While in attendance at Occupy DC, protesters told MRCTV’s Joe Schoffstall that despite President Barack Obama being the number one recipient of Wall Street cash, they still support him. Keep in mind these are people who ‘claim’ they want Wall Street money out of politics and ‘claim’ they are not Democrats or Republicans.

In other news, the ‘Occupy’ protests recently picked up endorsements from both the Communist and Nazi party.

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Earlier this month, news broke that a group calling itself the “Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative” is pushing a $1 per pack cigarette tax hike in the state. Via the AP:

A Maryland health group is planning to push for a $1 increase in the state’s tobacco tax.

The Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative says it will launch the campaign next week in an effort to build public support for increasing the tax to pay for public health needs.

[...]

Maryland last raised its tobacco tax from $1 a pack to $2 a pack during a special session in 2007.

Those who follow consumption tax policy will know that state cigarette tax increases have historically constituted a somewhat unreliable revenue stream.

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From The Hill:

President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.

“We do not support repeal,” the official said Monday. “Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.”

Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called CLASS Act advocates to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the program work. That official also told advocates that widespread media reports on the program’s demise were wrong, leaving advocates scratching their heads.

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Yesterday we released a video of John Bachtell, a national board member from the Communist Party U.S.A., addressing the bongo-banging, spoiled, suburban run-aways at the #OccupyChicago tent city and an interview with a few of his “fellow travelers” in the march.

Thanks to a reader tip, we have identified the three individuals in the march who we interviewed. In the photo below starting on the left is James Raines, a University of Memphis teacher (from reader tip), next to his right is Jordan Farrar (Young Communist League & Organizing for America), and next to him is Gabe Niechcial, another young communist.

According to the P/oed Patriot, Farrar, seen in the white C.P. USA shirt, is not only a Young Communist League leader, but he is also a member of Barack Obama’s Organizing for America and he organized a rally in 2009 for OFA to support President Obama’s health care bill. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) was featured guest at Farrar’s event as well.

Notice the host name on the screenshot of the event invitation.

Jordan is a self-described “militant anti-racist anti-fascist Marxist-Leninist skinhead.”

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UPDATE:  The White House has responded to our inquiry and they deny that this week’s weekly address video was shot in front of a green screen.  They also explained that the production line that the president was posed in front of is always shut-down on Fridays, the day President Obama taped his message.  It’s impossible to resist the temptation to speculate that this odd production schedule must suggest that the production line is designated for the Chevy Volt.

President Obama delivered his weekly address to the nation from Detroit, Michigan this week after visiting workers at a GM assembly plant.  When the video hit at Breitbart.tv, our tip box suddenly became very active with people claiming that the President was actually sitting in front of a green screen and the background image was really a composite image of an assembly line.

In the image below, you can see a black outline around the president’s shoulder, and you can see the background image slightly distorted around the president’s ear.

Several experts in the field of video effects have given us their opinions on the matter.  Some examples of their takes:

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According to newly released internal White House emails, however bad things are now, they’re about to get worse.  The messages, which originated within the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010, admits the train wreck of the Solyndra loan and indicates that “bad days are coming.”

“What’s terrifying,” the note reads, “is that looking at some of the ones that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better.”

It’s important to note that these emails were released by Democrats themselves so, in all likelihood, this is the version of the story that presents the best possible picture of the Obama administration’s future.  Depending on which poll you read, the President’s approval rating is either a point or two above or below 40% and his administration is mired in multiple, deepening, scandals.  This leads many conservatives to speculate that Obama will have no other choice but to bow out of a 2012 contest that he knows he can’t win. They’d better hope he doesn’t.  For the sake of the nation, Obama needs to run, and he needs to be defeated in an election.

Some on the right will argue that the chance of him winning a second term is too great and the United States would be better off if he just resigned.  The problem is, he won’t just disappear.  Ex-presidents may no longer enjoy the perks of the office, but they still command considerable attention both at home and abroad.  Barack Obama would present the left with the ultimate rock star of retired politicians, and he’d love to wield that kind of power.

