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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Walter Olson to discuss his book detailing the need to reform the legal community in the United States, from the legal education industry, to the practice of law itself.

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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Buy Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America on Amazon
Overlawyered: Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

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Walter Olson at the CATO Institute

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The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.

Any so called “Buffett Rule” Obama is touting wouldn’t bring in all that much revenue, anyway. Hopefully the broader middle class will figure out precisely where Obama is headed in terms of new revenue aka taxes. The bulk of America’s wealth rests within the middle-class. That’s precisely where Obama and the Democrats will go to get it, if they have their way.

What does an amateur in the White  House look like when he goes to the UN? An amateur, of course. Put down your hand, Barry, the bathroom break comes after the photo op. We’ve already told you that, twice, son. Geesh.

It’s being claimed that at least 200 Mexico murders resulted from Operation Fast and Furious. Obama’s focused on wiping out our middle class and Holder is concentrating on Mexico. Heckuva job, guys! Heckuva job.

Here is the full text of a letter from Republicans to Bernanke questioning anticipated actions by the Fed.

It is our understanding that the Board Members of the Federal Reserve will meet later this week to consider additional monetary stimulus proposals. We write to express our reservations about any such measures. Respectfully, we submit that the board should resist further extraordinary intervention in the U.S. economy, particularly without a clear articulation of the goals of such a policy, direction for success, ample data proving a case for economic action and quantifiable benefits to the American people.

The GOP is also pressuring Holder to investigate Solyndra. How much they pony up for Obama’s re-election bid might have more to say about that. Meanwhile, Solyndra executives plan to ‘take the fifth‘ when they appear before Congress.

Google+ is now open to the public, if you go in for the whole Internet thing. Don’t let the fact that Al Gore invented it discourage you. Oh, wait, … he didn’t. Maybe it’s not so bad in that case. Of course, Google is going before Congress today to try and answer growing questions about their business, practices and privacy policies, so you might just want to stick to Facebook. (Google has suddenly discovered there is a Republican party and is busy cozying up to it.)

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This summer, the EPA released a new regulation regarding coal-fired power plants in Texas. Called the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), it will devastate mine and other local communities, wreak havoc on already strained power supplies, and cause the loss of hundreds of jobs during a time of economic hardship.

The economy in my hometown, Fairfield, Texas, is all but based on our local plant/mine, Big Brown. The owner of Big Brown, Luminant, has just announced that that the local coal mine that fuels Big Brown will be shut down so the company can try and comply with the new rule. This loss to our community in Fairfield is enough to cause concern, but the issue hits even closer to home for me. My father has worked at Big Brown for 38 years.

In addition to the loss of local jobs, tax revenue to pay for our schools, roads and other necessary infrastructure will be greatly diminished. Luminant also announced the necessary closure of two other power units and the mine that supports them in Northeast Texas. It’s not hard to imagine the negative impact this will have on small local communities that are struggling to stay on their feet in this difficult economy. But the damage doesn’t stop in Fairfield and other communities. It extends to our whole state. Texans as a whole stands to be negatively impacted by sharply climbing electrical prices and rolling blackouts. There were numerous days this summer when our electric grid was a few hundred megawatts from running out of power. The plant closures from Luminant, alone, means that there will be 1,200 less megawatts of power now available.

The outrage I feel isn’t just about economic hardship, higher electricity prices, and rolling blackouts. It’s about fairness and truth. CSAPR did not originally include Texas in its new regulations, but the EPA decided at the last minute to include Texas. As a further slap in the face, they made the compliance date January 2012. This leaves less than 6 months for compliance by Texas power plants.

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From the Chicago Tribune:

All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state’s lengthy pension code.

The changes became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis.

Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation found.

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President Obama has given ACORN $729,849 so far this year and billions more in federal cash may be in the pipeline.

The president’s new economic stimulus package, the so-called “jobs bill,” contains as much as $15 billion for radical left-wing groups such as ACORN (his former employer). Obama has been using his presidential bully pulpit to demand that Republicans in Congress “pass this bill,” even though there is no bill yet. Despite all the rhetoric, the proposed “American Jobs Act of 2011” apparently hasn’t even been introduced in Congress.

Credit: Leo Alberti

Meanwhile, longtime ACORN ally Shaun Donovan, who heads Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been showering ACORN with your tax dollars. The money has gone to Affordable Housing Centers of America Inc. (AHCOA), which is the new name for ACORN Housing. Like a con artist trying to escape his past, ACORN Housing legally changed its name last year.

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There is a town in Tennessee whose government owns more cars than they even have employees to drive them. This is the sort of excess that every anti-big government activist points to in order to show the bacchanalia of spending to which governments in our fair country are prone.

The Times Free Press of Chattanooga, Tennessee reports that the city of East Ridge made a startling discovery. Town fathers realized the town government owns 149 vehicles. Turns out they only 119 employees. They do indeed have more cars than employees.

Two months ago City Councilman Jim Bethune noted that the city seemed to have an awful lot of cars sitting around that are never used. So, they decided to sell a few to help make up for budget shortfalls and to get rid of the needless vehicles.

