WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal judge has given final approval to a $1.2 billion government settlement with black farmers who claim they were unfairly denied loans and other assistance from the Agriculture Department over many years.

Federal judge Paul Friedman approved the settlement late Thursday. He said it will likely take about a year for neutral parties to review claims and then all of the settlements will be paid out at once.

This is the second round of settlements in the 1999 case known as the Pigford case, after the original plaintiff, North Carolina farmer Timothy Pigford. The settlement is directed at farmers who were denied payments in the first round because they missed deadlines for filing. (more…)

Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) made the following statement to the House Chamber on October 26, 2011:

Mr. Speaker:  The government’s continuing failure to address our nation’s gut-wrenching unemployment stems from a fundamental disagreement over how jobs are created in the first place.  We are now in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that government spending creates jobs. We have squandered three years and trillions of dollars of the nation’s wealth on such policies, and they have not worked because they cannot work.

Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy until it has first taken that same dollar OUT of the economy. True, we can SEE the job that is saved or created when the government puts that dollar back into the economy.  What we can’t see as clearly are the jobs that are destroyed or prevented from forming because government has first taken that dollar OUT of the economy.  We see those millions of lost jobs in a chronic unemployment rate and a stagnating economy.

Government can transfer jobs from the productive sector to the government sector by taking money from one and giving it to the other.  That’s at the heart of the President’s plan to spend billions of dollars to hire more teachers and firefighters and police officers.  But these temporary government jobs come at a steep price: every dollar spent sustaining one of these jobs is a dollar taken from the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to productive businesses to invest in creating permanent jobs.

Government can also transfer jobs from one business to another by taking capital from one and giving it the other. That’s how we got Solyndra.  We put a half-billion dollars at risk to create 1,100 jobs (that’s $450,000 per job).  Now that half-billion dollars are gone and so are the jobs.  And who pays for these losses?  Other businesses and their employees – meaning fewer jobs created.

(more…)

“Did a corporation end slavery, or did the government end slavery?!?!”

That’s the sort of question investment guru and radio show host Peter Schiff fielded as he debated Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters last week in New York’s Zuccotti Park.

Schiff is no ordinary observer. As the prinicipal of the financial firm Euro Pacific Capital, he’s a full-fledged and unapologetic member of “the 1 Percent.” As an outspoken radio show host (listen online here) and commentator, he not only predicted the housing crash and financial crisis, he railed bank and auto-sector bailouts as they were happening. Schiff believes that capitalism offers the only hope for young, frustrated people to have a vibrant and prosperous future (get information on his latest book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, here). So he went to Occupy Wall Street to engage and debate the protesters. (more…)

Push youngest/oldest to the front lines….This is a battle over images, not just over the park.

- Charles Lenchner, Occupy Wall Street activist, Oct. 13, 2011

If the police overreact (as they are likely to) and we take the blows, and it is recorded, it will go worldwide and further tremendously galvanize the movement.

- Tarak Kauff, Veterans for Peace organizer, Oct. 13, 2011

Woman in a wheelchair, Occupy Oakland riot, Oct. 25. Photo: Bradblog.com

When the activists of Occupy Oakland attacked police en masse on October 25th, throwing paint bombs and provoking volleys of tear gas, the images galvanized the Occupy movement as never before.

“Come see the violence inherent in the system!” they have all but shouted, using wild allegations of police brutality, and fallacious arguments about First Amendment violations, to build solidarity among scattered activists.

The outrage is sincere–but so is the jubilation.

Clashes with the police affirm the activistsʼ fantasy–that they are the leading a revolution, that the truths they speak are so potent that the “1 percent” must use force to suppress them.

The clashes also assuage the jealousy–what Harvard literature professor Philip Fisher once called “nightmare envy”– western radicals feel when watching the Arab Spring, where the struggles are deadly real.

But the Occupy activists have not just yearned for confrontations with police; they have planned them. (more…)

We have been warning about the bad news in the recent polls on Issue 2, and stated why the huge wins they show for the anti-reform side won’t be as big as the polls suggest.

Now, the Washington Post is reporting on a leaked memo from liberal mob Progress Ohio to the “We Are Ohio” union front group. They also believe it’s a LOT closer!

