailor-made for the district: he promises to protect Medicare and raise taxes only on the super-rich.

But the election, waged with little news media attention, offers scant time to remind voters of his biography. And after a long summer of stock market gyrations and battles over the federal debt, voters seem determined to register their frustrations with Washington.

(more…)

Parents in Wisconsin are voting with their feet. Or at least their kids’ feet.

More than 260,000 Wisconsin K-12 students exercise some form of educational choice, according to a new study by the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy.

Choice in education is not the exception, it is the norm in Wisconsin,. Our MacIver Educational Choice Census shows that parents across Wisconsin embrace alternatives to the public school that bureaucrats dictate upon them based solely on where they live.

The MacIver Educational Choice Census reveals that 261,301 Wisconsin school children are educated in a place other than their traditional, geographically-assigned public school. This includes private schools, choice schools, virtual schools and other public charter schools, those who are homeschooled and those who participate in the state’s cumbersome and narrow open enrollment window. That figure is up 17.7 percent from the 222,086 children from the last MacIver census.

Statewide, more than 25 percent of students exercised choice, and in Milwaukee, almost four out of every five students exercised some form of choice over where they’ll attend school. That’s right. Nearly eighty percent.

(more…)

In reaction to the criticism over the Obama family heading to Martha’s Vineyard amidst gargantuan economic woes and unemployment rates so high even the dead are disturbed, liberals have taken to defending Obama’s vacation time (transportation compliments of two tax-payer funded jets) by portraying George W. Bush as a man who never worked.

According to Obama’s defenders, Bush vacation days were disproportionately greater when compared to Barack “nose-to-the-grindstone” Obama’s. The left argues that Obama has earned 10 days in a haven for multimillionaires because Bush spent eight years in perpetual party mode.

Mr. Bush did spend time on “vacation.” But Obama and Michelle closing down Bar Harbor, Maine to dine in upscale restaurants with a “Latin flair” is quite different from G.W. fishing on his family’s estate in Kennebunkport prior to hosting a “Lobster Summit” for Vladimir Putin.

According to CBS reporter Mark Knoller, a vacationing President Bush would go into town for an annual cheeseburger. On the other hand, every chance he gets, Barack relaxes seaside, sipping sunset cocktails and eating lobster while the Secret Service keep peons at bay.

Maybe scorekeepers could refresh America’s memory and cite the instance when Mr. and Mrs. Bush nearly brought the Big Apple to a halt while they leisurely took in dinner and a show.

Intermittently, George W. did head home to conduct business from the “Western White House” in Crawford, Texas. For fun, Mr. Bush would be seen with a “power saw in his hand going after brush and dead trees.” President Obama has got to know that no one would condemn a decision to head home to his Tony Rezko-acquired property on South Greenwood Avenue in Chicago, instead of his $4,000 a night “Winter White House” in Hawaii.

(more…)