City officials made the surprising discover when they finally rounded up all the city’s vehicles. Then they got another surprise. The town had been so slipshod in records keeping that they couldn’t even locate the titles for 11 of those cars. The city had to pay the state $121 to file for each missing title.

Then the city found ten titles for cars it could not even find. They had no idea what happened to them. There was an additional 30 vehicles with titles they hadn’t received yet (they were recently purchased) or they didn’t have because they were donated cars. That made their ownership “questionable” and unable to be sold.

Naturally all these cars are insured — and some of them aren’t even operable — at a cost of $42,471 annually to the taxpayers.

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Reason’s Nick Gillespie talks with the one-and-only Penn Jillette about his best-selling new book, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, his friendship with Glenn Beck, skepticism versus cynicism, the role of religion in terrorism, why he’s a libertarian, and much more in a wide-ranging conversation.

Penn Jillette is the larger, louder half of Penn & Teller. For the magical duo’s official website, go here.

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“This I am sure, whoever, ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of….Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Barclay himself, that great assertor of the power and sacredness of kings, is forced to confess, That it is lawful for the people, in some cases to resist their king…”

- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 1690

The words and ideas of philosopher John Locke stirred the Founders of our nation to rise in revolution against the British crown. Alongside the Gadsden flag–”Don’t Tread On Me”–that has become a favorite emblem of today’s Tea Party, the forces of George Washington also flew the Pine Tree Flag with the motto: “An Appeal To Heaven.” It was a reference to Locke’s teaching that power and right ultimately lay in the hands of the people themselves.

In 2008, the American people elected a man whose life story represented the fulfillment of the Founders’ nascent vision of the equality of all human beings, and whose rise to power bespoke the very American exceptionalism he himself declined to profess. Yet this man, who could have achieved greatness far beyond his oratory skill, could not transcend the left’s rhetoric of violence and conflict, and could not resist the temptation to divide and rule.

For three years, he and his political allies have used violent words: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Senator Obama said as he campaigned in 2008. “Punch back twice as hard,” Obama’s deputy chief of staff (now campaign manager) told Democrats in 2009. “Punish” your “enemies,” Obama told Latino voters in 2010. “Take out” the “sons of bitches,” a union leader said before Obama at a rally this month. Today Democratic strategists justify Obama’s naked class warfare by accusing Republicans of a “war on the middle class”–a false charge, calculated to incite and inflame hatred.

For three years, that rhetoric has had real and regrettable results: physical intimidation at a polling place in Philadelphia, which the Obama justice department refuses to prosecute; assault, battery and mayhem committed by union thugs against citizens at town hall meetings; harassment of executives at their homes by bussed-in “community organizers; and, most recently, hostage-taking by union members engaged in illegal strikes–real hostage-taking, not the trumped-up kind Obama has invoked in rhetorical attacks against his political opponents.

Violence is wrong, and anyone who uses violence to achieve a political purpose does violence to our American values. Yet from Bill Ayers to James Hoffa, Jr., the left has embraced–and the media has largely ignored–Obama’s violent associates. Until CNN finally acknowledged the Tea Party as a legitimate political movement by hosting its recent presidential debate, the media generally assisted the left in casting the Tea Party as extreme, racist, and “terrorist,” blaming it for events like the Tuscon atrocity.

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Another week, another round of bad poll numbers. The incredible shrinking presidency.

As a preface, sometimes it helps to have been “on the other side” when trying to determine what the unions’ game plan is within the Obama Administration. What you are about to read comes from having been on the other side and, quite frankly, putting two and two together. And, if you are not alarmed when you finish reading this, you should be, because there may be something much more sinister afoot at the Department of Labor than most people realize.

Yesterday, information was shared with you about the importance of submitting a comment by Wednesday on the Department of Labor’s proposed regulatory change on who would be newly classified as ‘persuaders.’

There has been one sentence, more than others, in the Department of Labor’s 160-page proposed rule change that indicates the DOL’s expansion of the definition of ‘persuader’ to mean just about any vendor who has anything to do directly or indirectly with an employer’s relationship with employees since activities may implicitly influence the decisions of employees with regard in the exercise of their rights in the workplace.

Until now, however, one part of the sentence has been overlooked which, unless addressed, may cause individuals great harm—literally, physical harm. (more…)

Last week, Peter Schiff, CEO of of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, provided stunning testimony to the House Oversight Committee and explained how President Obama’s ideas of government stimulus are not the solution to the unemployment problems, they are the problems.

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Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has sent the following letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, seeking the appointment of an independent examiner to probe the Solyndra scandal:

Rep. Smith to Atty. Gen. Holder

Those listening to President Obama’s speech in the Rose Garden yesterday may have been hoping for remarks outlining a comprehensive debt reducing package from the nation’s chief executive, but what they got was yet another class warfare screed.  Replete with admonitions that the wealthy need to pay their “fair share” (as defined by Him of course) and sprinkled with his patented scare tactics rooted in the fallacy of the false alternative (either hedge fund managers pay more or seniors will go hungry) the president to me revealed more of himself even than he has in the past about what really makes him tick, both philosophically as psychologically.

