From The Chicago Tribune:

The emerging portrait of Herman Cain’s most recent accuser shows a suburban homemaker with a history of financial and legal troubles, but one who supporters say has the guts to do the right thing.

Sharon Bialek, 50, is the fourth woman — and the first publicly — to accuse the Republican presidential hopeful of sexual harassment. In a dramatic news conference Monday in New York, Bialek, a former employee of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, said she had sought Cain’s help in finding a new job in July 1997 shortly after the organization had fired her.

Instead, Bialek said, Cain, who was then head of the restaurant association, reached under her skirt while the two were seated in a parked car and attempted to move her head toward his crotch. Cain’s campaign quickly issued a denial, calling her allegations “completely false.”

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From FoxNews:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is calling for an investigation into allegations that ACORN-related group New York Communities for Change “engaged in fraud through its participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

In a letter dated Monday, Issa, R-Calif., called for U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York to launch a probe into allegations first reported by FoxNews.com that NYCC may have “solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters.”

In an Oct. 26. report, FoxNews.com quoted sources within NYCC who said that the group — run and staffed by nearly all former ACORN employees — was asking for donations for specific charitable purposes, including for the teachers union and PCB toxin testing in New York City schools.

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Should we call it the “new” new tone?

A death threat against Governor Walker was removed from Facebook on Monday, almost three full days after it was initially posted. “Rather than recall him… Can we kill him instead? Just curious,” wrote Regan Cowan on the Recall Walker Kick Off Rally event page on Facebook Friday afternoon. When someone responded with “He’s signed a bill allowing conceal to carry IN the capitol [sic]… Someone just might get away with it!!!” Cowan then posted: “I’m game.”

The effort to recall Governor Scott Walker is underway and is highly-organized, with dozens of employees set to work out of more than 20 planned regional offices. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin laid out its initial plan to recall Governor Scott Walker at a volunteer training meeting in Madison last month. DPW is working with a coalition of labor groups under the United Wisconsin umbrella and has divided the state into eight regions and is prepared to have 44 field officers operating out of 22 offices. (more…)

When Barack Obama was seeking the Democrat nomination in early 2008, warnings of his inexperience coupled with the fact that he was an ideologue were ubiquitous. Again and again, the facts were placed before us that Obama’s only claim to significant leadership was as a community organizer in Chicago. Mark Levin, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others repeatedly said that Obama would be a reckless President who lacked governing knowledge and who was ruled only by his desire to put America in its place.

And here we are. It’s late 2011, and the Organizer-in-Chief has proven that his only strength lies in his ability to organize those who hate America—hating both the economic system embedded in her and the ideals on which she stands.

To put it bluntly, “Occupy Wall Street” is Obama’s America. He has organized it, perhaps indirectly, but has done so nonetheless via his relentless venom for “the rich” coupled with his ongoing calls for more people to sacrifice and to “pay their fair share.” Of course, he doesn’t mean the hippies and freaks in the protests should pay their share. Rather, he is fostering a feeling of betrayal in them so they will continue to “rage against the machine.”

Look at it, folks–Obama’s America. Ain’t it great? It’s a place where law is disparaged (you can defecate on police cars), capitalism is hated (“eat the rich”), and people are entitled to take money from others even if the takers played no role in earning the money they crave (especially if they played no role in earning it).

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From most appearances, the Senate will this week vote on Senate Joint Resolution (S.J.Res) 6 – the Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval of the Obama Administration Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s illegal Internet Net Neutrality power grab.

Only 51 votes are required for passage – which means only 4 Democrats are needed.  There are 23 Democrat Senate seats up for reelection next year.  A few of these folks aren’t running.  The rest are – many in center or center-right states.  Additionally, there are a few other Senators that should also be subject to Constitutional reason, and thusly contacted.

Behold a list below the fold of some of these Senators and their contact information.  Reach out and tell them to vote Yes on S.J.Res 6.  Also tweet it all out using the hashtag #freethenet. (more…)

For the past few weeks, a small group of rag-tag occupiers have set up a shanty town in Keiner Plaza, the site of many St. Louis Tea Party rallies. They have done so without a permit and without insurance — things the city demanded of the St. Louis Tea Party before they were allowed use of the space. Demonstrators plug their laptops and space heaters into the park’s power outlets. Should an accident occur, the lack of insurance will place the city on the hook for liability. Yesterday in an interview with Mayor Slay’s spokesman Jeff Rainford, I learned that the city isn’t exactly keen to bring the group into compliance with the law.

The cost for renting out Keiner Plaza isn’t cheap, though not as expensive as permits for usage of federal park space. A letter to my STLTP Co-Founder Bill Hennessy detailed a list of actionable and monetary requirements before the city would allow an August 4th, 2011 Tea Party event to take place:

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Republicans were in an “Internet uproar” last week over a false report that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had called them “jack-booted thugs.” Meanwhile, deeply troubling statements that EPA officials did make have hardly stirred a ripple in the blogosphere.