If he simply quits, Obama will return to his community organizing roots. He’ll begin shouting about the nation that was too stupid, too trapped in its own past, to acknowledge the greatness of the future he tried to build.  He’ll blame Washington and evil corporations for standing in the way of his vision.  He’ll imply that we’re a racist land which couldn’t deal with a black president and, most importantly, he’ll declare that he was never beaten.

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental communication accounts, which a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA requests. This “cloud” serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the “bad timing” file, especially for the Obama Administration and the UN.

Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (whose scams I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a “science czar” John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to for developing his “environmental”’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, operating domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.

With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to — user names and passwords for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA, thereby also seeking to undermine the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978. (more…)

The narrative has thus far been that the #OccupyWallStreet crowd is one of outrage over the country’s financial sector, corporate greed, and the growing disparity between work and profit. The protesters are a culmination of these factors against the forces that have limited upward mobility, controlled wages, and dictated the livelihood of the American people. After all, who can possibly forget the endearing image of the brave man who dropped trou and took a dump on a police car? That single act made the Tiananmen Square look like child’s play.

Of course, in reality the protesters are nothing but a mob. A mob of “useful idiots” as Mike Elliot, my writing partner once covered, that has generated at least 1,500 arrests across the country and counting.

If you have never heard the term “useful idiot” it was the attitude held by Vladimir Lenin towards communist sympathizers in the West. While Lenin and the Soviets held them in utter contempt they also viewed them as tools for dispensing communist propaganda to other countries, thus infecting foreign cultures with their totalitarian tripe. After their mission was complete, they were no longer “useful.”

So disjointed is there message that the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party have voiced solidarity with the movement. The Communists have joined because they hate capitalism and the foundations on which our country stands. The Nazis have joined because they never miss out on an opportunity to blame Jewish bankers and Israel.

The tent widens from there. The Democrats and even the President of the United States have expressed sympathy with the Occupiers. Keep this in mind, China as well as Iran have also expressed support for the occupiers. The decision is make-or-break for Team Obama. They are looking for anything that will raise the passions for their re-election chances. The media, too, has jumped on the bandwagon. They noticed the myriad of positions and statements and so have lent a hand in public relations to help mold the rabble-rousers into a bona fide Leftists movement. Even Martin Luther King Jr. posthumously gave an endorsement.

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Who doesn’t love soap? Well, the obvious answer is the #OccupyWallStreet crowd, but put them aside for the moment. Everyone else loves soap. Or should. But not everyone does. It turns out that environmentalists don’t care much for soap either. Certain kinds of soap, anyway.

Learning that the “occupiers” and environmentalists have a mutual dislike of certain kinds of soap comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever sat next to them on a subway, but the why is different for each group. Where the protesters, presumably, haven’t used soap in a month out of the necessity of circumstance, the environmentalists shower but want to take your choice of soap away from you.

I’ve written about this before, twice in fact, and while it’s not the most exciting topic on the planet (that honor goes to a tie between the start of NHL season and release of the new iPhone), it’s every bit an affront to liberty as banning incandescent light bulb was. Only with soap, there’s still time to act to stop it.

The offending ingredient in soap is called Triclosan, it’s what makes anti-bacterial soap anti-bacterial and stops you from getting sick an untold number of times every year. But to environmentalists, benefits to humans is of little concern, nor are facts, it’s the agenda of control über alles.

Zealots like Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) are pushing Congress to ban antibacterial soap under the time-tested Washington favorite motivation “just in case.” Just in case it’s dangerous, just in case it causes problems, just in case…

Under the “just in case” model there is much that wouldn’t be banned, or never have come into being in the first place. That’s why we have science and why science studies things such as this. And science has weighed in.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Tim Geithner’s response to the Occupy Wall Street protestors, emails that show coordination with the media and if this is all part of the end to America’s centuries long prosperity.

