Big Government has already established that Lisa Fithian is playing an integral part in the planning, organization,and execution of the nation-wide “Occupy” protests and other union demonstrations and “direct actions.”

The Chicago Teachers’ Union has reported that Fithian trained its members, together with the Teamsters, for the Occupy Chiacgo protests. Evidence on the UAW website also shows that Fithian recenlty led members in a march to “close” a branch of designated villain, Bank of America. Fithian is also referred to as an “SEIU Commander” leading activists in a recent march on bankers in Boston.

Now, Big Government’s continued investigation of Lisa Fithian’s activities reveals another badge of dishonor to add to her shameful resume:  Israel-hater.

The “Occupy” protests have already shown startlingly brazen and unapologetic displays of antisemitism, and this newly-discovered footage of Fithian, a key driving force behind the protests, may help explain why hatred toward “Zionist bankers” keeps bubbling up to the surface at Occupy demonstrations across the country.

The footage above was shot on May 31, 2010 and features Lisa Fithian shouting through a megaphone, accusing the state of Israel of “slaughter[ing] Palestinians every single day.”  As Fithian, organizer of the Democratic Party’s new favorite mass protest, looks on, a menacing man decked out in a Palestinian keffiyeh leads her activists in the chant:

“Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!” (more…)

Something amazing happened at the Occupy LA rally the other night.  Who knew a capitalist would confront the people at the Occupy LA Rally.

Also funny to see that so many of the Occupy LA crowd would support Herman Cain for president. The even chanted “9-9-9!” Looks like Cain has crossover appeal that the GOP establishment has overlooked.

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From CNN:

House Republicans investigating the loan controversy had requested all internal White House documents about the issue. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee chair Rep. Cliff Stearns said that includes emails on the President’s Blackberry.

On Friday the White House Counsel sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee explaining they won’t comply with the request because it “implicates longstanding and significant institutional Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”

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With more revelations likely to come, initial emails released by Big Government demonstrate that not only do Democrats all the way up to the White House support the ongoing Occupy movement, they have formally partnered with it in terms of fundraising and support.

Check this out below via a leaked Occupy email first posted by Big Government. Not long ago, Howard Dean was viewed as a viable presidential candidate by the Democrat establishment, and the group he started, Democracy for America, is by no means seen as fringe by American media.

“We currently find ourselves in Phase 3. Senior members of the White House administration, and the President himself, have expressed support for OWS. Democracy for America, a Howard Dean initiated group just sent an email blast to more than a million members tonight selling yard signs that say “We Are the 99%” with co-branded urls: OccupyWallSt.org and DemocracyforAmerica.org/occupy. OWS is embraced by the establishment as a means to amplify existing agendae(sic). Bloomberg gives tacit “permission” for our occupation, effectively rendering it non-threatening and normalizing it. Result is rise in media coverage of occupation as nuisance to neighbors.

In the past, establishment Republican politicians who dared develop any genuine relationship with the Tea Party movement were often expected to answer for false charges of hate and racism among the Tea Party movement. Where is that questioning, if not outrage, now?

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Today, in 1859, John Brown led a raid on Harpers Ferry, VA (now WV).

Houston, we have a problem.

On March 24, 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden made the following announcement: “The President has directed us to take action to fight [Mexican] cartels…and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration’s comprehensive plan.”

Note: From the moment this announcement begins, “the President” and “Attorney General Holder” are both involved in some capacity.

The announcement continued by saying the DEA was going to increase its presence in Mexico and on the border, and that the ATF was using $10 million from the stimulus funds to add “37 new employees and 3 new offices” and “redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days, to fortify its project gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.”

Of course, this dovetails perfectly with Holder’s speech in Mexico on April 2, 2009, where he literally referred back to Ogden’s announcement in describing the focus on the southern border and project gunrunner:

Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels.  My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion.  DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail. (emphasis mine)

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In the beginning, I was willing to accept that a group of unhappy citizens utilized their First Amendment rights to protest what they believe to be an injustice (as I have written here and here):  the picking of winners and losers by government with a weak coverup attempt via cronyism.  I accepted, at first, their claims of being a “non-violent” group wanting to have their grievances heard.