At a recent hearing before a House oversight panel, three Obama administration witnesses — National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland, EPA Assistant Air Administrator Gina McCarthy, and EPA Transportation and Air Quality Director Margo Oge – denied under oath that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards. In so doing, they denied plain facts they must know to be true. They lied to Congress.

House Government Oversight and Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) put it more diplomatically: “Your statements under oath misrepresented the relationship between regulating greenhouse gases and regulating fuel economy.” By “obstinately insisting” that regulating greenhouse gases and fuel economy are “separate and unrelated endeavors,” the officials “impede the Committee’s important oversight work.”

Why did they “misrepresent” and “impede”? Had the officials answered truthfully, they would have to admit that California’s greenhouse gas motor vehicle emissions law, AB 1493, which EPA approved in June 2009, violates the Energy Policy Conservation Act’s (EPCA) express preemption of state laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy. The officials would also have to admit that EPA is effectively regulating fuel economy, a function outside the scope of its statutory authority.

Strongly Related

That greenhouse gas emission standards implicitly regulate fuel economy is evident from the agencies’ own documents. As EPA and NHTSA acknowledge in their joint May 2010 Greenhouse Gas/Fuel Economy Tailpipe Rule (pp. 25424, 25327), no commercially available technologies exist to capture or filter out carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor vehicles. Consequently, the only way to decrease grams of CO2 per mile is to reduce fuel consumption per mile — that is, increase fuel economy. Carbon dioxide constitutes 94.9% of vehicular greenhouse gas emissions, and “there is a single pool of technologies… that reduce fuel consumption and thereby CO2 emissions as well.”

(more…)

Today, in 1960, JFK defeated Richard Nixon for the Presidency.

***UPDATE: Big Government has confirmed through a source that Sharon Bialek is a Republican who registered to vote in Chicago in 2006 and voted in the 2008 Republican primary and the 2008 general election.

Sharon Bialek, a woman from Chicago who describes herself as a registered Republican, became the fourth woman to accuse GOP front-runner Herman Cain of sexual harassment, and the first to do so on the record with specific allegations.

Though she wasn’t an employee of Mr. Cain’s at the time, according to a statement she read today during a press conference with her attorney Gloria Allred, Ms. Bialek claims Mr. Cain groped her after they shared a 1997 dinner together and that he wanted sexual favors in exchange for his help in finding a job.

Immediately after Bialek’s press conference, Mr. Cain released a statement emphatically denying the allegations.

Part of Ms. Bialek’s statement included the description of a personal encounter she claimed to have had Mr. Cain at WIND’s Teacon in October of 2011. She claims to have confronted Mr. Cain and that he became uncomfortable after he recognized her.

Big Government has spoken with a source who helped organize Teacon 2011 and who confirmed that Sharon Bialek attended, as did Mr. Cain (who was a featured speaker).

Our source also remembers Ms. Bialek personally, and therefore can confirm that the woman who attended was not a different woman with the same name.

That does not affirm or deny the substance of Ms. Bialek’s allegations, nor her account of her interaction with Mr. Cain at Teacon.

The city of Cincinnati is broke.

Their 2011 budget includes a $55 million deficit. Part of the problem is that Cincinnati public employees enjoy some of the most generous perks in the state.

The City Council-approved contracts include benefits that, among other things, permit manyworkers to draw 13 sick days a year, grant three weeks’ worth of compensatory time to public safety employees for holidays whether they work them or not, and entitle veteran police officers to nearly 10½ weeks of various leaves annually.

That’s bad enough, but here’s what makes it even worse. These employees can save up all those days and cash them in when they retire or leave for another job. It isn’t rare for these payouts to be over six figures.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Speaking in a halting voice, a Chicago-area woman accused Republican presidential contender Herman Cain on Monday of making an unwanted sexual advance against her more than a decade ago, saying she wanted to provide “a face and a voice” to support other accusers who have so far remained anonymous.
“Come clean,” Sharon Bialek challenged Cain, demanding he confess to any inappropriate behavior with her or other women.

Cain’s campaign instantly issued a denial. “All allegations of harassment against Mr. Cain are false,” it said.

Bialek’s appearance at a news conference marked a new and—for Cain—dangerous turn in a controversy that he had been trying to lay to rest.

She described an evening in mid-July 1997 when she had dinner in Washington, D.C., with Cain, whom she had contacted in hopes he could help her find a job. The two were in a car for what she thought was a ride to an office building.

“Instead of going into the offices he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt toward my genitals,” she said.

“He also pushed my head toward his crotch,” she added.

She said she told Cain to stop, adding that he did.