An internal memo from a key labor-backed group in the state is flatly warning that the polls are “flawed” and that a big win for labor is not even “remotely possible.” It adds that the right’s messaging has “worked,” and that there’s good reason to suspect that a “massive amount of voter confusion remains,” suggesting the fight could still go either way.
(more…)

On Tuesday, militant, Marxist, anti-war, and gay-rights activists–including some suspected of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations–led the Occupy Chicago protesters into City Hall to stage an “in your face” protest directed at Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

We caught up with one protester, Roger Fraser, a retired Palatine, Illinois school teacher. Fraser is a proud member of the “99%” who earns a modest $7,792.75 a month from his pension.

Fraser is also known as a militant gay rights activist and a member of the Gay Liberation Network–the same organization founded by Chicago G-8 and NATO protest organizer–and militant, anti-war, social-justice radical–Andy Thayer.

You may remember a previous interview from earlier this year, released by Andrew Breitbart, filmed at a Code Pink-led protest against the Koch brothers in Palm Springs, California–where Fraser called for “Revolution now,” and exclaimed, “Just like in Egypt!“

In the following interview, conducted yesterday inside City Hall, we asked Fraser if “this” was the kind of revolution he was talking about. Fraser told us, “This is the beginning.”

When asked what he thought it would take to achieve the activists’ goals, he remarked: “This kind of thing on a massive scale.“ He also answered in the affirmative as to whether or not the revolution would require collapsing the American government, and explained: ”Because….the resistance against this will be overwhelming…very strong….and relentless.”

Cross Posted at: RebelPundit

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Only in Washington would political appointees think it appropriate to have secret a government workshop on transparency, and only in Washington would a politician promote his efforts on transparency while simultaneously taking steps to keep the American people in the dark about their government. That’s exactly what the Obama White House did on December 7, 2009. Judicial Watch now has the evidence to prove it.

Judicial Watch recently released documents detailing the Obama White House decision to close to reporters a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) training workshop conducted by the Office of Information Policy (OIP) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). JW obtained the documents from the OIP in response to a FOIA request filed on the same day the workshop was held.

The documents consist of a series of emails between White House staff and the Director of the OIP. And here are a few key excerpts from these emails demonstrating what disrespect this White House has for transparency:

• “I am going to touch base with my public affairs office re your suggestion to get their reaction. I, personally don’t object as my message is the same whether the event is open or not. Our concern had been solely with the inhibiting effect it would have on the gov’t ’ees [employees] who might not speak freely if press are there.” — Melanie Pustay, OIP Director, to Blake Roberts, Deputy Associate White House counsel, December 6, 2009.
• “Ok – please don’t have them reach out to any reporters before I clear w/ wh [White House] press.” — Blake Roberts to Melanie Pustay, December 6, 2009.
• “After talking with… ben labolt [then-Assistant White House Press Secretary], the decision is that the training will be closed to the press.” — Gina Talamona, Press Release Deputy Director for the DOJ to Melanie Pustay and Brian Hauck, Counsel to the Associate Attorney General, December 7, 2009.
• “I think you have the right to give closed training when you want it.” — Brian Hauck to Melanie Pustay and Gina Talamona.

The documents also include a statement by OIP Director Melanie Pustay regarding previous FOIA workshops: “So far I have always held parallel sessions, one for agency ‘ees [employees] and then one that is open.”

(more…)

A popular, veteran doctor from central Illinois has been sidelined by employer (Springfield-based) Memorial Health System because he has not become proficient with the electronic medical records system that they purchased and implemented. Patients are so incensed that they’ve started a Facebook page as well as a blog to rally to his defense. This situation brings into focus the problem of top-down medical solutions, calling into question the efficacy of healthcare by committee, not to mention Obamacare itself. Do we really want to sacrifice good doctors in favor of good followers of top-down rules? Do we want good computer operators or excellent doctors?

The doctor, Steven Kottemann, 63, was placed on paid administrative leave in September because he was allegedly not properly utilizing the new electronic medical records system that his employer, Family Medical Center, instituted. Kotteman initially tried to upload verbal recordings of his notes made when meeting with patients, but the system failed to accept the recordings. The only other option was to type in by hand all his patient notes. Kottemann tried to input the notes while actually with his patients but eventually came to feel that typing at a computer while trying to work with his patients was not conducive to good care.

