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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by James Rickards, to discuss why the Federal Reserve is wrong to keep interest rates at zero, concerns about inflation, and that increased regulations are needed on American banks.

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

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From BetaBeat:

The infamous $640 toilet seat which the Pentagon purchased back in the 1980′s now has a crappy, excuse the pun, modern day equivalent: a government-made mobile app with a price tag of $200,000.

Rich Jones of Gun.io, a job board for hackers, downloaded and installed the Heat Safety app from OSHA. It’s a straightforward service that finds your current location, measures the heat and humidity and serves up a warning with notes if the temperature is dangerous.

One might call it the kind of app that could have been created for less money by simply telling people to stick their head out the window before work. But this level of precaution is OSHA’s mandate and it’s good, in theory, to see government trying to leverage new technology.

Mr. Jones, an Android developer himself, took a much darker view.

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Please read Part 1 and Part 2.

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

Oregon OSHA and Federal OSHA had already attacked Brazilian Blowout’s product, steering the media to focus on faulty aspects of their respective studies, and burying the truth  –  that the product does not release formaldehyde in amounts that exceed state or federal short-term or long-term exposure limits.

Enter Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D – 3 – OR).  Ontheissues.org labels him a “hard-core Liberal”, and you know what that means when it comes to anything involving chemicals or the environment.   Rep. Blumenauer sponsored nonsensical bills like HR 3311 that taxes drivers based on miles driven; a ludicrous bill to jump-start the funding of streetcars; a bill to establish under-the-radar death panels; a bill providing environmental education grants for outdoor experiences (huh?); and even one quashing free speech by attempting to ban a website promoting the perfectly safe Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

So Rep. Blumenauer reads about OSHA’s nonsense in the media and, because he’s a politician, doesn’t do his research, either.  Nor does he bother contacting the company to get their side of the story.   Instead, he grandstands by penning a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking that they recall the product — a product already proven to meet OSHA standards!

I asked Rep. Blumenauer’s press secretary, Derek Schlickeisen, about this approach to policy.  His assertion was that politicians “can’t have a chemist on staff”, and thus rely on OSHA’s scientists to bring incidents like this to light.  When I mentioned that the company-funded study by Health Science Associates showed formaldehyde levels below OSHA standards, he inferred that the study held little weight because it was company funded.

Yet why is it that OSHA’s results are given any more credibility, especially when OSHA caused a panic based entirely on a faulty sample?  Are we to believe that OSHA scientists are somehow free of ideological bias?  Kermit McCarthy, one of the authors of the Oregon OSHA study, “likes” hard-core Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden according to his Facebook page.  Why isn’t his bias questioned?  If anything, a government worker is likely more biased than a private company to insert bias, because his very job depends on his work generating a result that permits the government to do something.  Otherwise, the agency’s existence, and the employee’s, have no purpose.

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Is the United States government considered a republic?

Paul Rahe thinks so – and asserts, “The modern nation state is an attempt to capture what the ancient Greeks and Romans had.”

Our federal government has gone through a massive shift in the last six decades, leaving us with less public discourse and more control at the federal level – which Paul Rahe argues has left Americans feeling anxious with no way to influence the government.

In our most recent episode, Paul Rahe, Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in Western Heritage at Hillsdale College, compares the US government to the ancient republics and explores how this applies to our current place in history.

The US Constitution has been co-opted to shield government agencies from the public. As a result, we now have a consolidated government with far too much control over private institutions. The recent developments in the EPA and the new regulations set up for ObamaCare are just a few easy examples of the extreme federal overreach coming out of the Obama Administration.

What’s the good news? Rahe argues that the administrative entitlement state is coming to an end.

To hear more about the past, present, and future role of the federal government, watch the full interview below.

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In case the fact that 76 percent of Americans oppose ditching the dollar bill in favor of a dollar coin wasn’t compelling enough, a new study that exposes the proposal’s supposed cost savings as mere myth should finally convince the super committee to abandon this clunker of a bill and focus on real spending cuts. According to the independent study performed by economic research firm John Dunham & Associates, the study finds that rather than saving money and helping the economy, a mandated switch from a dollar bill to a dollar coin would place a heavy economic burden on businesses of all sizes and types in the midst of an ongoing recession.