He is, at heart, an ardent believer that the wealth of a nation’s citizenry is in the end the property of their government into which the haves pay and bureaucrats then distribute out as social justice in the form or largess to the have-nots.  His increasing vibe of anger, that seems to conversely rise as his poll numbers fall, reveals to me a rather petulant man, unable to grasp the notion that he may not actually be the smartest guy in the room (despite the assurances of his orbiting satellites of sycophants in and out of  the MSM media) and that there are those who disagree with him not because they haven’t heard his message, but rather because they have and have found it wanting.

I found myself listening to his speech and thinking that I’d heard most of it before.  Most but not all.  One new tact that the historian in me found fascinating, and quite cynical, was his reaching down into the soil of Mount Vernon to summon the ghost of our most esteemed first president, George Washington, to help make his case.  Mr. Obama offered up this snippet from Washington’s September 19, 1796 Farwell Address to the nation to bolster his tax raising stance:

“…towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; and no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.”

Here is how Mr. Obama’s speech-writers interpreted our first president’s advice,   Said our current president:

“It’s always more popular to promise the moon and leave the bill for after the next election or the election after that.  That’s been true since our founding.  George Washington grappled with this problem.  He understood that dealing with the debt is — these are his words – ‘always a choice of difficulties.’  But he also knew that public servants weren’t elected to do what was easy; they weren’t elected to do what was politically advantageous.”

I wonder if anyone in the Obama administration studied history because to reach back to Washington to support, in effect, raising already burdensome income taxes to sustain a massive federal bureaucracy and social welfare state is about as far a reach as one can stretch before toppling over into the abyss of utter nonsense.

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From the Associated Press:

Obama promised Medicare beneficiaries that he’d veto any legislation asking them to sacrifice without also raising taxes on upper-income earners. But he didn’t issue them a complete pass.

Instead, he’s proposing to raise a range of costs for future retirees, while mostly shielding Medicare’s 48 million current beneficiaries. Under the president’s plan, starting in 2017:

_Upper-income beneficiaries would pay higher monthly premiums for outpatient and prescription coverage. Eventually about a quarter of all Medicare beneficiaries would be hit with the higher income-related premiums that only a small share of seniors now pay.

_Newly signed-up beneficiaries would pay a penalty if they also purchase private insurance that covers all or most of Medicare’s copayments and deductibles. Administration officials say such insurance encourages over-treatment.

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A new poll, conducted by the Manhattan Institute shows that voters are supportive of government reform efforts and reject the notion that taxes should be increased to address government funding shortfalls. But other findings show knowledge of, and support for, recent changes in collective bargaining laws are mixed.

The poll results show that the general public remains skeptical of government and its continuing fiscal problems. They realize there was a state budget crisis here and reject taxes as a way to fix the mess. They support the concept of labor reforms like merit pay and changes in benefits, but they don’t yet understand how the overhaul of the bargaining process was necessary to achieve these reforms and solve the fiscal crisis at every level of government in Wisconsin. However, I strongly believe these poll results show that over time as we witness more examples of how the new labor laws benefit taxpayers, the recently passed reforms will gain popularity.

Noted Democratic Pollster Douglas Schoen conducted a series of polls for the Manhattan Institute. One poll surveyed national attitudes and several other discovered the opinions of voters in certain states.

The findings in Wisconsin, the epicenter of efforts to change the way public employees are compensated, show that voters are supportive of concepts like merit pay but many have yet to make the connection that such reforms are unlikely without serious reforms in the collective bargaining process.

• A majority (55%) of Wisconsin voters say that the new law has helped either a great deal or somewhat in erasing Wisconsin’s $3 billion budget deficit.

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From the Washington Examiner:

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman, and doctor, Howard Dean backed a McKinsey & Co. survey today that found that almost a third of private-sector employers will drop their employee health insurance coverage when Obamacare’s government-managed insurance exchanges come online.

Dean told Morning Joe, “The fact is it is very good for small business. There was a McKinsey study, which the Democrats don’t like, but I do, and I think its true. Most small businesses are not going to be in the health insurance business anymore after this thing goes into effect.”

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From the BBC:

A solar panel factory in eastern China has been shut down after protests by local residents over pollution fears.

Some 500 villagers staged a three-day protest following the death of large numbers of fish in a local river.

Some demonstrators broke into the plant in Zhejiang province, destroying offices and overturning company cars before being dispersed by riot police.

Tests on water samples showed high levels of fluoride, which can be toxic in high doses, officials said.

The BBC’s Juliana Liu in Shanghai says the Chinese villagers see the plant’s closure as a victory.

They accuse Jinko Solar, a Chinese company making solar panels for sale overseas, of dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply, our correspondent says.

“We feel that it is socially responsible to close the factory first and to take corrective measures,” company spokesman Thomas Jing told the BBC.

Read the whole thing here. Remember, externalities are everywhere.

From The Hill:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that his committee plans to investigate government loan programs to private corporations in light of allegations of improper dealings between the White House and failed energy company Solyndra and wireless start-up LightSquared.

“I want to see when the president and his cronies are picking winners and losers… it wasn’t because there were large contributions given to them,” the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Tuesday morning on C-SPAN.

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