Bialek said she did not file a workplace complaint against Cain at the time because she was not employed. (more…)

From The Village Voice:

Insert “the revolution will not be televised” joke here. This Occupy Wall Street ad, which first surfaced a few weeks ago and is the work of David Sauvage, has appeared widely this weekend on ESPN, CBS, and Fox News (heh), among others. The ad was funded via Loudsauce, which is a kind of Kickstarter for media projects.

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From The Guardian (UK):

The revolution could be trademarked in the US as more entrepreneurs seek to profit from the Occupy demonstrations.

T-shirts began to appear days after the first protest on 17 September, a march through lower Manhattan. Now T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise are being offered on the campsites that have sprung up in cities across the US. The US patent and trademark office has received a spate of applications.

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Commenting on Supercommittee deliberations last month, I asked whether Republicans will choose the real budgetary savings of a sequester or surrender to a tax hike.

Well, it appears that the GOP likes being known as the Stupid Party and is seriously considering a plan to increase the net tax burden on the American people – even though some of us have warned from the beginning that the left would use the Supercommittee process as an opportunity to trick gullible Republicans into a tax increase.

Here’s the relevant section of an editorial by Steve Moore in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.

…raising rates and raising revenues are different. Eliminating loopholes in exchange for making the Bush tax cuts permanent after 2013 is on the table—and by broadening the tax base, this could bring in tens of billions of new revenues each year. Says Mr. Hensarling: “Republicans want more revenues. We want more revenues by growing the economy; we’re not happy with revenues at 14% of GDP, but we don’t want to do it by raising rates.” One positive development on taxes taking shape is a deal that could include limiting tax deductions, perhaps by capping write-offs on charities, state and local taxes, and mortgage interest payments as a percentage of each tax filer’s gross income.

I’m a bit disappointed that Steve thinks restricting deductions is a “positive development.” I’m a big fan of getting rid of all preferences and distortions in the tax code, but that should only happen if all the revenue is used to finance lower tax rates, not to finance big government.

But that’s a secondary issue.

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American taxpayers are on the hook for who-knows-how-many trillions of dollars in government bailouts/takeovers. And yet, to date, we have little information about how the federal government legally justified unprecedented its use of tax dollars to “bail out” private companies.

Why? Because the Obama administration continues to stonewall the release of documents that would almost certainly shed light on the internal discussions that took place in the Bush administration!

On November 1, 2011, we filed a petition on behalf of former Federal Reserve employee Vern McKinley, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling validating the Federal Reserve’s decision to withhold documents about this $29 billion Bear Stearns bailout. (Bailout Nation began with the Bear Stearns bailout in 2008.)

At issue in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit is whether or not the federal government can withhold documents under the deliberative process privilege of FOIA Exemption 5 without demonstrating that the release of the documents would result in specific harm to government agency decision-making. As you might imagine, the “deliberative process” is loved by government officials who use it to keep as much information as possible about controversial decisions away from the American people.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the exit of Greece’s Prime Minister, the likely resignation of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and whether CEO pay is linked to job cuts at America’s large corporations.

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:

Euro debt crisis: Greek PM George Papandreou to resign when new coalition government formed
Asia Stocks Fall as Debt Crisis Undermines Greece, Italy Leaders
Silvio Berlusconi: Resignation Rumors ‘Without Foundation’
Excessive CEO Pay and Job Losses: Are They Linked?

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Got Nuke? Latest reports may not claim Iran actually has one; however, they do suggest it has perfected the process required to produce one. That and Obama’s peace prize should make for a wonderful set of bookends as we approach the 2012 election.

Iran is pursuing its nuclear weapons program at the Parchin military base about 30 kilometers from Tehran, diplomatic sources in Vienna say. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to release a report this week on Iran’s nuclear activities.

Well, that would be one way to deal with a pesky outbreak of head and body lice, even if a bit extreme.

A lice outbreak was announced at the #Occupy Portland squatters camp this weekend. Head AND Body lice.

With the OWS rap sheet at 151 and counting, let’s hope they don’t  infect our jails and prisons. An intrepid New York Post reporter spent a night in Zuccotti park, finding it a ‘sliver of madness.’

Depending on who you ask, Herman Cain has either slipped given old allegations  of sexual harassment, or he’s emerged “unscathed.” Like beauty, the media narrative is in the eye of the beholder these days.

(Reuters) – Allegations that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain sexually harassed women in the 1990s have begun to damage his bid for the White House, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

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From The New York Post:

Now they want to Occupy the Future.

Determined Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have vowed they’re not leaving Zuccotti Park anytime soon, and their online agenda suggests they mean business — with events scheduled through Oct. 26, 2025.

“Maybe it’s a typo?” said Patricia Moore, 58, of Cedar Street, chair of Community Board 1’s quality-of-life committee.

“It will be Occupy Wall Street’s grandchildren. The community board will have to fight to build a school over there.

“It would be bad enough if it’s 2015. But if they keep getting donations like they are, who knows?”

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