Dr. Kottemann then began staying late after office hours to type in all the notes, but due to a stroke of his own, the effort became too much for him. “It got to the point where I was going in seven days a week to keep up,” Kottemann told the State-Register newspaper. For its part, the employer says that Kottemann’s lack of proficiency with the computer system was not the only reason they fired him, but Memorial Medical Center refused to comment further on this story when I contacted them.

(more…)

If you’ve been following the Senate Bill 5 debate in Ohio, at some point you have surely seen the “We Are Ohio” union front group refer to studies written by Rutgers University professor, Jeffrey Keefe, for the Economic Policy Institute.  ”We Are Ohio” is the union front group who is spearheading the opposition to collective bargaining reform for Ohio’s public-sector employees.  The legislation is on the ballot for Ohio voters this November.  A “Yes” vote upholds the new reforms.  The study is a comparison of private-sector versus public-sector compensation, and is frequently cited by the anti-Issue 2 crowd.

EPI Researcher Jeffrey Keefe agreed to publish a study for the Ohio Education Association
and to kill any information that would be contrary to the outcome that OEA desired.

In July, “We Are Ohio” spokesperson Melizza Fazekas steered Columbus Business First reporter Jeff Bell to Keefe’s study.

The folks I interviewed said those trying to save S.B. 5 will hammer us with information on how the benefits and pay for Ohio’s public workers are better on average than those of us in the private sector. When asked that question, Fazekas quickly steered to me to a study on the compensation issue completed this year by Jeffrey Keefe, a labor and employment relations professor at Rutgers in New Jersey.

“We will combat it with the truth,” she said.

(more…)

I really hate mice, but even I felt for the freakishly disgusting rodents when I was walking around Target and saw mouse traps with FAKE cheese on ‘em. Are mice so freaking stupid they’d actually fall for something pretending to hold the most coveted of cuisines within a mouse’s palette?

There’s a political parallel there…

Monday, President Obama announced a plan to force banks to refinance home mortgages for those who are upside-down in their property. For those of us who bought high and now couldn’t dream of selling at a profit, this is a wonderful way for us to benefit from a government that seems to spend on programs that’ll impact us, right?

But then we take a few steps closer and realize if we fall for this, we’re being sucked into something we already kinda fell for a few years back.

The original mortgage plan, put into effect in 2009, was designed to allow those who are current with their payments but have little or no equity in their home to secure lower mortgage rates. The President’s Home Affordable Refinance Program has helped only 894,000 borrowers since the spring of 2009. The administration had originally hoped up to 5 million homeowners would benefit. I guess this didn’t work as planned. This revised plan is supposedly going to help up to 1.6M homeowners and will force banks, on paper, to take a loss on the mortgages of people who over-extended themselves.

What the President is really feeding us is nothing more than a petrified piece of cheese that’s sat out in the sun way too long and has now been spray-painted and re-molded so as to broaden its appeal (so he hopes) in order to garner votes from an electorate who would otherwise NOT vote for him. (more…)

Former U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming used to say, “If government ownership of land and natural resources was the best way to protect the environment, then we should have found a Garden of Eden in the Soviet Union after the Iron Curtain came down.  Instead, there was one environmental horror story after another.”

It makes you wonder if America faces a similar fate as the federal government already owns almost 650 million acres of land in the U.S.  That’s about 30 percent of all the land area in the nation and includes national parks, forests and wildlife refuges.

That’s  1 out of every 3 acres in the U.S.—1 out of every 2 acres in the West, says Congressman Rob Bishop (R-UT), a member on the Natural Resources Committee and ranking member on the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

Federal lands are managed differently based on their purpose.  Some lands are managed by the National Parks Service, others lands are held as wildlife refuges and still others are labeled wilderness areas.  How the federal government regulates these lands often impacts the economies of surrounding local communities.

A study by Environmental Trends in June 2011 looked at the relationship between wilderness areas and local communities by comparing county total payroll, county tax receipts and county average household income.  The findings concluded that when, “controlling for other types of federally held land and additional factors impacting economic conditions, federally designated Wilderness negatively impacts local economic conditions.”