From Business Insider:

The group analyzed 29 different retail and service sectors in the U.S., finding that the annual cost of running business would balloon by $201 million and cause companies to shed at least 4,300 jobs.

The added costs come from adjustments such as adding new cash registers to hold the hefty coins, changing counting machines, purchasing larger safes and the costs incurred by banks, money transfer companies and financial firms, the study says.

“Changing to a coin would be a tax increase on retail and service firms of all sizes,” said John Dunham, president of John Dunham & Associates.

The debate is sure to continue on whether such a change and its potential to save the nation cash in the long-run is worth the initial hassle.

But it appears the public so far has spoken: More than 70 percent of consumers in a recent poll said they were against the proposal.

Supporters of the dollar coin, led by Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, cite a March 2011 GAO report as support for the contention that the switch would save money in the long run (over a 30-year period).  However, the study debunks that assumption as well, highlighting two key missing elements from the report:

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From the Associated Press:

During the first two months of the nationwide Occupy protests, the movement that is demanding more out of the wealthiest Americans cost local taxpayers at least $13 million in police overtime and other municipal services, according to a survey by The Associated Press.

The heaviest financial burden has fallen upon law enforcement agencies tasked with monitoring marches and evicting protesters from outdoor camps. And the steepest costs by far piled up in New York City and Oakland, Calif., where police clashed with protesters on several occasions.

The AP gathered figures from government agencies in 18 cities with active protests and focused on costs through Nov. 15, the day protesters were evicted from New York City’s Zuccotti Park, where the protests began Sept. 17 before spreading nationwide. The survey did not attempt to tally the price of all protests but provides a glimpse into costs to cities large and small.

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Big Labor has another opportunity to show employers and employees their level of control over the state of Indiana. And, apparently the show starts this week as union officials promise to bring union activists by forced-dues-financed busloads into Indianapolis to intimidate, disrupt, and generally throw a collective tantrum against the simple notion that Hoosiers should no longer be forced to pay tributes to union bosses in order to get or keep a job.

The nation will watch as Big Labor Democrats will likely flee to Illinois again in 2012 rather than allow their constituents the right to pay or not pay union fees without the threat of losing their jobs.

And employers from Illinois to Ohio will be watching to decide if they can stay in the Midwest or even remain in the U.S.

Indiana is located at one of the crossroads of America, and it has the opportunity to become a free state where workers can no longer be forced into union servitude. Indiana has the opportunity to become the anchor that saves Midwest economic viability.

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Coverage of Bigs editor Peter Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out has already permeated the news cycle, from presidential campaign ads to late-night comedy monologues. Now former mayor of New York City Ed Koch is using the examples of Congressional insider trading uncovered in the book to lament Congress’s disconnect from voters.

From the Huffington Post:

Congress is a joke. Today there is absolutely no respect for those who were elected to represent us in the House and Senate. The reasons for this lack of respect are many. Overwhelmingly, the public sees Congress as fools because, while they were elected to address and solve the problems besetting our nation, including a 9 percent unemployment rate, members of Congress appear far more interested in party politics and reelection. There appears to be no major effort to rise above party affiliation and responsibly address the nation’s problems and save the Republic.

…

Many voters also see members of Congress as knaves. Witness the recent piece on 60 Minutes on CBS-TV about two weeks ago reporting on members of Congress who, while enacting laws bearing upon the stock market, used inside information — not available to the public — to purchase or sell stocks, making profits in the millions in some cases. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was alleged to be one such member. Apparently, members of Congress are not subject to insider information restrictions that apply to everyone else. It seems to me there is an easy way to prevent that abuse. Congress should require its members to place their stock portfolios in blind trusts, so members cannot use their insider information for themselves or others. Also passing whatever laws are needed to apply existing insider information rules to Congress, as well as the public.

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By some accounts, today is the busiest travel day of the year. On normal days, airport security is a mess. (Thank you federal government!) If you’re flying today, good luck!

“I’ll say this plainly, I’ve said it before – Taxation is theft. It presumes the government has a higher claim on our property than we do,” says Judge Andrew Napolitano, the host of Fox Business’ Freedom Watch and the author of the new book, It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with the outspoken libertarian commentator to discuss topics ranging from abortion (the judge is fiercely pro-life) to Occupy Wall Street (he welcomes the protest against corporatism) to Rep. Ron Paul (“the Barry Goldwater” of our moment) to the role of religion in the quest for freedom.