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:

Treasury Secretary Geithner on the Occupy Wall Street Movement (4:40 mark)
Wall St. protests continue after arrests
Journolist 2.0: OccupyDC Emails Show MSM, Dylan Ratigan, Working With Protesters To Craft Message
Army of unemployed is now entrenched in U.S.
America Wrongly Thinks Its Prosperity Can’t End

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#GlobalRevolution Brought To You By Big Government, Big Business & Big Labor

Nearly a year ago, when the Tunisian uprising sparked the beginning of what would later be dubbed the Arab Spring, many in the Western World were transfixed by the seemingly spontaneous popular uprisings. However, what many have viewed as the impromptu uprisings of the oppressed appear to be more the result of a quietly-conducted campaign called 21st Century Statecraft that was birthed and nurtured by the U.S. State Department, some of America’s most well-known corporations, the U.S. labor movement and the global Left.

Now, as the American Autumn unfolds, combined with the #OccupyTogether movement taking root in cities around the world, it appears that the engineers behind Arab Spring are deploying their 21st Century Statecraft model in the United States.

What is 21st Century Statecraft?

In short, 21st Century Statecraft is an initiative of the U.S. State Department to change the world through social media. Simply put, it is regime change through internet activism. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (referred to as “the godmother of 21st-century statecraft“) describes it on the State Department’s website: (more…)

The Chairman of The DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) Steve Israel, who is supposed to be representing NY’s 2nd Congressional District (where I live), never met a Progressive anti-Semitic or anti-Israel group that he did not embrace.  The Long Island Congressman’s latest “love affair” is with Occupy Wall Street whose members have displayed a hatred of both the Jews and the Jewish State.

The DCCC run by Israel features a petition supporting Occupy Wall Street which is looking for 100,000 signatures in support of Occupy Wall Street

Its hard to believe that Congressman Israel hasn’t seen any of the news reports of hatred coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

For example this New York Protester who claims that one small minority controls the banks, the judiciary, American Politics, and represent over 50% of all billionaires in the country.

“The Jews who represent only 2% of the population…have pooled their money together an now control all the the finances of America”

Last night during the tent city construction at Occupy Chicago on Michigan Ave, John Bachtell, a spokesperson from the national board of the Communist Party U.S.A., addressed the angry mob of nearly 3000. He claimed to “bring greetings and support” from the party, to the occupy movement. Bachtell received a very warm welcome and overwhelming applause form the “occupiers.”

“We will be with this movement….til we make all the changes that we know we have to make….This movement is part and parcel in the great tradition in this country of people powered democracy….This is the next big step of the democratic revolution in our country.”- Bachtell said.

We also caught up with some of the other communist revolutionaries who marched with flea-infested, bongo-banging, suburban runaways from Occupy Chicago.

Take a look.

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There is a long 20^th century history of Wall Street protests in America.  After all, Wall Street is the financial center of the country. Today, we’re in a financial crisis so Wall Street (or its financial center equivalent in other cities) is the logical place to protest, right?

Actually, we think it’s a poor second to Lafayette Park across from the White House — where the current crisis was hatched and nurtured.  No, this isn’t an anti Obama screed.  His predecessors (several of them) are far more to blame for the current economic disarray in which we find ourselves, although we think his proposed remedies are anything but remedial.

“Occupy Wall Street” and “Wall Street Greed” are great memes.  They are highly memorable and easily passed on as a rallying cry. Unsurprisingly, President Obama and the left has sought to adopt them.  Of course, the protestors are an outgrowth of the wider sense of entitlement many young people have developed (including quotas disguised under the term “diversity”).  As George Will stated in his column in The Washington Post on October 13, 2011:

“Demands posted in [Occupy Wall Street’s] name include a ‘guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment’; a $20‑an‑hour minimum wage (above the $16.00 entry wage the UAW just negotiated with GM); ending ‘the fossil fuel economy’; ‘open borders’ so ‘anyone can travel anywhere to work and live’; $1 trillion dollars for infrastructure; $1 trillion dollars for ‘ecological restoration’; ‘free college education’, and forgiveness of ‘all debt on the entire planet.”