(more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Joy Pullmann to discuss Obama’s recent student loan initiatives, lessons to be learned from the battle with teacher’s unions in Wisconsin , and the need for dramatic reform in America’s schools.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

The impact of Michelle Rhee’s ‘culture of urgency’
Joy Pullmann’s September 2011 Edition of School Reform News
Obama Bypasses Congress on No Child Left Behind Reform
Joy Pullmann at the Heartland Institute
Joy Pullmann at The Weekly Standard

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

The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements were both born out of the despair following the 2008 financial crisis, and both have tapped into the public’s anger over the unfairness of bank bailouts and huge bonuses for the risk takers while the rest of the country has struggled with unemployment, falling home prices and anemic economic growth.

Yet the elite media has constantly vilified the peaceful Tea Party as right-wing rabble for prodding politicians to do nothing more than reduce the bloat of government.

Meanwhile, politicians, the press — and now CEOs — have generally celebrated Occupy Wall Street as the second coming of the civil-rights movement — no matter how many times its followers have clashed with police in the name of Mao and Che Guevara.

And the worst part about these unfair depictions of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street?

There’s no end in sight.

I can’t remember a single instance in which the chief executive of a major bank or conglomerate has said something nice about the Tea Party’s goals of limited government, lower taxes and free markets — the very things upon which this country was founded.

But such business leaders as GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt and Blackrock chief Larry Fink have been falling all over themselves trying to say nice things about the OWS protesters, their grievances and rants against capitalism — even while the unwashed mob is nearly rioting not far from their corporate headquarters.

(more…)

By now you’ve surely heard about Mitt Romney’s famous visit to Ohio on Tuesday. First, he visited a call center where volunteers were doing work for Issues 2 and 3, but then declined to endorse the issues. Conservatives around the country jumped on him. Then it was revealed that he actually did endorse Issue 2 over the summer. Not only did this reinforce his dreaded “flip flop” weakness, Rick Perry jumped at the opportunity to embarrass Romney by declaring he fully supported Issue 2 and stands by John Kasich.

The next morning, Romney came out and said that, yes, he DOES indeed support, er…“question 2″, again strengthening the flip-flopper argument against him. Both conservatives and Democrats, including our old buddy ODP Chairman Chris Redfern, have had a field day with this. The entire visit was a disaster.

Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine, Mitt Romney, Ohio Governor John Kasich

But then a day later, Michael Brendan Dougherty from Business Insider claims that Romney was set up and used by Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine.

Yesterday, our source says, state GOP chairman Dewine took Romney to an event organized by Governor Kasich — and used him to try to damage Kasich.

…

But GOP chairman Kevin DeWine, who did not support Kasich’s gubernatorial campaign, brought Mitt Romney, displaying his political clout. But apparently no one informed Mitt Romney what the Ohio ballot initiatives were about or whether he had a position on them. When asked yesterday if he supported Issue 2, Mitt Romney punted. “I am not speaking about the particular ballot issues,” Romney said. “Those are up to the people of Ohio.”
“It would have been a pretty simple thing to make sure Romney knew that he was going to a phone bank where volunteers were making calls on behalf of Issue 2 and that earlier in the year he endorsed Issue 2,” said one Republican with close ties to the governor.

It’s not the best kept secret that Kevin DeWine and Kasich aren’t close, to put it kindly. It’s also known that current Secretary of State Jon Husted wants to be governor, and that DeWine is fully behind him. But if there is animosity towards Kasich, what does it gain DeWine by embarrassing him now? If he damages Kasich, he also damages the Republican party in Ohio and hurts Husted’s chances in the future. Would DeWine really do that to satisfy a personal grudge of some kind?

(more…)

It’s déjà vu all over again. For the second time, the entire Texas Congressional Delegation, with the exception of one member, wrote a letter last week urging the EPA to reevaluate and delay implementation of the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). The new letter was inspired by the fact that while the agency has offered a few corrections to the original error-ridden rule, they’ve done nothing to address the egregious timeline for compliance that continues to threaten jobs and communities here in Texas. EPA’s minor modifications to the rule may be good public relations, but as we say in Texas, it’s all hat and no cattle.

Donna Nelson, Chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, expressed her concerns last week that the EPA’s adjustments to CSAPR have failed to move the January 1 date of implementation and the Agency still has not corrected obvious errors and flawed assumptions. Commissioner Nelson noted that “the EPA overstated the amount of Texas generation available in future years by more than 10,000 megawatts by including plants that are already retired and failing to adjust the state’s wind generating fleet to account for wind’s intermittent nature.” (more…)

Governor Perry made significant strides toward producing a pro-growth tax proposal with his announced “Cut, Balance, and Grow” economic plan. Unfortunately, his plan has some glaring deficiencies.