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A recap of the Republican debate on national security and foreign policy, as seen through its best and worst moments.

Worst gaffe of the night: CNN, which mis-identified former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark as a Republican in its pre-debate analysis.

Best comeback: Newt Gingrich to Ron Paul, on the need for the Patriot Act: “Timothy McVeigh succeeded. That’s the whole point.”

Worst neo-colonialism: Mitt Romney, channeling his inner Kipling by suggesting that we have to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan into “modernity.”

Best follow-up answer: (Tie) Michele Bachmann on the Patriot Act, who focused on Barack Obama’s eagerness to grant rights to terrorists, rather than taking the bait to attack fellow Republicans (that time, anyway); and Ron Paul, who highlighted problems with immigration and the war on drugs in answering a question about border security.

Worst attempted dodge: Rick Santorum, allowing Wolf Blitzer to back him into saying that Muslims should be profiled at airports.

Best nickname: Herman Cain wins for calling Wolf Blitzer, “Blitz.” Somehow, I think that’s going to stick.

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Tonight, CNN, Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute host another debate of the GOP candidates for President. The focus of tonight’s debate is national security. The fun begins at 8pm EST.

Tonight’s debate among the Republican presidential contenders, co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and CNN, will feature the candidates’ views on foreign policy.

By now, Republican voters are used to the clash between the hawkish approach favored by the party mainstream and the isolationist posture championed by Rep. Ron Paul–a confrontation that has been a feature of GOP presidential debates since the 2008 election.

Yet the events of the past year–especially the upheaval of the Arab Spring–have generated real debates among conservatives about how the United States should respond to a rapidly changing Middle East, an ambitious China, and a disintegrating European Union. Those new fault lines within the party will likely make their appearance on the stage tonight.

Though it is certain that each of the Republican candidates on stage tonight will criticize President Barack Obama’s record, each will find something different to criticize–not just because of their own divergent views, but also because of Obama’s incoherent policy. (more…)

The Congressional “Super Committee” tasked with cutting the debt has failed. Good. Embrace the joy of failure. Sometimes failure works out for the best. Because in this case “failure” leads to the Holy Grail: $1.2 Trillion in forced spending cuts. That’s the best thing that could have ever come out of this unconstitutional “Super Committee.”

Congress is now forced to accept automatic across the board cuts to spending- including defense spending. This is what the GOP should have been aiming for from day one. Play out the clock and force $1.2 Trillion in spending cuts.

But our GOP friends never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They are scared, spineless weaklings. They are actually panicking because there wasn’t a compromise that raised taxes. Could they possibly be this dumb?

The GOP had the perfect campaign message tailor-made for a 2012 landslide. “The GOP stands for smaller government, lower taxes, less spending. Obama is for bigger government, higher taxes, more spending.” The same simple clear contrast that led to a historic Tea Party landslide in 2010. All they had to do was play out the clock and let the spending cuts take effect.

Instead the GOP “super committee” members were so scared of actually forcing real, honest-to-goodness, spending cuts that they desperately tried all last week to compromise with Democrats. They practically begged Democrats to increase taxes on the wealthy (by taking away deductions). The GOP was anxious to sell out every small business owner, homeowner, and GOP contributor in America. Listen carefully- it was the GOP who offered a deal based on Obama’s philosophy to punish successful Americans for their hard work, sacrifice, and financial risk-taking.

Republicans offered a deal to Democrats that included only slightly larger spending cuts versus tax increases. And guess where all the tax increases were aimed- at wealthy taxpayers. Even as GOP Presidential contenders lied to our faces during televised debates, all agreeing they would not even accept a deal of 10-to-1 spending cuts versus tax increases, the GOP Super Committee members attempted to sell out the entire conservative base for close to 1-to-1.

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Voter fraud is not a figment of your imagination, says former Congressman Artur Davis (D-Alabama).

The use of absentee ballots makes massive electoral fraud possible, Davis told the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro in a startling interview.  Davis’s comments came months after a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted local NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots.  Sowers received a five-year prison term.

“Most voter fraud doesn’t happen on Election Day,” Davis said.  “Very few folks are going to walk into a polling place and claim they’re somebody they’re not.  It happens with the absentee ballots and counties in my old congressional district.  Sometimes 50 percent of the votes cast in Democratic primaries were absentee ballots.”