But abuses by Wall Street are an affect, not the cause of the current economic disarray. As anyone who has read our essays knows, we carry no brief for Wall Street excesses or those of the various Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE’s) that are the real culprits. But Wall Street was simply the vehicle by which the White House, Congress, the Fed and the Washington bureaucracy carried out very ill advised objectives. As is well known by now, the seeds of our current discontent were sowed a quarter century ago when President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).  This legislation and the regulatory policies that it set in motion may have been well intentioned, but as history teaches, roads paved merely with good intentions often lead where no one wants to go.

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Today, in 1777, the British surrendered at Saratoga.

In Seal Beach, California, a shooter took eight lives by a marauding sweep of a hair salon. The cry for gun control is now surfacing, this time being written, as I see, by contributors who seem to be middle-of-the road gun owners or second amendment mavens… but who seem to be ‘rethinking’ their views.

I doubt these, and their remarks are another chance for us to educate the electorate on the subject of role the armed citizen.

In summary, many of the op-ed pieces appearing after the Seal Beach Murders seem to be even-handed, but there is one tell which divulges that the contributor is probably not a gun owner. Yes, we have our critics within the liberty movement but on principle, which is within every armed citizen, we do not differ. A gun owner would likely know this. Yes, gun owners may differ on many things, but not on core principle.

At the core of suspicion is the concept that regulation or even a gun ban would have helped. No honest gun owner would believe this because they understand deeply how they are the only one they can count on in time of violence. The entire purpose of carrying a gun is – as we often say  – because a cop is too heavy.

Think of the death of Michael Jackson and the trial of his physician Conrad Murray: do you believe that regulation of all doctors would ever prevent this or remedy this case? As they gleefully said in Indiana Jones, “They’re looking in the wrong place!”

And this is one of the problems of the left, is it not: the practice of doing everything but the most effective thing. For all the handwringing, officials are looking for community safety in all the wrong places.

Criticism of guns following shootings such as the Seal Beach Murders will never stop violence, and a gun owner knows this, or h/she wouldn’t own a gun. Law does not stop killings, because law responds after the fact as in defining a crime and provision for penalty. This crime was not due to guns, but a combination of factors as so-called ‘new information’ emerges. The more we learn about the shooter’s environment, the more we conclude that no regulation would have stopped these murders. Please name one law which would have prevented this shooter from killing eight people. Just one.

Now look at how many laws were broken. Start with Murder. Every single crime of violence is an impeachment and humiliation of gun control.

Let me spell this out: if an armed citizen were present, chances are he or she may have stopped the shooter in his tracks.

[The armed citizen's immediacy, lawful authority and lethal force are what make the difference. Instances are well documented by the millions (2.5 million) each year, the only opposing anti-gun content being mocking and emotional carping.

Many times, I have said that your two hands can save a life, because your two hands holding your handgun and your two hands which can do CPR can make all the difference between death and survival of innocents.]

The solution to these is not to look in all the wrong places, such as gun control, because there is no such thing as controlling guns; it is a lack of self-control which murders people, not the availability of guns. Murder is in the mentality of anger or pathology which can easily outwit and overcome any gun law in order to obtain weapons and shoot people to death. As gun owners say, murder is already illegal irrespective of the weapon. You won’t prevent murders by adding lesser charges.

The goal is not to try and prevent them by law, but to stop them by force. Immediacy and force. The improved odds that a shooter will encounter an armed citizen can be as effective at preventing premature death as one out of ten citizens trained in CPR.

Thirty years ago, we used to say, “If only someone knew CPR.” We never said, “If only the paramedics were here…” We said ‘someone’.  Your two hands can save a life because you are there, not because of who you are. You don’t have to be a medical person to save a life, and you don’t have to be a policeman to save a life. Or eight of them. Or thirty-two of them.