Yet, as the “movement” began to grow, it became obvious that being “non-violent” is “non-correct.” Quickly, the OWS protesters were co-opted by those who believe in violence as a legitimate means of achieving their objectives:  Van Jones, who wants to see an “American Autumn” emulating the Arab Spring (which was, and still is, very violent), Michael Moore — who has stated publicly that the “rich” can give up their money now, peacefully, or later (though he doesn’t elaborate on what happens to get the money later, one can imagine), and even Roseanne Barr got into the mix. Barr actually said she longed for the return of the guillotine and re-education camps for those who don’t give up their wealth willingly.

In my appearance on CrossTalk, I was joined by Jason Del Gandio – assistant professor of rhetoric at Temple University and author of “Rhetoric for Radicals,” (a handbook for 21st century activists) and Kevin Zeese, organizer of October 2011.org and activist.  In that program a few things came to the surface:

Both Del Gandio and Zeese pushed the meme that the organizations across the nation were non-violent. Zeese made it clear that they were not allowing themselves to be co-opted by Jones, Moore, the Democrat party or anyone else, claiming:

Van Jones is not part of the Occupy movement…he’s a Democrat…if Obama and the Democrats embrace us, they gonna be very sad to see that we will be protesting them as well…we see them as part of the crony capitalist corrupt economy that has resulted in 400 people having as much wealth as 154 million, not because they are smarter or work harder, but because they are politically connected and essentially bribing through campaign donations…

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The Obama administration has admitted that it cannot move forward with a major feature of Obamacare, its long-term care insurance program, due to the fact that it contains a critical design flaw.

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, known as CLASS, a pet program of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D- Massachusetts), was to have been sponsored by the federal government but maintained as a voluntary plan to which healthy, younger, working Americans would contribute in the event they became disabled later on in life. Participants would have paid a monthly premium that ranged widely between $235-$3000, depending on income, during their employment years, and then collected a daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled.

The tragic flaw in the plan is that unless large numbers of healthy people are willing to sign up for the program during their working years, the cost of the program would become prohibitive due to the needs of the disabled who would benefit from the plan. Unlike the purchase of long term care insurance in the private sector, CLASS did not offer lower premiums to healthier participants. Thus, the program attracted those who were already disabled in some way, yet able to work to some extent, and who anticipated the need for long term care in the future. Without healthy subscribers paying into the system, these individuals would not likely be able to afford the steep premiums. (more…)

Here’s one of the protesters Reason.tv spoke to at Occupy Wall Street in Los Angeles on October 12, 2011. She identifies herself as Patricia McAllister and as an employee of Los Angeles Unified School District.

“I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government… they need to be run out of this country,” she said.

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The Greater Boston Food Bank intended to have a fundraising event in Boston’s Dewey Square over the weekend of the 14th of October. It was to be called the “Greenway Mobile Food Fest” and was supposed to help raise funds to feed the poor and needy. However, due to the tantrums being thrown by the Occupy Boston protestors, the event had to be canceled.

Despite the selfishness of these pointless, clueless protesters, though, conservative bloggers stepped in and raised over $3,000 for the food bank. An important question is, where is the media on this story? Isn’t this a perfect sort of human-interest story that media types usually love?

The media should love this. It’s got clueless, uninformed, cretins hurting an organization that helps feed the needy. It has a more caring group rising to the challenge to help replace those lost donations. Perfect story, right?

Ah, except that it is conservatives in the role of good guy and the Old Media can’t have that, now can they?

Now, the anti-capitalists of the so-called “Occupy” events pretend that they are for the downtrodden, the low man on the totem pole, but in Boston the Occupy-Whatevers were more interested in their tantrums than in actually helping anyone. So, the food bank and the small-business festival associated with it lost out to those selfish whiners that claim to be for “the little man.” Nice, eh? (more…)

The Laffer Curve is the simple notion that higher tax rates don’t necessarily generate as much loot as politicians expect because taxpayers have less incentive to earn and/or report income.