“There is no reason that half the vote in a community ought to be absentee ballots when the number is 0.01 percent in most communities in the United States,” he said. “How do you get 50 percent of the Democratic primary electorate being absentee in the natural course of things?  You don’t get that.  That comes about when there’s a strategy of cooking the books at the polls, voting people named Donald Duck and manufacturing ballots.”

Davis can’t understand why those on the left oppose voter ID laws such as the law recently enacted in his home state of Alabama.

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Tonight, eight Republican presidential candidates will take the stage at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., to share their foreign policy and national security views with the American people. The debate, hosted by The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, will be broadcast on CNN at 8PM ET.

The debate will focus on a number of crucial national security and foreign policy questions that will undoubtedly reach the President’s desk in the coming years. Ensuring our country’s defense is a fundamental responsibility of the federal government, as set forth in the Constitution. And it is up to the President to take the lead in crafting American foreign policy while also serving as commander in chief of the armed forces.

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Today marks the 48^th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and with it, 48 years of conspiracy theories.

The Left has promulgated nearly all of these theories since the day of the assassination in 1963. Kennedy was killed by a communist — someone to the left of him — but yet we’re still told this was some grand conspiracy, involving what would necessarily be dozens or even hundreds of people who orchestrated and executed it (and then kept the secret!) with right wing forces at the center.

Various suspects have included military industrialists, the CIA, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, pro-Israeli groups, oil magnates aligned with Lyndon Johnson, right-wing racists, E. Howard Hunt, and J. Edgar Hoover.

Even at the time, the Kennedys and the mediacouldn’t accept that a lone deranged leftist was responsible. Kennedy, after all, was in Dallas, a hotbed of rightwing extremism as they saw it. Even as the shooting was taking place, Connally yelled out “They’re going to kill us all!” Jacqueline Kennedy didn’t change her clothes until she got back to Washington, stating to Lady Bird Johnson she wanted “them to see what they did to Jack.” (Emphasis mine.) This was the liberal mindset, from the people in the car on out.

Gerald Posner’s 1993 book “Case Closed” makes a strong and convincing argument that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and for it he’s been demonized as a right wing stooge, a Kennedy-hater, or enforcer of the establishment line, obviously on the payroll of some nefarious right wing phantom.

But Posner did what most of the conspiracy theorists don’t do: look at the actual evidence that exists, and at the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. Why do all these conspiracy theorists typically ignore all that’s known about Oswald? Because there’s a clear trajectory in his activities that led to the assassination.

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From James Delingpole in the Telegraph:

Breaking news: two years after the Climategate, a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet by a person – or persons – unknown. And as before, they show the “scientists” at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa – all your favourite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they’d like it to be.

In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower ‘FOIA 2011′ (or “thief”, as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.

As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails:

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

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From the Chicago Sun-Times:

A federal judge sentenced Tony Rezko to 10 1/2 years in prison Tuesday, describing his actions under Rod Blagojevich’s tenure as “selfish and corrupt.”

Rezko, 56, has already served about 44 months. His daughter burst into tears at hearing the sentence.

U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve said she found it offensive that Rezko put at risk the Teachers’ Retirement System by scheming for kickbacks with a board member in 2004.

“You put their retirements at risk for your own greed and your own thirst for power,” St. Eve said.

A pale, thin Rezko gave a brief statement before he learned his sentence, saying “there are no words to describe the pain and regret,” he carries and the amount of suffering his family has endured. He apologized to the court and to his family.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Niewoehner said Rezko’s conduct was severe and included scheming with former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and others to control state deals so they could make money off of it.

“That’s about as bad as it can get in a political corruption case,” he said. “Illinois was for sale at the very top levels of our government.” Rezko’s attorney, Joseph Duffy, said his client would never commit a crime again.

Read more here. Readers will no doubt remember that Rezko and Obama were involved in a controversial land deal when Obama was a state Senator. They had very close ties:

Rezko was a key supporter and donor throughout Mr. Obama’s political career, with the Illinois Democrat estimating that Rezko raised $250,000 for his various political campaigns, though not for his presidential bid. The two were friends who talked frequently about politics and occasionally dined out together with their wives.