(1) It is NOT strictly a flat tax and will SHRINK the tax base. The $12,500 personal deduction per individual provides an enormous advantage to large households at all income levels. Further, if a Head of Household of a family of four makes $50,000, he would have NO federal income tax liability under Gov. Perry’s plan. This will dramatically shrink the federal tax base even more than it has under President Obama. If Gov. Perry wants to restore an ownership society where every individual is a taxpayer and has a stake in his or her government, this plan will not accomplish that.

(2) This plan is guaranteed to balloon the deficit in the short term. By allowing taxpayers to choose a tax regime, Gov Perry is guaranteeing every taxpayer a tax-break. As a taxpayer, I say “great”! Unfortunately, Gov Perry does not plan to balance the budget in the short term, and our creditors will want their money back eventually, so we will be piling on to a $16 trillion debt when Pres Obama leaves office.

(3) The reduction in the corporate rate is insufficient to stimulate growth substantially. While I applaud Gov. Perry for recognizing that the corporate tax rate needs to be reduced, most states add another 5%+ or so of state corporate income tax, making a corporation’s effective rate 25%+. That is not enough of a reduction to encourage US corporations to relocate operations from countries like Ireland where they are taxed at 12.5%. (more…)

I’ve always wanted to be a writer for that satirical rag The Onion, but (sad to say) this story’s headline is not a fake.

For some time now, our local sports talk radio station has been carrying a very clever public service ad campaign warning young people about the dangers of overspending and having one’s credit score downgraded.  Recently, I noticed that this campaign is being sponsored by the Advertising Council and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Now, I had always believed that Ad Council projects of this kind were completely free; but, alas, that isn’t entirely the case.  According to two different Ad Council officials with whom I spoke, when a federal agency or non-profit organization contracts with the Ad Council to do a public service campaign, only the creative talent (to come up with the clever ideas) and the air time (to broadcast the ads) are provided pro bono.

All of the campaign’s “hard costs” – for research, recording, editing, studio rental, focus group testing, public relations, etc. – are the responsibility of the project’s sponsor.  According to the Ad Council, these expenses “typically run between $2.5 million and $3 million per campaign.”

While the Ad Council would not divulge (for “proprietary reasons”) the exact amount that the U.S. Treasury Department spent on its campaign to warn young people about overspending, their officials assured me that this project required a significant payout from its federal sponsor. (more…)

The Occupy movement is planning to take ‘direct action’ against banks in the next several days, using a variety of tactics, according to video and email evidence compiled by Big Government. These tactics include physical occupations of banks, and attempts to encourage financial runs on the banks.

In this clip from the video bombshell that BigGovernment revealed on Sunday night, we see a New York Times freelance reporter and a self-described ‘commie’ laughing over the possibility of criminal acts against banks – has have happened recently in Dallas, Oakland, Los Angeles and Minneapolis.  The assault on banks  appears to be the movement’s latest strategy and  part of an overall scheme to ‘take over the banks, to nationalize them’, as one #OWS supporter said in a recent email revealed by BigGovernment.com.

This segment comes at about 57:30 in the full video posted by Jacobin Magazine and it shows New York Times reporter Natasha Lennard authoritatively answering a question about what comes after the park occupation ends. Watching her answer, there’s no possible way to tell she’s reporter and not a active part of the Occupy movement. You’ll note her use of the phrase ‘that’s what we need to think about’.

Then something bizarre happens as Malcom Harris takes the microphone. You’ll remember we showcased Harris on Monday discussing how Glenn Beck was correct in his analysis that Occupy wanted to ‘drag people into the streets.’ As Natasha Lennard hands the mic to Harris, he seems like a kid who can’t keep a secret. He speaks cryptically about banks and their doors while Lennard giggles like a nervous schoolgirl who knows exactly what Harris is talking about. As the vauge hints die down, the moderator seems to stop the conversation before it goes any further.

(more…)

Today, in 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered his “A Time for Choosing” speech in support of GOP candidate Barry Goldwater.