And it works in both directions. Lower tax rates don’t lose as much revenue as politicians fear because better tax policy leads to more taxable income.

Supply side Snooki?

In a few cases, higher tax rates may even lose revenue and lower tax rates may generate additional receipts. The IRS collected a lot more tax from upper-income taxpayers, for instance, after Reagan slashed the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent.

Over the past few years, I’ve shown lots of evidence from around the world (England, Spain, and France) and in various states (Illinois, Oregon, Florida, Maryland, and New York) to make the case that it is foolish to ignore the Laffer Curve. Not surprisingly, leftists never seem to learn.

More recently, I’ve explained why Obama’s class-warfare tax policy is especially misguided because of Laffer Curve effects.

But I sometimes wonder whether I make any progress with these arguments. Maybe I’m being too much of a wonk? Perhaps I need an example that strikes a chord with regular people.

I don’t know if that’s true, but let’s give it a try. I now have an example of the Laffer Curve for the MTV audience. Best of all, the story is from USA Today.

The IRS got red-faced trying to collect the new tanning tax, burning a hole in estimates on how much the levy would bring in to federal coffers, a new report said Thursday. …Tanning tax receipts for that nine-month period totaled $54.4 million, the report found. That was below projections by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which had estimated the tax would raise $50 million in the last three months of fiscal year 2010 and $200 million for the full 2011 fiscal year.

Let’s deconstruct the numbers from the article. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that this new “Snooki” tax (part of the awful Obamacare legislation) was going to raise about $50 million every three months.

Yet during the first nine months, the tax raised just $54.4 million, not $150 million.

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The Occupy Oakland movement officially kicked off on Monday, October 10 at 4 pm. In a bold act of solidarity, the Oakland Education Association provided the occupiers with four Porta-Potty units, but that wasn’t enough for a movement as large as this one.

An email obtained by Education Action Group from an Occupy Oakland leader explains the problem:

“If you didn’t already know, OEA has pulled through and donated some funds to have porta-potties available at Occupy Oakland. … People are really grateful to see how the teachers are supporting this. However, less than a day later, the potties are already full! They cost $35 a unit to service, and there are four units. We need to gather some funds to either add more units, or to make a consistent servicing schedule throughout the occupation. … Please email me if you are able to help with monetary donations!”

In a short amount of time, the occupiers have issued an impressive amount of communiqué, of which the Porta-Potty SOS email was only a part.

A sign at #OccupyOakland summarizes the movement's intent.

The mob has issued a manifesto/blog, which contains this message for “the politicians and the 1%”:

“Since we don’t need permission to claim what is already ours, we do not have a list of demands to give you. There is no specific thing you can do to make us ‘go away.’ And the last thing we want is for you to reinforce your power. … Our goal is to bring power back to where it belongs, with the people so we can fix what the politicians and corporations have screwed up.”

However, the Oakland mob provides an extensive “wish list” of supplies to their “comrades” in the 99%. Here’s a sampling of the occupier’s demands –er, needs, and in their own words:

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Today, protests are scheduled in cities across the globe. Should be a hoot. Smelly, but a hoot.

Los Angeles became the first city to officially endorse the Occupy movement when its city council unanimously passed a resolution affirming the group’s right to camp out on lawns in front of city hall. The council members had glowing words for the movement.

“These are things worthy of protest. And I thank you for speaking out and helping move the debate forward,” said City Councilman Paul Koretz.

Many of the protesters had similarly positive words for their local politicians, as well as local law enforcement. Reason.tv was on the scene to ask protesters about their general attitudes towards government power.  Is Occupy Los Angeles (and Occupy Wall Street) simply a pro-government movement, or is there room for libertarian sentiment within it?