It’s time to look in the right places and to stop governing by crisis in every corner of this country. We need to see our officials presiding over prosperity after the 2012 election and not crisis as a never-ending mandate for them somehow. We need to see less gun control and more nationwide acceptance of the armed citizen as the norm it is in forty-eight states. How 2012 candidates feel about the armed citizen will be a reliable indicator of how they feel about who is the Sovereign in this country, and that is how we want to live in this country; as the Sovereign, with more independence from our servants and less of their independence of the electorate.

With civil disturbance looming on the horizon and with shortages of all sorts, it is a distinct possibility that mobs can easily spill over into home invasions. For many of these individuals, the disturbance itself is cover. That violence mentality will be amok, and not with guns, but with bare hands, sticks, vehicles and arson.

Crime is fought best at the scene of the crime. Gun control only assists crisis and chaos, and it must be removed as an obstacle to self-governance.

The cost of freedom and safety is more than fair, it is quite a bargain. The price of gun control for safety is far, far too high; it makes for bigger government and dependency on it to the exclusion of all alternatives.

Meanwhile, many of us are working for smaller government as our best path back to safer streets. Safer streets are evidence of a healthier self-rule. We won’t find our way back to smaller government and self-rule without the repeal of gun control first.

__________________________________

Herman Cain is the only GOP presidential candidate who wants to kill the tax code. That’s right. Put a knife in it. Junk the entire system. And people are cheering as he rises in the polls in his quest for the nomination.

Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is not perfect. But then again, the good should never the enemy of the perfect.

Congressman Paul Ryan gives the plan a thumbs-up. Supply-side mentor Art Laffer tells me it would be “far, far better than the current system.” And Chris Chocola, president of the free-market Club for Growth, calls it “a truly revolutionary tax reform that would amount to a massive job-creating tax cut on investments, savings, and income.”

As the world now knows, 9-9-9 translates to a 9 percent income-tax rate, a 9 percent value-added net sales tax rate on business, and a 9 percent national sales tax overall. Like many conservatives, I am troubled by the national-sales-tax piece. It reminds me too much of Europe. It could start low and then build on top of the other taxes. But I totally support the first two nines on personal income and business. In my view, these are vast improvements.

For his part, Cain argues that the sales-tax nine would pick up revenue and help to lower the rate for everybody, especially the middle class. His economic adviser Rich Lowrie told me in a CNBC interview that the sales tax is a replacement tax, not an add-on tax like you’d find at the state level. This is a key point. Lowrie said, “All we are doing is pulling out taxes that are invisible. We’re cutting the rates. We’re putting them back in at lower rates.”

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The Anti-Defamation League is one of the most powerful and authoritative voices against bigotry of all kinds–not just in the United States, but throughout the world.

Yet the ADL’s message has been compromised by left-wing political bias, most recently in its failure to denounce the evident antisemitism of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

Photo at Occupy LA (Pajamas Media)

By contrast, the ADL was quick to accuse the Tea Party movement of antisemitism when it began.

In May 2009, shortly after the first Tea Party rallies in April, the ADL warned: “White Supremacists and Anti-Semites Plan to Recruit at July 4 Tea Parties.”

In November, the ADL issued a “special report” on the Tea Party and “anti-government conspiracies.” The ADL noted that “extremists were a tiny minority of Tea Party protesters,” but claimed Tea Party members were filled with “rage” and held ideas that “fall outside the mainstream.”

As of this writing, the ADL has said nothing about the “rage” and bigotry on display at several “Occupy” rallies. Instead, it is minimizing the antisemitism on display, effectively helping “Occupy” do damage control.

One ADL analyst told the Daily Caller:

“We have seen instances of individuals promoting these [antisemitic] views. We do not think that it is or has been institutionalized in the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movements,” she said. “But I think the bigger issue is sort of that when there is a heightened focus economic strife and the financial industry it is not surprising to see these messages. Yet, we will continue to be diligent, looking for them and combating the promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories should they arise.”

Todd Gutnick, ADL’s media relations director, confirmed this morning: “Aside from the story in the Daily Caller in which we were quoted, ADL has made no statements on the Occupy movement.”

That is alarming, given the explicit anti-Jewish hatred on display at Occupy rallies across the country. (more…)