The answer is… well, it’s complicated. While we spoke to a few small government libertarians at the event, others eschewed anti-government rhetoric and said that criticism of the Federal Reserve is a libertarian “pet issue” distracting from the real matter at hand: economic justice.

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Richard Cordray, President Obama’s pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, won approval from the Senate Banking Committee last week on a party-line vote. His confirmation to run the new agency faces fierce opposition from Republicans, who have vowed to block Senate approval until reforms are made to the agency.

As the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is leading those calls for reform. In an interview at The Heritage Foundation this week, Shelby criticized Obama for failing to respond to the GOP’s suggested reforms for the CFPB.

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The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College just released an analysis entitled “Comparing Wealth in Retirement: State-Local Versus Private Sector Workers” to determine the wealth effect in retirement from 1996 to 2006 for former public employee versus the private sector workers at age 65, after adjusting for workers with similar characteristics of education and experience.

“What do we want?” “To protect our income gap!”

The report concluded, “The results show that spending more than 50 percent of one’s career as a state-local worker is associated with 11 percent to 18 percent more wealth at age 65.” The data for the report was produced by a long-term nationally representative study that tracked more than 12,650 people in 7.600 households since 1992, asking the participants questions about financial standing, spending habits, retirement, pensions, and employers.

The Boston College analysis determined that the dominant difference in wealth at retirement turned out to be private sector employees now rely on their self-directed 401(K) defined contribution accounts and Social Security payments, whereas public employees rely on defined benefit pension payments.

At the 2006 conclusion of the study, 78 percent of state and local government employee households in the sample received a defined benefit pension as compared to 59 percent of private sector households. This high proportion of private sector workers with defined benefit pensions shrank dramatically during the study that began in 1992. (more…)

Evidence suggests that ACORN, the left’s premiere astro-turfing organization, has been paying people to participate in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Astro-turfing campaigns can generate big money, and ACORN’s lucrative protest-for-profit program is nothing new. As I note in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN has acquired great expertise in manufacturing so-called grassroots protests.

Left-wing billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler, the founders of World Savings Bank, gave ACORN affiliates close to $11 million to manufacture mobs to protest their competition in subprime mortgage lending. The United Federation of Teachers paid ACORN $500,000 to create a spontaneous uprising against charter schools in Manhattan.

The SEIU-funded Working Families Party, a front group for ACORN, placed a want ad on Craigslist dated Sept. 26. The ad indicates that WFP was recruiting activists to carry out “direct action,” leftist argot for a variety of activities aimed at forcing sociopolitical change.

The line between direct action and violent terrorism can become blurry. Extreme forms of direct action can lead to bodily injury and sometimes death. The labor movement is no stranger to assault and killings. Left-wing activists David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin participated in an attack on an armored car that left two police officers and a security guard dead. Two anarchists tried to disrupt the 2008 GOP convention with Molotov cocktails. The eco-terrorist Sea Shepherd Conservation Society admits both to attacking whaling ships with acid and sinking them.

WFP’s ad is titled, “FIGHT TO HOLD WALLSTREET [sic] ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERNENCE [sic] GET PAID!” It states:

The WFP is seeking immediate hires.

You must be an energetic communicator, with a passion for social and economic justice.

Only outgoing, articulate dedicated, determined candidates will be considered for the positions.

For those candidates that qualify WFP offers substantial paid-training provided by senior leadership, on varied issues such as: advocacy, public speaking, mobilizing, fundraising, networking and organizing. We invest in passionate people with excellent communication skills and a full benefits package is offered to those candidates that qualify. In addition, there is opportunity for advancement and travel to our satellite chapters and out of state affiliates.

This is not a policy job! Through direct action you will be shaping NY state politics for the next 20 years.” [emphasis added]

As previously reported, WFP has been involved in organizing the Occupy Wall Street protests since the beginning.

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The Columbus Day protests in Chicago had anarchists, socialists, communists…and a Marching Band! Chicago’s public Morgan Park High School turned out its marching band to entertain and rally the #OccupyChicago protesters.

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